Chapter 34 - Knowledge

Darkness spread as far as the eye could see. If not for the magical lighting produced by the crystals carried by the soldiers, it would have been pitch.

The further from the entrance they got, the more those crystals dimmed, as though being suffocated by the ambient dark.

How had Constance made it through here? Warriors, Knights, a Hero and a Master diving into the depths of the earthen ruins of the Giant's home, it felt like an old legend.

He couldn't help but be reminded of the fate of those who stay near heroes. 

In every legend, the nameless companions always serve as lessons for the hero, and die miserably or are left bereft in the end. 

A pathetic fate. And a miserable destiny for the hero, to be loved at a distance always, and to love from a distance, for fear of bringing down the hammer of fate on their companions.

A lonely existence he was not interested in changing.

It was unfortunate but he was neither a god, nor was he someone who could stand up against the whole world, or insane enough to try to.

His eyes turned. A girl walked beside him. She clutched her dagger, her round eyes peering off into space. 

She had been allowed out of her cage. She had been refusing food and water, until it was from him, that she was receiving it.

She was smart. Very smart. Perhaps a consequence of her upbringing. He assumed as much, and passed her a snack he had under his armor. She looked up at him and took it.

He turned his eyes back forward.

She was munching it down like a squirrel. She was childish in the strangest places. But he didn't think more of it. 

He had not seen Red, Lucian, or anyone for that matter, aside from the girl, in some time now during the march. He was directly at Master Murphy's side, in the center of the Undead horde. 

They'd been marching for so long, he had begun counting the seconds.

Perhaps, the giants found this much room suffocating, but for they who were not so tall, with strides measured in feet and not valleys, it was a far distance to travel.

Seeing it now, and knowing how far they had come, he couldn't help but wonder what kind of titanic effort it had taken, to raise such a civilization, and in succession, what could possibly cause it to disappear.

Pillars raised hundreds of feet, lined the far ends of the road. He could not make out the carvings on them, since the light was not strong enough, but it had been depicting a battle.

That may have been what happened.

A battle fit to bring down these titans of creation, he couldn't imagine it. The only thing that could make sense, was if the Lich King had come down, and personally done it, but, the giants had passed long before the Lich came into power and brought about the Ruination.

Humanity had entered a golden age, after it's destruction, but in these halls, he felt like he was lost to time.

It was beautiful, and silent. 

Only the sounds of armor and people breathing were there to accompany their march. With the undeads noiseless movements and rotting flesh. It was enough to drive a weaker mind insane.

The Blind Daughter on the gate, appeared to be fighting against the hordes of the underworld. Against what? 

He could not imagine even a million of those Defiled, able to collapse this mighty place, to it's current state, where it had not felt the foot falls of a giant in thousands of years, at least.

The Blind Daughter who stood over a hundred feet tall, had to be well over a few hundred years old too.

The biggest giant skeleton ever found, was a hundred and forty feet tall, which lead him to believe that the daughter who was over even that in height as a statue outside of Avancia, was even older.

And whatever had killed her, had to be beyond strength.

The light's grew dimmer.

At the end of the Ruination, when the nations of man were first being settled, and the continent had begun healing, there was a great upheaval, as warriors had nowhere left to go.

It was during that time, that War became, and peace fell through, entering into an age of heroes and conflict, until the current Golden Age of Humanity, where the only contenders against their spot at the top of the food chain, were the monsters who came from the Underworld.

But what were they anyway? 

Why had they appeared at the end of the Ruination?

Had they even appeared so late? What was the Underworld? Where did the monsters in the murals of the Giant's, come from then?

They were not natural to their world… Argo bit his tongue.

The thought had not occurred to him, and he… did not know what to do with the thought that had just appeared.

If the Giant's from thousands of years ago had fought against the nightmares from the Underworld, then, the gates had not opened for the first time after the Ruination.

They had been around for a long time, but had stopped, and were in the last hundreds of years, beginning to reemerge. 

Five hundred years ago, it was a trickle, few and far between, perhaps one Gate across whole nations, that was quickly subjugated.

Now, the entire of the Hollow Mountains was swarming with them, not to mention, the underground where no one had cleared or explored in untold millennia.

It was very possible, that the entirety of the underground, was submerged in monsters. 

He hastily shook the thought from his head. 

If that was the case, then, by poking the hornets nest and coming down here, it could cause the monsters from below to rise up, following the path that their souls had left in their descent and tracking them to the surface.

It was a catastrophe above the Invasion, if such a thing happened.

…The invasion.

Another headache.

Ever since he'd left Loch, he'd been learning more and more things he didn't want to contemplate, but he was not ignorant enough to lament finding out about it.

A prepared man was worth more than a hundred men. Or so they say.

Underneath Loch was the dungeon from which the Heroes descended into the catacombs to find and slay the Lich King, at least, so the history goes in the books, but, there are dozens of different places claiming to be the place they descended from.

And besides, the place of descent didn't matter too greatly.

What mattered was what had happened. And it was clear that if the Lich was dead, then it was a curse that was bound to something, raising the dead and sending them ashore every year.

And that thing, was somewhere inside of Karlan, or, the Undead were being raised by an intelligent force, as Constance had suggested, and was having them attack Karlan, but he was uncertain of that. 

Aside from that, Argo hazarded a glance at Master Murphy. 

Forbidden Magic stemming from the Ruination.

He dealt in the trade of human organs, body parts, drugs and a variety of other illegal things, for the sake of making money, and only used criminals whose punishments fit the crime.

But Dumbar's Magic Towers had been kidnapping people, and putting political activists in camps, to use for their experimentations, and now, Murphy had appeared and had a control over Undead, even a Low-Rank Mage like Red, knew Mind Control Magic as well.

Did they have a connection to the Invasions? 

But the Invasions had been occurring since shortly after the Ruinations end. Or had they? Argo's brows furrowed without consent.

There were too many lies in those books.

Constance had said that when she saw the writings that it was murky. Someone was trying to occult something.

There was too much information, and too little way to prove it at all. 

If the invasions were still occurring during the time of Humanity's upheaval, then, wouldn't the nations of man have faltered and fallen?

Even today, there was trouble against those invasions, let alone five hundred years ago, before any forts, castles or even the whispers of a bloodline named March, had been birthed.

Those undead would have absolutely rolled over the continent, once the Heroes were dead and gone.

The invasion. The gates. The Lich King. The Ruination. The Era of Heroes. The Golden Age...

…What had their ancestors tried so desperately to hide?

He felt a small hand tug on his hand. He looked down.

The girl was looking up at him, with her great big round eyes. 

He could see himself in them, despite the dark. She was staring into his soul.

He gave her a little snack, and lowered himself for a moment, picking her up onto his arm. This little thing he had picked up, he wasn't sure if she was brave, ignorant, or just didn't care.

But as she ate her snack, he didn't exactly care either.

He could feel the viewing gaze of Master Murphy, but ignored it. He knew that he was under close watch. If he wanted to escape into the dark with the Girl, he would be dead long before he could take even a few steps.

He idly wondered when Marce would arrive. Or Lunston, for that matter.

There was not a single doubt in his mind, that Lunston would be flying down right at this very moment, trailing behind them at breakneck speeds.

Murphy was a Master Mage, but so was Lunston.

He couldn't tell of what rank they both were, but he knew that they were strong.

If the two got into a battle, both sides would be obliterated in their struggle. It was also the reason he surmised, that Murphy was in such a rush, moving even while that Defiled was hovering around.

If this place was as infested as he imagined, then it wouldn't be long before that Defiled would gather another army to attack again, and this time, it would not make the same mistakes.

He felt the girl shift in his arms. His mind found it's way back into place, and he looked ahead.

They'd arrived at the next gate.