(From Ingrid)

Many ages ago, our world was ravaged by The Flood. Everything and everyone that its dark waters touched was devoured by it. From its depths, monstrous creatures arose to destroy what was left and claim the world as theirs. The land itself fought against them, volcanoes erupted constantly, the land shook and opened under them, and the wind blew up with enough strength to blow up mountains. But these creatures and the black waters from which they have raised remained. It was then that the three Rulers appeared.

The first one, Utnapishtim, was the sole survivor of the old world, one being with many faces, they became the Ruler of the Underworld.

The second was our lord, Enki, who came down from beyond the stars, wielding a golden power of creation, he became the Ruler of the Heavens.

And finally, from the dark waters themselves appeared a giant winged snake with horns, Tiamat, the Ruler of the Oceans.

The three of them worked together to defeat the monsters and seal the dark waters away, bringing peace and order to our world once more. Enki then made beings made out of clay, and called them humans. Tiamat followed, creating descendants from her own flesh. They were called demons.

Both races lived in peace for a long time, but eventually Tiamat fell prey to her own sins, and desired to conquer and consume everything. Many of her sons and daughters joined her, and with their superior strength, they almost fulfilled her goal. Even the ancient kingdom that was seen as humanity’s birthplace was destroyed and sunk into the ocean.

But Tiamat’s own first daughter, Lilith, opposed her. She had fallen in love with a human, and they had passed away due to the war. Furious for this, she joined forces with the warriors chosen by Enki, and they were able to seal Tiamat in the deepest part of the ocean.

Since then, Lilith’s lineage was continued through a line of first daughters, the Dragonroot clan, the last members being Rosanne and Violett. Our church was always wary of their clan, as they were still of the demon race, but we couldn’t be openly hostile against them since humanity wouldn’t have survived without Lilith’s intervention.

For the same reason, we allowed the worship towards Lilith to coexist alongside ours. Centuries ago, her cult had been even bigger than ours, spread through the entire continent. But their golden era had passed. It broke down into smaller groups, basically just the elders passing down their traditions and beliefs to the kids in the more rural areas.

But in the last few decades, an organization took form. Preachers arrived to those rural communities, helping those in need and spreading a more unified system of beliefs. Temples started to pop up even in regions closer to the capital, and the number of believers grew a lot in just a few years.

We already suspected something was brewing under the surface, when they tried to kidnap Rosanne’s daughter. The perpetrators were caught and confessed, they were locked in the black tower under our care. We interrogated them, but we didn’t get any substantial information. They were zealots, part of a radical group within the cult… or at least that’s what they insisted.

If what Elise had told us was true, the kidnappers were following the orders of those in the top of the organization. And their goal was not to revive Lilith, as they made their followers believe, but to release Tiamat herself. If they fulfilled that goal, that would pretty much mean that humanity would be doomed. And the worst part is that this was not something that we could put on the back burner.

“Your part- no, the progenitor of Lillie, he had that strange device that seemed to cause the curse of Calliope to get worse. I think it is pretty safe to assume he is still working for the cult, and that they are the ones responsible for the spreading of the curse of Calliope.” I said.

“Y-yes, that seems to be the case.” Elise answered, looking ashamed.

“He wanted to take Lillie away…” Rosanne muttered.

“That’s right, they probably want to continue the ritual even after all these years” Elise said, “When she was born, they told us she was going to be the key to revive our goddess. I was so happy when I heard about that, but I soon came to learn how they were going to do it. They had summoned Lilith’s essence into her body, and she needed to be sacrificed to release it. I… I couldn’t allow them to do that to my baby, not even before I knew about their true goals.”

“I tried to convince that man that what they were thinking was insane, that we should run away and protect our daughter, but he turned me to the leaders. They separated me from my baby and locked me in a basement. All I could do was hope that they hadn’t hurt her, and pray to our goddess to save us, until one night, I saw the aurora in the sky through a small window. They are pretty common here, it is one of the reasons why I chose this place, but they were not normal where I lived.”

I saw that aurora as well from the capital, it was so uncommon that everyone was talking about it for weeks. I think it happened some… 5 years ago, a month or two after the start of winter. Some even said it was a good omen for the birth of prince Julius, though that happened almost half a year later.

“That night…” Elise continued her tale, “I found that the door was unlocked, and there were no guards in sight. I was even able to get to where they had my baby without encountering anyone. I thanked Lilith for such a miracle, and ran away from that place until I collapsed. I came to the farthest and most hidden place I could think of.”

“And that’s how you ended up here”

“Yes. I thought we were safe…”

“Well, now that we have captured him, you shouldn’t have to worry more about him.”

“That is a relief, but it is very likely other members of the cult will try to take her away from me.”

I tried to tell her that the church could protect both of them, but Rosanne spoke first.

“I will not allow that to happen. Lillie deserves to be happy and not worry about those idiots, and neither do you. We’ll stop the signal from the radio tower and then we’ll go after them. I’ll kick them down on my own if I have to.”

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Both Elise and I were shocked by her words and attitude. Elise then giggled.

“Thank you, then I’ll be in your care” she said in a soft voice.

“Me too!” a young voice said.

The three of us turned around to find that Lillie had been following us.

“I told you to stay behind!” her mother admonished her.

“I was worried…”

Elise let out a sight before picking up her daughter in her arms.

“We are almost on the other side of the tunnels, we can’t return to take her back now, and I don’t think she will go back on her own. I’m taking her with me, sorry.”

“That’s fine, just stay in the tunnels once we get to the radio tower.” Rosanne said, patting the head of the young girl.

We kept walking through that maze-like underground. At one point, Rosanne remembered she had written a flashlight spell, which she proceeded to activate. It was rather dim, and pulsating as if her flow of mana wasn’t stable, but it allowed us to see better. Some corridors looked more like caves, but the ones that were clearly man-made were decorated by glyphs depicting ancient stories. One of them caught my attention, as it was bigger and more elaborate than the rest. It depicted three people.

One was a woman with horns and wings, surrounded by flames. The second was a man with a crown in his head, with weapons floating around him. The last was a person with deer antlers, several animals next to them.

Shortly after that glyph, we got to a tunnel where we could hear water running and the temperature went up. We probably were under that boiling river I almost fell into. That meant we were really close. Finally, we got to a ramp similar to the one we had used to enter, Rosanne and I crawled through it to get to the basement of the radio tower. It was quite jarring to see what was once clearly a room in a temple, with similar carvings to those we have seen in the tunnels, being used to store materials and equipment for the radio tower’s operation. There were even some machines making a low buzz and blinking lights right next to a vase that I was sure was a genuine antique. I groaned. Our nation had a law protecting ancient sites and artifacts, but these territories were technically not part of our nation. I made a mental note, once this ordeal was over, I needed to procure an archaeological study of the entire site.

We didn’t find anything relevant in the basement, so we used the only door there to access a staircase that seemed to go all the way to the top of the building. There was a sign hanging from the wall informing us that we were at Underground Level 3, and that there were 6 more levels above the surface. That seemed excessive to me for something so remote. We went straight to ground level, where we found that the main door had been unlocked. There was even some snow going into the building. Rosanne and I let out a sigh of relief. At least, Lucius and Maxwell had arrived at that place safely.

“We should search every floor for them,” I suggested, and Rosanne nodded.

We looked through that floor first. It was a bit scary, all the windows were covered, and we only had Rosanne’s light and a glowing crystal to guide our steps. The storm was howling like a pack of wolves. The majority of rooms were completely empty, adding more eeriness to the situation. Some had a desk and chairs, others had recording equipment or machines used to record the music cylinders. There was apparently another staircase on the opposite side of the building, but the door in this floor was locked. We didn’t find any clue of the whereabouts of our companions, so we returned to the original staircase, only to find that the majority of doors on that side were also closed. Only the top floor’s door was open.

“They must have gone through here, right?” Rosanne asked.

It was the only way they could have gone without the keys to open the door, so it made sense that we would find them there. But the results were the same as that of the ground floor, no clue about them. The door on the other staircase was open on this side, though, so we could access some of the other floors we couldn’t from the other side. We looked as thoroughly as we could, prioritizing finding them, but also the source of the signal, floor by floor.

While on the 3rd floor, I saw a corner of a window that wasn’t obscured. I could see that beyond the tower, there was a forest with a lake on it. Sitting on a relatively small peninsula, there was another building. I couldn’t look at it properly, it looked old, but not as old as the ruins in the basement or the temple where we entered the tunnels. It almost looked like one of our churches.

Underground level 1 was the fifth floor we explored, and it seemed to be the same as the other ones. This was especially worrisome because this was the last floor we have found unlocked. To our surprise, we found another set of stairs going up, straight to a door. But despite seemingly being unlocked, something seemed to be blocking it. It was really cold, so it probably led to the outside.

“Let’s finish searching this floor, if we don’t find anything, we’ll force this door open” Rosanne said, and I agreed.

In one of the last rooms we looked at, we found a wall of boxes. We moved some out of the way, but there were just more boxes behind. It seemed like the room was just full of boxes. We were about to leave that room, when I heard something. It sounded like someone playing a very small piano that had the keys disconnected from the hammers. We looked at each other as if to confirm we both had heard it, and started to move boxes away, practically throwing them to the hallway. We found out that they had been placed specifically in that way to hide the source of that sound.

“That is it…” Rosanne said coldly.

What laid in front of us was a device very similar to a music box, a miniaturized version of the turntables used to play music cylinders in other rooms of that station. A microphone was standing right next to it, and its cable went into the wall. All of that was covered with a semi transparent black glass dome. The weirdest part of it, to me at least, was that it didn’t have any power source, despite it already being covered in dust and cobwebs. It must have been playing for months already, even a spell or a magic crystal would have ran out by now. That seemingly innocuous and inoffensive looking device was, as Rosanne pointed out, what was transmitting the plague signal, Lilith’s wrath, the curse of Calliope.

“I’m going to destroy it, get out-” Rosanne started to say when she was interrupted by a metal door slamming, followed by the voice of Elise calling our names. She sounded afraid.

The sound was coming from the first staircase, which was locked from this side, but both of us instinctively charged against it. We were thrown back after the impact, our shoulders hurting, but the door flew open. There we found Elise going up the stairs, carrying Lilie in her arms.

“Those creatures, the ones that you sent flying,” she yelled, “one of them got into the tunnels!”

“Could they have come from the other temple?” Rosanne asked worriedly

“N-no, I don’t think so. It was too big to fit through the narrow ramp in this one, so it couldn’t have gone through the other one. It must have found a sinkhole leading to the tunnels in the woods.”

“At least we are safe here, right?” I said, and as soon as I did, we heard windows breaking all through the building.

“We need to hurry, let’s destroy the signal and get out of here!” Rosanne said, and I tried not to think too much about the rest of her plan.

We ran back to the room where the music box was, but we were interrupted again. Just as Rosanne was about to use her threads, the blocked door that was right next to it swung open, with one of those… Unseele Reine, charging against us at full speed. Rosanne would have received the full force of the impact if she hadn’t used her threads as a shield and to stop the beast. She was still hit pretty hard, with enough force to push me into the room. The boxes softened my fall a bit, but when they collapsed, one fell over the protective glass of the music box, shattering it.