Memories of the Fall

I see thee dread shade, your foul sign upon this hungering dark.

Though your hope was betrayed, to abomination you are wed.

Speak your words, that I might know of your conviction.

Show me your promised kingdom. Your so-called power. Your stolen glory.

This land shall not relent to you, deceiver of hope.

My Lady is with me, her favour upon my arm.

My Lord watches over me, his blessing upon my blade.

I do declare it, that we shall abandon you this day.

Return thee to ruin, on behalf of our generations who fell here.

From, The Matter of Evershire.

X-VII: Lucius Everkind, Emperor of the Imperial Commonwealth, faces the Prophet of the Yellow Mark on the eve of their historic battle before the Gateway to the Perilous Realm.

~ Lin Ling – Ancient Vestige ~

Lin Ling, or at least the part of her trying to hold on to rational thought amid a sea of confusion and rage, was forced to agree with herself that things were now awkward. Despite having known Juni for maybe eight years and Shu for four, the three of them had some kind of invisible wall that was obstructing any form of meaningful collaboration as they explored the area the stele called the ‘High Halls’.

-Really it’s kind of obvious, we are all just insane because of the oppressive darkness and our isolated trauma, the reasonable Lin Ling tried to explain.

-Screw you. They have no understanding of any of what we went through, another voice hissed.

-You think being reasonable is going to help? Another added.

-Stop trying to blame the darkness on your own insecurities.

-Fates take you, you’re the reason I even have insecurities…

And so on…

-If we go that way, there’s a fate-thrashed collapse, we will have to go the other side, she said.

Her psyche was at war with itself. At war over what it could remember. At odds of what it couldn’t. Confused about why it was incapable of remembering…a…a bunch of important stuff.

And now… just angry at everything as a result.

The fact that her psyche was trying to splinter into these different parts, and she now had no reasonable way to stop it, was…. just another source of inner rage, actually.

-Look, we are taking on personalities like this so—

-So I can say that I’ve always thought you were an overanalysing precocious bitch!

-Yeah, shut it.

-Look, clearly there is a deeper problem here than just missing memories?

-And what would you know about that? Are you also a scholar of minds suddenly, voice in my head?

-Who’s the voice! You’re the fate-thrashed voice!

-Yeah, not exactly sane behaviour here mental committee, she snapped at them.

-Shove it.

-You know you would be dead without us.

-I might be dead BECAUSE of you.

-Who is the voice?

-You’re the fate-thrashed voice!

Still, all things considered, she was still alive. The small shard of rationality that was maintaining control over her physical form tried to add as cheerfully as it could. She eyed it warily, in case it also became a raving lunatic moments later. The last two so called voices that pretended to be rational had gone that way.

-Maybe we are already dead, and this is just your mind grasping for a rational exit, another obnoxious voice added.

She ignored that one. It was certainly a vestige of whatever that… that…

-That…

Fates she was even forgetting who was responsible for all this fate-thrashed mess she was in.

-That youth. The youth. Yes, it was the youth.

-Or were there two..?

-Was it even a youth, what if it’s one of Them?

-Or a ghoosty!

-Or was he a prince? Another voice sniggered.

-You wanted him to be a prince, didn’t you, another one leered

-SHUT UP! She hissed, pushing her mantra through her head like a wrecking ball.

The voices scattered, laughing, giggling, sneering and mocking her and it. Evading its clumsy grasp. Her only counter now was to just try and ignore or tune out some of them. If she succeeded in ignoring them for long enough, they lost their personality and just became bad thoughts and even worse ideas. Now if only she could get better at tuning out the more persistent running commentary from the other half a dozen shards that had been with her since before she ever met the person who was probably Juni.

-SHE IS JUNI, she pushed back.

-But you don’t knoooow, the malicious voice whispered.

-You're not even the real Lin Ling, I am, another whispered insidiously.

Exhaling, she tried to turn her view back outwards. Relying on the others while she argued in her head was a bad idea. Given she wasn’t sure how real either of them was…

-Oh for fate's sakes!

“Watch, don’t walk there, there're stairs down,” Han Shu said from ahead.

-Well, if we had gone the other side, and kept on going straight through the halls, we wouldn’t be having this issue would we. And there’s still the collapse, she scowled.

-It's like they just don't care what you say, isn't it?

-They are just ignoring you now, you realise.

-Totally. Who is going to respect you?

-Yeah, like so inexperienced. Duh.

Part of her had a flash of irritation as Juni reached out with an arm to absently stop her from looking too far over the edge. Like she was some small child. Really, though, the flash of irritation was for being reminded that Han Shu was here.

He had recollected his experience in this fate-thrashed hell hole and by the nameless fate, she would shave her head and become a nun before she could reconcile his story to her experience. Apart from the last bit. Part of her was pleased he had nearly died. That was the least he deserved for having such a… such a…

She had met some asshole who tore her mind to pieces, got stuck in a cave half-filled with a sea of corrosive blood, nearly been killed twice by the shockwaves, encountered one, if not two nameless horrors from the deep-

-AND maybe a third. If the glowing undead prince thing we threw the blood over was real and not a figment of our imagination, one of the voices cheerfully pointed out.

She nodded absently, agreeing for once with a voice. It held up her acknowledgement like some lifetime community commendation and started crowing at the other that it was more real.

Juni had apparently fallen into some hell hole, met a bunch of long-dead lizard people in an illusionary moment, maybe narrowly escaped being killed IN the dream, nearly been killed by an ancient horror from the deep immediately after, encountered a small army of terrifying sludge things that spat rocks that exploded or melted, and were maybe able to see the future.

The two of them had nearly killed each other when they first met, and then been nearly killed by….someone, and narrowly….

-I really wish Juni hadn’t talked about that, the strongest candidate for the real Lin Ling muttered darkly from the shadowy recesses of her mind.

It was a miracle they had survived, even though they couldn’t remember half of what had happened there and that left some niggling doubts in her mind, the broken bits of her couldn’t answer or wouldn’t. But there were some very nasty worries in that caged off part of her mind that didn’t want to shift.

Han Shu, on the other hand…

Han Shu had fallen into a lake of priceless earth-core juice, escaped, wandered around lost in the dark for a few days, swum through a large cavern complex where the most dangerous thing he actually seemed to encounter was lash limpets. Found a bunch of ancient vestiges with actual, interesting stuff in them that hadn’t tried to curse him or gnaw his face off.

-Or explode him with corrosive rocks.

Found a mystic sword. Met an ancient cultivation ghost that didn’t try to cheat him, kill him, steal his soul, rip his mind apart or turn him into a slave and generally had seemed like a good guy.

And even when he HAD been chased by some ancient evil from the deep, his magic fate-thrashed sword had just killed them all, locked all the exits and even turned the nameless blessed lights on!

“Watch out, there’s another area of collapse over here, can we jump?” Juni’s voice intruded into her rant, derailing it somewhat.

“No way we can jump that, well maybe you can, but I can’t,” Han Shu’s voice sounded plaintive.

And now both of them were treating her like she was a total moron. She had been aware of the damn collapse ever since they entered the hall, even told them twice that going this way would only mean a backtrack or a stupid jump. Never mind that he was….

“Arrrrrgh,” she ground her teeth and exhaled.

The injustice of the thing was just… Really, she had no words. And. AND—!

-We still dunno if this isn’t another horrible hallucination!

-Yeah, we might be stuck in this hellish dark foooor eeeeevar, another sniggered.

-We could even still be being controlled by that Di… Ji, the most morbid voice chipped in.

-Who even is this [Di Ji] you talk about? Another sniggered.

-Yeah, there is no [Di Ji], stop making up people to rationalise your own stupid problems.

-Next, you will be saying that we aren’t even in here, and you just fell and hit your head.

-What a moron.

“…may-you-be-penetrated-by-a-demon’s-cock-and-be-made-into-a-chattle-of-the-nameless-cursed-mon—”

One of the inner voices of inarticulate rage managed to seize the moment to make itself heard in her mind for a few seconds before she managed to tune it out.

Both Juni and Han Shu were staring at her.

-Oh... I said that out loud, a small part of her sobbed.

She glared at them both and dared them to comment.

Neither did, so she stalked off ahead, in the direction of the actual exit of the room, where they should have gone from the very start. Maybe the next room would have a less destroyed table or a chair on the edge that she could actually kick over. That last hall hadn’t.

~ Kun Juni – Mysterious Vestige ~

Kun Juni watched Lin Ling stalk off ahead of them. Not so far that she would be dangerously distant, but far enough that her annoyance and desire for more personal space was made very clear. She was becoming increasingly worried about her. She spent an awful lot of time muttering to herself. Not to mention the fact that her internal dialogue that was creeping out was on the level of some kind of gu incantation.

The source of the younger girl’s anger was clear, to her at least. It had been a source of some annoyance to her as well when they were listening to Han Shu recount his… experience with this place. However, it wasn’t really fair to compare their three trips through this endless darkness. All of them were individually horrifying in their own ways it seemed.

-Well, at least until Han Shu’s sword turned the lights on, now it's like walking through night fog.

Not that that actually helped. Sure, the light made keeping track of the edges of things, and sudden drops much easier. But it was also dangerous because there had been a few spots where it didn't extend, where the motifs were damaged. Especially on this spur. Somehow it was also making her awareness of the unpleasant feeling that the darkness had reacquired more prevalent. It was the same feeling she had gotten early on in the darkness far below. She had been dimly aware of its returning presence ever since their close encounter with the soul setting spores. At first, she thought... hoped... it was just a side effect of them. But now it was getting steadily… more…

-Steadily more something at any rate.

At times it almost felt like a hand, just behind the back of her head. Poised to pull her into the shadows the moment she lost concentration. Hunger was perhaps the most familiar aspect of it. A madness as well, like that of a starving man, held within it, always distant, but never that distant. It kept making her want to turn around, but whenever she did, there was nothing out of the normal.

But, in the end, they were all still alive, and that was what was important. With life there was hope.

-Probably, her mind treacherously added.

-Oh don’t you start as well, Lin Ling is bad enough.

Yes, they were all still alive. That was an outlook that came with quite a few years' extra experience of life in general over Lin Ling, and even Han Shu. And a better familiarity with the way the darkness treated you down here. She was the only one among their number who had been into the first layer below the valleys more than once.

-You were a member of the Hunter Pavilion before she was even born, her mind added. What do you expect?

She eyed the mental voice, but it still really was just her. Not that she was going to thank it for reminding her that she had almost seventeen years on Lin Ling, and six on Han Shu.

-At least I was blessed with good looks, and physical cultivation will keep me looking twenty until I hit two thousand, she thought wryly.

Schooling her thoughts, hauling them back from that rather self-obsessive thought and chasing them back to the moment, she stared around the hall they were now in. This one was largely empty. They were still going in a straight line, in accordance with her mental map, now they had retreated out of that failed spur. Thankfully, they were also on the ground level. The last one, that was impassable, had been one of the long transverse halls that seemed to run at a tangent to everything else. They were beset by sealed doors to workshops, collapses and disturbingly truncated walkways and holes in the floor.

-When you consider that Lin Ling was promoted young for an eight-star ranked Hunter, even younger than Sana and Arai, who didn’t get that rank until they were sixteen, and joined the Pavilion when they were twelve, at the fifth rank, thanks to their mother and father's teachings….

She was forced to re-engage with her mental monologue briefly as it was running a bit too noisily, to see where it was actually going with this background thought. She hadn’t been properly beset by overactive remnants of her own psyche break since she had her qi completely dispersed by that youth… now would not be a good time for her own 'voices' to recur.

-...Fifteen had been too young, even in this province where the cultivation realm requirements for promotion are waived in lieu of an exam before the grading committee in the Blue Water City Hunter Bureau. Maybe if you go to one of the mid-grade sects you might get cultivators that young doing this kind of thing, but here, she—

-All of them—

She exhaled softly, cursing her stupid thoughts for rambling on like this.

—are simply too young, even now.

Part of it, she was sure, was that she had somehow sensitised her soul in the process of this whole mess. That was a rare by-product of running into serious mental trauma down here. If it was the case, she might well come to look on this whole endeavour as a colossal stroke of good fortune.

-Assuming we survive, a part of her added treacherously, diverting from its own thoughts just to annoy her.

She ignored it, having worked out the point her mind was trying to make to her. Lin Ling was simply too young. Her mind was too malleable, still developing its inner strength. Watching the younger woman mutter under her breath and turn her head this way she sighed. She was really suffering excessively. Not helped at all by side-effects of the same set of reasons it was inadvisable to break through to Nascent Soul before you passed puberty or cross the Immortal Threshold until your mental strength stabilised. That was usually in your early twenties.

These places, the caverns and cave systems below the mountains and northern reaches of the Shadow Forest, south of Yin Eclipse, preyed on the mind as much as the body. Old Ling didn’t let anyone he didn’t think was experienced enough go on those missions. Theirs was the only pavilion that even accepted requests in the depths here, and usually, Old Ling along with some of his old drinking buddies who were not even 'Herb Hunters' but very select 'Mercenary Hunters', or the Beast Cadre took care of them. She was the only one of the current generation allowed to do so without the accompaniment of a senior from the Beast Hunter Cadre. A recognition that even if she lacked the cultivation realm, she had two decades of experience as a Herb Hunter. The only reason she wasn’t a nine-star grade hunter was that one fate-thrashed mission.

She mimed spitting silently in the darkness. Trust this place to remind her of that.

Pausing, she surveyed the path ahead again. Lin Ling was still a few metres ahead. Moving, it had to be said, with unerring accuracy towards the exit. It was almost as if the darkness didn’t impinge her vision at all. She was starting to wonder if her intuition, in the form of some of the earlier, less skittish voices, hadn’t been right, and something more was up with the younger girl.

They made their way across another largely empty hall and a short tunnel with stairs that took them down a level. This new hall was another big crossroads hall. Breathtakingly huge columns into two rows, with the walkways passing between them. Standing at the entrance, she looked over the edge of their walkway warily. They appeared to be at one corner of the hall. The floor was barely visible below them, at least 200 metres down. In the distant gloom, another walkway was just visible to her right. There was also, she realised, a huge gaping space in the middle of the room. A pit into darkness, with what might, if the light lines were any indication, be stairs leading down.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Han Shu hissed under his breath.

“The grand hall within the ruin below South Grove Pinnacle is almost at this kind of scale,” she replied, equally softly.

“This makes the workings in those caves I passed through look like small hovels in comparison,” he added.

“This place is certainly bigger than the South Grove Ruins, though,” she sighed. "Between the workshops and halls you saw, the ones we saw, and the fact that that shaft had at least 30 levels with multiple living halls… not to mention the one where we found you and another besides… If people did live here, it must have had a population in the tens of thousands…”

~ Han Shu – Mysterious Vestige ~

As Juni took over the lead from Lin Ling, he followed after her, looking around at the gargantuan hall and feeling conflicted. When they recounted their own stories of… well… horror, he had rapidly adjusted his perspective on what could be lurking in here. Somehow the improbable spider demon things seemed the most explicable of the things they had encountered between them. Assuming of course that they were not all facets of the same thing, however unlikely that was. His recollections might be hazy, but he was certain whatever had happened to the spider demon creatures was pretty final.

That he had managed to walk through this maze of horror, in no small part due to the burn scar of the divination talisman, with such minimum hassle up until the spider demons was…

-Maybe you should have talked up the exploding mushrooms and the yin poison in the water more.

-Or the hook bats, a voice in his head grumbled.

Lin Ling had certainly been, and still was, it seemed, pissed off about the apparent inequality of their experiences. A part of him did feel that he was getting a raw deal there. Without their timely rescue, he would have died from the soul setting spores. That must have been a parting shot from the spider demons somehow. Even then, he would still have died, had it not been for that fortuitous reward of the Mortal Reformation Pill for his part in the recovery of Ha Yun’s cousin’s body from a danger zone in the western region of the Shadow Forest all those years ago.

On the other hand, a part of him knew he too would be angered to a serious degree if the situation was reversed. It didn’t help that both of them had a thousand-yard stare that made him suspect there was even more, they hadn’t talked about. One way or the other.

-Not that it’s your business, a part of him added. They will talk about it if they want to… When they want. Trying to pry will cause issues, and you know it.

-Until it kills all three of us, the other half of his mind added, the paranoid bit that really didn’t want to die a second time.

The worst bit was that that other part of him was, on some level, right. If they kept going on like this; three individuals, rather than an actual team of cooperating people, they were going to run into real trouble if they did meet something physically dangerous, like some cave swarm. The sword might protect them, maybe not. It hadn’t had any warmth since he was healed, even though he was holding it, still in its scabbard, as they walked around.

The huge hall was impressive. The dim light gave ephemeral suggestions of colour and design that hinted at the marvel it would be if fully lit. Even on this walkway, stretching between the columns, the floor was inset with marble and granite slabs. The pillars that rose into the darkness appeared to have been drawn like glass from the floor and ceiling, joining and coiling to form immense trunks in the style of sweeping trees. Arches of support threading off them to double as branches, so it seemed like the walkway was supported upon a lower level of them.

-So many shadows and blind angles from which death could spring on us unawares, a paranoid voice muttered in his head.

Even though he was alive because of it, it was hard not to feel somewhat… vexed over the effects of the Mortal Reformation Pill. Its effect on his physical foundation was somewhat strange. He had lost all the qi in his body, even taking the strongest of his qi replenishment pills hadn’t done much to solve that. He had also lost all the progress towards Physical Foundation he had built up. Effectively the pill had dropped him back into early Qi Containment but it had not, and this was the most fate-thrashed bizarre part, undone the transformation to his mantra that came with reaching Physical Refinement. That change allowed it to passively cycle itself, and It had guzzled up the qi from several pills and started re-establishing his vital qi within moments of him taking them. It would likely take a week or two, but he would probably return to Physical Refinement without ever having to do anything other than eat qi replenishment pills and some nutrition pills or suitable spirit herbs. Furthermore, he would possibly have even increased the base capacity of his bones to hold vital qi in the process.

He would have to ask his uncle if they got out. ‘Sir’ Han Ran was at the peak of Soul Meridians and was one of the foremost experts in the Han family. Failing that he could try asking Old Ling, the head of the Hunter Pavilion.

“Over here,” echoed through the hall, and he was jolted out of considering his limited physical state by Juni calling him.

She stood about 30 metres ahead of them. The walkway reconnected to the hall here, in a broad half octagon. At its back was a door, sealed off by a carved seal: what looked like a weird cross between a moon rune and a formation? Above the door was written in the same oddly familiar script a series of instructions that suggested Danger, Big Danger, Hall, Open and Learning, which resolved themselves as Scripture Hall and presumably the danger was the ward.

“It’s locked?” he asked, arriving beside them.

“Not for long…. probably…” Juni replied.

Lin Ling arrived moments later.

“Oh… one of these,” she said in a distant manner.

He stepped smartly aside as a jar of something with far too much unconstrained yang qi appeared in her arms. Juni also took a half step away as the luss cloth that Lin Ling was wearing started to smoke faintly under its influence. He watched as Lin Ling put the jar down on the ground and got a torch wrapped in luss cloth out of her talisman and daubed what appeared to be a dark red, internally luminous…

-Is that blood of some yang attribute qi beast? He found himself wondering. Presumably it’s from the qi beast she mentioned in the cavern.

“Let’s see if that’s enough,” Lin Ling finished daubing a large splatter of the blood onto the symbol and stepped back.

There was a grinding sound and the runes all around the door glimmered faintly. The symbol on the door shifted from ‘Locked’ to ‘Authority Accepted’. The grinding continued for some time, with no obvious effect that he could see, then the door wavered and flowed into the frame, leaving an open doorway to enter and a dark tunnel beyond. The surrounding runes all started to shimmer and reorganise themselves.

“Wait…” Lin Ling made no move to enter…

“Those runes on the wall are the same ones as from my… erm… from…” she paused… seeming unwilling to expound.

“—from-when-I-threw-blood-over-the-skeleton-chained-to-the-chair.”

The words came out in such a rush that he had to run the sentence through his mind's eye four times to decipher what she just said.

“Err… Skeleton chained to a chair?”

Juni continued, “There was a prison place… beyond the way we came originally. It's sealed off now. You locked all the doors on that approach to where we found you. When the lights got turned on.”

“Do I want to know why you threw fearfully corrosive blood over a skeleton?” He asked, a touch more offhandedly than he perhaps should have, as he tried to work out what the writing around the runes meant now that it had changed—

A screaming pain suddenly burst through his shoulder, sending him sprawling. White-hot fire raged through his flesh and tried to eat into his arm and burrow towards his heart where it had managed to pass through the damaged parts of his own luss cloth garment. It was only the presence of his circumstances and prior experience with the acid lake that enabled him to not scream in agony as his vision wavered.

He was aware of Juni tackling Lin Ling smartly, going for her arm to stop her hitting him again with the torch, even as Lin Ling twisted away with remarkable agility.

“Stop!” Juni hissed.

*tcch* Lin Ling spat even as she picked herself up and tried to disentangle herself from Juni's grip.

Making a rude gesture with her free hand, the younger girl glared malevolently at him. “You deserved that. You think that monkeyshit joke was funny?”

“We can't even remember a tenth of that fate-thrashed encounter… And you want to treat it…"

"Treat it like its… a… LiKe. It’s A… JOkE!?”Her voice rose to a near scream echoing around the hall.

He was about to explain that he hadn’t meant it quite that way… but Juni caught his eye and made an unobtrusive sign outside of Lin Ling's view ‘

"Shut it. Say nothing, Idiot. She Had. A. Big. Psyche. Break"

Shame flushed through him even as he fought the pain, resisting it as best he could with his mantra.

What DO you say to someone having a mental breakdown in a place like this?

With a gulp, he looked at Lin Ling. Her eyes were… not normal. The whites of her eyes were nearly gone and her eyes were almost glowing… filled with rage, an icy fury that was almost edging towards something more….

Juni, who was still holding Lin Ling, got punched twice, hard, as Lin Ling tried to break free “Let me go. I’m gonna beat some understanding into him!” she hissed.

Juni grimaced, blood trickling from her mouth, shiny in his dark vision, but still kept a hold of her. “Ling, Calm Down. You’re not in control of yourself. He didn’t realise. You never told him about the prison remember.”

“OF COURSE I REMEMBER YOU OLD BITCH!” she roared in Juni’s face…

The echo of the qi infused shout boomed around the hall, seeming to travel quite a bit farther than it should.

She opened her mouth to continue but Juni, faster off the mark, spun her around and, having arrived at her back clamped a hand over her mouth, before spinning Lin Ling again and pinning her against the wall to stop her thrashing like an eel.

The echo of the yell just… kept… going…

And going…

And going…

He tasted blood in his own mouth where he was almost biting his tongue to stop himself screaming in pain. At the same time, a part of him was straining to hear for any odd sounds in the gloom as the last echoes faded away. They hadn’t found anything up here yet but the spider-things had to have come from somewhere, and they had made it up to the top of those stairs before he had, without ever passing him.

Seconds moved by and there was finally silence.

He could only look on as Juni leaned in to whisper to Lin Ling, “Get. A. Grip. Ling. You are the one in control. Got it?”

Her intent infused every word, making the younger woman flinch back, even if her gaze was undimmed.

“There will be things you can hit to your heart's content at some point,” Juni continued “but not us. We are your friends, everyone’s…..”

She paused.

He was sure she was about to say ‘everyone’s had it shit’ or something to that effect.

However, instead, she added. “Everyone’s real. Okay? But whatever he made you think. That’s Not Real. That was just him trying to break you. And. He. Failed….”

Lin Ling just kept staring at her, flatly.

There was a long pause as if Juni wanted to say more but then decided better.

They all stood there for a few moments longer before Juni spoke again. “I’m going to remove my hand now. You won’t scream again?”

The eerie chill was still in Lin Ling’s eyes, but the rage seemed to drain out of her suddenly and she nodded slowly.

“Good… you’re stronger than that... Stronger than this Dark.”

Rather than let her go, Juni enveloped the younger girl in a hug, until finally, reluctantly, Lin Ling returned it.

“And you—” she turned to him and he felt her intent land on him.

-Fates! he winced.

Sweat pooled on his back and all the hair that remained on his arms stood up. He had never realised Juni’s intent was that strong. Even without his cultivation, he suddenly felt like a mouse in front of a very dangerous cat.

Closing his eyes, he could only acknowledge his mistake. He had been aware of her fragile mental state.

Grimacing through the pain, he inhaled twice, just to make sure he didn’t yell. Bowing to Lin Ling, he offered her a formal apology. “I am sorry, Lin Ling, I spoke wrongly and—”

The pain made him grimace for a second before he could continue.

“And didn’t think about your circumstances. I apologise."

Lin Ling stared at him for a long moment before letting out a weary sigh. “I know.”

He blinked, her voice had actually changed tone. Like she was almost a different person from before. Her psyche break was really bad.

“It's not really your fault. It’s just…” she slumped down the wall to sit on the floor while Juni squatted down beside her. “It’s just…”

He grimaced. He knew what she was trying to say somehow... Or was pretty sure at any rate this time

She finally added, as no more than a whisper. “It gets in your head, and then it never leaves.”

“Saying it doesn’t even help does it…” he found himself saying

“No… no it really doesn’t,” Juni said equally wearily.

“So… we avoid that room?” he asked carefully.

“Yes….I—” Juni started to say then trailed off.

He was about to push himself up off his knees when Juni half spun and threw Lin Ling straight at him.

The force of the impact sent them both skidding towards the dark doorway. Qi flared around Juni as she charged after them, tackling both of them and carrying all three across its threshold. He rolled underneath her and the doorway came into view…

The shadow with four clawed limbs hung in the shadows, just off the edge of the platform. In the darkness, beyond the walkway. Five eyes in shadowed sockets stared directly into him.

He tried to continue scrambling backwards but couldn’t. His entire body was limp and numb. A creeping cold clawed at his arms and legs even as his vision started to blur.

The creature… shifted.

It crossed the platform in a way that made it seem like the world was what was moving rather than it.

His mind just refused to process what… it…

It arrived at the doorway and stopped. Four eyes shifted, looking at each frame, while the fifth never left him. Holding him in place, refusing to allow him to look away.

Two more of the shadowy things rose up over the edge of the walkway behind it, drifting forward in an eerie fashion. They had no eyes, just shadows. Shadow within shadow.

It moved forward, towards him, even as he felt something grasping the back of his collar and dragging him roughly along the floor, into the tunnel, slowly away from the shadow.

It drifted out of the shadow, shadow revealed shadow, a lizard-like creature with pallid skin, and a robe made of… skins!?!…

Yellowed faces stared back at him. Myriad eyes welcoming him, a hundred voices whispering to him… Its eyes… like the deep void beyond the stars devoured him, even as something touched his mind, calling to him.

He was dimly aware that it was moving forward, through the doorway. Two of the clawed arms stretched out, making contact with the walls, scouring out the stone. Peeling it away like rotted wood. Its hideous visage opened wide, revealing a toothy maw that held just more… maw. Other arms scraped the ceiling and its floating limbs sank their claws into the floor.

Inexorably it started to move forward, even as whatever had grasped him from behind dragged him into swirling darkness.