Each step I took made my heart grow heavier as well as my anger. I was stepping on the bones of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons and so many others. The closer I got, the more bones I felt beneath my heel. Their deaths will be avenged.
After walking for a while, I felt something strange. It… was a corpse, the corpse of a Shadowborn?
I knelt down and tried to examine the body the best I could. Its legs were broken, slanted awkwardly behind it. The hand, twisted into the shape of a sword, seemed the only sign of its former purpose. But its face... was missing, replaced by a wet, gelatinous mass.
'It's skull has been caved in, but what is this strange substance?'
Standing up I roamed around in an attempt to see if I could find more clues to what happened here. I happened upon another shadow corpse, repeating the process I found this one less confusing to understand. Its hand formed a mace, now broken, its chest had collapsed under an immense amount of force. Crushing all its internal organs, killing it in an extremely painful way.
I already knew who did this, but I still roamed around trying to find another corpse, and I did. This was a very simple corpse, a spear hand and… a missing heart. I walked around trying to find any other corpses, but there weren't any. Only three.
Closing my eyes, I started to reconstruct the battle in my head.
'Three shadows, most likely the ones that bound and dragged her down here. She must have shaken off their attempts at restraining her.'
'So they attacked her, but that's weird. All their actions suggest they need us alive. Unless… she proved to be too powerful for them to contain.'
Walking towards the shadow with its chest caved-in, I started to deduce what happened to it.
'The origin of the damage was from the chest, which leads me to believe she punched it. But it's too spread out and too powerful for it to be just a punch. A spinning back kick?'
'That would make the most sense, before the shadow could land its attack she planted her heel into its chest. Killing it in one attack.'
Looking at where I found the heartless shadow as well as the one with the strange substance on its face, I broke into a cold sweat.
'She… ripped out its heart, and threw it at the other one's face.'
The brutality of the scene didn't unsettle me as much as the ease with which it had unfolded. She hadn't moved from her spot, yet the shadows had fallen, defeated, like she was hardly trying.
'I knew she was holding back against me, but I never knew how much.'
'If she really wanted me dead…'
No, I didn't have time to dwell on this. I walked towards the mace-wielding corpse and tore out both its femur bones. They were long enough to be short swords, enough for me to fight with until I could get out of this place.
I continued on my way towards the center, but the closer I got the brighter it got. The brightness was gradual so I wasn't temporarily blinded, I could finally see what was happening in front of me. Not that this was any better, I could now witness the horror in front of me with all five of my senses.
It was worse than I could have imagined, dried blood on the walls, loose skin still sticking to some bones like wet paper and the ceiling seemed to have stopped its movement. Like its life had just been snuffed out.
'I haven't run into any shadows either. Strange, there are supposed to be a lot of them in this womb, especially towards the center.'
The closer I got to the center the more anxious I became. Just what was happening here?
After a few more minutes of walking I had finally made it to the center, it was…
"Unbelievable, right?"
Before I could complete my thought a voice rang out towards my left.
"Elara?"
She walked out of the shadows slowly and calmly, the light shining on her face once again reminding me of how beautiful she was. Even though I had given her a jacket to wear, her figure still managed to prevail.
"I've been waiting for you."
I raised my eyebrow in confusion.
"Waiting for me, why?"
She gestured towards the center of the room.
Causing me to once again be faced with the abomination that nested there. It was some kind of flesh-sack of darkness, a black sticky tether connecting it to the ceiling. It pulsed as if it was about to hatch, the bodies of shadowborns littered the ground around it.
'They gave up their lives for that thing, but what is it exactly?'
As if reading my mind, Elara spoke.
"It's a Nightspawn."
My heart skipped a beat, my breathing quickened and my hands broke into a cold sweat.
'A Nightspawn?? Here??'
I snapped my head back towards the center of the room.
Staring at it everything I'd seen started to make sense.
'That's why they tried to capture us instead of kill us. They weren't eating the animals or the townspeople, they were feeding it to this thing.'
'They would suck the light out of them and feed this thing the rest. Then after they become self-sustaining, they would feed themselves to it as well.'
'This must also be why this place is brighter than the rest of the womb. It sucked out all of the darkness.'
"This is the worst possible scenario. Even as new-borns, those things are at least low rank fell-tiers." I said.
"And it's about to hatch." Elara said with a smile on her face.
I looked at her with an irritated look.
"What are you smiling about?"
She started to walk toward the Nightspawn, speaking as she went.
"Ever since you told me you didn't have a system, I was quite skeptical. So I let myself get captured to see how you would reach me."
She turned around to stare at the bones in my hands, her smile widening.
"Safe to say, I was not disappointed."
"But now I'm curious. How will you fight this terror in such a disadvantageous state?"
'I knew it. A Drakonid doesn't get captured that easily. The way she dispatched those shadows, it was all too effortless. It had all been a game to her.'
My hands tightened around the femur bones, knuckles white, every muscle in my body trembling with the urge to strike. I wanted to drown her in the bones of the dead. This was that Drakonid curiosity that I loathed so much.
"Well, do your best."
She cut off the tether connecting the Nightspawn and disappeared into the darkness.
Before I could say anything the sound of the flesh-sack echoed throughout the room. It squirmed, then started bulging, then… silence.
*SCHLUURK*
Something crawled out of the flesh-sack, its body leaving a trail of black slime behind it. It towered over me, at least eight feet tall, its skin stretched thin over its bones, a sickly gray that shimmered with a faint, unnatural sheen. Its eyes were hollow voids, an emptiness that swallowed the light around them. The creature's long limbs unfolded with disturbing fluidity, joints bending at impossible angles as it rose. An umbilical cord hung loosely around its waist, pulsing like it was still tethered to something far worse.
As it moved, the air grew colder, thicker, like the space itself was recoiling from its presence. The silence was unbearable, broken only by the sound of its raw, rasping breath. Then, without warning, it opened its mouth, a cavernous, gaping maw, and let out a bone-chilling scream, a sound so alien it seemed to pierce through existence itself.
*RIIIIIIIIIHHHHHHH*
The walls of the womb seemed to tremble as if the creature's very existence was tearing at the fabric of this place. There was no escaping it. I had to fight and kill this terror.