Page 1 of Livewire Witch

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Silver

It’s dark underground.

That’s probably not surprising, but it makes me think that whichever bright spark named the city beneath Arcanum ‘The Buried Citadel’ had never actually stepped foot down here.

It sounds lofty, right? Like a mysterious world hidden below the pavings of Arcanum city.

In reality, it’s not even a shanty town. Instead, it’s a mix of old sewerage systems, defunct subways, catacombs, and tunnels that lead right the way through the city.

The ceiling is low in most places, barely a couple of feet above our heads, and the air feels dense and smells thick with the scent of old rock and earth. It’s claustrophobic as hell.

Dark, too.

While some sections of the tunnels have ancient electric lighting and spell-enchanted candles that are never fully extinguished. There are miles of tunnels down here that have no light at all.

Clean water is a struggle to get hold of which means I haven’t bathed in days and all three of us are covered in a thick layer of dirt and grime I don’t want to look too hard at.

Plus, there are bones down here.

So many bones.

That last one is a major issue. Since, along with the stench of this place—the mixture of years old sweat and decay and mold—my necromancy magic has been having a field day.

The bones whisper to me. All day long.

And the stuff they come out with is weirdly banal.

“Dance with me, baby.”

“It’s dark in here. Put on the light so I can kiss you.”

“I’m regretting wearing these shoes.”

“Did you see what Tim was wearing? It’s like he got dressed in the dark.”

Honestly, you’d think they’d be plotting revenge, or that the bones would be angrier. Instead, it’s like being the fly on the wall at a dive bar,

The first time I heard them was right after we came down here after escaping Felix Hawkshead, and I was pretty sure I was losing my mind. I put it down to exhaustion, magical energy drain, or an adrenaline slump. Fabian’s curse had finally broken, which was a big enough deal on its own. Then, add to that, Felix tried to kill Fabian’s little brother, and I accidentally revealed a little too much of my forbidden magic.

It’d been a day. So, a breakdown wasn’t all too out of the question.

That’s not to mention the stress of having dragged my Fabian and Seb down here with me. That’s Seb, the incurably sick teenager who was still reeling from being a hair’s breadth from death. And Fabian, the mage I’ve been steadily growing closer to over the past few months, who elected to forget me as part of the sacrifice he made to rid him of his blood curse.

So yeah. I was stressed to the max.

But even after my heart rate returned to something like normal, I could still hear them. The whispering bones.

As if this place wasn’t creepy enough.

There are skulls all over the place too. They’re inescapable. Someone has been using them as candle holders, they’re embedded into the walls, and... they’re also used as a kind of decoration, I guess? There are also piles of them just dumped all over the place for seemingly no reason.

It’s creepy as fuck.

I’ve never spent too much time exploring my necromancy magic. I’ve mostly ignored it and hoped it would go away. I’m not all that used to hanging around cemeteries, or morgues, or anywhere dead people hang out either. But down here, the bones areeverywhere. Which means the whispers have been constant.

I wouldn’t have thought they’d be so damn chatty. Not that they seem to want a response. It’s more like an echo of words. Memories, maybe.

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