He didn’t love enclosed spaces exactly – who did, after all? – but Vasily didn’t have some deep set fear of being closed in either, no hardscrabble panic. He could deal with cramped quarters, with small cars, had survived being locked in a closet at school more than once, both by choice and out of malice. He could survive it.

Now a trip down into a [basement was an entirely different story. About three stairs down, once he was sure no one was there watching and judging, he crept to a halt – halfway holding his breath and clinging to the wall, staring bleakly down toward whatever waited at the bottom. The careless cool of teenage indifference faded into the hammering of his heart as Vash listened to the way his breathing echoed, harshly, down into the damp of whatever waited below. The dark closed in, narrowed his vision to just a prickling tunnel down the middle of the path.

At the top of the stairs, he thought, Gale still waited, with his clipboard and his cool confidence. At the bottom, he had no idea what he’d find, but Vash’s memory could easily fill in the blanks. The echoes of another time were what made his hand tremble and turned his knees into jelly, suddenly all teenager, instead of dragging on his mask. He swallowed once, hard.

And slowly, wobbly, he took one step.

Vash wasn’t the sort to let old fears hold him back, even if it brought his heart up into his throat. As he made his way down into the darkness, damp closing in around him, he hummed something steeling between his teeth. By the bottom, he’d managed to at least look relaxed again, even if his chest ached from the thumping of his heart.

There was nothing there. A torch lit up chicken scratch on tablets, and Vash didn’t know how this was supposed to move his life along. He looked longingly back up the stairs and toward escape as he leaned in against the wall to catch his breath – and, as he did, whispers and words filled his mind, a half-dozen different voices beckoning. A laugh. A sigh. A rattle of chains. A low humming.

He jerked away from the wall and spun in place, and the voices faded away to leave only the hum. It did nothing to calm his horror movie senses, nor to drive away the panic that descending down into this place had dragged out of him. Vash swallowed, the hair at the back of his neck prickling, and he stole several quick glances back over his shoulder to make sure no mass murderers were creeping down to take him out.

Only once he was satisfied he was alone did he reach out, pretending not to notice the trembling of his fingertips as they brushed over a handful of runes, taking in the strange shapes on their surfaces. More sounds slid through. A roar that didn’t sound like a lion but like something bigger. A murmured song of the sea. Chains. A wicked promise that made him flush, just a bit. The humming growing fainter again as he moved to the right, and louder as he moved back again. Chains again.

And over this one, a rune that looked vaguely like a key and vaguely like something more modern, more lethal, Vasily finally paused. His fingertips just barely brushed the edges of the tablet and again metal rattled in the back of his mind. The other symbols still scared him, left him shivering and wishing he weren’t alone in this dank room (not that he’d ever admit such a thing aloud), but this one beckoned him. Unthinking, his fingers curled around it, to pull it away.

Like that, it was no longer simply a stone tablet. The rough edges smoothed into something elegant and deadly, a handgun that fit shockingly well in his hand. Vash licked his lips and looked around the place once, twitchy, before he focused on his new prize: pointer sliding over the trigger and thumb over the grip, testing its edges and wondering absently who thought it was a good idea to give a deadly weapon to a teenager. And then it spoke to him.

/Death is a part of what you do, now./ The voice was grumbly, pouty; the fact that it sounded just a bit like Droopy, to Vash, did some good in dispelling the potential terror of a voice in the back of his mind. He blew out a shaky breath and turned, instead, raising the gun with easy instincts.

/No need for that. You can hardly fire on the thing doing the firing, can you?/ Again, those chains rattled, the sound grating. In time, maybe, it would become familiar. For now, it made Vash wince – and, puzzled, he lowered the weapon.

/Besides. I’m long dead aren’t I./ The question didn’t require an answer, but still Vasily hesitated, musing over how to reply.

“Who are you, then?” His voice cracked as it came out, squeaking in the middle, and thank god there was no one here to witness it.

/Septimus. Fear not, I can try to guide you./ His weapon sounded uncertain, though. No confidence. /And you are…?/

“Vasily – Vash.” He cleared his throat, turning the gun in his hand, and blinking it in surprise as it turned to a key instead, heavy iron in his palm.

/You hate it down here. Me too. Let’s go up and see if we can’t find something better./