I wanted to end this loop as quickly as possible, but I had not finished answering all the questions, and this was what the Hollow Avatar wanted me to finish before I took the final step.
Was there another way to end this, apart from taking the place of the Jade Oracle?
The Quest from the system was still there on my status screen, even though I took it upon myself not to look at it anytime I checked my status.
[ World Quest ]
[ Stop the Pale Matron from rising]
The quest did not give me any conditions for completing it; I just have to stop her from breaking free from Caelith Mourne.
Even though knowing that I could not stop the Jade Oracle from dying, perhaps I was not meant to... perhaps I had to allow myself to believe that I could finish this World Quest and return home.
As if my thoughts were the triggers, which they were most assuredly were, the wall before me rippled, and a passage opened, stretching before me, dark and waiting.
The passage did not lead upwards; it descended into the Caelith, and the red fog no longer bothered to hide what it was. The passage was filled with flowing blood, and as I stepped into it, I could hear the wails of thousands.
Breaking the law of gravity, the blood was flowing upwards, creeping up the walls and vanishing into the darkness above.
Count the graves, Elric. How many have suffered and died for the ambitions of the few? They are no longer worthy of the breath in their chest. Your fucking hesitation would lead to the death of not thousands, but millions.
I shivered as I descended deeper into the Caelith, the red blood staining my Acolyte robes until it reached my chest. The fox stirred on my shoulder. Its silver fur brushed against my jaw, and I felt its blue eyes watching me through the darkness.
"Down," it said, in Mel’s voice. "You go down."
"Yes."
"Bad things down."
I was a bit surprised at the insight of the Moon Fox, and I nodded, "I know."
The fox was silent for a moment. Then it pressed its nose against my ear and whispered, "I help."
I smiled a tired smile, but it was a real one. "I know you will... thank you."
The passage sloped downward, and then became stairs, carved from the same black metal, worn smooth by ten thousand years of nothing, or maybe even longer. I descended, wading through the blood and gritting my teeth through the screams.
As I got used to the cries from the blood that was flowing upwards, I began to move faster. I had stopped Orath from killing Rex and accelerating the death of the Jade Oracle, but from the amount of blood flowing past me, the Jade Oracle did not have long to live before she was drowned by the cries of the innocent.
Perhaps it was because of my enhanced physique or the fact that all my channels were still transforming, but my speed as I descended the stairs was almost unreal. I glanced at the fox on my shoulder, but it was comfortable, and it even stuck out its tongue as if it was enjoying the speed.
I could feel many spaces hidden by the metallic walls around me, but I did not have the time to investigate every single space inside the Caelith. The flow of the blood came from below, and that was where I needed to go.
About fifteen minutes passed as I descended, and I saw the end of the passage before me, and I slowed down. I could see a glow at the bottom, and apart from that, there was only silence.
I paused and then continued forward. I surrounded myself with lightning threads, but I did not allow it to spread. The threads were just to sense if there were any traps ahead, and my threads caught some strange magical markers that I evaded.
Lightning Incarnate helped me move through these magical traps with relative ease until I neared the glowing door, and, making sure that Lightning Edict had wrapped me in a layer of invisibility, I entered the door.
The passage did not open into one chamber but into a web of them, connecting halls branching off into more chambers, lit by cold witchlights, and I moved through them on the soft edges of my senses, mapping, unseen, until the largest of them opened in front of me and I forgot, for a moment, to keep moving.
I did not know what I would find at the end of these chambers, but I did not know it would be so... beautiful.
A cathedral hall, vast enough that the dark ate the ceiling, and down both its lengths stood statues of winged figures of gold, each one taller than a house, their faces had been melted off, and in the cupped hands of every one of them floated an orb of pale, slow-pulsing light.
The colour of this light was familiar in a way that made the back of my soul ache, because it was the colour of the light that flooded my channels when I cracked one of the ancient gates.
However, this Celestial Essence was far more potent than what flowed in my channels; it was as if these orbs were crystallized Celestial Essence.
I sucked in my breath. Each of these orbs was massive and held a ridiculous amount of power, and I realized that these orbs were the seals that held the Pale Matron. These statues had stood in this hall doing the one thing they were made for since before the magus civilization had learned to write its own name, and it was all about to end in an hour.
Surrounding every statue were pale green domes of light that I could visibly see were slowly fading as spots of red stain, resembling blood, were spreading across them.
The walls between them were murals, and I saw that they told a story that I would need a lot of time to decipher, but I could see familiar shapes of demons etched in these murals, Khaaz, Khaazims, the Narghul Sorceres... there were other demons that I did not recognize there on the murals.
And in front of these statues was an oval portal that seemed to lead to a place filled with nothing but blood, as I could see the source of the blood flooding the pyramid came from this open portal.
Gallons of blood rose from the portal into the air like an inverted waterfall before they disappeared into the darkness above.
I watched that portal for longer than I should, because I could not imagine how many people needed to be killed to create this waterfall of blood.
And there was not one living demon in the whole vast room... only the men.