Not Sorry

“Charcoal?”

“It worked best for the writing surface,” the stylus explained.

Anna reached for the letters with her right hand, slowly tracing her fingers over them. Nothing felt out of the ordinary, just damp stone. She lifted her fingers away, shining her phone on them. She expected to find a sort of watery dark residue. Strangely the charcoal did not stain her skin but remained entirely embedded upon the stone.

“That’s odd.” Charcoal shouldn’t behave like that.

“Were you expecting something else?”

“I guess… ink?” Though ink on stone would have been impossible to transfer.

“I’ll have you know, I’m a multi-talented stylus. Swords have nothing on me. They can only write in crimson. Me? I can render in ink, charcoal, chalk, oil stick, colored wax, luminescent dust… or my personal favorite… crayon.”

Crayon?! “You’re unhinged.”

“Hey! You spend who knows how many centuries trapped as a writing utensil!” Its voice fell to a self defensive pout. “It gets lonely.”

With their magic spent, Anna watched as the letters slowly lost their clarity and began to muddy, merging into two illegible amorphous dark blobs on the floor. Anna stared in complete disbelief.

The words had erased themselves.

Phone in one hand, pall in the other, Anna slowly backed out from the passageway and into the hallway, the unmistakable scent of urine assaulting her senses. Her eyes swept over the muscular man. Dark staining ran along the inner unarmored thighs of his trousers.

“Look who’s pathetic now,” the stylus mocked.

Anna stared at her attacker. He stared back. Whatever was terrorizing him he didn’t vocalize.

“I… will… get… you… witch…” he slowly murmured through clenched teeth. It appeared he could see through just enough of the spell’s hallucination to realize the culprit.

“You know? He should really have an unfortunate sword accident. Right about now.”

Anna felt fingers brush against her ankle. “P-p-please, g-g-get them off.”

Looking down, the younger man was pawing feebly at her feet.

“What’s wrong,” Anna asked softly, slowly lowering herself into a crouch beside him.

“S-spiders,” he whispered. As if spiders could hear. “T-they are all over me. If I move they will bite me.” He shuddered, eyes half lidded. “They’re poisonous. I’m going to die.”

Anna reached to touch his shoulder gently. “There are no spiders.”

“No, no, there are,” he refused, quivering. “They are running across my shoulder.”

Anna immediately withdrew her touch, not wanting to unintentionally torment him further. “There are no spiders,” she assured him.

The young man resumed crying softly. “Tell my mother. She was right. I was not strong enough to hunt witches.”

Anna swallowed hard. “Stick! What did you do to them?!”

“You mean, what did you do to them,” the stylus replied with a chortle. “You didn’t write out anything specifically about intensity or duration, so I figured you wanted the max.”

“This is awful.”

“Welcome to necromancy, apprentice!”

The young man continued to hick and sob.

“What can I do to help him?”

“A white witch. Which you aren’t.”

“That’s not good enough of an answer.”

“Eh, it’ll fade. Eventually. Probably have post traumatic nightmares for a long time. But it’s your fault. You should have been more specific with your words.”

“Thanks for the forewarning.”

“Not sorry.”

Anna looked at her phone, considering the slowly dwindling battery. Toggling the flashlight off and powering it down completely, she slipped it into her joey pocket. She then stooped to pick up a lantern dropped by one of the hunters.

“Who’s my friend?”

“It’s called a smart phone.”

“It doesn’t say much.”

“Maybe you can learn from that.”

Anna set the lantern at her feet and fumbled with what to do with the funeral pall that had saved her life. Skirt? Obi? Mantel? Cloak? There was a lot of fabric. Eventually she settled on folding it in half and wearing it as a shawl. She then retrieved the lantern and began following the trail of objects dropped by the hunting party from when they made their escape. Hopefully their fear didn’t chase them further into the catacombs but instead to the exit.

One hallway led to another junction which led to another hallway and another junction.

This was a maze.

“If I describe what I see, can you figure out which way is out?” Anna swept the lantern about at the next intersection. Nothing visible had been accidentally dropped to indicate which way the group had run.

The stylus did not reply.

“Hello?”

The stylus did not reply.

“What are you, six?”

“Smart phone and I are busy,” the stylus replied haughtily.

Anna sighed with disgust. “Are you going to be like this all the time?”

“Mmmmmaybe. But, if you aren’t going to use your brain, then you might as well be a zombie.”

“Ha. … Hah.” Anna made no effort to hide her disdain for the arrogant object.

“Of course you could always just ask the dead which way is out. ‘Speak Dead’ would be the written command. But I would advise being a lot more specific than that, otherwise if you run into a talkative one, they may bore you to death.”

“I’m not speaking to the dead.”

“Killjoy.”

Anna swept the beam of the lantern slowly over each wall adjacent to the junction. She was sure she was missing something, but she didn’t know quite what to look for. With the walls hewn from the stone, all the individual mechanical marks seemed to just blend into one chaotic mess. But whoever constructed this labyrinth, surely they would have left some way of knowing which way was out.

“Ughhh, ok, fine. Don’t say I never helped you,” the stylus chided. “Look near the ceiling or the floor. Unless the marks were removed, there should be two vertical lines spaced closely together, or something similar.”

The search continued until she spotted them. Near the corner where the wall met the ceiling, carved faintly into the stone, were two vertical lines with a horizontal cross bar capping them. The symbolism said what words did not. Portal.

“Ok, I’ve got it.”

Anna dashed down the hall until reaching the next intersection. This one was wider, a main artery. Puddles of water lined the floor. A small, carved center cut channel carried water away from the gallery. She turned and followed the gallery uphill, though the slope was so slight she stopped to check to make sure she was going against the flow.

“Hurry! She could show up at any time!” The male voice was distant but definite. Anna paused in her sprint, slowing to a walk, uncertain. Exiting this horrible place was ideal, but ending up dead or a handless captive would be worse.

A cluster of wooden barrels lay on the floor ahead, sitting upright. Half were set against one wall of the gallery, the other half directly across against the other wall. Anna paused to study the arrangement. Thick black lines of the grainy charcoal lead away from each cluster, continuing uphill and out of reach of the lantern’s beam.

“Stylus, how fast does black powder burn?” Anna’s mind went to cartoon physics.

“Black powder? Incredibly fast.”

“Fire in the hole!”