Chapter 115
Secrets From Beyond the Grave
Leo was the first to emerge onto the opening overlooking the cirque. It was just as he remembered it--thirteen steles populated the sprucely-decorated landmass, with the Well sitting quietly betwixt them all. Just as it was the first time he saw it, it remained unassuming, a remarkably ordinary thing among what looked like a graveyard of sorts.
Azariel came out of the woods a moment or two later, pausing by Leo's side, his eyes dancing between the rocks and stones. He clasped his fingers into a fist, whether knowingly Leo was uncertain, and pursed his lips at the sight. While, to Leo, these were merely stones with some potential history etched into them, to Azariel, in a way, they were objects of worship, or at least objects of some other emotion at that level.
"In my head," the man said softly. "They were... grander. Larger than life. Seeing them like this, though, they just seem... sad."
"Perhaps, at some point, they were as you imagine them."
"Hardly," the man scoffed, taking charge and jumping into the cirque. Leo followed, staying silent as he watched the man peruse a history that was close to his heart.
Leo found it difficult to locate a comparable event--perhaps, back on Earth, if the entire history of Ancient Egypt was lost sans the pyramids, and one of those Pharaohs of old woke up in modern world... yes, and if they visited the pyramids. To him or to her, it would mean far more.
"They are made of clasytne stone," Azariel said. "As with many things, we have tried desperately to locate the quarry, but we only ever had the finite amounts that were the Demons' leftovers. Many of our scholars supposed that it's not stone at all," he said, touching one of them and running his fingers across its surface. "But an alloyed metal made in some secret way, designed to look like stone."
"You don't sound convinced."
"I'm not," he said. "It's just another one of the tales we wove and made up to try and make it seem it was the nature itself that was against us, and that we were in no way lacking when compared to the Demons."
"Can you read them?" Leo asked, knowing the answer already.
"No, just this one," he pointed at the exact stele that Leo himself could read. "Avun'van," Azariel mumbled, turning to long silence afterward. "They never told us this was an actual grave."
"It's probably not," Leo said. "Chances are that it's entirely metaphorical. Perhaps this was where he died, but not where he was buried."
"You can't be sure of that," Azariel shook his head. "Though the Demons, in many ways, looked human, they were as different as could be from us. Their bodies were composed of Primordial Qi itself, condensed into a shape--they could choose it, and most chose to look that way in front of us. Upon their deaths, their bodies would vanish. It's entirely possible that, whoever carved these words into stone, did so using the last remnants of the King's vanishing body made of Qi."
Azariel let go and walked over to the Well, Leo following. There seemed to be no changes from the last time; it was still dark and gray and dull, and seemed as ordinary as ordinary got. The two men peeked over the edge and into the dark, though there was nothing there.
It all happened in the blink of an eye, before either of the two could even respond.
Darkness surged in the form of ashen smoke, ripping out of the well like misshapen claws and latching onto both men with ferocity of a maddened beast. And yet, instead of ripping them asunder, the claws heaved them and dragged them over the edge of the well and into its intricate depths.
Leo tried to use Qi to shield and free himself from the darkness but to no avail; it was as though someone had plugged his meridians with gutters' debris, making Qi depressingly slow.
Thus, they fell--they kept on falling in silence as neither of the two could talk.
They fell... until they didn't.
Inexplicably, Leo landed on his feet, reoriented by forces beyond his ken. It took a moment for him to recognize he hadn't died, and a moment more to realize that Azariel was by his side. The man appeared rather shaken, looking around warily with round and bulging eyes. Leo hardly blamed the man; a dead, ordinary Well just 'kidnapped' them to who knew where, and, far more importantly, why and how.
Leo poured Qi into his eyes, his meridians unclogged, and looked around. He couldn't help but gasp as the awe-inspiringly large structures came into view. Columns arose like piercing spears into the sky, holding up a ceiling that was well over three hundred feet above. The two of them were tiny, dusty motes in a grand hall that likely housed giants at some point.
A passage paved with cracked bricks extended straightward, positioned between towering columns that were each spaced by about twenty feet. Even with the help of Qi in his eyes, Leo found it practically impossible to see past some hundred feet or so, and not because that was the limit of his sight, but because something was blocking it. A strange kind of haze, as though someone pulled down the curtain.
"You alright?" Leo quizzed.
"Y-yes," Azariel stuttered. "You?"
"Physically, at least. Where the hell are we?"
"I don't know..."
"Can you see?"
"Not well."
"Alright, let's go," Leo said, walking forward only to be grabbed by panicking Azariel.
"Wait, why? Where are we going? Didn't you just say you don't know where we are?"
"I mean, yes. But what else is there to do? It's not like there's anything of note here. I assume whatever dragged us here didn't do so just so we can admire how big of a hall this is or how large these columns are. Come on. What's the worst that can happen?"
"We could die!"
"That's kind of cute," Leo chuckled, dragging the man. "That you think death is the worst outcome, I mean."
The two men walked forward in concert, with Azariel making sure to keep up with Leo's pace. While the former hunched, trying to make himself as small as possible--almost like a child in front of screaming adults, trying to become invisible--Leo was freer. He looked about as though lacking fear, taking in the first sight that wasn't a dream or a vision or just a bunch of trees arranged differently. It was all same-y for a long while, wide pathway flanked by tall, impossibly tall, columns. And then it changed.
The pathway opened up into a round opening while that fog began to vanish, lifting as though there was a current of wind underneath it. Bit by bit, frames emerged, and from them silhouettes, and from those objects and shapes that made a whole. And it stilled both their breaths.
Azariel stumbled backward and fell, almost whimpering.
And Leo felt his blood freeze.
This was a prison.
Eight rusted chains, all beyond large--per Leo's estimate, even at their narrowest they were at least a hundred feet--extended from outside the circle, wrangling around a cocoon-like structure at the center of the opening. Webbed silk lay strewn around, likely having shed over countless years, revealing what was within it.
The structure itself was as tall as a skyscraper and as wide as a mall, and within it resided a... thing, Leo supposed. Further chains dangled from invisible holds, tangling with the bodice of maligned flesh. It rolled like excess fat over the chains and unto itself, over and over, like thick liquid descending over obstacles. The flesh was gray and spotty, rattled holes decorating its vastness, they themselves sporting dried-up black liquid which Leo assumed was blood... of sorts.
All folds had eyes to them, eyes numbering beyond count, though most were now merely hollowed-out sockets. Here and there, though, there was a massive sphere dangling from them, hanging on by the thinnest of threads, robustly rotting.
A misshapen amalgamation of flesh--rotted and rotting--seemed composed of smaller parts forced together into a larger whole. There were no discernable limbs, there was no 'head', no logic or reason or design to its make. It was chaos at its purest, entropy personified, randomness that even the nature could not concoct. This thing, whatever it was, was born in a primordial soup of chaos and destruction, and as for how it ended up here, chained and leashed...
Was it dead? Leo believed so.
There were no signs of life--no Qi presence, no blood flow, no sounds, nothing. Just stillness and silence suspended in the thrones of time.
Leo took a step forward and was immediately grabbed onto by Azariel--
"--where are you going?! We need to get the hell out of here!!" the young man whimpered. Leo paused and glanced down, smiling faintly.
"It's dead," he said. "And if it's not, do you really think us being here or elsewhere would matter?"
"I--I..."
"Relax," Leo shrugged. "I'm not going to touch it. I just want to get a closer look. There," he pointed below the monstrosity--the 'cocoon' that it was wrapped around didn't jut out directly from the floor, but, rather, it rested atop another structure made of obsidian blocks. On its surface, Leo saw letters--letters he faintly recognized.
Azariel let go, quickly standing up and following in Leo's shadow--well, metaphorical shadow. There was no light here of any sort, and thus, there were no shadows.
Leo approached rather cautiously, as even with his rather callous outward behavior, he was scared. His heart was pounding like a war drum, his palms were sweaty, and his throat was parched. Of course he was terrified--this was straight-up from some Lovecraftian nightmare, and even if it was dead, the mind did not care.
Ultimately, he was right--the letters were written in the language he recognized. Well, some of them were. Just like with steles, the central portion of the text could be understood, while all the letters framing it were in an alien script for the both of them.
Unknowable, the first part of the text read. A child. Captured through the sacrifice of 8,398 Generals. Cannot be studied. Not of things made known to Us.
"That thing... is a child?" Azariel mumbled in horror as Leo looked up. From this angle, the monster resembled a tall, flesh-colored mountain, its folds the protruding cliffs.
"Your ancestors were right," Leo said. "The Well was a prison. For this thing."
"Why would they even keep it?! What if it got free?!"
"Do you imagine this is what they were at war with?" Leo asked the silent part out loud.
How heavy of a sin, then, was upon the casts of humanity? That they betrayed and decimated the very same group that shielded them from... this? If this thing invaded the Ashlands today, Leo had no qualms about accepting it would simply devour it whole. Thousands upon thousands of years had passed, and it was impossible to know precisely when it died, but its body, even if in a heavy state of decomposition, was still whole. Something that endured death for a passage of time that was incomprehensible to humans... how would the latter even begin to contend?
"And if this is just a child," Leo posed another question. "Then what the hell does an adult version look like?"
"No wonder they never told us," Azariel said. "What the hell would that accomplish?"
"Well, at least it's over--" Leo's words got caught in his throat as a screen appeared in front of him, with words that made the world go cold.
[You have discovered the Secret behind the Well!]
[...]
[Your Spiritual Roots have evolved: Peak-Tier Tri-Elemental Mortal Roots --> Peak-Tier Tri-Elemental Earth Roots]
[Your Cultivation Realm evolves: Early Core Formation Realm --> Peak Core Formation Realm]
[Bonus Reward: Cycle of Life and Death]
[Cycle of Life and Death -- by touching the Dead, you can catch a glimpse of their living form. Be warned: touching entities beyond your ken can corrupt your mind and make you go insane. It is recommended that you reach Nascent Soul Realm before you examine the entity before you]
[...]
[The 'Eternal Prison' is not known to another soul, and its secrets remain buried to this day. The world is unaware of the past, or the present, or the future]
[New Quest has been generated: The End of Time]
[The End of Time: those from which the Entity comes are not gone or dead, and one day they shall return. They are extremely sensitive to Primordial Qi even across time and space. When the Primordial Qi has been fully reinstated into the world, the countdown will begin]
[...]
[Main Quest has evolved and merged together with the new one]
[Main Quest: Establish a Sect, guide your Disciples, and prepare them for the War. You can only disclose the truth behind the curtain to up to two of your Disciples and no more]
[Good luck, traveler]
"--yap, should have seen that shit coming."