Hello everyone! How are you doing? I hope you are all doing fine!
Chapter 125 is here and, as always, I hope you enjoy it!
I have an announcement to make; next week will probably have no chapter. I finally managed, after 2 years of trying, to find a good job position away from my hometown. Thus, I am moving next week to my new workplace and I have zero idea if I will be able to write while organizing my moving. Taking that into account, chapter 126 will be probably released on Wednesday November 4th instead of October 27th.
Thank you all so much for your understanding and your continuous support of the story. You are all the best!
See you all in fourteen days with chapter 126. Until then, be well and have fun!
"Oh how I missed iiiit" Nora sarcastically remarked when the team passed through a gate and reached a familiar site; the cyclopean terrace with the vast pools of dark water, separated by thin, slimy passages to walk on.
The ever-prevalent green mist hovered above the masses of unnamable liquid, partially hiding the granite walls. Shimmering alien lights pulsed through the cloud, being absorbed into the murky, shadow depths.
And, echoing inside the vast chamber was the demonic chirping of dozens of unearthly pipes. It was distant and low-toned, its usual otherworldly ambience hugging their surroundings like an ethereal, mystifying blanket.
"I am impressed; following the sound actually led us somewhere familiar" the ex-maiden said. "Yup" Ruby commented "do you still have the sketch you made when we first came?" she asked the taller woman.
"Yes" she took out the map she had started to draw when the mission had started. Right now, it felt as if it had been another life when she did that. "If this is the same place as back then" Lumia reminded her leader.
"Doesn't matter; I just want a reference to be extra safe" Ruby accepted the paper from Lumia. "We are still going to be following that weird and creepy as heck flute. But, first of all..." she turned and looked at them.
Ren was standing next to Nora. His seemed to be doing fine, but there were deep expression wrinkles adorning his youthful face. Trails of sweat ran down his head and torso. His chest moved slowly and heavily.
"Do you want to rest a little, Ren?" the silver-eyed girl asked in concern. Nora glared at her husband as soon as he tried to protest. "You used your semblance to mask us for too long; you rest. Now" the ginger demanded.
"So, ten minute break?" Lumia exhaled deeply and bit on some chocolate. "Make it five; we are kinda in a hurry" Ruby replied, taking a good look at their surroundings. Fog, granite slabs and sickening pools filled her vision.
Last time we went there... she mentally pointed at a tall arch on their left side, using the map as an indication to draw parallel lines. But, unless I am mistaken, the sound seems to be louder that way, on the right side of the area. She rubbed her chin, unable to see through-
Three sets of gleaming red eyes locked with hers, glaring through the dark mist. Her shocked expression faded at once and she narrowed her eyes at the figures that observed them hidden inside the eldritch miasma.
This is just like when we first passed through this place, when I thought I saw a figure watching me from the shadows. "Guys; we have company in the fog!" she announced, making all three of her friends jump next to her.
"Do you-" "Yes, I can see them!" Nora cut off the reaper. "Me too" Lumia added. "They look like they are watching over us for some reason" Ren added, pointing Stormflower towards the hidden figures "like before."
The silver-eyed girl raised an eyebrow, aiming towards the monsters with Crescent Rose's scope. Something is off; this- she clicked her tongue while trying to put her thoughts in order "it doesn't feel the same as it did back then."
Everyone nodded, not letting the figures out of their sight. Ruby turned her scope around, making sure nothing tried to attack while they were preoccupied with them. "The dreadful feeling I had last time is not here."
She took a couple steps around, aiming at all directions. "Don't let them off your eyes even for a moment" she commanded her team. "I am going to secure the area and then we-" A loud splashing sound cut her off.
"What?" a hiss followed through and a sizzling sound like something hot had just fallen into cold water. Ruby turned her head to the source and saw a small pile of steam rise up from a murky pool of corrupted water.
"What was that?" Lumia wondered- a large drop of black liquid fell down before her eyes and landed inside the pool. There was a loud splash, a sizzling sound and a pile of steam rising up from the water once more.
"Watch out Nora!" Ren dragged his wife out of the way just in time for her to avoid being hit by another drop. It splashed on the granite tiles and showered the area in a blast of hissing droplets that hit Nora's arms.
"Ow!" The turquoise-eyed woman let out a groan of pain. Ren's magenta orbs opened wide in shock as he saw the liquid sizzle on his wife's arm, eating out at her aura like corrosive acid before they fell on the ground.
Ruby knelt next to the pool and poked it with a stick. It was sticky and smelled heavily like- blood? Astonished by everything that was happening around her, Lumia looked up- and gasped in horror.
The ceiling, the top part of the walls, the arches and the highest places of the columns; all was covered in this thick, dark blood, spreading around as if it was being stained by a thick blood pool forming on the floor above.
A massive blood pool of humongous proportions made by the vile blood of unnamable beings slaughtered in the most abhorrent manner. Ruby and Lumia remembered the horrendous slaughterhouse and shivered.
Pulsing and sizzling, the filthy goo bubbled down, forming long, thick and viscous stalactites that begun dripping the acidic miasma on the ground below- where team RRSN was currently standing at.
The demonic sound intensified. As if being augmented by the vile goo, it resounded in the chaotic halls as the drops started accelerate their fall, slowly yet steadily turning into a horrendous rain of acidic black blood.
"We have to move!" Ruby raised her hood and tugged her body inside her cloak. "Move to where?" Lumia asked, dodging a splash. Silver eyes stared at the mist, where the alien forms slowly faded away, vanishing into it. She took a quick look at the map and smiled weakly.
A new path had appeared before their sights. A thinner, drenched road cut through the pool leading into the eldritch miasma. "I am pretty sure this wasn't there before!" Ren said, realizing Ruby's plan.
As if it wanted to encourage the brunette's intentions, the alien chirping rose even more into an abhorrent, scornful crescendo the moment Ruby took a couple quick steps towards the newly discovered pathway.
"I am hearing alternatives!" she challenged, retracting her hand to avoid a drop splashing on her. Lumia sprinted after her leader, tugged in a rugged cloak she pulled out of her bag. Hissing holes had already formed on it.
Nora and Ren ran behind the ex-maiden, covering their bodies with a pair of thin cloaks as well; courtesy of operational standard equipment kits. A loud gasp escaped the girl's mouth as she slipped, but Ren grabbed her.
As they moved towards the unknown, the pipes broke into a delirious and maniacal crescendo. Flaps of unseen winds and screeches of agony broke through the mist, as the rain turned into a real downpour from hell.
"Follow me!" internally happy that the music intensified with every step she took, Ruby led her team across the pools. Her boots were wet; their anti-slippery design was a lifesaver at this point. She hastily looked back.
Slightly obscured by the black drops, her team was still following her, even if their pace was a tad slower than hers. Sizzling vapors rose from their cloaked figures, the fabric slowly being eaten away by the vile goo.
The music suddenly let out a mighty bass sound, shocking their eardrums and causing them to stumble. Ruby skidded and Lumia used her sword to stay still. Ren's feet slipped, but Nora returned the favor to her husband.
"As you move further in, the world shuns you."
The voice was powerful and melodious, in a truly twisted and deformed manner. Nora held her breath "it's the Piper" she announced. Ren simply nodded in approval, eyes narrowing in suspicion as they moved.
"The unclean ones have been devoured. Their polluted blood shall herald the beginning of the ritual."
"Again with that polluted- ah!" Lumia gasped in pain when a large drop of blood fell on her. She cleared it off, eyes opening wide when only for a moment she thought she saw a pair of eyes staring at her from inside it.
The fog started to fade. The blinding lights subsided, hidden behind the caustic tar that had now fallen down the walls alongside the pouring rain it had formed. Acidic vapors sizzled around them, raising pillars of steam.
"May the unclean temple be devoured in darkness. The vile feast shall be its downfall. Let the Pipes of Avyssos accompany its last moments- let them herald its rebirth as it shall rise anew from the mud."
"That doesn't sound foreboding at all!" Ruby gulped, picking up the pace as the rain intensified even more. Her prized cloak was currently in need of repairs and she hoped it would be the only thing she would have to fix.
"Speed up, guys!" she commanded and pointed towards the other side of the room, where the parting fog revealed a massive gate; a white golden gate with monstrous amphibian creatures and an abyssal Grimm on it.
"That's the gate we saw before!" Nora shouted, fearing the rain could somehow muddle her voice "the one the Piper went into when Jaune's voice called it back!" she added. "I don't see a path to it" Ren exclaimed.
Ruby's eyes narrowed. Under the onslaught of acid blood, the vile smell it carried the demonic pipes' crescendo and the Piper's eerie voice, it was a tad tough to properly see; but she did manage to notice that this path did not connect to the gate. It ended abruptly and menacingly on a hard wall.
"The Gates of Abyss have been opened wide." At its words, the gate started to open, revealing a pitch-black void behind. The eldritch power it emanated started to snuff out the air, as if it was a foreign concept to it.
Ruby stopped. Her team followed suit. They stood there, gasping under the strain and the pouring acid. It was a good 10-meter jump from where they stood to the opening. Question is; should we do it? Ruby thought.
"It is time to choose your fate" the voice turned ominous. Its words loomed over them, as if it could see their current predicament. Lumia was sure it did, if she wanted to be honest. She stared at her brunette leader.
Ruby took heavy breaths. It was like her chest was trying to harmonize with the twisted pipes and their vile chirping. She gritted her teeth as a large drop of blood burned her shoulder. Thankfully, her aura still held.
"Embrace your destiny and offer your souls to the Great Abyss; deny it and accept your doom" the Piper roared, all the flutes rising to reach a horrid peak of utterly disgusting and soul-wrenching sound.
Ruby pumped her fist. She could see the water rise, covering the path as she was there wasting time. But how could she be sure it was the right choice to do? What if there was a safe place she was missing? How-
"We are with you all the way" Nora said. She stared at the ginger girl, as Ren and Lumia nodded. Ruby smiled and gave a toothy grin to her friends. "Sorry Lu" she said, looking up at the rain "I am going to hug you tight."
Immediately after that, a burst of petals surrounded the whole team and flew forward. Straining her semblance, Ruby carried all her friends over the ten-meter distance and jumped inside the void gate to the unknown.
Behind her, the piping slowly faded away as the gate slowly vanished and let the vast, cyclopean chambers to be filled in the pitch-black blood until the Temple completely sunk inside a horrible abyss of deadly black ooze.
-o-
Unlike all other times, there was no creeping chaos overwhelming them. There was no pallid darkness devouring their minds or a surge of energy in their passage to oblivion. It simply felt as if passing through a door.
And it definitely didn't warn them about the unbelievable spectacle they would come across the moment they reached the other side. They stood still, eyes wide and mouths agape, taking in the unimaginable scenery.
The door had, obviously, vanished; so had the cyclopean temple full of granite and miasma. They now stood on a wide passage made of an alien material that was both abysmal dark and luminous at the same time.
To Lumia, if felt as if they walked on top of high-quality glass. She could see reflections of lights and their forms' outlines as they tried to walk over it. It felt sturdy and brittle altogether. It worried her to no extent.
The path was flanked on each side by tall walls that looked like they were made of series of monoliths stuck together. They had a disturbing purple color that turned blue when someone looked at it from a different angle.
Millions of little lights, small as a pinhead, dyed the road with a weird and exotic fluorescence that provided a modicum of light, barely enough for their eyes to see. For reasons unknown the floor wasn't illuminated at all.
The same fluorescent lights hovered around them. Nora tried to touch a bunch, but they reacted as if they were alive and fled to the walls. As they did, shadows of tall and amorphous statues came into view.
The problem was; there were no visible statues next to the wall of at any place the humans could see as a matter of fact. The demonic crescendo of alien pipes was stronger here, but for disturbing reasons it didn't seem to bother them that much anymore. Ruby shivered when she realized that.
What disturbed them the most, however, was the ceiling- if one could call it a ceiling to begin with.
A cosmos of purple-black chaos hovered above their heads, one moment close enough to burn and the next hundreds of years away. It felt strange and disgustingly alive, as if it observed them all so meticulously- so alien.
The cosmos itself was home to an ocean of stars. However, they were not the gentle, romantic ones Ren and Nora loved to observe at night. These ones were sinister, their deceptive glow unable to hide their evil nature.
Some of them were white, resembling more the glister of Grimm bones than the color's usual purity. Others cackled red, akin to the monsters' eye color. Some just were pulsing, black and silent as death itself.
They are like the walls of Riverside... like the cosmos we saw reveal when the Cleaner started devouring the hospital. Lumia balled her fists, trying to clear her head. The magnitude of this place was overwhelming her.
"Is anyone unable to move?" Ruby's voice made the others turn their gaze at her. They were still in shock, so their reaction had been slower than usual. "This path must be leading to the inner sanctum... probably."
She pointed forward, where the road seemed to lead to. Lumia looked at the wide path, lit by unnatural lights, flanked by non-existing statues and paved in impossible glass. The chirping of the pipes rose up for a second.
"Yes" she calmed herself down. She was no stranger to fear, but being so overwhelmed was a rare occurrence to the ex-maiden. She discovered that she didn't like it at all. "I will manage, somehow."
"We are fine too" Ren solemnly nodded and Nora gave her team leader thumbs up. Ruby opened her backpack and took out her remaining vial of Azure's liquid. She checked its state and put it on her belt pouch.
"How many do we have left?" she asked. "I used up all of mine" Ren said. "Mine is full; we just used Ren's" Nora followed. "I have more than half of mine left; so that makes us a total of two and a half" Lumia summarized.
"Good; keep them close by. We never know when we'll have to use them in here" Ruby instructed. Then, she pulled out Crescent Rose, used it to check the floor in front of her and started moving along the dark path.
"Follow just behind me; and please try to not thing about this place a lot; it's bad for your mind" she told her friends. They exchanged a quick stare, took out their weapons and went after the girl with the tattered cloak.
"Easier said than done!" Nora commented, sending another curious and awestruck look to the cosmos, before Ren cleared his throat to stop her.
Ignoring the couple's antics, Ruby moved, eyes wide open in full alert to counter any attack that may come to them. Even though, she had this gut feeling there would be no attacks coming until they reached their target.
The passage was wide and looked really long. The scenery barely changed with every step she took, just barely enough for her to understand she was actually moving at all. That offered some comfort to the girl at least.
The chirping also rose and intensified. The rhythmic, otherworldly sounds echoed in the dead space surrounding them in an impossible way; it was almost as if they were inside a theater rather than an open, starlit path.
A sudden flap of wings- a very familiar flap of wings- made the huntress halt and raise her fist in a warning signal. Her teammates followed suit and all raised their weapons, assuming a back-to-back formation at once.
The flap sounded again, audible even above the chirping and the echoes of the pipes abysmal lullaby. It was clear they came from above; it was descending on them from the primordial purple sea of abominable stars.
"Not this time" Nora's voice whispered. "We came this far; there is no way we are letting them capture us again" Ren added. Lumia didn't comment; she only raised her head, bow aiming at the cosmos above her.
"Do not attack unless they do first" the reaper instructed "there's no need to draw them towards us if they don't intend to." She cocked Crescent Rose and held her breath, as her eyes finally saw the familiar figures fly.
As they all had guessed, Carriers came down from the alien sky, the flap of their bat-like wings resonating with the demonic chirping of the flutes. A terrifyingly high number of black shadows filled the starry cosmos.
They danced in circles, spiraling down as if they were mesmerized by the alien flutes. They didn't stare at the humans, their gleaming bone masks that reflected the purple lights from beyond gazed only at the stars.
"They don't seem to be here for us" the magenta-eyed boy commented. "I like that idea" Nora nodded. "Let's wait to see what they want to do; if they keep dancing, we can start moving" Ruby whispered at them.
As if to give her an answer, one of the beings made a powerful dive. Her fingers went to her weapon's trigger at once, but she stopped at the very last moment when she saw the Grimm land on top of the towering walls.
Its body bent forward and its clawed arms- both sets- went up high. Then, it stretched its long neck and, head always looking above, it screeched.
The cacophonous sound nearly made them vomit. It was nothing like the eerie, haunting chirping that, despite the abhorrent and otherworldly nature it had, was melodious and full of twisted harmony. This was... bad.
Like, it was really bad. Ruby thought for a second that she was witnessing a twisted bird from the very first days of creation, before its species learnt how to form beautiful sounds and communicate with them. Even still...
"Is it just me, or is it praying to someone?" Lumia wondered. "It does feel that way" Ren replied. "It's horrible" Nora said. Ruby's eyes opened wide all of a sudden "hang on; it's getting much worse!" she warned them.
"Oh shit" the ginger's swearing was lost in the middle of the flock's sound of diving down. One after another they landed on the walls, stretched out their arms and started praying to the stars with their horrible voices.
The spectacle was hideous both for their ears and their eyes. Dozens of winged monstrosities flanked their path, croaking and screaming at their alien god, their horse-like bodies moving in accordance to the alien pipes.
Ruby gulped audibly "Time to go!" she pointed ahead and the humans started their tactical retreat, weapons pointed at all sides without slowing their pace, hoping the end of the road would offer them a little silence.
They moved through the endless passage, lights, stars, carriers and even the walls themselves joining in a mighty crescendo. Thankfully, everything seemed to ignore them for now; which made them highly suspicious.
That was until they reached the end and managed to take a look at what lied in the final chamber of this abhorrent, out of the world temple.
A tall staircase made of white gold and dark soapstone the likes of which Ruby had never seen in her life again was occupying the end of the road, standing on the edge of a circular platform made of black shining glass pulsing with green light.
There were no Grimm there; correction, there were no visible Grimm in the place. Even at their state of awe, they discerned the outlines of things holding and playing strange flute organs, like invisible shadows reflected by figures that didn't exist at all. As they did, the alien chirping rose again.
Behind them, the Carriers continued their abhorrent praying, chanting in that hideous language of theirs. Funny thing, Ruby thought, a few months ago the idea of Grimm having their unique language would sound stupid.
"I think" Lumia stared at the staircase. Images of alien forms and shapes, full of protoplasmic eyes and tentacles that writhed around their mass, were depicted on its sides, made of brilliant multicolored gemstones.
"This might be the-" "At last!"
Piper's voice was carried over by the flutes, the shadows flickering and dancing in frenzy. Its sound, guttural and alien as never before, easily dwarfed all other noises. At its wake, the platform surged with power.
All of a sudden, the Carriers fell silent and the music stopped. A pulsing sound of magic as the green fluorescence quickly filled the area and ran up the staircase was the only sound remaining. Nora gasped at the sight.
As the miasma rose up the stairs, the stars pulsed. A sinister presence filled the cosmos above, slowly expanding and descending at the top of the stairs, where stone and glass formed a colossal throne of darkness.
As it reached down, it didn't sit upon the throne. Instead, the unseen and unformed entity got wrapped around the massive contraption. Its shadow fell on the insignificant looking humans, who hugged their weapons tight.
Ruby felt something was amiss, but at the moment she was too focused on the monster coiling around the glass in front of her. She couldn't see, but she felt myriads of eyes stare at her, permeating her very soul.
"Behold Avyssos" the Piper announced "He who carried darkness since Remnant was still bathed in light."