"Gah!!!" Eryndor exclaimed as he walked out of the cell through the open door. He was in a lot of hurry and soon came out of the dungeon area.
The moment the coolness of the air outside hit him, he bent over and started retching. After a while of aimlessly trying to cough up anything, he straightened up.
"Who am I kidding? I'm a ghost. But how the heck does just one person have the worst smell of fart ever and still be a criminal?" He muttered as he thought of the smell of Lysander's fart.
Very quickly, he shook his head as he was determined to find this man that Lysander had spoken about.
But wait, he had just left the place where he should be looking though. The dungeons and then he turned to go back inside just as Lysander was being dragged out.
A black eye courtesy of the guards marked Lysander's left eye alongside other bruises. Eryndor would have waited but then he recalled that very soon, they would close the door and in his solid state, he would be unable to access the dungeons. He rushed inside just as the guards passed with Lysander who winked at him.
The door was locked afterwards and Eryndor was left inside the dungeons as he listened.
There were sounds of agony every here and there. People whimpering and some groaning from their pain. The place was dark nearly, save for the flames on random pedestals standing by the wall.
"Well, let's go searching." Eryndor said as he started approaching the cell rungs one at a time.
The first one he approached had a young man who made Eryndor gasp.
The young man's eyes were staring right at Eryndor, if better explained it would have been said that it was right through him. He was sweating profusely and his lips were moving in an inaudible whisper.
"Hey, can you see me, buddy?" Eryndor asked him.
There was no response.
This made the latter confused that he decided to verify. He ran upwards and downwards the dirty corridor and each time, his eyes were fixed on the young man. There was no movement. Not even a twitch from his eyes.
Clearly, he was lost already.
"Peace be unto you, brother." Eryndor responded and then started proceeding to the next cell.
In this one, a man was crying.
"Please. No more. Please. I'll talk. I'll tell you everything you need to know just take me out of here." He cried as his thin fingers clutched really hard at the rungs of the cell.
"Whiny rat. Your kind is the worst of the lot. Humph!" Eryndor exclaimed as he straightened himself and started walking like he was a supervisor inspecting the dungeons.
The next cell he passed, the occupant was sleeping.
"Too peaceful for a person in this kind of place. Guess you've made peace with your fate." Eryndor remarked.
He then advanced to the next.
"Arghhhh!!!" He screamed his head off as he jumped.
The man in this cell was really scary. His hair was let down and scattered around his face. His eyes, savage, nearly pushed out of their sockets as he kept laughing maniacally. What caught Eryndor's attention was what he was doing, he had a piece of sharp stone in his hand where he stood with which he was carving a lot of rubbish on the wall. Carving it in.
His fingers. They were overgrown and very dirty. Broken at the ends and even bloodied yet, he did not stop what he was doing. He just kept laughing and carving into the wall.
'The great mage forbids that I end up in this state. I'd rather slit my wrists with that stone than advance to this stage.' Eryndor thought.
But something struck him as he observed the man.
Certainly, before he got to this point, he must have been sane enough to have known when he started drifting from sanity.
Was his life so precious that he had to let his health deteriorate to a point of madness?
What was he living for?
Or was he scared of what he would meet on the other side?
The more Eryndor thought about it, the more it reflected on his life. He knew that if the Emperor had not killed him, he would have done the honours himself as there seemed nothing more to live for.
"May you find peace." Eryndor muttered as he walked out of that place.
The rest of the cells had different people in them and he just kept moving, there was no sign of the old man. Lysander was not going to be happy if he should tell him there was nothing to find.
That was when he got to the end of the corridor and in front of him was a very tall steel door.
Eryndor's eyes widened and he felt excited. If anyone was going to be held in this place, it had to be the old man.
There was a rectangular opening at the top of the door that served as a peephole. Eryndor looked inside of it and he was startled by what he saw.
There was a person there with lots of burning flames illuminating the surroundings where he was being held. Eryndor was confused as to what this person was doing here. He touched the door to see if he could enter but he was still solidified.
Seeing that his assignment had been futile, he decided to wait there for someone to open the doors again. He slid down and sat on the ground as he started thinking of something.
The system. It had mentioned something about profiles and he needed to see what Lysander's profile looked like in comparison to his own.
'Summon the system.' He thought in his head.
There was nothing. No screen popped up in front of him.
"Weird. Maybe I said it wrong." He said as he started thinking of more ways.
'System activate! System activate? That sounds cliche.'
'Show me system! That's even worse.'
'Ultimate penance system.'
Instantly, the screen popped up right before him. There was the home screen with all the options before.
"So that's it. I have to address it by the full name. More like the government name." He said and chuckled as he touched the option he was aiming for.
'Profile'
Unlike the first time when it had shown him his own directly, there was a new organisation.
[Profile
Eryndor
Lysander]
He smiled and selected the option he wanted to explore.
[Lysander's profile
Basic info:
Name: Lysander (Surname unknown)
Age: 22 years, 5 months and 3 days
Height: 6"1
Origin: Elementus
Abilities:
Element: Undetermined
SpecialSkills: Picking pockets
Equipment:
Basicequipment: Lyre
Weapon: NIL
Status:
Threatlevel: 1 (Nuisance)
Assignment: Become a mage
CurrentStatus (NIL)
< "At least he's got a threat leveling enough to be recorded." Eryndor muttered as he shut the system from his mind. Simultaneously, the screen disappeared.
He suddenly raised to rest his head on the steel door when suddenly, he fell light headed.
Not light headed, he realised that he was actually falling.
But he never fell totally, he seemed to be floating in a horizontal way. He looked up and he realised the ceiling above him was different and illuminated.
If anything, it was so tall and above were chains forming a criss cross.
Slowly, he looked down and he saw that the door was wedged in the middle of his waist. His legs were outside. Eryndor raised his hands up and he saw that he was nearly transparent again.
Realization dawned on him accompanied by a burst of excitement as he floated into the cell now and started jumping around excitedly.
Intentionally to make sure it was what he was seeing, he tried to pull his hands through flame and pedestals, it went through.
"Finally, I'm back to my lovely self. I never thought there would be a time that I would love this ghostly body but this is nice." He muttered as he slowly came to stand in front of the prison.
There was a man in the middle. His hands were shackled and stretched out to the different sides so that the chains were attached to the wall.
His legs were chained and these chains were deeply rooted to the ground.
There was a strange thing about the shackles on his hand, a steel pouch was crafted and used to secure his palm up to the wrist so it was concealed.
Eryndor knew what that meant. This man definitely had powers and this was a tool to make sure he did not use his powers ever again.
He observed the man's face.
His hair was long and white, let to fall freely around his face and he wore a skirt like an underpant. He was bare from the waist up.
On his body were patterns. Most looked like talismans while the others seemed to be like writing characters in different languages.
'Who is this man and why is he being held here?' Eryndor thought as he approached him closer.
The man's eyes were shut like he was in a deep slumber and this brought him to remember someone he had once fought. He recalled capturing him and holding him this way up until his execution.
The Jade Emperor had given the orders for his capture with the explanation that he was secretly using his powers to help the nation's enemies.
Up until his execution, this man, a sect leader, had maintained his innocence and Eryndor was beginning to wonder if perchance, the man had been saying the truth.
He was about to move away when suddenly, the prisoner's eyes opened sharply, nearly startling Eryndor.
"Who's here?" He muttered.
"Wait, what?" Eryndor asked, confused.