“Vyswe’eyaga?”
“…Yes?”
A beat of silence hangs in the air. Though I cannot see his face, I feel Ike’s gaze pressing on me, and I am certain it carries concern. He has worn that same expression ever since we began wandering these tunnels, and the persistence of it gnaws at me.
“…I know it is an easy thing at the moment, but you need to calm yourself.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. My throat feels tight, like there is something wedged inside and blocks anything I wish to say. In the darkens I feel Ike’s hand holding my trembling ones firmly, and I rest my forehead over his chest, focusing on his breathing. We remain in this position until the sound of footsteps and voices slowly fade into the distance… and then some more.
“The coast is clear,” he whispers.
I take deep breaths, tightening my grip on my staff before tapping it against the wall to our left. The earth parts open, and we both step out of our hiding place, the wall sealing itself back behind us.
I stumble against the wall.
“I… I need a moment.”
“Vyswe’eyaga…”
“I-I’ll be fine.”
From the corner of my eye, I see him walk closer, then sit against the wall. I watch him briefly before copying him.
“How do you manage?”
He glances at me. “What do you mean?”
I swallow hard. “How do you stay unaffected? You have sharp senses, so you must feel the energy these people give off—the energy permeating this place… what is it that keeps you this composed?”
“Honestly, I don’t think my senses are as sharp as yours; I don’t have your sensibilities, hence why I am not as affected.”
“…Is that so?” I hold my arms around my thighs harder. I suspected as much, but I still hoped that I was wrong and wasn’t alone in this.
This place… and all these cloaked ‘people’ we have been coming across, they exude so much malevolent energy, the energy of the junjus. It is everywhere, and so dense that I can almost feel it sticking to my skin. This is awful, it makes me sick.
And the closer we get to that ‘shrine’, the more difficult it becomes for me to
breathe
. My body won’t stop shaking, no matter how hard I try to stop.
I let out a shaky breath.
“If this is too much for you, Vyswe’eyaga, then let’s run away together.”
About five seconds pass before I register what he just said.
“What?” The question comes out in a voice I don’t recognise as my own.
Ike holds my gaze as he repeats, “I am suggesting that we run. You and me. I’m certain we could pull it off somehow.”
“I-I can’t do that,” I say after a second. “I… I have dragged everyone into this situation, so it is my responsibility to at least try to get us all out of here. I could not live with myself otherwise.”
“Guilt and a sense of obligation, huh?”
“I am pathetic, aren’t I ?”
“I don’t think so.”
I snort. “You have a biased opinion.”
“I beg to differ; not everyone would push through despite their fears as you do.” His fingers intertwining with mine, and we stay like that. “You are very brave.”
His words make me feel strange inside, not the warm, fuzzy kind, the uncomfortable one—I feel like an impostor.
“Were you serious when you suggested that we run?” I ask, trying to change the subject. “Would you have really done that had I accepted?”
“Yes.”
My eyes open wide at how definitive his answer is. “Even as it meant abandoning the rest?”
Ike smiles, and he lowers his gaze to study our conjoined hands. “Contrary to what you may think, I’m not a good person, milady, I am, in fact, very selfish. And it would be for that same selfishness that I will take you away as far as I could. So, whenever you feel it has become too difficult for you to bear, just say the word.”
I shouldn’t be feeling comforted by his words. It’s wrong. I should not be glad to know that Ike will not hesitate to take me away if I so felt inclined… yet I don’t seem to care in the slightest.
“You are not a bad person, Ike.”
“I’m not a good person either.”
A frown creeps across my face. “And I don’t think you are selfish. If anything, I believe you are far too selfless… and fearless.”
He starts chuckling out of nowhere.
“How do you feel?”
I come to a sudden realization; for a time, I had forgotten the crushing aura pressing down on me, and my body no longer trembles. I gape at Ike.
He had been distracting me!
~~~~~~~~~~~
We delve deeper into the tunnels without too much impediment. But I observe something peculiar: there seems to be less and less of these cloaked individuals as we go. I am not sure whether to see it as a good omen or a bad one.
We have been avoiding them out of precaution but aside from the dreadful essence they give off; they do not appear to be that dangerous, most of them are not even Practitioners.
They scour the tunnels, searching, but do not employ any form of detection. Who does that?
My thoughts come to a brutal—I find myself slowing my pace and coming to a complete stop as we pass by the entrance of a chamber. I am vaguely aware of Ike stopping beside me. I think he called out to me, but the world around me feels muted as I stare at the dark entrails of that cave. Goosebumps prickle across my skin as dread coils through me.
What feels like an eternity passes before I force myself forward—one step, then another—until I halt at the threshold. Looking down, I see faint lines and symbols etched into the stone, winding across the entrance like veins of some hidden design.
“Talk to me… Vyswe’eyaga, what has gotten into you?” Ike says.
“I don’t know, I—” I kneel down, my hand hovering over the array. It was not designed to prevent entries or hide something; instead, it functions solely as an alarm mechanism.
Yet, I can’t help but frown.
The way it has been crafted… this is sloppy work.
It takes me barely a minute to disable the entire thing, and I can finally step through. I raise my staff, and small orbs of light disperse from it, drifting around as we go.
My trepidation intensifies as the orbs cast their lights against the empty space, and I nearly cry out in fright when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to find Ike pointing somewhere to the far right. The orbs quickly whizz there, but there is nothing…
Nothing… except for a couple of stone caskets.
“This cannot be…” I breathe, feeling my stomach drop.
I am running. Hoping, praying that I am wrong, that maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. Because if this is reality…
My fingers run across the cool stone, tracing the familiar glyphs carved on its surface, until they pause at the edge of the lid—now slightly ajar. Without saying a word, Ike moves the lid to the side, and a broken sob escapes my lips when I peer inside.
As I feared, these caskets are Nchāren capsules, similar to the one I had awoken from. By why… why—
“He is dead,” I choke.
The body is almost unrecognisable as it has already undergone an advanced stage of putrefaction—no, this looks more like mumification.
“Why?”
Ike walks over to the other capsules, inspecting each and every one of them. I count six in total. When he looks back at me, the expression he makes tells me everything I need to know… They must all be dead too.
“Vyswe’eyaga, these people…” Ike asks after some time.
“Yes… they… they are Nchāren…” I take a deep breath to stop myself from falling apart. “Do you remember when we first met? Back then, I said that because of the Corrosion, many of us were evacuated out of all the cities. We were led into underground facilities, then put under an artificial sleep in hopes for the crisis to subside.”
He nods, glancing at the capsules. “Then, you awakened from one of these?”
“That is correct. But I don’t understand… the capsules… They were designed to keep us alive. Why… why are they dead?”
As I force myself to check the other corpses—which are in a similar state as the first one—I come to the horrifying realization that these young men and women all are very young, around my age… no older than a hundred years.
“I’m not sure, but it looks like they died in their sleep,” he pauses. “I suspect it was because those coffins were obtained prematurely.”
“That can’t be right, the capsules cannot be opened from the outside—I tried—only the one occupying it can do that.”
“…Using sorcery, maybe, but what about brute strength?”
I freeze.
Of course… I forget that the capsules were not made with people with extraordinary strength in mind. “But still… It should not have been that easy. Look, the rims are not damaged at all; the capsules were not forced open.”
“It appears so, then…”
“They were already open, very probably when they died, I can’t think of anything else.”
Ike watches my face for a moment before asking, “How did you know these were here?”
The question takes me off-guard, and as I mull over what to say, I realize I don’t have a proper answer.
“I… I’m not sure how to describe it. It felt like I was being called… I had the impossibly overwhelming feeling to go inside.”
“It sounds awfully like your mind was being enthralled,” he says after a beat of silence.
“It did not feel that way, though, I felt in full control of my mind in body. I did not feel steered by anyone.”
“Hmm… Anyway, I don’t see any more of these capsules, are these the only ones?”
I look around and the room is as hollow as it was when we first entered—there are also no hidden passages when I use my senses on this room.
“It looks like it, yes.” Could there be another hidden shelter here? And if there is, how did those people access it? From what I have seen, they are not very capable when it comes to wards, I can’t imagine they somehow detected and disabled ours.
I cast a glance at the body inside this other capsule before quickly averting my gaze. The way these bodies had been left behind… discarded like some useless piece of furniture. “They deserve to be laid to rest with dignity.”
Ike sighs deeply. “You can’t. We have lingered more than enough.”
“I have to!” I insist, whipping my head at him. “Do you expect me to leave them like this? I cannot imagine what this, this cult of madmen did with them—to their body—but I will
not
let it carry on any further.”
“And by doing that, you would be giving away our position, Vyswe’eyaga, you would be putting Kayin, Ewa, and the others at risk.”
“Don’t forget that I can ward this place,” I say. “No one will sense what will happen in here.”
“What if they marked the bodies somehow?”
“I doubt it. I would have noticed.” But as I finish talking, Ike’s attention has already shifted—his posture is stiff as he glares at the cave’s mouth. Without waiting another second, I snuff out the orbs of light, plunging us back into the darkness.
“Is there someone—” He silences me at once. And on instinct, I deploy my spiritual senses—an action I regret dearly. Because as they stretch outward, far away, they slam into a wall. A suffocating mass of violence and murderous intent that locks me in place. And when I finally tear my Gaze away, I know it is already too late. Because it Gazed back.
“I-Ike,” I say, trembling.
“I know.”
As I feared, there were others—there is another Nephilim here… and he is coming straight at us.
“What should we do? We are t-trapped.”