Trial and Tribulation 7 (New Name)

"Incredible! What is this place?” Verus asked reverently. “I had no idea anything like this existed on Evera.”

The wall in front of him depicted a bulky humanoid figure tearing a mountain in half. The figure loomed over him, over thirty feet tall, and its rough outline didn’t look quite human. Was it made of stone? It also had no mouth or nose, only two menacing eyes. 

Looking around, saw many smaller figures standing on spheres scattered around the background as well. What were they supposed to be? 

Escora rolled her eyes. “You grew up in a temple run by the empire and then immediately moved to another temple. There’s a lot you don’t know about this world. It’s more than empty land ready to be colonized.”

“Does that mean you know what this place is?” Verus said as he turned to give her a look. 

“It’s old,” Escora replied after a moment of hesitation. She then walked up to study one of the reliefs. This one showed a giant surrounded by fire floating above a sea. “Very, very old.” 

“You can’t be more specific than that?” 

Escora didn’t glance away from the image. “Only a little. I think this place is far older than my tribe, which is one of the oldest civilizations left on this world.” 

There was a hushed tone to her voice now. “I think it’s a… relic depicting the titans. It might even be from the primordial era.”

“The titans?” Verus asked curiously. He’d heard of them but didn’t know much about the subject. They weren’t something the empire or the sect talked about a lot. 

As if unsurprised by his ignorance, Escora sighed. “It is said that the titans crafted all the worlds under the endless heavens, shaping their earth and filling it with their fire. They were massive elementals of incredible power that were born at the dawn of time. Even the empire doesn’t directly dispute their existence, although they ignore them as much as possible and consider them nothing but servants of God’s will that vanished long ago once their job was complete. They certainly aren’t around anymore.” 

“So, these scenes are the titans creating the endless worlds?” Verus asked. Official church doctrine attributed the creation of the heavens and earth directly to God most the time, but he could remember a few passages that mentioned him sending forth unnamed servants to help. 

“Probably,” Escora replied as she pointed up at the top of the mural. “See that crumbling landmass hanging above everything?”

Verus nodded. There was indeed something that looked like a huge floating continent at the top of the mural.

“That would be the primordial world. The legends of my tribe say that once all the worlds under the heavens were one, but that world was destroyed in a great calamity, so the titans emerged and formed the countless fragments into new worlds before going back to sleep.” 

“Sort of like the lost eden of humanity?” Verus mused as he tried to fit this into his church’s teachings. 

Escora laughed. “I’m not sure it was a paradise. My people’s stories just say it was very big and full of giants.” 

Verus made a face and decided to focus on the present. “Do you think there’s treasure here?”

“No, I’ve heard of ruins like these many times. They’re ancient and nigh-indestructible, but they were picked clean a long time ago. No one ever finds treasure in them. If they held any originally, it’s long gone after countless eons.” 

“Then let’s focus on finding that spirit. That’s what we’re here for,” Verus said as he turned away from the wall before him and let out another pulse of his void sense. 

He could sense that the spirit was close. The ancient walls of this ruin seemed to give off a minuscule amount of ki, which was probably why it had made this place its lair.

After a few moments, Verus realized the spirit was hiding in a crack in one of the nearby rock walls. Escora and him got ready for combat and carefully approached the gap. However, once Verus placed the talisman he’d been given over the crack, it drew the spirit right in and sealed it without a problem. He barely got a glimpse of its small rat-like body.

“That was too easy,” Escora said as she frowned thoughtfully. 

Verus nodded. He also had an unexplained uneasy feeling in his gut now. 

“Regardless, we’ve got what we came for. Let’s leave before something unexpected happens,” Verus told her before pulling out his amulet and touching the sealing talisman to it like he’d been instructed. A faint tapping noise echoed through the cavern, but nothing else happened. 

Escora groaned. “I knew it.”

“Maybe were just too far underground. Let’s try it again at the surface.” 

Escora didn’t have a better idea, so they both hurried back through the cave. It wasn’t long before they saw sunlight again and had jumped outside. 

The uneasy feeling in Verus’s gut had only grown stronger though, so he wasted no time in bringing the sealing talisman out again. However, before he could tap it against the amulet, a loud cracking noise descended from the heavens, making his heart skip a beat. A vast rumble that seemed to shake the earth followed. It sounded like the world was breaking apart. 

Scared speechless, Verus and Escora both looked up in horror to see a massive gash appear in the sky overhead. The scene shocked them to their cores. There was only one possible explanation for this. 

“The world barrier has been broken and something has come from outside,” Verus hissed in alarm as he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. 

One of the ways the Heavenly Empire defended its worlds was using a great spell tied to the Heaven and Earth Arrays. This barrier prevented powerful forces from entering the world without permission. Lesser spirits and weaker cultivators could get around it, but it stopped invasions by foreign armies and the greatest of spirits from the eternal plane. Verus had seen a glimpse of such beings before, and he knew how devastatingly powerful they were. They were dark gods full of hunger and malevolence.

Escora gasped. “What could do such a thing?”

Before Verus could come up with an answer, further horror made his thoughts go numb. As he watched, the gash in the sky widened and three balls of white flame flew out. The balls of unearthly flame cut through the air and then slammed into the ground below a moment later.

As the ground shook, Verus could see one of the landing spots from atop the hill he was standing on. 

The impact had created a smoky crater. Within, white smoke wavered and then parted as a creature emerged. The beast was larger than a horse but shaped more like a massive hairless dog or wolf. It couldn’t be mistaken for a normal animal though. Its grey skin was tough and wrinkly, and it had five long tails that resembled writhing tentacles.

The beast exuded an alien aura that made it presence seem wrong and dangerous. As it looked around, Verus saw that it had six small eyes in a row instead of just two, and each of them radiated madness. A moment later, the creature bounded away and disappeared. It had thankfully headed away from them, but the horror didn’t end there. 

From with the gash torn in the sky, a giant ghostly eye appeared and began looking around. It filled the entire tear in reality, and it had an inhuman slit pupil. 

“Try the amulet again, we need to get the hells out of here!” Escora hissed. Her face had gone completely pale, like all the blood had drained away. 

Verus did as he was told, but nothing happened. “It’s not working!”

“That can’t be a coincidence.” 

“So, what do we do?” Verus asked. The massive eye was still staring down at the wasteland form within the gash up above. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to have seen them. 

“We leave, as fast as possible!” Escora replied before turning and beginning to run away from the gash in the sky. 

Verus immediately cycled his ki and followed at full speed. Behind him, screams full of pain and terror rose up, causing him to shudder. It sounded like the strange beasts had found some of the other competitors in the trial. It was unlikely they’d be able to survive. 

Verus shoved his thoughts about what was going on aside and concentrated on running as quickly as possible. Escora managed to keep ahead of him by covering her feet in water ki and sliding a bit every time she put her foot down, but Verus wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up. There wasn’t a lot of water ki or water around for her to work with. He was using his void ki to lighten himself. 

Suddenly, there was crashing sound from Verus’s left and one of the strange beasts from the sky charged out from behind a hill. It was headed straight for him.

Shock and terror overwhelmed Verus, and all he could do was stare. From this close, he could see that the beast was faintly transparent. It was a spirit of some sort! 

As spine-tingling fear surged through him, Verus cycled his ki and tried to jump out of the charging spirit’s way. However, despite its size, the creature was incredibly fast. Spinning around, Verus somehow managed to avoid its teeth, but he still hit its shoulder and was thrown aside. The heavy impact sent pain through his body as he was knocked down to the ground. His momentum made him roll across the dust for a few moments. 

When he managed to come to a stop, Verus coughed wretchedly and quickly pulled himself to his feet, despite his pain. It felt like his chest had been squeezed until his ribs broke, but he couldn’t stay down. The alien spirit had stopped its charge and was already spinning back to face him. He had only a few brief seconds before it would attack again. What had he done to attract this monster?

Seeing her ally go down, Escora stopped her own flight and turned to lash the spirit with a water whip. There was a loud crack as the ki attack slammed into the beast’s flank, but much to Verus’s dismay, it ignored the blow and leapt at him again. 

This time his injured body was much too slow to avoid the spirit’s attack. The creature’s jaws stretched unnaturally wide and a longue tongue shot out to wrap around his chest. A split second later, he was pulled into the beast’s mouth. 

“No, Verus!” Escora shouted in horror, but she was helpless and could only watch.

Bound by the tongue, Verus tried to struggle as he was pulled into the spirit’s slimy throat. Behind him, the creature’s jaws snapped shut, sealing him in terrifying darkness. Then, warm mucus swirled around him and he was sucked into the spirit’s stomachThere, pressure pushed down on Verus from all sides, keeping him restricted. He was utterly blind and unable to move, but he could feel the force constraining him writhing and shifting like something alive as it began to absorb the ki from his body. Terror filled him and he tried to scream, but he couldn’t even open his mouth anymore. He was being digested! 

Tendrils of alien energy sliced into his body. Verus could feel them slide through his flesh as they made their way toward his core and wrapped around it. Slowly, the tendrils squeezed and sliced until they found a way inside his core and headed right for Verus’s soul. 

However, Verus’s core was not like most others. The moment the exterior was cracked, the void within went crazy and created a more powerful suction than ever before. Caught off guard, the tendrils were pulled inside, and one even lost its tip to the hungry edge of the void essence. Immediately, the other tendrils began thrashing around as they reached for Verus’s soul and attempted to crush it to end his pointless resistance. 

The vicious tentacles soon found their prey and caught Verus’s soul. Verus’s deep terror deepened at the intrusive and unnatural feeling of his soul being grasped by another being. He felt sick, and he gagged as the tendrils began to pull his soul out of his body. It seemed like he was about to be devoured and utterly destroyed.