Dark Fate, Chapter 55 (Patreon)

Chapter 55 – Prison of the Forgotten One

As we stepped into the cave, the whispers in the back of my mind became clearer, stronger. Before, it was an unintelligible whisper. Now, it was more like Gregorian chanting, low and rhythmic, but in no language I understood.

The chanting was like a physical weight on my mind. Each thrumming chorus pressed against me, trying to break me down, trying to break my resistance. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew their intent. They were designed to keep the magic’s chosen prey docile, unresisting. The better to finish them off, somehow.

I didn’t notice the shimmer of magic until I stepped through it. Maybe that was also part of the reason for the chanting? To keep anyone who could resist from noticing a stealthy trap until it was too late?

The magic felt as though I was stepping through a wall of ice water. It was clearly the boundary of a dimensional barrier of some kind, because once I stepped through it, I was no longer in a mere tunnel. Instead of a cave, this was an ancient cavern, too large to be inside the mountain, as it seemed, and the walls had a soft glow to them, illuminating the area, much like certain dungeons did.

Actually, if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that this place was a dungeon. The magic barrier hiding it away, leaving a space that is bigger on the inside certainly fit many dungeons with a more magical style. But the chanting and whispering, trying to draw only certain types of people in? No, that wasn’t a dungeon’s style.

Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t getting a notification from the System for having entered a new dungeon for the first time.

In the distance I saw what looked like a ruined temple, made of marble and carved in the same manner as ancient Greek or Roman temples. Between us and the entrance to the Temple was a paved stone pathway, lined in statues. The statues were frightening, even to me.

Oh, it wasn’t that they showed scenes of terror or anything like that. No, it was the fact that, despite the statues being made of stone, and being immobile, I had the horrible realization that they were carved with non-Euclidean geometry, with only parts of the whole visible to us with three-dimensional sight, which caused the statues to warp and change as you moved. Sometimes they looked like a man, and sometimes a woman. Sometimes it was a beast, and other times a creature that defied even such loose description.

A stele rose before us, made of black, carved obsidian, and upon it there were letters carved in some unknown language. But even as I looked at them, they glowed red, and that red light bathed over us. After a moment, it retreated back into the stele, and the red markings began shifting, until they came to rest in English. This is what the writing said:

Know ye now the words of Mh’yxlex, the Enlightened, who sees through the mists of time, free of the bonds of sanity. Know now the harbingers of the final prison’s fall:

The Fool of Fools shall ignore his advisors, and restore magic where it was lost.

The Cursed Man returns as a Demon Lord, defying Time and Fate themselves, to undo what had been done.

The Sleeping Guardian awakens, and the Prison will call for sacrifice to restore his might.

Blood of magic may restore the sleeper, and weaken the bonds of the prison.

The Demon Lord and his thralls shall enter the Prison, and confront the Guardian.

If the Demon Lord falls, the Prison falls with him. Yet if he triumphs, only delayed is the doom.

For the bonds shall yet hold, until the one who takes up the Demon Lord’s lost Mantle calls forth damnation.

When that happens, all the prison doors shall be open, and that which had been set in place ages past shall come to be:

There comes a day when impurity is born, a secret woman shall mark an age of tragedy and an end of freedom.

When the water rises to the sky, a forbidden relationship shall bring the rise of a new evil.

It shall be on a day when a red child is born, a drunken fight shall usher forth a generation of health and the downfall of two kingdoms.

When the moment comes that the clouds roar with fury, an assassination shall bring forth the destruction of power.

It shall be then, when the Horned One returns, the two faced one shall mark a reunion of enemies and an era of honor.

The day the world becomes shrouded in shadows, a forced marriage shall bring forth a rise of a new god and an age of tranquility.

It shall be then, when the Dark One returns, a pure blood shall usher forth an age of inhumanity and the dawn of evil, everlasting.

But Hope remains, whilst the final bonds remain unsevered!

The Demon Lord, unbound by Time and Fate, should he survive the Sleeping Guardian, may yet sway this path.

The Blood of the Maidenhead, spilled upon the altar, shall open the door to the Pit.

Then, shall the Demon Lord face the Forgotten One. And, in their meeting, the fate of the world shall be decided.

“Gods above and below damn it all!” I cursed as I finished reading the message. I wasn’t a religious scholar, and I wasn’t fluent in insane ramblings from beyond time, but I recognized a prophecy when I saw one! There had been several prophecies made, in the last timeline, before the world fell to chaos. Anyone who had heard the Oracle’s warning before the first invasion would not forget the language of prophecy.

That there was a prophecy at all was troublesome. Getting wrapped up in such things was never a good sign, or a recipe for a safe and easy life. After all, the System didn’t give people prophecies of, “He sat on the couch watching sports, and drinking beer to the end of his days.” No, it was always about something coming, some event that could change everything.

“What… what is this?”

I looked over at Aura, only to see the little Wiccan standing beside me, staring at the stele in rapt awe. I sighed, and said, “It is a prophecy. Which means that this place, this prison, is very, very old.”

The Ranger frowned. “How old?”

I shrugged. “Probably put here before the Dinosaurs got wiped out by the comet that knocked the System offline. Well, if we’re lucky. There’s other possibilities, but, as far as I know, those should be impossible for anyone except beings so far above our level that our gods might as well be ants to them.”

“What possibilities are those, Master?”

I glanced at Talia. She must have been shaken, to call me Master in front of people, instead of Boss, or something similar. “The only other options would be either this is the work from someone in the future, who sent their problems back in time to us, someone from an alternate timeline pushed this place across the boundaries between worlds to our existence, or someone was able to use the System to create this place while the System wasn’t functioning on Earth. Either way, we’re fucked if that happened.”

Sergeant Matthews nodded slowly. “Do you have any idea on what this prophecy might mean, then?”

I nodded once. “Sure. First, we’re likely dealing with some cosmic horror stuff here. Like, H.P. Lovecraft and his mythos kinds of stuff. You don’t go to this much trouble to lock up anything that is less powerful than that, after all.

“Second, the prophecy is clearly in three parts. The first part is basically establishing the prophet’s bona fides. Then you have the section about what happens if the prison is allowed to open. Finally, you have the inflection point, the point where the prophet likely lost track of the different threads of fate, and couldn’t see the outcome.”

I sighed. “So, the first part, the bona fides, establishes the authority of the prophet, this… however the hell you pronounce that. Anyways, the Fool of Fools is obviously the Idiot in Chief that blew himself up and started the Apocalypse. The Prison is probably under that ruin we can clearly see in the distance, and it has been calling magic-users to it, as we’ve seen. If there’s blood sacrifices going on, then it could easily be restoring some slumbering guardian to full strength.”

“But what about the stuff about a Demon Lord?”

“Oh, that’s easy. The Apocalypse turned me into a Greater Demon, and I was formerly under a curse, before I used an artifact to undo that. Which is why I know this is a genuine prophecy, rather than someone with a bit of divination magic.”

Aura gaped at me. “Wait, you went back in time? How? When?”

I shook my head. “Those questions aren’t really important right now. Maybe later, you can ask them again. For now, though, we have bigger things to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“Well, first, we have to find the guardian, and kill it. That probably will be a pain in my ass, but we can deal with that. Whether we can continue on depends on after that, or need to come back another day, depends on you, Aura.”

“M-me? What do you mean?”

I pointed at one line of the prophecy. “The Blood of the Maidenhead, spilled upon the altar, shall open the door to the Pit. There’s probably some ritual site ahead, with a door sealed by magic. So, the question is, are you a virgin, Aura?”

The Wiccan blushed furiously and hid his eyes. The other two men, especially the Ranger, looked like they were about to get up in arms, but I silenced them with a glare. “If we don’t settle this, there’s a good chance that the other person mentioned in the prophecy can come in, and fulfill the bad parts of the prophecy, instead of the ones that give us a chance at winning.”

Still blushing furiously, Aura nodded slowly. “Y-yes, I’m still a virgin. I’ve, um, never done anything like that with someone before. Not with a man. Before the Apocalypse I didn’t really have any luck with that.”

I was about to try and find a classy way of telling her I’d be happy to help her with that while we were unlocking the door later, but a sudden pulse of magic watched over us, rolling down from the ruined temple that I assumed was sitting over the prison. This place, despite being abandoned for however long, clearly still had power. And that surge was almost certainly something waking up.

That was a big problem, since I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be fighting, yet. Looking back towards the temple, I sighed. “Come on. We should try to get a look at this guardian before they get fully awake.”

Rachel frowned. “Are you sure, Master? We could always come back, after doing some research. There might be some lore tomes in the System Shop that would explain what’s going on, and what we could expect.”

I chuckled. “That would be the smart play, Rachel. But I don’t think that is going to be an option. Even if we trusted this prophecy to not go to worst case scenarios if we ran away, there’s the little problem of actually getting out of here.”

I pointed back the way we had come. Everyone turned to look, and gasped as they saw something I had half-expected even before I first noticed it. The tunnel we came in was nowhere to be found.

“Didn’t you notice that the chanting is gone, now? We’re in the trap, so the only way out is through. This place is designed to draw whoever comes in to that ruined temple, and the prison beneath it. That place is the only landmark in this otherwise featureless cavern, besides the stele.”

Hibari nodded. “So, anyone who comes in, will eventually find themselves going there, without the need to waste power on a lure.”

“Exactly. And, chances are that the way out is there, too. Or, at the very least, the way to unlock the way out. But to find it, we’re going to have to go there, and fight our way past this Sleeping Guardian.”

There was no more to be said. I led the way towards the temple, scythe in hand. As I stepped onto the first marble stair, I felt a pleasant warmth run through my body. This place was unholy ground! I was expecting holy, myself, since unholy doesn’t really do a good job of locking up unholy and other planes of weirdness creatures. So, what was really going on, here?

Answers would have to wait, however, as a massive voice rang out in our heads, though it was almost as though someone was yelling at us from inside the temple.

COME, MORTALS! THE FEAST OF BLOOD BEGINS!