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Chapter 1: Agonizing
🕑 Added 2022-12-13 15:00:10 +0000 UTCThe flames of the funeral pyre graced Dan’s cheeks in a forgotten way. Fires weren’t common in the mines nor the outside camp. Ignoring the fact that the fumes would clog the small passages, poisoning the stale breathable air, the heat and light would only attract the monsters that roamed the Blood Rains.
In their stead, mana lights were used.
The lights glowed in a certain hue of ultraviolet that Dan just couldn’t fully see. Others in the camp, as well as a few slaves in the mines, could – not that it mattered to Dan. He didn’t talk to many others, mainly becuase he could hardly speak their language. Their appearances didn’t help much either, most of the time a simple glance sent shivers through his spine.
The monsters in the Blood Rains weren’t all indiscriminate bleeding beasts of viscera and terror. Some were sentient and oddly friendly, others cold but non-hostile. There were a few, especially those in the mine’s guard, that were downright sadistic, but they hardly touched Dan.
They would beat him for this, for burying his one true friend on this hellscape of a world, but he hardly cared. It was the least he could do for Sully.
The man, Sullethan, was one of the first people Dan met on this world, and the only one who took pity on his frail half dead form. Sully, a nickname the old man adopted early on to help with the language barrier, was kind and sweet but daring and forceful when he needed to be.
He was the one who taught Dan what little magic he knew, the one who pushed life into the young man showing him a way forward. Truth be told, Dan was thinking about letting the blood monsters end his life when he first arrived. It was a difficult and torturous experience, but Sully’s smile was almost as warm as the beautiful magic he controlled.
The encampment and especially the cave were cold. Dan’s first night he almost froze to death, only finding solace in a single glowing orb of pure light – one that mimicked one of the few stars in the sky. Later he would find out that Sully was the one who cast such a beautiful lifeline. It reminded him of when he was adrift at sea, back when he was still on Earth. Back then the night sky had plenty of stars.
Now? Now there were only three, none of which Dan had seen since entering the Blood Rains.
Dan watched the red damp wood burn, a final resting place for what it was worth. Sully was something else, something monstrous but at the same time not. He was like the others, beings from different worlds, all forcefully taken and placed into this realm.
Whether or not most wound up in the Blood Rains, Dan didn’t know, but from the old man’s stories, he knew that other places on this world existed. Allegedly there existed endless deserts made of splintering shards of glass that turned into blenders when gravity surged; continents completely sunken into dark water with horrific sea creatures battling for underwater territory; forests with no life, no ecosystem, and only a single predator that devoured everything that neared.
Was Dan lucky for ending up in the Blood Rains? He didn’t know, nor did Sully. There were pros and cons, that was apparent, but that hardly mattered at this point.
The cult that had enslaved Dan and Sully made it very apparent that they were going to live out their entire lives within the camp and/or caves. Dan didn’t want to believe it at first, but after the first few months he finally looked at his one friend. The man was old, very old. His race and people were from some unpronounceable world fit with life and water. It sounded like Earth, but held secrets of magic and mana.
However, Sully was born in the Rains. His mother was taken while he was still in the womb, giving birth in the very cell that he lived in every day. The same cell that he died in.
After Sully shared his story, and Dan made the realization, his time in the Rains began to seem like nothing. His spirits and morale dropped significantly from that point, only mimicking the motions of daily life in the caves as his mind wandered about. He drifted from idea to idea, often thinking what was the point?
Each time, however, Sully seemed to sense Dan’s trepidation and quickly sought to rectify things. Whether it be by showcasing the intricacies of magic, touring the camps and helping those worse off, or by playing therapist, Sully always seemed to come when needed.
It made his betrayal all the more agonizing.
It wasn’t until after the cultist and guard had their fair share of beating Dan nearly to death that he realized Sully was not who he said he was. The beatings hurt, that much would always be true, but the healing properties of light magic were something special.
Sully had raved on and on about how nice it was to finally meet someone like him, someone who could harness the powers of mana to create and craft miracles. Others like Sully didn’t always share his gift. Luck played as much of a part as will and discipline since the gift was not hereditary. The ones who did, however, were always raised into the cult’s ranks.
Dan was the exception.
One could potentially learn to create spells, but it was harder than mining the bone crystals that the cultists needed. It took a dedicated hand and strong foundation of schooling to balance the theoretical and practical portions of magic. Most that came to this world would never aspire to learn the ways, life was too fickle here to devote that much time into something that may not work out.
If what the old man had said was to be believed, hard work was one way to grow into a fine spellcaster, but talent was much more direct.
Dan, however, did not possess such talent. Sully did, and was easily able to debunk the theory that Dan was some sort of prodigy. Dan was lucky, his path to minute power was dealt by blood and death.
“You stole the rite of magic from the dying breath of a Magus,” Sully had said to him after hearing a full recount of the young man’s life in the Rains. “That is incredibly lucky. I can only have wished to do the same.”
There was no prejudice or enmity in the old man’s voice, only understanding and elation. The way he spoke made it sound like stealing a dying man’s life was a good thing, something he assured Dan was the case.
With a jumpstart to learning magic, Dan was able to become Sully’s apprentice of sorts. The man born into slavery was the only healer within the ranks of the filth. The cultists had a few for their guards and themselves, but all other wounds and illness were left to Sully.
Together they went from cave branch to cave branch, cell to cell. Under Sully’s watchful eye, Dan would heal the simple visible flesh wounds while Sully would explain how he healed the internal or the near fatal. They made a good team, even though the look of their patients caused the Earthling to shudder in fear.
It was understandable, however, and Sully said as much. Dan’s arrival to the Blood Rains was nothing but dirty. Frankly he was surprised that Dan didn’t break like many of the others. He wouldn’t have been the first, nor the last.
With their history spanning two years, Dan thought of Sully as the world. He was a mentor and friend, his death hurt. His only request was to be buried by pyre, a tradition from his world that his mother spoke of. But flames would cause a monster wave, which prevented Sully’s kind from being laid to rest unless one was resolved enough to endure beatings.
It was his one last wish, however, one that Dan saw through.
After healing his internal bleeding, a task that only took a few hours, Dan was back to his daily rounds. Without Sully next to him, the caves felt hollow. The lack of an extra set of echoed footsteps was what he noticed first, then the lack of Sully’s gentle breathing, and the slight shifts in the air currents as the old man stepped around.
Dan was heartbroken, almost to the point of breaking down. But, he had a job to do. He was the lone healer of the slaves, he had patients to see, miners to fix. If the crystal output slowed, he’d take the blame after a few mass beatings. The miners always had it the worst, which was something Dan couldn’t fix but rather remedy.
He idly moved through the dark caves, only the odd glowing of mana lights leading the way. He stepped over cart rails, past pickaxes, shovels, and the dead body or two. It was a shame, but sometimes the ventilation paired with the horrific visions were just too much. Falling over dead was as common as a broken wrist.
One particularly injured woman glared at Dan through swollen harsh eyes. She, like a few others, had been beaten for looking at the flames in the camp, thus slowing the mine’s output.
“Why did you even do it?” she asked as golden light deemed across her broken body.
Within a few minutes her surface wounds were healed. Dan thought she was lucky there was no internal damage. More often than not there was, which in turn made him unlucky. Spending a few minutes with creatures of a child’s nightmare was one thing, a few hours made Dan rethink his job.
But shaking in fear beat out traveling to the depths where the crystals were. He had only been that deep twice, and each time he had screamed in fear at nothing more than shadows. The blood monsters outside the camp were one thing, the thing that lived at the bottom of the cave was something else entirely. Something so powerful, so terrifying, a cult had sprouted above its corpse.
“I was honoring a last request for Sully,” Dan whispered through chattering teeth.
“Don’t do it again, even though the pyre was beautiful. I don’t remember the last time I saw real fire…” The woman went thoughtful as the light magic washed over her body one last time. Just as the human was leaving she spoke, “Who is Sully?”
Dan had long learned not to look at the beings in this world through his periphery. They mutated and contorted, casting their body parts into wrong forms and twisting the very fabric of the world. It was in his head, he knew, an afterimage of the thing that lived below. So, he always made sure to look at the other slaves in the eyes. Even though that alone was enough to cause nightmares.
“Sullethan,” Dan said slowly, doing his best to match the highs and lows of his friend’s language.
This was, again, something he had learned over his two years here. People had a hard time understanding him, and vice versa. Sully’s language had turned into the most common in the camp and caves, as most were from his world. But as the woman tilted her head in confusion, Dan pronounced Sullethan in other accents.
“I understand you,” she said. “I just do not know who that is. Is that a cultist? A guard?”
“What? No. Sully, the man who is always with me? The other healer? Old, probably the oldest one here?”
The woman just shook her head. “You’ve always been alone. I do not understand.”
Dan recoiled. “Three months ago he and I healed you after the collapse. You had multiple ruptured organs. You almost died.”
She pursed her frightening lips. “You were the only one to heal me. I know no Sully, nor Sullethan.”
Dan nodded slowly, honestly thinking the cave had finally gotten to her. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone went mad, in fact it was just as common as dropping dead or being selected by the cultists for a sacrifice. He shrugged to the woman and left to attend his next patient.
The man before him was just as menacing as the woman, maybe even more so. But Dan didn’t let it get to him. His mind was wandering, what the woman had said got to him.
“Hey…” he whispered to the freshly healed man. “Do you know Sully? Sullethan?”
The man didn’t answer in words, but his grunt was answer enough.
Dan continued, “Old man, healer, we worked besides each other.”
“I do not know,” The man said, flopping over to his side to stare at a rocky wall until he fell asleep.
Dan went to the next, asking the same question.
The being, rather three beings sharing the same torso and head, all spoke at once, “Who? You are always alone.”
Dan circled into the camp, where the cave’s corruption died off somewhat. He healed who needed him, each time asking if anyone knew Sully. Each time he received the same answer. He couldn’t believe it. Now he was glad he started the fire, sending the man off was the least he could have done, seeming as no one cared to remember his name and legacy.
As the hours ticked by and blood continued to rain, Dan was left alone with his thoughts. He knew Sully, he talked to the man for hours and days on end. He was taught magic, he was taught language, he was taught to live in the wake of a god. They had fought together, spilled blood across the same horrific battlefield, healed each other’s wounds, and practiced magic together…
But something felt wrong.
Three days of thinking about Sully had changed something in Dan. Memories had shifted, details blurred. The old man was his only friend, the only being in the camp that he could stomach. But now? The memories were just like the other beings. They scared Dan, to the point that he missed his healing rounds in fear.
People would suffer because he didn’t get out of bed, but he couldn’t move. He was breaking, he knew. Dan’s head fractured and he felt the shadows in the cave shift. He was in his cell in the camp, but he felt the god below him move. It was nothing more than a giggle, like the being smirked. The cultists began to roar with movement, they had felt it too, the whole Blood Rains had felt it.
A god of this infernal world had just breathed, and Dan realized the truth of the situation.
Then something shifted in the cave again, mimicking the shift in Dan’s brain.
Sully appeared before him, young and radiant, far from his true wrinkled and old form. Shadows bloomed as the eternal rains of blood picked up. Before it was a moderate shower, now it was a full storm.
Blood dripped into Dan’s cell, pooling around the image of Sully like a magnet drawing metal shavings. The blood slowly crawled up the man’s legs and chest, forming into a living suit of red.
As the blood encompassed Sully’s head, and he spoke.
The monster’s words tore at reality, bending and pushing the cell into something else, something alive. Demented and dark, like the concept of torture personified into reality, the opposite of how the real Sully spoke.
Soon the room flashed red and went slack. A pile of goop fell on Dan from above, it was slimy like saliva and mucus. Then the cell switched back to stone. The illusion of Sully gave one last smile before disappearing as well.
Dan had been deep within the cave only twice. The first, the time he went too deep, he saw the same red wet walls as what appeared in his cell just then. He knew what it meant, he knew what they were. At the time the cultists hounded him with beatings for going so deep, but they also interrogated him about what he had seen. He told them everything, only hoping that they would stop torturing him.
He had talked about the gate – the great doorway that slid open during his frantic running. He talked about what was on the other side, the mucus especially. He bathed in it for days before he found his way out. The cultists were interested in the muscles that made up the walls, especially after he explained that they contracted and expanded over the course of several minutes like sleeping breath.
Through broken language and rough treatment, Dan was able to ask only a single question at the time. One that the cultists’ high priest answered with a sinister smile, one that kept Dan alive rather than being executed for his crimes.
“The door has only opened once, no matter how many we sacrificed to our god,” The high priest fell to his knees, his hands in prayer. “Rejoice! For you have met him! You have been graced by B’hithazad!”
The high priest fell into a low laugh. Each giggle rebounded and churned, pooling the world into something of his own design. He leaned into Dan and whispered, “Your sacrifice will open the gate for all of us.”
Dan snapped back to reality, back to the present. Sully was gone, leaving him alone and with only a single direction. He had been called upon, his presence was required at the very cause of this nightmares.
The gates would be opened one way or another.
