Max
In a place slightly closer to home ...
"What a dump." I comment drily to myself while lifting my foot off Jasvinder's chest. Shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun, I take a look about, observing the people around me shuffling forward like whipped dogs.
"Don't say that." Jas whines as he picks himself off the ground, "We're standing in a place only spoken of in legend."
"The Endless Empty?" I grunt, keeping an eye on the people walking past us, "I heard about this place before, sure, but never thought I would actually wind up here."
Before I can say anything more, Jas's fist lands solidly on the side of my face, sending me flying into the crowd. Grubby unwashed hands grab at me, preventing me from falling and bowling the marchers over. The ripe scent of decay washes over me as gamey limbs roughly help me back to my feet.
"What the hell?" I curse, staggering about blinded.
As ridiculous as it sounds, the skin of my face shifted when Jas hit me, obscuring my sight. I grope at my face with both hands, trying to ascertain what is wrong. The only sensation I receive is a worrying slackness in my skin, as if it is hanging loose over my skull. With a bit of fiddling about, my sight clears up again, though the skin feels like its about to fold on to itself again at any moment.
Just in time for the semi decaying crowd to part, revealing Jasvinder confronting me with a thoroughly conflicted expression.
"You got yours at the end of the day." Jasvinder growls as he lowers his fist, his chest heaving from emotion, "I don't have anymore time to waste on you, Don."
"Fine." I agree as peaceably as possible, managing to grab at my face just in time before the sagging skin obscures my sight once again. With a hard tug to the rear of my scalp, I pull the skin tight around my skull, accompanied by a worrying tearing noise. As I immediately ease off on the tugging, the skin begins to slide off once more, like a pair of trousers that have become too big for its wearer.
Shit, Sammie must have done quite a number on me. There are plenty of people wandering about the Endless Empty with gory wounds, but I'm probably the only guy whose face no longer fits properly. Much as I would like to kick Jasvinder's ass, I can't fight like this, not when my face keeps threatening fall off. I find myself entertaining the vaguely ridiculous idea of keeping one hand behind my head to keep my face in its place while fending off Jas with the other, before realizing the other, more important, issue at hand.
I did not realize Jas was attacking me until his punch actually landed. Death sense did not give me any advance warning. At all. As fear begins to creep down my spine, I mentally reach out, commanding my Operative powers to respond.
And there's nothing. I feel completely hollow.
My powers, they're gone.
I'm now no different from the rapefugees in front of me. Jasvinder, completely unaware of how screwed I am, instead begins to cast his eyes about somewhere in the distance, his attention consumed by something else. With no further ado, the man begins wandering off, his legs moving with urgent, pent up energy.
"Hey!" I shout as Jas, "Where do you think you're going in such a hurry?"
But the man doesn't bother to respond and Jas merely gives an annoyed wave in my direction before disappearing completely in the crowd. The other rapefugees begin to press in on me, and I am swept up in the inexorable momentum of their marching. The crowd is nearly silent, other than some incomprehensible moaning here and there. A beast woman dressed in paupers rags extends her hand to me, offering a small, unappetizing piece of hard bread.
"I don't want it." I dismiss the gift, more concerned with finding a way out of this place.
The woman however does not relent, the piece of bread still hovering in front of what remains of my face. Her mouth has been gummed up by a thick, sticky slurry, forming a razor thin line on her face. The woman nevertheless walks alongside me in stoic silence, both feet tirelessly carrying her forward. As I reluctantly accept the proffered gift, I notice the woman's fingers that have grown black at the edges, rot having set in.
"Thanks." I murmur, inwardly wincing with disgust at the act of accepting food from a decaying corpse. I probably don't look much better in my current state anyway.
The woman hums with satisfaction through her closed mouth and long bluish lines squirm beneath her waxy skin. She draws a deep breath of sweltering air, but her chest does not move an inch, taking me by surprise before I metaphorically slap myself for not noticing the obvious. Of course the beast woman's chest would not move, she's dead. Her entire body is slowly rotting away, just like everybody else trapped in this place.
Wait.
When Jasvinder hit me, there was not a single trace of rot on his fist. He looked worse for wear, sure, but no different from when we were alive. I also only noticed the gamey scent of decaying flesh after I was knocked into the crowd, not when I was standing in front Jas. And most importantly, Jasvinder was very obviously taking deep breaths.
"How long have you been here?" I urgently ask the woman beside me.
The woman shrugs and raises four blackened fingers in reply.
"Four days, four weeks?" I query, and she merely gives a chortle from behind that sealed mouth.
"Four months?" I press and the woman tiredly nods and makes a vague circle over her head, indicating the path both of us are tramping down on.
Four months. Unlike myself, my "conversation" partner does not appear to have any external wounds. So she would have begun to rot when she arrived at the Endless Empty. Jasvinder might not have been here as long, but the decay by all rights should be setting in right about now. As my head begins to spin from everything that has been happening, another revelation hits like a ton of bricks.
There's something wrong with my sense of touch and pain.
I had been too preoccupied with the loss of my powers for this fact to really sink in, but the time I have spent holding my face in place has made noticing it unavoidable. There's no pain, despite the ruinous level of damage my body has experienced. My sense of touch has also been heavily muffled, as if my whole body has been wrapped in a quilt. The blazing sun causes a crawling heat to build underneath my skin, the same kind of sensation you get from wearing a heavy winter coat in the middle of summer. I cautiously prod at one of the wounds on my face and feel literally nothing. No numbness, not even the sensation of something being wrong. As I begin desperately feeling up the other parts of my body, I get the exact same result. Its like my skin is made out of cloth.
My legs begin to quiver thanks to the encroaching panic, causing me to nearly trip. The woman nods once again and pats me reassuringly on the shoulder, as if telling me that whatever I'm feeling is completely natural. A strong wind begins to push at our backs and I am urged forward, marching along with the rest of the rapefugees.
"What's going on?" I gasp, the sudden increase in the crowd's marching speed taking me by surprise. The woman merely points in the direction of a giant crater that the crowd has been circling around and I immediately understand.
Green flames lick hungrily at the tip of the crater, tightly contained by a barrier of wind generated by the marching rapefugees. This must be where the Tears of Iros enter the world. And if so, that also means ...
Without another word, I begin pushing through the crowd, making my way straight for the crater. The woman hoots a warning somewhere behind me, apparently being near the crater is dangerous, but I'm past caring. I truly know where I am now. Jasvinder knew the name of this place, not what it actually is. He had no idea how correct he was to say that this is a place of legend.
The crowd parts as I keep pushing forward, not objecting to me breaking ranks with them. In fact, the closer I get to the crater, the easier it is for me to make the journey. The weight of my body begins to melt away and there's a subtle pull emanating from the pit itself. A gravitational force, seeking to reel me into the chasm's maw. Was this why the beast woman had been warning me not to head too close to the crater?
There's a scream of anguish coming from somewhere ahead of me as a rando flings herself off into the pit to the total indifference from the rest of the crowd. Suicide, but was it really? There had to be something compelling the crowd into marching its well worn loop around the chasm. It couldn't be the wind blowing through the Endless Empty, that seemed to be governing the marching speed and not anything else. Was the pit's gravitational pull working its magic on the crowd all this while? The rapefugees are steadily pulled toward the chasm and they fall into a more or less steady orbit around it.
Like how the moon loops around earth back home.
The tugging sensation is getting stronger now, its actually noticeable at this distance from the chasm. I grit my teeth at the pull, digging my heels in to keep myself from being thrown forward. The rapefugees around me have huddled into tighter clumps, turning each other into makeshift anchors against the unseen force exuding from the pit. Curious stares are openly sent my way at the sight of someone actually wanting to get closer to the pit rather than do the smart thing.
Well, whatever. My life is my own at the end of the day. If I can even be considered to be alive at this point.
The pull becomes steadily more powerful and I collapse on to all fours, my damaged bulwark letting out a loud metallic clang against the sandy ground. The merciless sun beats down on my back and I can feel sweat begin to build up underneath my skin, even though my body remains bone dry. Without a hand to hold it in place, my face loses shape again and my sight goes back to being obscured. Gritting my teeth in annoyance, I tip my head to the side, letting the folds of skin fall partially away. A crack opens in my field of view as I begin pawing forward with my hands.
The lip of the chasm gets steadily closer as the unseen force attempts to drag me toward it. But with all my limbs planted securely on the ground, my momentum is kept at a controllable level. As I carefully edge along in this awkward kowtow, my hand brushes across a series of drag marks, long narrow streaks that have carved into the dirt.
Finger marks.
My imagination kicks into overdrive as I fantasize about some rando getting pulled into the chasm, kicking and screaming all the way. Scratch that. There probably would not be any screaming, almost everyone here has their mouths sealed shut. Why is that?
My hair stands from the electric tension as both of my hands reach the rocky edge of the pit, fingertips questing into empty air. With tortuous slowness, I stretch my head out, over the mouth of the chasm, while all four of my limbs sink deeper into the ground, holding me down as firmly as possible. The Tears of Iros have died out by now, giving me an unobstructed view into the innards of the pit itself.
Its a hole in the earth, stretching downward obviously. The bottom of the pit is a dark maw, making it impossible for me to see how far it delves. From first impressions it could very well be at least several hundred miles in depth. But the chasm's depth pales in comparison to the sole piece of decoration adorning it.
Yes, decoration. Though that's not quite the right word to describe it.
Wedged against the wall of the chasm is a massive skeleton, the remains of a giant. Despite the size of the fossil, its clear from the proportions that the giant was originally a woman with a pair of large antler horns adorning the crown of her skull. Several fractures mar the skeleton, showing whatever had caused the giantess's death clearly involved a hefty amount of violence. Lightning crackles across the giantess's bones, flaring up periodically and lashing the walls of the pit.
The bones are smooth, despite the breaks that adorn them in places. The skeleton glistens as if it was composed out of polished ivory with clusters of pulsating moss squirming about its surface. Low groans of agony emerge from the direction of the skeleton, prompting me to squint harder to ascertain what's actually going on.
That's not moss.
Its people. The people who had been sucked into the chasm and now stuck on to the skeleton, their bodies steadily dissolving, nourishing the bones. Malformed arms and legs protrude from the lumps of dissolving flesh, grasping at air, vainly searching for salvation. Excitement and dread seizes my heart.
This is it.
This is actually it.
The Divine who never picks up the phone. The Goddess of Fang and Horn. Or as she is known to the Directorate -
Foundation Four.
