Chapter Text
I'm a 15 year old moon whistle, returning from a dive with Ozen testing to see if I'm ready to become a black whistle. It has been a couple months since my attempted suicide. I'm still counting the days in a disoriented hollow blur.
I'm following behind Sovereign, limping really. Something in my leg twisted wrong fighting on the icy terrain of the updraft wasteland. I've gotten skilled, my relic pickaxe was strong enough to defeat the crimson split jaw. But even helping me carve away the creature's corded muscle to reach it's stomach, my Sovereign has been quiet.
Lightstones lit the windows of Seeker Camp far above us. Each room is a slightly different shade of light. I can pick out Yelme's room by the blueish look of my fish filled lightstone. He takes it for reassurance when he's anxious about me. The same way can play with his collection of 1st layer boob stones under his bed with his p*rn.
On the gondola I dare to rest some of my weight on the rail. I feel the Immovable Sovereign's gaze towards me but not on me. It was understandable, she'd had to protect Lyza and the curse repelling vessel with Riku in path of the unheard bell expedition she'd dragged me back through. I feel the tremor in my hand. I'm in a bad way.
Zappo locks the gondola in place, looking through me as well. He's probably just high or groggy, he usually does mornings in the observatory. Marulk isn't around to welcome us back. He's off doing rescue work for the guild more and more and the place is so much darker without his smile.
My Sovereign walks past Zappo and heads down the hall in the direction of the stairs up to her chamber. We usually do certain things after enduring the 4th layer curse together. I'm much too weak even with the prospect of her relics against my bare skin.
I'm a mess and my stomach is churning from the curse I head away down to the relic storage room with the long sink. When I'm done vomiting I realize my nose is bleeding. The drops are too thin, twisting apart in the warm water right away.
I can see the tendons in my hand clearly like how Ozen's are. She has no skin there, no fat, its all worn away. My pack with food and water is thrown carelessly all the way back by the door. I'm on my knees and my head is spinning.
I think Sovereign's test went badly. I fish in my pockets for energy rations or snack bars. All I have is a stress ball relic, the only thing in the crimson splitjaw's stomach.
I collapse. I know to faint on my side so I don't drown on vomit in my sleep.
…
I have no memory of this.
Yelme's shame as he finds my unconscious body beside the wood sink.
I'm getting used to the emotional background noise, the same way he can grasp my self loathing. How as a rising moon whistle at Ozen's side, completely on track to reach or exceed the Sovereign of Annihilation, I still felt like enough of a burden to try to end my life.
I tried to do the right thing, he thinks. His agonized eyes looking up at me through the monsoon rain out on the suspended footbridges. When I tried to run away with him before Ozen made up her mind about making him one of the Subterranean Bandits. Is he dead? Am I to become the Oasis Sovereign?
I'm hesitant, this feels like a violation when so much has already been taken from him. I tug his limp body against my chest. He's breathing, shallowly. The relic washing sink is splattered with blood. The Immovable Sovereign could be cruel. This was a bad way to die. He doesn't have any thousand man wedges that would make him able to regenerate the blood lost to the 4th layer curse fast enough.
He curls slightly to the warmth of my body. His sluggish heartbeat normalizes to match mine. Exhausted eyes open as I hold him tighter, “Hey the way you look at Marulk. Why won't you look at me like that.”
I had no way of knowing Aki was thinking of Ozen and Zappo's distant expressions to welcome him home.
The naked loneliness in the teenager's tone. I can't explain we treat Marulk like that because he was to be our treasured sacrifice. I treasure Aki as well. I want him to be mine through however many centuries and whatever torture the 6th layer holds.
For him to stop clutching that old red whistle looking sadly towards the bottom of the abyss. He's not the child I couldn't save anymore.
I kiss the barely conscious boy roughly. His saliva tastes metallic mixed with the sweet rot of muscle breakdown. His dazed smile with a thread of saliva between us.
“Of course I love you both Aki.", I kiss his forehead and cradle him against me so I can carry him.
By the time we reach my room he's asleep again. He rouses enough to be a little help getting off his raiding armor and undersuit. He sighs at my lips against the burn over his chest. I don't want to be this close to his red whistle though.
Underneath me Aki holds on to the collar of my shirt when I try to pull away. I go ahead and take it off. This is getting dicey, it hadn't really been necessary to strip him naked. Ozen had been watching him closely enough to know if he had immediately life threatening wounds. It was always reassuring to have our skin pressed together though. How Riku's slightly too large short white dress would bunch up as he slept against me when he was a child.
He's barely conscious, he won't remember this. He'll find out if he's to become my white whistle. But what's the harm in having sex with him if he's about to die. If I can't have him as my lover, I want him to always know. How much I treasure him.
I loved scouring the 4th layer for him after he disappeared. Pain or death meant nothing in comparison to the chance to see him again. I could finally live without fear. Day after day winding deeper into the abyssal rainforest, following game trails no raider had ever dared use before. Sleeping in stone ruins distinctly not sized or organized with humans in mind. Waking to the dew dripping on my helmet from roots of trees both growing into and suspending everything far from the bottom of the 4th layer.
I remember the way his eyes lit up in the watery pink light of Terminal Pond every single time we went. I could feel that wonder again. How badly I wanted to take his courage, his ambition for myself.
“I'm so proud of you Aki, you worked so hard.”, I stroke up his inner thigh and watch his co*ck twitch, “Get on your knees for me, I'll be gentle."
He's so exhausted it takes my help to get him in position. His sigh as I stroke his side is lovely. He's lost too much blood to get hard but he still presses into my touch when I grasp his co*ck.
I'm being cautious with the gentle knock relic. Tendrils carefully press deeper inside him, letting me feel for curse damage. It's not usually this area. Raiders who got internal bleeding where it could lead to sh*t contaminating their blood supply did not live long.
He moans and presses back, “Isn't the 4th layer curse thrilling?"
Right, he's kinda insane from getting praise primarily through his ridiculous pain tolerance and how much he loved sparring with Ozen, “You're just used to her f*cking you down there."
“She teases too much. She likes changing the texture of her relics inside us both.”
The dild* he's talking about did feel wonderful. When I was old enough not to just be scared and hurt by her advance, “You just want me to f*ck you?", nuzzling his neck I'm partly making sure the effect of our life frequency matching is still strengthening his heartbeat. You'd better see me in your head instead of finishing thinking of her like you do messing around with Marulk.
“Yes.", he sounds breathless.
A tendril of my relic finds some more lube under my bed. He's all warm and slippery, with the right mood it could feel like a girl's. Hookers were awfully lonely though. This was a person who loved me, wanted to come home to me. He wanted to walk to the edge of the world at the altar in the 5th layer with me. Another tendril coats my dick so I can keep stroking his back. His thigh. I want to memorize every scar and detail of his slight frame if he really has to be taken from me to save us all.
His stifled gasp against the pillow as I enter him. It's not really thicker than the tendrils of my relic, but those were far more soft and yielding against his muscle. Marulk is more reactive but Aki's shivering with pleasure is lovely. He's been down here all this time, he hasn't had many partners. It's not that difficult to find male prostitutes on the surface but he's been disinterested. It's a shame Nanachi got to do this to him before I had the nerve to.
His insides are getting sloppy with my pre. It's so hot. I've wanted this for so long.
I try to focus on the sketches of the 4th layer maps that decorate my wall. The pain of the curse. Not working.
He whimpers, his insides tightening as his cum leaks over my hand. His soft co*ck twitching as I squeeze him. I stop holding back and thrust more roughly to ride out my own climax. It's possible to feel how much is coming out of me with how his body is relaxing back into sleep.
Aki moans softly as I pull out of him. He's curled on his side, asleep before I can clean us up. I find a rag to squeeze the last bit from myself. Aki doesn't react again pressing it between his legs. His pale skin is flushed all over. He's too tired to really move but he still presses his cheek into my blanket, smiling.
I comb my fingers through his hair lying next to him. His condition is more stable than I'd feared. I probably should've been focused on getting some food and water into him instead of... This.
The clarity hurts. He's passed our mentor's test. I don't know if he's genuinely determined to live now. He seems to feel safe with her, pushing himself past any reasonable limits trusting she'll help keep him from death. He has been very clearly suicidal the entire time she's known him.
A pair of 12 year old boys set out to reach the bottom of the abyss together. One child had a very powerful relic with undefined drawbacks. Somehow this red whistle had managed to make a relic hatchet. One was a hunter gather child who managed to be completely at home in the abyss. He didn't recognize a torrential downpour from both above and below as any kind of danger. Being soaked in terrible visibility doesn't limit his ability to sense the inbyo or other genuine threats to them. Clearly they had no place on the surface, so they belonged with the good for nothings in the Subterranean Bandits.
Only the albino child arrived in Seeker Camp as a blue whistle. He was attacked by foreign raiders. Limping and with serious defensive wounds was a terrifying combination. His wrists are injured from binding it's not clear how long ago, his neck is badly bruised. He hasn't noticed the bit of brain on the sleeve of his leather reinforced raiding gear.
He's already had to kill, so there's less resistance inside him to being trained to fight foreign raiders.
I stroke his cheek until my hand rests on his neck. He will likely kill me as his white whistle. He's very weak, I could kill him quickly.
It's surprising to me. That I don't feel disgust at the idea. I collapse next to him and bundle us close together under my blanket. He won't try to kill me soon. I'd take just a year.
For a year, a lifetime, or several lifetimes, let's carve a life we'd want to live from this place.
...
Trudging through the 5th layer snow, Yelme and I come upon something strange. In a rocky area with only thin layer of ice, a small field of eternal fortunes grows. Following Nanachi's directions exactly, we'd avoided the curse so far. It had been hard to convince them we didn't need them to guide us. I could be cowardly too, I didn't want to face them if there was potential for me to become a sacrifice.
Yelme pushes me back. Attached to his back belt loops his gentle knock relic creates thin tendrils that prod the area ahead of us. An invisible dome. The tendrils quickly locate a door and open it. A circuit crackles for an instant as the door closes behind us. A dark metal sphere covers us for an instant before the timeless overcast purple sky is above us again. Just as Nanachi described, a cave is concealed by the dome similar to the armored elevator used by the Sovereign of Dawn to transport hundreds if not thousands of children.
I try to nudge the pleasantly neat edge of the higher snow on the outside. My foot hits the invisible metal but I can't perceive the space it takes up. I can't see the curse like Nanachi can, or Prushka with her relic goggles. Curse altering relics are he speciality of the Sovereign of Guidance.
This cave system had been his base and was currently his apprentice Prushka's.
Yelme exchange glances and advance into the cave. Dozens of portraits of children watch from the walls made up of surely every race in the world. There are even a couple who look like I would've without my albinism, thick straight flowing dark hair and warm brown skin the shade of coconuts or Nanachi's fur. The scattered adults seem to be the pale serious high cheek boned race that Prushka and her Mom, Svetlana, came from. Possibly the impoverished far northern country that Nanachi described as their former home.
I'm shoved down and against the wall by Yelme's relic as he flings himself to the other side. The earsplitting crash of metal against stone as Prushka's harpoon grappling hook leaves a crater where he stood.
Yelme's eyes widen and he pales. Her weapon retracts of its cord of braided metal that doesn't seem to thin as its stretched. Yelme is clutching a hand over his mouth to keep from being sick.
Two sets of footsteps.
“Hi Prushka!”, I call down the tunnel lit with bright fragments of 5th layer lightstones.
Prushka is grinning, her weapon is still in her hands as she crosses her arms in irritation. Her neck sits a conch shell white whistle, “My name is Prushka the Sovereign of Illumination.”, the smooth lines of her whistle play perfectly with her cascading waist length white curls flecked with green. The motif of her sweater with the skis is obscured by a black kudara fur coat, “Nanachi helped me set up this place to move into after I became an adult. She knew about the f*cking doorbell.”
Nanachi wasn't above skipping that detail to annoy Prushka. Nanachi disliked Prushka. Prushka had been concealing she had a white whistle. Nanachi absolutely knows who Prushka's white whistle is.
Tiarre's bright laugh as he comes to stand beside her, when he speaks his voice is still breaking at 18. He's only barely taller than me, the same height as when he went on his last dive. This is much more obvious to be now than when we met when I was deep in fever. We're adults but he and I are small, “Sovereign dont be rude, I've been waiting for these guests for a long time.”
Tiarre is in basic leather armor, his relic hatchet attached to his waist. His eyes are still solid indigo with yellow pupils making the relic that sustains his body blatant. His anxious smile betrayed his absolute joy, “I've missed you Aki.”, said the boy I attempted to go on a last dive with 6 years ago.
“Hey.”, Yelme pointed shakily at Prushka, “I don't care if you're actually the Sovereign of whatever. I'm sure Bondrewd had a spare kid you could use.”
He took an unsteady breath.
“But that's Reg's arm that you made into a weapon. Tell me the truth. Did Riku really survive and become the Sovereign of Children.”
Prushka doesn't look shocked, which is shocking, “Yes.”, she said, her voice not giving away any of her feelings, “The foreign raider stowaway became her white whistle and she descended in the eye. It was the only time I've ever seen it descend into the whirlpool. Sovereign Wakuna was no longer recognized by his white whistle and had to use his submarine.”
Yelme still looked wary. Tiarre takes Prushka's and which I notice is trembling slightly. Jealous of Riku. Angry at Wakuna for his abandonment. Had Yelme's insult to her white whistle actually struck a cord?
Tiarre continues, “As one of the Praying Hands, I'll vouch or her that the others in the Sovereign of Dawn's final dive team saw her pass through the holy barrier into the Altar of No Return. The massive eye accepted her role as a greater sacrifice in departing to the 6th layer.”.
He is clearly describing a 12 year old girl's suicide as one of the most joyous occasions he could imagine. I looked at my friend dubiously but his words were heartfelt. There was a reason the Subterranean Bandits didn't interact with the Praying Hands much. The abyssal faith was common and it was normal for most delvers, even red whistle children to describe their return to the bottom of the abyss on their death as a neutral or even happy thing. The Praying Hands were cultist lunatics who regarded that sacrifice as outright blissful. They all spoke in eeriely similar turns of phrase and were as prone to evasion and lies as redirection as my Sovereign herself.
Yelme speaks first, “I'd be more reassured without the cultist bullsh*t Tiarre.”
Prushka snaps at that, “Oh come on, the Immovable Sovereign's polyandrous cult of personality wants to judge us on what to believe about the abyss? Dying in service of humanities progress is the greatest achievement any of us could hope for. It's just in the abyss we can be together an eternal adventure until our souls are chosen to dive again.” she calms and returns her weapon to her belt.
Some of my fearlessness did come from my and Tiarre's old promise to be twins so we'd be reborn together. We did all have wild things we held to for comfort.
Yelme takes my hand and we go hesitantly behind the two followers of the radical abyssal faith deeper into the base. We didn't need to fear losing our souls to the abyss. Ozen's training had hardened our minds. We just had our faith our souls would return to her and the Curse Repelling Vessel. She was stronger than anything that could break us.
What we saw next was enough to shake both of us though. In a wide open cavern lit by relic lasers bouncing around waist height by mirrors, partly concealed by a valley of eternal fortunes, lay dozens of corpses. But instead of regular rot, the room had the alcohol scent of controlled decay. Mixed into the ringing of the relic lasers we could hear their breathing and the buzz of so many amaranthine deceptors. More than half the bodies still had their masks without holes for the eyes or mouth that the Praying Hands wore.
Yelme hugged me around my shoulders and pulled me back into the tunnel we'd come from, “Prushka we don't have your vaccine.”
She seemed to remember something as they entered, “Tiarre did you finish taking temperatures and moving them for bedsores before you came with me?”
“No Sovereign, I can now.”, he's smiling as if the field of suffering people isn't a chore anymore taxing than dishes. He notices our fear, “Don't be alarmed Aki, they've been paralyzed from the neck down. They're not suffering too much for this.”
Prushka sighs and takes off her glove. Taking an amaranthine deceptor from the leaf of a flower she holds it up for us in her bare palm. The parasite is secreting some fluid on her but its flapping wings are too small and deformed to fly, “This is really hard to explain with how... Ignorant Aki is. But none of these bugs can hurt anyone.”
Yelme's teeth are gritted, “Try, Sovereign of Illumination.”
A few Praying Hands enter from another tunnel. It s really setting in how bad an idea it was to go directly to another base.
Prushka smiles and waves in the exact way I'd greet the red whistles I was to guard each morning on the surface, “Hey you guys can help me finish up.”, she jogs over through the flower field and starts giving directions for the care of her subjects. As they get to work it's immediately obvious how the Praying Hands under her stagger. One had a tremor in his hand too bad to hold a thermometer. Prushka calmly took it and redirected him to shifting the bodies positions.
Tiarre looks back at us apologetically, “Her subjects will always be her top priority. I might be able to explain her vaccine better to you anyway. My research under the Sovereign of Dawn is the 6th layer waterborne parasite that Aki and the Sovereign of Guidance suffered with. Its actually in some of the waterways passing through the outer reaches of the 5th layer as well.”
Why don't any of you focus on fighting huge monsters like make up the main threat to cave raiders.
“Fair.”, Yelme replies, “They are quite a bit more terrifying than the larger primeval creatures.”
Tiarre awkwardly fidgets with the red whistle he still wears, “Aki, uh, sorry about your leg.”
I shrug one shoulder.
“You weren't too derious from sepsis to realize how you got the parasite right?”
“I lost part of my toes and traveled through infected water.”
“Yes but they only travel so far in your body that way. If you drink the water as Wakuna did they complete their life cycle and generate relic material from any part of the body. The head is avoided in the same way as the internal organs are spared to preserve the host.”
“We know that much from Nanachi. It's about all we know.” I said.
“This vaccine lets the body fight the amaranthine deceptors and disrupt their growth cycle. It's the same way your body was able to limit the damage to your leg instead of your body because the parasite was at a vulnerable part of its life cycle.”
Yelme's eyes widen, “The vaccine won't actually protect the person that gets it.”
Tiarre grins, “You got it right away! Yes the vaccine might even lengthen the time you spend as a host. But amaranthine deceptors that grow from you will be crippled and unable to infect others, saving countless lives and allowing for humans to eventually be unusable to the species!”
“That's awesome!”, I said, “Like making all of the Earth's mosquitos harmless.”
“Yep! It's just shifting the immune response like Sovereign Bondrewd's medicine let me fight the cancer for some years. He and Sovereign Prushka are true visionaries guiding us to be safer deeper in the abyss.”
He takes my hand excitedly, “My project with the relic generating parasite has run its course. I'd like to send my research notes up to the surface with you. But really it's time for me to fulfill my greatest purpose and become your sacrifice.”
I had doubts in my head. Standing there before the field of, its occuring to me not all unwilling victims of this gruesome fate, I understood he'd changed at least some. We were both adults now.
I understood we'd both done things that could be considered wrong. That he'd captured many of the black whistles who lay in this field himself. That we'd committed atrocities really. That we weren't so much criminals as people who on the surface would be seen as active threats to all humanity with every breath we were allowed to live and take.
Yelme reacts first, “You don't have to rush into this. Surely you'd like to spend some time together again first.”
Tiarre grins and knocks his raiding helmet against mine so I'm only looking at him, “I'm ready to go. But I need to go with you on one last mission.”
A cruel glint a bit like Ozen got occasionally in his indigo eyes, something like rage,
“We need to go kill my Master.”
...
Tiarre and I prepared to head out after dinner with Prushka's team. Aside from Tiarre they were all Praying Hands who couldn't take the strain of the Sovereign of Dawn's relic spreading himself to them. They were too infirm to join the last dive, but not far gone enough yet that their only options as loyal teammates were becoming cartridges or amaranthine deceptor food. Maybe some even chose the slight immortality of the pit of starving hollows.
“I was excited to teach you to ski with me for so long, but that probably won't work with your leg will it?”, Tiarre asked.
I finished tying my snowshoes around my support boot and getting up with my hiking pole, fitted with a flared bottom for snow, “Less that than that I weigh a quarter ton with the thousand man wedges.”
“Seriously? You look like you're 40 kilos.”
“My body sure. My Sovereign is straightforward and our relics have a straightforward drawback.”
Tiarre sighed and joined me in snowshoes, “This place is the best with permeant fluffy snow. Since you told me about your relics, I should tell you Detchuanga lives in a cave that was my Sovereign's previous last dive attempt.”
“A cave all the way to the 6th layer? What incredible discoveries he makes with such a huge final dive team.”
“Sure something like that.”
…
A weeks travel around the coast of the underground sea we came to a cave that looked like any other in the craggy sharp black stone. Then my ears began to ring from powerful relics.
I was grateful Yelme had accepted Tiarre's claim that he spiritually just had to do this with me alone. It was utter bullsh*t, we just wanted to fight side by side. That and my odds of surviving this dive as the Sovereign of Mirages instead of as Yelme or Tiarre's whistle were better with just Tiarre and I. That Prushka's bedroom was full of more sketchbooks and nice art supplies than we ever could've afforded at Seeker Camp made the choice easier.
Tiarre found the door to anther mirage dome Instead of plain dark stone, the cave before us had a plush rug laid out right at the entrance. While they were much too high for us to really use, and too fragile delicate gold chain made up guide rails. It drew attention to the oddly regular twisting ridges of the stone.
I realize this cave had been drilled. We were right on the coast of the underground ocean which seemed like a bad idea. But if Tiarre had found the relic generating parasite while surveying the farthest out caves it could be safer. He'd been chatting proudly about finding the amaranthine deceptor larvae in seeds of the flowers of fortune being carried on water from deeper in the abyss.
Tiarre worried at the shell whistle I'd carved for him from white bone. I had no way of knowing about Prushka's conch white whistle when I left it down here for him. I still had my leg when I first met her what felt like a lifetime ago but had been under a year.
He lead the way inside. On black stone walls were elaborate tapestries depicting the wonders of the world above. Where Detchuanga could never return to. A meticulously embroidered map of the silk road beside the grand canyon in the west and the great wall out east. Volcanos and geysers, palaces and peaks, he had paintings of every wonder of the world I could name and more besides.
Some of the neatly mounted lightstones were filled with fish like my pets back at Seeker Camp. We were progressing into his relic collection. Scraps of fur, wood, and metal in layer boards from the 1st layer were cut and set together in a mosiac making up a map of the abyss. Above us sharp twisting knots of wood and vine like teeth from the 2nd layer were wired together to form a massive spiky eel. Stress balls from the 3rd layer were glued together with the tangled fluid I used to repair guns in an hourglass reaching the ceiling. The 4th layer display was an assortment of wire frame vases with relic pottery shards making up half their shape. On the rare places two shards fit together they were sealed with gold. With the frames of their original shape it was clearer they were meant as drinking vessels, but everything in the 4th layer was awkwardly sized. Things like staircases that someone would need to be half again Ozen's height to use comfortably.
I shrank back against Tiarre, “This...”, any one of these sculptures from useless relics could feed the orphanage for a decade, “Did your Master create these sculptures?”
He took my hand mostly so I could adjust back to hiding how my prosthetic changed my gait, “Yes. He's been obsessed with having great treasures from the netherworld, but in the end left the more valuable things to his import/export crew to take down these useless junk relics he had hundreds of.”
“You said he was suffering under the effects of his relic but these are beautiful.”, I thought of Mitty napping in a herd of shroombear, “Is he really unhappy trapped in the 5th layer?”, I realized it had gotten warmer as we had descended. Little blue heat stones were set into the floor. A common 5th layer relic that got extremely hot when put under pressure. With industrial uses they were among the most valuable relics brought back from deep in the abyss and what drove many to brave the 5th layer at all.
Tiarre's expression was unreadable, “Aki? I've had metastatic cancer for 6 years. Knowing the abyss feeds on my suffering in the same way it eats at my lungs, my bones, my blood... It kept me going no matter how much the Sovereign of Dawn had to carve out of me. But you'll understand when you see him, and see the thing that got him.”
I calmly matched his pace and we came to a high ceiling cavern. The tapestries on the wall here were simple, delicate sky blue with scrolling clouds. Every bit of the dark stone was hidden by tan carpet making the loose image of a desert like his home country.
In the center Detchuanga sits on a plush stool. I quickly realize it isn't that his back is deformed, its a massive spherical relic with blunt teeth around his upper arms and something like legs going into his abdomen. The bloated relic tick has some tendrils connecting to a flutted pipe that replaces one of Detchuanga's arms. A wide metal band is around the wrist of his remaining arm. Blood and rotting unidentifiable gore soak is previously white linen dress shirt but he seems unaware and unable to smell it.
The only purposeful looking modification to his old surface clothes is how much of his right pant leg is torn away. Right above his fabric shoes there's a clear weasel bite gone black. A wound anyone could get in the 1st layer, this had been his actual cause of death some years ago. Back when Mio saw him use a relic on his eye to save his life.
Detchuanga smiles broadly at me, eyes the same indigo with yellow pupils that Tiarre has, “Welcome Aki, I'm glad you appreciate my collection.”
“It's beautiful sir.” I say hessitantly to my old boss who helped me sell furs for years. I notice the massve albino horncrier head Tiarre and I had brought him as children beside an array of bookshelves and workbench strewn with pliars, “Will you be going on the Soverign of Dawn's last dive?”
He chuckles oddly naturally considering the teeth of the tick going into his upper ribcage, “I'm afraid despite our long business partnership he won't allow it. What vicious strain of bacteria causes sepsis for however many years I've been down here.”, he gestured to the tick the size of a delver backpack, “And look how the straggler from his earlier expedition has grown.”
His body must feel like it weighs a ton no wonder he's haphazardly attached relics desperate to get stronger and remain able to move. I can feel the attention of the relic tick that appears to be eating him alive. Its purpose is clear to me at a glance like with many high grade relics. It wants stronger relics, its attention is on my thousand man wedges. Something about it reminds me of the curse reppelling vessel filled with muscle and teeth, “I see.” I said warily.
He stood shakily and gestured to the push stool, “Tiarre haven't you stalled enough, your place in my collection is waiting.”, a tendril extends from the relic tick to hold aside the fabric skirt to reveal... I don't know a really big cassette player or something like that, “I've had assistance converting every last page of Bondrewd's notes from the 6th layer expedition to audio. Once your life reverberating stone has been carved you can listen to them without any need for sleep. Thats not even getting into the fantasy novels you used to be so enraptured with. Plus more besides to appeal to you queer new spiritual direction.”, Tiarre looks like he's going to puke at this display that would've enthralled him as a helpless child, “I mean you'll never die as a white whistle Surely you'd rather have an exhibit in the old capital where your parents can visit, loving attendants can polish you and keep rotating audio books from new authors century after century. Even if he doesn't intend to live a normal lifespan Aki will eventually die and you'll be lost in the sands of the 6th layer or deeper for millenia.”
Tiarre was trembling, whether from fear or just in pain like he did sometimes was unclear, “I... I don't intend to be part of your collection.”
Detchuanga quirked his head slightly but isn't surprised, “What a shame, but Aki here understands that you belong to me. Same as he belongs to Mio.”
I grit my teeth but restraint was never my strong point, “Mio would never ask something like this of me! She took me as a deformed ignorant child from a war torn island and never for a minute treated me as less than her own son!”
“And you repaid her kindness by becoming a child arsonist, a child soldier, and soon an adolescent white whistle whose name would only be uttered in the same breath as Bondrewd's.”, he was completely nonchalant as the relic tick retrieves a seed. The moment it touches his hand the hundreds of gossamer layers of the curse are visible for an instant. The way the tick is distorting the power of Detchuanga's relics into itself, a whirlpool of greed. In the same instant they're gone again and an image of a healthy Detchuanga stands beside him. There's a black whistle around his neck and bloodstained blonde hair is clean and tied into a ponytail under his cave raiding helmet, “This is yours Aki.”
Do not take the powerful relic from the crazed collector who is being eaten alive by his collection. Well its not like the seed is eating him.
I take it ad the master cave raider Detchuanga disappears. Beside me is a young woman. My heart is racing but I'm calm because I know her near nudity is just a remnant of the life I had safe under the volcano. Long flowing cobalt hair covers slight breasts. The bit of fabric tied around her chest for support matches the short sarong around her waist. Warm brown skin the color of coconuts or of Nanachi's lovely fur. A horncrier white whistle sits at her neck.
“Your ideal life and body is as a woman? You always were a strange boy.”
“f*ck off I'm a girl.”, I hate to admit its a tantalizing image, “Is this a mirage relic or what?”
“It will change your body to be exactly what you long for in every way at the moment you swallow it. After that it will devour your current memories until only the life this perfect body would've lived remain. Without your numerous genetic defects, I imagine that could include children which could be disorienting.”
“Children I'll never meet?”
“Of course not, the memories are the plant's fabrication. The memories its shown me with of my life as an illustrious cave raider born in Orth inspired the sculptures you passed. For every unheard bell there are thousands of treasures like these raiders stil risk life and limb to return to the surface just to eat and live to dive again. But as I am dead and this being feeds on life, I can never use it.”
I cast the perfect body a longing glance.
“The Immovable Sovereign is what, 100 years old and you've trained under her for 6 maybe 7 years? She can wait for you to catch back up after giving Tiarre, your white whistle, to me.”
I shake my head and tug Tiarre's hand. He takes the seed from me and the image of a beautiful petite island woman fades. Beside him is an image of a rather tall blonde cave raider, traditionally handsome with broad shoulders. A bit of facial hair but not enough to look more thana little scruffy after weeks out exploring. Around his neck is a horncrier white whistle. If Tiarre could be restored so impeccably, my sacrifice would be worth considering. Surely a master cave raider with an intact body would be of more use to the Subterranean Bandits.
Tiarre shook his head, “I'm just as dead as he is. The pwine hearts that keep our bodies and souls sustained make us pursue our greatest desire at the time of our death. For Detchuanga it's adding a white whistle to his collection. For me its awaiting my most glorious possible sacrifice and seeing the bottom of the abyss without the burden of this body.”
His wording is eerie and Detchuanga senses it too. I can see his stance change. The slightest quirk of his arm with the metal band and hundreds of dark metal spears are walling in the room and protecting his treasure from the fight to come. We can't get out but we already knew that coming down here.
Tiarre presses the seed back into my hand and I pocket it. The vision of myself as a woman is similarly on edge. My slight perception of the curse while I have this is valuable though. The layers are pressed down around Detchuanga with the power of his relics. The gauntlet is generating mirrored spears that really want to remain in a radial pattern. The massive relic tick and to a lessor extent the pwine heart in his right eye are completely controlling his body.
My relic gun of 5th layer ceramic is at the ready, somewhat crouched I'm ready to dodge in any direction. Tiarre's relic hatchet, I'm realizing it's eeriely bloodstained, is drawn and his stance is sideways to make himself a smaller target.
“How disappointing. You wouldn't reconsider for a million orth? A billion?”
It's his delusion talking but he might still have access to that kind of money. I shake my head and allow his advance. He knows whatever bacteria have made a host of his body are deady but a tendril from the relic tick stretches to stroke my cheek, “Perhaps I was wrong. It wasn't what I needed to own a white whistle after all.”
Tiarre slashes at the tendril and it retracts. Detchuanga's contempt for him in that glance.
“You were only pretending. You never had any real desire to join my collection.”, he shrugs the shoulder of the arm he's amputated and replaced with the relic cannon, “It's alright. I understand now. For my collection to truly stir hearts it must include both the relics and the cave raiders who use them.”
There are a dozen spears spinning around him, “I'll have Aki's corpse stuffed by the greatest taxidermist money can buy. For his white whistle... I'll slaughter you myself at the altar.”, he raises the relic cannon and fires at Tiarre. He narrowly jumps out of the way of a cannonball that tears into the tan carpet where he stood.
The spears circling Detchuanga explode outward. I deflect one with my relic pick and fire at his cannon arm. There's a squelch of his shoulder dislocating but he's clearly past the point of being affected by pain. He's not genuinely living in his body anymore the way Tiarre seems to be able to.
The spears flicker and reverse to fly back inwards toward Detchuanga. He doesn't seem very skilled with this relic. They're so locked in their radial path I only need to dodge or knock aside the one closest to me. Another cannonball crashes into the outer wall of spears. He didn't reload it so it's another matter generating relic. Another shot to his altered arm. This time it connects with one of the bits of the relic tick going into his upper ribcage under his arm.
An otherworldly screech, the spears he's actively controlling disappear.
Tiarre catches my eye, “I had a feeling it was like that.”
With the mirrored spears disabled he runs in to slash at the tendrils going into Detchuanga's torso. One good hit cuts open the remains of his shirt and sends a gold necklace clattering to the ground. I recognize his prized translation relic.
The tick creature is still squeaking and snarling but Detchuanga has lost the ability to speak long ago.
I fire at his leg as I try to get behind him but while jerky his movement is quick. His hand at my neck holding me in the air. An inarticulate snarl of frustration that he can't drive him fingers in through my armor.
I'm thrown like a ragdoll towards the ceiling of the high chamber. The sensation of my body turning to smoke. But the sensation of another body floating beside me is grounding and helping me resist it. I need to get this shot. With no sensation at all, I instinctively raise my gun and fire at Detchuanga's back.
I hadn't realized the kickback would still happen in midair though. The sound of my body crashing into the ceiling. The view of the gorgeous sand colored carpet half shredded in the fight and splattered with gore. The spears have all disappeared. The sky tapestries, his library, his workbench, all untouched.
He really could've been happy huh.
Blackness.
…
What is true destructiveness anyway.
Holding Dorothea's hand as Jiruo tells us that Tiarre hasn't returned from a routine mission. The utter hopelessness. The hatred for the red whistle around my neck that meant it wasn't worth searching if Tiarre or I or Dorothea ventured too deep.
The way it marked us as a sacrifice.
My work bench in Riku's old room. My hammock that was haphazardly filled with raiding gear above the bed I shared with my sister. Nat's bed was further back from the window in the nook filled with torture implements from back when this place had been a prison.
Before me my pouch of turret flower pollen, I need to mix it with regular gunpowder I bought still. But after returning from that dive with Tiarre, I dried the mucus of that fire breathing man sized frog in the 2nd layer. It burned no matter what. Even in a downpour on icy rock it wouldn't dilute enough to stop burning.
They believe Tiarre continued into the 2nd layer, they're calling off the search.
This has happened by mistake before, they'll believe it's a mistake again. I strike the barrel of my gun hard against a pile of turret flower pollon which ignites explosively. When the powder I've made from croaker mucus ignites it's a pillar of flame engulfing the desk completely and burning into the ceiling.
The back of my hand and arm are somewhat burned as I flee. I can't feel it yet. It's beautiful, I want to see more, I want to see what happens.
They abandoned my first friend. Burn this place to the f*cking ground.
…
One of Tiarre's nightmares he's described to me is similar, maybe my inspiration. After his Mom came by to scold him for sleeping through dinner, he didn't awake again until after midnight. In his mountain cabin home with electric light and a wood stove for heat in another world from the abyss, he watches the pilot light on the stove.
Tiarre is a good boy, lets his long hair be cut and styled neatly, doesn't mind formal clothes. Quiet, bright, weak, he was the sort of boy who was easy to ignore. After a point, months, years, his entire decade of life with his parents walling themselves off preparing for his death... It was little different from the hatred I faced in my own home.
At least hate me for me and not my body that I can't control.
In his dream he soaks a rag with cooking oil and throws it on the little flame. Unable to be hurt he watches to spread to the counters and climb the walls to his parents room above.
People think Tiarre and I aren't much alike to be so inseparable we insist we're twins. But being alike isn't what makes your life frequency match someone's or even having similar goals. Tiarre's dream was to get healthy and live in the capitol never returning to his mountain village. Maybe if pressed he'd describe living alone on a tropical island in a hut he built. His only worry in life being missing the rich, bitter, grainy bread from his homeland.
But the dangerous part of a hurricane is the calm eye you never want to pass over you. Because with the eye comes the wall. Me. The most destructive part. I have little restraint and almost no regret destroying basically anything. If Ozen or Yelme who love me wanted me to slaughter raiders from Orth instead of foreign raiders for really any reason at all I'd do it.
It's overwhelming and scary and wrong and I don't want to be like this and... In the end I'll do it, I don't care. I hate the world that cast Tiarre and I and so many others aside.
...
I'm in a soft clean smelling bed. It's f*cking huge. The back of my head hurts and my shattered raiding helmet is on top of my other armor beside Detchuanga's bed. My support boot and leg are right at arm's reach. Or would be if this bed wasn't so plush and tall.
Tightening my prosthetic back I see Tiarre at Detchuanga's desk. There's a trail of gore leading out of the cave.
I remember seeing it from my eyes while I was in the curse haze.
Tiarre presses the translation relic against Detchuanga's head where he lies defeated. He's half crushed by the relic tick. Parasites like this were an extreme threat to immortals, unless like Bondrewd the infected bodies could be discarded. Only the creature is writhing and reacting as he tears out his master's right eye. The indigo and yellow gel slough off to reveal the pwine heart. A sphere the size of an eye filled with opalescent fluid with barbed florets at each end.
Detchuanga regains consciousness and presses himself up with the stump of his upper arm. His cannon relic has been removed. Reaching out with the somewhat longer stump of his other arm, the mirrored spears relic band was only attached to his wrist, he tries to touch Tiarre's face. He would've been able to reach if the hand was there. He isn't aware it's missing, “My,”, he gasps, “My white whistle.”
Tiarre takes off the shell whistle I'd carved him from bone when we'd attempted our last dive together, “You can't hear it. You could never share a life frequency with someone, you never thought of anyone as your equal.” he places the worthless child's carving around his Master's neck. Of course he had never noticed Tiarre enough to see him wear it.
“My white whistle!”, he seems overjoyed at the deception The relic tick grumbles and hoists the ecstatic corpse somewhat. His breath hitches as a couple of its legs withdraw from his ribs.
With the relic tick's host murmuring unintelligibly, the creature drags the both of them off. Presumably until the parasite that looked sort of like a raiders heavy backpack got the chance to suck off an unfortunate looter. It didn't seem to have taken much damage in much the same way I doubted anything could destroy the curse repelling vessel.
…
Yelme and Prushka were waving for us from her small boat on the underground ocean. Her and her team are all set to take anything valuable from Detchuanga's collection. The sculptures will probably remain for some time until someone strong enough to pack them into the elevator spheres comes along.
I presented Yelme with the mirrored spears band and he hugged me, “I should've been there you asshole. Figures he never actually fought anything before with his relics that could change the tide of a war.” being in his arms is a nice distraction from how my back feels like one solid bruise.
Tiarre holds out Detchuanga's pwine heart to Prushka, “For your Mom.”
She takes it warily but soon breaks into a grin and embraces him, “You've done enough, but thank you.”
The purple sky is dreary even when it's clear. Enough light to get around by, to be uncomfortable sleeping in at first, but never enough to cast clear shadows. It was also just painfully disorienting not to have normal day night cycles. It was a relief when it left our view going into the inner dock of the Ido Front Base. The entrance in the smooth light stone was in front of us.
When Tiarre went on ahead of me I took his hand and pulled him back. What could I say. The curse repelling vessel couldn't really heal him just like Marulk was still sickly. But it definitely repaired pressing physical damage. We could bring it to the entrance to the 5th layer. He could be more comfortable for a few years before our last dive.
“Tiarre I-”, have a way to heal you.
His smile and a small knife in my neck above my armor. Not a knife, one of the little curse inflicting blades Bondrewd had developed, “It's time Aki, for my most holy sacrifice.”
Yelme's yelling off in the distance. Maybe even if he's been grooming me the entire time he's known me, he could've helped if I'd let him down here
…
I regain consciousness in a floor to ceiling glass tube in a laboratory of some sort. There's another tube right beside me. f*ck f*ck f*ck no. My leg is gone. My armor is gone and I'm tied up in just my boxers.
Bondrewd has his hand on Tiarre's shoulder.
“Of course I'm ready Dad. I've always wanted to become a sacrifice and go the bottom of the abyss.”, shining indigo eyes and yellow pupils looking up at the white whistle “I can't wait to have a body like Mitty's blessing and become an everlasting cartridge for you. Maybe Aki's maimed body can be made into something more comfortable too.”
A low chuckle, “Get in Tiarre.”
He looks at the elevators, “But Dad he's on the wrong side, I'm supposed to be-”
“You really thought a sterile amputee and a boy who died to cancer at 14 could attain the greatest blessing of the abyss?”, soft laughter, “I just have to see what happens when such a pathetic offering is made.”
Tiarre looks in terror at the open glass elevator.
“Go on, to your holy sacrifice.”
He knows he's been manipulated. He knows every step leading up to this horrible end has been his own choice. He knows he's hurt countless people pursuing his hope for a twisted immortality.
Tiarre doesn't hesitate to get in the other elevator.
