Nic was returned to the top of the Gibbous Tower, gasping as the sickness of passing through dimensions overtook him. He leaned against the tower’s broken walls and stared down into the green forest below, sprawling out in all directions. The air brushed cool and cold over his face, and he had a moment to reflect how much more solid, how much more real, this world was than the shifting landscape he’d left behind.
“What was that…”
“The chaotic regions of space. Places beyond anyone’s control, where the System’s influence is limited. Where you went in particular is a pocket realm called the Shallows. It could be called one of the more vicious chaotic regions, since any aura used there will crack through the thin reality and unleash the Abyss.” She paused, and added, “You did well to survive, Nicolas. These trials test one’s luck as much as anything. Some places it could send you, not even C-Classes would have any promise of escaping.”
“Then why send us at all…” Nic complained. But he thought he already knew the answer.
“In a word, territory. The System greatly wishes to harvest the rare and beautiful things within the chaotic regions, but must stabilize them before it can begin to conquer them. If it simply sent the strongest soldiers, C-Class Hegemons and the like, they’d draw tremendous amounts of attention and likely spark all-out war.”
So in essence, the plan was to send thousands of scouts promised meager rewards if they lived, and let all but a few of them die. Better that than risking a single hegemon. “You’re a lot more chatty than before I went in and nearly died.” Nic noted.
“I am allowed to discuss chaotic regions you’ve already visited, thankfully. I’d suggest purchasing a book on the others before taking another scouting mission.”
Nic nodded. He knew Sofia wasn’t trying to sabotage him, but having access to an unlimited library where he could only read the least important books…
It could be frustrating. “Any chance you could tell me about the Abyss, then? I took a dip or two in it.”
“Normally, no. But seeing as I knew you’d ask, I took the liberty of requesting informational access from my higher-ups. And… They’ve agreed you should know.”
“Wait, what?” Nic actually snorted in disbelief. “You’re kidding. Is it my birthday?”
“Perhaps you’ll understand when I’m through. The Abyss is the origin of everything. Infinite dark waters, in which there is no energy of heaven or earth, no cultivation, nothing but the raw will of souls. In the time before histories, countless smaller cosmos rose and fell. They may have been evil places or they may have been paradise, but they all shared the same fate, shattering apart and returning to the Abyss.”
“But one day, the four Vigilants arose. Four creator gods who left their paradise world and walked through the void, creating life wherever they went. With each step they brought the cosmos we know into existence- and with each step, they spent their own souls. They are called the Vigilants because their bodies guard the end of the known world; skeletal soldiers staring out into the depths of the Abyss, looking towards something we can’t understand.”
“The Old Speech you employ is, in truth, the cultivation method of the Abyss. It is the sign that something powerful from within those waters has marked you, and there are very few reasons such a being would take notice of someone like you…”
“One is… They believe you have the power to destroy this Earth, and sink it into the Abyss.”
Nic’s first thought was to say that was ridiculous…
But then he thought of the storm in the desert. The twisting rifts that knotted together, distorting each other, opening pathways to distant lands. He had done that…
“If Seoona’s plan goes off, if she really does destroy one of the outer planets with nuclear fire, would that be enough?”
“Undoubtedly. It would likely take years to fully annihilate this solar system, but a rift of that proportion would inevitably let the Abyss in.”
Nic nodded. “Should I stop using the Old Speech, d’ya think?”
“It’s a path to power, and the ones who created this world knew the Old Speech, as do the ones who’d destroy it. There are few powers that inherently evil- even the slaughter paths have righteous walkers, who destroy evil-doers by the thousands...”
Nic couldn’t help but feel the boyish part of himself, who’d read countless stories of the cultivating heroes, sink into imagination at that. Men who walked a thousand planets, bringing justice with the sword…
It reminded him - that dream, and what he’d experienced in the chaotic region - how little cultivation he’d truly experienced yet.
There were worlds unnumbered.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Are you curious?” Nic asked. “About what we’ll find beyond the System?”
“Of course I am. Why, Nicolas, it’s almost as if I’m a being designed to learn as much as they can about the cosmos… In fact, when I mention it to my sisters, they all say roughly the same thing. It’s a laughably terrible idea… But if it works, I have to tell them what we find.”
“Will you be able to follow me?”
“Usually, no. But there are things we could arrange for. Ways for a Sophont to walk beyond the normal bounds of the System.”
“Wait, will you be getting a body?” Nic perked right up at that. He’d always been curious. It seemed like Sofia did have a natural form, at least one upon a time, rather than always being a creature of pure thought as she was now.
“I… would prefer not to. The last time I had a body…” She paused, painfully. “It was a war, and not one I felt good participating in.”
“Still. It’s not much of an adventure without you.”
“Thank you Nicolas. I imagine I’ll be very bored with my next assignment if you ever manage to finally get yourself killed.” In her dry, cool tone, it was almost possible to detect a hint of humor- and maybe a compliment.
---
Nic sat down and pushed energy into his Mire-Caller nodes, feeling them pulse as they accepted the swell of Essence and were dug deeper into his core, polishing and refining their place in the constellation of stars and nodes that defined his cultivation.
One level…
Two levels…
Three levels…
And with that, Nic sank into dreams…
…
The dreams of the deep swamp, where cicadas and dragonflies roamed over waters the color of tea, split by sandbars bristling up with reeds that shook and rattled in the wind like legions of spears.
Skeletons lurked beneath those waters, the pale bones of the dead.
And underneath the mud were legions more, centuries of the forgotten, the damned, the condemned. They slowly melted into their prison, becoming one with the sucking morass of mud…
They were one will…
One unliving mind…
Dreaming the slow dreams of nothing that only the unliving could dream.
A witch lived on the edge of this swamp, in a house raised up on stilts. She kept treasure coffers full of keepsakes, of old lockets, bright ribbons, sparkling stones like stars. When she wished for the swamp’s favor, she would cast them down, handfuls of rubbish-treasure…
She would feed the swamp, make it remember the days when those bones had been living things, full of aspiration and hunger.
The mud would surge up, seizing her petty treasures. It would coil and twist and obey as she gave it commands.
She would make mud-dolls, the size of humans, rough in features and mindless, and set them to tasks. Tending the swamp, pulling up invasive weeds, planting good, honest varieties of pale underworld grass; striking bent stakes into the ground around newborn saplings so they would grow twisted and weirded; culling life and bringing death.
The swamp was a place where life and death collided…
Where one melted into the other…
Where things descended under the soil, moldering and rotting, giving sprout to new life; where things grew twisted with the weight of memories; where fish fed on the rotten meat of discarded bodies. Everything that lived here required something else to die, was born from that death.
The cycle turned for seasons.
And a girl was brought, her white dress trailing in the mud. She was dragged by a procession of bloody-minded men, carrying torches and swords. They dragged her to an altar, ready to pierce her heart with a stone dagger.
Ready to feed the swamp on the death it desired.
In the hopes of prosperity to bloom from the sacrifice offered.
But it was not their choice; it was not their right to choose. The mud rushed up, grasping at them, sucking them down. The old witch struck her cane against the planks of her cabin, keeping rhythm. The men were dragged beneath the water and their faces twisted in agony, giving up a last gasp, a burbling plea. They were taken beneath the black mud, their bodies interred among white, picked-clean bones.
This was the death the swamp desired…
And the woman was the life.
As she stood there, shaking, the old woman stepped from her hut. She laid a hand on the trembling thing’s shoulder, and smiled at the girl with broken yellow teeth.
The swamp had found a new master.
Someone who respected life and death.
The girl worked tirelessly, learning the uses of swamp grass, mangrove bark, fen flowers, muddy herbs. She would grind them to pulp and use the paste to restore the wounds of the creatures around here. So too would she learn the powers of blood, and what she could win for the price of a life. What bone and viscera could tell her of the future…
What the swamp knew, in its quiet way, what it learned, from the bones interred beneath its dark mud.
Life and death.
Life and death.
They turned around her like the wheel of the seasons. The two became one, embodied by the swamp. Embodied by the tapestry of mangroves and murk, by the rot that became life, the life that became rot.
---
Nic’s eyes snapped open, and for a moment, all he perceived was the light and dark of life and death. Rotten trees in the forest, and parasitic vines sprouting from them. Living trees holding down legions of rotten grass between their roots, starved of light by the shadow of their branches.
He understood.
Mire-Caller.
It was the muddy earth, bringing life forth and dragging it back under. It was a turning wheel. It was a cycle that ground enemies into nothing, consuming them under the endless cycle.
Life.
Death.
All came from the cold earth.