The rain left when morning came. The usual silence returned to the old house and inside its decaying wall, the soft breathing of a sleeping girl could be heard.
The night was cold as the fire had fizzled out, forcing the girl to crumble into a small ball in a corner of the kitchen. It was hard for her to fall asleep, the cold air infiltrating from the cracked stone and holes in the house tried to infect the girl with a crawling frost. Though, the cold wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t sleep well, but her tired body and mind took the better of hers and she finally slumbered.
A veil of light warmed her back, slowly making her exposed skin irritated. She was forced to wake up because of the pain she felt from it. She wasn’t in the best mood because of that, and her sleep schedule was all over the place.
Tsuki wanted to climb down to the basement in the hope to find useful tools. Luckily, the wound on her leg was mostly healed and didn’t impair her movement. As for her plan to go down to the basement, she wanted to push large objects like the sofa down the hole to make it easier to climb down.
In the end, she wasn’t able to push anything down. She was simply too weak to do so.
Thus, she looked at the edge of the hole and ‘crunch’ the floor broke under her feet and she fell down this dark hole…
She didn’t fall too far because the rubble had accumulated into a small mountain and caused her to roll down sharp stones and sticks. It did hurt, but her clothing which covered most of her body was enough to avoid the worst.
The basement was dark but a large hole in the roof allowed a few rays of light to illuminate part of the basement. The room she found herself in looked like a copy of the floor above with the same amount of room connected to it. There were two rooms she was able to enter, with one of them having debris blocking most of its opening.
She first chose to go inside the one that wasn’t obstructed, and inside was a large table with what looked to be a map sculpted in a large log. It was strange to see something like that since a map could have been made more simply with any kind of writing tools, but here was a map, sculpted in a large log, which should have taken days or weeks to make. But strangely enough, it was impressive how detailed it was with every hill forcing bump in the wood. It showed the height of mountains to the length of rivers. It was like a work of art that could give an exact vision of the relative surrounding to any blind individual who might brush their hands atop.
There were a few locations that had yet to be fully defined, some of them had words or sentences painted above to describe what they might be.
There was a simple sculpted house that was bigger than what it should have been and acted like a landmark. To its side was written ‘Home’. She found other landmarks such as the hunting cabin, the strange blue stone with leave-loving fish, and the glass temple. They were named as followed: “The king’s house”, “Moonlit shard”, and “Cursed temple of the gale”.
Looking more at the map, way north of hers were large mountains with cryptic writing added to them. From those mountains, rivers formed, and one diverted around the house she was in. The river twisted and curved around to the west of her location until it feed into a large body of water, most likely the sea. By what looked to be a gulf was a note which read: ‘Fishing town – Enclave of Scylla.’ If there were people still alive in this world, she had a good chance to find them in this town. There were more locations marked on the map where people might live but the fishing town was the closest to her. There was even a place called ‘Empire of the dark lord’ far to the east… She had no clue if it was something good, but she did her best to believe that the flowery writing used for the name was a good thing.
There was only one thing that worried her with the map. It was the few annotations that were in a completely different language, the curves and strange lettering looked to be made by someone insane at best and possessed at worst. There were three such places where those annotations were written. The mountains in the north, a forest to the south, and the fishing town she wanted to head to… they all had a small drawing next to them. A bug trapped in a book was in the north, the south had a branch cut by a rainbow sword, and the west had a fish pierced by a spear.
❀
Tsuki explored the room for some time and found a few tools that were still in a relatively good state. Sadly, she found out that most bladed tools were either brittle or chipped. There was a long broom in the corner that she was able to modify into a spear by expanding a few rusted knives. She also took a small hammer, the handle was at risk of breaking, but even if it did break, she could somehow use the hammerhead to crush some nuts if the need came.
It took her time to make the spear-broom and she needed to investigate the other room quickly before the sun began to set. To enter this said room, she needed to climb some piled-up rocks. Inside the room was a strange sculpture of a man sitting in front of a large table.
When Tsuki got closer, she realized it wasn’t a sculpture in front of the table but a mummified person that was propped in a sitting position by strange vines going in and out of its skin. Tsuki guessed that the figure was Yassil as he was the same height as in the journal.
In front of him, on the table, was a long letter with the same writing as the long strips of paper that were in her bag. She simply couldn’t read it. On the wall were the other pages of the journal that had been removed. It depicted how the daughter caught an incurable disease and how the father tried everything he could to save her. At one point the mother stopped making her drawings and the fate of the family was unknown.
Tsuki didn’t really know what to do in this kind of situation. She wanted to pay her respect, and that she did with a simple bow, but she felt like it was mostly useless. Instead, she believed that taking the letter and finding someone who could read it was the best course of action. After all, Tsuki presumed that this man’s daughter had died from a certain sickness. Maybe what was written in the letter was related to curing said disease. Wouldn’t it be a shame to simply leave it here and be forgotten…Thus, she carefully placed it between two pages of the journal she was writing from time to time.
Now, she needed to deal with the issue at hand. How was she to leave the basement? In the main room, there were only two rooms that were accessible and the hole in the ceiling was too high for Tsuki to simply climb. She tried to look behind every piece of furniture in case an exit existed, but it was after opening a wardrobe in the room with the mummified man that hope came to her.
A sweet breeze kissed her hair, coming from a large crack in the wall that led to somewhere unknown. It was Tsuki’s only hope and the wind coming from the crack meant that an exit should be on the other side. In the worst case, she could simply come back and find another way to leave.
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She ventured forth, at first walking normally with some space left on each side and later, having to move on her side to squeeze forward. The stone wall also soon turned to wet dirt and then to a root-filled corridor. Although she could feel a soft wind guiding her, it felt more like it was luring her to a verdant coffin. She felt something tug at her heart, almost making her sick while giving her a sense of terror of what was at the end. She chose to ignore it believing that it was just the fear of the unknown annoying her.
At some point, she would start to feel as if she was walking in spiderwebs. Small lines that stood in her way, yet when she tried to look at what she might have touched, there was simply nothing: unseen and disgusting.
She kept drudging forward even when the air became warm;
she kept moving while the soil became wet;
she advanced in the dark while ignoring a low thumbing that came from the walls.
Forward onward to an unknown world…
❀
After what felt like an eternity, Tsuki managed to reach a circular room with a large crack in the ceiling which fed the small chamber a soft and calming light. In the center of the said room was a large and peculiar flower that had its petals restrained from dark undulating strings. Now that light was present, Tsuki could see that every wall was covered in those disgusting strings that felt more like fleshy tendrils to the touch. As for the flower, it was slowly undulating as it tried to push the strings that were digging at its delicate petals – almost trying to break them or open the closed flower – towards the large barbs on its stalk. Yet, as the dangerous spikes the flower possessed might have been sharper than most sharpened swords, they weren’t able to do any real damage to the strings which simply strangle the base of the flower after accumulating.
That insidious feeling that almost ended her life when she tried to save the wolf pup came back. It thug, it pulled, it pushed her hand forward…
“NO!!” Tsuki screamed trying to drown this feeling back inside. Her voice resounded in this dark place and made every taunt string vibrate and produce a shrilling sound.
‘VriiiiiiIIIIIIiiIIIIIIiIIIII-----IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII----’
One string sound fed another and kept making the whole so loud that Tsuki thought that her ears were about to bleed.
Tsuki was on the ground with her head between her hands to try and cover the loud noise. She was in pain and there was nothing she could even do about it.
But watching the girl writhe in pain from above was an old whisp of wind that was protected from within the flower’s petals. It had lived for a long long time and carried with it the sound and smell of a bygone time. The crying girl resonated with an old sound the wisp carried and slowly it awoke it. The sound it had heard following a certain man began to slowly flutter inside it. The wisp escaped the protection of the flower and danced around the girl, spreading the smell of a distant land, and covering the shrilling sound with the music of fluttering leaves.
Tsuki felt the aggressive sound dissipate and albeit it wasn’t fully gone, it was now bearable. She managed to slowly lift herself while realizing that the surroundings were permeated by a soft incense smell. She got up, not able to see the being made of wind and confuse as to what was happening. Seeing the flower move more violently, she believed that it was somehow the one protecting her from the shrill.
She chose to follow the feeling she had before she screamed and tried to tear off the strange strings. They were similar to metal wire and her pretty attempt was worth nothing more than cutting her hands a bit. She tried to use the hammer to smash a bundle of string, but it pushed her back on impact. There was nothing she could do, even the spear she made simply broke on impact. Maybe it was lucky that it broke on such an occasion and not in a fight against something…
The strings almost looked to be angry at the girl striking them as eyes and sharp teeth would pop from them and be directed at Tsuki’s strike. She hit one of the disturbing eyes with her hammer and it blew up in a cloud of red dust. The hammerhead instantly dissolved after being touched by the dust but luckily, a gust of wind pushed the dust before it could get close to Tsuki.
Tsuki was desperate and pulled the dark knife even if she knew it would simply break. She wanted to get rid, with all of her cells, of those disgusting strings.
She swung downward with a precise strike at a large bundle. Miraculously, it cut the strings and even the eyes popping from them were surprised.
The binding on the flower losing strength allowed the flower to instantly break free and bloom. The ground began to tremble with the flower now free and an unholy scream could be heard coming from the sky. The ground shook and rock fell from the ceiling, almost crushing Tsuki. The rocks that would have crushed her were blocked by large roots that dug out from the walls.
As for the strings, they all slowly dissipated by tearing holes in the fabric of reality from which a similar screech as the one from the sky was coming out.
The flower completely destroyed the ceiling and propped itself with strong roots on the outside. A root took Tsuki and lifted her to its side. She could now see the sky, but she had no words to describe the disturbing sight.
It first came as a shadow from a large mountain in the distance. It moved across the blue sky and disturbed it like a paintbrush that is moved in a body of water. It turned the sky into complete disarray as dark swirls morphed into monstrous sets of sharp teeth. Biting, gnarling, gashing. The sky was becoming a dark embodiment of gluttony with mouths biting at nothing other than the blue sky as it slowly consumed it.
Dark maws of callous splintered teeth shatter the sky.
it grinds its fangs; a melody of hunger is created.
The sun now closes its eyes on the coming feast.
A god of gluttony awoke.
﴾ꙮ﴿
While the girl rested in the old abandoned house which had decayed from the passage of time, far to the east, beyond the forest, and deeper again in the east, just at the border of the country the girl was on, a fight broke up. On one side were headless beings made from a viscous black liquid that came out from an equally dark body of water. They were simply slaughtered by a squad of archers the moment they left the dark sea. Some long spearman took care of the straddlers who didn’t liquefy after getting hit by bonny arrows.
“SQUAD 5!!” screamed a man after every dark monster was slain. “RECOVER THE MUNITIONS BEFORE THE NEXT WAVE COME!!!”
A man wearing a long black robe came close to the one who had just screamed and whispered in his ear: “Captain, I just received news that reinforcement is coming to help us until sunrise.”
“If it’s those pricks from Higure then they should simply leave! This is no place for a bunch of bookworms!”
“Sir, I will act as if I didn’t hear this comment. Understand also that they are sent under the emperor’s orders to explore the sea of void…”
A heavy silence was created after this revelation. The sea of void, it is considered one of the most dangerous locations in this world. A sea made from a dark and heavy liquid that births many monsters every single night. A legend says that a kingdom exists on a lone island in this sea of darkness. The story changed from nation to nation with some thinking this kingdom was the land the god rested on while others believed that a large evil was sealed on this island. The truth didn’t matter as in general this dark sea was seen as an important threat to most people.
The sea would create dangerous monsters at different rates and those rates were compared with high and low tides. Right now, it was a low tide with only a small squad of warriors from nearby villages being needed to fend off the invasion. And once a year, there would be a tide so low that every nation would band together and send warriors at sea in the hope they could reach the supposed kingdom and return with much-needed information.
“Do tell.” Said the captain toward the robe-wearing man “Have we enough booze for a good send of? Better that they’re drunk before they leave! Might give those monsters a taste for booze when they rip those poor sod to pieces.”
“Sorry captain but I don’t think it’s something you should be saying…”
“Huh? I and my men don’t care if someone decided to go kill themselves, alright! We defend this beach only to feed our kids back home. If those sacrifices can die without making our work any harder, then I have no complaint.”
“No…It’s not about that sir…Knight Kokuzoku…Your son. He volunteered.”
The captain’s sword hit the floor, the news resounding as heavily as the blade ringed after hitting the hard stones that they stood atop…
﴾ꙮ﴿
When morning came, a small ship left on a pitch-black sea. Boarding it was only a handful of brave heroes who dreamed of glory and riches. They were the first to embark as the sun first rose on this part of the world but soon, other nations would send their braves to the sea in the hope that this time, they would return.