Long after Sand had stopped playing his makeshift panpipes, the Weeping Willows carried on the refrain. At first, they imitated him, singing their mournful rendition of the song in a chorus of sighs and moans. Then they began to analyse the phrases, taking them apart, substituting one note for the other, and making the music their own in a consummate display of curiosity and innovation. Character traits Sand didn’t find out of place in the core spirit of a woman who had created her own Dungeon formula. Or, at least attempted to.
Immersed as they were in their musical discourse – various parts of the forest singing its own version of the song – the trees didn’t bother Sand as he walked within metres of them as he followed the course of the river towards the centre of the Dungeon. Even Leo had been oddly silent since the ending of his performance, lying peacefully atop his head. Without anything to distract him from his thoughts, Sand immersed his mind in the lake of his memories.
Lirael Enzeal, the Third Princess of the Enzeal Royal family, was one of the most influential non-human figures in the history of the Human Emancipation Movement. She was a mascot of sorts; her story inspiring hundreds of human slaves to seek for a better life, a life without fetters. Amongst the slaves of Gehenna, where the first page of her story was written, her popularity was overwhelming.
Hers was a tale of betrayal, a tale of star-crossed love.
In the three millennia since High Lord Enzeal’s demise and the cracking of his Dungeon, his descendants unceasingly launched expeditions into its ruins through the crevices. The Chimaera Dungeon was a world unto itself. Its expanse was broad and the resources contained within it innumerable. With how silently death had crept upon the High Lord, he didn’t have the time to properly leave his Dungeon to his posterity in the form of an inheritance.
The political situation of the Enzeal family finally reached its nadir as the rest of the Royal clans banded together to pressure them into coughing up the resources within their purview. The Enzeal family was like a toothless old wolf guarding a large haunch of venison as the young and healthy members of the pack circled them while licking their jowls. To make matters worse, the minor nobles waited and watched from the sidelines like hyenas attracted by the scent of blood. Even the aristocratic clans subordinate to them were ready to make trouble.
They were forced to cede many territories, to make many concessions. Not the least among which was the right to explore the Chimaera Dungeon.
In such a critical situation, the Sangre clan extended their hand of assistance. All they wanted was to form a marital alliance and to explore the Dungeon together. After they collaborated to gain ownership of it, they would share the proceeds half and half. Even knowing that the intentions of the Sangre were likely impure, the Enzeal had no alternative but to accede. After all, the conditions they put forward were much more reasonable than the vow of vassalhood demanded by the other clans.
The Chimaera Dungeon didn’t allow anyone above the level of a mortal mage to enter – threatening self-detonation if a Dungeon mage tried to force his or her way in. That's why they had to delegate the exploration to their mortal mages. To bolster their forces, they rushed Lirael's engagement with the Sangre crown prince Vincent and sent them to rally the orcs to their cause.
As the birthplace of their race, the significance of the Dungeon to the orcs was extraordinary. Sand didn't know what deal the Vampires had offered the orcs but he knew that whatever it was had successfully baited them. Unknown to the general populace, the entirety of the orcish high-level mobilized comprehensively. For the reward promised by the Vampires, they dared not stint any effort.
Sand had assumed that the couple's choice of Gehenna for the visit was a coincidence but going by the events in this life, it was probably due to Lirael's familiarity with the location.
After she and her beau left the Tyhr to report their success, the excitement of their visit slowly died down. The discussions pertaining them growing scarcer as the people relegated them to an interesting memory. Until they were pushed back to the forefront of public perception by the explosive news that shook the hearts of the people. The Vampires were at war; a civil war.
The alliance of the orcs, the Enzeal and the Sangre had captured the jurisdiction of the Chimaera Dungeon. Celebrations were in order and what better excuse could there exist than the marriage of the couple who had led their expeditionary team of mortal mages to victory?
It was a grand occasion. The entirety of the top brass of the tripartite alliance gathered together under one roof to wish nuptial joy upon the newlyweds. The doors closed upon the most widely celebrated wedding in recent history…
… and they opened, revealing a mountain of corpses; rivers of blood. Only the Sangre exited the hall – the newly crowned King Vincent carrying the disembodied head of his would-be wife.
It was called the Red Wedding.
Lirael’s solicitation of the orcs to bolster her forces and the subsequent losses they sustained in the event led to the weakening of orcish influence in the Tyhr Desert. This paved the way for the pioneers of the freedom struggle, allowing them to establish a firm foothold while the orcs squabbled amongst themselves over which of them would fill the political void left by the deceased.
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'But that wasn't all. If it was, she wouldn't have become as popular as she had.'
As the Sangre clan went about digesting the fruits of victory, they were obstructed by a string of assassinations. Mortals of their lineage were wantonly slaughtered with no trace of the killer left behind. Investigations were repeatedly carried out but failed to bear fruit. Things came to a head when King Vincent was targeted. If not for his guard, a Dungeon mage, sacrificing himself, the newly crowned ruler of the mortal Kingdom of Sangre would have reigned for all of two years. The death of a Dungeon mage finally alarmed the upper echelons of the Sangre family. Believing it to be the work of the other clans, their High Lord personally took action.
The result of their investigation shocked the world.
The culprit was the gladiator who had been carried off by Lirael. He had somehow promoted to a Dungeon Mage, that too, one whose strength dominated above the norm. In his final moment, he left a dark stain upon the pages of history by managing to make High Lord Sangre bleed. It might have been a trickle of blood, a shallow wound; but it was the first time a human had managed to break the skin of their masters.
Further investigation of his remains revealed that his Dungeon had been inherited from Lirael. It didn’t take much imagination to make up a plot of clandestine romance and revenge fuelled by lost love. Henceforth, the name Lirael Enzeal became a stain upon the honour of the Vampires as well as the object of many a human slave’s admiration.
Sand's mind returned to the present as he finished analyzing all the information he had about his captor. He'd had the perfect plan, each stage was linked to the other. His knowledge of the future had filled him with confidence and he was sure that he would be able to surpass two hundred years of effort in mere decades. First, he would win the tournament in the Arena and replace the man who would have been selected. Then he would play pretend lovers with the girl. 'How hard could it be?' And when the preordained tragedy came to pass and the girl donated her Dungeon to him, he wouldn't take the same idiotic actions as the love-struck Gladiator. How the man could place meaningless revenge above the plight of his own race was beyond the scope of Sand's understanding.
Once he had the Dungeon, he had planned to leverage its resources to complete his own formula. The Blood Gourmand inheritance had mentioned something about fusion between Dungeons with similar themes and it was the shortest route to power Sand could come up with.
And he had a very compelling reason to rush.
Right after the Red Wedding was the time when the orcish influence in the Tyhr was the weakest. If he managed to fuse two whole Dungeons and attack before the orcs had a chance to reestablish their chain of command and recuperate, he was certain that he would be able to destroy their supremacy and free most of the humans enslaved by them.
'Man proposes and Heaven disposes...'
Unfortunately, the untimely appearance of the Princess had upended his plans. Especially as she planned to use him as a test subject for her experiments. There was a high probability that he would lose his life or his magical ability as a result of some botched attempt and there was little he could do to avoid it. Once again, his destiny was in the hand of another.
'But that's what makes life worth living. A fight against fate? Interesting!'
Looking up ahead, he realized that he had unconsciously reached a much wider part of the river. The banks which had been within a dozen feet of each other were now separated by nearly a quarter of a mile. Conspicuously, a large river island took up the middle of the water course, resembling a small hill as it towered out of the blood that flowed around its obstruction.
Driven by thirst, Sand approached the water. Kneeling by the bank, he cupped up some blood in his hands and drank it down. To his surprise, the taste was a lot thinner compared to the liquid higher up the course. Looking down into the river, he found that he could fuzzily make out the bottom, albeit tinted red.
Curious, he reached into the river and fumbled about, searching for something that might explain the dilution of the blood. His hand bumped up against something that felt like bone, if bone had the rough texture of bark. His eyes widened as realization struck like lightning out of cloudless skies and he jerked his gaze up to the 'island' in the centre of the river.
As though stimulated by his discernment, the entire 'mountain' shivered, its coating of white soil cracking and showering down into the water as it came to life.
"Woahhh..."
With a deep call that shook the bottom of Sand's heart, the gigantic Weeping Willow unfurled its vines and awoke. The formerly noisy forest stilled at its cry, the silence spreading like an invisible ripple centred on it. Under-lit by the red radiance of the blood river and shaded by the darkness of the night, the tree took on an ominous cast as it towered over the boy, its hollow sockets fixing their soulless gaze upon him. Stumbling in his haste to put some distance between them, Sand landed square on his behind unable to tear his gaze away from the massive ent.
He realized now what Leo had been leading him towards. The second core spirit of Bloodskull. The trees in the forest were but a few offshoots of the actual spirit - outgrowths that had sprouted from the network of its roots that overspread the entire Dungeon, feeding upon the skeletal remains in the soil and absorbing the blood in the river.
Boy and ent stared at each other for a brief moment before the spirit turned its attention to the lion by his side. Leo had leapt off Sand's head the moment he had stumbled to avoid being thrown off. Growling at him discontentedly, the Frostmane Lion walked up to the river and then above it, the flowing blood freezing into a path of red ice beneath his feet. Beckoning for Sand to follow with his head, he turned to the ent and roared.
As though receiving some sort of confirmation, stretching back upright the giant Weeping Willow opened its mouth wide, revealing a cavernous entrance to its interior. Without a backwards glance, Leo bounded into it, disappearing into the darkness. Scrambling up to his feet, Sand rushed to follow before the river broke up the bridge of ice. Shooting a last glance at the tree-spirit that seemed to be ignoring him, he too followed Leo into the darkness.
As soon as he was through the spirit closed its mouth, wrapping its vines around itself yet again. Soon, the river returned to its previous design.
After a few moments of utter silence, one of the smaller trees hesitantly exuded a decidedly musical sob. The sound echoed out into the silence, sounding deafeningly loud by contrast. Spooked, the perpetrator shrank back into the concealment of its vines.
Silence.
When it became abundantly clear that no reprisal was forthcoming from their stoic progenitor, the forest burst into a joyous cacophony of melodious lamentation. Music filled the night.