I freeze, unsure of what to do. Should I attack? It's not talking. Can they even speak? I don't know. I look closer at it as I realize something is wrong with it. Their face is angular and sharp yet shrunken in apparent hunger, with piercing yellow eyes that seem to glow in the dark. This Bado's whole body is emaciated and gaunt, its steel feathers matted and its eyes sunken. It regards me with a fierce hunger that makes my heart turn cold.
As it draws closer, I can see the veins bulging in its wings, as if it's barely holding on to life. Its talons scrape against the stone floor, and I hear its ragged breaths as it analyzes me in the same way I'm doing to it, almost as if it's relaying to a higher entity. The weird feeling throws me off. Finally, after these few moments of pause, the Bado begins to move toward me, its wings beating the air with a threatening thud. I can see its claws flexing and hear its breath coming in ragged gasps as foam drips from its beak. It's hungry, something is wrong with it, and it wants me as its next meal.
I thought these things were intelligent? For a second, I think about trying to help it, but it lunges right for me; it's a sharp beak and eyes that radiate light even in the dark, coming straight for me.
Without even thinking, I move. Ether flows through my body in Adrenaline Surge as I jump to the side and dodge the desperate attack. I can feel the wind snap from where its jaw closed, only a few inches from my back. Once I successfully evade its attack, all my hesitation leaves, and I counterattack.
I push my foot onto the wall as I push off and leap onto the Bado from the side. Then, by using Leash and Chainlink Boots together, I get atop the back of the creature as it screeches and fights back, but it can't do much from behind. I feel a few sparks of lightning glow from its wings, but before anything can come from it, I pull out the Intervention from my hip and aim the barrel at the back of its head.
The trigger is squeezed just as the light on its feathers reaches a crescendo. As it reaches that near-blinding blue brilliance, I cover my eyes, but before it explodes into what I can only assume will be lightning, the light dissipates entirely as the creature meets its end. And so, less than after a second lunging at me, the creature falls to the ground unmoving, brain and head splattered against the terracotta-like stone of the inner spire. My breathing and heart return to normal as I slow down my Ether from the furious tempo to a relaxed calm.
I step off of the Bado and look down at it. Upon an easy glance now that I'm up close, I can see deep gashes in the Bado's flesh, most certainly not from me.
There is something wrong with it. Very, very wrong.
Kneeling down next to the body, I examine it more closely. The wounds are deep and jagged, as if a powerful and frenzied attacker made them. I can see bits of torn feathers and bone fragments hanging from some of its wounds.
These creatures are said to be ordinarily aloof and removed from human affairs, rarely, if ever, causing any trouble unless provoked. But this one had attacked without provocation, foaming at the mouth and growling with terrible ferocity.
What is going on? I don't know, but I need to find a way to help Johnny and them up. We can figure it out together. My eyes scan the part of the spire I am in, and I can quickly find a piece to wrap the rope around. But before I do, I stop myself. I've gone so far that I won't have enough rope at all.
Stupid. I got too caught up in exploration and the maddening bird.
Trudging back toward the entrance, I sigh. I'm gonna have to pull them all up. My eyes glance at the dead Bado as I, for a second, think I hear something like the flapping of winds once more.
I'll deal with it later. Need to get them up. Heh… I got to fight, Johnny. Oh fuck. I got into a fight! Should I hide the body? No. That's stupid. Just own up to it. So what's he gonna do? Take away my gun? That'd be stupid.
*****************************
"You're stupid. Why would you go so far into the cave? You're strong enough to pull us all up!"
I sit breathing heavily after hauling everyone up the hundred or so feet of rock while Johnny yells at me. Of course, he heard the gunshot, but he waited to say anything until we were all inside the cave and got to the Bado's body.
For a few seconds, I really thought he wouldn't care. To not draw any more ire, I keep my eyes on the rocky floor of the spire as he sighs and inspects the Bado, pushing off my issue.
"Nevermind. You couldn't have known you would be attacked from inside. But you should have expected it. So next time, think a bit further ahead. Now, let's take a look at this rabid bird."
Johnny spins the Bado over as Silas, Blake, and I watch him look all over the dead body, inspecting every part. Dakota is watching Lennox tap his fingers against different types of stone, comparing his multicolored stone of black, gray, white, and a tad bit of red with the rock of the spire. The Stoneclad was the hardest to pull up, mainly because he insisted on carrying Dakota. The combination of a child of stone about five feet tall and a fox the size of a large dog was almost too much for me to pull up the spire.
Why did he have to come up first? Kids are crazy.
I see Johnny hum several times as he pulls apart wounds to look further, even going so far as to find an eyeball that somehow survived the blast of Intervention to look at. Then, he holds it up for us all to see as well. The pupil is milky white, and stained with veins of red now that it's dead, nothing like the crazed yellow from it being alive.
Johnny begins to speak but catches sight of something else inside the side of the Bado. Something that makes the man audibly gasp.
"Seems like it was diseased? Perhaps… Oh. Oh no."
The Gunfighter stands rapidly, draws his gun with purpose, and walks to the edge ignoring our questions.
"What?"
"You find somethin'?"
"Is the disease bad?"
Johnny looks up and down from the edge of the internal cliff, bringing us the rest of the spire's insides through the border of rock. I can see eyes evaluate the entire interior, pupils scanning every inch from the edge. I join him but can't find anything, even with Temper. It's all quiet. Really quiet.
Johnny's voice whispers to us, raw and with a hint of definite fear. Fear for himself and those that were supposed to be here.
"There's a Motherbound here. And a strong one at that. Likely a Two-Face or Manipulator. That's the only way the Mother's Darklight spreads, as far as I know. Look at the Bado's heart."
I twist and look behind me, peering at the heart of the Bado, my split vision of chains and reality letting me see it clearly now that I know what to look for. Twisted chains tainted with corrosion and a melding of darkness and light lie deep within the chest of the Bado.
His words make me think of the only thing in the world that genuinely gives me pause. Not fear, per se, but something close. Something existential.
A Motherbound. The term for any who undergoes changes as Vernon did within The Cabin, the Darklight of the Mother Below, twisting them into something different. Something… untold. The Two-Face Vernon was gnarled into is only one kind.
The most dangerous types are Manipulators. People twisted in mind, body, and Sigil to only want to spread that plague of silvery madness. Two-Faces can also corrupt people, turning them rabid similar to how that Bado acted, but Manipulators can go a step further. They can raise others into Motherbounds as well, even if they follow all the rules of The Cabin and Sigils that we have set in place for each other.
They can create creatures far worse than any demon. At least demons can think and are their own selves. These things? These Two-Faces, Taintwroughts, Dreadmarked, Manipulators, or Devil forbid, a Fallen, are mindless machinations of the Mother Below, existing only to spread her plague.
I return to the cliff as my heart speeds up with the unsaid. If there are Motherbound here, what happened to those who left those symbols? Where is Sacate? Bonfire? Did Virgil already make his way back here with his family? What about Earl, Elizabeth, and Primrose? Esther?
My breathing picks up, but I put a tight clamp onto it, using a split Daydream to focus the tightening of my chest while strengthening my hearing. Something I came up with during the travel here. If Temper can isolate senses, why can't Daydream isolate its weaknesses instead of being a total body weakening? The change was easy and made me regret not doing it earlier. All it takes is focus and another stream of Ether pointing to get the part I want to weaken in exchange for strength.
I also use Listen to hear everything I can while Temper isolates the sense. We can't see anything from here. No movement, but earlier, I listened to a flap of wings. Closing my eyes and focusing intensely, my mind almost flies through the grand opening of the spire, listening for any sounds.
As I concentrate, the sounds of the wind within the spire, my friends moving, and even my own breathing fade away, replaced by an eerie silence. I feel my Ether focus on my ears, and I extend my sense of hearing outwards, reaching into the depths of the spire.
At first, I hear nothing but the faint echoes of my heartbeat. But as I listen closer, I can detect the faintest of sounds, like the distant drip of water or the shifting of rocks. I follow the sound, allowing it to guide me deeper into the spire.
I listen deeper, following that sound with my ears, but I seem to reach a limit. A limit of my ears. That they can only detect so much sound, even with Ether. Some things are just too quiet to pick up with the human ear.
"Beneath everything, there yet lies more. Limits are false and potential unreal, for exertion and obsession are all that matters in search of the peak."
Remington Shaw's words come to mind as I force my Listen to the next level, taking in all I've learned over the past months. Ether spirals, twists, and joins from many different streams as they all coalesce in my eardrums. With this supreme focus of no other sense besides my hearing, I quickly push it further, elevating my Ether's quality with my own Sigil's signature, my mind moving the tang of a Philosopher into my ears.
The second I do so, I hear a resounding pop, and the world seems to shift. Even with my eyes closed, everything turns to chains in my hearing, everything a small scratch, tingle, or metallic sound. It sounds impossible to understand, but somehow I do. I know these sensations even better than my normal hearing as it expands even further into the spire.
My ears pick up the slightest creak of a branch or the faintest crunch of leaves underfoot from behind me in this odd tangle of chains as if it was next to my eardrum.ck to their boots. I am alert to every sound, every nuance, every whisper of movement. So I turn my ears toward the depths of the spire.
The sounds of the spire grow louder and more distinct. I can hear dripping water as if it's beside me, shifting stone as if I'm touching it, and two simultaneous noises far down below. The fluttering of ringing feathers metallic in nature and a… spark? No, a plume of fire.
The first sound is easily attributed to a Bado, and the second to a friend.
Bonfire.
He's the only man I've met capable of wielding flames as if they were simply a part of him. They flow from him just as Ether flows from others, the fire almost as innate to him as breathing.
I open my eyes, stopping the flow of all my Ether, and discontinuing this new skill I label in my mind as Echo as it lets me hear even the smallest of echoes. As I do so, I realize I missed an opportunity to use Release, one of my 4th Sigil skills that I've mostly neglected. I was focused on using it to enhance organs. I never thought about using it on my ears or eyes.
But I shake that off and turn to Johnny, still looking into the spire with light coming in from above. So I will try that out another time.
"I found Bonfire. He's far below us, probably fighting one of these Bado."
He twists and looks at me with surprise, asking how I did so.
"How? I can't see anything alive from here. There isn't anything in sight."
I shake my head and point to my ears.
"Didn't see. I used a whole bunch of skills and Ether to hear his flames and fluttering wings by amping it all up as far as I could go."
He nods at me as he tosses Blake some rope from his pack. Questions hit the both of us in quick succession, the Gunfighter unwanting to waste any time.
"How many did you hear? Anyone else? Can you tie our rope together so we have a way down over here and a way up from behind us? Should be enough to at least get close to the ground if you tie two bundles together."
Blake gets to work immediately for our escapes and arrivals into the actual tunnels of the spire, as I reply to Johnny.
"No. Just him and the Bado."
I see his face twist in concern and know what he's thinking. Bonfire is… tough. Probably the strongest of those left behind, besides Sacate. I'd even bet on Bonfire against Virgil unless my friendly Damned snuck up on him. But if he's the only one we hear, not even the rest of his group, that's bad. Real bad. It means there is a real chance he's the only one still alive.
Silas, however, is not as concerned as we are. He doesn't know these people after all and is instead more focused on my feat of Ether.
"Quite impressive there, Wyatt. That Sigil sure does do wonders for your skills. Most struggle to use a few at a time, and you can do it all at once. Not just that, but you advance far faster, too; it seems you are either really talented or your Sigil makes your Ether smoother. Keep that going, and one day you'll reach a Dzil."
I awkwardly nod in thanks for the compliment but return immediately to the task at hand. A small chuckle comes from Silas as he waves his head.
Without waiting, we head down, Johnny being the first to hold onto the rope and climb down. I follow right after him once I secure Dakota onto me with a blanket tied around my shoulders tightly.
The wind slaps against us from the inside of the shadow-filled spire. The wind is far less than on the outside, but it is much colder, as if coming from deep in the stone pillar. My eyes constantly roam all the shadows of the spire while I climb down, looking for anything that could have been hidden in a corner, unmoving while we looked from above.
But as we move our way down to a walkway of stone that goes across the spire, I don't find anything. No Motherbound hidden in some crevice or Bado watching from above. Just silence.
Eventually, my feet land on the hard stone below as I dust off my pants and let Dakota down. I look up and see Blake behind me with Lennox above her nearing me, so I move out of the way and join Johnny, looking out from the walkway to the seemingly endless depth of the spire. At the very bottom, only darkness lies. A lightlessness that seems to spiral into infinity.
"We should keep moving. Best to find Bonfire as fast as possible; who knows why he's alone."
I speak in the open air, pulling Johnny from the obscuring dark. I can't tell his thoughts exactly, but I know he's worried. Very worried. The people he left behind to stay safe are obviously not, and his oldest friend is not where he should be.
But the Gunfighter is no weak man. Even if he is a fearful one. He always pulls through. That's the definition of courage, right? To be afraid and push through it. I wonder. Would I be courageous if Aniwye had not taken away my fear?
I don't know, and Johnny doesn't give me time to think. Instead, he whips around and walks across the walkway toward the tunnel that leads to where I heard Bonfire. The rest of us play a bit of catch-up to keep with the man's pace as he speeds up from a walk to a jog through the wide tunnels.
It's dark, but we all know Nightvision or can naturally see in the dark like Lennox and Dakota, which really gets me thinking. How much do the two of them know about Ether? I can't imagine Lennox would know very much, and the same idea is with Dakota, but perhaps their bodies and instinct are enough for the two of them.
Lennox's stone body gives him crazy endurance, strength, and no need to eat, breathe, or drink. He's got the best natural advantage, even if Dakota's instincts have proven sharp. The young fox has been a menace in combat, a perfect harasser to slow down and damage targets.
I rip my thoughts from the past and future as I focus on the present, the tunnel opening into a vast cave with dripping water from the ceiling. So, this is where the drips came from. But we need to go deeper. I search for a few moments with Johnny before we find a small tunnel in the back, barely big enough for even Blake to crawl through, the lip of the tunnel partially covered with intricate stone.
We all look at each other for what to do, and I see Johnny look at me with frustration. I know what he's going to say before he even says it. Regarding pure firepower, I'm the best here with Strugglers Gasp. If Johnny were to shoot through the rock to make it bigger, that'd risk ricochetting and hitting us.
The man takes a deep breath before giving me permission.
"Go ahead, Wyatt. Use your Ether. Safer than me risking getting you shot."
Smiling, I let Ether run through my body as I take a deep gasp of air, Adrenaline Surge giving me strength, Struggers Defiance slightly loosening my chains, Struggers Gasp heavily loosening my chains, and finally Release removing the chains on my shoulder.
All at once, I feel a surge of unbelievable power and, in one motion, strike the small passage with a Whetted palm. An equivalent force hits my hand, and it hurts pretty bad. But in exchange for that pain, a large chunk of rock falls off.
I quickly peek at my hand and only see a bruise, so I continue. The Bloody Palm can and will heal from any damage, even if it won't heal the rest of me. I strike the top of the tunnel to enlarge it almost ten times before stopping to clear the rubble out into the room behind us. From there, I can see I've made significant progress. And I continue.
After about a full minute, the tightness in my chest from Strugglers Gasp has reached a crescendo, so I start to use small Explosions, unwilling to blow off a hand for this. And on the final Explosion of Ether from my palm, the stone flies outward, not down, as I break through the tunnel, revealing the other side.
Another cave is on the other side, one the size of several houses in its impressive magnitude, but that's not what surprises me. And neither do the large nests high in the roof almost thirty feet above. Instead, what surprises me is what's on the ground.
Dozens of bodies. Human bodies twisted in pain, agony, and suffering, several still glowing with faint Darklight on their skin. Bado bodies gnarled into small balls of plague, the Darklight positively burning their flesh even after death. And finally, several Nahullo bodies.
Twelve, exactly twelve, Nahullo lay dead in front of us in a circle as if defending themselves from the onslaught of humans and Bado. But what's surprising is that none of the pale giants between seven and nine feet tall are corrupted with the Darklight. Instead, it is only the dead humans and Bado that are.
A panicked whisper comes from behind me as Johnny is the first to climb up and over the rocks that I broke through after me.
"Sentinels!?"