The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]

For we reached up with our hands.

And we built a tower to the Heavens.

And judgement was declared.

And smiting was rendered.

And the Sun opened up.

And all was wiped away.

And we sinners gaze up at the sky.

And at the thrown bestowed to Arda.

And we built the tower again.

To skies within skies.

To life within life.

To souls within souls.

And the throne fell.

And so did the world.

- Inscription found during the first Arisian Catacombs Expedition.

Fer kept pace by Malam’s side as the party descended further into the Aris Catacombs. All of them said little, it was actually Maisara and Fortia that were the most talkative, and then, that was just question asking. Malam would answer without joke, without elongation, flat explanations all. Fer asked nothing, said nothing, she had watched the first few fights with caution, her eyes almost never leaving or the beasts around her.

It wasn’t that Malam couldn’t fight, she could. Better than most Divines out there, the Goddess of Hatred was older than Fer or Fortia or Maisara after all and she had made it through this world so far alone. But still, it was a little sister. And out of everyone here, Malam may have been the least proficient in fighting. Iniri could go at range, Neneria could most likely wipe the tunnels out if she was more assertive. But Malam wanted to do the killing, so they let Malam do the killing.

And Malam was good at it. Knives would emerge from her wrists whenever a beast got to close and her own slivering made the snake-like monsters seem more like slugs. The shapeshifters would be forcibly shifted into Malam’s form, with all the same looks and no of the skills. After the third fight nest had been cleared singlehandedly by Malam, with not a scratch on the Goddess, Fer finally allowed herself to take a breath. It was terrible to watch a cub hunt, but this cub was made for hunting.

In every way of the word, Malam was the apex predator down here. It could not be said in any other way, if it was said that Malam singlehandedly slaughtered every monster in the world, Fer would believe it. Her black eyes managed to bind them somehow, the deformed parodies of humanity would take pause when Malam’s gaze passed over them. Whenever they tried to cloth the world in the liquid darkness, Malam’s hair would be a beacon of white to follow. Not a bright sun which provided the warmth but rather a star in winter. And, Fer had to admit, down here, her senses were overpowered.

The inhuman smell that managed to be bitter and sour at the same time permeated everywhere. She could tell, more or less, when it was getting stronger, but a beast had to be approaching them. Likewise her ears were constantly being assaulted by the clatter of claw or paw on stone, or jaw snapping somewhere in the distance, of irregular heartbeats that pretended to be from other creatures and tongues whisking about deformed mouths. And Malam’s ability to taste magic suffered from none of it. Twice, Of Hatred would stop and look down long corridors after they reached a junction, then tell the blessed Paladins what was hiding behind a bend before sending them off.

Fortia did calm down after a while, Maisara had not come in afraid, and the disgust and concern had not shrunk an inch. Iniri smelled calm, almost of mint and lemon and bramble, although she always had that fruity scent about her. Neneria was dust: unimpressed still. “It would go faster if you cleared everything.” Maisara said to Neneria.

“It is not my place to.” Neneria said.

The party watched as Malam raised her shotgun into sheer darkness once again. “Do any of you see it?” Malam asked. Fer sniffed the air, she had just assumed the thick smell was another case of her senses being overwhelmed by the ever-permanent musk that was down here.

Fortia and Maisara both looked at Fer, Iniri stopped. Neneria was the only one to speak. “I do.” Fer’s ears turned and tried to find something, anything, that Malam could be hinting at. She found nothing, utterly nothing.

“I do not.”

“Out of curiosity.” Malam said, what do you see Neneria?

“A general outline of a spirit.” Neneria said. “Not a loose soul but not a spirit either.”

“What do you see?” Fer asked. “I don’t see or smell anything. I don’t even hear anything.” Well, she heard everything here, and that was the problem. The sound carried too well in the tunnels and the beasts made a cacophony of every noise imaginable. Even in a battle, you had heartbeats and boots and screams and gunpowder, but you didn’t have paint slicking onto walls or the buzz of an oven baking.

“It’s a kobold.” Malam said. “Shapeless, sometimes, they appear as animals.”

“Why aren’t you killing it then?” Maisara asked. “If you can see it.”

“Its eyes are closed and it’s not moving.” Malam said quietly, she pointed her shotgun up, straight into the corridor and Fer pursed her lips.

“That’s bad why?” Maisara asked.

“Because I have never seen one of them pre-emptively close their eyes as I was coming.” Malam said, then pulled the trigger. A flash of light, Fer saw a faint shimmer in the air, the same that came from heat, and then she saw blood burst out of nowhere. A form immediately took shape as the creature died. The creature was humanoid and long, with a snout that bore only gums and no teeth. The hands bore long, curved claws that fell onto the ground as Malam stopped to inspect the monster. She prodded it with her gun. “What do they smell of? Out of curiosity?”

“I don’t know.” Fer said. “Bitter and sour at the same time, you can taste it on the back of your tongue.”

“Bitter and sour?” Fortia asked.

“It’s not a taste I’ve ever come across. There’s nothing… it’s not like a lemon, or like the stomach, it’s just sour. Same on the bitterness.” Fer said as Malam moved the corpse around.

“It’s odd.” She said. “It shouldn’t have known to close its eyes.” She flipped the monster over. Nothing on the back either. “Did any of them run away from me last time?” She turned to look down the corridor in the direction they were going. The masonry had long since given way to pure stone, smoothed down by constant use.

“I don’t know.” Maisara said. Malam turned to Fer.

“They’re everywhere around us, I can’t pick them out individually.” Fer said.

“Even behind?” Malam asked and Fer turned around, her ears twisting. A short distance, close enough that she could hear their jokes and words, were the men blessed by Helenna. Fer had never even known Helenna had a blessing until she heard someone mentioned the first Arisian Expedition. Now though, she could see how Malam and Helenna were both creatures that formed in the Age of Monsters. Their powers and blessing were utterly redundant in this world.

“Not behind.” Fer said.

“Good, me neither.” Malam turned back around. She turned around, stared down at the corpse, and then started moving on, merely knocking it away with her foot. “That thing was disconcerting.”

“Disconcerting.” Fer kept up by her side. From ahead, there was more frantic skittering, it sounded to be in the walls. “Why?”

“We spent more than a hundred years chasing them across Epa.” Malam said. “Revisiting old nests that the repopulated and venturing into caves or forests and not once have they adapted. Now we have been here what? A week? And they are closing their eyes.”

Maisara spoke up from the back. “Can they not communicate with each other?”

“Can animals?”

“Animals can.” Fer said. She knew they could, maybe not as well as humans, but enough that such things as territory or prize or kin could be established.

“Maybe.” Malam said. “But bears won’t be building guns anytime soon.” She stopped and lifted her gun up again, then lowered it. “Something ran away just now.”

“You missed it?” Fortia said nervously. Malam shrugged. “How could you miss it?”

“I don’t detect them, I know a few tastes of the most common ones but the rest need visual confirmation.” Malam took another step and then looked up. “There’s a tunnel above us.” She turned around, then looked to the Paladins. The men were working in dark steel armour under black coats. None had drawn their blades yet, Maisara’s greatsword had been swapped for shorter blades that could actually be swung down here. A pair were laying cabling and lights and civilization, the rest were resting and chatting. Malam turned around and continued.

“They’re above us?” Fortia said.

“The men will handle it.” Malam said. “We push on forwards.”

“This isn’t the route Paida took.”

“That is why we go down this route.” Malam said. “Because there is nothing new down there.” Fortia sighed, Fer’s ears fell to her head as she fell back in line. Of Hatred lead them down another series of twists and turns. She cleared out another nest. Another short fight were Malam burst in, shooting her gun from range as Fer tracked the monsters. Of Beasthood stepped out of the way, the tunnel actually got slightly wider here. “It’s larger than the others.” Malam said. “Join in, I don’t have enough ammunition for this.”

With six Divines, and especially with six Divines of such scale, it was a slaughter. The troops trailing behind them did not even have to wait at the entrance of the nest for the Goddesses to finish. Spear and axe and claw and knife tore through the monsters, some fought back. Or tried to, at the very least. But they were too slow to chase Malam and Malam was slow for Fer. The Goddess of Beasthood ripped through the monsters. Fortia and Maisara spread out to the sides as a flood of ghosts emerged from Neneria and rolled forwards like a tidal wave which ignored the ceiling and the floor.

And then, they were done. The den was an assortment of odd items and trinkets, stacked on top of each other. There were burrows in the walls, Iniri and Neneria both flushed those out, one with ghosts and souls, the other twisting vines and roots. Fer walked around the spilled blood and the broken bodies as Maisara and Fortia dematerialized their weaponry. The dark blood on it splattered onto the ground. “That was a lot.” Fortia said.

“Indeed.” Malam said. “We’re getting closer to whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is?” Maisara asked.

“What we just cleared here would have amounted to a once in a year find back when in the day.” Malam said. “But we track them by blood and signs of life, the more, the better.”

“You mean you’re taking the most dangerous road there is.” Maisara said.

“It can be put that way.” Malam said. “Paida went randomly. We’re going to go deeper than her.”

“Paida reported seeing a city down here.”

“I believe her.” Malam said. “The amount of nests we’ve come across is unprecedented already.”

“And if we’ve gone the wrong way?”

“Then the nests will start getting smaller again. As long as they’re getting larger, we’re getting closer to the centre.”

“Are we scouting this?” Fortia said, already moving the corpses about with her foot and rolling them over. The Goddess of Peace grimaced each time she got a look at another deformed face. “I think we should.”

“There’ll be trinkets.” Malam said. “They steal items of importance, do you want to play historian or do you want to advance?” Fortia didn’t reply, seemingly deciding to take the first option. The others did not notice the hesitation, or maybe they did and decided to remain silent about it, but Fer noted it. Normally, Malam kept the pace of lightning in this trip. She would rush in and hurry along without even inspecting the corpses. And now she was giving them a break? It did not add up.

“We should wait at least for the troops to light up this area.” Maisara said. “And for you to get ammunition.”

“No disagreement there.” Malam said as Fortia summoned her spear to push the corpses away. Fer felt queasy in her own throat. Never had blood wanted to make her throw up, not when it was Tartarian or Angelic, not when it was human. Not when it was freshly spilled or cooked over a fire. But the liquid here… There was something off about it. The smell was seemingly foreign, never smelled before, and yet… And yet, there was something about it that was almost nostalgic. As if Fer had smelled it before, even though she knew she never did.

“What is this?” Fortia suddenly asked. Malam blinked, walked over to Fortia, and knelt down. Fer herself came closer too, Of Peace was pointing at something that looked to be a hunk of metal, was it Tartarian blacksteel? That looked like it could be it. But then how could Tartarian blacksteel get down here? “Can I touch it? Or will it poison me and eat my soul?” Malam stared at it for what felt like eternity. The Goddess that knew everything about what was happening here was at a loss for words.

She prodded it with her shotgun as Fer knelt down and gave it a sniff. The smell was foul, nothing made a smell like that. “Is that monster shit?” She asked.

“No.” Malam said. “That’s metal.”

“It doesn’t smell like it.”

“What does it smell like?”

“Like the worst thing I’ve ever smelled.” But there was a question that had to be asked. That someone had to ask, and so it would be Fer if no one else was going to say it. “Did they make that?” Malam stared at the item, and prodded it again with her gun. The small chunk of faux-metal bounced make a clatter when it fell over, bouncing on its sides and settling into a vibrating rhythm that settled down after a few seconds.

“They shouldn’t.” Malam said. “Iniri, touch it with a plant.”

Iniri pulled out an acorn from her satchel and threw it on the ground, it sprouted into a tiny oak tree in the span of a second, the zenith of the green leaves reaching only up to their knees. Slowly, the tree curled, vines sprouted from it, then rotated and picked up the chunk of metal. It was smooth on one side, jagged on the other. “That looks like the edge and there’s another half of it somewhere else.” Maisara said. Neneria stepped forward.

“Do you sense it? Can you feel anything?” She asked.

“No.” Iniri said. “It’s tough but it’s not… it’s sitting somewhere titanium, I could crack it in half if you want.”

“Can I touch it?” Neneria asked, she was already walking before anyone answered. Her fingers closed around the chunk of material and she picked it up. “It stings a bit.”

“It stings?” Fer leaned over to touch it. It did sting, not a bad feeling, but just hot without giving off any temperature. As if every single particle on that stone was actually the prod of a needle.

“I’m not losing any power though.” Neneria said. “It’s just…” She blinked, her eyes started to glow with a blue light and she spoke the question to herself more than to anyone else. “What?”

“What do you see?” Malam asked.

“A soul signature.” Neneria said. “Not whole, just a fragment of it, very small….” She blinked again.

“Can you tell what soul?” Malam asked.

“I can…” Neneria said. “But…” Her eyes started to glow again. “It’s…” She dropped the stone onto the ground and waved her hand. “It’s Divinity. It’s the shard of a Divine soul.”