Black Onyx - Forgotten Magic

'Bunch of drunken swine!' Falos raged on the inside while containing himself from cussing them out outright. Still, he couldn't help but say something, "Fine! Maybe I'll go take a look then!"

"Go then."

"I will!"

"Good."

He stormed out of the hall and slammed the reinforced door behind him. Or, at least that's how it happened in his mind.

In reality, he barely managed to open the damn rusty thing, and closing them was even harder from the other side since the stone was slippery and wet. The thick iron hinges squeaked loudly the entire time, probably just another reason why the other guards used those doors as rarely as possible.

He was just gone for a few minutes when Falos Nerum came back screaming hysterically.

"He's dead! Murlin's dead! I've seen his corpse! They've killed him dead! Completely and unequivocally dead!"

Once again, the rest of the guards didn't even flinch.

"11? Damn it! This dice is cursed!"

Falos stood rooted to the ground in the middle of the hall with his eyes bulged out and hands shaking. "Hey! Did you hear what I just said?!" he shouted in a hysterical voice.

"Oy! Shut yer trap!"

"Leave the man sleep, greenhorn, it's not the first time that's happened."

Now he had enough! The Nerum lad finally gathered some courage to stand against the older men, "You absolute buffoons!" he shouted. "Listen to me, I said he's dead! T-there's blood and all! And his neck was all bent the wrong way and shit!"

The largest of the guards, going by the nickname Grog, slammed on the table and stood up in a bad mood.

"Alright, already! Shut it!" He went forward and grabbed Falos by the arm and dragged him out of the hall, "Let's go to see this dead man, shall we?"

"You tell 'im, Grog!"

They went down a few flights of stairs, walked along a corridor, and went down even further. Eventually, they came to an especially steep stairwell that was well-lit by the freshly refilled lamps and stopped there.

On the bottom lay the corpse of the ol' Murlin, laying in a puddle of his own blood.

"See?! I told you!" Falos shouted victoriously.

"Hmm…" Grog just stood in place and rubbed his boot over the stairs. A thin layer of black liquid coated the top of the stairs below the lamp and a few steps below. It was quite slippery.

"This bumbling fool…" He murmured and carefully went down where he examined the body.

Murlin had many bruises on his face and neck, and a big gash on his forehead, most likely the source of all that blood. His neck was quite obviously broken, and so was his nose.

It didn't take a genius to wrongly guess what happened there.

"Alright, get him up," Grog ordered and gestured towards the corpse.

"Me?" Falos asked incredulously. "He stinks! And he's all bloody! No way!"

Grog just took a step closer and looked at him with the meanest look he could make. He didn't even have to say anything as Falos quickly lowered his head and said the meekest "Yes, sir..." he could muster.

As they were on their way back, the young lad still couldn't keep his mouth shut and had to ask, "But who killed him? Aren't we going to search for his killer?"

Grog just groaned internally, "Boy, he fell."

"Fell?"

"Yes, fell. The dumbass spilled the Earthen Blood all over the stairs and then slipped on it and broke his neck. You would have seen it too if you opened your blind eyes."

The explanation made perfect sense, and so did the wounds, but Falos didn't want to admit to being wrong and so he insisted, "But Grog, sir! What if one of the inmates killed him and then just made it look like an accident?"

Grog stopped in his track, turned around, and looked at him like he was looking at the biggest retard in the world. There was even pity and disgust in his eyes, something Falos knew all too well as it was the same look his father would give him when he would drag his sorry ass back home in the early morning hours after a night of partying.

He shuddered and shut his mouth.

"By all means, you can check every single one of the 90-something cells if you want. Good luck finding the killer." Grog then turned around and opened the door of the hall and took back his seat at the table. He had wasted enough effort for one day, now it was time to play dice!

Oh, and he would probably have to write a report for the dead Grumbler. "Aaah! What a pain!"

***

"Excellent…"

Gerald mentally rubbed his hands together as his trick with the dead body worked. He had to change the content of Earthen Blood in many of the burning lamps just to make it seem more legit. And yeah, he confirmed, that Earthen Blood was in fact oil or some version of it. But judging by the looks and smell, it was most likely crude oil.

It seemed that this world was in the early stages of its use, so something like an internal combustion engine was probably still ages away. If it was ever going to emerge.

Gerald certainly wasn't going to make it. Because, despite knowing the basics, he wasn't going to waste his time creating something he had no current use for. Magic was way better anyway, and he wanted to focus on that.

And as he kept nearly all of the Howling Abyss under his watch with the help of Magic Eyes, he felt quite safe. There was that one annoying dude among the guards that complained too much, but luckily the others didn't let him run around and do whatever he pleased, so he wasn't concerned about getting discovered.

"What happened?" Murik asked as he noticed Gerald's expression perk up.

"Weren't you watching?" the man in question answered.

Murik Woods shook his head, "I can't see that far. At most I can recognize objects up to ten meters away, any more than that and it all becomes blurry and merges into the background."

He was talking about his Magic Eyes, of course. That's how they worked. Depending on the strength of your Soul, you could distinguish detail at a longer range and pick up the world around you through the mind's eye.

Gerald's range was about ten times that of his, and his resolution was also much greater, so he could see almost everything. He could even read lips if he focused on it hard enough, though that skill wasn't exactly reliable.

"They bought it," he announced. "They think that guard fell down the stairs and broke his neck."

"They did? Hahaha, they are so dumb! How does that even work?"

Murik Woods used his free time in the prison cell to restart his Cultivation. It had been many months since he had last done it, and he was itching to give it another go. He didn't have anything better to do anyway.

He and Zeph also started training a bit, since their muscles degraded from a long time of inaction. Now that they had good food and could move unimpeded for many hours each day, they made sure to get themselves ready for when the time came to fight for their freedom.

In the meantime, Gerald kept making all kinds of scrolls. He made hundreds of Fireballs, Wind Blasts, Ice Shields, and countless Thorns, together with Stone Bolts, his signature move.

He created countless scrolls until he ran out of paper, parchment, and even raw beast skins, he used it all. Some of them were subpar as ingredients, however, that was even better since he was also making explosion scrolls en mass. The more unstable they would be, the better. And the Runes he was drawing made absolutely no sense.

They were just there to gather and focus Focus until it reached critical mass and became unstable, creating an explosion. The only part that had to be accurately made was the activation delay, going from three seconds, all the way up to ten. A bit of variety to spice things up.

And it was a good thing he was working on it so aggressively for the last few days, as, not even two full weeks since his imprisonment, a group of five guards came to their cell, all of them wearing the same grim expressions that went well with their gray and black uniforms.

"Rise and shine! It's time to go!" one of the men shouted and gave Gerald a few slaps across his exhausted face to wake him up.

As the man weakly replied to their abuse by lifting his head and opening his eyes, they unlocked his shackles one by one. As the metal ring around his neck was opened, they had to stop him from falling down, such was the weakness of his body.

"Come on, stand up!" another hollered at him, but it was useless. Gerald's legs were like noodles from weeks of abuse and starvation, and he couldn't even stand on his own. One of the guards had to hold him up straight, an action which he begrudgingly carried out.

"Where are you taking him?" Woods asked. He still didn't know the exact plan Gerald had for them, and now the man in question was already being taken away. He, of course, knew that the seeming weakness was all part of the act, especially seeing Gerald secretly wink at him, but that didn't mean he wasn't worried.

He didn't know what was happening at all!

"Shut it!" barked one of the guards and slammed the cell door, locking it once more.

As the group of men left, Woods and Zeph remained alone. The former mulled over everything he was told in the recent days, but couldn't come up with anything.

"What do you think he meant when he said Listen for the thunder?"

Zeph simply shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. We are too deep to hear thunderstorms."

"That's what I'm saying! It makes no sense!" He then looked towards a small crack in the wall within his reach where a small iron key was hidden. "Or maybe it does..."