An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 25 - Chapter 4 - The Nightmare Child

The time since the Concord (plus Liz, Kizmel and Seven) had discovered the deceased victims of the Sandman had been a furious flurry of activity, as each member of the group searched areas of the country estate for something that could offer them even the slightest insight into their enemy. From their meeting in the days prior, Jet had a sneaking suspicion that the lord of the manor had known more than he let on about the Dream Catcher and possibly even knew about the Sandman - as more than a mere bedtime story, anyway - but proving that was proving to be an almost thankless task as he and Koharu trawled through volumes and tomes in the library.

Fascinating as the deep dive into Lyusulan culture and history was, it wasn't exactly yielding much by the way of results, and right now, results were pretty damn important - especially with a homicidal creature on the loose. Still, the mention of certain elements of the old magics was certainly interesting, and whilst he knew that Aincrad didn't have magic anymore, that didn't mean that certain elements didn't still retain some prominence in the society. After all, Kizmel had described their menus as such; ''magic scribing'' if he remembered correctly?

''Jet, look!'' Koharu showed him the book she was looking through, and directed his attention to a map. A series of mostly grey lines, interspersed with solid black lines in places, with connecting lines to them. At first glance, he'd have suggested it was a kind of network diagram - after all, he'd scribbled enough of them in school notebooks to recognise one - but that didn't explain what it was a network of.

He was fairly sure that Emstrey didn't have its own train lines or bus network, so that ruled those out, but what else might a town the size of Emstrey have a network of?

Communication lines? No, they'd have been more obvious by now. What else did towns and cities keep underground that might not have been wanted above ground? ''Oh!'' His jubilation quickly turned into disgust... ''Eww...''

''Jet?'' She glanced at him, eyebrows raised.

''It's a diagram of the sewers.''

She grimaced, a similar level of disgust on display. ''Why are some of the lines black though?''

''I suspect those lines are the catacombs, Koharu.'' Kizmel, having returned from her search of the lord's bedrooms, informed them.

''Catacombs?'' Koharu asked.

''Old mines used to store the deceased. Underground cemeteries, basically.'' Jet answered, before allowing a quip to escape. ''Where better to hide a death trap, eh?''

''Indeed... only a small problem though, that map is nowhere near to scale. It took years to map, and that was with an entire force of cartographers, and even then, sections of the catacombs remained off limits to them.'' Kizmel explained.

''What if we could narrow it down a little bit more? A specific area of the catacombs, rather than all of them?'' Koharu thought aloud, before picking up another book they'd set down earlier and taking a map of the town out of the back of it.

Without talking, she'd placed the two maps together, and pulled out a light crystal, allowing the two pictures to be overlaid. The topographical map showed the hills of and around the town, which noticeably formed an almost complete ring around the town. ''The hills line up with the ''sewers'', right?''

''Curious...'' Kizmel seemed lost in her own thoughts as she checked the map again.

Without any thinking, Jet opened his menu, pulled out a pencil and started drawing lines on the map. If Koharu was right, and those hills lined up perfectly with the ''sewers'', then he reckoned they weren't sewers at all - they were like ley lines!

''Kizmel, when we were talking with the lord of the manor, he mentioned something about the locals using the Dream Catcher for power, right?''

''He did, yes. What are you thinking?''