It is a long climb from the Tombs of the Neverborn to the heights of Mount Meru
The path winds treacherously up through the Labyrinth, itself not the safest of places. The Underworld is merely the memory that the Neverborn took with them of Creation, inhabited by the dead who have not yet returned to the cycle of souls. The Labyrinth is the reflection of the Oblivion that the Neverborn see in their future, or so some say.
The Neverborn's resting place - some savants claim it to be their final rest, the more wise remain silent on the question - lies at the foot of the Mouth of the Void around the Pit of Oblivion itself. Eons since, when the Underworld was new, living heroes constrained the forces of oblivion, winding the Venous Stairs down through the bolgia to where their fallen Primordial foes lay. Or perhaps they built them upwards as those geological layers of the Underworld was formed. Those handful known as the Golden Vassal Heroes who recalled those days were rarely inclined to confide the details of those days.
Ascend the stairs though, tread gently past the homes of the hekatonkhires, bypass the empty hospitality of the kingdoms of the depths and your route shall take you to the heart of the mighty necropolis of Stygia, fortress city of the ghosts, its fortifications focused with a single purpose towards the Mouth of the Void, about which it was constructed and above which hangs the Calendar of Setesh, that mountainous artifact of the Dual Monarchy which enforces the dictates of time itself upon all the Underworld. This is the first waystation and though you now stand in a place corresponding precisely to the Elemental Pillar of Earth, Mount Meru, it is merely the first waystation upon your journey for Shadowlands upon the Blessed Isle are few and well guarded.
Far easier, if easy be the word, to take ship upon the White Fleet of Stygia, rowed down the River Styx upon one of their galleys, and across the dark and treacherous Sea of Shadows to the mouth of the mighty River Acheron. Unlike the empty shores of the Styx, the valleys of the Acheron and its tributaries are home to many ghosts, those who deny the demands of Creation's missionaries and cling to their identities against the finality of Oblivion or the forgetfulness of Lethe. Only one of these settlements enjoys the sanction of the Exalted, permitted its trade and even communion with the living: Sijan, the funerary city. For as long as the Underworld has existed and perhaps even before, Sijan has ministered to the dead. Enter the Black Chase, that feared forest lying to the north of the city and under the light of the Unconquered Sun then you may walk out of it into Creation and from there take ship west once more to the Blessed Isle and to Mount Meru, capital city of the Mandate of Heaven, the Exalted rulers of Creation.
This was not the route Lo Pan took.
The little monkey did not know what lay ahead and above of him. Friends seemed unlikely. Enemies, those still merely dead and not beyond anyone's calculations, possible but still implausible. Mysteries, menaces and morbidity, certainly. Stygia had not been kind to him on his last visit and the dank streets could do well without him. He recalled towering palaces raised by the servants of the Neverborn, the whimpers of coffled dead as they awaited their places beneath the hammers and tongs of the soulsteel foundries. No, not Stygia and therefore the Venous Stairs were closed to him.
It was the side passages that Lo Pan stalked, preying upon the creatures that thought a lone and living animal to be their own prey. Sometimes the passages took him deeper and he found himself doubling back upon himself. The Labyrinth is a world in and of itself, winding and writhing and twisting between the purgatory of the Underworld and the last, final quietus of Oblivion. A hungry world. Down is easy. Up is hard.
Lo Pan was not merely a small ape. He ascended through crevices in the black rocks, through galleries laid down by creatures who had died in the darkness without ever seeing the light of the sun. If his direction was uncertain, then his purpose was not. If the Underworld existed still above him then he would reach it. If it did not then he would climb forever or, at least, until the Labyrinth itself ceased to be. If Creation existed, be it still or even again, then he would obtain entrance no matter the cost he paid to do so. There was a deep yearning in his heart to see more than the clouded skys and shadowed paths of the dead's domain, to tear and rend flesh and shed hot blood, not bitter corpus. Words he had shaped as weapons to describe Creation now tore at his own heart, as if they had turned in his hands.
It is impossible to calculate how long the monkey clambered, crawled and fought in the Labyrinth, but although he did not know it, it was the morning of the first day of the fire season, two thousand four hundred and fifty years after the end of the Primordial War when Lo Pan stood upon in the shadows of the mountain that in Creation was named the Pinnacle of Mercy and saw the pallid light of the dead sun far to the north-east, rising in accordance with the Calendar of Setesh.
Sijan, if it stood, lay more than four thousand miles away, in the direction of the rising sun. Lo Pan put his back to the pale orb and began a steady scramble down the western flanks of the Fire Mountains. There were other roads, less likely to be trod by others. Perhaps none here would know him, but perhaps also there would be those who would, and Lo Pan had wept and cursed the demises of too many of his allies to suspect that he would find companions from the past walking the Underworld.
It had been a very long time since the small monkey (who was also so much more) had seen the sun of Creation. Hours and days have little meaning for the dead, even the years passing tracklessly in routines whose only purpose was to bind them away from the peace of lethe. Even the weak light of the Underworld's sun was a great relief for him after the darkness of the Labyrinth. After uncounted centuries when even Setesh's calendar had failed to bring light and order.
Once Lo Pan had been a mortal man, an officer in the great armies of one of the Princes of the Earth. Then he had been reborn, become more than a man, a child of the burning moon. But power comes with a price and there are always those more mighty. During the Thousand Stuggles, when Celestial Exalted waged war upon each other for vendetta and fear, the newly Exalted were precious and fought over - most especially those possessing the powerful Celestial Exaltations. He had paid and paid for his exaltation in those days. In blood and love and in dignity spent for the scraps of power that he could wheedle, steal or sometimes take by main force.
And then...
Lo Pan had no explanation for it.
In one single moment he found Creation itself undone and himself within a nightmare Underworld that was no reflection but the last transient shadow of a dead Creation, a shadow that was itself collapsing slowly into oblivion. In one single moment he had found a cause, a war to be fought against the most primal of enemies: Oblivion and the Neverborn who desired it to engulf all that was.
The Neverborn and the cabal of their ghostly servants who arrogantly styled themselves Deathlords and who bore terrible resemblence to the Celestial Exalted Lo Pan knew. Resemblence in their form and skill and power. Once again, faced by those older and stronger than himself, Lo Pan paid the same old prices: blood upon ten thousand battlefields, wreaking havoc as only one of Lunar's Chosen could; loves lost to the merciless tortures inflicted by the Deathlords against conspirators who would bring about their downfall; dignity chained in their dungeons, allowing his captors to parade him as their captive for the precious moments when he could wield a silver tongue against their justifications.
And for all the pain of that long and often lonely struggle, there had been triumphs: victories wrought from defeat, success salvaged from catastrophe. One by one he had learned their secrets, their weaknesses, fought them not for their deaths but for their lives. For their commitment to something more than crude entropy. Some of them did die. Some of them fought him to the end of their very existences. Some turned to his cause only to perish utterly and forever upon the blades of their peers.
Yet some saw promise in what had all the hallmarks of madness.
For Creation to be reborn, so too must those who had never been born. The Primordials who had first forged Creation must be awakened from their slumbering tombs and raised to new life. A life that Lo Pan's ancestors had reft from them to usurp power and dominion on behalf of the Primordial's own divine children. Irony, all irony. So much irony that he would choke on it.
What Creation stood now? Did mankind live? Did their allies, the Dragon Kings, rule their temple cities; the Mountain Folk, those strange children of the Great Maker and the Wyld delve still beneath the Blessed Isle? Did the bannered hosts of the Dragonblooded still march to the greater glory of their Celestial masters and the security of the Realm?
He would discover, given time, if the many sacrifices by himself and his comrades had won that prize.
.oOo.
Calan's Loss, it was called. The Wailing Fen. The Font of Mourning. Old tragedy, foul evils. Secrets of its history that none knew, or if they did not then they had never shared them with Lo Pan. But a place of darkness and death is often a place where Creation and the Underworld touch upon each other. A Shadowland, like the Black Chase or Darkmist Isle. During the day they were part of Creation, but walk out of them after sunset and it is the Underworld in which you will find yourself.
Such a place, Lo Pan sought. He had not seen one since before his Second Breath, before Luna blessed him and raised him up as one of her Exalted. But he knew of them from his military education, where the possibilty of one forming upon a battlefield was concern enough that not even the most abbreviated of training could omit the mention of them, and such a road was one of the few paths between where he walked and the place he wished to be.
When the sun was in the east, Lo Pan moved through the shadows of the mountains. When it was below the horizon he moved through the night. In the light of the sun he stopped and watched. Meditated. He did not sleep - the lands of the dead were not welcoming to the living and there were many ghosts that hungered for the hot blood that flowed through his veins.
Few were ghosts of men, in this place, but there were others. A race of avians that had been slaughtered when the Primordials were overthrown still clung to a halflife south of Stygia - he had broken open their citadels and despatched many of them to a final end upon a time. Animals did not generally leave ghosts, but creatures sired in the Labyrinth strayed out and bred, a bizarre cycle of life for beings that were dead from the instant of their conceptions.
When he could, Lo Pan avoided them. When he could not, he wrapped his long fingers around them and strangled them quietly that they did betray his location. Then he ate them, every morsel including the bones. The food of the Underworld was somewhat sustaining, but he had little time to gather it. The Exalted were posssessed of uncanny resilience and Lo Pan never wearied but he could still hunger.
It was a factor of the Underworld that the living could not recover their strength there no matter how they rested. At first this had hindered Lo Pan greatly and he had moved secretly between places of power, relying upon them to replenish him. Later, he had secured the gems that served as tokens of great manses that capped such desmesnes, binding them to him with silvery tattoos that let him draw on the essence of the Underworld's dragonlines no matter where he was.
Those stones were lost now, victims of the chaos of confrontations deep in the Labyrinth. Now he respired the essence directly, as the dead did. Was he dead himself? He meditated upon this during one afternoon, watching the sun descend. He felt no different, none of the terrible ennui that ghosts had told him of. He was driven to discover Creation's state... thus are the compulsions of a ghost bound to existence by needs and passions, yet he had been thus when he lived and could not consider this to be unusual.
Would he, when he found a way into Creation, be swept away by the light of the Unconquered Sun in the sky, like any other shade? Perhaps, perhaps. It seemed, on reflection, unlikely. He shaped essence gently to increase the strength in his limbs and found it much as it had been in the past when he walked Creation. Would that work if he was dead? He had never met the ghost of another Exalt save for the Deathlords, and had never thought to ask them about death and how it had changed them. It was not a topic that would have furthered his cause and thus he had not debated it.
The sun sank from sight and he continued on his way. The mountains were becoming hills and the sparse trees and shrubs larger and more frequent. Further down, the jungles of the south east-beckoned, a shadowy maze that diminished only when compared to the horrors of the Labyrinth. They stretched a thousand miles east to west and twice that north to south. The Font of Mourning lay at its south-westernmost extreme, surrounded by the sickly swamp known as the Wailing Fen.
The jungles of the south-east were different from those of the south-west, Lo Pan noted as he took to the trees. The climate was damper and there was a sense of rot and weakness to the trees. He was travelling across the canopy so that he could still navigate by the sun and stars, and were he larger he was sure that the branches would not have supported his passage.
Now he moved only when the sun was in the sky. In the darkness, treacherous branches were a far greater threat than the starlit mountains had been and the only threat was from the skies. The birds of the Underworld were scavengers and anything still moving filled them with caution. At night, the beasts below would be moving, waiting for a single slip. Lo Pan did not propose to give them one. Fighting such creatures would not even be cathartic... and sending them on to Oblivion would be ultimately counter-productive.
Oblivion's hunger could never be sated.
Was it always there? he wondered at night. Was Oblivion always waiting? Or when my forebears slew the Neverborn was it created to draw them away, just as the Underworld was formed to house them when they did not reach it. If so, is this our sin?
Morbid thoughts. The Underworld breeds them, to some extent. After longer than he cared to contemplate, he wished very much to be outside of it.
There was no moon in the sky. He would like to see Luna again. In person, or in the sky did not matter. It had been a very long time. His body never wearied. His mind was another matter.
He could feel the Wailing Fens in his bones the moment that he crossed the border into them. It wasn't the thinning tree cover, or the murky water that sometimes covered mossy ground beneath him. It was the essence of the dragonlines that felt different, twisted and alien to what he was accustomed for. Almost like a demesne, but not one that was strong in the elements, or in death (for that was sometimes the sixth element within the Underworld, an element of mournful black and bleak bones). Whatever it was, it was not the border of a shadowland.
Upon one tree, Lo Pan stopped and thought. He had never been here before - it was far across Creation from his birthplace and it had possessed no strategic value in his war against the Deathlords - but Calan's Loss had been a popular and celebrated legend, immortalised in no few songs and plays.
The tale told of the final ending of three great heroes: Calan, a warrior of great renown Chosen of the Unconquered Sun; her husband Tomun, Chosen of Luna and known for his wisdom and his beauty; and of course Thrice-Damned Gorol, fallen hero and traitor to the cause of the Gods and the Exalted. Gorol, first of all the Exalted to turn towards the service of the Primordials (or, Lo Pan thought with a cynical grin on his simian face, the first to be uncovered as such) had been umasked for his sins and fled far to the west. Near the shores, Calan and Tomun caught him and Calan mortally wounded the traitorous Exalt, but not before he unleashed a cloud of venom upon her. This was Gorol's revenge for he instructed Tomun that only the blood of Calan's mate could heal the injury and thus either Calan must die or she must survive without the love of her life.
The end was rather maudlin, no matter which version of events one listened to, and Lo Pan normally cared very little. Now, however, he wondered who or what might haunt the groves in front of him.
Unlike the mountains or jungles, the Fens were not the best of ground for a monkey to travel through. A crow left the tree and flapped its way apparently casually westwards.
.oOo.
Several days later, the crow landed on another tree, this one overlooking a clearing that seemed to be as near to the exact centre of the Font of Mourning as Lo Pan could determine. A few moments later and Lo Pan reverted to his human shape and started swearing at length in three languages, only one of them a human tongue. There didn't appear to be a Shadowland anywhere in the Fens.
The tree branch bent slightly under Lo Pan's weight - a crow weighs after all, considerably less than a man whose broad shoulders are not less than six feet from the floor he stands upon. His swarthy southern skin had paled slightly after so long without the light of the Unconquered Sun and black, kinky hair hung loose around his shoulders, the silk ribbon restraining it having gone missing sometime during his original descent into the Labyrinth but his shirt, pants and the thick leather belt around his waist had survived more or less unscathed. Belt... oh, yes of course. Absently he reached out and pulled his daiklave and its sheath out of the air. No point keeping it hanging around elsewhere when he might need it at any...
The tree creaked alarmingly and Lo Pan's eyes widened as the consequences of adding thirteen or so pounds of moonsilver to the weight supported by the branch played out in his mind. He jumped free, landing knee deep in the water and behind him there was a snap as the branch broke.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think I'd broken a geas-sworn oath," Lo Pan grumbled in annoyance, attaching the weapon to his belt. It was of the wavecleaver pattern, short and heavy with two fittings for hearthstones that he could not for the moment fill.
"Are you sure that you haven't?" asked a raspy voice from behind him, and the Lunar Exalt whirled, eyes narrowed. Indicatively, his long fingers did not curl around the hilt of his daiklave, but instead closed into fists that he raised defensively.
"It's not the sort of thing that one forgets," he said, eyeing the ghost who faced him warily. "Either in swearing or breaking."
"Memories are transient things," the ghost, clad in ragged finery of archaic cut and leaning on a black stave, chided. "As are perceptions of what an oath may be." He was half a head shorter than
"I've never sworn any oaths," Lo Pan grumbled. "Not to any of the Crowned Suns anyway. And who are you, anyway? This is a strange place for any ghost to be haunting. No one comes lightly to Calan's Loss."
"And why do you think that that might be, hmm?"
Lo Pan sighed. "Legend has it that Thrice-Damned Gorol fought with a black staff. So either you're a poseur or..." The ghost smirked and green flames sprang up around him. "...shit."
"You Lunars never quite had what it took, did you," smirked Gorol, twirling his staff easily between his hands. "Or I might take some satisfaction in this. Do you know how to use that sword?"
"Sharp end in my hand, blunt end in you?" Lo Pan asked, shifting his feet in the water to assume the martial form of the snake. "Or was that something else?"
Gorol lashed out with the butt end of his staff and scowled as his opponent seemed to slither easily aside. "You're an amusing little bug," he said conversationally. "What brings you to my little corner of the Underworld? You yourself said that no one comes here lightly."
Lo Pan shrugged. "I was looking for a Shadowland," he said. "Calan's Loss seemed like a likely location." His anima banner began to blaze around him as he drew on another of the martial arts he was familiar with, blending the defensive patterns with snake style expertly. His anima was flaring like silver fire now, rather than the usual steady blaze.
"I've not seen that one before," admitted Gorol. He whirled his staff and lunged forwards, essence flaring around him as the black stave whistled around Lo Pan, never quite managing to touch him.
"Fire Dragon Style," Lo Pan observed.
The ghost's eyes blazed with green fire. "You're using a terrestrial art? On me!? That - is - truly - pathetic!" He punctuated the condemnation with a flurry of blows that ended, much to his annoyance, with Lo Pan perched on the end of his staff. "Dammit!"
Lo Pan smirked "So... why are you picking a fight with me? Not that I particularly mind kicking the ass of a traitor, but is my personality that attractive to your aggressions?" Then he punctuated the question by ramming a fist that was suddenly crackling with lightning into Gorol's face.
He didn't hit of course, the ancient ghost whipped his staff out from under the Lunar Exalt's feet and in the same move batted the strike a few inches off to one side, but the look of alarm on Gorol's face was well worth the essence wasted on the move. "And it's not a terrestrial art, it's a celestial art designed for terrestrials to use... hmm, you'd not heard of that innovation, had you? Terrestrials learning celestial arts - it's since your time, old one. Feeling out of touch?"
"Pah!" Gorol sneered. "I fought Primordials, boy. I duelled with Calan - right here, in this clearing - for a day and a night; and you aren't one tenth the warrior that she was. Your tricks are no match for my Infernal Guardian Defense."
His opponent barked laughter across the glade. Then he rose off the ground, swirling light shining down on him through the mists of the Fens. His neck grew longer and gazelle's horns sprouted from his head as gold-veined pearl scales ran down his throat and spread across his body. No longer standing in the mud, instead he was floating above it, suspended by a score of broad carp fins. "Thrice Damned and Second Rate!" the chimera bellowed and lunged forwards towards Gorol. "I'll test your guardian charm!"
The damned ghost threw up his staff, blocking one blow, twisting to intercept another, then a third and fourth, retreating step by step, the green light of Ligier blazing around him and sweat dripping from his brow as strike after strike hammered into him. He could see pain wracking through Lo Pan's transformed body where flesh and bone was pitted against the hardened black wood of his stave but that perception was swept away as the sustained attacks wore down his defenses. The thirteenth blow struck his knuckles where they held his staff and the fourteenth hit his shoulder with bone-bruising force.
Gorol screamed as blow after blow rained down on him, pummelling him from face to groin, his staff batted aside by cunning fingers. He scrambled backwards, away from the assault but for an endless moment was unable to escape the hammering. The battering only concluded when Lo Pan stopped punching him and instead grabbed the Thrice-Damned by the front of his tunic and yanked him up and into a vicious headbutt (no small detail when the one delivering it had half-yard long horns sprouting from his brow).
"I'm no longer surprised that you made accomodation with the Yozi," the chimera observed sardonically. "Clearly you are the one who never had what it took."
"Wait..." Gorol gasped, between wrackingly painful breaths. "Why do you seek a Shadowland? To return to Creation?"
Lo Pan smirked slowly. "Correct."
"There is another way... the shortest road."
"Being less poetic and more specific might spare you considerable pain," the Lunar suggested, lifting Gorol from the ground by one ankle.
"The Fens aren't a weak spot between Creation and the Underworld," Gorol gasped, "But they are a weak point in the prison of my master and his people. Enter there and you can reach Creation far more easily."
"You want me to go back to Creation through Malfeas!" Lo Pan exclaimed. "How many times did I hit you on the head?"
"Seven," Gorol growled and spat out half a tooth. "Bastard."
"I can do worse than that," threatened Lo Pan and cracked his knuckles. "So, why don't you explain how you believe I might enter, and more importantly leave, Malfeas."