The hallway went on endlessly, the minutes stretching past as they walked down its unchanging length. The tunnels that led off of it all looked the same, yawning chasms of darkness that greedily swallowed the light of the room, and Eni quickly lost count of how many she passed. No end was in sight, but all at once the monotony gave way to the first sign of anyone else passing before them.
One of the tunnels on the right side of the hallway had been sealed off in a peculiar fashion. An enormous slab of stone had been fit into the opening like a cork into a bottle, plugging it perfectly and leaving no gap around its perimeter. The rock was smooth and seamless, bearing no marks upon its surface, and Eni glanced at Tin as they passed it. The wolf gave it a single sidelong look, not breaking his stride, but as they continued it wasn't the only passage that had been sealed.
About a hundred yards later, there was an opening on the other side of the hall that had been shut off in a similar fashion, but the floor around it was stained with giant streaks of something black and glossy, several inches wide and glittering menacingly. Eni gave it the widest possible berth that she could, not wanting to touch the unsettling substance, and Tin's nostrils flared briefly while his lip curled. Zathos's eyes roved curiously over the stain, but the monster didn't touch it, its long limbs gracefully stepping over the mark.
"What was that?" Eni asked in a low whisper once they were past.
"Ichor," Tin said simply, and Eni realized with horror why the marks looked as though they could have been made by enormous legs.
"Is there anything coming?" Eni asked, even more softly, and she strained her hearing for any sign of a monster craftily approaching.
"Nothing living," Tin said, but Eni's grip on her trident only tightened.
More tunnels had been closed off like sepulchers, prickling at Eni's awareness like needles being lightly dragged across her ears. She couldn't make out any words or voices, but there was an undeniable pressure to the other paths she was glad to leave behind. As they crossed one of the doorways, Eni's knees went suddenly weak and she stumbled into Tin.
Unlike its fellows, its seal was a door fit into a ring that nestled snugly into the circular portal. It was made of the same stone as the others, but its surface had been marred by two large and untidily carved words.
NIHIL ULTRA
The characters were uneven, crookedly tilting to one side, and Eni's blood ran cold as she took them in. She was horribly aware of her pulse, feeling every movement of her heart as she stared at the awful door. Eni dimly realized she had come to a stop, frozen before it with one paw outstretched, and she jerked her fingers back with a start. "Don't look at it," Tin said, his voice low and breathy with his mouth right against one ear, "Feel it too."
There wasn't the same presence coming from behind the door as from the other blocks; it was something far worse. "Classical Word for 'Nothing beyond,'" Zathos said, two of its eyes fixed on the sealed tunnel and the others staring at Eni and Tin, "The phrase would normally suggest that there is no task that the speaker cannot accomplish."
"That's… That's not what this means," Eni said weakly as she shook her head, "Can't you sense it?"
"No," Zathos replied, its chin tilting at a curious angle as all four of its eyes gazed at her.
"There's nothing past that door," Eni said, surprised by the vehemence in her voice, "Nothing. It's…"
"Perfect void," Tin finished for her, and she shuddered.
Zathos's unblinking stare briefly rolled back to the door before the monster's attention returned to them. "Then it is a distraction and consequently meaningless," it said, turning forward, and Eni found herself envying the smooth blandness of the creature.
Tin frowned as he looked at the entrance, as though he was drinking in every detail, and Eni grabbed his paw in hers. "Zathos is right," she said quietly, but she couldn't help but give one last look at the handle.
It was made of Aurum Regis, the gleaming golden metal absolutely untarnished, but underneath it there were four deep gouges in the door. Eni shivered, feeling as though the very warmth of the air was being leached away by whatever was hidden behind the opening, and set off after Zathos as she pulled gently on Tin's arm. They continued on in silence, and although there were more blocked passages there were mercifully no more with writing on the seals.
Hours seemed to pass before at last the dim point of light off in the distance down the corridor at last resolved itself into the end of the hallway. The change in the golden glow was subtle at first, becoming gradually redder, and then at last they were close enough to see what was past the interminable series of tunnels.
It was a broad chamber, although not nearly as large as the one far above them, and it was filled by a single crumbling building of a bizarre design. Eni gaped at it, unsure at first if she was seeing it right, but as the details came into focus there could be no doubt. The walls were gold, inset with rubies the size of her head; the gems were clearly responsible for the change in the quality of the light. The jewels almost seemed to have their own inner fiery warmth as they refracted the glow that filled the air. As they entered the cavern, the white of Eni's fur took on a pinkish hue, as did Tin's, but his blue eyes seemed more intense than ever, the contrast against their surroundings almost too much to bear.
The building that filled Eni's sight was oddly awkward, for all the finery of its decorations looking somehow unpleasant. Its shape was organic, but not with the pleasant symmetry of a flower; it was more like a wasp's nest. The lines of the walls bulged and twisted, seemingly at random, and the doors and windows were almost perversely misshapen. Some had four sides, and others five or even seven, but there was no apparent logic to the design that Eni could see.
Despite its seeming shortcomings the edifice was utterly massive, soaring at least twenty stories high and flowing smoothly into the ceiling above and the floor below. It was nestled among stalactites and stalagmites, rippling as it flowed over and around them, the foundation and the roof looking like sheets draped over a shrub and punctured by thorns.
In the gaps of the chamber that the building didn't fill, Eni could see where the material used to construct it had come from; the stony walls were shot through with veins of gold and constellations of glittering gems. It was a mine of impossible value, worth more than a dozen kingdoms put together, and her mind reeled as she took it in.
"Is this the enclave?" Eni asked in a hushed tone, but her words echoed flatly across the still room, distorting and becoming almost painfully loud as they reverberated back to her.
"The enclave," her voice came back, "The enclave."
Tin nodded, his features twisted in a grimace as he stared ahead. He held out a single paw, gesturing toward the largest of the entrances in the building. "Have to go through," he said, his eyes taking on a distant look, and a single word came echoing harshly.
"Go," Tin's voice said, low and unpleasant, "Go."
Eni swallowed, her mouth suddenly horribly dry, but she crept after the wolf as he began his advance. As they neared the massive doorway, Eni realized that her first impression had been completely wrong. The enclave wasn't actually made out of gold; it was coated in it.
She could see where molten metal had run down the sides of a massive stone structure, rippling and pooling from how it had cooled. In a few spots, projections from the sides of the building had protected some of the structure underneath, exposing gleaming white marble like the bones of an enormous carcass. The rubies set into the gold were bizarrely haphazard; they had clearly been put into place while it was still liquid, but Eni could see no clues for how or why. There was no obvious pattern, nothing even slightly like a spiral or a geometric shape, but the longer Eni spent with her neck craned upward the more she got a sense that there was something she was almost grasping.
"Careful!" Tin called suddenly, grabbing her arm and pulling her hard; she gave out a cry of alarm as she staggered and nearly fell before regaining her balance.
Their voices overlapped into a terrible din as they reverberated off the walls, Eni's wordless cry unsettling as it changed. At first it sounded almost like laughter, high and mocking, but as it faded the sound was one of unmistakable terror. She shivered, feeling her fur standing on end as she looked up into Tin's face. He inclined his head toward the floor, and Eni saw what she would have stepped on if he hadn't intervened.
It was an arm.
The limb was desiccated, with barely any flesh left, but the slender fingers and wrist poking out of a ragged black sleeve were unmistakable. The shoulder wasn't connected to anything, but it was surrounded by a powdery brown stain that could only be blood. He was a sheep, Eni thought dimly, some part of her mind horribly calm, He must have died at least fifty years ago.
Although there was no sign of the rest of the body, Eni felt absolutely sure the poor mammal hadn't survived his dismemberment for very long. The bloodstain on the floor was much too large, although as Eni studied it with sickening detachment she saw there were droplets and smears leading deeper into the enclave. Here and there she could make out hoof marks in the blood, the edges faded and indistinct, as well as much larger marks from what must have killed the sheep.
There were paw prints, unmistakably belonging to a wolf, and as Eni peered into the gloom she saw a dark bundle of rags just past the doorway. She pointed it out to Tin, and his face was grim as he noiselessly stepped into the enclave.
Although the interior walls were the fine white marble that the building had been made out of, uncovered by runnels of gold, Eni's lantern didn't seem to illuminate it very well. The faultless stone wasn't even faintly reflective, the light seeming to die as it reached the milky surface. Eni held her lamp as high as she could, trying to guide their way, but it was woefully inadequate. The ceiling was much too high to make out, disappearing into the gloom, and the reddish light streaming through the malformed glassless windows felt dingy and weak.
Eni was overcome with a sense of ruined grandeur as they crept forward; the air was thick with the scent of ancient rot and decay. No motes of dust danced or swirled in the beam of her lantern, but the feeling of abandonment was undeniable. As they approached the pitiful remains of the sheep, Eni saw that his corpse wasn't alone. A much larger body was splayed across his, dressed in the same faded robes, and Eni blinked and turned her head away as her lamp lit up the blade of a dagger.
The glittering obsidian was painfully bright compared to everything else in the enclave, throwing off brilliant reflections that died the instant they touched the walls. Eni caught a glimpse of Tin's face as she turned, his features set in an expression of relief. By the time she looked back at the bodies, his face was serious once more, one paw resting on the hilt of his weapon.
Eni carefully lowered her lantern and reached out with her trident, gently rolling the larger corpse off the sheep. The stone dagger moved with it, and as the corpse tumbled to the floor she saw it was lodged in the dead mammal's chest. The body had been a she-wolf, one at least a foot taller than Tin, and although she might have been more powerfully built, what remained of her muscles were withered and frail.
Her jaw yawned open, the flesh around her mouth pulled tight into a terrible leer, and the she-wolf's eyes had long-since decayed and left behind nothing but dark pits. Her fur was a dingy gray, splattered with brownish stains, and even her teeth weren't white.
"She bit his arm off," Eni said quietly, and the words barely seemed to travel.
There was no echo in the vast room, just an oppressive flatness that ate all sounds. "But why?" she asked, gesturing at the two deceased mammals.
The sequence of events played out in her mind as though she was sharing one of Tin's memories, sharply focused and terribly real. The she-wolf would have been a fury of teeth and claws, not bothering with any weapons besides the ones the Mother had given her, and Eni could almost hear the sheep's panicked sobs and pleas for her to stop. She would have been relentless, ignoring his shrieks as he begged her to spare him, but he would have fallen woefully short.
The she-wolf had torn his arm from his body, knocking the sheep to the ground, but he hadn't died all at once. He had managed to get up and stagger another twenty feet before collapsing for the last time, drawing his obsidian blade and plunging it into the she-wolf's heart as she pounced on him once more. They had died together, their blood mingling as it ran out of them, and beneath the corpses Eni could make out the wide stain they had left. She could see smears where they had struggled in their last moments, but just beyond the puddle's border were words so poorly written they were barely recognizable.
"I saw," Tin read haltingly, his head cocked to the side.
It was in Circi, and once she spotted them Eni saw they weren't alone. The message had been written in a mixture of the wolf's and sheep's blood at least a dozen times, the characters almost childishly uneven, and the temperature in the enclave seemed to drop.
The words couldn't have possibly been written by either of the combatants, and as Eni raised her lantern once more she saw that they continued. The words were repeated, over and over, in a straggling line leading away from the bodies and toward one of the ill-formed windows. She traced the path, her heart pounding as she avoided touching the stains with her feet, and came at last to another body.
A goat was slumped against the wall beneath the window, her skin as papery and her flesh as decayed as the other two. She wore the same robes that they did, so similar that they looked to have even been cut from the same bolt of fabric, and her cause of death was horribly obvious. Her fingers were coated in gold, twisted like the gnarled branches of a shrub, and her eye sockets were full of metal. It had dripped down her face, scorching her fur, and droplets had pooled on her collapsed chest.
The goat had killed herself.
She must have leaned out the window, scooping up fistfuls of the still molten metal, and then pressed her fingers into her eyes. Eni didn't want to imagine how painful it would have been; she didn't dare imagine the agony the goat had felt as the metal had burned its way through flesh and bone before at last reaching her brain. "All happened at once," Tin said softly, his body a reassuringly warm presence at Eni's side as he placed one paw on her shoulder, "They all saw something… The enclave got covered in gold… Same time."
She nodded, utterly unable to speak, but she could hear the hesitance in Tin's voice, as though his words were only half-theory. "Your conjecture is consistent with mine, All-King," Zathos added with its usual flat blandness, "I recommend extreme caution."
The monster's head tilted to the side as its pitiless eyes regarded Eni and Tin. "Whatever caused these events may still be present," it continued, "It is not inconceivable that your minds may be just as susceptible as these mammals."
"Or yours," Tin replied sharply, his brow furrowed as he glared at the beast.
"Or mine," Zathos agreed, "If I sense myself losing control of my actions, I will alert you if possible. If not, you cannot hesitate."
The monster spoke the words with perfect tranquility, but Eni still felt an awful thread of fear at her very core. Zathos stood motionlessly, the contrast between its dark body and the milky floor beneath it like a Knavery piece on its board, and Eni was overcome with the sense of how large the creature had grown. It towered over her and Tin, more than twice as broad across as the wolf, but its footsteps were utterly silent as it continued on its path toward the end of the hallway they had entered.
Tin waited a moment, letting the monster get a few steps ahead before he began to follow and gestured for Eni to do the same. For all that the exterior of the enclave was distorted by its uneven gilded layer, the interior was geometrically precise, everything laid out in tessellating patterns that rigidly interlocked with almost invisible seams. The walls and floors, where Eni's lantern could illuminate them, were the same unchanging white that she had already seen. There were no spots for torches, and if there were any chandeliers overhead they were much too high to see, as invisible as the ceiling itself.
The grand entrance felt immeasurably vast, but just as Eni was beginning to feel that the enclave was somehow larger on its inside than its exterior dimensions suggested, Zathos came to a stop. The hallway branched off in four different directions, the doorways horrible voids that her lantern gave no warmth to. "I cannot tell which path to take," the monster said, two of its eyes meeting Eni's as the others roved across their options, "I do not perceive which ultimately continues in this direction."
"This one," Tin said roughly, gesturing with his whip-sword at the second from the right.
It looked no different than the others to Eni, and no matter how she strained her hearing she heard nothing. Zathos accepted the guidance without comment, leading the way once more, but Eni turned to Tin. "How can you tell?" she murmured, keeping her voice as low as she possibly could.
"I… know," Tin said, clearly groping for an explanation, but Eni could hear a certain confidence in his words.
His eyes had taken on a distant and far-off look, his brow broodingly furrowed, and Eni didn't press him for any further reasons as they continued down the path. The hallway twisted elegantly, spiraling with a slight grade that made Eni have to focus to avoid going too fast. The ceiling swooped downwards, coming close enough that Zathos's ears almost brushed it, and they descended for what felt like hours. Eni was sure it could have only been minutes, but there was nothing to mark the passage of time; there was no change in the walls or the floor, the same geometric patterns repeating endlessly without any variation.
It was so monotonous that when the next body appeared, Eni saw it at once, the sad and crumpled shape standing out against the perfection of its surroundings. The corpse was dressed in robes, but they were torn and shredded; Eni couldn't even tell what the mammal had been in life. Its legs were curiously twisted, as though its bones had been worked like iron on a forge, and noticeably mismatched in length. The corpse's chest was split open, its ribs glittering in the light of Eni's lanterns, but they were barely recognizable. The bones split apart like the branches of a tree, forking over and over again as they burst through the decayed flesh.
The mammal's mouth was open in an expression of terrible pain, its grotesquely long teeth growing through the sides of its withered cheeks and then curving back into its temples. Lumps that might have been horns or antlers sprouted from the poor creature's head like weeds in a garden, the thin flesh bulging hideously where it wasn't punctured. The corpse's fingers were at its throat, wicked claws rending what was left of its pelt, and Eni shuddered as they passed. As they turned the next bend of the hallway, however, what she saw was far worse.
The ramp leveled out into another room, one that was roughly the same size as one of the larger laboratories in the Terraces of Gorin. The layout was even somewhat similar, something like a mixture between a library and a chemistry workshop, with long benches interspersed with massive bookshelves. The ruins of glassware and moldering books were everywhere, filling the air with a sour chemical tang mixed with the faint spice of old tomes. But the contents of the room were secondary to what dominated it, to what nearly made Eni drop her lantern in horror.
Monsters.
They were cold and still, their corpses twisted into poses of agony, and their long-rotted flesh merged into the walls and floor. The smooth white marble had flowed over and through the bodies, wrapping bones and transitioning into it so perfectly that no division was visible. There were creatures Eni knew from The Codex Monstrum, distorted and not quite formed as their ruined flesh strained at the stone that had entombed them. There was something like a Zezernak just a little larger than Eni, its claws cracked apart and revealing the dried remains of its husk. There was a Ninurta, its wickedly curved beak half-formed of marble, and an Ovivenga recognizable only by its many dull and milky eyes that were partially combined with a granite countertop.
At the center of the room, though, was something somehow more awful than any of the monsters that surrounded it. It was a stele carved from diamond, standing about ten feet high and tapering elegantly from its base. Its perfectly faceted sides were inlaid with gilded symbols, so densely packed they were difficult to make out. They shimmered and danced in the light of Eni's lantern, and she found herself stepping forward to study them more closely. The words weren't in Derkomai, but they were somehow familiar anyway, tracing out similar shapes to the blocks Abraxas had left behind.
A faint humming filled the air, prickling at Eni's skin, and the stele filled her sight. It demanded her attention, almost calling to her, and she stretched out one arm. "Eni!" Tin cried, and her head snapped to the side, "Don't—"
It was too late. Her fingers brushed against the massive diamond, its surface as warm as her own flesh, and Eni felt as if a hundred fishhooks had been lodged in her flesh. There was no pain, but a horrible pulling sensation filled her, as though her body was being ripped apart, and she caught a glimpse of Tin's horrified expression before her vision failed.
For an instant, she was blind and deaf, her sense of her body completely gone. She was no longer a hare, her limbs strange and unfamiliar, but she couldn't say what she had become.
A hare?
Her own voice came to her, whispering into the very corners of her mind. And yet it was not her voice, exactly; it spoke no language that Eni knew and its pitch was ever so slightly off, but the cadence was exactly right.
A hare.
Her sight returned all at once, her eyes dazzled by the sun. It seemed too large, too bright, and beneath it there was a beautiful beach bordered by a wide and grassy field. Everything was vivid beyond comparison, the colors so intense that it felt more like a painting than anything that could possibly be real, and Eni felt everything. The waves of the ocean rippled and sighed against the sand, filling the air with a salty smell that felt like home, and she could see a crab scuttling along the shoreline. The breeze rustled against her body, making her fur and feathers ripple, and she glanced about, looking away from the sea to the grasslands beyond. Massive trees were dotted here and there, gnarled and twisted with age, and beneath one of them cowered a small mammal.
"Little one?" she called softly in the voice that was and wasn't hers, reaching out one arm.
The being froze, wary as its sides pulsed with its rapid breath. Eni had no idea what it was; it almost looked like a hare, but it was much too small, its body barely any bigger than a rodent and largely the same shape. It was completely nude, crouched on all its limbs, and its eyes were fearful on the sides of its head beneath its long ears.
She took a step closer and the creature bolted, bounding in great leaps as its four legs pushed furiously against the ground. Eni stared after its retreating cotton ball of a tail, her face turning in a frown, and—
The sky split. The world itself was being torn asunder, breaking apart, and for the briefest of instances Eni had a glimpse of what lay beyond reality before she looked away. A being of pure malevolence blotted out the sun with great pennons of chaos, roaring triumphantly as all the forces of creation poured their might against it.
The sight was too much to take in, her eyes watering as one of her limbs swooped up to shield her face. Eni fell, her ears full of a thunderous sound, and the ground beneath her quaked and trembled. Raw power surged across her, making her entire body pulse with it, and she cried out, her voice swallowed by the din. She staggered, pushing herself to her knees, and as she tore her eyes away from the sky she watched in horror as things began to change.
The sand of the beach was shaking like mad; the ocean almost seemed to boil and the crab was growing ever larger. Its carapace cracked and came back together over and over, its abdomen bulging and twisting as it took on a new and terrible shape. Its claws grew larger and larger, their inner edges becoming wickedly sharp, and the creature's eyes bulged as their stalks elongated, new ones forming on its misshaped head. Its mouthparts split apart, the creature becoming horribly familiar, and Eni looked away.
Her gaze met the strange hare that had tried to run from her, but as she watched it was becoming increasingly less so. Its legs were getting longer as its body reformed, its front legs turning into arms so quickly that its skin split. For a moment the hare looked almost flayed before flesh and fur began rushing to cover the exposed muscle as its paws were giving way to delicate fingers. Its torso elongated, its head reshaping itself as its eyes slid forward. The hare was screeching in pain, the sound too high and shrill, but even as Eni listened it changed until it became full of awareness.
The hare flopped about, her eyes widening as she caught sight of Eni, and she called out in a wordless sound that nevertheless was full of intelligence. Her body was still changing, her plumpness giving way to obvious femininity, and—
Eni's head felt as though it was being split with a hammer and chisel. She groaned, her body somehow ill-fitting like trying to squeeze into a pair of trousers that were too small. She was pressed up against something warm and comforting, and when she tried opening her eyes she couldn't. The lids felt much too heavy, and she moaned as she tried to form words, her throat and mouth painfully dry.
"Restrain her limbs," Zathos's voice came, eerie and flat.
Eni could feel herself being moved, as easily as if she was an infant, by a pair of strong arms that gently placed her against the floor. "Don't need to," Tin replied, a slight edge underneath his dry tone.
"The possibility that—" the monster began, but Tin cut it off.
"Eni?" he asked softly, "Can you hear me?"
It took an extraordinary amount of effort to nod, but Eni at last managed it. She still hadn't managed to open her eyes, but the world felt as though it was spinning around her, her stomach tilting and lurching even as the smooth and cold marble beneath her back felt wonderfully solid. "Good," Tin said, relief evident in the word.
"I saw," Eni croaked, forcing the words past her parched lips, "Saw what drove them mad."
"Eni…" Tin began, and she could feel his palm pressed gently against her shoulder.
She forced her eyes open, drinking in his worried face as she took his paw in her own. "No," she said, "No. It's important. I'm not…"
She coughed, the sound almost a chuckle. "Not any madder than I was," she managed, and Tin's face smoothed slightly.
"What did you see?" Zathos asked, looming over her as all four of its eyes bored into hers.
"The Scourge," she said, "The very first Scourge, eons ago. It didn't… I saw what it made."
Eni clutched at Tin's paw, desperate to get the words out while her vision was still fresh.
"It… It twisted mammals, made them stand, made them think and speak… Do you get it?" she asked urgently, "The first Scourge never ended."
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