Greatness is Never Promised

Within this trickle of foreign water, Ruby the Red Mage, finds the way. She finds her path. It is not immediate safety nor is it immediate help but instead an unwinding of the very world around her. She manages to continue to avoid all the threats that were pursuing her. Just by following by listening to this foreign water.

She finds herself winding and weaving through the forest, ducking into bushes, climbing up into trees. Each time she questions why. What she's doing. Only for moments later someone is searching for her and ends up misdirected, following where she would have been going, rather than where she is. With the constant success Ruby begins to lean more and more of her instincts into following the magic. Within this it grows, the foreign water starting out as a mere droplet now encroaches upon her river. It's an adjoining stream. In the past she may have been worried. She may have considered it to be an invader. But now she accepts its presence, encourages it.

The only thing that she wishes from it was that she could find or understand its source. Was it a person? An organization? How could magic like this exist in this world? She'd never heard of it, never read anything about it in her books. Someone's River is supposed to be their own.

She now finds herself outside of the forest. She walks plainly into the opening, fear abandoned in her heart, confidence surging through her blood. Her heart thumps hard in her chest, adrenaline surging. She feels nothing but assured.

At once the land opens up revealing a deep cavern. Ruby gawks towards it, her mind racing. She hears yelling behind her, within the forest there are probing lights. She walks into the cave, it swallows her. The moonlight that had been trickling in, vanishes, it has resealed itself. Ruby finds herself alone now. A quiet calmness overwhelms her as she drops to her knees. Finally, she feels safe for the first time in hours. Deep, unbreaking sadness overwhelms her and she wails, crying, screaming. Her old life is gone now, it will never come back. After a few minutes until it almost hurts to continue crying, she wipes the remaining tears from her face, slowly gets up and does the only thing she knows she can do now, she moves forward.

Snapping her fingers, a dull orange orb manifests itself using a small portion of Ruby's River. The orb begins to glow brightly, illuminating the cavern. The walls and the ceilings are a smooth gray rock. There are many stalactites hanging from the ceiling, though they appear to be in odd, almost rounded shape, water drips down from them. She looks backwards from whence she came and finds it to be nothing but a curved wall. She rests her head against it. The stone is uncannily smooth but it emits a nice, cool feeling. The air within the cavern is damp and old, as if it has never touched the outside air before. There is only one path forward and so Ruby begins to walk. The floor is uneven, there are constant cracks and bumps. The going is slow but soon Ruby catches the hang of it and proceeds as quickly as she can. Blood still drips from her body, fatigue wears her muscles down with an ache and her stomach grumbles. Her throat is dry, parched. She hopes that something within this cavern can answer those issues for her.

The cavern continuously descends Ruby's ears pop again and again. After hours of travel Ruby can only guess she must have descended thousands of feet now. She begins to hear something, a deep beating of a drum. She stops and listens, there is a rhythmic sense to it. As if it were for a song or a dance.

In caution, Ruby whisks away her glowing orange orb and instead activates a more costly spell, but a more stealthy spell, [Night Vision]. She blinks her eyes several times, adjusting to the new feeling. While the foreign water within Ruby's River tells her that she continues down the right path, she cannot feel anything but caution, weariness grips her as her recent betrayal leaves her on edge.

Slowly and silently Ruby the Red Mage creeps through the cavern. She finds herself at a bend in the cave system, just past the source of the drum. She peeks her head past the corner and is met with a harrowing sight. The bodies of people she doesn't know but she can tell exactly who they are. Their sunken skin, lacerations and scars marking their entire bodies but most especially their backs. Large wounds festering at their wrists and ankles. The source of which can only be the freshly undone metal chains. But they're all lifeless and their skin pale and sickly. Looking about, she can see now people from every kingdom on this world, even kingdoms currently at war. She can see why these slaves were made lifeless. Their blood marks the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Making an ominous circle filled with various inscriptions of an ancient and hellish language.

The drum continues to beat loudly, it only seems to grow louder, the rhythm more intense, she can feel the anger seeping in from the music. Each representative of the kingdom's dance, a wild, furious dance, their naked bodies sweating. Ruby remains watching as minutes go by, then an hour passes. The dance continues, until finally the climactic event happens. All the representatives rush to the middle. They cut their fingers, dripping blood into the middle inscription marking it, each with a unique symbol. Afterwards, they all gather just on the outside of the bloody floor inscription. There, they have smoked meats, cheese, fruit, various drinks from gourds. They seem to be getting drunk, having fun. They talk lazily, laughing constantly. Ruby realizes this event is not uncommon. This is not the first time these people have done this. She also thinks, "I don't know these people. I don't know the representative from my own kingdom. He's not higher up. These people don't even know what they're doing." They're clearly being rewarded plentifully from it. Ruby can only imagine how many occurrences like this, how many groups there are like this across this world.

Ruby bites hard down on her lip drawing blood trickling down her chin. Killing them would prove nothing, it would accomplish fuck all. The most she can do is wait and watch with a fury building in her gut as she knows, she must let them live. Because what she will be able to accomplish is something no one has, no one with a soul. She will be able to find these markings, these inscriptions, and translate them into knowledge, into foresight as to what great evil deed is being planned in her lands.

After what feels like an eternity but could only be several hours, a hooded figure appears out of thin air. [Teleportation] magic. At once the naked representatives are whisked away. Leaving Ruby to wait, uncertain that they won't be back. But after a long enough time, after the blood has dried and the corpses have begun to rot she sneaks on ahead.

The first thing that she does is visit each corpse. She shuts their open blood-stained yellow eyes closed, saying a quick and solemn prayer, hoping to put their souls to rest. If that doesn't work, then the vengeance that she enacts upon this world will. She glances over the markings. She cannot read the language.

Months go by, Ruby finds herself having encountered now several of these rituals. She never stops a single one. She always comes too late to prevent anything. The people that she wished she could save already drained of life. But finally, her day of fruition appears. She comes upon that hooded figure standing at the reckoning of a past ritual. She sees the figure dragging their feet along the floor, along the inscriptions. She makes her move, slicing the figure's hood off, as well as the head below. The body falls to the floor lifeless, blood spurting out of the hole that remains at the stump of its neck. Pools viciously across the floor, ruining the inscriptions. But it doesn't matter. Ruby is already committed them to memory. Without an ounce of emotion, she goes through the hooded figures belongings stripping them of everything that they have. She finds a tome.

Ruby scurries away back into the recesses of the cavern that is clearly only meant for her. If there were truly such a large and interconnected cavernous realm beneath all of the world, surely someone else would have discovered it. She can now only attest the foreign water that has grown into the depths of her river to be the culprit, opening up the world for her to explore and travel. Well, it would be easy to say that the conclusion was that natural. But what really did it for her was the piping hot meals and cozy beds that just so happened to appear right when she needs them. Thank you, world!

Ruby slinks backwards and once she's gotten far enough from the body, the one that she killed, she begins to run, tripping haphazardously through the darkness before she winds upon, well isn't that cute, a little study room, a nook with a journal and writing utensils. She plops down on the comfortable chair in front of her, throws the tome up onto her lectern, and begins to work. Day and night have already bled together for her. She hasn't seen the sun or the moon in months. All she can do is dive into the countless lessons that lie ahead of her, transcribing a new language. Each time Ruby passes out from fatigue of the daunting task in front of her, she awakes to the tempting and tantalizing aroma of a piping hot fresh meal. Her days, her moments, even waking, dreams, it all bleeds together until finally she's made a truth of it all.

She knows now what the inscriptions are for, what this accursed ritual will attempt to do. The sacrifice of half the people on this land for a meager wish upon a demonly figure. The Lord of the Three Hells. Tears roll down her face. She screams and curses and all that she is welcomed with are the echoes of her own voice.

Her river is no longer her own. It is merely made of foreign water. And yet she's never felt stronger, more confident. It now pulls her upwards, beckoning her to leave her hovel.

So Ruby emerges, she climbs up back into the world, her eyes aching desperately attempting to adjust to the natural light. After several moments of rubbing her eyes, giving a big long stretch, she looks around, taking in her surroundings.

"Oh Hells on a stick! Motherfucking damn!!"

Ruby finds herself smack dab in the royal courtroom of her very own kingdom. Naturally the king sits fatly and lazily upon his throne, His court wizard is gasping in the horror and the knights surrounding the room are just confused as to what is going on.

The wizard is the first to adjust to the insanity screaming out, "How dare you use such vulgar language in front of His Highness!"

Ruby responds almost immediately with "Oh, shut up, you bag of useless bones." She switches gears now, attempting to make the king see reason. "Please, sir, I just want to bury the beef between us. There is something utterly, horribly evil going on in this world, and I have vast proof of it. I can show it to you."

The King's eyes narrow as he glares at her before his voice drops, two octaves becoming a gravelly, deep monotonous boom throughout the room. "Please, child, I know exactly what you've brought me. I can smell the blood on you."

Ruby's eyes grow wide as she sees the transformation take place in front of her. Large, curled, snaggling horns grow out of the king's forehead. His skin becomes taut on his bones turning to a bright, sickly red as his eyes burn within fires of the great Hells.

The demon resting on the king's throne lazily sets his chin down on his fist. "Hmph! What's another thousand years in the grand scheme of things." He looks at his nails, "And here I thought I had finally won this world over too." He stretches a long hand out towards her and all that Ruby sees turns to red bloody streaks.