SUB SYSTEM QUERY: "If deviation blooms, what then?

  The camp chamber is too quiet for a place that once housed children. Its air is still, not in peace, but in pause. Wax pools in corners where candles have burned down to their wicks. Chalk lines stretch and curl beneath the bunks where practice altars once stood, fading into the stone like a soft ghost you might meet in the attic. The rest of the place, an amalgamation of fragments from various rituals practiced until the rhythm of performing them alone brings comfort.

  Eileen kneels beside the remains of a cracked wooden table, one palm pressed flat to its battered surface, as if listening through the grain. Her sleeves are rolled neatly to the elbow, her hands steady and unhurried. She is not testing for strength, for she is reading the shape of the piece, trying to feel the memory of whatever Audry carries of this place.

  The wood, of course, sags beneath her touch. It is the kind of collapse born not from violence, but from long, patient sorrow. This was a table where proud hands once stayed folded, where stillness was taught to mean safety. She traces the worn edges with her fingertips, and beneath one of the broken legs, something catches her attention. A scrap of paper pinned under the weight of splintered wood.

  Eileen retrieves it carefully, unfolding the fragile sheet with the gentleness of someone who now knows what echoes of childhood cost in a place like this. A goblin figure stares back, drawn in thick charcoal strokes, its grin too wide, one hand holding something... bread, or maybe a weapon. The distinction is unclear, and the fact that it is unclear troubles her more than anything else.

  She folds the paper again, smaller, but does not pocket it. Instead, she places it atop the table’s cracked surface, where it can bear witness to the drawing, quiet and enduring.

  Rising slowly, she brushes the dust from her skirt and shawl before moving towards the far wall where the cots line up like abandoned offerings. Most are empty, their blankets frayed, their pillows turned and threadbare, stripped by hands in a hurry. But two cots remain untouched, each with a blanket folded with mechanical precision, each with a pillow smoothed to quiet perfection.

  Eileen stands before them for a long moment. The air hums, not with sound, but with the kind of weight that only settles in places designed to forget grief by shaping it into obedience. She cannot look away, and when the footsteps come, soft but sure, she does not need to turn to know who they belong to.

  Audry steps up beside her, her eyes catching on the two perfectly made cots. Her hands fold loosely against her chest, a small, unconscious shield. She breathes out, almost a laugh, but thinner, stretched into something brittle. "They made the beds for us," she says, wonder softening her voice. "They made them the same way they always do when new arrivals are coming."

  Her hand brushes the nearest blanket, careful not to disturb it. She turns toward Eileen, pride rising in her voice. "Ollan and I slept here before we got our orders. We followed the orders just like we were asked, and so they must have known we would come back to sleep in our beds."

  There is no hesitation in her belief. No room for suspicion, only the bright certainty of a child who has never been given reason to doubt the rituals she has been taught, and Eileen listens without correcting her. She looks at the false beds with their straight lines and perfect folds and knows immediately what truth lies beneath. The camp clearly assumed Audry and Ollan would not return, that the camp had never expected them to survive the orders given. Because to this camp, when vessels are expended, replacements are required. It was the same as all the twisted rituals in the Hall of Instruction.

  But Audry, small and brave and aching to belong, sees only kindness in the cruelty, and so Eileen folds her hands gently before her, saying nothing. She lets Audry keep her hope a little longer.

  Then from the corridor beyond, a new sound emerges, the scraping of steps. Until a goblin figure stumbles into the room.

  Caretaker William walks like someone whose ending has already been processed. The corridors do not reject him, but they no longer seem to recognize him either. There are no more rituals left for him to perform, no more murals waiting to be followed. The stones of the halls allow him to pass without resistance, as though he is little more than dust drifting along a path that once mattered. He follows the way forward not because it is right, but because it is remembered, and he continues because stopping would mean making a choice, and choices have never belonged to him.

  Several motes drift behind him in silent attendance as well, small orbs of red, white, and blue, each one a quiet indictment of his failure. He had performed the rites as prescribed, swiftly and with care, but the deviation had not been contained. Whatever entered the Dungeon had devoured the small offerings left at the threshold and continued its advance, moving deeper as if it belonged. That alone should have been impossible. For the Father had built these tunnels for his faithful to serve the sacraments, not for the tunnels to resist invaders. The old wards, since time immemorial, should have driven back anything impure, anything wishing death upon its creations. Against contenders of old who reveled in the glory of slaughter, the wards had always held.

  So as William walks, he cannot fathom how the deviation slipped through. The rituals were clear, the safeguards ancient and absolute. The stronger the violence, the stronger the wards. As such, the emotions following him must have been carried in with these intruders, the most profane of contaminations. What level of untamed bloodlust could this monster have used to bypass the wards? What level of depravity would have to be wrought by a true abomination of chaos and death for it to slip through? It is the only explanation William can hold onto, that only a depraved, 'murder hobo' as one adventure had called themselves could have brought emotions so deep into these sacred tunnels and with them, the deviation that followed emotions around.

  He had, of course, followed the scripture to the letter. He had performed the Ritual of Binding, and when that failed he had unleashed the Hounds of Purgation to cleanse the rot before it could spread. But even the hounds had fallen. It had not been a contest. It had been a failure written out in flesh and broken commandments, the loss of this institution resting sorely on his shoulders.

  Now there is nothing left but aftermath. William knows the cycle of these stories as well as any caretaker of the rites. Intruders, heroes, adventurers, abominations one and all, for none ever leave witnesses alive, and the only kindness a goblin can expect from them is the blessing of death. So Williams knows that his head will roll from his shoulders, and he accepts this without resentment, because he understands that he was never meant to survive an event where a ritual breaks away from its proper shape.

  He steps into the broken chamber with finality, already composing the form of his own end. There are no prayers left to say, no rites to invoke. Only the understanding that a sacrifice is required to close what has been opened. Perhaps he can delay these invaders long enough for the Dungeon to rally, though he worries he may not be able to for long.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  He does not expect to find her.

  “Caretaker William?” asks a small voice breathlessly, the sound of recognition rousing him from the dreaded spirals of his mind. Confused, William looks up and finds himself perplexed. Why was one of the offerings not dead? Intruders were merciless to monsters across the entirety of the Dungeon and horrific slayers of goblins, even going out of their way to collect ears in exchange for titles.

  But the intruder speaks first. “You locked the door behind her," it says. The voice is female; it is not loud, but it carries. "You left two children with no food or bedding. Do you have any idea how irresponsible that is?”

  William does not answer, for he cannot. He finds his mouth dry and his breath coming too shallow. He does not flinch, but something inside him leans away from the truth she has placed between them. This intruder must be taking prisoners as blood banks; it must be how they bypassed the wards. What foul machinations could they want with the blood of the sacrifices?

  William watches as the invader picks up one of the folded blankets with the calm grace of a matron preparing a guest room. She smooths it flat over her arm, tucking the edges carefully, as though folding silence itself.

  "I have seen what cruelty looks like," the invader says. "But this is not cruelty. This is obedience pretending to be safety. Both of your little ones were so faithful to this system of rituals that they forgot how to question those who wrote it."

  The offering, Audry, shifts closer to the invader, her small hands tightening at her sides. She can tell Eileen’s disposition has changed, and yet she finds a way to be brave. She lifts her face to William, voice thin but clear. "Where are the others?"

  William lifts his hand without thinking, a gesture carved into him by years of duty, a remnant of the rites meant to sustain the Dawkith Lorth through his eternal slumber. His arm feels heavier than it should, trembling not with fear but with the unbearable weight of necessity. The child's question still echoes in the hollow places of his chest, but there is no rite left to shield him from its sting. Audry was a goblin, he was a goblin, and goblins sacrificed so that the Dawkith Lorth could survive.

  Perhaps then there was still one thing left he could do, one final gift he could give to the Dawkith Lorth. He knew his logic was sound, and it burned through him like cold fire. He lunges suddenly, not at the invader or the source of the deviations above, but towards Audry, his small hand outstretched to gather her, to bring her toward the chute in the only way he understands.

  His body moving before more rational thought can intervene, deep liturgies written into his bones dragging him forward in blind devotion. If he can return her life to the cycle of rituals, if he can offer himself in the same breath, perhaps the Dawkith Lorth would not wither. Perhaps some part of the sequence could still be preserved. Perhaps this abomination, this invader and its deviations, could still be stopped.

  And even if it could not, at least he would have obeyed. At least he would not have failed completely.

  But before he can reach her, the invader steps lightly to the side and throws the folded blanket over him with a precision that is almost tender. The cloth lands across his head and shoulders, muffling his momentum as he crumples to the floor, blinded, deafened, and silenced.

  Audry does not wait. She turns and jumps into the arms of Eileen, burying herself in the invader’s shawl with the desperate certainty of someone who has finally found something steady. Eileen catches her unsteadily, tucking the girl against her side, one arm anchoring her safely away from the stunned goblin, William, who is struggling under the weight of the blanket.

  William thrashes once, pulling free. His face is red with confusion and something deeper, some rift opening inside him where understanding should have been. He stares at the invader, his mind reaching desperately for familiar narratives. Emotional motes drift above them in lazy orbit, too many to be ignored. How do they keep multiplying? He convinces himself it must be an illusionist’s trick, some foul magic meant to deceive.

  He draws his dagger with a shaking hand, the blade catching the dim light, but before he can strike, the invader steps forward. She does not raise her voice and she does not bare steel. Instead, she simply lifts one hand, open palmed, and swats the weapon from his fingers as easily as if brushing a crumb from a tablecloth.

  The dagger clatters across the stone, and William gasps, looking at her not with anger, but with a dawning, stunned horror. He was truly a failure. This abomination... "Knives," the invader says, her voice crisp as fresh laundry snapping in the wind, "are for food only. Do you understand me, young man?"

  William nods once, twice, his whole body trembling. Somewhere behind the fog of his eyes, something ancient begins to crack. Not from pain, but from recognition. Was he being scolded?

  "Y-yes, ma’am," he whispers.

  William lowers his head for a moment, his eyes blinking too quickly to hide the confusion. He looks again at the invader, the one who does not strike, the one who opens her arms not in attack but in welcome. He struggles to assemble the pieces of the world he has always known, only to find that none of them fit the narrative in front of him anymore.

  "But..." William begins, his voice rough, "we're goblins. And invaders are... they are adventurers. Adventurers hurt goblins. Adventurers kill goblins. That is how it has always been."

  William blinks, then blinks again. Was this invader a grandmother? The invader stares back, her gaze calm, steady, rooted in a certainty that asks nothing in return.

  "No," she says, her voice as firm as it is kind. "That is how it was. And even then, it was only because no one stopped to say, 'This is not how it should be.'"

  William stands frozen, not because he disbelieves her, but because he has no place in his mind to set the words she offers him. They do not fit into the grim scaffolding of obedience and sacrifice he has lived by. Instead they wallow in the air between them, fragile and shining, waiting for a home he is too afraid to even try to build.

  So Eileen steps forward and breaches the gap with a hug, the motion simple, unforced, and oddly inevitable. "Come now," she says, the corners of her mouth turning up just slightly.

  They stay like this together for quite a while, and at some point, Eileen repeats the words softly into his ear. "It's okay, I can tell you have some hugging left in you yet. And I am not leaving until you have used it all up."

  When they finally pull away, William finds himself staring. He does not understand how a command can feel like a kindness, and not in the way the routine of the rituals ever felt kind. He does not understand how his feet moved without his permission. But they had, and he feels they are doing it again. 'Am I hugging again?' he wonders.

  This time, when he steps into her arms, it is easier. The trembling of his body is still there, but it no longer owns him like it had before.

  Stacked neatly at the base of the chute are loaves of honey bread, wrapped in linen, still warm as if they had just been placed there by unseen hands. Dozens of them, far more than a small camp like this should ever received. The smell of them fills the chamber, sweet and aching, a scent that speaks of abundance and of loss all at once.

  Audry does not cry, but she does not reach for one either. It is unclear if she fully understands what they represent, for she stands small and stiff, staring at the pile. Her fingers curl against her sides, the knuckles whitening.

  "They gave us extra honey bread," she says finally, her voice very small, as if speaking too loudly might make the bread vanish. She does not turn around either, she keeps her eyes fixed on the bread, as if it holds the last thread of hope in the spiraling demise of her memory of this place. "...when one of us did it right."

  The words hover in the stale air, fragile and terrible. Her fingers tremble now, but her voice remains steady, a thin wire stretched too tightly.

  "So... that means... all of them did it right?"

  William says nothing. He is in the corner in shock, his knees having buckled without command or permission. Sunk to the floor, his palms press flat against the cold stone. There is no defense he can offer, no explanation that would make this right. There were no other survivors, he had been the cause of that, and the bread, as if to taunt him, had come anyway.

  Eileen moves beside Audry without a word. She does not offer comfort in the form of explanations or falsehoods. She does not tell the girl that the ritual was wrong, or that the bread is a lie written in sugar and sacrifice. She rests one hand on Audry’s back, firm and steady, anchoring her without pressing her to move or to speak.

  Because sometimes survival is about not having every truth explained. Sometimes it is grief to be shared, a weight to be carried quietly by someone who will not leave your side until you can stand on your own.