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The first of the monsters came to Uthir long before any kin or man. They arrived from the second world and took the land during the age of endless darkness.
When The White Flame came to our world, bringing its light and our life, they were the first enemies. They were the eternal enemies. They strike out at any and all that attempt to usurp them, mad beings who only love the darkness.
Their champion, the one who birthed the darkness, and the one who was the first to step foot in the first world, is known as a dark god. A being of pure destruction, sealed away by the sun and the stars for its madness. The monsters of the dark still worship it, tending to it deep in the home, deep in the Pit where all evil stirs.
But in this age, an age of endless peace and prosperity, the monsters have all been but banished. Of course, we must still study them, and we must still learn to fear them. After all, no matter how far man and kin have gone, and no matter how great our power, darkness always comes with the light. Darkness is always birthed at the edges.
The Pit and its champion have been sealed since before our history tells. But the art of the historian was first created in order to pass down these legends and these myths, to ensure that our humanity- our fear- never fades
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“...It’s…”
“...Terrifying, right? -I wanted you to see it in person before speaking too much.”
“...”
Their eyes did not waver from the horizon.
While they stood a decent distance away from the sudden edge of the rocky cliffs, an almost perfectly vertical drop downwards through the air, the man gripped the boy’s shoulder and pulled them back a handful of paces.
The boy’s face was frozen, eyes still peering through shock into the distance, into the thin air before them. The stone beneath his feet was perfectly steady in the silence but he still felt his body wavering, as if he was standing on the inside of an earthquake, only affecting him.
There was perfect silence, except maybe the wind rising in the distance, far down the rise behind them, still blowing clouds of dust across the flat stone ground, tinged with red and rust. Although they stood at the edge of the earth, overlooking the coast of the land, the sound of water sloshing against the cliff sides was absolutely absent.
“...Alvo..”
“...Yeah, kid?”
“-What… is this…?”
While standing before the edge of the coast, the cliffside hanging above the world and staring outwards, there was no ocean for the two travelers to see. It was simply a drop, deep into pure darkness, covered with hanging shadows that extended infinitely downwards.
No air shifted within that endless gap below their feet, and the cloudy sky simply extended forever forwards, towards the horizon which seemed so incredibly far away, out of reach. The boy felt like some great presence was watching him, waiting from that distant horizon.
The boy couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched the earth beneath his feet, so sturdy and stable, simply dropping away down into the unending nothingness, as if something had just cleaved away the rock, tearing apart the world itself to leave this singular abyss in the place of the ocean.
It was simply darkness.
The boy might have been expecting awe. Wonder, at the sight of the ocean, a place where the water supposedly touched the very horizon itself. What filled his chest, chilling his skin, was not awe.
He felt like a mouse before a giant, and the indescribable sense of scale pressing down on him almost made the boy forget to breathe. The sudden pressure in his lungs, caused by his shock, suddenly caused him to take deep breaths of air, almost shuddering as he warily stepped farther away.
The gray sky, not a single bit of clear blue breaking through the great cover of the clouds, extended out a seemingly endless distance. Turning white at the very edges of his vision, that sky eventually met with the pitch blackness of the abyss, the two contrasting colors meeting each other, touching and mixing in a murky border between light and darkness that made up the far horizon.
He felt the urge to look downwards, deep into the black and towards the very bottom of what must have been there, but the boy could not bring himself to walk any closer to the edge, where he might lose footing on unstable rock and fall forever.
But what he could see, from his position many steps away from the sudden edge of the coast, was still more than enough. The shadows beneath the edge were almost physical things, and if he stared for too long into that yawning darkness the boy could nearly see movement within. He didn’t want to look further.
He had a feeling that even if he dared to walk closer, and throw some kind of torch off the edge of the abyss, its light would soon be snuffed out by the shifting, cloud-sized shadows. The boy would gain no knowledge from seeing whatever lurked beneath the edge.
The sheer size of the great abyss below him seemed to dwarf anything he had ever seen, even the great cloud-piercing mountains he had traveled through that very day. Anything he had ever seen, the great vistas of the highest plateaus, and the enormous lakes that gleamed silver beneath the colorless sky were so insignificant in the face of this sight. The darkness stretched in every direction, extended onwards towards the horizon without any other land in sight.
The boy felt like, in that moment, as if there was nothing left in the world except for that dark abyss that seemed to engulf the sky above. He felt it in every bone, through every alcove of his mind.
He could not bring himself to turn away. Not from that terrible sight.
Suddenly, the old man chuckled slightly, a heavy tone present in his voice as he stared forwards, almost entranced by the sight.
“-I’ve been to the coast a few times before, but it still manages to shock me every time I look.”
“...”
“That book of yours is outdated, kid. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again- it’s interesting to know about things that happened a hundred years ago… but a whole lot can happen in a hundred years.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“-But… all this? What even is… this?”
The man turned towards the boy, watching his companion’s pale face and wide eyes carefully, even while keeping his awareness firmly on the extended abyss that lay before them.
“Give it a guess.”
“...All the ocean spirits died, somehow? Is that it?”
The old man shrugged, and turned back towards the edge of the cliffside.
“Seems like it. Any mortal who knew for sure is probably long dead, by now.”
“But how… how did something like this actually… -What is this place?”
“It’s the coast. What you see, looking out, is supposedly where the Sea of Etrith once was.”
The old man shrugged again, an uncomfortable shadow passing over his face before he began walking away from the boy, parallel to the edge of the world.
“Come on, kid. We’ve still got a ways to go before we get to Cliffside.”
The boy blinked, broken out of his dull stupor as he once again turned to the receding back of his companion. He shaked his head hurriedly and rushed forwards, walking along the cliff while staring out to the horizon.
“Is this why you said we’ll be safe at the coast? All the spirits that should be here are dead?”
His voice was slowly beginning to regain some of its normal energy as the boy became somewhat used to the shock-inducing view. Although almost paralyzing with its scale, he quickly occupied his mind with curiosity.
“...Partly. No spirits like to come too close to this place- I’ve never even seen any kind of monster show itself around here. We’ll be perfectly safe.”
“-But why? ...Not that I don't appreciate that, it just doesn’t make sense! And if that’s the case, why haven’t we ever tried coming here sooner?”
The old man huffed, looking over his shoulders for a moment at the curious face of the boy before shaking his head to himself, gesturing out into the smoky abyss, expanding out towards the horizon.
“It’s obvious, right? Do you really want to live in a place like this for too long?”
“...Fair enough. But what about the monsters? Why don’t any of them stay here?”
“Think, kid. You should be able to figure it out.”
The boy turned curiously towards the abyss once again, eyes looking downwards into those shadows that still filled him with sick apprehension. He couldn’t help the tar that filled his bones as he stared off the edge.
“...This used to be the sea of Etrith, right? …That means… Inluneth is just beyond the horizon, right?”
The boy’s words were faded, almost reverent as he spoke that name that seemed to almost hum in the air. With its utterance, the man’s eyes narrowed as he turned to the boy behind him.
“From where we stand, we could be looking at the ruins of Edelgrand…”
“Kid, that’s enough.”
Soon enough, Rush pushed away any lingering fear that might have held him back from the cliff face. His apprehension of the abyss disappeared in a single moment, and he stepped closer to the edge of the darkness.
“Rush! Stop that!”
“...Ah. Right.”
He had already crossed more than half their distance to the darkness, trying to look downwards further, along the unnaturally smooth face of the cliff, descending deep below sight.
The sudden surprise on the old man’s face was already fading back into a scowl by the time the boy walked back quickly, a sheepish smile on his face.
“You never walk towards the unknown, Rush. That’s probably the dumbest thing to possibly do. Get your head back on- just because spirits don’t like to come near here, doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“...Right, sorry. I was just… curious.”
One of the man’s thick brows rose slightly, before his dark eyes slowly dropped to peer at the leatherbound book sitting on the boy’s waist.
The man sighed, turning away from the boy again as they continued to walk alongside the edge of the cliff, the man looked upwards towards the cloudy sky, his eyes still narrowed deep in thought.
“Hey, Alvo, what is it?
“Quiet, kid. We’ve still got a long way to go.”
“-Okay.”
After their brief words, the two travelers moved quickly across the ridge, their eyes always focused outwards, towards that neverending sight, the abyss hanging just below their wary steps.
That night, they camped on the edge.
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The ring of torches, as well as the tent, was set up a hundred or so feet away from the abyss, sitting beneath a large rise of stone coming to meet the coast. The light of those twelve flames was dim compared to any previous nights, but each one continued to steadily burn beneath the starless night.
The man’s eyes were closed, and his posture relaxed while underneath the bedroll, but his pupils beneath the eyelids moved frantically. While his breathing was even and controlled, there was a weight behind it- one heavily concealed and masked behind a veneer of calm.
The boy did not notice much of that, however. Beneath the light of a candle, its wax a curious blue shade like the brightest kind of flower, he read from that leatherbound book. No smoke or distortion in the air rose from the candle, the flame unwavering and unaffected by the flow of the air, steadily spreading a quiet light across the tent.
His eyes moved quickly, and the boy stifled a yawn, reading shallowly as he passed over familiar pages.
He felt warm, reading that book, discovering knowledge a hundred years lost. Just by reading, by learning about the people who once lived in the mountains, the black forests and the cliffsides, he could do something more than just live and survive. He could grow.
But that night, his mind was caught elsewhere. His thoughts, normally directed with singular focus towards the history and the magic of civilization, still drifted towards the abyss, waiting just outside.
The boy flipped through those old and worn pages with a new kind of energy, skimming through each passage carefully, looking for certain information he knew, he hoped, was hidden within.
After countless cycles of this pattern, however, that energy within him soon dissipated, and he sighed quietly to himself, blowing out the blue candle and closing the book, placing both into his bag by feeling blindly through the shadowy tent.
He rolled into the small bedroll, slightly shivering from the cold of the night, before closing his eyes, no small measure of contentment filling his small body.
“Hey, Alvo?”
His drowsy voice echoed outwards into the silence of the night, and the fluttering of the man’s eyes beneath closed lids instantly came to a stop, his breathing losing the heaviness it had held just moments before.
“...Yes?”
“You think we’ll reach Cliffside tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“...I’m excited…”
“...”
The man’s eyes opened, staring blankly into the total darkness surrounding them, narrowing into a blind glare.
The man cursed quietly, unheard by the boy who had already fallen asleep next to him. That constant, burning pain within his chest not alleviated even with the rest of the peaceful night.
He murmured quietly, nothing more than a soft exhale, the words nearly hidden inside of his breathing.
“...I’m sorry, Rush.”
But the boy was asleep.
A sense of dread came over the man, forming a sudden chill that traveled throughout his bones, reaching down his spine.
He almost reached out for his sleeping companion, his empty, ungloved hand pushed outwards towards the boy cautiously, before stopping in the air.
The man put down his hand, laying it on the floor of the tent next to him, quietly breathing in the fear of the night, and the incredible frost within his chest that only grew with every moment.
“I’m sorry.”
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