He could only visit the lights at night.
When Sister was at last fast asleep and the soft humming of crickets filled the empty broken halls, the Boy stood, took one last survey of his surroundings, making sure he was ready. Then he took careful steps towards the garden, teetering on the edge of a full sprint, making sure he ever-so-delicately, ever-so-carefully, slipped off the broken staircase, landing softly in grass.
Something rustled and he stopped, his heart drumming up to his throat, where it remained stuck. He listened intently for the flicker of a recently-lit torch, the stern voice of Sister as she'd poke her head out from the above floor to fix him with that ever-present look of simultaneous concern and exasperation. He waited for this inevitability—but it never came. Instead, he saw the fainting smudge of black shadow shoot up from somewhere in the darker crevasses of the garden, straight into the sky and over the dilapidated remains of the building. Off to another world.
Breath drawn in, he dared not let it out until he carefully wove his way through the garden's empty waterways—or whatever they might have once been, he assumed they were a source of water for the original inhabitants of this strange place. Regardless, they served no real use to him now except as an easier and safer way to avoid possible detection from Sister's prying eyes—should she wake—and as he pulled himself up onto chipped stone, he thanked the previous inhabitants that they deigned to build them.
I wonder if you ever thought of what might happen to this place once you were gone. Did you think of a silly little boy, sneaking out in the dead of night to explore the world you left behind? Or did your fate not even once cross your minds? Did you think of yourselves as invincible?
The Boy shook his head, mentally knocking himself on the head as Sister would do if she caught him skimping out on his chores to instead explore, as he was often wont to do. He was certain that, whatever civilization had once lived here, they had better things to think about. He was also certain that, if they saw him now, they would have to chuckle at the way he stared the walls and shadows, daring the ghosts to come out.
What I wouldn't give to talk to one of those ghosts...I could only imagine the stories they'd tell.
But he had reached the entrance of the garden, and so—disbanding thoughts of long-lost ghosts and civilizations—the Boy turned and made his way deftly out onto the ledge. He walked a little ways, careful to sidle up to the wall away from the sheer edge that loomed over the outside lands several feet up high, before he dared to light his torch.
The Boy took a deep breath. He had never even dared to go out like this before. He had certainly visited the temple's shrine below and some of the lands—the plains to the immediate south, the nearby forest, Sister and him even went on a far-off trek to a western beach. He was at first confused she took him out that far when he was quite certain there was a beach just behind the temple, but he only had to ask this once before Sister immediately shot it down and, in fact, forbade him from going to the beach. The Boy didn't offer it up again but one look at the sky told him why.
One of the bright lights shone down upon that beach.
Sister did her best to avoid any nearby lights whenever they went on their trek to the beach. Their journey was a winding, confusing path, at first going one way west then immediately backtracking the other way, then over a little to the north before heading west again. He noticed a few lights in their way but only one of them was out in the open, the others guarded by mountains and deep passes. But it mattered not—Sister would not go anywhere near those lights. And the Boy was likewise forbidden. If Sister so much as caught him looking at the lights, she'd pull him forward, hands clenched firmly on his shoulders. The Boy was not sure what made her so frightened of those lights—if she was frightened for herself or for him. Either way, her reactions always sparked his curiosity ever greater.
Until finally, he just couldn't take it anymore.
The Boy made his way carefully side-stepping down the walkway and over to the entrance into the lowest part of the temple. He took a quick glance at the scattered remains of an old bridge, fallen so delicately in a neat, straight line looming all the way to the distant gates that marked the end of this world. He shivered, unpleasant and foreboding thoughts bouncing within the confines of his overactive imagination, and turned into the opened doorway. The fallen bridge always disturbed him.
He made his way down the spiraling ramp, past the dry pool resting in the center. This pool disturbed him, too. It felt like there should be something there, almost like he could feel eyes resting just beneath the cracked stone floor, and yet there was nothing. It was completely empty. This felt intensely wrong for a reason he couldn't quite reach. Sister had even told him that she had found him in that pool, one night when he asked of the world beyond this one, and why they had come there. She had never told him her own story, but she admitted to him that she had found him there in that empty pool, at the bottom of the ramp, though she could not tell him for how long he had been there before she found him. This only served to both attract and repel him from the strange location even further. The Boy did his best to avert his attention from it.
Down the hall of broken statues he ran, knowing he was now far out of the range of Sister's hearing. His torch flickered, casting long and intimidating shadows in the crevices where the statues once stood tall. Large beasts he saw, watching him from these corners. Shadows seemed to dance everywhere in this hall. He sensed them every time he walked through this hall, but paid them no mind—he figured, this hall must be so ancient and full of history, the shadows have just become a part of it. The natural inhabitants of this strange place. But now, during the night, when the only light was from his torch, the shadows were no longer so natural. He could feel them breathing, watching, and waiting.
And they felt all so familiar.
The Boy gulped in a deep breath of air and ran on even faster. There was a light dead ahead to the south, amongst the mountain range that looked the temple in the eye. Past the raised platform, over the wall he jumped, and onward he continued to run, making sure to hold the torch as carefully as he could so as not to accidentally set the fire out. The mountain was the closest light besides the beach just behind the temple—and also the easiest to access, as far as he could tell—but it was still a long, long walk away. It seemed to talk him at least half an hour to reach it, and when he finally reached the stone steps leading a short way upwards, he had to stop and rest, short of breath with a stitch in his side.
If only Agro was still here...I miss that horse. And she made traveling so much easier. Well...easier, but not any faster. It's just as well, she'd probably only try to wake Sister up. She was just as skittish of these lights as Sister is.
A knot formed in his chest and the Boy had to sit down, get his head on straight again. It was a several more minutes before he felt ready to climb those stairs. There weren't many, he was on level ground once more in only a moment, but getting up to where the light spiked up to the sky only got more complicated. There were several ledges leading up but no real way to get up except the vines growing on the side. The Boy frowned. There had to have been an easier way to get up there at one point in time. He looked around him but there was no obvious broken passage in sight, so he just shrugged and—with one hand still carefully holding the torch—he took his free hand, pulled himself up, and climbed the rest of the way with the use of his knees.
The ledge was a strange, twisted way up to the opening where the light rested, but he traversed it fairly quickly. Carefully jumping over gaps, climbing awkwardly over fallen debris, and once more having to grab onto a ledge and one-handedly make his way to the top, he eventually got there and a smile broke out on his face. He had made it. He had reached one of the lights.
His heart seemed to stop in his chest; the Boy couldn't take it. He was just too excited to unearth one of the many secrets this secluded world of theirs seemed to hold. He was almost too afraid to keep going. What if Sister avoided the lights for a good reason? What if there was a dark secret this world held, darker than the shadows that seemed to laugh from their perch on the walls? He suddenly thought about turning back, sending a cursory glance over his shoulder at the temple. It loomed, another tall shadow, and it was menacing to look at from here. A living tower, ruling over an empty barren land, staring down trespassers and ready to attack at the slightest twitch of motion. The Boy fancied he even saw a pair of glowing, monstrous eyes near the top.
He sighed, shaking his head. No, I'm already here. This would have been a waste if I were to just turn back. I'm here, I'm going to see the light. If it is something dangerous...well, I don't know. I couldn't just run back to Sister with something grotesque at my heels. We'll just have to see.
So, he turned back, staring at where the light seemed to drill into the earth. There was definitely something there; he could make out the faintest of outlines. And so, his whole body trembling, his breath seeming to trap itself in his throat, the Boy took his first shaking steps forward.
The dark mass revealed itself to only be a great mound of earth as the torchlight poured over its form, and for a moment, he was greatly disappointed. But as he stood there, rather dumbfounded, he noticed there were intricate details to this mound of earth. For starters, it seemed to have arms—and a head.
He stepped closer to study it, and his whole body jumped backwards, the torch dropping to the ground, the fire stuttering before going completely out.
The thing had eyes.
Or that's what he saw. He couldn't tell in the now-complete inky blackness. The silence was complete, the darkness thick and suffocating. Even the light above his head seemed to grow dimmer. There was an expectant tone in the air, as if the whole world was watching, waiting for the first shuddering of earth. The beast seemed poised to suddenly come lumbering up, ready to crush him. But as he stood there in the cold dark, waiting a minute, two minutes, several minutes...nothing happened. The mound remained inanimate. He braced himself...then shuffled forward a little.
He stopped. Still no movement. The air around him shivered with excitement. Taking another breath, the Boy took a few more steps. He paused again, but at this point, it was clear the mound was not going to move. Those eyes were blind to the world.
The Boy took the last few lumbering steps towards the great beast. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and in the immediate presence of the light, he had a better idea of what the beast looked like. Those eyes he saw—or rather, the one eye, the other was hidden in the earth—were not normal eyes by any means. He wasn't even sure the beast had actual eyes. They were cold, stone, and completely lifeless. He felt, even when this beast once walked and lived, those eyes held nothing in them. He wasn't even sure this beast did ever live. Or was it a beast at all? He couldn't shake that feeling away that this was a thing, a living thing, at one point or another. For all he knew, it was just a strange, crude, childish attempt at building something of reverence, but a voice in the back of his head told him no—this creature once roamed this earth.
And there were more like it.
The Boy turned with a gasp, staring at the all the other spikes of light he could see from his position. He knew there were many more; he had at one point busied himself with counting every single one. Sixteen in total. So...there were fifteen others of these beasts? All slumped over in a heap, now one with the earth? Or did some of them...even one of them...still live? The same voice came in the back of his head once more—no. He shuddered at this thought.
All dead? Every single one of them? What...what killed them?
He couldn't even imagine something so powerful, so dangerous, so grotesque that it could take a giant like this and snuff out its sense of life—not just one giant, but sixteen. Was this beast-slayer still roaming this world? Is that why Sister was so scared of these lights? Did she expect it to still be there, waiting amongst its victims, searching for another life to ensnare? Is that why the bridge was destroyed? Did someone, Sister maybe, seek to contain it? Is that why Sister was here in the first place?
Are we truly not alone?
Suddenly, the shadows seemed even darker. He eyed the darkness; he could see them dance. The Boy stepped closer to the mound, curling into it, coddling it. There was a sudden warmth it offered, a protection from the presence that laughed around him. He turned to the broken eye, stared into it. It seemed to him like an opening, an opening to a forgotten soul.
It was like reuniting with a long-lost friend.
The Boy smiled. I think so long as we have each other, we're safe.
The next night, he had visited the mound again. He brought a present with him—a single stone emblem. He had found many of them cracked and discarded throughout the temple, old decorations that had long served their forgotten purpose. He figured the temple didn't need them scattered about the place, taking up space. He would put them to good use.
Placing the stone emblem beside the mound's long-dead eye, he sighed. He so wanted to visit the other lights, see the other creatures. But he wasn't even sure if he could. Aside from the beach that lied behind the temple, the others were all so very far away. Could he visit them in one night? He would have to leave early, and he wouldn't be able to spend much time with them.
I don't want them to lie forgotten, either. I've visited you, and I intend to visit you every chance I get. But what about the others? I'm sure you wouldn't want your brethren to be ignored.
So, he had set out on a quest. He waited a week before he set out for the second light. He could already see the mound as he walked over the great land bridge, careful of the sides. When the Boy had finally reached this second mound, he was astonished to see that it actually looked quite different from the other creature. This one seemed to have walked on all fours, and it had a horn spiraling out of the side of its head. This made the Boy flinch; he brought a careful hand up to the short spike that rested on his right temple.
Sister never did explain why I had these...and not her.
The Boy suddenly had a curious thought...a thought that made the insides of his stomach twist with worry. Could he...perhaps, in his strange beginnings...could his birth have had anything to do with the great battles that went on here?
But how—how could that even be? He tried to connect the dots but he couldn't. There was no discernible way he was in any way related to this creatures. Or was there? He racked his brain for ideas—he just had this feeling that there was something deeper, something darker to this mystery. But aside from this certainty, he could not come up with a reliable conclusion.
Oh, well. It doesn't matter. Whatever happened to these beasts, whatever happened to me, whatever happened to Sister and the beast-slayer—it happened. And it's over with. But I can't leave these beasts to be forgotten.
Every single light he visited, there was a mound waiting for him. And they were all different. He marveled at their uniqueness. All magnificent beasts, all dead. Two were partially submerged in water—how they were floating, the Boy couldn't even begin to try to reason, but he had long come to the conclusion that these beasts were not of a human element. He had come to this conclusion about a lot of things in this world.
But this was not what bothered him. What bothered him was that these unique beasts—some small, some lumbering, some towering, some slithering—these unique beasts all met their unfortunate, unnecessary demise at some other's hand. He had figured something great and huge had destroyed these beasts, ripped them out of the world and left their remains to lie, glued to the earth. And so he had surveyed the lands he passed, deserts and plains and lakes, with a deep suspicion. He jumped at every shadow, certain that he saw something grotesque lurking within. But the more he surveyed these beasts, the more he sat with them, talked with them, complained about chores to them, the more he had to wonder...what kind of heartless creature would destroy these magnificent beings?
Were they truly that dangerous? Most of these beasts are locked away in places they can't get out of. Only a handful of them could have really left their prisons if they wanted to. Just what sort of danger did they pose? Who was convinced they were dangerous in the first place?
And then he saw it. He saw the look in Sister's eyes every time they looked at the lights. Every time she had to mark where they were in the sky, every time she turned her back on them...the gross and haunting fear that sparked in her eyes. And he knew.
These beasts didn't fall to anything otherworldly, anything grand and magical, anything great and big. They didn't fall to their own kind.
These beasts fell to hands of flesh and bone.
Something tightened the knot in his chest and pulled. His body trembled with both anger and sadness. His own kind had done this. Somebody had trespassed in this world and killed these beasts. Because they deemed them dangerous. And then they destroyed the bridge because...well, he still hadn't figured that part out. Maybe they got away. And they were worried these beasts would rise once more. But that wouldn't have mattered, they were all mostly imprisoned anyways. Was it Sister? Did she destroy these beasts to claim this land for herself, and destroyed the bridge to keep others out? But that wouldn't explain him. If she was so worried about sharing this land with strange creatures, surely she would have taken one look at him—a mysterious, abandoned, horned child—and she would have dismissed him as she, possibly, dismissed these other creatures.
Unless she lied about him...
The sixteenth light was the farthest away. It was, as the first, dead ahead, but the light was even farther south. He half-wondered if there was a correlation between the two—was there a secret passage he hadn't noticed that led to this light? He had searched the whole place, every nook and cranny, on that first night there, and he had found nothing but a long-abandoned, long-dilapidated tower, buried halfway into the mountain. That surely wasn't it? But he was half-tempted to visit the first light anyways, if only to say hello to his new-found friend again. He hadn't visited any of the creatures more than once, determined to discover each and every light.
As it turned out, the Boy instead found himself traveling down the path along the eastern side of the mountain that had originally led him to another light, a little ways off hidden into another mountain range. He sighted the cave that laid open, inviting him once more. But he instead turned to the right, traversing the mountainside, and walking the long, long walk towards the last light.
He had never been this far south. Well, he had never traversed all that far from the temple to begin with, other than the far-western beach. But still, being this far south was a different feeling. The silence swallowed him, the darkness pulled at him. He could see the horizon and he knew that this was the end of this world. This was where their story ended.
An opened door rested in this final mountain range. He followed the pathway, slowly, terrified of what he was going to find. He found another small shrine; several of them dotted the landscape. He had gone out of his way to study them, wondering their significance. He had realized fairly early on that they were near-identical to the temple he and Sister called home, and his curiosity deepened. He had already, in fact, planned to explore the land further, to see if there were any others hidden in the deep corners of the world.
I wish I could explore this place during the day...imagine how beautiful these places must look in the sunlight. How beautiful these creatures must be when I can fully see them...
He traversed the final staircase into the opening of the earth walls and stopped, his heart stopping with him.
It was a dead end.
Not truly. There was an entire tower of earth and stone that rose above him. He could see an opening far up to the top, stone pillars jutting out. His eyes trailed downward and spotted the ledges and another opening that no doubt led up to the top. And the light...just barely, he could make out the final light. Resting somewhere on the top of this tower.
But there was no way he could get to it.
There was a deep chasm cutting him off, a chasm that fell downward for miles. There were little detached bridges that he sighted, but there was no way he could use them to jump across. They were all dilapidated, broken, and useless; what remained of them looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
The Boy dropped to his knees. After all this time, after traversing all this way...he couldn't see the last one. The final glorious creature left to lie where it had once lived and now made its grave. This one was forced to be left all alone. He wouldn't forget it, he knew it. He made himself promise he wouldn't. But that promise was not very reassuring, for either him or the hidden creature left to lie dead on its own. It was still hidden from the rest of the world. And the last person to know what it looked like, to gaze upon its immense beauty, was the very person who brought it crumbling to its death, the one who left it to rot into the earth.
And nobody else.
He let the stone emblem drop from his hands and cried.
The Boy did what he could to visit the mounds every chance he got. Between chores and trying to get decent sleep so that Sister didn't suspect anything, he did not get many chances. But the ones he did, he capitalized on. He would sit next to them, these colossal beings of the earth, he would tell them stories. He would put on shows, shows of putting their slayers to justice, shows of exploring the worlds beyond the gates. Shows of praise. He would tell them how much he loved them, and how much he was sorry. The Boy regretted their demise just as much as they did, if not more.
He was their only friend.