Demon continent Alsace in the year 237 in the 9-month Lilithum on the 31st day after the shattering of the empire.
She didn't know exactly what day it was, as the Forge was a bit more complex than she had first thought, the city was connected with an underground system of tunnels. It was almost like a city of its own that the rats had built, the only access to it being the forge. They must have built it to protect themselves from the attacks of the other rats and the monsters in the area, and as she suspected, also to free their titan. At least she hoped she was right in her guess because she had not yet been able to find any rat who would have known anything more specific. This is why she was just following her intuition and not really following a trail, also because she wanted to know how she hadn't noticed the rats that called this city their own. How did I not see that the city was inhabited by these rats? I examined the entire city and did not find even a trace of these rats. Which, when I look at this underground city, is not surprising.
Already she had to duck back into the shadows to avoid being seen by the rats patrolling the intersection in front of her. Something she had to do more and more often the deeper she got into the city. More and more rats in groups of four to six ran along the corridors in full armor and seemed to control everything. What they were protecting down here she didn't know yet, but she was determined to find out, and she hoped it was the way to the Titan of the Rats. She was determined to fight the titan and defeat him, no matter what the cost.
So she kept looking for a way to the dungeon of the Titan of the Rats. Time seemed to pass differently down here, on one hand, she felt like she wasn't making any progress and on the other hand, she felt like she wasn't even aware of what was happening around her, because everything was moving so fast and she couldn't even get a proper look at the things around her.
Faster and faster the world seemed to pass her by until she could only blurrily perceive how the rough-hewn walls of the rat tunnels passed by her. Where she now also slowly noticed, again and again, rats, which stood like columns in the middle of the corridor and which she simply ran past. Only when the walls of the tunnel changed and changed from the rough-hewn tunnel walls of the rats to brick walls, she stopped to see what was depicted on the walls.
It was a story not unlike the one she knew from Sappho and Sia, in which the Demons had imprisoned the Titans with their own hands in the war against the Dragons. Only that here the Titan who was locked away was not the Titan of the dragons, but Diva, the Titan of the rats, and it did not look like an act of the demons alone but of all the divine races. At least if one could believe these depictions and until now she had no reason not to believe them. Just as she had not believed the stories of Sappho and Sia, it was always the victor who wrote the story. Thus, in its own historiography, the Empire was never the aggressor, but always the defender, always to protect the ordinary inhabitants of the Empire from the barbarians on its borders. Therefore, she had to assume that it had been similar at the time of the war with the Titan of the Dragons. The same could of course be told about the history of his family and how the founder of the House of Basilisk had killed one of the supposedly immortal Titans and until she had been able to awaken the abilities of the Basilisk in this life, she had handled this family legend just as she held history in general, and critically at that. She did not want to lose this view also with these representations and wanted to examine these also critically.
But before she could take her time, she was already running down the corridors again. Part of herself had been reawakened by the display and this part of her was now wondering why she was running along these corridors like a siren's call, wasting vast amounts of arcane energy. The part of her that wondered was in a state similar to the mind of a drunk and could not really fight the other part and make it stop.
Nevertheless, it tried with all its might and fought against the other part of the mind bit by bit to regain control until it could bring itself to a stop.
Bent over, she panted for air, which she tried to inhale with big gulps. Only after a few moments did she realize that she had barely exhausted herself and that the level of arcane energy in the air around her was greater than on the metal road that led further into the center of the continent. Thus, she had already accumulated all the energy she had expended in her insane state, and still, it seemed to her that time was passing differently than it normally did. Somehow slower, almost viscous, it was difficult to put the feeling into words since she did not really know how she felt it at all. Still, it was certain that time was acting strangely.
When she regained her composure enough to take a closer look at her surroundings, she realized that the corridors were much more different from those of the rats than just in their construction. The walls and ceilings of the corridor were littered with mandalas of runes so that between each mandala, the wall or ceiling was barely visible. These runes were the same ones she already knew from the golems and their armor, only that here they covered every inch of ceiling and wall, and as it seemed to her, the walls and ceiling were not made of stone either, but of the metal still unknown to her. The runes on this metal were for it again from another metal, where they had been applied directly on the unknown metal or in the case of golems and their armors. Already two new metals, which were perfectly suited for working with runes, but both of which I still do not know, let alone their composition. A long sigh escaped her. More questions again, but I also think I'm getting closer to some answers, even if it doesn't feel like it.
She looked back to see how far she had come and if she could still see the representations that had made her stop the first time. As soon as she did, she realized that her eyes could see amazingly well in this darkness, even though there was no light except the arcane glow of the runes.
This made her freeze, because arcane glow should not be perceived with one's eyes, but with one's other senses, but never with one's eyes. She looked around the corridor again, there was no other source of light than the Arcane Light, which was faintly illuminating the corridor from the runes. Again, she could feel a she was about to lose control and continue running down the hallway, not paying attention to cover or enemies, or generally making sure she wouldn't be spotted. She couldn't see the representations and still something was tugging at her me, something that wanted her to run along the corridor without another thought of being in danger. Something she could only prevent with the greatest of effort and as she did so, she could see a pulse going through the arcane energy around her, which seemed to come from further ahead here.
With a last glance backward from the direction she had come from, she set about following the corridor further, in total darkness, without making a single sound or the passing of a single moment.
