The Tunnels under Alfheim

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...Go left.”

“... Dance to the beat… wave your hands together…”

Mavis looked back at John, an incredulous look on her face as he hummed and sang to himself. John stared right back at her, shutting up until she looked away.

“...Come feel the heat-”

“You are not seriously singing Caramelldansen, are you John?” Talia asked, her swords having been returned to her sheaths as they walked.

“Maybe,” John replied, putting his arms behind his head.

“...”

“...”

“... Forever and forever…” Talia muttered, finishing the lyrics.

“Oh, don’t you start too, Talia,” Mavis said, rolling her eyes.

“C’mon, it’s catchy!” Talia said with a smile, holding her hands up to the sides of her head mimicking the dance moves from the music video.

“But can you not? It’s, like, the worst possible song you could sing right now,” Moira said with a groan. “I had to hear it all throughout middle school, and then getting it stuck in my head when I would go out with my dad on Order business. I really don’t wanna have my dying thoughts in these Lady-forsaken tunnels to be “Now we are here with Caramelldansen.”

“Well, on the bright side you won’t die in these stupid tunnels,” John said before trusting his arms out to his sides, “because that would require something TO ACTUALLY BE IN THESE TUNNELS!”

The others let out a sigh of agreement. It had been about 20 minutes since they had started walking through the tunnels, and the first thing they had discovered (aside from how dark the tunnels were) was that the Order had been very thorough in clearing out and sealing off the tunnels, as there wasn’t even a spider or odd bug in the catacomb like structures. Apparently whatever seal the Order used kept the tunnels cleansed and sealed off, almost like their own pocket dimension within Alfheim. The advantage of this was that they could relax and not have to worry about getting ambushed by anything while Naoto guided them through the tunnels.

The bad news was that this made the tunnels very, very, VERY boring.

“If my phone had any charge, I could at least play some music while we walked,” John said after a moment or two. “But I guess the Order isn’t keen on keeping the phones in their ward charged.”

“John, they tortured you and experimented on you. Did you really expect the Order to actually charge your phone?” Talia asked incredulously.

“... It would have been nice,” John said with a shrug.

“Oh, thanks for reminding me,” Moira said before turning to look back at John. “I need to make sure your phone is hooked up to the Abyssal network later. I think we have a few chips that can go into your phone back at the mansion, so don’t let me forget to put one in your phone later.”

“What’s the Abyssal network?” John asked.

“Basically the deep web but for the Abyss. It allows you to browse certain sites and shops exclusive to Abyssal users, and lets you access the Abyssal Auction.”

“I assume thats like… Ebay for the Abyss?” John asked.

“Basically,” Talia interjected. “But it also works kinda like Amazon. You list whatever it is you want to sell on there, a drone comes by to pick it up, and some third party person usually analyzes it and gives you a fair price on what it can be sold for. You can raise the price if you think it’s worth more or lower it, but the experts are usually pretty accurate about those things.”

“How long does it take for things to get sold on there?” John asked.

“Decently fast, but you get paid the moment you agree on the price.” Moira said. “The Abyssal Auction will pay you 95% of what it’s worth, with the remaining 5% going to keeping the lights on and the employees paid. Then the item gets stored with them until it is sold and delivered to the buyer via the same kind of drone that took the good in the first place.”

“What about more custom stuff or things that need to be tailor made?”

“Well, as someone who recently had to get her jacket adjusted due to… growth.” Naoto interjected. “There are some businesses that partner up with the Auction, and the Auction will advertise them and sell their services like a normal product. Then when you decide that is the product or company you want, you generally get sent a message about when the company is coming by to help you with the product. In my case I needed a new jacket, so I went to the Auction and purchased a bit of time with the company that made my last jacket. Two days later they came by, took my measurements and showed me some colors to choose from, asked what enchantments I needed for it, and gave me a price. I paid them directly, and two days later I got my brand new jacket.”

“Pretty useful,” Mavis said, walking up to Naoto’s side. “But I think we all know that your ‘growth’ wasn’t in the height department.”

“W-w-what are you implying?” Naoto said with a blush.

Mavis simply grinned and slowed her walking speed till she was side by side with John again. She gave him a wink and a nod before gesturing to her own breasts and then to Naoto. John could feel himself get a bit harder as he imagined Naoto trying to put on her old jacket, only to find that it was too small to cover her breasts. He imagined the cleavage it would be showing off, and just how hot it would look to have her in said old jacket with her boobs pressed tightly together before getting splattered and covered in his-

‘Focus, John. Mission now, dirty thoughts later,’ he thought to himself. He then said a quick prayer to Gaia that Naoto would be poly as well, and that maybe she found him as sexy as he found her to be. They continued to make their way through the tunnels, Naoto’s persona every so often pointing down a branching path for them to take. However, aside from the occasional humming from John or Talia, the walk was spent in silence. It gave John time to look around at the tunnels that they found themselves in. He could see the obvious remains of the skaven empire, things like skaven weaponry littering the floor and banners depicting the horned rat hanging in various entryways. However, the numerous rat skulls and bones that littered the ground and the distinct lack of humanoid bodies made it clear that things did not go well for the under empire. It got even worse when they entered one of the larger chambers, one that seemed to be a central hub that branched off into several other tunnels.

“Man, I hold no lost love for the skavens, but even I feel bad about this,” Mavis said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Talia asked as they all stopped for a moment to look around.

“It was a massacre,” Naoto said, continuing to walk forward. “You can tell by the positioning of the skeletons, and how the sealed tunnels have the most skeletons by them. The skaven must have realized that they were losing, but couldn’t get to any actual exits so they tried to escape through tunnels that they themselves boarded up.”

“But they couldn’t,” Moira said somberly. “The Order would be sure to kill all of them. Leave no chance for corruption to bloom once again.”

“The Order sounds brutal,” John said, to which Moira responded by turning away from him.

“The Order does what is needed to keep humanity safe. Even if it’s the most brutal option,” she said softly, walking away from the group. “We die, or I guess slaughter, in the dark, so others may live in the light.” She kicked aside some dirt, revealing several smaller skeletons of child-like rats huddled by a larger skeleton, who seemed to be curling around the smaller bodies. “No matter who it is that we are killing in the dark.”

No one hummed a single note or spoke another word for the rest of the walk through the tunnels.

_________________________________________________________________________________

John gave out a long whistle. “Man, for an evil scumbag and villainous dirtwad, he sure knows how to make one helluva bachelor pad.”

“John, can you stop marveling at Lifthrasir’s decorating skill and help us look for clues already?” Talia said as she searched through an old filing cabinet for anything incriminating.

“Sure, sure. But still, you have to give him props for house layout and decorating,” John remarked as he slowly walked through the various rooms. They had gotten to Lifthrasir’s home a few minutes ago, and luck had been on their side in that an old tunnel happened to end right at Lifthrasir’s basement. Granted, it had taken Moira’s hammer to break through the packed earth wall, but the result had been that they didn’t have to spend even a second in plain sight of any officials of Alfheim. Upon finding that the house was completely empty (“abandoned”, as Naoto put it), they split up and started turning the house upside down for any clue as to where Lifthrasir could be. Talia and John had taken the downstairs office areas, while Mavis and Moira searched the basement and living areas of the downstairs.

John suspected the pairings were to try and have Mavis and Moira hash out their differences and work together. However, Mavis’ constant glares at the paladin made it abundantly clear she was not keen on coming to any understanding.

And Naoto? She was upstairs searching through some of the bedrooms. When asked why she didn’t need a partner, she humbly reminded them all that she was, in fact, an actual detective. She could handle herself in terms of investigating.

John picked up a small manila folder and quickly used Observe on it to ascertain it’s contents without having to open and read it. “Just more documents from the council.” John said, after reading the description. “I really doubt that we will find anything in that cabinet other than more of these documents.”

“You never know,” Talia said as she tossed another folder over her shoulder. “I mean, if it were me, I would try hiding all my illegal incriminating stuff in between a bunch of boring shit. Kind of like hiding your porn in a folder full of homework.”

“You know, that might have been smarter for me to do rather than just password locking it.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Talia said before giving him a grin. “You’re just lucky that your girlfriends happen to be kinky freaks who like the same porn that you do.”

“That does make me wonder then…” John said as he pulled another file out. “What kind of porn is in your porn folder?”

“What makes you think I have porn saved on my computer?” Talia said, tossing away another file.

“I figured that, with how controlling the council is, that there would be high internet restrictions. Figured you would wanna make sure you keep the good stuff for later in case you can’t find it again due to censorship.”

“Smart conclusion,” Talia said with a grin. “Tell you what. If you can guess what my favorite fetish is, then I will share my porn folder with you. But only if you guess EXACTLY what it is.”

John crossed his arms. “Is it something overly specific? Like ‘My favorite fetish is being fucked in the ass by a blue-green slime while having ahegao, but only one eye is closed.’?”

Talia giggled. “No no, it’s not that specific. I would say that it is specific enough to have it’s own tag on something like rule34 and have a couple thousand results pop up.”

John was silent for a few moments as he thought about what he knew Talia liked. He knew she had a bit of a freaky side at times, but she never mentioned what was her favorite thing. “Um…. bondage?”

“Nope,” Talia said, emphasizing the p with a loud pop.

“Anal?”

“Nu-uh.”

“Oral?”

“Not even close.”

“Are you two going to keep talking sex, or are you going to actually search for what we are here for?”

John and Talia turned their heads to see Naoto standing in the doorway, her arms crossed and a sly grin on her face. The two of them lowered their heads sheepishly while muttering an apology. Before they could say anything else, however, Naoto held up a hand to stop them.

“It’s fine. The other two I figured would be more on task due to not liking each other, but I fully expected the two of you to be making out or something similar.” Naoto then turned to look John in the eyes. “I could use your help with something upstairs though, John.”

“Hey, just because we’re dating doesn’t-”

“I’m joking,” Naoto said with a smile. “But seriously, I do need John upstairs really quick.”

“Why?” John asked.

“There are some writings of Lifthrasir upstairs as well as some carvings on the walls in runes. I can’t quite understand them, so I wanted to see if our runic mage could make heads or tails of them.”

John shrugged before adjusting his glasses. “I think I could take a look. Do you think it will lead to where Lifthrasir is?” he asked as he walked over to Naoto's side and, together, they walked upstairs.

“Not sure, but he also had some runes written in a journal that we found at the guild headquarters of The Scarlet Hand that we couldn’t decipher. My hopes are that these runes have something to do with them.”

Naoto directed him down one of the hallways, and quickly pulled him into one of the doorways. Inside was what must have been Lifthrasir’s master bedroom, with a poster bed placed against one of the walls and an old oak desk that looked decades old covered in papers and folder files. Upon said papers John could see a multitude of numbers and figures as well as what read as some boring legalese. However, more interestingly, on the margins of several of the papers were various words written in runes. John pushed his glasses up a bit further and took a closer look at the papers, the magic of the glasses slowly transforming the script of the runes into English.

“What does it say?” Naoto asked, quickly pulling out a small notepad and pen in order to take notes.

“Py.. Higs..ziv.”

“... Say again?”

“Pyhigsziv? Or at least that is the best that I can pronounce it, it’s kinda missing a few vowels”

Naoto stood still for a moment before handing her pad and pen to John. “Write it down.” John complied quickly, scratching down the nonsense phrase after double and triple checking that he spelled it right.

Pyhgszv Bmpbn, Eenjccqgab Ehmacqfpkhno

Naoto looked at the word, looked down at the paper, then back at the word. “I am guessing that it’s not in another language?”

John shook his head. “The glasses would have translated it to English. Or at least… I thought it would have.”

“No no, I expected this,” she said, shaking her head. “It was the same in his journal. I tried to read the runes and looked up a translation, but got nothing. I was hoping that I just did my translation wrong and you could set it correct.” Naoto sighed and jotted down a few notes in her own notebook. “At least I have the coded phrase now. Now I can start decoding it.”

“That sounds like it’s gonna be hellish,” John said crossing his arms. “I mean, do you even know what code it could be?”

“Unfortunately, no,” she said with a small sigh. “For all we know it could be as simple as a Caesar cipher or something as complex as the Zodiac Killer’s codes. But hopefully it will be something that will be somewhat solvable.” She then looked back at the papers before handing John her notebook. “Finish writing down the phrases, and put numbers by both your translation and the actual phrase. We will be taking the papers with us, and I’ll need to know which paper corresponds to which code.”

John nodded and got back to work. Granted, it was slow work as John had to ensure that he didn’t miss a single letter. Whilst working, he did note that some of the papers had repeat phrases on them. In fact, a lot of them did. After doing a quick reshuffle and a check with the phrases he wrote down, he found out that there were seven phrases in total, each one repeated a few times on various sheets. He then took a few moments to sort the sheets, figuring that perhaps something could be garnered about what the phrases were if the similar sheets were looked at.

One thing he did note was the difference in sheet amounts. There were four phrases that took up most of the paper space, with each of these four phrases’ piles being larger than the three remaining phrase piles combined. Additionally the sheets associated with these phrases were all very similar, reminding John of business ledgers and excel spreadsheets. Things like packages being shipped, transactions, and so on and so forth. All very dry legalese, but such sheets were only found with these four phrases.

John took a closer look at them to see if he could guess something based on sentence structure.

Pyhgszv Bmpbn, Eenjccqgab Ehmacqfpkhno

Mzmunp Vkobnobn, Sfwdj Kkcc Fkxww Dyqujemm

Tesg wz Jpdibzed, Foxuoao Yqsecdluff

Fprost Ttwyc, Ooo Fqwslow Xsxngzsvj

‘Hmmm… nothing really stands out about them obviously, aside from the comma being in them. Then again, all of these phrases have a comma somewhere within them.’ John shuffled through the papers again. ‘Maybe location names? City and state possibly? But then what state would have 3 or 4 words in its name.... And unless he is adding county or providence then I really doubt they are just pure locations. Plus who the fuck even remembers their county aside from people who spend all day filling out forms and lonely grandparents?’

‘Maybe something he hid in these-’

“John?... John… John!”

“W-what?” John asked, bursting his thought bubble as he turned towards Naoto.

“Were you not listening to me?” She gave him a sly smirk.

“N-no, sorry. I was lost in thought.”

She shook her head, still smirking. “No no, it’s fine. I do the same all the time. I wanted to ask you if you finished writing all the phases down.”

John nodded. “Yeah, but each one is as nonsensical as the first. But I did take a moment to sort the papers based on which phrase appeared on them. I figured-”

“That if we found similarities in the paper, it might lead us to a translation,” Naoto finished with a smile. “Good thinking. Notice anything?”

John gestured to the papers. “These four stacks are made up of a bunch of… what I can best describe as business ledgers and the like. Things I would figure you would find in the files of a small business somewhere.”

“Could be then that the coded phrase is the name of a secret business then.” Naoto picked up one of the pages and read through it quickly. “Might be a front for one of his guilds… one the Order has no idea of and one he would want to keep hidden from prying eyes that looked at his documents.”

“Right, but these three,” John gestured to the three remaining far smaller piles, “are much more varied. For example, this pile is just made up of receipts.” John pointed to the pile that had papers with the code phrase of “Mkbxymdefbd, Xelbwju Fdopun”. “While these ones are… Honestly, I’m not sure. There were some receipts, some maps, some random other stuff… I honestly don’t really have a theme for them.”

Naoto looked through them a bit, as well as taking her notebook to look at the translated phrase before frowning. “Well, you’re not the only one stumped here. To be honest, I don’t think we are going to get a satisfying answer until we can break this code.” Naoto shut the book before turning and gesturing to a wall she had been looking at. “And I think we might have a clue here. I found a small lever that was hiding in the wall behind some plants. But I can’t quite reach it enough to get a grip. Care to pull the lever and see what we found?”

John walked over and reached his arm between the planks. He could feel the soft wispy touches of the various cobwebs as he brushed past them, and he desperately tried not to think about the spiders that could be on said webs (hairy creepy little fuckers). His fingertips soon made contact with the wall behind the wall, but after pushing his had just a hair further, his finger slid onto a small groove in the wood. Tracing up it, he could feel that it was a small lever just large enough for his hand to grab around.

After a few moments of adjustment, he gave it a quick and strong pull, a soft click noise sounding out. Then the wall that was beside the two of them, one that had just seemed to have a picture hanging on it, slowly pulled back and to the side revealing-

“Oh god, we found his sex room,” Naoto said as a blush overcame her. John pulled his arm out of the wall and peered into the room. Sure enough, it seemed that Lifthrasir’s secret room was his “bungalow” so to speak. It looked like a honeymoon suite in a hotel, with a well made bed with rose petals as the centerpiece of the room, a small mini fridge against a wall and a jacuzzi not too far away from that. However, it was a bit more **** than your average Red Roof Inn suite as over against one wall was a St. Andrew’s Cross as well as a chair with several restraints on it. Additionally there were some other bits of furniture that seemed to be more for bondange than actual sitting and relaxing, and that was ignoring the wall that had a whole plethora of various BDSM tools such as whips, gags, and restraints.

“... You know, I would figure that he would want to have the dungeon and love-making room separate, in the event a girl isn’t into that,” John remarked. Naoto took a slow deep breath, straightened her posture and smoothed out her jacket before slowly walking inside.

“W-we still have to search it. There are a few drawers in here that he could have hidden the code inside of,” Naoto said while still blushing like a virgin. “Let’s just… hurry up and be done with this.”

John nodded, walking inside after Naoto. However, after only a few steps into the room, a small click sounded off and behind them the door began to shut. John quickly turned, trying to stop the door from shutting but it was too late. His fingers just managed to push against the door before it shut completely. As it did so, a set of red lights came on along with the soft sound of smooth jazz from some hidden speakers.

“Oh wonderful, now Lifthrasir is trying to seduce us without even being here. Least he could have done was buy us dinner first,” John remarked before starting to feel against the wall. “I’ll see if I can find another lever or button to open the door.”

“Good idea. I’ll start checking around to see if I can find anything of importance,” Naoto said. John started to pat down the walls, the smooth wood beneath his fingers giving no indication of anything hidden as he slowly dragged his fingertips across the wall. However, after a few moments he felt a small indentation in the wall. Then, after a bit of feeling around he deduced that what he found was a small button.

‘Jackpot.’ He pushed the button, but rather than causing the door to open, the sound of air entering the room was heard. John quickly spun his head around to see where the noise was coming from, and about halfway between him and Naoto was a small hole in the floor that was pumping in some slightly pink tinged air.

“Naoto! Something is getting into the air! Be careful!” he yelled out, pulling his shirt over his nose. Unfortunately Naoto was shoulder deep in a rather large sex toy chest, and did not hear him correctly. She stood up and turned towards him, just slowly enough for the slightly pink air to make its way to her.

She took a slow breath, and then another. Then an even deeper breath, and as she did so John could see her face getting slightly redder and her gaze starting to go from inquisitive and observant to sultry and excited. She took another deep breath, her hands reaching up to slowly start unbuttoning her jacket.

“John…” Naoto said slowly, and John could feel both the arousal and fear grow in him as he watched his childhood crush start to undress in front of him. “Could you come over here for a moment?”