(A/N: please do bring any typos or grammatical errors to my attention, either by chapter or paragraph comments so I can immediately fix and attend to it. As I am only human too, there's only so much I can do without making mistakes. Thank you, and enjoy!)
***
The sound was loud. It rolled and echoed through the tunnel's paths like a rolling thunder, causing tremors.
The magically conjured wind was thinly concentrated and exploded upon impact, but was more than enough to force Scarface to black out for a quick second, before finally taking him out with his eyes rolled back inside.
His head slammed a hole through the ground. If Reo had bothered to notice, he'd have realized.
The bald man was already dead.
Reo walked over the corpse unsteadily. His palm stung from the strike. He had unconsciously drawn manna and used magic at the moment of impact. It wasn't until his palm had made contact with the man's face had he realized.
The tremors and echoes that forced the walls of the cavern to shake like a seizure had settled. The walls had cracks spreading across them like webs, the ground had been split open as well. The protruding pointy rocks that made up the caverns' ceiling had broken and shattered into the ground.
Reo stopped.
His breathing was rough and the pain in his side burned. He tore a piece of his tattered shirt and wrapped it around his left arm as a makeshift bandage. He had sprained his left wrist in the process of forcefully stopping Scarface's club and using just brute strength to break the chains of his binds at that moment.
Using the torn piece of cloth wrapped around his wrist, he wiped the flowing blood that streamed from his forehead, over his eyes, and down his face. But no matter how much he did, the bleeding refused to relent.
He wiped his the blood just one more time and looked around before making his way back to the slumped body of the man and ransacked it to find a bunch of keys.
***
"What was that?" Kyle shuddered back at the cell. The booming sound had traveled even all the way here.
"I think it came from the direction Reo was dragged off to," Leon said, looking in towards the said direction with a forming grimace.
Lia shared a look of worry with her friends and then turned towards the bloody figure of Don spread across the back wall.
"What happened to him?" She asked with a heavy heart.
Leon turned away, biting tightly at his lower lip.
Even if she asked, Leo didn't know. None of them did.
He wasn't sure he could imagine what they had done to Don but only a few minutes after he had been dragged away, they heard the torturous screams and cries of their friend.
And it didn't stop with one scream. The cries of agony persisted and continued, ripping through the space of the tunnels. Don screeched, he cried, he screamed, he moaned. Don's voice filled with agonizing, and harrowing piercing cries was forever etched into the memories of Kyle, Trise, and Leon.
All they were forced to do was listen to the excruciating sounds persist for what seemed like eternity. They cried and blocked their ears. They banged their heads and cursed. Then they cried once more.
Lia took notice of the twisted change in the expressions of her friends.
Whatever had happened to Don could be happening to Reo at that very moment.
Lia was filled with grim foreboding. Then she glanced at the other unfamiliar kids in ragged garments that had already been here before they arrived.
There were four of them, remaining lifelessly and unresponsive in a corner.
Their eyes were bleak and hollow. They had shrill skin and thin limbs with sunken cheeks. Their dried and cracking lips remained partially parted, remaining unresponsive to even perching flies.
They were all hollow.
"... They were already here before us," Leon said, squaring a glance at unmoving and lifeless kids.
"We have no idea who they are or how they got there. We tried making a conversation with them but they remained entirely unresponsive to whatever we did," he turned to Lia and added.
"It's almost like they are already dead."
Lia's heart ached.
Just who were these people?
Just as the looming feeling of dread continued to persist, the attention of the kids was drawn to the approaching thud of footsteps looming down the corridor.
The rattling of the chain echoed like a bellow against the archaic corridor walls.
A shadow was soon cast before the gates of the cell, the resounding footsteps coming to a halt.
Reo took two steps forward, coming into the view of the cuffed children.
"Reo?!" Their eyes widened and they jerked up from their spots.
Reo responded to this reaction with a quiet stray glance. He was looking at them, the gaze in his eyes however empty.
Lia was the first to realize this.
'...He looks different.'
Reo's expression was plain, and empty, with looming traces of what seemed like exhaustion. His eyes were tired and dark and his expression was long.
Meeting Lia's gaze Reo remained still and quiet. Then the sides of his lips curled up into a very small forced smile.
"I found the keys." He said, dangling the bunch of keys in his hands.
Lia and the rest blinked as if to get out of a daze. Still lost for the next second, their gazes moved between Reo and the bunch of keys in his hands.
"How did you—!" Kyle being the first to regain composure shut up but came to a halt when he met Reo's bleak gaze.
Reo looked away and approached the cell gate, his fingers shuffling through the number of keys.
"No time for that now. I'll tell you later, but for now, we should get out." The iron keys rattled, Reo, slotting each one at a time into the keyhole, looking for the right one.
He slot a key in and turned, following it was a click sound as the cell was unlocked open. A small sigh made its way out of his lips as he pulled the gate open and stepped into the cell.
"Hey, what about the guard — the one who took you away?" Leon asked as he watched the black-haired boy fiddle around once more with the keys looking for the right one to free him from his cuffs.
"...and that sound from earlier...it came from the same direction you were dragged off to. Does it have anything to do with you?" Seeing as Reo failed to reply to the first question, Leon persisted with another.
Reo turned the key and with a click, the steel chains binding Leon's arms came undone and fell to the ground with a clangor.
Reo's gaze met Leon's.
"I said no time for questions."
Leon found himself strangely unable to say anything after that.
He wasn't the only one. Throughout the rest of the process of Reo unlocking the chain binds of the kids, no one else put forward a question and just simply rubbed their wrists and ankles with a restrained sigh.
"Don," Reo muttered silently, his cloudy expression growing darker. He had already brought the battered boy down from the wall.
Don moved in his hands and weakly grabbed tightly at Reo's shirt.
His blood-dried lips moved and parted slowly.
"T...take them...with us too," he said.
Reo slowly reached out for Don's hand, placing it down.
"Of course."
The rest watched this scene play out somberly, some restraining tears.
Reo didn't waste too much time. Placing Don in Leon and Kyle's hands, he moved to uncuff the lean taciturn kids.
Even as he approached them and freed them from their chains, the kids remained entirely unresponsive.
Reo met with the bleak eyes of the kids, they were dark, empty, and hollow. They were the eyes of corpses.
Reo, filled with cold somber, outreached a hand and lightly tapped on one of their shoulders, careful not to hurt their frail bodies.
"Let's go home." He whispered openly.