Chapter 78: Weeping Catacombs!

Finally, after another lengthy run, Albedo and Ember arrived at the Weeping Catacombs. Its entrance was nothing more than a split in the earth, a wound at the base of a ridge.

Black glass teeth framed it like a gaping maw, and from the darkness within bled a smell so thick with iron it coated his tongue. The bloody scent was so intense, it was like an ocean of pure blood stood before them.

Albedo swung down from the saddle. Havoc and Ruin sat heavy at his hips, runes dim now, as though conserving themselves for what lay ahead.

The extremely windy environment of the Ridge didn’t follow them in when they entered, as if the entrance cut them off from the world entirely, sending them into a completely separate direction.

Once he moved forward, he touched the first wall inside as a test. It felt extremely warm and damp, and when he drew his hand back, his glove was covered in slick and red.

“Huh?” Albedo muttered, the blood seemed extremely fresh which was surprising. If he didn’t know better, he’d seriously think it came from a freshly bleeding body.

It also clung to his glove with a living stickiness, the way it does when it hasn’t quite decided to dry.

“They weren’t exaggerating,” he muttered as he thought back to what he was told.

The Catacombs wept, just as the Tavern’s Bartender had said, and the tears were actually rivers of blood.

“Let’s go,” Albedo said, with him and Ember moving deeper into the Catacombs, the floor soping downward in a narrow ramp. He could see runes of various ancient languages engraved on the wall.

Black stone slicked with thin droplets of crimson reflected the dim flicker of Ember’s flames. It dripped from the ceiling in slow, steady patters that echoed through the vast, unseen halls below.

Somewhere in the dark ahead, something scraped, but it was quiet.

The Catacombs were quiet in the way an empty theater is quiet, sound existed, but it was swallowed by the space, making every step too loud.

The further they descended, the more the architecture revealed itself. Various Pillars lined the way, each etched with symbols that shifted if he looked too long.

Crypt niches hung open between them, holding skeletal remains that were blackened, warped, some twisted into postures that defied anatomy.

Occasionally, an entire area would be filled not with a corpse, but with what looked like melted statues, outlines of people mid-motion, caught as if they’d been poured into the wall.

The blood oozing down over them made it hard to tell where stone ended and flesh began. It was freakish, and to some people, downright horrifying, but Albedo had experienced enough at this point to not be flabbergasted.

His boots left faint prints in the crimson film that coated the floor. The smell was growing stronger, but so was something else.

A whisper.

~MUFFLE!~

At first, the sound was faint and muffled, so faint he could’ve ignored it as the sound of stone settling or some other miscellaneous event.

However, the more and more Albedo walked with Ember beside him, the muffled quiet sound evolved into something different, something almost like a speech, the syllables of language becoming clearer and clearer.

Then it came clear enough that he could hear exactly what this previously muffled sound was stating.

’Albedo’

It was his name, and it echoed within his mind, soft and coaxing, alluring and tempting, begging him to respond.

He ignored it, jaw tightening. The warnings were clear: If the Catacombs call your name, do not answer. Not even in your own head.

That was how they will take him, and while he didn’t know how that would work, he certainly wouldn’t find out.

Then, he felt something. His mana senses tingled as he noticed creatures entering his immediately space.

They came without sound, sliding from the walls like tar given shape. No bones, no eyes, just slick, boneless silhouettes writhing toward him with a predator’s patience.

Their movement was all wrong, like someone had cut the spine from a man and told him to keep crawling anyway.

The creatures had no eyes, but they didn’t need to see. They hunted by the heat of life, and the closer he and Ember drew to the heart of the Catacombs, the more restless they became.

One lunged, its entire body whipping forward like a length of wet rope. However, Albedo would be caught dead before he let that happen.

His right hand snapped up, Havoc in his hand in Infernal Mode as he fired.

A burst of crimson fire turned it into boiling shadow, the flames chewing through it in seconds. The remains dripped, hissing as they hit the blood-slick floor and sizzling away.

Another one of these grotesque creatures slid in low from the left but Ruin came up in his off-hand and a compressed Graviton slug hit the center of that creature, causing it to implode on itself, collapsing into a twitching not of black strands before vanishing entirely.

The sudden gravitational pull dragged two more creatures into the collapsing mass, their forms smearing like paint as they were crushed together.

Ember surged forward, hooves striking with the sound of stone cracking. White-blue flames blossomed from her mane, sweeping across three more shadows that had risen behind them.

The light cut deep in this place, burning the edges of the darkness itself, forcing the monsters to shriek without mouths, the corrosive flames quickly invading their essence and burning them away from the inside.

One tried to slither past her and coil around Albedo’s legs, but Albedo shot it point blank using Mana-Drain Mode, the impact ripping through it, and he felt the stolen mana rush into him, sharp and cold.

Finally, no more of the creatures came, and they just left a corridor reeking in shadow and blood, silent only broken by the steady drip of blood from the walls.

Ember’s flames dimmed back to a simmer, her breath steaming in the cold air.

“Let’s keep moving,” he murmured, reloading, “These were just the scouts.”

He said, and the duo continued walking forward until they spotting something.

A shape slid along the wall ahead, thin, elongated, moving more like water than flesh.

When it reached the corner, it simply flattened, merging into the surface and vanishing entirely.

Following it, they reached a grand chamber after what felt like half an hour of winding descent. The ceiling here was lost in darkness, but the pillars were thicker, carved with spirals of bone fused into the stone.

Blood ran down each in slow sheets, pooling into a basin in the floor. The pool was vast, deep enough that the center was black rather than red.

The name came again.

’Albedo’

This time it was lower, more resonant, almost kind. Like a friend trying to coax him out of hiding while playing hide and seek.

He kept walking, skirting the edge of the pool. Ember followed, hooves silent despite the slickness beneath her. He saw movement in the blood, ripples that didn’t match their steps, disturbances like something pacing beneath the surface.

One ripple grew into a bulge. Fingers broke the surface first, too many, each longer than they should be, jointed wrong.

They gripped the basin’s edge, and a head rose, faceless, skin stretched taut like wax over a skull. No eyes, no mouth, but he felt it staring at him.

The thing made no sound, but the voice in his head swelled, overlapping with itself.

’Albedo – Albedo – Albedo’

Havoc came up in one hand, Ruin in the other.

One shot in Infernal Mode turned the upper half of its torso into ash and fire. The rest fell back into the pool, the ripples calming almost instantly. But the whisper didn’t stop.

Past the pool, the halls narrowed again, now branching. Some paths were blocked by collapsed bonework, others by sealed black gates carved with unfamiliar sigils.

Blood still wept from the walls, sometimes in thin lines, other times in sudden gushes that hissed where they met the floor.

The deeper they went, the more wrong the gravity felt. Sometimes his steps landed too light, as if the ground had given up holding him. Other times it was like wading through invisible syrup.

The Catacombs felt like a breathing shifting zone, constantly manipulating the environment to keep him from his goal.

’Albedo’

The voice came again, and this time it was close. Not in his head. Not entirely. He could hear it, as if someone was standing just behind him.

He didn’t turn.

Instead, he took the next turn, marking the wall with a smear from his glove. Blood on blood, but at least it was his.

At the end of that corridor, the wall pulsed. Literally pulsed. The stone, if it was stone and not reconfigured flesh, shifted inward and outward in slow beats, like the side of some sleeping giant.

And in the deepest seam between the “stones,” more blood leaked, warm enough to steam in the cool air.

Ember stopped, ears forward, eyes locked on something in the dark ahead. From the shadow between the pulsing walls, something stepped out.

It wasn’t a ghoul or anything Albedo could recognize from the ridge, but it had a malevolent aura.

It was tall, robed in what looked like layered strips of skin, its head hidden behind a mask of polished bone carved into the shape of a screaming face. In its hands, it held a staff made entirely of femurs fused together.

It didn’t speak. But the Catacombs did.

’Albedo – Answer me!’

He breathed out slowly. Then he raised Havoc and Ruin.

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