[The Aperture] True Terror.

by **Archailist** on February 28th, 2014, 8:47 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

56th of Winter, 513.

He was sick of mystery. He was sick of being kept in the dark. He wanted answers and he wasn't going to stop until he found them. What had begun as a small niggling in the back of his head.. an itching curiosity to discover what was going on and understand just what happened within this city, had only grown the more he uncovered. It wasn't just the monks hiding things.. it was everyone. No matter who he talked to, where he went.. nothing, all of the time. Nothing but warnings and promises that he would regret pushing farther than young, squirrel minds and outsiders were supposed to comprehend. If it was so terrible, he asked, why didn't they do something about it when they found out? In a city run by a quartet of demi-gods, one would think that they would be free from superstitious nonsense and creatures that came from a different place. But, instead, it seemed like they were almost hiding them away from the rest of the world as if they were nothing more than a secret treasure.

"Those beetles. They were made, from the Aperture. They've been here as long as the Greenwing Flyers." The more the squirrel explained what he'd seen, the darker the man's face became as he pondered over the rather crude descriptions of the bug that he'd caught the previous night. His eyes seemed to almost sparkle. "If you want to learn more about them.. the Great Infirmary has antidotes of their venom stored inside. You could always ask those in there, if they knew anything." In truth, he wasn't interested in the origins of the beetle in particular. He wanted to know about the Aperture.. all of the creatures that kept emerging from its core. All this nonsense that he heard - of a giant hole being the Heart of the World.

"Isn't there anything else you can tell me?" All the reply he got was a shake of the man's head, as he straightened a brightly-coloured short shirt that barely came around under his ribs and was thankfully placed over a second, longer shirt, before he stood and walked off in other matters more pressing. The squirrel could only watch him go, with a sigh, before waddling down the edges of the street. He needed to find more out, about the body of the beetle.. its origins.. what else he cold expect to find down there. If there were more than a few of those damned beetles, the squirrel was very unsure what he'd end up returning like. Those things were tough.. and he didn't really know what else he could do to them, other than repeatedly smack them until they ended up crunching under his weight. Or, goodness, what other creatures even worse than those would eventually appear.

He'd be unable to take weaponry, that much he knew. He'd leave the Py-Pole at home, and take only a few lengths of rope at the most. Anything else would weigh him down - and that would be the last thing he wanted when potentially climbing into a cave surrounded by monsters. There was no point in trying to kill every single one, and taking a weapon down with him would just be asking for trouble in the first place. Not to mention - he was already pretty confident in his understanding of his own clay so there'd be little need for anything else. That went on what he knew about the creatures, but he still wanted to ask.. he didn't want to go down there and die, after all. And dying was a very real threat at that moment.

Either way. He needed to waddle his way over to the Great Infirmary. The beetle was slung over his shoulder and curled around by his long tail - keeping it pressed against the small of his back. Thankfully, most of the venom had dripped out of it during the crunch-session, so he didn't need to worry about his body rotting away on the journey through the familiar corners and back-alleys of Nyka. Looked like he was going to go through another interrogation session to find out what this person knew about the Aperture.

by **Archailist** on July 23rd, 2014, 6:39 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The Infirmary was always busy. Monks and citizens seemed to constantly move back and forth through the doors.. and the squirrel had to perform a veritable miracle in order to push around the various people with a huge beetle pushing on his upper back and shoulders with all the weight of a boulder. He'd seen the man from earlier struggling to lift the damn thing, so it came to little surprise from the Pycon. That didn't mean he'd be happy to carry the thing around the entire day, though. In fact, he was hoping to get the thing off as soon as he could.. just so that he could get back to what was important. The Aperture.

The person behind the desk looked very imposing, but with a huge beetle on his back, he felt like he could push his weight around a little. Most of the patients gathered around the infirmary were certainly giving the squirrel very odd and concerned looks as he stepped up towards the front desk - causing the woman, with her all-too-familiar Nykan scowl and piercing eyes, to tilt her head just over the lip in order to see the diminutive squirrel. "I'm here to see the person in charge, and give him this." As he lifted the beetle once again, she wordlessly pointed towards a nearby door and the squirrel slipped through it shortly afterwards, into a corridor that seemed to twist and turn unevenly the further he made his way down it. At the end, though, was what he could only guess a research lab - filled with vials, and strange concoctions, with a rather grizzled man walking between them, occasionally testing this and adjusting that. All Arch needed to do was lift the beetle into the air, where the dim light shining through some of the fogged and dirtied windows lit up the carapace like the whole thing had been set on fire.

"Oh... you startled me. What are you doing in here?" Straight and to-the-point, the man obviously wasn't interested in playing around.. but that suited the squirrel just fine. He took the opportunity to lower the dead beetle to his side before he began speaking.

"I want to ask you some questions about these beetles. You know about them, don't you?" Well, the man was obviously glancing back and forth repeatedly, between the squirrel and the dead beetle sitting on the floor. Obviously he knew something about them.. although, he'd known that before he walked through the door. He needed to know something new.. heck, something to his advantage about the creatures so that he could be prepared when he finally made his way down into the depths of the Aperture. Perhaps it was time to stop just asking questions, and start probing for them. He could make a deal, surely..

"Well.. they're Gesentke Beetles. Normally never found above-ground.. very dangerous. We don't get many bites from anyone that hasn't been down in the Aperture but unless we give them the antidote within a few chimes, it's better to just amputate.." Well, that was definitely unnerving. Although he supposed that he didn't have to worry about it, if they had antidotes. And thanks to the fact that he knew that it was possible to regenerate lost limbs. That was always something to be proud of.

"So... worst-case scenario when meeting one of these creatures is a bite that can remove limbs?" It still sounded dangerous.. but less so. He knew that they were pretty damn aggressive because he'd already gone against one, but knowing that he could survive their attacks.. well, it put him a little more at-ease. Or it did, until he heard the reply that he got.

"Oh, no no. Worst-case scenario is death." His eyes widened to the size of saucers but the man continued on, unperturbed. "Oh yes. The bite slowly dissolves tissue, and if it was to get near the torso, then certain death unless the antidote can be administered within time." Now, that was definitely unnerving. Considering that he knew his body was small enough to easily be wrapped around by a pair of those large mandibles.. well, he knew that his torso or head could get a pretty swift bite, and then.. bye-bye, Pycon. Oh dear, oh dear. Well.. there was still one other solution that he could think of.

"So.. if one was to go into the Aperture, couldn't they take some of that antidote with them? Just to make sure that they didn't lose a limb, or die?" He could return later with a few Miza's.. better yet, he could just hand over the beetle and they could use that, and he'd just take the antidote away with him. He could make it down into the Aperture, and use the antidote.. well, actually, he might need a few. He didn't know how many of those creatures were hiding down there, in the depths of the caves and the ledges in the Aperture. He could pay for them, though. As long as they meant that he could keep his life and all that.

"I'm afraid not.. it's very difficult to create an antidote and we need them all in the Infirmary in case someone gets bitten. If you do.. just come here and we'll administer it straight away." He couldn't believe what he was hearing.. after all, they were keeping the antidote away from people that may be bitten.. because they wanted to save it for people who got bitten. Surely the man wasn't being serious.. but then he opened his mouth in complaint and the man gave him a dark stare that soon shut it again. "Like I said. If you get bitten, come to the Infirmary, we'll inject it, and you'll be fine. Now, is there anything else you need? I have important work and research to be going with, and you're wasting valuable time."

by **Archailist** on July 23rd, 2014, 7:21 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

It was quite obvious that the man was growing impatient.. much to Arch's dismay. Before he could turn, the squirrel held out a paw and yelled out at him. "Hold on!" It was enough to stop him in his tracks, and pass an inquisitive eye back towards the Pycon. Thank goodness. "I-I need to know more about the creatures found in the Aperture. I know that the Gesentke Beetle emerged from the Aperture but.. what else is there that sits inside? And.. how dangerous are they?" His voice was growing a little bit desperate. He needed to know these things.. because one way or another, even if he wasn't prepared, he was going to climb into that Aperture and discover what was going on down there. He'd prefer to do so, knowing what he was up against. And apparently the man took pity on him, because there was nothing more than a soft sigh before he turned away.

Not back to his work, though. To a stall nearby filled with books - one of which was soon dragged down and slammed heavily onto a free desk, before sitting down himself before it and beginning to flick through the pages rapidly. Taking that as a sign that he would finally get the answers he needed, he hopped over to the healer, and climbed up the edge of the desk in order to get a good view of the book. Each page was riddled with various drawings and sketches of creatures - dogs, bats and beetles. Each one riddled with many different lines of text, some written in different handwriting than others.

"I'm guessing that you're going down into the Aperture. Usually that would mean you are a monk, although I severely lack that you are.. for some reason." His voice had taken on a darker tone, but he stared at the book, and not at the squirrel currently sitting at the very edge of the desk. Thankfully. He wasn't sure what he would do if confronted by the dark glare that had taken over most of the usual indifferent scowl. "We only know some of what can be found inside the Aperture. Most of what we know, is in this book. You do know how to read, don't you?"

The man turned his head, but the squirrels eyes were already down on the book, out of a mixture of fear and simple embarrassment. The healer could read him like a book anyway. "You already know the Gesentke Beetle. We believe that there's something between it, and a different animal - a type of food chain. This -" he grumbled, while pointing to a rather elaborate sketch of what looked like a bat with shredded wings - "is a Greenwing Flyer. It has saliva that can melt through the exoskeleton of the beetles, and can act as a predator. I still want to find some of its saliva for use as healing aids." If the man was planning on using something so.. acidic for healing, he was surely insane, the squirrel thought briefly.

As if to prove the squirrels thoughts, the man flicked over the page, and the next one was filled with drawings and a few paintings roughly drawn and crudely made.. but showing off the damage that a bat such as this could do. One picture showed a building that had no roof - because most of it had simply been dissolved off, by the looks of the surrounding walls that were gnarled at the edges and had various infrequent holes puncturing them. He could only guess that this was where the Greenwing Flyers had dug through. Arms and legs were also displayed, with holes and massive wounds caused by burning through contact with the acid. He could only make out a few words in the masses of text, but words like 'Amputated' and 'Extreme pain' immediately shot out.

"There is only one other thing that we really know is down there, for certain.. that's the Marrow Dog. Most notorious of them all, because they pack together and because of their leavings. Very obvious creatures." The man had begun to talk almost casually.. as if, instead of showing him a book of monsters and different cases of encounters, he was being shown family pictures of his wife and children. Not that he could imagine the sick piece of shyke to have either. As he turned the pages, he found himself confronted with even more walls of text, and more pictures. Different drawings showed the dogs from different angles.. but in all of them, they looked absolutely hideous. Spines, scales, teeth.. this thing had far too much of all of it. "They hunt in packs.. but they're carnivorous. I don't think you'll have a problem if you find them.. just try to stay away." With that, the healer cast down a single eye at the squirrel, and Arch returned the favour. He could tell that the man was doing him a great service, and he was thankful. But he'd have to do things his own way. He needed to find out what was down there.. one way or another.

"Wait.. is that it? That's all you know?" He felt uneasy only knowing of three creatures living down there. Surely there were more...

"I'm afraid, little squirrel, that the only things I know have been gathered from reports, or from personal experience dealing with patients after encounters. Mostly monks, after spending their time in the Aperture. I haven't been down there myself; although I wish you luck. You'll need it - the Aperture is not a place for the faint of heart, or weak of stomach." He leaned closer as he spoke, with hands resting on his knees for support. The squirrel thought he was just being dramatic. "It's not a safe place for anyone. Least of all squirrels. People die. And those who don't, see things that make them wish they had." And that was it - his time was over. The book slammed shut and before he could throw another question, the medic turned his back and returned to his research. Evidently, he was no longer welcome. With only a brief glance back, he hopped down from the huge desk and disappeared through the door.

by **Archailist** on July 24th, 2014, 12:17 am

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

It took him up until he got to the entrance of the Great Infirmary before the reality began to sink in - the understanding of what he was about to do. Something that he never thought he'd do before, and more importantly, something he suddenly wasn't so sure he would be ready for. He was going to crawl down into a hole potentially filled with monsters. He could very quickly die under there, if any of them saw him and decided they wanted a bit of a squirrel sandwich. There was no telling just how long he could end up down there, and the same went for what he would see. He'd heard stories - that monks often had to spend three nights down there, in the depths, to test something about them. Well, if the monks could survive three nights.. then he could survive even longer. He just needed to keep his cool. Remain calm. All of that stuff. He needed to take deep breaths, push them right inside his body.. and slowly expel them again.

He didn't even know he was hyperventilating until he reconnected his nexus to his eyes and found himself bent over double, with both paws pressing hard against his legs, to the point that he was struggling to distinguish his own legs from his arms. He was afraid. There needed to be something.. something needed to be done about the monsters. He needed to find out what it was, down there, that made the Aperture what it was. There were no ifs, or buts, about it. But at the same time, he didn't want to die going through it. He needed to gather courage, strength.. because otherwise he would die. He would be travelling into a place that wasn't... wasn't meant for man. But he wasn't a man. He was a squirrel. A Pycon. Deep breaths.

He needed to get into the Aperture.

...

The sky was turning dark. Possibly the worst time in the world to try and sneak into the Aperture but the place was pretty much shrouded in shadow all of the time anyway, because Syna's light had to shine down from directly above in order to bless it. There was really little difference in light, whether he did it in the day or the night. And besides, if he did it in the night.. he'd be less likely to anger the monks. They'd always be ones to keep their secrets from him and all the other outsiders.. but boy, was that about to change! Not that it was actually night, yet.. the few citizens still walking the streets were obviously on their way home, but they weren't being bundled under houses by the monks still patrolling the rooftops and the near-empty streets. Many of them gave odd looks to the squirrel running towards the bridges, but otherwise they didn't pay any mind. He was a squirrel, after all. He knew what he was getting himself into.

Before him stood one of the four bridges to cross the Aperture - the Cursed Bridge. It looked sturdy.. and a ladder ran from the middle, straight down. Down into the inky black that was the Heart of the World. For a moment, he thought on the irony of the name and nearly laughed - the idea that such a dark, malevolent place could be considered the heart of all creation... perhaps those that had first named it were a little too melancholic for their own good. With the sun fading at the far end of the sky, there was no light within the Aperture - even the ladder, after a while, seemed to simply vanish into nothing as it sunk farther and farther. As he stepped closer to the edge, and leaned over, he thought he could see flickering lights at the edges of the hole.. but there'd be better uses of his time than to sit there and stare at the Aperture. With darkness creeping close, the monks would soon emerge and if they found him standing atop the Cursed Bridge past curfew, he'd be corralled into one of the houses until morning and most likely given a good beating on the side.

The rope ladder looked old and worn.. and not too sturdy. But for some reason, he knew it would hold his weight. The larger problem would be the gaps spacing the rungs.. given his diminutive size, they were far too large to be easily traversed. He'd have to pretty much slide from rung to rung using the edges of the rope ladder for support.. and although that didn't cause too much stress, his mind was more focused on the problems that it would pose on the way back up. He'd have to basically climb one of the supporting ropes all the way back into the light. The more he stared at it, the less confident he felt about this journey. So, he closed his mind to it all. He wasn't going to try and rationalize this - he wasn't going to think logically. Nothing. Just do it. He leaned down, grabbed the rope edges of the ladder, swung himself down over the edge of the bridge and hit the first rung. The whole ladder creaked and swayed a little, as new strain fell on old bonds.. but it held. And he took it as a sign to continue.

The further he pressed down into the Aperture, the darker it became. That was the first, and only feature that he could make out - the darkness. It wasn't just a lack of light.. it was as if the light simply wasn't allowed to be there. With the lack of light soon followed the lack of warmth. The rungs creaked more often as he pushed his way down.. apparently in different stages of disuse. He could have sworn that one step felt close to snapping under the meager weight that he pushed onto it, and seemed to sway more often than the others. But, he only tightened his stranglehold on the frayed ladder and continued his slow descent - with his legs wrapped tightly around one of the ropes, and his paws gently allowing his body to slide down - like descending a pole, essentially. Broken, only occasionally, by a wooden rung pressing on his leg.

Those lights flickered again.. but now they seemed more pronounced. The closer he came to them, the brighter they became, until.. he could make them out quite clearly. Glowing balls of light, hovering in place at random locations across the walls of the Aperture. Some completely motionless.. but most slowly swaying back and forth, enticingly. As he moved closer to them, they began to pull away.. very slowly, illuminating the walls of the Aperture in a sickly-green glow. Repulsive. Unnatural. Yet he felt almost compelled to follow them. They were the one source of light.. if he kept close to it, maybe things wouldn't be so bad down here. Alas, even though he wanted to.. he couldn't. Suspended from the rope ladder as he was, there was only one direction available.. and so, he continued to slide down into the Aperture. The lights eased themselves back into place afterwards.. and between rungs, he gazed at them dreamily.

by **Archailist** on July 28th, 2014, 6:00 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

Eventually, he touched solid floor, and the orbs slowly faded to nothing again. It wasn't stone.. it was earth. Soil. The ladder stretched far above him, into the dark.. and he suddenly realized just how long the thing was. There wasn't even an anchor holding it at the bottom.. it just hung from the bridge at the top by the two ropes, and nothing more. If those two broke.. he'd be trapped. Lost, down in the Aperture. Until either he died or until someone thought to throw down another rope ladder.. however many of them the monks had in reserve for occasions such as those. If they had any at all.

No. Quickly, away from that. He needed to focus on the here and now, so that he'd be ready for.. whatever came. He couldn't see a blasted thing, after all. With even the meagre lights of the orbs gone, and no chance of sunlight or anything from the stars.. the squirrel knew that he'd pretty much be fumbling around in utter black for most of his time in the Aperture. The hole was too deep to allow any light from above unless it shone straight down. He should have brought something like a torch.. a lamp.. he had his bag with him that had flint and rope, but that wasn't going to be any good if he didn't have anything to light.. a piece of wood, a stick, a twig. He couldn't even see if there were any; the only thing certain, in this blackness, was the ladder that his paw kept tightly gripping.

This is hopeless. The thought hit him like a horseshoe, out of nowhere. This is hopeless. What am I even doing. He knew that he needed to see what was down there, to understand why this woman in purple clothes appeared to him, only him. No matter what happened, no matter what he saw, or felt, all that mattered was that he kept going down. The stupor broke free like heavy chains weighing his limbs down and the small squirrel pressed on with a weary huff of cold air. But it could do nothing to ease the darkness that threatened to smother his tiny body. I can't even move. He was surely at the bottom of the ladder but there was something more to this place. If he'd made it down this far, into a place that even the monks struggled to survive inside, then he wasn't going to get out again until he'd truly found what was behind the bizarre happenings. He wasn't going to leave without answers.

If that meant he had to stand there, utterly deprived of sound and sight and smell, then that would be what he did. "M.. My.. My hands m-might be sha-shaking.." he muttered into the Aperture, hearing his shaking voice reverberating off the invisible walls, ".. a-and m.. my m-mind might be s.. scared.." He took a ragged breath, deep as he could but nowhere near enough. "B-But I'm.. I'm still h-here.. because I dare." This tiny, insignificant chant he repeated over and over and over, until the words themselves seemed to lose meaning. But still he pushed himself forwards. "My hands might be shaking and my mind might be scared but I'm still here because I dare.."

There was no way to tell the true time in the darkness. Salvation eventually came though, after endless bells of descent in the terrifying blind of night, in Leth's pale glow. Above, the moon slowly peeked over the lip of the Aperture, filtering down streaks of light that stretched down over the surface of the hole. Deeper down, however deep this cavernous maw truly was, there was still nothing but the purest of darkness to chill his nexus down to the last inch of clay. Even from straight above, light shining down into the hole could not pierce its veil.

That didn't matter though; he was just happy to be able to see the ground beneath his own feet. As the moonlight spread deeper into the Aperture, as clouds slowly cleared and exposed more of its pale glow, he soon began to understand - unfortunately - just what it was that he was thanking Leth for. Light brushed along stone walls, that stood apart from the edges of the Aperture.. man-made and cut to precision, however crude that may have turned over the countless years. Buildings in various stages of ruin, with some barely ruined at all. Few plants clung to them, as such little sunlight could possibly push so deep into the Aperture.. but mushrooms and other fungus seemed abundant. One thing seemed the most abundant.. and it looked identical to those that grew along the edges of the walls of the Aperture. Roots, that dug deep into the ground and stone, but nothing else. He couldn't see any flower, or any sign of particular life. Perhaps it was just the season that wouldn't allow it.

The more he stared at the ruins that spread across the hole, the more he realized that there was definitely some kind of structure to it all. Buildings that formed somewhat-orderly lines, like streets. It definitely looked as though it'd been built by humans.. but why would a city be made in the Aperture. Pretty much underneath Nyka itself.. and completely uninhabited. Why would they abandon this place. Most of it looked somewhat inhabitable. If incredibly old, somewhat decrepit.. with that familiar red stone turned grey and black after years.. decades.. hidden from the light and the outside world. Even if it was organized, unknown time had brought the ruins beyond any repair. At least the sunken roofs could provide a little more stability. Without a ladder to take down any further, it looked like that was the only way down any deeper.

by **Archailist** on August 1st, 2014, 5:21 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

There was still a long way to go for that, though. Now, without a ladder to provide some stability while he made the descent, he'd have to rely slowly on the slanted ledges of rock jutting out uneasily from the edges of the Aperture. Some of the collapsed buildings might be able to offer their support along the way but others seemed overgrown with strange plants. Some seemed so tall that they simply disappeared into the deeper darkness; one wrong foot and he'd go the same way. Don't be silly. I know where I'm going. I know what I need to do. Those that never came out, weren't squirrels. The one piece of hope that he grappled to with almost as much strength as he did to the frayed bottom of the ladder still hanging just barely above his head.

There was no use clinging to that forever. There was a tiny ledge he could probably use to navigate a path down the edge of the hole. A human would just about be able to slide their toes over the ledge.. for Archailist it was possible, though his chest was pressed close against the wall constantly. His legs shuffled, one moving forwards before the other, and the only way to see where his foot was going next was to press his cheek against the wall and peer down over one shoulder to the road ahead. There was no looking back.. no straightening or relaxing.. not even the aid of his tail, since it too was pressed tight against the wall. Leaving it out meant he'd overbalance and tip straight down into the abyss. Even a little over and he'd cast a shadow over his own feet, blocking out what little light he had to work with.

There was nothing behind. Nothing to catch him, if he fell. No safety net. No harness. One false move would be all it took. His fingers dug as deep as they could into the wall but it never felt like it was enough. "My hands are shaking, my mind is scared, but I'm still here, because--" his mantra was suddenly broken by a deafening crack somewhere down below. The ground was shifting and little trickles of soil were tumbling over his feet. Was the ledge breaking? He couldn't tell. Instinct told him to move faster, common sense said that he'd slip if he went too fast. "My hands are shaking, my mind is sc.." Another trickle of soil broke his concentration again. He forced the foot forwards and kept moving. Another crack.

I could die.
"MY BODY IS SHAKING..."
This could be it.
"... MY MIND IS SCARED..."
My body could fall into this endless hole and never be found.
"... BUT I'M STILL HERE, BECAUSE MY SOUL DARED!"

He'd never even noticed that his voice had risen into a scream. What felt like moisture had soiled his face; he couldn't tell whether this was what it felt like to cry, or whether it was the wall. The true fear of death had sent the squirrel's poor little nexus into overdrive as breaths came out in short, harsh gasps. Humans called it hyperventilating, didn't they? All he knew was, he needed more air.. even though he was breathing as fast as he could. "Huh.. no.. huh, come on.. haah.." His chest ached. His arms, legs, head ached. He didn't know how long he could hold to this tiny, narrow little cliff for any longer. Then he looked back down and realized the stump of a flat-roofed building was barely an inch away from his foot. Thank you, Lhex.

From there, scaling down the collapsed walls of the building was far less traumatizing. The walls were so thick that there was little worry of complete collapse.. the only holes he had to watch out for were the windows. Near the bottom, one of the edges of wall had completely caved through, meaning he had to navigate around the rubbled remains to make it back to the 'solid' ground of the jutted pieces of Aperture wall. There's still deeper to go. I'll never make it all the way down in one night. It'd only seemed a few chimes ago that he'd stood at the bottom of the ladder. The truth was far from that. Leth's light had crossed what little sky was available to the Aperture by over half. The bottom of the ladder was a distant point. Soon it'd disappear entirely. Doubt surfaced again, but this time he crushed it much faster. I've come this far. I'll keep going. Even if it takes me all of the night, and the next day.

Deeper he walked. The path became less uniform; no longer was it just flat and even, nor narrow and unstable. Every step became different; in some places the ground felt dry and crumbled away under his feet, dissolving and tumbling down into the cavern without so much as a sound. Others felt like steel. No matter how he stomped and jumped, there was nary a crack in the surface of what looked like loose soil. The deeper he went, the less sense it all made. Hard, soft, cold, warm... warm?! Why was there something warm underneath his foot?

by **Archailist** on January 13th, 2016, 7:46 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The human's head had spent so long in the Aperture that it's skill had literally fused with the ground, yet pale skin still clung to portions of its face. In the fading shimmers of Leth's light it shone a sickly whitish-green. One eyesocket was entirely empty and partially filled with soil, yet he could still see the remains of muscle and flesh on the insides. The other eyesocket was covered with a few tattered shreds of eyelid that hung over it as curtains did over a window, more than anything remotely normal. Most of its milky-white skull was exposed, though parts of the scalp still had strands of bleached hair sticking out. The rest of the body was in complete ruin. One leg seemed to be missing, as well as one hand. "Sweet Sylir.." The one remaining hand was so deep in the dirt that only the top was still visible. That was what he'd stepped on. It'd seemed so easy to mistake the sunken white knuckles for little jagged stones in the near-darkness; now he wondered how he could have thought they were anything else but parts of this poor, deceased person's grotesque hand. So this is what happens to monks that don't pass.

The cause of death was obvious upon closer inspection. A chunk the size of a human's fist was missing from the side of the victim's head. Not clawed away.. it looked like a rather neat, if uneven gap. Acid. Those beetles. Or maybe something else. Who knew what still lived inside these caverns? Wherever those things were, he had absolutely no intention of disturbing them. Better to just move on, leave the corpse well enough alone, forget it ever happened, forget he'd ever stepped on its weird, warm hand... wait. Warm.

He looked back at the face, just long enough to see the half-rotten head open its one eye and stare with a yellow, bloodshot eye. There's no way that thing is still alive. Its jaw started to twist under the dirt, making the very visible tendons around the exposed bone still jutting out of the soil start to twitch and bunch. It's not alive. It's a trick of the darkness. A figment of my imagination. All over, its body was contorting unnaturally as if it was literally trying to dig itself back out of the dirt that it'd spent so long trapped inside. Whatever it is.. I'm not sticking around to find out.

It felt like the ground was moving again. Just like before, on the ledge, only now it was everywhere. Every step he took made the Aperture itself shudder. Like it was simultaneously collapsing down towards the endless depths below, and rising up to swallow Archailist whole at the same time. Paranoia. The man, woman, thing, whatever it was he'd left behind was still watching. He could feel its eye staring into the back of his head, constantly. Even when he turned back around and looked at its remains in the distance, head looking the other way, the feeling persisted. Trickery. It was just like the Hollow of Odraz, but oh-so-much more.. everything.

There was no simple escape this time. No going back. No door he could push through and escape, make it all go away. There wasn't even a ladder he could climb any more. Leth's light was fading rapidly, slicing away whole portions of the ground into a void-like darkness. Soon, there'd be nothing again. He'd have to wait for Syna's light instead. If it could even reach this far down. Just a little more. He needed to keep moving forwards but the path ahead, following another one of the broken-down blocks that could still stand, was overshadowed by something high above and now he couldn't even see the footholds anymore. Come on! There was nothing to fear. He'd seen it just ticks earlier; nothing was there, nothing could be there now. But when he set his foot down in the shadow, it felt very, very alive. Warm and wet. Something brushed against his leg. This wasn't just some figment of his imagination, some random hallucination like before. When he recoiled and stepped back, viscous and translucent liquid had travelled in a very specific, winding path around the back of his calf.

"No no no no no no, not real, not real, not real, not real.." The moon was disappearing. Nothing the way he'd come except for the dead monk. Nothing ahead but eternal darkness. "My hands are shaking, my mind is--!" No. The last sliver of the moon slowly tracked across the star-covered sky, stealing away with it the last layer of protection that separated the Pycon from the void. All at once his senses were removed, barring one. All at once, there was this feeling. Difficult to describe, and even then, words could never come close. Because it wasn't just a physical feeling, on his body. It wasn't just everywhere, it was everywhere.. on his nexus and in his nexus at the same time.

It was like.. like being submerged in warm water. Thick water that stuck to his body in odd places. Snail slime? Somewhere close, but at the same time, nowhere close to the sensation. Like a sponge, he was soaking in it. Being filled by it. Even when he was full, it kept filling, until he was a balloon, only sinking into the ground.

Then nothing.

by **Archailist** on January 13th, 2016, 10:06 pm

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

Lhex. Dira. Kihala. Sylir. Someone. Anyone. Help.

...

There was no telling how long it took before he next woke up. Wild hallucinations had wracked his nexus to a point far beyond even his own understanding. Could have been a few chimes. Could have been a few days. He felt hungry, one way or another. Surprisingly dry, too.

He was standing on the tip of a sharp jut in the wall, looking out and down towards the middle of the Aperture. Couldn't remember why or how he was there. Things seemed better not knowing. Wait, how did he know? Oh, there were lights now. Not from Syna, or from Leth; the sky above was as black as the gaping hole below without even the stars to guide his twisted sense of direction. Faint blue lights floating in the air around the hole like dandelion seeds caught in a faint updraft, bobbing up and down. Seemingly random yet never moving too high or too low; never too close to the edge, nor too close to the middle. Just drifting around the edge, at the corners of his vision.

If there were true words that could describe what happened next, Arch didn't know them.

Nothing happened, but it still appeared. Archailist didn't move and nor did it. Somehow, though, the space between them just seemed to collapse on itself; and then, it was there. This mass of black shapes. It wasn't even one piece that others were attached to; there was nothing uniform, nothing symmetrical about the.. the thing. Unnatural, ungodly.. wrong thing. A jumbled mass of pieces and shapes twisting and swivelling off one-another in ways that no creature should ever replicate. But that wasn't even the worst part, no.

It wasn't just that it shouldn't be there - and every part of Archailist at that one moment was screaming at the top of its lungs that it really, really shouldn't be there - it couldn't. It just.. it couldn't. None of the shapes made sense. The sheer size, crammed into such a tiny space, didn't make sense. It's not natural. Gaps opened up between the shapes and more of the black creature seemed to regurgitate out from inside itself, filling the spaces as the edges slid away back into the darkness. It's not right. It's not. Like a ring turning itself inside out over and over again it just went on. No eyes, no mouth, no head, no brain. Contorting in ways he never, ever could have imagined. Is this what a God looks like? The Pycon could feel his own nexus rolling around on the surface of his tongue. It tasted like an acorn. And when he opened his mouth and surrendered himself to whatever fate the squiggle-monster had in store for him, the bluish lights died.

...

Somehow, he made it back to the surface. Though it felt more like the Aperture itself was regurgitating his sunken corpse. There were brief moments of clarity - walking, climbing the ladder, shuffling across a narrow ledge, climbing the face of a wall sunken with plant roots that he'd never seen before. His entire body felt numb from hunger and a pain that no matter how he struggled to soothe, seemed impossible. No matter how much he ate, drank or slept over the next long days. He didn't know how many. Nor did he know how many days he'd spent in the Aperture. Something he never really wanted to find out, truthfully.

The only next moment of true clarity came when he suddenly woke up in bed, breathing heavily and feeling sticky. I need to leave this city. Now.

by **Elias Caldera** on February 8th, 2016, 10:44 pm

Behold, Your Just Reward!

Archailist

Experience and Lore :

Miscellaneous :

Comments :

Don't Forget

Now that your thread is graded, be sure to edit your grade request to reflect as much. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to send me a private message and we'll work it out together.