Chapter 26: The Shadow City
Ravi blinked as the scene around him took shape. He sat up from a plain white bed inside a familiar room—simple, quiet, and meticulously clean. Books and scrolls lined wooden shelves. A red carpet stretched across polished wooden floors. The polished wooden walls were catching the soft sunlight trickling through the window. A hanging charlatan-shaped lantern swayed gently from the ceiling. He stood, heart strangely heavy, and stepped outside.
Ravi's house was clean but deserted as there was only silence dwelling in it. The courtyard greeted him with five figures in navy-blue uniforms, expressionless sky-blue masks covering their faces. As one noticed Ravi, he brought a fist to his chest in a salute, the others following with mechanical precision.
Ravi's lips parted, but before he could speak, the world shifted. Crimson bled into the sky. The courtyard floor turned to blood. When he looked down, he saw twisted black horns rising from his head and the ominous black markings crawling across his face in the reflection.
Corpses emerged from the pool of blood while huffing and panting, gasping, eyes wide with pain and betrayal. "It's all your fault ... " they cried in unison, their voices like wind howling through broken windows. "You did this ... you killed us ... "
Many crimson eyes opened in the air around him, all gazing at Ravi, followed by laughing mouths.
(Cough!)(Cough!)
Ravi awoke with a start, cold stone beneath him and darkness pressing in. Jagged stones hung from the collapsed tunnel above, their points glistening with dew or blood—he couldn't tell.
The sharp stabbing pain shot down on his right side with the welcoming of excruciating pain from different body parts told him that he wasn't dreaming anymore. He tried to get up, but his body didn't listen. The only thing he managed was turning his head, and even that involved a series of throbbing pain in his neck.
Looking to his right, he spotted Waker groaning and shifting slightly but remained unconscious. His shirt was torn, and one arm was bloodied from the fall. Then, slowly turning his head to left, gritting his teeth through the pain.
The body of the giant cursed ape lay partially crushed under slabs of fallen rock in a pool of red-black ichor that stained the rubble. Its face was slack, its corrupted eyes dim. He could see the black bones of its ribs jutting out of the sunken cavity of the chest with a pile of its entrails beside him. Some sticky black matter oozes out along with black ichor from its shattered skull. The once-threatening creature was now just a heap of shattered bone and ichor. Its corrupted eyes stared blankly at the stone ceiling, slack-jawed and unmoving.
Again, Ravi tried getting up against his body will, which was screaming with resistance; the only part of his body that seemed to listen to him were his left arm and neck. He willed essence into his left arm and able to set up slowly.
Beneath his robe, he retrieved two glass vials filled with vermilion liquid. He drank half of one, wincing at the acrid taste as warmth spread through his chest with a bitter expression. After a while, he was able to stand up as some strength returned, and the injuries on his body were healed to a certain degree. His grey robe automatically started to stitch and clean itself to new.
He then fed the other half to Waker. "Still alive ... " he murmured, his voice rough as he put the other glass vile beneath his robe.
Despite the pain, he slung Waker over his shoulder. Each step sent fresh jolts of agony through his body. He was heavier than he looked, or maybe I had become considerably weaker.
Torchless and weary, Ravi moved forward into the cave's darkness, the only sound being the soft crunch of dust beneath his feet and the occasional far-off screech of unseen creatures, the air turned colder as he walked deeper into the caves.
Twice he had to press himself against the wall, holding his breath and suppressing his essence through an Essence Technique as shadow-beasts slithered past — eyeless, scorpion things with dozens of twitching limbs and cursed energy bleeding off them in sickening waves. Fortunately, they ignored him. Whether due to the residual stench of the ape's blood or the Dark Sigil, he couldn't be sure.
Ravi grimaced inwardly as he saw how such dangerous creatures were dwelling under the Astal Mountains. He couldn't think about the consequences if these underworld monsters broke out on the surface.
Eventually, the narrow stone corridor opened into a vast underground expanse.
Before him stood an ancient city carved entirely of black stone like a graveyard carved from shadow — a massive cavern with spired towers rising like obsidian teeth into the ceiling above. Bridges hung broken across bottomless chasms and dried blood covered shattered market stalls and broken statues.
The place was eerily silent, but when Ravi looked above the city, he couldn't stammer anything as he froze. There were dusty greyish skeletons, and blueish illusory hooded skeletons floating above the ancient city. These were phantoms and wraiths made up of essence and memories but tainted with corruption and cursed energy.
Their numbers were uncountable, and Ravi never saw such shocking numbers of phantoms and wraiths in his life.
He descended into the deserted streets quickly, Waker still unconscious on his back. The Sigil pulsed again, nearly buckling his knees. Each step echoed into the eerie silence, no reply but the whisper of long-dead voices in the air.
As he passed through an archway with ancient glyphs — now worn to near illegibility - a thought came to his mind.
How come those phantoms and wraiths weren't attracted by the dark sigil nor those underworld monsters as well and attacked him. Did it mean that they recognized me as one of their own?
But still normally these creatures fought against each other, but here in this black city of shadows and around it, they were ... organised.