A/N: Read Chapter 10- Two Rituals… to enjoy this chapter and the one before this one more.
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The moment Vesper crossed the threshold, the egg screamed. It screamed right into his brain like as if a serpent had come alive and was wriggling inside to move.
He didn't feel it audibly but he felt it… a pulse of something strange… something completely alien that should not have been there.
It traveled up from his pocket, through his chest, into his skull, and for one disorienting second he saw it….
A woman weeping. Dressed in black garb, her face was hidden by it but her tears were visible.
Black blood flowed from within her eye sockets, empty as obvilion and she cradled a child in her arms, a child pale of skin but a monster sucking on her teats.
Though the child looked grotesque, its skin sagging… and eyes black with little fangs that protruded out of its lips… there was a certain divine beauty about it, one with fervour that made one want to offer all of the blood in their body.
Vesper came back to himself with a gasp.
No… not a gasp. He didn't need to breathe. But his body tried anyway, chest heaving, hands trembling.
"What…. Was… THAT?'
The image was seared into his skull… the woman in black, the child at her breast, those empty eyes weeping black blood.
"Vesper?" Amanda's spoke sharply. "You just stopped moving."
He blinked. The others were behind him, watching. He'd taken maybe three steps into the structure. Had it been seconds? Minutes?
The vision had felt like hours.
"I'm fine." His voice came out wrong… too flat, too controlled. He could feel them not believing him.
Danisque stepped closer. "Bro. You're white as snow. Well, whiter."
"I said I'm fine." Vesper's hand drifted to his pocket. The egg was still warm, but the screaming had stopped. For now.
Danisque frowned. Vesper clearly looked disoriented.
"Let's keep moving." The boy's words rang out in the cold darkness of the walls that enclosed them.
Jimeneus studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
"Formation. Eyes open."
They moved.
Vesper didn't look back at the threshold. He didn't want to know if the woman in black was standing there, watching him go and honestly at this point…
Vesper felt as if he had made a terrible mistake. He should probably have never come here.
'Am I hallucinating because I haven't tasted blood yet? Am I so hungry that I don't even realize?'
The young vamp wondered. Then he shook his head.
'No. Maybe it's the effect of the architecture on my vampire physiology…. Then it means that there is a certain connection that this structure holds with Vampyres.'
The egg was given by Lysbelle. It was most probably a soul bound beast that would hatch from it… a high tiered one, he was sure about it.
The egg, Lysbelle and his Pureblood veins… they were all connected to this archaeological structure.
Taking a deep breath in, Vesper steadied his mind as the cohort ventured further inside.
Smooth black stone stretched ahead. There were no torches or glow-strips yet they could see a dim, sourceless light that seemed to rise from the walls themselves.
It cast no shadows. Or rather, it cast only shadows, thin and stretched, reaching toward them like hands.
The air was cold but breathable but the geometry didn't quite sit right. Hallways opened at angles that shouldn't exist and chambers led into other chambers that seemed larger than the space outside could contain.
"Readings are..." Adam paused, his brow slightly raising. "Weird."
"Weird how?" Jimeneus kept his voice low.
"Weird as in 'I'm not sure I trust my own equipment' weird."
Knoncan's voice sounded across the hall.
We're being watched."
Everyone stopped and Vesper shivered for a second.
"I don't see anything," Amanda whispered.
"That's not how being watched works." Danique retorted. He glanced at the leader and spoke. "Now what captain?"
Jimeneus was stoic, his face looked as if it had already aged by a hundred years.
"We move."
Danique nodded. The only choice that they had. They were already too far in to look back.
They passed through a wide gallery lined with statues. Humanoid, vaguely, but wrong in ways that were hard to articulate.
Too many joints. Too few features. Their faces were smooth blanks, and their hands were raised in gestures that might have been blessing or warning.
"The architectural style doesn't match anything in the records," Adam murmured. "Not Xi, not pre-migration, not even the vampire ruins from the Second Pandemonium. This is..."
"Older," Jimeneus finished.
"Much older."
The gallery ended at a T-junction. Left. Right. Both identical.
"Which way?" Amanda asked.
Vesper's hand drifted to his pocket. The egg pulsed… not hot, but directional. A pull, like a compass needle finding north.
"Left," he said.
Jimeneus raised an eyebrow. "You sound sure."
"I am."
Jimeneus considered his words, they could opt to split but the numbers too few to take such a risk especially in a variable like this.
Far too many had died exploring a ruin… which is what this site was starting to look like.
The leader nodded, "Left it is. Stick together everyone."
The corridor narrowed. The walls pressed closer. The ceiling lowered until Knoncan the tallest of them had to duck slightly.
And then they found the first sign of the other cohort.
It was a boot. Military issue. Troy standard. Lying in the middle of the corridor like someone had stepped out of it and kept walking.
Danisque picked it up. "There's no blood. No sign of struggle."
"Maybe they ditched damaged gear," Amanda offerered but her voice lacked the conviction.
They moved on.
Twenty paces later… a glove.
Fifty paces… a helmet, its visor cracked.
A hundred paces… a sidearm, ammunition spent, lying beside a dark stain that might have been blood but wasn't red.
It was black.
…and it shimmered faintly in the gloom.
Nobody touched it.
Adam's voice was barely a whisper now.
"The energy readings here are... they're not stable. It's like the whole structure is breathing."
"Structures don't breathe," Knoncan said with one of his classic one liners providing insight into the situation.
Vesper finally spoke, his voice filled with apprehension and a strange seriousness that had enveloped since he had entered inside.
"This one… it may."
The cohort members glanced at him and the mood of the party, plummeted.
Amanda glanced at Jimeneus and whispered.
"What if we turn around…go back…?"
Jimeneus shook his head. His eyes muddy and his voice escaped his lips with soft deprication.
"We keep moving."
The corridor opened suddenly into a vast chamber. Larger than the last.The ceiling vanished into darkness above, and the walls were lined with more of those blank-faced statues, row after row, thousands of them, all facing the center.
At the center of the chamber stood a single figure.
Not a statue.
A person.