In these gothic chasms, bound by a mortar of liquid hate, entropy is raised, tainted beyond redemption.
The lamenting writhe in their filth and accusation, while the conceited loathe in their gluttony. Across the river of guilt and dystopia, the helmsman guides those pitiable souls from these hexed walls right back to them, for they are damned to the crypt.
What was this wretched place before it was defiled?
Before its initial fall, the Dungeon had a name other than that. Founded in 12 DE, it was named Elysia, an empyrean city carved from the earth by the First Six Mages, and given life to become a prosperous district. A center for distributing goods, magicks, and or divine influence. hundreds of chapels were established and for each one two marketplaces were built. An entire academy of magic was constructed at its upper layers. The Grand Archive, the greatest achievement of understanding magic, shining at its core.
With the fact it was built completely underground, no threat could ever besiege it. It was dubbed one of the greatest of its kind, following shortly behind Azafure. But how did a golden city degrade into a wretched hellhole? What truly caused Elysia's downfall?
Its citizens typically were part of one of the seven factions:
The Marching Hoarde, an army of ruthless warriors clad in cobalt. They were highly disciplined and willful, yet baring an unceasing hunger for conquest. Before joining Elysia, many said they stormed at their targeted cities like a tidal wave approaching the shoreline or a storm ready to sunder all in its path. After joining, they solely defended areas of honor and usually aided in territory expansion.
The Ragged Brotherhood. Descending lines of psychotic spellcasters dressed in torn red robes of their choosing. They were situated in Elysia's middle class layer, and practicing their arts in the most obscure spaces. Typically thriving from the richer, some could find them lurking in the dark and scurrying away frantically when caught, the faction being barely noticed and low-praised. Some believe the reason for their madness is that they drank from The Void, others say that's nonsense.
The Rusted Companies, barbaric, vile dissenters who lurked in the lowest class sewage systems and slums. Trudging through the muck and stalking the pipelines, they brutally murdered any who touched their territory and were even seen cannibalizing their corpses. The truth was they never joined the city with consent, somehow birthing from its filth and dwelling there since. They contemplated whether they were even counted as a faction. They gained their name from the miskept, rusted weaponry they carried.
The Necromancers. A league of trustworthy authority sorcerers who specialized in spiritual magicks. Their upper-class power allowed them to work within The Grand Archive while appeasing the higher authorities with their contributions. They created a set of guardians that demolished any being who dared trespass into the city, along with cursed drones that scouted the layers for crime. With their deep understanding of the spiritual world, most of them had the privilege to teach at the academy.
The Molten Legion. Oft dubbed the greatest of all, they were of Azafurian descent, their desire to crush burning brighter than themselves. Tempered by the underworld magma to demolish, they gave up their bodies for a vessel wreathed in fire and brimstone. An untouchable infernal bastion, blazing a trail of ash and smoke in its wake. A hell-bound seal is cast upon them to stop them from melting apart, yet in an amorphous hot-red monstrosity.
The Diabolic League. Underworld priests who worshipped The Great Wall for millennia. The influence of such worship twisted their minds to lifelessness, becoming a husk of devotion. Before their affiliation, they practiced sacrificial rituals that fed prisoners and slaves to the wall.
Lastly, The Lunatic Cult is the highest-ranked of them all. The faction that began Elysia and continues to reign over it. Their covenant devotes themselves to the Lunar Phantasmal, star-borne beasts from the celestial moons and their void-bent king. With their fanatic obsessions of the unknown, they're the most vicious and corrupt of them all. After the fall of what is known as Cthulhu, they began extensive experimentation with the properties of its corpse and began centuries of unethical and gruesome research.
But what indeed caused this city's downfall? Well, there is much speculation but few answers, not many survived to tell the tale. Tensions between the factions were rising, as the upper classes grew, the lower became more and more miskept. Elysia had risen to its peak in 1457 in size and power, mages were reluctant to expand even further. By the time it fell, the lower slums were abandoned and forgotten while the upper ones fought for who would take rulership of such a city. The Cult had run to the crux of their experimenting, any glimmer of end or morality was lost. They had gone insane deeper than they ever were and decided such a city could not keep up with their research, and they could not let such frivolities disturb their accomplishments.
It was a silent day.
Citizens steadily paced their paths with naivety, musty fog shrouded the rooftops and blanketed the upper layers. The Lunatic Cult gathered atop the highest point of the city, a circle incomprehensible to any other was drawn. Slowly, the fog parted. Then the water spilled on the cobblestone and flowing through the cracks faded away. Citizens in their daily routine saw a miracle they hadn't seen in years: sunlight. Warm, bright sunlight graced the blue bricks and glimmered its comfort over all of Elysia.
They raised their heads to what revelation was upon them. From the center of the tender glow, emblazoned on the luminous was a sigil burning in scarlet.
Survivors say a feverish red wave raced throughout the city and dissolved anybody who was caught in its vicinity into bubbling pulp. Buildings were swept off their supports as blood ran down the streets, harbinging the demise that followed quickly after. The wave soon seeped into the lower layers and eradicated any remaining, all while the cult sat upon the highest point and laughed.
What occurrence was told, was utterly, a near-exact replica of what was depicted of The Second Massacre.
His brain rang out of his ears.
Laurence ran through the labyrinth, drifting across every turn. His trench coat flapped violently behind him as he searched through interlacing passages and pathways. His heartbeat thrummed with steadfast haste, feeling it pulse throughout every vessel with glowing purple surges. Gusts of damp air bristled his cheekbones and sculpted out his posture.
Where would that ghost go?!
A specter such as that couldn't pass through matter with its armor, yet somehow it seemed as if it disappeared entirely. The dungeon was a maze with no end, miles upon miles of hallways, curving from abandoned archives to pits of malformed malice. Wicked sets of spikes spanned around the floor and ceiling for reasons he didn't understand. It lacked any linearity with its structures, side rooms barely able to fit a person in opened up to cottages and chapels carved straight out of the rock.
Shit...it must have any knowledge of where I can find my past...
The specter's voice wailed at him without end—dementing, desaturated, one that sounded like it passed through ten thousand bodies and back. With every step, every breath, it spoke the same.
BE SURE YOUR STEP, VOID-BORNE, YOU TREAD FOOTING ON AN UNKNOWN FORTRESS.
A sizzle from the back door frame. He turned his head and squinted his eyes, watching his back steadily. The tip-tap of the lightest footsteps bounced across the walls and straight toward him. A chilling breeze drifted against his feet, and as he looked down a dark purple fog billowed across the floor.
A shadowy figure sprung up against the walls and leaped from side to side. Baring purple cloth with a teal trim and otherworldly pauldrons, sparkings swirling out their steel-plated toes. They danced across the hall with upheaved precision, each foot landing perfectly for the other to dash forth. Their stature was relatively thin, yet terrifying nonetheless. Laurence whipped out the tentacles from his fingers on one hand, the other the red fork from the skeleton priest. The figure moved so fast it dizzied his mind and outspeed his eyes, from what he could make out was a kunai twirling in one of their hands. As they approached closer, he readied his stance, weapon in front as Ars taught him. But before he could blink, the figure leaped right at him, kicking away the pitchfork.
What the?!
He swung his tentacles directly to their face, but the lacerates tore off with a blade of purple energy. Before he could even see the figure had their armored claws clenched on his neck, knee straight at his sternum as he was battered onto the floor. The figure, now wreathed in a cosmic veil that spun around their arms and legs, locked the kunai into his arm before he could attack, grasped his side, and launched him across the hall with such herculean might he smashed right through the walls.
Who the fuck is this...a ninja?!
The ninja flung him around like a ragdoll. Dragging him across the ground and beating his face against the wall until black and blue. Laurence finally gave out, dropping to the floor, barely conscious. The ninja quickly gripped his hood and pulled him back up, pinning the kunai against his neck.
"Who the hell are you..." He said.
The ninja scoffed. "You have two options...either you surrender right now, or I'll kill you right here." He said.
He spoke in a rather quiet and stern voice, muffled by the steel plates oni-like mask covering his face. Almost as thin as him, yet baring an outfit that draped heavily and forced a menacing aura. He moved with clockwork precision, every movement, every blink of the eye felt as if they were planned ten steps ahead. This ninja wasn't just another unruly beast Laurence had faced before. No.
As Ars said...is this one of those Resistance members?
This was a truly commendable foe, who doesn't waste a second taunting or laughing at the face of their opponent. A man who really knows how to fight and confront, who trains to sunder their enemies in the most speedy and emotionless way. A man who'd strengthened their abilities for decades to accomplish any goal, a true terror of exerted dominance and rewarded power.
I-I'm nothing...I haven't learned anything...
He saw it instantly. The division members...Kade...Lloyd...they didn't know anything either. They were also just beasts of fight and win. Sure they had strength, but none of that was ever devoted to such level as of this foe.
Shit...I'll still die if don't go!
He tried squirming, but he had an iron grasp against him. The more he struggled, the closer he inched the kunai at his neck, to the point where the blade sizzled at the skin.
"Sigh...Didn't wanna do this..." Laurence responded,
Dark markings quickly appeared all over his body, from head to toe. Immediately, tentacles tore out from everywhere and jettisoned across like spears, flailing like a storm of blue. The ninja easily cleaved away any in his path as Laurence grappled himself away before he would notice. The hall opened to a city section built across a dividing canyon, chapels built on layers cascading to the edge.
He fled in subjugated fear, frantically swinging from pillar to pillar, twisting his ankle at the landing, and grappling onto anything possible. The center was stranger than any other place he'd seen. The brick was unnaturally paler than there, monuments and arches were chiseled broken in geometrical ways far from anything possible. Yet it didn't reek of blighted stench, or covered in gunked filth. It smelled of ash and dust, the dampness was steamy and hot.
*(BLAM)*
The ninja appeared behind his back, ribbons of dark energy flowing behind him, and jabbed his kunai into Ren's side.
What the fuck?! He couldn't have possibly caught up that fast...
His coat where the blade had hit was etched in a sizzling purple burn, him pulling it out and kicking the ninja away from his grasp. Ren dropped down on an edge walkway at the end of the canyon, and the ninja followed quickly after. He struck out his tentacles once again, as the two paced the ground wearily. Any attempt to strike would undoubtedly be countered by the ninja instantly. There was nowhere to run, he doubted anybody was near this place at all. The ninja wouldn't back down, he had no reason to do so.
The air was rasped and rigid. Waves of humidity burned across his face as he sweated bullets out of his face. There was not a single light, yet he could somehow see unusually well, perhaps something with his mutations. Bricks under his feet crumbled as he walked, tumbling into the fog-stuffed canyon undercroft. The ninja's armored plating glistened in the dark with rays of pink and blue, still, a purple mist surrounding his feet. He watched him firmly -The ninja was bold with every movement, standing in the perfect position, watching Ren from every detail, whether he shivered and stuttered or what the emotion on his face was.
...I can break as many bones as I like, but can't afford any hits to the vitals. As long as I have a brain and a pulse, I still stand...
Ren gulped down his stress and stared back, sliding into position and charging forth.
*(CRACK)*
Nothing. He could barely even swing his weapon, let alone move more than a foot. Just like that, the ninja had his grip on his head and pinned him against the canyon wall. He clawed and punched and kicked, but he had the strength to lift his full body just by the head. A distortion blade beamed out his arm as he lowered his grasp to his neck and swung him over the edge.
"Give me a fine reason not to kill you right now."
A scream.
A wrenching, sorrowful scream for help, echoed in the distance. They heard the grainy crunch of bricks, followed by deep moans and groans. They looked to the other side, atop a cathedral roof, and an exhale of blue breath flowed up to the ceiling. They felt a frigid sweat run down them, the buildings around them shaking uncontrollably. The scream was not of any desperate cry, but the unbearable screeching of metal, along his hundreds of chains rattling and bashing together.
It was horrid.
From the perceived darkness, a colossal amalgamation of spectral flesh hides itself in a cloak of tattered cloth. Scrap metal armored its horribly disfigured maw, wrought steel bars welded against its teeth. Two gigantically emaciated arms protruded from its body in contorted ways, spun in steel bracing and decayed bandaging. Over its back, three more arms claw out. One on the left, shorter than the others, two on the left, wielding a wicked claymore of dozens of other rusted swords bound together. Its twisted eyes peered through the cloth and smote all how gazed through them. The Polterghast roared of a thousand souls, crawled like a lizard who had lost its back legs, chains trailing behind, then gnashed and gnawed like a crocodilian in fury.
They said this beast was a ghost. Simply a vengeful group of spirits, nobody could've described it such as what he was laying his eyes upon. This was no ghost, it was alive, in a real body, moving, standing, directly on this plain. Its scrap metal creaked and hummed through each breath. Each heartbeat surged scarlet ectoplasmic blood across its body, its flesh pulsated with every pump. He could hear it gargle its mucus and fume its breath, bones cracking, skin spanning, bowels rumbling. He could smell the necrotic rots slathered all over itself stinking like a slaughterhouse, he could see fresh exocrine oozing out the crevices like pus and coating the metal in glistened disgust.
He bit down on his tongue and swallowed a bitter taste in his mouth. Sweat drenched his stomach, a fine layer coating his face. With hapless depravity, his hands loosened as he dropped the red fork, and bent down his rusted knees. He tried to breathe, yet only got a nose full of dust and stink. Such horror made him lose footing, stumbling against the pillars and nearly tapping the edge. A violent ensemble of gags and voices encompassed him, bellowing tainted reliquaries into him. He felt his ears ring beyond comprehension, and ache in absolute torment, all the while his mind drowned in white noise, a single figure standing in the madness.
He had never felt fear, yet the things he had done would be nightmares for others. He traversed the deepest chasms of the sea with relative ease. He dueled a Dreadnautilus within a lake of blood, leaving it butchered by the cliffs. He had slain The Destroyer with his bare hands in the scorned ruins of Ilmeris. Yet this was different, it was a being of pure, utter hatred. It salvaged its armor in such horrible and uncanny craft to exert fear. It chose such a hellbent, amalgamated form to exert fear. Every single concept, from its appearance and the way it moved, was to exert fear. It was not feral, it was anything but feral.
He looked for the ninja; he disappeared without a trace.
It was able to portray emotion, emotion was what created it. It sweltered in a slurry of grief and anger, spiritual vehemence tempered it to madness. It boils in scarlet fury, yet still knows its purpose and how to do it. And thus from the whirlwind of raging souls, the storm parted with the presence of the figure.
It whispered.
FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH, TWENTY-ONE OH THREE. DOES THAT DATE SOUND FAMILIAR...WRATH?
A rush of palpable vehemence surged throughout his entire body, causing him to lose sense and topple closer to the edge. It was nearly identical to what he felt at Ilmeris, faint scenes of grief...sadness...and anger. He felt the sting of those mere words spoken to his ears impale him with an utter plague of loss. Those mere words made his flesh melt off his bones and his skin smolder with a burning dread.
"H-how did you know that...what the hell is this?"
Immense pain dashed him and split him asunder. His hands shuddered in horror as his shoulders fell limp, his grip loosened on the pillars and along with the red fork, dropping the furicus as well. He felt the figure approach closer, an undescribable, fathomless presence stirred his mind as he faced oblivion. It moved even closer, each step heavy with angst, pacing further with the floor dissolving throughout its subjugation.
I WILL ASK YOU AGAIN. FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH, TWENTY-ONE OH THREE, DOES THAT DATE SOUND FAMILIAR.
"No...no...NO NO NO. STOP THIS. STOP THIS."
FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH, TWENTY-ONE OH THREE. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE IT. YOU CANNOT RUN FROM IT.
As the floor dissolved, he began to sink. melting into a soup as his feet slowly submerged, then to his shins. It stuck against his legs, the more he tried to pull the deeper he sank. The Polterghast coalesced behind the figure, swallowing them whole, and stared as he haplessly drowned into the floor.
How much more time does he need to suffer?
How many more times will he get wronged?
He kicked up the red fork and launched himself at the specter, the pavement reaving itself from the force. He stomped against the wall and thrusted the fork towards its metal hull. It made another screech as the prongs slashed against the steel, although doing nothing he still kept jabbing the fork against the armor. The more he jabbed, the weaker the hull grew, denting it further until it was nearly broken. Tentacles wreathed around his biceps, eyes pale, mouth foaming, he had lost all sense, only a fuming rage was left.
*(SNAP)*
He stared down but was left in awe. The armor had nearly broken, but his fork had impaired far worse. The specter held the half of the fork between its wicked claws, splintered like a twig. The Polterghast curved its body back, arching its claymore, then sent a sweeping cleave across the domain, trailed by a scarlet blade of souls. The blade grazed the end of his horn, leaving a knawing red sting, but barely hurting a bit.
"nggh...WHATEVER...YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER BEAST I HAVE TO SLAUGHTER..." Laurence screamed.
YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOURSELF. YOU HAVE FALTERED, ONLY PAIN REMAINS.
"Hehehe...he..." He laughed in rasped breath as he charged back, "I'LL KILL YOU...JUST LIKE I DID ALL OTHERS."
He pulled up the furicus fork and clashed it against The Polterghast's gauntlets. The specter flung him away and with its wrought talons, snatched him by all limbs and pried him to its maw. Its jaws slowly opened wide, mucus slobbering around as its sharp tongue danced in his face. Laurence felt his life flash within his eyes, or perhaps several, for phantoms spun in its mouth in a dizzying danse macabre.
YOU HAVE BECOME DEAF TO YOUR WORLD, ANY SEMBLANCE OF YOUR PAST DRIVES YOU TO INSANITY. YOU ARE FIGHTING A SENSELESS WAR, AN ENDLESS CYCLE OF TORTURE YOU CANNOT CEASE. THE DESPAIR WILL NOT END.
The walkway began to rumble and crack, more slags rolling into the mist. He saw the pillars were scored apart, and quickly failing, a cut line and flew all the way to the wall. The specter's cleave had severed the supports, and was about time the balcony would be ready to fall.
PERHAPS I SHOULD TELL YOU...BUT I BELIEVE IT WOULD BE MORE ENTERTAINING FOR YOU TO FIND OUT YOURSELF.
The Polterghast threw him into the canyon as the roof came tumbling down, then crawled away.
The Resplendent Phoenix soared across the warm, tropic sky.
Gliding through whirlwinds and puffed gusts, the canopies couldn't even grace his height. Such lifeforms, measly foliage were nothing but obstacles in his path. Beings that grow so large and strong yet will inevitably wither and die. For he was beyond such a shoddy existence, he was beyond death. He willed power to uproot this entire forest within a single breath, he could level mountains with a single step. Nothing was beyond him, for he was a dragon.
Yet even with such power, an ideal life could never be achieved in this world.
Yharon's glistening wings shifted to a halt as he majestically descended to the destination. This place was once a beautiful grotto, decorated with draconic ornaments engraved with auric and embedded with gemstones. Statues carved out of living fire lined a pathway to The Grave of Light, where the aerie rebirths fading dragons anew.
Now it seems even the aerie has died itself. The remaining dragons tried their best to retrieve any ash or bones of the hunted and scatter them across this sacred land. The temples were left ransacked, all fire was burned out, and what's left is nothing but an imposing mound of tragedy.
The grave still stands tall above the ash, yet chiseled and fragmented, as it would be. He climbed up the ruined stairs, trying his best not to trample over the passed. Upon reaching the grave, he bent to his knees, arched his wings, and lowered his head. It was his people's way of showing respect, he had been coming here to do so every month now.
To be the last of his kind was an aspect he still didn't fully comprehend. The Auric Dragons, protectors of this earth, were massacred by the beings they swore to save. One by one, every dragon was slaughtered for the desire to reach the heights of The Primordials, but in truth, they are usurpers to a throne dull and rusted. However, he showed no anger against them. The hunger for power is embedded in the mind since birth, it is their nature, and the reason this world survives.
Though, he still shows great gratitude to his master, lest he would've been consumed long ago.
The empire was practically a shell of its former self. Yharim has given up on governing such land, and the provinces are now either suffering from poverty or struck with civil war. Cities revolting against their leaders, dying of disease, ravaged with falsehood and false hope. Yharon was once the beacon of light to this empire, an emblem to guide hope within his crusade. And what was that beacon now but a bleak, beam of lies?
Now, fury paves the streets in red, riots reigned over the cityscapes, lighting houses aflame, carving messages in lava,
"YHARIM FUNDS THE E'DAX RURAL AS A MASS GENOCIDE INDUSTRY"
"EVERY YEAR, 800 CITIZENS ARE EXECUTED TO THE DEVOURER"
"FREE THE PEOPLE OF E'DAX"
He was sent along with the fearmongers to cease the riots, simply to gesture intimidation. As they arrived, he flew across the sunlight and shunned all with his mighty roar. But at the edge of his vision, another group of messages was carved across the dragon pantheon. Etched in slashes of fire, charred to a smoky black, it wrote:
"DRAGONS ARE A SIGN OF JUSTICE, WHERE IS OUR DRAGON NOW?"
"YOU POISON YOUR OWN WELL"
But one, the largest, scorched across the rooftop, startled him beyond anything.
"YOU HAVE BECOME THE SOLE THING YOU PROMISED TO DESTROY, YHARIM. EMPERORS SHOULD NEVER OUTLIVE THEIR EMPIRES, AND HE IS STILL ALIVE."