Chapter 788 – Unknowns Below

The Age of Monsters is unique for its properties, because it is the one Ardan phenomena that can’t be bound by rules. The Monsters themselves are a rarity, although the Age is not entirely kept secret like that of Gaia. Most of the folk tales from that time have long since died out, and most regions did not have any sort of writing system. The pictograms were only beginning to be invented and cave drawings serve as the best forms of cultural analysis.

Of course, the existence of monsters in themselves is undisputable. There are too many mass graves from that time, pits filled with inhuman bones are evidence enough that Malam’s retellings of the time serve as truth. But so, another problem all the more peculiar is revealed to us. The existence of the monsters is a conundrum within themselves.

Never, not once, has a monster young been found. The bones that are small reveal themselves to be parts of larger organisms, always roughly the same height, ranging from teenager to Divine sized. There is no evidence of their growth. Of course, many theories exist.

The one that is most popular, holding some plausibility, is that they reproduce through corruption. This would fall in line with their vile nature and some accounts. There are indeed monsters that can corrupt and turn humans into mind-slaves, or deform them into grotesque parodies of life on Arda. Nevertheless, this still leaves the issue of the population problem and the original specimen. Humanity did not number anywhere close enough following the Age of Gaia to be turned into monsters.

There is also the egg theory. That they are spawned in sacs in the same that larva are, that these sacs degrade naturally and thus we have no evidence of them. Whereas this solves the population problem entirely, it remains questionable as to why not a single Divine who has lived through the era ever talks of such spawning chambers. The spawning pool theory is similar, and it falls to the same issue. No one that has lived through that age has ever seen a monster young or a monster in incubation. And surely if anyone, then Malam at least, who burned down their nests, would have witnessed such things.

So begin the theories of conjecture which are sensical, to some extent, yet also entirely unfounded and utterly unprovable. There are countless, although most of them can easily be argued against through basic logical fallacy. Nevertheless, two exist that hold some merit and thus shall be touched upon briefly in this section.

Non-Ardan Life Seeding and the Proto-Divinity hypothesis. The first relies on monsters being entirely foreign to Arda, that they come from a world which follows its own rules of life and that they require some external source to reproduce. It could be that only the males or females got transported? Or maybe they do in fact birth in spawning pools, but they are unable to build these pools? Whereas obvious questions arise of how they got here, we are unsure.

The second, which is distasteful amongst Divine circles but peddled by mortal scholars, is that before the rules of Divinity were set and understood, and before the major aspects were claimed, these were rogue essences. That monsters exist as some sort of proto-Divinity. Thus they never age, and they are never young, and they are in fact the collective consciousness of a primitive humanity’s worst aspects.

- Excerpt from “Archive of Arda”, written by Goddess Elassa, of Magic

“I’ve found another one!” Malam stopped her own inspection when she heard Iniri’s voice. The C-Team had officially become a team at this point, with the whole group starting to optimise. There was no point for searching and picking through the corpses of these massive nests anymore. Iniri could just a thin web of nets that covered the entire ground and identify everything just by shape.

“Another artefact?” Maisara asked as Malam looked to the other entrance out of the nest. This, she did not like either, although there was no reason to mention it to the rest of the team. Normally a nest would have at least a dozen entrances and exists coming from it. This one had precisely one route that went deeper in, and there were monsters waiting there. She could taste them whenever she opened her mouth.

And the route behind was being lit up by fresh wire and the small team of Paladins that were blessed by Helenna. Malam turned her back to the monsters ahead, they were far were terrified of the Divines. Fer could probably smell it although that was up to debate? Did monsters feel fear? Did they dream? What would they even dream of? Monstrous deformed sheep?

Malam watched a thin, small tree, a leafless candlestick of young bark rise out of the corpses holding and another. All of the Divines, Fer, Neneria, Maisara and Fortia, Iniri and Malam clustered around it. “Still odd feeling.” Iniri said. “Not very hard but it’s…” She twisted her head. “I’d describe it as an ungrowable material even though I think it’s organic?” She tapped the it with her knuckle. “I don’t know, it’s not stone though.”

“Do you think this one will light up?” Fortia asked, looking between Neneria and Fer. That lighting incident with the first stone had made all of them jumpy. The rock suddenly starting to glow for the better part of an hour was one thing, Neneria and Fer both independently confirming they sensed or smelled Elassa on it though? And Elassa of all people? That was honestly the worst part about the whole thing. What was so special about Elassa?

Neneria reached for it like she did all of them. With curiosity that was both hesitant and eager, and care that was reckless and cautious. “It stings, like all of them do. And it feels like another soul fragment.” She took the stone. Then, from the pouch in her side, she retrieved the other two stones. “They all sting in the same way.” Malam didn’t want to touch them honestly. She was curious as to the stinging, but some things did not need their curiosity sated.

“What does that mean?” Maisara asked.

Neneria stared at the stones, then put them back in her pouch. At first, they were going to send these up to the surface but they would bring them back up themselves. The worst case scenario would be for something else to activate, and then for them to miss it. The Goddess of Death took a deep breath, then shook her head. “Realistically, either that the stinging is an innate property of the material, or that it is part of the same soul. They don’t connect though.”

“Connect?” Maisara asked. “What?”

“Physically.” Neneria said. “They’re not a complete puzzle set.”

“How large do you think it could be.” Fortia asked.

“I have no clue.”

“Aren’t souls the size of people?” Fer asked. “Generally.”

“Generally they are.” Neneria said. “It’s rare for someone’s soul to exceed the size, but it’s not uncommon for it not to fill the body entirely.”

“So we’re talking generally the size of a Divine then.” Fer said and Malam turned around to the corridor. She opened her mouth and tasted the air. There were more monsters ahead, standing and watch and… Malam squinted; not really doing anything. Just watching them.

“Divines vary.” Iniri said, the smallest of the group, and small enough that the tallest members in Fer, and Neneria, Fortia and Maisara all were double her height. “So that’s more of a range than a number.”

“True.” Fer said. She sniffed the air, then looked down the corridor. “Did you catch them Mal?”

“I’ve caught them.” Malam answered. “They’re staring at us.” She increased the power on her torch and saw the light did not extend by even an inch. She turned the power back down to save on the battery. There was no point wasting it after all.

“Why do you have to say that even?” Fortia moaned, her arms falling loose by her side. “Please Malam, why?”

“Are you scared?” Malam asked.

“Not at this point but why do you go out of your way to make it ominous? Seriously.” Fer chuckled and bounced from leg to leg.

“I agree with Fortia.” Maisara said. “Can you see them actually?”

“Well they’re just stood still so what else can they be doing?” Malam asked. “We’re deep anyway, this is unknown territory even for me.”

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Fortia moaned. She summoned her spear pre-emptively. Malam brought out her axe and Neneria looked into the darkness of the corridor. These rooms were always simple. They took about fifteen minutes to light up, so that was fifteen minutes of time to kill. “And what? None of them are moving?”

“I don’t think so.” Malam said.

“Oh you don’t think so.” Fortia said. She took a step towards the entrance and shook her head.

“Well I’m not going to lie about it, they could be moving but I can’t hear heartbeats or the rustle of clothes.” Malam looked to Fer, she was smart enough to get the hint, right?

“There’s too much noise all around us.” Fer said. “I can’t pick anything out.” Her ears swivelled and bounced on top of her head, then sat up straight and forward in their standard position. “I know there’s a nest above us.”

“Thanks for that.” Fortia said and Fer chuckled.

“They’re not that bad. I was nervous as first but they fall pretty easy.” Fer said. “It’s just… I don’t know, they’re not Ardan. That’s how I put it, animals don’t live like this.”

“Well they’re here.” Iniri said. “So I don’t know about that.”

“You know what I mean though.” Fer said. “We’ve come across so many, what do they eat?” Fer looked to Malam. “But actually though, we’ve killed what? Thousands? Hundreds easily? How do they sustain this population?”

Malam stopped to think. What did monsters eat? But actually? “They eat humans.” She said. “So meat I assume?” Fer rolled her eyes.

“But you know what I mean, don’t you? Aris would be having disappearances if the city was feeding all this.” Her ears bounced around again as the troops from the rear finally caught up to the door. The looked around at the broken bodies left behind by the Divines, a few swore openly in front of the Divines. That always made Maisara stand up straighter, and it always made Malam smile. That was how they talked back in the day.

“Too many mouths to feed.” Fer said. “Do they farm?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Malam said. Now that she thought on it, she actually did not. What were monsters even? She knew the types and species of them. But it was… well, they were things to kill. They weren’t something you could farm. They were pests, weren’t they? “I can’t assume so. What would they farm?”

“Mushrooms could grow down here.” Iniri said. “It’s damp enough but I don’t…” She shrugged. “I mean, I run my own inspections every now and then as we walk and I never feel any flora nearby.” She pointed straight. “Except for that way, there’s wood that down.”

“There’s wood!?” Fortia asked and everyone turned to Iniri.

“It’s old wood?” Iniri said. “Neneria knows, it’s the Age of Gaia roots, the ones that couldn’t be commanded by me because it came before me.” And suddenly, everyone turned to the Goddess of Nature as she dropped that bombshell. There was wood she could not command.

“I’ve seen it before on the surface.” Neneria said lightly. “It’s just aggressive plants.”

“Like the Jungle was?” Fer said.

“No, that just possessed.” Iniri said. “The old flora is more… old? It doesn’t listen to me like younger plants do. And it’s less…” She looked to Malam. “I mean, they could be related, because the old flora also just breaks rules of nature. There were trees that grew on stone and sand, and these vines that sucked up rivers. I call them old flora because they’re plants, obviously. Like this is a creature.” Iniri kicked the deformed corpse of a man too tall and with scythes for hands that lay without a wound on him. Neneria had gotten the kill then. “But it’s not a creature that we expect?”

“I know what you mean.” Malam said. “They’re monsters, but I can’t tell you how they breed, how they eat, I know they can die and I know how to kill them but...” She shrugged. “They don’t fit into any rule of beast that we would use for anything else. Even Divinity has rules we can learn. Monsters just have uniformity.”

“The old flora is like that.” Iniri said. “It just breaks the rules of flora and doesn’t behave the way you expect plants to behave, so there’s this… uncertainty? Is that how to say? It doesn’t seed for example. It just regrows itself eternally.”

“How did you get rid of it?” Fortia asked. Malam knew this story, she had heard it passed down in oral tales that died out before the Concordats were written.

“Fire and lightning.” Iniri spoke in a light and breezy tone. “Zerus and Alkom incarnated, and then there were saps you could harvest. Those burned well.” Around the party, the humans got to the usual affair, the team split into smaller groups. One pair went around the left wall, another pair around the right wall, another started cutting a channel through the broken corpses in the middle. That would be for the main power cable which was always running out. More rolls were constantly coming in from the surface, and those were being practically devoured by the distance Malam’s party was making. None of the other teams could keep up with the pace, although the other teams had to set up firing lines and ammunition depots and everything else that slowed down modern infantry. Malam just needed rounds for her shotgun and she was the only one who could even run out of ammo.

“You mean you burned it down?”

“We had a god of wildfires.” Iniri said. “For a while, then as the age of monsters was beginning, he decided not to stop.” Those green eyes passed over all of them.

“Feriz.” Neneria said. “I remember him.”

“And?” Fortia asked. “What happened to him?”

“I killed him.” Iniri said. The party of Divines moved out of the way, towards the exit door without needing to be asked. Fortia kept on giving nervous glances to the darkness that was swallowed pushed back one step for every step they took.

“You’re so scared.” Fer said.

“I am not.” Fortia muttered back. “I am just nervous, this is not good.”

“Honestly you have a problem.” Malam said. “They’re just monsters.”

“But they don’t act like them, do they?” Fortia argued back. “Monsters are monstrous! They’re supposed to stand there and be terrifying!” Malam chuckled.

“Well they’re doing a good job on you then.”

“You know that’s what I meant. That’s… These things act like… I don’t know what, but they’re not… it’s like an army is what it is!” Malam rolled her eyes. That was a classic Fortia analysis alright. Kassandora would have been more insightful frankly. “They’re just stood here, waiting about, doing nothing. Look, these nests are basically barracks, aren’t they?”

“I see it.” Maisara said.

“Of course you do.” Malam said. Anything to back up and support her precious Fortia alright. Of Hatred shook her head, took a step, then another, a third. And then she stopped, her fingers closed around the flashlight and she had to stop her own hand from shaking. Malam took another step and realised what she was looking at. That was fucking impossible though.

“What the fuck?” Fortia asked.

“What the fuck.”

Her torch pointed to the back of a monster. And another one. All of them. She had seen them close their eyes down here. But this? Malam increased the power on her torch. It made no difference. She took another step forward. And another to advance the beam of light slowly and steadily.

And then fabric. Black and white. A large circle with a ring around it.

Was that a flag?