Axiom ~ 13!

~ Thirteen ~

“Alright recruit. Once again, from the start.” Armored fingers drummed with delicate impatience on the extended table in the salt village longhouse. This entire mess of a report had more holes in it than his favorite cheese, and Head Cleric Tarrean had not been able to acquire said cheese for far too long. He shook his head and forced himself to refocus. The bags under his eyes were reminiscent of crescent purple moons, and still he couldn’t take the liberty to rest; duty demanded the task be seen through. 

His faith would carry him, as it always did; but this whole endeavor had been a repeated set of annoyingly convenient events. Bothersomely convenient. He went over how he just knew his superiors would be reacting: 

‘Where are the raiders, Tarrean?’ 

‘Oh, I don’t know! We have this intercepted vellum with a surprisingly detailed troop placement plan. Well, now we’ve arrived at the abandoned settlement, Tarrean, where are the wanted men?’ 

‘It appears that they’re just taking their sweet time walking right over to us without a care in the world! Sure, we’re already occupying defensive emplacements, and are the wolf waiting for lost lambs to walk into our open mouth. Those raiders never saw it coming!’

‘Why, Tarrean, where are we supposed to go from here, the map isn’t very clear.’ 

‘Recruit, if you look in the distance, doesn’t that look like an awfully large funnel of smoke rising into the sky?’

‘Why, yes. Yes, Head Cleric, we should rush to that position post-haste!’ 

‘Tarrean, are we certain these are the raiders we thought they were? The last group seemed exhausted and in retreat.’

‘Well recruit, there’s an awfully large amount of buildings on fire, people screaming, and sharp metal objects being stuck rather deeply into what seem to be awfully innocent people.’ 

Head Cleric Tarrean snarled and slammed his armored fist on the table, startling the man giving him a report into silence. Whoops. He hadn’t heard a word the man had been saying. To top it all off, this mess was in the celestial-rejected Fringe. As if the history of this place wasn’t enough of a nightmare for the Church!

Tarrean almost wished he could have just a sip of wine again, but his vows prevented him from such pleasures. The bridge of his nose received another squeeze, the shining metal of the gauntlet not injuring the cultivator in the slightest. A circular *go on* motion of his hands restarted the report. Acolytes and a Keeper were seated around the Head Cleric, pouring over stacked documents. Their gear was far simpler than his, though most of them had a weary expression that matched his own. 

A new day was already starting to rise from the horizon, and silence laid on the wreckage that used to be the prominent village of Salt. Beams of sunlight funneled through the gaping holes in the longhouse walls, and a collective grunt heralded eyes being squeezed together to cope with the sudden brightness. 

The next recruit in tow cleared his throat; ready to give a near exact replica of the report with differences based entirely on the viewpoint of where he was at the time. Acolyte Tibbins fingered through the vellum to find the beginning of his report, and everyone worked to hold in a sigh as it began. 

“As mentioned in the other reports, we found the settlement under raid rather than under siege. A poorly organized force arrayed itself against us, and flung itself on our spears. The consensus I agree with: the intention was for a series of waves to greet us, and that the utter lack of coordination altered that to a loose stream of individuals charging into a defensive line. Our casualties were minimal, and according to Acolyte Jiivra’s more knowledgeable report on the matter, entirely due to an uncommon venom coating the arrows our squad was attacked with.”

“We caught the effects too late since the poison was crystal clear and just made the arrowheads look shiny; which caused affected troops to not pay attention. The majority of the village was on fire before our arrival, and it seems that the idea was to pillage and burn.” Acolyte Tibbins drank some water from a recovered local cup, and retraced his fingers to where he was on the report. 

“Losses for the village are… borderline total.” The young adult motioned a thumb behind him to the still figures lining makeshift resting spaces along the wall. 

“Recovered individuals of note are two old people. The catatonic woman hasn’t spoken, and was found seated in frozen horror at the head of this very table. As of yet, we have not found an explanation for why the longhouse is one of the few buildings not burned to the ground. From the stains on the floor, we can easily put together that people were executed here, but the old lady appeared to have been spared. From the complete inability to communicate, we are guessing that she was made to watch the ordeal.” 

“This also led us to think that we could not locate the leaders of the raiding force because they were simply not part of the main assault, and escaped during the confusion while our forces were tied down with consecutive attacks. Cowardly, to be sure, but there was no doubt of that. We did find carriage tracks, but any more effort on our considerably exhausted forces was essentially impossible. No chase was given.” 

He flipped a page, took a breath, and continued speaking. “The other individual of note was an old man in a dark blue robe. Keeper Irene found him still breathing next to the body of a deformed man that had a sizable gash in his chest and shoulder. It is the Keeper’s opinion that the man was spared due to being partially obscured, and having the appearance of someone that was already dead. His breathing was found by accident when she was prying bodies apart for proper death count.” 

“Based on the high quality of the cloth, we’ve concluded that this must be one of the Fringe Elders. So, per the plans of the ecclesiarch, he is likely who we need to speak with pertaining to the greater effort. He has as of yet not woken, and while basic aid has been provided, we have no idea what state he may be in when he wakes up. Acolyte…” 

The young adult’s eyes bulged and he needed to take a strained breath as he saw his own name noted, “Tibbins, is responsible for the wellbeing of the Elder until a positive outcome can be reached.” 

A pleading look was in the Acolyte’s eyes, but his superiors were too laden with their own burdens to reconsider his plight. Defeated without any words, Tibbins continued, “Almost no bodies under burned and collapsed buildings could be recovered. The few we did find were indicative of having received crippling injuries rather than directly lethal ones.” 

He swallowed, and rasped out more of the report, “Being burned in their homes was intentional. Consensus is that the additional cries of help would distract us from pursuit. To my great regret… I must report that this was a fairly successful ploy, and no actual adults were recovered. However, we found no bodies nor remains of any children. With the depth of the discovered tracks, we are of the opinion that the children were taken rather than slaughtered.” 

Vellum rustled as he’d gotten to the bottom of that section, needing to flip to the next page. “Temporary encampments are being erected, as our forces require rest. Morale is low from being so close to the scarred zone, though merchant intelligence indicates it has been locally renamed to the ‘Salt Flats’. Updated documentation shows that history past a few hundred years has been entirely forgotten or wildly misunderstood.”

“Is it still dormant?” the tired commander inquired, wanting that off his chest now; as he hadn’t heard this part of the report before. 

The Acolyte calmed his worries. “Yes, Head Cleric, the scar is not expanding. The current state of the flats matches the scriptures.” 

Relief washed over the group. 

“Good. It would have been a horror if that dungeon woke up again. Can we safely conclude no deaths were on the scar itself?” A different, more wizened Acolyte nodded, older vellum embossed with golden text unfurled to compare with fresher notes. 

“Yes, Head Cleric, that is correct. No casualties were incurred on the flats, so there is no chance of the calamity coming to pass.” The Acolyte received a stern nod from the commander, who chuffed in reply. 

“Excellent. While that is good to assume, we must be certain. Establish a forward base rather than a temporary encampment. We cannot allow the possibility for these raiders to let misfortune come to pass due to their blithering ignorance! Tibbins, you’re in charge of making the Fringe Elder agree to letting us stay here.” 

“I don’t care how inane some of the requests may be; the rules are twisted in this place, and we need both verbal and written consent… as far as I’m aware. So, if he wants to ride a pony, fetch the blasted horse! Don’t come to me with requests for permission, just get it done. Bill it to Keeper Irene, have it added to the expenses tally. If it’s truly egregious you may ask, or better yet decline. Still… make him happy with us.” 

The hand of the fifth Acolyte down the bench rose. The Head Cleric snarled at being interrupted, “What is it, Mandell?” 

The heavy accent of the Acolyte gave away his centralized heritage. “Sir, I don’t understand. Why would a purely celestial dungeon waking be a bad thing? The majority of us have major affinities that align! From initial reports, I thought this place would be ideal for cultivation; in addition to our daily chants and prayer.” 

Irene turned to give the Acolyte a leer, but couldn’t fault the young man for not knowing. Her tone was motherly, though cutting. “May I, Sir?” 

The request to her superior was waved off with a, “Do as you please.” 

Irene’s chair *squealed* on the floor as she turned herself to face the recruit. “In ordinary circumstances–yes–you would be correct, Acolyte. Unfortunately, this dungeon doesn’t operate under the common behavior we generally expect from dungeons. It does not align with the reports we cross referenced from the Adventurers Guild, and even the scriptures refer to what happened here in the past as ‘The Great Scarring’.” 

“This is why we’ve been referring to the salt flats as ‘The Scar’. This particular dungeon is strange in several ways.” She lifted her gloved hand to keep count on her fingers. “The scriptures say that at least a hand’s worth of centuries ago, a celestial dungeon awakened here. Not developed slowly; not came from the heavens. It just… woke up, and *pop*… it was there.”

“Not only was no one ever able to locate the core, but clerics at the time couldn’t figure out if it even had one. Instead of building in layers, applying clever traps, or adding what we’ve come to expect as the usual gambit of monsters. Those aspects simply never appeared. This dungeon only did two things, beyond absolutely ruining hosts of armies and emptying entire coffers of nations.” 

All the Acolytes, while tired, had latched onto Irene’s words with rapt attention. “The first thing, and the only confirmable thing that this dungeon did, was flatten every bit of area it could spread to. On this flattened area, sporadic amounts of highly desirable resources would slowly accumulate as the tides came and went.” 

“The tide–to this day–remains one of the great mysteries of the Fringe. There is no major body of water nearby, and the mapped rivers simply do not provide the amount of water that comes and goes as the scriptures describe. Over the next few days we will be able to generate an updated account.” 

“One of the rare Mages in those days described the phenomenon as watching a great beast breathe during slumber. As people died by the droves over the pursuit of scarce, rare resources, the dungeon grew; and grew in width only. It snaked across the landscape, and wherever its rising waters touched… the earth slowly flattened to a very specific depth. In certain places, it split like the roots of a tree. Up north, the pattern seems designed more as an infection rather than any cohesive pattern, while down south there’s nothing but straight lines and right angles.” 

A hand rose again, but she was just getting to the point, and was sure she would answer the query before it was asked. “The second thing the dungeon did–something we’re still not certain about it actually being responsible for–is a phenomenon that we frequently see in celestial cultivators that don’t keep a proper balance.” 

“Every warrior, every single one, who stepped foot on the salt flats… slowly lost their sanity and the ability to see reason. They began claiming the land and resources as theirs, and seeing themselves as superior regardless of established hierarchy. They also gradually physically withered when they failed to be present on the landscape the scar ‘owned’.”

Irene pointedly motioned to the Elder in the blue robe. “Eventually, you end up looking like that. We actually have fairly detailed notes on the subject, which involves internal corruption problems. So, Acolyte Tibbins, please do take care to not let his corruption consume him before the Head Cleric has what he needs.” 

Tibbins nodded with a salute. This part was following orders; he could do that. Mandell still looked confused; he didn’t feel his question had been answered. “While that is certainly unfortunate, why would that prevent this area from being a good source of Essence for us to cultivate with? Our prayer certainly provides, but why would already present celestial Essence not be beneficial?” 

Irene had to think for a moment, but was decently certain she had the answer. “It is very beneficial. Had there not been a hidden trap that caused people to lose their minds, I would be agreeing with you.” 

She squeezed the tips of her fingers together. “The issue comes from the interaction. By taking, we also give back. Any Essence we fail to refine fully returns to the dungeon. Unlike in a common dungeon, Essence density here is always low. A place where additional Essence suddenly depletes because of, say, the presence of a dozen cultivating clerics? Well, that may awaken a cycle we very much wish to avoid.” 

“The scripture is also clear that the Core was never found. The scar is vast, and worst of all, the spread of Essence is incredibly even. So using the adventurer trick to follow the path where Essence density is thicker to locate the core is unfruitful.” 

“Scripture says that the Mage in the area proclaimed the dungeon dormant, rather than dead. Specifically, when its expansion fully ceased after years and years of the Church and the Guild deterring people from entry.” 

“The region isn’t named ‘The Fringe’ due to some landscaping design. It is named such because this very scar brings someone to the fringe of sanity. Delusions of grandeur and grand heroism are recorded to have been declared by cultivators rapidly rising in rank. Their intent to do well, and invoke the best for us all, was devoured and overshadowed by this place. It is one of the well-kept secrets the church does not want the populace to be aware of.” 

“Could you imagine the rumors? That a celestial dungeon, a gift of the celestial above, drives people insane? Makes them commit great acts of violence, in the name of what they consider to be right? The church prizes and relies on its relationship of goodwill, its values of great virtue, to remain in the hearts and minds of the people. The Fringe is one of those secrets that has been obscured with misinformation to soothe the minds of those who don’t want to know. This place isn’t on the map, because the Church does. Not. Want. It. To be on the map. The scriptures complain for an entire…” 

She put her finger down hard on a fat book. “…Volume, of notes and complaints, that not a single bastion or permanent stone building could be erected! If there was any semblance that something important was here, permanent structures would have given it all away. A full chapter is devoted to disgruntled scribes going on and on about how movement was constant and tensions were always high!” 

“Not only did they need to keep themselves from venturing into the scar despite the glint of prizes clearly visible in the distance, but they had to keep everyone and everything else out as well. Why do you think we still haven’t seen a single monster? Eradication was widespread. As you must have clearly noticed just by glancing, the scar is utterly massive. The manpower and coordination that took made fully devoted scribes complain. Fully. Devoted. Scribes. Were… complaining.” she trailed off with a soft sigh.

“I have never seen a scribe complain about anything in my decades with the church, and these are written accounts.” Her finger repeatedly pressed down hard on the volume. The importance of her words was not difficult to discern, even for the tired. Irene leaned forward in Mandell’s direction. “Do. Not. Cultivate. While. In. The. Scar. Near might be fine, but certainly not in. Is that understood, Acolyte? All of you, in fact?” 

Mandel’s stand and snap to attention was textbook. His chair screeched back, and in an instant he was in the official salute position. “Yes, Keeper, Sir!”

The others gave mumbled responses. Irene let Mandel be at ease and return to his seat, handing the reporting back over. “Acolyte Tibbins, please continue.” 

Tibbins had lost his place on his report vellum and scrambled to find his lines again. The reporting continued for another hour, until a fresh recruit announced himself with the news that temporary camp was set up. The meeting was dispersed, and the priests went to rest as a guard rotation of the least exhausted was set up. 

The camp was sizable. Four dozen clerics had been housed in tents, with only a handful remaining in the longhouse as the construct was not considered structurally sound. As soon as the majority of them had acquired some much-needed rest, the real work would begin.