OOCI feel such shame for taking so long! I kept losing the post or getting my day devoured by visiting relatives. Thus: Extra long, and EXTRA CONTENT! Now with PLOT THICKENER!Both girls were led, albeit in different fashion, through a labyrinth of claustrophobic corridors carved from jagged stone, the air growing damper and unnatural as they descended into the complex. Occasionally, they glimpsed a rough-shod wooden door breaking up the monotony of the barren halls.
It was not long before the chanting Kaie had heard earlier began to grow in volume. Suddenly, the corridors the two women were walking converged, and they found themselves face to face at last. Before them was a pair of rotting iron doors. From the crack between them and the floor, a faint red light could be seen. "You will enter." the cultists said with one voice. The doors swung open.
They revealed a wide, three terraced chamber in the shape of a circle. The highest terrace was empty save for rows of wooden stakes adorned with curious glyphs. The walls were covered in papers and strange, arcane scribbling. On the far side of the room, a massive map of Nyka hung next to one of Mizahar as a whole. Both were dotted with orange pins, especially around population centers and points of food supply.
The second was filled with figures in red, many emaciated, all supplicating towards the center. As the pair was pushed past them, they could see that many had buckets filled with a foul pink liquid.
The outermost edges of the lowest terrace had mystical rings and symbols carved into the stone- the magically knowledgeable would identify it as an eight-circle used for Summoning. The vast majority of the floor was devoured by a huge portal to a barren, lifeless planet. But what had come out of it... It would haunt the duo's dreams.
It almost looked like a gargantuan vermillion worm, tentacled and glistening with ooze. Its entire left half had been blown open, revealing an odd, viscous fluid that seemed to twitch and shift with a strange sentience. Black lines and dots twisted and darted erratically, spelling sentences in scripts long-forgotten by the race of man. The cultists threw the liquid in their buckets onto it, and black steam rose from where it struck the monster.
Kneeling next to it was a woman in gold-trimmed robes of the same brilliant red hue, fawning over the eldritch beast like a runty puppy. Beside her was a child of nine years old clad in the same, trembling and thin, with strawberry blonde hair, a twisted staff and bulging red eyes. Her left palm was bandaged. She looked up at Kaie and Vanari, and said in a shaky voice, "They ar
rive..."