06/05/2026: Captives In the Dark

Darlene, Alternate Hester, 2026

Diro comes back alone.

He is calm about it, which is its own kind of information. He reports what happened below in the even tone of someone who has already processed the worst of it and moved on to logistics: there is a devil down there. He met it. He told it he was a student doing research. The devil — Orestes — let him leave. He told Orestes he was guarding captives.

Diro pauses here, letting that land.

He believes those captives are the alternates. Their versions, from this timeline, locked somewhere behind that door.

Debbie goes very quiet. Not the quiet of someone thinking — the quiet of someone who has already thought, and arrived somewhere they would rather not be.

She knows Orestes. The name sits in her gut, cold and heavy. She has experience with this devil, another version of Orestes in their own timeline blinded her. She has no interest in a combat with this creature again. She says, without much inflection, “We should leave. Without the alternates. Without looking back.”

Diro looks at her.

He does not raise his voice. He does not perform patience. He simply says: “We can’t do that. Those are people. Those are, more precisely, you. All of you. And they are locked in a room with a devil on the other side of the door. Your can’t leave them there!”

The argument is short. Diro wins it, not by volume but by weight. Debbie’s shoulders drop a fraction. The expression on her face shifts — not happy, not brave, but committed. Shoulders slumped, Debbie sighs, “I’ll volunteer to draw Orestes out. He chase me, and I’ll draw him away from the captives, clear the path.”

Reyna talks her out of it, “He’s not even in this room, Debbie.” The chef is calm, her argument efficient, and it carries the quiet authority of someone who has watched enough plans go sideways to recognize one going sideways in real time. The devil stays in its rooms to the west. They go around him.

⚔️

Hester and Diro take the lead.

The dungeon winds past the first chamber, low and damp. The walls are close enough that a tall person would have to mind their head. They move through it carefully, mapping what they find — dead ends, side passages, the smell of standing water somewhere ahead.

The well appears without warning, sunk into the floor and wide enough to matter. On the far side, barely visible in the dark, are seams that do not match. The surrounding wall bears the outline of a door set into the stone. A door that has been designed not to be noticed.

Hester flutters over to examine the wall above the yawning well. Her hands move over the stone with the methodical focus. She finds the release. There is a sound — low, mechanical, old — and the door gives.

They go back for the others.

⚔️

The Hexmates gather at the door. On the other side, audible now and unmistakable, are their own voices.

Not like an echo. Not a trick of the stone. Their actual voices, from their own actual mouths, coming through a locked door in a dungeon under Witherbloom Tower. The conversation on the other side is ordinary — the particular low-grade bickering of people who have been waiting somewhere they did not choose to be.

Diro raises a hand. Quiet. The word does not need to be spoken. Orestes is close. Sound carries.

He kneels at the lock with his picks. But the tumblers will not fall into place.

The lock stays locked. It is old and it is stubborn and whatever technique Diro applies to it, the lock declines to participate. He sits back, allowing Debbie to try next

She produces the Architect’s Compass. Diro is incredulous. “A compass? For drawing” 

“And for shooting pencils,” snaps Debbie, and gets to work.

The compass is a significant artifact with precise and powerful properties. Debbie loads a number two pencil into it with the focus of someone who has committed to a course of action and has no intention of second-guessing themselves. She positions it at the lock. She applies pressure with the particular confidence of someone who has no idea what they are doing but is prepared to be confident about it anyway.

The compass misfires.

The pencil drives itself downward with considerable force, through the leather of her boot, through her foot, and into the floor beneath. Debbie is pinned.

Reyna moves without hesitation. She gets her hands on the pencil, braces, and pulls. With her other hand she covers Debbie’s mouth — or makes very clear that the hand is there and why. Debbie does not scream. This is a significant personal achievement.

From the other side of the door, Orestes’ voice comes through the wood. Low. Easy. The kind of voice that does not need to raise itself to communicate the stakes.

He tells them — the alternates, presumably, though the instruction applies to everyone in the dungeon — to keep it down. He is specific about the consequences of not doing so.

The Hexmates freeze. No one breathes unnecessarily.

⚔️

The Architect’s Compass goes back into Debbie’s bag.

She produces woodworking tools instead, with the quiet practicality of someone who has learned to keep options available. The lock is not actually the obstacle. The lock is attached to the door by four screws, old and rusted, sunk into thick wood. She identifies this. She communicates it with a gesture. She begins.

The work is slow. Rust makes the screws reluctant. Diro positions himself next to her and they work together in silence, methodical, the two of them across from each other in the narrow passage, turning screws by fractions while ten feet away a devil sits with its ear to the other side of the door.

The fourth screw gives.

The lock drops.

Diro catches it milliseconds before it hits the floor.

He holds it for a moment — both hands, held level, the lock still and silent. Nobody moves. No sound from Orestes’ side of the door.

The Hexmates look at one another. And they withdraw.

Diro swings open the door.

⚔️

They step back, away from the threshold. This moment does not belong to them.

Diro goes in.

Whatever is about to be said to the alternates — you are us, we are you, there is a devil six feet from this conversation, and this is going to take some explaining — he will be the one to say it. The door closes behind him. From outside, the voices inside the room murmur, then go abruptly quiet.

This is going to be complicated.