Prologue: The song from the darkness
The horrible conclusion that was now intruding upon my confused and terrified mind was that I was lost. Hopelessly and completely lost. Hope had departed in it's full extent. Frequently I had thought of the fate of one lost in Erebus, for I now was one such being. It was no other fault than my own and I could only curse my self confidence and brashness that led me to the depths of this cursed dimension beyond all comprehension and linearity.
Now I grimly told myself that my death would not be from the shadow anima, instead it would be one of dehydration and fulminous hunger. Perhaps it was my foolishness that brought fruit this horrible future that I now found myself facing. I was now convinced that I was being stalked through the darkness. Perhaps my death would come from this strange shadowy stalker instead of a lack of things to eat and drink.
In an instant my thoughts were turned to horror as I listened to the slithering and unnatural chittering that followed me through the infinite black and purple shadow anima. So summoning my last reserves of power, I viciously lashed out with my Fractured Siphon, yet it bore no fruit whatsoever. No sound of power striking down an enemy. No pained screech of a defeated enemy.
As the last fitful rays of my power faded into the darkness, I realized that my attacks were of no purpose. Was my death to come so soon? Whilst these fears arose in my brain, I realized something. The slithering and skittering had stopped, replaced by an unearthly stillness.
This was even more frightful, as the instinct of self preservation, never truly dormant, arose in my breast. I determined to part with my life with as high a cost as I could extricate. The ever-present warmth of the shadow anima was turned cold, and I suddenly felt some great being was about to confront me. Struck sharply by my own mortality, remembering the awful things that happened to those that died in Erebus the tension in my mind became frightful as I was petrified, rooted to the spot.
I could hear the sound of a mixture of the grinding of thousands of cogs that were almost overpowered by the distant sound of approaching screams. Soon the screams were replaced by sharp metallic clicks, and I felt primal terror that only humanity could feel in front of something so incomprehensibly terrifying, beyond even mathematical dimensions and the ability for my mind to process. In a meaningless and idiotic manner, I tried to run, to flee from this being that I could not possibly dream of confronting. Only after what felt like an infinity of complete silence I realized that I was unable to move.
With a jerk I was turned over and lifted upwards towards whatever had captured me as such.
I screamed in a visceral terror that I had never felt before, despite my encounters with Gods, Demons, and Creatures from beyond the stars.
Turn as I might my eyes could see nothing but this vast terrifying existence.
For though I had read of victims in similar situations like these, that knowledge was ripped from me, leaving me nothing but a terrible song that pierced my mind. In completely alien sounds that were not meant for mortal minds I was doused in a new terror. As I cried and screamed, my voice fell upon no ears but my own. Whilst these terrible notes filled my ever acute mind with dreadful and unearthly secrets in an unending assault of sharp and incisive blows, each slicing and tearing into my mind.
Every moment that passed, I felt my incomprehensibly tiny mind being filled with wails and screams of song only to break apart and spill out into the darkness, until at last, only darkness and the song remained.
Only then did I begin to sing along with the wails, and soon they were no longer wails, but beautiful notes, augmented by the sharp pain in which they were sung. Beautiful sounds, beautiful music. Thus the fear left me and I found myself completely free of the worries that had plagued me. What small knowledge I had clung to had all but become laughable. It had a sort of relation to a past I scarcely remembered.
All I wanted to do now was sing. Those studies and pursuits I had sook in my life were now dim candles in front of a universe of stars. It was strange that I had clung so tightly to my mortality, going about pointless quests and protecting a peoples that had yet to hear my song.
This was what Kranon felt. The euphoria of the song. The freedom from all of space and time. I felt like a foolish child returned to a warm non judgmental family at a dinner table filled with naught but the most delectable of dishes at the end of a particularly successful day.
I tore my armor off, for it was little more than a burden that I no longer need don. I relished in the darkness as the song rose and fell all around me, each scream a harmonious note accentuated by my own. My life, previously held at small value by those around me was now absolutely and unshakably valuable to the song.
The fear of death?
Such a thing was laughable. Death could claim me no more than it could claim the hands of time themselves. For the writhing hand of the darkness now shielded me from the Reaper's claim. It was upon that fated moment that I came upon a beautiful sight. Oceans of corpses all writhing and swelling in the darkness in an endless sea that twisted and swelled beneath me in beautiful song.
My eyes widened upon beholding it, and I reached out to them. In return, the sea rose to claim me, only to fall back upon barely reaching me. For I had a purpose, to spread the song of the dark depths of the endless sea among those that did not yet know the joy of the song.
Bell ran through the fifth floor with a speed unmatched by any level one adventurers before him. If one were to question why he was running with such voracity, the answer would become immediately clear upon looking behind him. A hideous amalgamation of man and colossal bull full of rage and hate thundered behind him in naught but a wild frenzy of heated rage and the desire to kill.
The ground seemed to shake with every step of that horrible beast as it slowly gained ground upon the fleeing boy. With naught but a large stone single bladed battle axe that was chipped from clear use, likely on any being in it's way on the higher floors as it chased it's prey with a tunnel vision rivaled only by certain species of carnivorous fish monsters deep in the dungeon's lower depths.
The young boy, who was known as Bell Cranel by everyone who was even aware of his existence, which was a small list of very powerful individuals that he had yet to know about in a strange twist of fate. This was due to his heritage which was something that he was quite unsure of up until this moment and for many moments afterwards.
His red eyes were wide in an unbridled terror that only the young and naive can face upon feeling their very real mortality for the first time. His short white hair was in disarray with sweat, dirt, and blood marring it from a shallow slice on his forehead. His taut skin was morbidly pale as all of his blood was going to his lower body as he ran with a fervent haste akin to Apollo's own speed.
Most unusual though was the strange black energy seeping out of the minotaur. Adventurers had made wild claims of monsters being unusually powerful when a black energy seemed to seep out from them before their bodies could no longer survive the energy before exploding without even taking damage from any weapon or attack from the adventurer's part.
It grunted and eyed the boy with a predatory air, strangely slowing slightly and bellowing as the energy permeated it, dominating it's will, and moulding it into a new being of a fearsome sort beyond what it was naturally capable of.
Then, with a burst of speed, it swung it's elbow at Bell's head and any attempt at dodging would be impossible, as if he stopped he would die immediately.
With a sickening cracking sound of bone on skull, the beast's elbow connected with Bell's skull sending the boy slamming into the wall and bouncing onto the ground like a ragdoll that was struck by a massive force. The boy bounced and rolled a few meters down the hallway unconscious and suffering internal damage not yet fully discerned.
The Minotaur was spewing a black smoke like energy that had completely wreathed it. This led to it looking more like a huge shadowy wraith than a creature of bull and man. It ran by him before slowing down a good dozen feet away.
It's transformation was complete, and what was once a creature of the dungeon was something different, twisted and melded with darkness beneath which even the dungeon could not reach. It was now a being from beyond space and time itself, merely using the minotaur's body as a host for itself.
It slowly walked, no glided over to bell with some inexplicable movement that one could not make heads or tails of. It was as if some being from beyond geometrical dimensions was trying to understand such limited physicality via the minotaur.
It knelt down by Bell's unconscious form and reached out to him. No to say it reached into him was a more apt description, and it gripped his heart. Then it squeezed.
Bell awoke with an incomprehensible babble and utterly insane shouting, and only upon gazing at the creature did he stop screaming. His fearful yelling replaced by a terrible silence.
Then, with the sound of a thousand voices all speaking in almost harmony, leaving an uncanny twisting in his heart. His throat immediately parched, and his skin dried from some impossible heat.
"Do you really think you can save them, Bell? You can't. The spiral of time leads only to the gaping maw of eternity. And this is Xau-Tak".
In that last moment the name came with a cold swamping wave of repulsion, a wave of such alienage and abnormality that Bell could do nothing but falter in such a dark sound of such incomprehensible cosmic force.
Then the thing of darkness exploded in an unnatural and diabolical shriek and blast of inky black wet mist.
When Bell looked up with wide and hollow eyes for a moment, he was greeted by the horrified look of a beautiful young lady with long golden hair and impeccably fair skin, but even her beauty could not contend with the bizarre supernal terror that Bell sat stock still in, his mind wandering to places far beyond that of even space and time itself.
The young woman could do nothing but look in horror as she saw the young boy's eyes covered in a black ichthyic film that only slid down when she knelt down and shook him in trepidious terror. The fear had effected both of them profoundly and it was clear that this was only the beginning.
Whoever this Xau Tak was, it was something that could not be allowed to arrive onto this world.