Elnn was sobering off the ashwine and the adrenaline of getting a named quest. Was this the prophecy about to unfold, he thought to himself? Elnn was not especially religious. He knew the Rat Keng's primary tenements and his end-world stories. The Rat Keng sacrificed himself to save the world. The Rat Keng’s sacrifice was not without its drawbacks. For all he did to put off the end of their world, he could only slow the inevitable if the scriptures were correct. Eventually, one day the Sustem would come in full force and bring with it the apocalypse.
Elnn shook his head, clearing it of the dramatic religious rhetoric he had always avoided. He chuckled at himself as he remembered Greth praying and the Keng losing his composure. If these were the end times, maybe they weren’t so bad.
Regardless, Elnn was thirsty again and needed a place to keep a low profile for a while he thought through his next steps. He walked through the great warrens of the East, winding down roads and passing the many house hills common folk lived in. Large spongy pods were carved and painstakingly laced inward on themselves to retain privacy scattered among stout hills of stone. Egressed doorways into the mounds faced the streets, and the sides of the hills were dotted with quartz-filled windows.
Space was the most coveted commodity in all the warrens. The tunnels and caverns on the outer edges were nothing compared to those of the major warrens. The major warrens were heated and kept a consistent humidity. It sustained an entire ecosystem. One anyone would naturally ingratiate themselves into. Each boasted unique qualities, and the Eastern warrens had a cavern one thousand feet tall with thousands of househills spanning the floor. Placed every so often were natural pillars of granite, each housing a different sept. The middle support housed the Keng’s sept, with concentric circular mounds. Built up to provide a bulwark against invading armies.
Elnn walked down the lanes with a slack, color-drained face. The nights of revelries were catching up to him. His features glowed pale blue in the gloaming of the heptan. He used to wonder about the eight-legged creatures as a child. He naively thought there was something magical in what they did. A milling sea of hand-length creatures coated the ceiling, changing color in seamless unison. There was harmony in the organization something that made them seem conscious of something greater than themselves. That each one had a place and each one knew its place.
His transcendent view quickly shifted after a lesson from a tutor at age twelve. The Thurgist explained how they changed color based on a metabolic reaction that helped shield them from infrared predators and identify the species amongst themselves. The thurgist was a bald, pin-holed-eyed man who had studied the creatures for twenty-five years and went into further detail about their extensive social stratification. They would push the old or wounded to the outer edges of the colony. The deformed, heptans that changed color at different paces, were shunned to the very outer edges of the whole. Offering them as a snack to sate any creature not completely duped by the infra-camouflage. The Thurgist was amazed at the behavior as it allowed the warrens to have a specific and metered interval of time. Every 49 cycles broke down into seven color-specific intervals. The last moments of Conchylium blended into Rutilus with dark mauve undertones. Elnn thought about how many color-changing arachnids were mating a thousand feet above his head and laughed.
Elnn stumbled around a corner and leaned against a wall while he caught their breath.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
His uncle would grumble about the burden and blame any misfortune in the Trigfel mines on Elnn. His cousin would be jealous, tyrannous as usual, finding ways to undermine him when he returned. Come back, what if I don’t come back, he thought; what if I stay in Grund and leave Waitomo behind? Pull a Crobalt and answer to a keng he chooses to bend the knee to. Regardless, he needed to find a place to try and hide until he could figure out what to do next.
That’s when Elnn looked across the alleyway to the roughly hewn temple that lay before him, “Rapture Dance is tonight,” Elnn whispered aloud to himself. He saw a few people walk into the temple adorned with glowing roots, and bioluminescent paint they had brushed on in swirling designs. They were wearing nothing but multicolored undergarments. Elnn dashed up to the group and happily engaged them with some chatter. They lent him some paint, helping him get his back after he took his shirt off. He hopped along and took off his pants. Elnn looked like just another one of the group at this point as he chuckled at his cleverness. What better way to celebrate the end of the world than with a party, he thought as they entered the broken-down temple. Some of the walls in the halls had been smashed in so you had to take a specific route to get to the main party area. This was the local event for all the young warrenkin to party and hallucinate on the different mushrooms that had been forgotten down here. At one point the temple had used them for religious ceremonies, now the youth used them to experience their music on another level.
Elnn and his fellow Rapture Dancers felt the thrum of the heavy beat deep in their chests as they wound closer to the main party. There were side tunnels where two Warrenkin making out, and one they passed that was hosting some gambling. There were two girthy, meter-long cave lobsters, that were exchanging blows. The gamblers had set up a ring of fallen debris and were standing a top of the chunks of fallen wall. One group of men were shouting on in triumph as the lobster painted blue lifted the other lobster above its beady black eyes then slammed it down with a crunch that meant the crowd would be eating the loser tonight.
They entered the main chasm and felt the music wash over their skin. The air was ripe with sweat and musty mushroom spores. The spores clung to the air and would adhere themselves to the sweaty exposed bodies of the hundreds of Warrenkin. Each golden spore tingled on their skin and drove their limbs faster in dance, moving through visions and seeing the music precipitate out through the cavern in spreading waves. The only light besides the glowing body paint were the spores and glowing mushrooms that had been groomed for thousands of years to be incorporated into the layout of the main temple chamber.
The temple had housed the last of the Hearth Slime warriors. A sect known for raising and using hearth slimes, but ephemeral slimes were rare these days and most of the slime sects had gone to hiding or weren’t widely broadcasting their actions to the greater public. Regardless, the spore hall was being used but not for its intended purposes. Elnn, stayed to the edges so he wouldn’t pick up many spores. He did however grab a mug of beetle ale. He sipped it while taking in the controlled delirium that pushed everyone to dance to the music. He scanned the crowd and noticed a few people he knew. A couple of lesser nobles he had gone to the academy with. He could see the large ensemble of musicians, all of which were coated in spores but just like how the spores made the warrenkin dance to some universally known rhythm so too were the musicians bonded by the swirling gold dust.
That’s when he spotted his cousin from across the dark cavern. They locked eyes and he slowly started making his way through the convulsing dancers, pushing back limbs to get to Elnn.
Elnn sighed and took a long swig of his drink, “Oh boy, here we go.”