I lay on the cold stone floor, gasping, my heart pounding, the fox’s silver fur warm against my neck. For now, I think we were safe... I hope.
The passage stretched ahead of me, lit by a soft, steady light that came from nowhere and everywhere. I don’t think that the walls were metal, nor were they stone, but a weird mixture of both, and this did not remind me of Caelith Mourne, but I was getting familiar with Celestial architecture, and this was certainly one of them.
I pushed myself to my feet. The fox was still panting with the orb still inside her mouth, but thankfully, the damn thing had gone silent,
"That was close," she said, muffled.
"That was too close." I agreed.
"Is it gone?" the fox whispered, around the orb.
"It’s on the other side of the door. That’s not the same as gone..." I brought up the head of the snarling knight and crushed it before taking out the chip. I had not done this, so I did not aggravate the Sovereign further, but that time had clearly passed. "...But it’ll do."
I looked back at the door. The darkness was still pressing against it, but it could not enter. The door was holding. For now, but who knew how long before the Sovereign tore its way through it.
I began to walk deeper into the passage, and soon I began to notice carvings on the walls of vague abstract objects and what I thought were creatures, but looking at them gave me a headache and caused my Anima Depth to grow heavier, as if a weight was pressing down on it, so I took my eyes away.
This sensation was familiar to me, as I felt it as an Initiate when I glimpsed the spell structure of an Adept. Whatever was etched into these walls was likely secrets at the Sovereign level, and trying to glean any information from it at this point was foolish.
However, I was able to see structures that looked like Caeliths, and even bigger structures that made the Caeliths appear as small as grain, and when I thought about a Caelith that was at least thirty kilometers, the realization of the scale of these unknown structures hurt my mind.
The passage opened into a round chamber, and in the middle of it, floating, was a crystal. It was deep blue, turning slowly in the air with nothing holding it up.
I paused, the fox and I holding our breath at the same time. The crystal was beautiful. I stood at the edge of the chamber and looked at it and, for a second, forgot everything that was chasing me.
Then I saw the inscriptions that were wrapped around the cube, thin lines of living script, and they moved. When I took a step closer, they turned, every line of them lifting off the crystal’s surface and pointing at me, hissing, the way a nest of snakes lifts its heads when you get too close to the eggs.
I stopped, my eyes widening, because I never thought that Inscriptions could be alive. The energy I saw inside the chip only indicated the energy activity of the Inscriptions; it did not mean they were alive. This one was different; it was almost as if they were looking at me.
"What is that?" I said.
The Hollow Avatar stirred in the deep. Its voice was careful.
"Come no closer for a moment, there is something wrong here. Let me look."
I have heard the Hollow Avatar speak with seriousness, but something about its tone was different, and I stopped. My eyes were fixed on the Inscriptions that slowly lowered, yet were still eerily focused on me.
I had felt the first cold spots around me when I neared the floating crystal, and I wondered whether the danger came from the crystal or the Inscription. The Hollow Avatar interrupted my thoughts as it spoke after a few seconds of silence,
"I know what that is. That is the heart of a Gate Warden."
I paused as I recalled the massive metallic statues inside Caelith Mourne that had been cut into pieces. "A Gate Warden? Like the ones in the Caelith?"
"Yes, the crystal is the core of its power, and it has been harvested."
"A Gate Warden has a heart made of crystal?"
"A Gate Warden is a heart made of crystal and light. The rest of it is armour and duty."
Behind me, I heard a loud boom, and the entire hallway shook. It seemed that Sad was no longer content with finding an easier way to enter this place and was going to tear it all down. My time was running out.
I stepped closer, testing how close I could come to these living Inscriptions, and they reared up after I took a step, and hissed louder, their coils tightening around the crystal. The blue light pulsed faster, as if it were being strangled and was panicking.
"Someone harvested this," I said. "They took it from a Warden and brought it here for what purpose?"
"The heart of a Gate Warden is a fountain of power; this entire facility could run off its heart for a hundred thousand years. However, this is not what is important, Elric. Those inscriptions, I have to be sure of it, but go closer."
I nodded and took another step closer, and the hisses from the Inscription grew louder, enough to drown the booming sound behind me, and the crystal began to pulse faster, and this time I could feel it in my heart... a connection.
The core of Cor Telluris had been buried in my heart, and the transformation was still ongoing, but I could tell that my heart was different, and I wondered if the transformation inside me was complete, if my heart would take the properties of this crystal, and beat for a hundred thousand years.
If I failed and was captured by the Soul Flayer, would this be my fate? Soul gone to spend an eternity in a nightmare, and my heart made into a glorified power source?
The brief moment of distraction was all it took for one of the inscriptions to strike, and although I moved as soon as it began to strike, this ensured that it did not hit my chest, but my left arm, and the arm simply vanished.
I took several steps back and stared at the empty space where my arm once was. Oddly, there was no pain, only a creeping sense of coldness flowing through my body.
Erasing the threads that I used to make my clothing, I saw that the wound on my shoulder was spreading, and more of my body was vanishing. However, I could feel no pain; it was as if my body was being destroyed in such totality that not even my soul could register it.
"Elric, kill yourself... now!"
I did not rethink the words of the Hollow Avatar; I simply exploded the charge I kept behind my Anima Depth, shattering it to pieces, and I collapsed on my back, gasping my last few seconds of life away as my body slowly vanished.
The last words of the Hollow Avatar rang inside my dying consciousness, and for the first time, I would swear that I heard fear in its voice.
"These Inscriptions... are demonic in origin, and that should not be possible. Someone has found a way to bend Chaos to Order."