Chương 129: Chapter 62: Aelthra, Have Mercy on Us

Magnor, his face tense but his eyes steady, made an energetic gesture with his hand, and Selena, like the others, knew exactly what it meant. Together they advanced, shuffling their feet through the new passageway of smooth stone, fighting to ignore the constant hammering of foreign desires in their minds. It was then that Selena noticed Astrid's erratic behavior. The blonde resonant, usually imperturbable, was walking with her head down, one hand compulsively clawing at the thigh of her trousers.

At first it was a distracted gesture, but it soon became frantic, her nails tearing the fabric and then the skin beneath, drawing somber, red furrows. —Astrid is behaving strangely —Selena said, following the established protocol, her voice sounding flat and professional amidst the whirlwind of whispers. Magnor turned instantly. His large hands cupped Astrid's face, forcing her to look at him. Her blue eyes, normally glacial, were glassy, lost in something only she could see.

Magnor examined the self-inflicted wound, then her trembling hands. There were no questions. His expression hardened with the certainty of the diagnosis. He opened his lips and pronounced a soundless word, a pure and silent verb of healing, woven with the intention to close, to restore, to purge. The wound on Astrid's leg responded instantly. The raw flesh came together, fiber upon fiber, the bleeding ceased, and the skin closed, leaving only a thin pink line, like a memory of minutes rather than a deep trauma.

It was an act of the echo so clean, so efficient, and yet so terrifying in its quiet power. Astrid blinked, as if waking from a trance. Color returned to her pale cheeks, followed by a wave of shame and confusion. —I felt… as if someone were touching my leg from beneath the skin. She stammered, her hands now still but still trembling. —Something was moving, it wanted to get out. I tried to pull it out, but there was nothing… and when I looked up, I only saw fog. A thick, white fog coming toward me.

No one said anything. There was no comfort to offer in that place. Only Alistair, with his serious bishop's face, stepped forward. He pulled out the flask of distilled liquor, no longer just a tradition but a useful antiseptic, and wet his thumb. Carefully, he marked a point on Astrid's forehead, right between her eyes, murmuring with solemnity: —May Aelthra bless your flow, and may everything be restored according to her will. It was a blessing, an anchor of faith against the madness surrounding them.

Astrid nodded slightly, gradually recovering her composure of ice. They returned to the formation. They continued moving forward. The smooth stone of the walls began to change again. First, a dull, rhythmic thudding made itself felt beneath their feet, gradually replacing the murmur of desires. Then, a dark reddish color, like damp rust, spread across the rock. And from that red, living stone, blood vessels began to sprout like spontaneous veins.

Thin and thick, pulsing and gleaming, they intertwined across the walls and the ceiling, throbbing in unison with the now dominant sound: a resonant, deep, and monstrous heartbeat that vibrated through the air and could be felt in their teeth. From the dense darkness, a shadow detached itself. It had no recognizable shape. It was a circular, flat object, about two meters in diameter, made of a darkness deeper than that which surrounded it.

It floated half a meter above the floor, motionless for an instant that felt eternal to them. Then, it attacked. Without warning, solid shadows stretched from the edges of its circular mass, swift extensions like whips that, at the ends, materialized into blades of a blackened, jagged metal. The movement was a lightning bolt of deadly intent. One of the blades drove directly into Alistair's leg, who barely had time to twist away.

His instinct saved his heart, as the blade was heading straight for his chest, but he could not avoid the impact on his thigh. The blade penetrated the cloth, the flesh, and emerged from the other side with a wet, terrible sound. Alistair screamed, a sound muffled by pain and surprise. —Positions! —Magnor roared, already in motion. The giant interposed himself between the circle and the group, his staff spinning to block two of the extensions lunging like serpents.

The impact resonated with a metallic clang that made the air tremble. But a third extension, swifter and more stealthy, slipped past his guard and struck his breastplate dead-on. Magnor's armor rang like a funeral bell, and the force of the impact sent him sliding a meter back, scraping the floor with his soles. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Astrid, her ancient shoes glowing faintly with a pale, bluish gleam that was barely visible in daylight but notable here, became a whirlwind of evasion. She dodged the attacks with supernatural agility, moving with steps so light and quick that she seemed to glide across the floor. The circle of shadow, however, seemed to have a clear objective after its initial attack. Momentarily ignoring the others, it lunged toward the pool of blood forming beneath Alistair's wounded leg.

The bishop, wielding his sword of distorted reflections, turned the pommel with a peculiar technique. For an instant, his entire figure seemed to split, vibrate, and distort in the air, as if he existed in several places at once. It was a trick of light and perception, an effect of his artifact. But it did not deceive the circle. The entity stopped over the pool of blood, and from its dark mass emerged something similar to a mouth or a suction cup.

With a sickening sound, it absorbed the spilled blood, cleaning the floor until it was dry. Fed or satisfied for a moment, its attention turned once more. This time, it fixed upon Selena, who was now the closest. Selena felt the cold of death approaching. There was no time for complex spells, nor for calculating costs. Instinct, once again, took control.

As the dark mass lunged toward her, she turned the bronze ring on her finger, not gently, but with a gesture of desperate will, and from that gesture, light was born. It was not a gradual illumination. It was an explosion. A concentrated beam of pure light erupted from the ring, then expanded in all directions, not to illuminate the room, but to strike directly at the center of the shadow circle like a miniaturized, focused sun. The impact was instantaneous and catastrophic for the creature.

A sharp, unnatural shriek, which no human being should be capable of hearing, tore through the air. It was a sound that made ears bleed and entrails twist. The shadow began to burn beneath the light, but not with fire. It disintegrated, pouring out thick, black smoke that released a nauseating stench, indescribably worse than rotting flesh; it was the smell of darkness itself being annihilated, of corrupted nothingness burning away.

The circle contracted, twisting in the air, its shape losing definition until, after a full minute of agony beneath the implacable light, it vanished. It left no ashes, no trace. Only the tranquil light of the ring filling the space where hunger and violence had previously been. The silence that followed was different, relieved yet tense. The light from the ring softened, returning to its state of ambient illumination, but the air still smelled of ozone and that metaphysical rot.

Then, Alistair's voice sounded, weak but clear, from a corner where his artifact had partially hidden him: —Magnor… could you heal me, please? I am to your right. The giant, catching his breath, nodded. He searched with his gaze until he located the bishop. Once again, his lips formed a silent word, a command of healing cast across the space. There was no flash, no glow. Only the immediate effect. A sigh of relief was heard from Alistair, followed by the sound of him standing up.

—Thank you —he said, his voice regaining firmness. —I can walk again. The golden light of the ring, serene and implacable, bathed the tunnel of throbbing veins, making the damp blood conduits of the rock gleam with a sickly radiance. Magnor extended his enormous hand to Alistair, helping him to his feet with a care surprising for his stature. The bishop, pale but stable, rested his weight on his newly healed leg, testing its firmness with a silent gesture of gratitude toward the giant.

It was then that Astrid broke the heavy silence. Her voice, normally so controlled and cold, trembled slightly, betraying a crack in her glacial armor. —How much further do we have to go down? —she asked with growing uncertainty. She turned, looking into the darkness that extended beyond the circle of light, where the veins of stone merged with the blackness. Magnor turned toward her, his weathered face illuminated by the golden light that brought out the scars and the deep shadows beneath his eyes.

His answer was not a comfort, but a stark revelation. —I do not know —he said, his tone grave and sharp. —But it cannot be too deep. This… is already the cave. He paused, letting the word carry weight. Cave. Not a tower, not a construction. Something prior, more fundamental. —The part above —he continued, gesturing vaguely toward the ceiling, toward the levels of white sandstone, decapitated soldiers, and cannibalistic libraries. —It was built by Eliud, the first king.

A tower-barracks, a fortress raised with a single purpose: to contain this. To seal the wound. His gray eyes scanned their faces, ensuring they understood the magnitude. —But the corrupt energy of the Void Dimension… is not contained with stone. Year after year, century after century, it took a little of the tower. Corroding its purpose, impregnating its walls, distorting its spaces. The part above… He sighed, a sound heavy with the weight of history. —It is only a lesser essence, a degraded echo of the dungeon.

An intoxicated vestibule. Now… this His gaze encompassed the throbbing walls, the heavy air. —This is the true core of the curse. The original wound. Alistair, who had been reflexively touching his necklace, which was a simple symbol of Aelthra, a tilted pitcher watering a wavy line of earth, nodded slowly, connecting the dots. —That is why there were only remnants of soldiers, mercenaries, people…

at the entrance and the upper levels of the tower-barracks —he said, his bishop's voice recovering some of its liturgical cadence. Magnor nodded, confirming the bishop's line of thought, but Alistair continued. —They tried to contain it, watch it, perhaps even study it. And they were absorbed, transformed into part of it. Perhaps from here, from the original cave… He left the sentence hanging, but its meaning was clear: here, no bodies remain. Only what is left after the body has ceased to be relevant.

He brought his fingers to his lips and then to the symbol, murmuring with a devotion that sounded genuine, not just ritualistic, in that place of horror: —Aelthra, have mercy on us. Give us the strength to return to Your infinite flow.