Inside, only a handful of patrons were present: an old sailor slumped over the counter snoring, and a few dockworkers conversing in low tones.
Hendrick spotted the man in the worn felt hat the moment he entered.
He observed for a while, confirming no one else was coming in, then approached. Standing before the man, he asked, "The contact?"
The man nodded in acknowledgment but didn't speak.
"The matters the gentleman wishes to inquire about... the mine, and information regarding the 'Forged Scars'," Hendrick said. Though an adult, he hadn't dealt with much of this sort. He tried to make his voice sound mature, but in truth, his hand wouldn't stop trembling.
Hearing the lingering youth in the other's voice, the man paid it no mind and took a swig of his drink. "The mine is a festering sore of a fallen family. As for 'Forged Scars'... I don't know much about the name."
"The mine is west of the Fog City, in the barren hills almost at the county border. Been sealed for thirty, forty years."
"Not because the vein ran dry," the man continued, "but because the vein wept. Word spread that you could often hear the cries of women and children from deep below. Then people started dying. Disappearances too. Several who went down never came back up. No bodies found, dead or alive."
"Later, a few men who went down to search went mad themselves. Babbling nonsense all day, spreading panic. So it was sealed."
"All I know is the sealing order came swift and sudden. The Church collected and destroyed all related archives."
After hearing the contact out, Hendrick asked directly, "Whose enterprise was that mine?"
"The Bethany family."
Hendrick's reaction was that of a complete greenhorn, utterly clueless, but he caught on quickly. Bethany... wasn't that the former surname of the Viscountess? He had indeed seen it in the archives while investigating with Detective Hastings.
Seeing the lad's blank expression, the contact went on, regardless of whether Hendrick understood. His job was just to relay the message.
"One of the Bethany family's key assets. But later, the Bethanys fell on hard times. Their financial hole grew bigger and bigger. Roughly a decade before the mine was sealed, they packaged the mine's ownership rights, along with some other assets, and used them as collateral with... certain families."
The contact himself paused, straining to recall. "The name of who handled it... I can't remember. But that's not the point. The point is, by the time the mine was sealed, the Bethanys had no connection to it anymore. Yet, the weeping... that started after it changed hands."
Seeing no further reaction from Hendrick regarding the 'Forged Scars', the man shook his head. "That name... I only heard an old sea dog mention it once when he was drunk. Said they'd seen 'people who don't speak' near the wreckage of a lost ship at sea. Nothing more than that."
"That old sea dog later went missing. Ship was there, man was gone."
With that, the man stood up and held out his hand, indicating payment.
Hendrick produced four shillings but handed over only two. "The information on the 'AshGuild' isn't worth paying for."
"Fair enough," the man didn't press Hendrick further. After all, what little he had on the AshGuild of Forged Scars hardly constituted useful intelligence. "But, for your employer's sake, a free piece of advice."
"You're meddling with the Weeping Mine and the AshGuild. Neither is good news. If there truly are still people using the name 'AshGuild of Forged Scars', then what they remember... is likely more than the living ought to know. The key point is, the Church officially defines that lot as heretics."
He donned his worn felt hat and left.
That final line before he departed – "the Church officially defines that lot as heretics" – made it clear this contact knew more. Yet he chose to withhold it, unwilling to trade it for coin.
Was he trying to deter the Detective's investigation? Or was the AshGuild of Forged Scars itself a taboo?
For the first time, Hendrick felt a sense of awe regarding these matters. So, Lundenium's history held pasts he had never known.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
During the inquiry, the contact had also let slip something Hendrick had never heard of before: the Serenity Project.
That was from the previous request. He was only to tell Hendrick's employer that regarding the Serenity Project, the Church's current progress was rather slow due to... insufficient raw materials.
Raw materials... Hendrick was very concerned about what these 'raw materials' might be. And just what was the Serenity Project?
He had handled many case files. Strange, mysterious, but at least they were documented. Yet these matters Mr. Anger was having him investigate... they seemed to be things even the police headquarters couldn't find any information on. It suggested Mr. Anger was likely entangled in a dangerous investigation.
******
The moment he stepped into the mouth of the shaft, he heard it—the sound of women sobbing. Intermittent. More than one.
The mine is weeping.
The informant had spoken true. That was decidedly unfortunate. It meant this particular legend had persisted for decades at the very least.
He approached the mine entrance. Nailed to a timber beam behind the warning sign was a brass plate. Anger wiped it with his sleeve, struggling to make out the inscription.
Elsiway Mining Company. Shaft No.7. Operating Permit. Foreman: J. Bellatus.
Bellatus. Anger's finger lingered over the surname.
This family again.
He stooped and ducked into the opening. After about fifty yards, the tunnel forked. The main shaft continued its descent, while a narrow side passage branched off to the left, its entrance halfblocked by a fall of rubble.
Just as he hesitated over which path to take, the weeping seemed to emanate distinctly from the side passage.
He drew his revolver and squeezed into the narrower tunnel.
It was much lower than the main shaft, the pickmarks on the walls cruder. After another twenty yards or so, the passage opened up abruptly.
It was a small chamber, no larger than a modest bedroom. The walls showed clear tool marks, the floor had been leveled, and the stone was covered in a dense lattice of scratches.
From the ground up to about headheight, the rock was scarred with deep gouges. Fragments of human fingernails were embedded there, alongside the marks of frantic, repeated clawing.
Finally, in the very centre of the chamber, he saw it: a ring, driven into the stone.
Anger approached slowly. The ring was of a simple, unadorned style, now a dirty, dark grey. It had been forced into a crevice, with only half the band and the setting visible.
A normal ring would hold a stone. This one offered only an empty, gaping claw setting.
He crouched, resisting the immediate urge to touch it, and observed first. Then, taking the diary from his pocket—perhaps because he was now in such close proximity and could sense the object's peculiar nature—the book obligingly presented its analysis on a blank page.
Item: ThreeDay Wedding Band
Status: Active Pollution Source
Associated Edicts: Primary Edict 9. Secondary Edict 4.
Pollution Intensity: Medium. Localised Accumulation.
Threat Level: ContactTriggered.
Anger frowned. Edict 4. A new one. Not encountered before.
He reached out and pulled the ring free.
"I take you." A man's voice.
"Three days hence, the gold claim is yours. You are mine."
A woman's sob, despairing, resigned.
The two voices overlapped.
Then, the sound of a blade parting skin. The drip of liquid. A sucking sound.
Anger snapped back to himself and tried to yank his hand away, but his finger was already fused to the ring by a chain that had sprouted from it. The links were crawling up his finger.
Worse was the emotional assault.
A violent, possessive hunger flooded his consciousness. It was distinctly not his own. An external desire to seize, to own everything—at any cost, by any means. To crush what he held if he could not keep it.
Close on its heels came an impulse to annihilate: If I cannot have it, I will break it. If I cannot break it, I will drag us both into the abyss.
"Get out. Get out. GET OUT." Anger gritted his teeth, the low growl all he could manage. It was the only thing left to do.
******
Suddenly, he saw a scene.
The back of a woman in a coarse dress. She stood at the mouth of the mine shaft, looking back over her shoulder, but her eyes were empty.
A man held her hand, slipping a ring onto her ring finger. The ring tightened, biting into her flesh, almost severing the finger, yet she never cried out in pain.
Deep underground, the woman knelt before the ore vein, digging with her bare hands. Nails split, blood staining the rock. As she dug, she whispered over and over, "Yours... mine... yours... mine..."
Then came the image of her hanging from a wooden beam in the tunnel, a rope biting into her neck, her body slowly turning.
Bloody hell.
Just as he was trapped within this vision, his diary reacted. It drew the images away.
The foreign emotions retreated swiftly. The deluge of possessive desire and destructive impulse was pushed back by his consciousness.
Anger regained some sensation in his finger. With a frantic wrench, he tore the ring from the crevice.
Beneath the entry for the "ThreeDay Wedding Band," the diary obligingly added two more lines:
Bellatuscrafted. Seed of the PactSurgeon.
LowGrade Sacred Relic of the PactSurgeon's Pathogenesis.
Sacred Relic? What manner of sacred relic was this?
Anger pondered for a moment, formulating a theory about the ring. He understood it was no ordinary wedding band. It was crafted to forge a souldeep pact between two individuals. A thing of the Bellatus family's making, perhaps connected to that socalled "manuscript" he'd heard whispers of.
As for the "PactSurgeon's Pathogenesis," Anger had no answers here.
But if it truly was a Sacred Relic, it shouldn't be this malevolent. Its current state was likely due to the loss of its most crucial component. What once sat in that empty claw setting... perhaps a gem, perhaps something else entirely.
As for the torn nails and claw marks on the walls—those were doubtless the effects of others caught in its phantasm. Had it not been for his diary's intervention, he would have met the same grim fate.
Moreover, the ring seemed to have lost its anomalous power after the ordeal. Anger held it up, wiping away the grime. The material was neither gold nor silver, nothing commonplace. He couldn't identify it, so into his pocket it went.
The Bellatus family... a monstrous entity, far more terrifying than he'd imagined. Not merely dabblers in human experimentation. Extreme caution was warranted.