"Freedom!"
Thud.
Thud.
...
The undead pair landed on their feet outside the small opening in the earth. Their tattered rags and torn leggings flapped in the gentle wind of the outside world for the first time in a long time.
Liemann wanted to feel happy about getting out of the dark cave, finally able to use his eyes for vision like a human rather than the undead night vision that made him uncomfortable...but he could not feel happy just yet.
They may have gotten out of the weird cave, but those knights may have heard Jim's and his footsteps coming out of the tunnel, so he had to find another hiding place. Quickly.
Shaking his head to rid himself of the excitement, Liemann observed where he'd found himself.
The terrain before him was a treacherous one, a steep incline leading up the slope of a mountain, flanked on either side by a dense thicket of towering trees. The looming presence of enormous boulders precariously perched upon the edges of their respective ledges.
Liemann couldn't tell exactly where they were because of the sheer denseness of the forest. Still, he would guess that they were close to some sort of large settlement - judging from the knight's conversation that had 'Royals' and 'Vassals' about 'waiting for their ceremony'.
As Liemann was about to pivot on his heel and seek out a place of hiding, a sudden sensation of numbing coldness surged through his body, reminiscent of the frigid touch he had experienced upon absorbing those mysterious crystals earlier. In an instant, he found himself standing on an open field, his surroundings completely transformed!
"Hmm. Hmmm?! Am I tripping, or am I tripping?"
Liemann doubted his eyes for a moment before he did a double take on what he saw. He rubbed his empty eye sockets with his boney hand and opened them again to see that he was still standing in the middle of a field.
Before him lay an endless expanse of grass, stretching out as far as the eye could see. It was a desolate, empty plain, devoid of any signs of life or activity. No trees or buildings dotted the landscape, no animals roamed the fields. The only break in the monotony was the crimson orb that hung on the edge of the horizon, casting its eerie glow across the grassy expanse.
As he gazed out at the scene, he couldn't help but feel a sense of unease. The Sun's red glow bathed the grass in a sickly hue, turning the sea of green into a disturbing sea of dried blood. Silence hung over the plain, not even the sound of wind or rustling leaves to break the stillness. It was as if the world had been frozen in time, leaving him stranded in this surreal, otherworldly place.
"Jim?" Liemann looked around for the bumbling zombie, but no one was there. His hand was empty, and there existed not a companion that he could see.
"My hand?" he looked at his hand in surprise...but it was no longer the skeletal hand he had moments ago, but his original human hand!
Liemann frantically tore off his ragged clothing, discarding them in a heap on the ground. He stood naked as he watched in awe. His flesh began to regrow at an astonishing rate, the muscles and ligaments sprouted from nothingness, and organs materialized within his body with an otherworldly speed. The process was both fascinating and terrifying to witness, and as his vision blurred, a searing pain shot through his skull, threatening to split it in two! The sheer intensity of the agony made it difficult for him to remain standing, but he gritted his teeth and fought against the urge to collapse.
Panic set in as he struggled to comprehend the strange and terrifying sensations coursing through his body. The Sun now flickered and disappeared at random intervals, leaving him temporarily blinded before reappearing in a fiery red blaze. His vision became a chaotic jumble of light and darkness, disorienting him and leaving him struggling with little acuity of what was happening.
The transformation continued, and he could feel every fibre of his being convulsing and contorting in ways he could not have imagined. It was as if an invisible force was reshuffling his muscles and tendons, rearranging them in all the wrong places and causing his body to twist and writhe uncontrollably, turning his muscular body into a mass of moving flesh that writhed under his skin!
Agonizing torment wracked Liemann's mind, an excruciating sensation that sent waves of pain coursing through his very being. Even though he was no stranger to pain, this affliction was unlike anything he had ever experienced. An invisible force, a phantom agony, burrowed deep into his psyche, driving him to the brink of madness. The pain was so intense and relentless that Liemann felt as though he was being rived apart from the inside out. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, desperately trying to hold onto his sanity as the torture continued unabated!
"Ah. Ahhhh! AHHHHH!" he began to scream as he felt his teeth fall out and regrow. Many mouths spawned on his body as they laughed and cried in pain with him. His arms and legs doubled, no, tripled...he couldn't even begin to count now that the phantom pain had reached a limit far beyond his capacity!
As the frost of the crystal crept deeper into his flesh, and the pain of the convulsion reached unbearable levels, vivid images of something, someone, or someplace began to materialize in his mind. The intense sensations seemed to unlock a hidden realm of his consciousness, unleashing a torrent of sensory information that flooded his mind like a deluge. Colours, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations converged into a swirling maelstrom of sensory input that threatened to overwhelm his mind. He felt as though he was witnessing an entire lifetime of memories in the span of a few fleeting moments, each image more vivid and detailed than the last!
A nightmarish tableau of horror, the stuff of the darkest dreams. A person hung from a tree, their flesh being torn by chains that ground against their skin with a sickening sound. The chains were rusted, and blood dripped from them onto the ground below, forming a gruesome puddle.
A woman was nailed to the moon, her face split open as if by some terrible force. Her eyes bulged, and her mouth twisted into a grotesque grin, revealing serrated teeth that writhed and squirmed. Her moans echoed through the void of space, a sound that chilled the soul.
A black sea, a man's body was strewn, his skin bubbling and burning as if being consumed by some infernal blaze. His screams of agony fueled the abyss that devoured his mind, driving him further and further into madness.
Alas, lying on the ground nearby was a skeletal figure, its bones bleached white by the unforgiving Sun. It lay motionless next to an open tunnel, a silent witness to the horrors surrounding it.
He began to hear murmurs, incomprehensible yet discernible as their meaning seeped into the folds of his brain. The many mouths on his skin also began to mutter the same phases repeatedly, creating a cacophony of noises that almost tore his remaining sanity to shreds!
"Thee has't hath passed the first. The moth'r is v'ry did please with thy eff'rts. Continueth, and learneth what t is to beest god."
"Godfell and a tribulation. Amusement f'r the most wondrous'r shall."
"A blessing f'r a sacrifice to the most wondrous'r shall. Unus'd to the pow'rs, unknown to the w'rld. Thou art to becometh the v'ry thing yond endues us down."
"Knoweth me as The L'rd. Findeth mine own fragments, and killeth me."
And then it stopped.
...
"Haa...haaa...haaa...haaa..." Liemann was left gasping for air as he found himself lying on the grass, feeling a cold sweat run down his illusory skin as the muscles and ligaments disappeared without a trace.
"Grah?"
Standing next to Liemann, Jim watched with confusion as his zombie mentor suddenly ceased all movement and collapsed to the ground in an instant.
"What...what was that? The Lord?" Liemann could barely tell what was going on, only able to see that Jim was still next to him and they were at the entrance of the tunnel.
He then realized that his undead night vision was working, and the crimson sky had disappeared. Either that, or it was never there in the first place.
What he just experienced...was not normal. Even if this world was magical, even if it was mystical, he could feel it in his bones that whatever that was - was something completely different.
"J-Jim...help me up. Help me." he unsteadily grasped around for his companion.
"Gra."
He took a few seconds to steady his legs and calm his mind, using Jim as a support for the time as he felt his condition improve by the second.
"Thanks." Liemann's headache disappeared as his mind's functions returned to normal after a full minute.
Looking around, he saw that the knights had not returned yet, and the tunnel remained open. If they had, it was likely that Jim would not be standing here with his little backpack intact.
I have no idea what just happened, but I'd like to get the hell out of here before things get worse than this.
Those knights went through the tunnel in the first place because they wanted to feed the 'bear' something called the 'Plague of the Midnight'. The bear is dead because I killed it, soo...they shouldn't be very happy.
With his conclusion reached, Liemann seized Jim's hand with determination and moved them forward into the dense forest. They plunged down the slope of the mountain with incredible speed, their feet pounding against the rugged terrain as they sprinted with an urgent need to escape. The rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs echoed through the woods as they charged forward, the wind whipping past their faces and a crippling anxiety that took hold of Liemann.
Who knows what more The Lord could've wanted from him?
...
After about half an hour of running through the forest at inhuman speeds, Liemann found a trail that led somewhere and decided to follow that.
His decision led to them finding a dilapidated house after another hour of frantic running through the forest on an almost indiscernible trail...but it got them to this house regardless.
It was a wattle and daub house reminiscent of those in the Tudor era, though it really did look like it had seen better days, maybe a few tens of years ago, when its inhabitants were still present. The wooden beams that supported the walls were warped and weathered, and the thatched roof was caved in at several points. The windows were shattered, and the doors hung loosely from their hinges, creaking with every gust of wind that blew through the forest.
Bang!
He pushed the front door with such force that the hinges may have become undone, dragging Jim into the house before he slammed the door shut and put the rusted metal lock in place.
"Okay. Alright, wow. I don't think I've ever run that fast in my life, being an engineer and all." Liemann chuckled as he felt relieved about the successful escape from the knights and the extraordinaire.
Well, they never left the tunnel for some reason, so I guess The Lord stopped them for me? How awfully convenient. How awfully suspicious.
There was no way to know, and he was most certainly not going to go back to the tunnels that led to the 'Grand Caverns of Alarc'. Heck, Liemann doubted that the caverns should even be called the 'Grand Caverns of Alarc' if there were only two caverns and their entire space was less than a couple of thousand square metres.
"Anyways. Let us perform a memory and a sanity check before moving on." he grabbed a nearby chair and sat on it. The wood creaked under his weight even though he was left with just bones and scraps of skin.
So...I indirectly killed the bear-spider, which called itself the 'third creation of the lord' or something...which I didn't really think too much about, and retrieved its crystal out of its head.
Then, Jim and I climbed the wall of the cavern to the other tunnel we hadn't explored, taking around 15 minutes to reach a dead end that I surmised was actually an entrance...somehow. And then it miraculously opened because the knights who wanted to feed the bear-spider came, and I got my ticket out of the cavern.
The sense of suspicion grew stronger and stronger as Liemann thought about the events that transpired.
Then, I was...contacted? No, more like...'experienced' the Lord? It really is difficult to understand what the hell happened there. But anyhow, it gave me some random information about three people who died in strange ways and some cryptic stuff about finding its fragments? Then...killed the knights and extraordinaire that went into the cavern...just because?
Liemann felt another headache form as he leaned back into the crummy old chair and stared at the rotting wooden ceiling.
"I also got a new rune...and I can guess where it came from." he reached into his side pocket and grabbed the remaining crystals, placing them on the table in front of him as he made sure not to put too much force into them.
"One." he pointed to the left.
"Two." and then the right.
"Two black spikey crystals. No blue cube crystal."
Liemann sighed as he looked at the state of his crystal collection.
If that one knight didn't see the small pouch he had full of hedgehog crystals, then his collection would add to a grand total of 25 gems!
Considering the fact that the extraordinaire said that they went for 10 nocs in the black market, he could sell the 22 gems for 220!
...not that Liemann knew what a noc is and how much it was worth.
"Still, that knight made it look like 10 nocs was worth a lot...so I guess there goes my starter money." he shook his head as he dismissed the notion of money for now, returning to the vital matter that he needed to verify.
Preparing the table in front of him for a potential disaster that his following actions may bring, Liemann removed the two black crystals and old candle stands off the rustic table.
He then prepared his mind for what was to come, ready to tackle whatever monstrosity or strange effects this particular rune may bring.
"This rune." Liemann drew out a strange shape, his hands no longer moving in straight lines like the previous runes he'd drawn but a mixture of curves and straights.
After what felt like an eternity, the letter finally materialized, its delicate and beautiful form taking shape in a stunning turquoise hue that seemed to radiate an otherworldly glow in the darkness of the old house. Its shimmering surface caught the faint light that filtered in from the empty windows, casting a soft, ethereal glow around the room. The intricate details of the letter were mesmerizing, with delicate curves and swirls that seemed to dance and shift in the flickering light.
Liemann watched it float in the air, waiting for it to do something or generate some kind of strange happening...only to see it fizzle out of existence shortly after being cast.
"..."
He wasn't disappointed, nor was he surprised.
Liemann had known that this rune was different from the others, and his precautions were just there for the sake of respecting the power of runes.
Yes. He knew what the rune was, the meaning behind it, and it was something he didn't expect to be possible with a rune...because it necessitated a fact that contradicted itself.
"If my theory is right about how runes are forged...then you should not exist. No, you cannot exist." Liemann mumbled as he felt a strange energy surge through his skeletal body while his face expressed an evident emotion of curiosity.
"Immortality."