THE RUN AND GO : JOSHLER

35 : TRENCH

"What's this?" Josh raised an eyebrow.

"My journal," Clancy stated. "From my time in Dema."

Tyler and Josh exchanged nervous glances.

"Alright, so," Clancy began. "The plan is, you go to training today and pick out some of the best Banditos. Tomorrow, you'll take a squad..."

Clancy flipped through his journal until he pulled out a grey paper with a series of circles drawn on it. A compass was in the corner.

A map.

"...and enter Dema. Kill the Bishops. They only way everyone can escape is if they're all dead."

"Wait wait wait, you still haven't told us who the Bishops are yet," Tyler intervened.

"The Bishops are the leaders of Dema. Nico and the Niners. Andre, Lisden, Reisdro, Sacarver, Nills, Vetomo, Listo, Keons, and Nico, obviously. Every bishop rules over a certain group of people, but Nico rules them all."

Clancy looked down and fiddled anxiously with his hands.

"I'm proud—or, uh, was proud—to be an inhabitant of Keons' region. He was nice. Nicer than Nico. He's terrible."

"What happened to your parents?" Tyler suddenly blurted out.

Clancy didn't answer. Tyler really didn't want him to.

The kid pointed to the outer circle of the map.

"There's a huge wall surrounding the whole place," Clancy explained. "But there's one weak spot where no one looks, here."

He pointed to a spot on the circle in the East.

"But that's the high road. You have to go low. There's tunnels all over Trench that lead to different parts of Dema. You should take this one here."

Clancy moves his finger along a line drawn in pencil across the map.

"We usually stayed in Necropolis, all these buildings out here."

"Necropolis?" Josh repeated.

"A necropolis is a cemetery of an ancient city," Clancy explained. "Dema is the ancient city, and the necropolis is where we lived."

Figures. If you're in Dema, you might as well be in a cemetery. You're as good as dead.

Clancy pointed to a smaller circle on the inside.

"That's the Limit, can't go past that. Going past that, you enter the Glorious Vista."

Clancy's finger moved to inside the Limit, where there were three rows of three black circles. Nine of them.

"The Glorious Vista is the nine towers where the Bishops stay. Sometimes we were allowed in. For a special ritual, or to visit our Bishop, or..."

Clancy gulped, and a terrified looked glazed his eyes.

"...or if we got in trouble," he murmured.