NOVEL NEXT 201. The Straddler of Worlds
201. The Straddler of Worlds
Realgar had gone right back to yelling at Trav, but Serac had stopped listening. Indeed, she tried her darnedest to shut off all senses other than sight and ripples.
The hyper-focus, boosted again by her 'oneness' with her own soul, helped paint a barely legible picture. It was muddled, like something you did or didn't see in a dream. But right now, it was her only lead, and she followed it with the intensity of a determined hunter.
Then the picture nearly got away from her, like it'd suddenly sped up. She had no choice but to break into a run herself, the better to chase the receding waves.
"Sister Edin? What do you think you're doing?"
Realgar followed, spraying his pissy attitude into the ripples. Serac continued to ignore him, now out of necessity. It was all she could do to keep up with the ripples. As the ripples sped back up the hallway, they jerked violently, side to side and up and down. Almost like the hallway itself moved with the waves.
"Deacon! I bid you in the name of the Keeper, stop and answer me! Now, more than ever, we Templars must act as one."
"We can still do that." Serac was annoyed into spraying a pissy response of her own. "Except now, I'm taking the lead. You can follow or not; up to you."
Something roiled deep within her chest. The mad cackle of a shadowy, impish creature. For one fraught moment, it felt as though her unified soul might split again, and forcibly at that. But the moment passed quickly—warning rather than real consequence.
I just nearly Breached my [Oath], Serac realized after the fact, breaking out in cold sweat. At the very least, I just said 'no' to a direct order. The saving grace is Realgar didn't offer me anything worthwhile to say 'yes' to.
Regardless, the moment of truth drew near, as the ripples led Serac all the way back to the slightly askew elevator. She stopped to examine the deserted cage and its mangled doors. It was unchanged from when the Wayfarers had earlier made their hasty exit. At the very least, no soul had passed through here a second time.
But the sensation was unmistakable. Serac's horns shuddered one last time as a dense whorl of ripples danced around her body. The same ripples then seeped through the cracks and into the elevator shaft. So, something did pass through here. Just not on this side of the world.
"We have to follow them."
"What?"
Serac turned and fixed Realgar with an even gaze. The purple-robed man was slightly out of breath and visibly flustered. A far cry from his usual, manicured demeanor. He was also the only Templar to have followed her to the edge of the corridor.
"What happened to Trav?"
"Forget about him," the Viceroy said coldly, regaining some of his composure out of sheer anger. "Right now, he's of no use to anyone."
That bad? What the hell did [Nightmare Stripes] show him?
"Well, either way, we need to head down this elevator shaft and follow DREAMPROWLER. It's still here. We can catch it."
For a second, Realgar merely stared in silence. His expression too had settled into something remarkably even-keeled. Skeptical, perhaps, but not downright disbelieving.
"How do you know this?"
"I can ripple-read," Serac stated as a matter of fact. Then, upon seeing the blank look on the Mriga's face, added, "A trick I picked up from my time in Pretjord. You might not believe this, but the skyveils are just dripping with signals from the other side of the divide. And based on those signals, I can say with confidence DREAMPROWLER ran all the way back here before going down the shaft. So, if we still wanna catch it, we should follow it."
"Even if what you say is true, why would it then come back to our side? It's made its escape. Wouldn't it simply hide in the Night, safe from retribution?"
"Well, besides the fact it's literally our only lead right now," Serac continued, so calm and collected as to almost surprise herself—at least one half of it, "DREAMPROWLER's illusions held some clues as to what's happening on the other side. Remember those friends I'm looking for? I've reason to believe they're getting up to their usual mischief 'over there'. All good things for us, I'm sure, and I mean to see it for myself."
More silence. Serac could see Realgar's gears turning, but the leader of [the Herd] wasn't so easily convinced. She shrugged.
"I'm going down there no matter what. You can follow or not; up to you."
"We don't have much time," Realgar argued. "Sister Hanafin's [Balm] won't last for much longer. If we're still out here when the effect runs out—"
"Well then, guess we better hurry."
Serac held her gaze. Realgar stared back in earnest consideration. It occurred to her this was only one of two occasions where the haughty Viceroy had looked to her as an equal. The other time had been back at the refectory, where she'd 'let slip' her third entity. Perhaps, in some sense, this was an exact repeat of that situation. As of this moment, [Anointed] as a creature of the Gloam, Serac and her third entity were one and the same soul.
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Eventually, Realgar pushed past her by way of a wordless reply. He lowered himself onto the stone floor, looking a little undignified as he crawled through the gap and into the elevator. Serac followed suit, but not before allowing herself a private smirk.
Silence continued through the rumbling elevator ride. Serac relaxed and leaned against a wall riddled with bullets, hoofprints, and claw marks. Realgar fiddled with the collar of his robe, occasionally cutting uneasy glances in Serac's direction.
All the way down to Floor 20. The Viceroy's original plan was back in play. Just not in the way he'd foreseen, not even with the help of his omniscient Keeper. And as soon as the elevator stopped, Serac's intuition was proven correct.
By then, the ripples had settled, too subtle for a reader of Serac's limited skill and experience. But she didn't need them. For whatever creature had passed through here recently had left plenty of signs of a more traditional variety.
Multiple sarcophagi had been knocked adrift from their slots, now scattered on the floor as cracked stone and exhumed cadavers. Machete-sized claws had ripped through them both: signs of madness with no outlet save violence.
Half of Serac boiled with fresh anger, while the other half lusted for the prospect of confronting the madness. Compared to 'them', Realgar's reaction was outwardly muted. But the Mriga couldn't fool the ripples, which roiled anew at a surge of primal emotion.
As the pair followed the tracks to their inevitable source, Serac summoned the presence of mind to talk strategy.
"Don't think your time-related tricks work on DREAMPROWLER anymore. I think it's somehow found a way to adapt."
"I've noticed."
"Sooo… for this fight, are you gonna be anything more than a 'light source'? It's just I've never seen you carry a weapon. Can you fight without one, or—?"
"Worry about yourself, Deacon," Realgar snapped, back to his usual haughty self. "Just because I've chosen to linger on my Path for the sake of [the Herd], it doesn't mean I've ever strayed from it."
Both halves of Serac smirked at this. This was what she liked about Wayfarers. She'd met all kinds of personalities, some easier to work with than others. But when push came to shove, every Wayfarer showed flashes of how they'd broken free of their Anchors in the first place.
The pair made it to the circular stone door at the end of the corridor. As expected, DREAMPROWLER had already been, as evidenced by great chunks of [Tiger Maul]'d stone. Beyond the collapsed door stretched the pitch darkness of the sarcophagus-shaped mass grave, recently cleared out of its resident seven sins.
The forced entry was a good sign. Just as the Viceroy had predicted, DREAMPROWLER and its Oathkeeper had no way to [In/Excise] this far underground. The beast was well and truly trapped inside the giant sarcophagus—as long as Serac and Realgar were up to the task of keeping it there.
The pair stepped through the rubble and into the room. Realgar immediately channeled on [Dusklight]. Evidently, he wasn't above acting as a light source on top of whatever he still kept up his sleeve.
At first, however, [Dusklight]'s eerie umber glow did nothing to clarify the situation. For as far as Serac could tell, the room was as empty as it was silent.
How could that be? Did DREAMPROWLER's Oathkeeper manage to [Excise] it back to the Night after all? But if that were the case, why had it come through here in the first place?
As Serac stepped deeper into the room, however, she did become aware of some kind of presence. Just not a visible one. Could it be readable then? She concentrated again on her not-so-trusty horns, sifting the stale, ancient air for signs of fresh malevolence.
It didn't take long to find one. But hang on… Was this what she was looking for?
These ripples were a discrete collection: traceable shapes rather than lapping waves. And they didn't so much roil as float in place. Almost as though they'd been waiting for someone to read them in their entirety.
Serac was confused for several reasons. Firstly because the ripples contained scarcely any trace of the madness and violence she'd expected to find. And secondly because, instead of fur, claws, and shadows, she saw…
A face? Except it wasn't. Not really.
The outer edges traced an angular shape that might resemble a skinny Mriga. But the thing had no antlers, no ears, no hair, nor any features that made a face, well, a face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Only a formless, definitionless nothing where a face should've been.
Nothing Serac had ever experienced could help her comprehend what she was reading. In her desperate search for any defining feature to latch onto, her senses eventually grasped at a small, spherical object that sat centrally, just above the faceless void—in the approximate location of a 'forehead'.
It was a gemstone: deep-blue flecked with fool's gold. Lapis lazuli. So small as to be nearly indistinguishable from the void, but it was there. And for a Rakshasa with no other way to understand what she was seeing, it served as an 'eye' for her to meet with her own gaze.
Serac gasped and shuddered all over. The realization rocked her with the force of its implications.
A faceless face. A piece of jewelry that was the closest thing to an eye. Serac had met their kind before, at least twice by her count. Which was twice more than she'd cared to. For this collection of peaceful ripples was the face of a—
Krriiinnnnggggg…!!
Serac winced in pain as a strange, high-pitched noise filled the room. Yet the noise wasn't exactly 'strange'. She'd heard it once before, back on the pink desert above Laceration Gorge. Back then, the noise had heralded the arrival of a—
An explosion of shadows. The ripples, along with the faceless face they'd traced, dissipated in an instant. The giant sarcophagus of a room, once so empty and silent, filled once more with the essence of its resident mad beast.
"Ready yourself," Realgar spoke, startling Serac with the presence of another soul right beside her. The Viceroy's tone betrayed only his controlled irritation—no indication he knew anything of his close brush with a Deva.
Whoever that faceless creep was, they'd only meant to reveal themselves to me. But something tells me I'm not the only Wayfarer they'd had recent contact with…
Indeed, as the surging shadows coalesced into a physical being, Serac's intuition was once more proven correct. For the shadow-furred tiger that stood before her now had undergone a clear transformation, touched as it'd been by a higher power.
[Designation: DREAMPROWLER—Straddler of Worlds]
[Aberrant Race: Paradox Incarnate]
[Aberrant Class: Dungeon Boss]
[PRIMAL Instrument: SCALPEL]