There were a number of things they had to do, of course, before they could stroll into what was hypothetically the prison of yet another god.
For one thing, they had to make sure the bonus room was relatively stable. The dissolution didn't seem to be progressing, and no one was receiving any new boxes; the injuries of all the various villagers were healed, and now they were all trying to recover.
That was the good part. The bad part was that it was sowhat difficult to explain to them why they weren't trying to imdiately kill the Serpent, and in particular why they wanted to go into it.
There was, of course, also the concern that whatever effect was keeping the bonus room up would fail the mont they entered the Serpent.
That one, at least, was a concern that was easy enough to alleviate. Charise was there, shaking her head. "It will not," she said. "This space is tied strongly to what you're holding. As long as it doesn't break, this place won't break, either."
"[Intuitionist] at work?" Misa asked, and her mother grinned at her.
"You know it."
That was not, of course, actually enough for Misa to be satisfied. She had Derivan take her in and out of the prison a few tis, quickly, checking if the dissolution had progressed while she was gone but it had not, and it seed that Charise was right.
So that, at least, was fine; Misa could co with them.
The second thing they needed to decide was if going into the prison was worth it at all. For that, they collectively decided that it was; they were ant to find answers here, after all, and all they had was the barest beginning of one. The pieces were all there, but they had nothing to put it together. No real idea of what it all ant.
...And, of course, if there truly was another god trapped here, it seed only right that they try to do for them what they could not do for Onyx. Perhaps it would even be Onyx, again, and there would be a second chance to rescue him, though none of them really thought that would be the case.
Still, it was enough for them. They all linked hands, and Derivan found the part of himself that touched upon Shift; he brought them all up to the wound in the Serpent, where he'd already stepped through with Misa, and pushed at the now-familiar crack in space and ti.
They found themselves in a prison of prismatic webs.
It was completely unlike the blank, empty space they'd first found Onyx in, with nothing but a long series of chains trailing up to the figure in the center. This one was lit up by a fractal brilliance that would have been beautiful, if not for the way those very sa webs clung to them, a sticky, off-feeling substance that couldn't be easily ignored. It took effort to step through the webs, to make their way deeper into the prison.
And it was a prison that much was obvious. The further in they got, the denser those webs beca; they were forced to stop before they reached the center, for a sheer drop appeared in front of them, the ground disappearing into endless prismatic light.
In the midst of the light, far into the distance, was a single, solitary figure. It was covered in so many dense webs that it seed nearly impossible for it to move.
It was dressed in red robes that were adorned by golden filigree, flowing around its figure. More striking, however, was the head, or lack thereof; a sphere of roughly-hewn gold sat in its place, a strange, distorted hum rising up around it.
Every ti that figure moved every ti it breathed the light around it would shift and warp, every web twisting into moving and holding it down.
It was also enormous, dwarfing them in size. Onyx had been human-sized, but this god if it was a god at all was nearly the size of a small mountain. It was only the fact that the ground they stood on was far above it that they were able to stare down and look at it in full, or else it would have towered high over them, and yet...
For all that they'd made it in here, they realized they didn't exactly know what they were going to do. This wasn't like the chains, where they could weaken them and heal the god; this wasn't like Onyx, either, who knew who Sev was and had been willing to lend them a hand. There was no guarantee this god would want to help them at all.
But there was only one way they could start, really.
"Hello?" Sev called out. His voice echoed strangely in this liminal space, the words sohow bouncing between the webs rather than being absorbed; small fragnts of his own, distorted voice ca back to him when he spoke, and he grimaced slightly. "We're here to help."
The figure below them shifted. It seed to glance up at them, though it was hard to tell if it did the golden orb it had for a head shifted slightly, but there was no face to indicate where it was looking. "Hello?" it called back.
Sev paused.
That was a child's voice. Distorted, yes, and difficult to make out with the way the cobwebs repeated the sound, but that was almost certainly a child. That was the last detail that made it click the sphere of gold and the golden filigree, the state he was in, like the webs were still ripping away sothing vital from him.
The way the teor had shied away from the ghost of Jero that Misa had sohow summoned, instead of striking him.
"Aurum?" Sev said carefully. The god beneath them jerked then winced when the webs tightened around him.
"That's ," the god said. "Can you help ? I'm I'm stuck."
The smallest waver in the god's voice. Just the slightest hint that he was afraid, though he should have been bawling by now, if the age of his voice was any indication. But who knew how gods worked? Onyx had been humanlike, but he was one example out of many.
"Do you know where you are?" Sev's tone was gentle.
"No," Aurum admitted. "I dunno... I don't rember much, actually. I rember being scared. I'm less scared now. 'Cause I can't rember what I'm supposed to be scared of, I think? I feel like that should be scary... but it's not."
A short pause.
"It's nice to talk to soone again," he added. "It's been lonely here. I don't have any of my angels. They usually take care of . I rember one of them finally ca back... they looked so worried. I was really happy to see them. And then... I dunno what happened after that."
Another pause.
"Can... can you keep talking?" Aurum said. "I just... wanna know that you're there."
"...We're here," Sev answered. He didn't trust himself to say any more; beside him, he could feel how tense all of his companions were. Misa let out a quiet fuck, and winced as the sound echoed more than she wanted it to.
"Oh, okay," Aurum said. "Thank you."
"He really was just a child?" Vex said quietly. "I thought maybe Jero was just delusional. Or he was tricked. The way everything was coordinated..."
"His angels were probably just as scared as he was," Misa answered. Of the four of them, she was the most visibly angry, though she didn't seem to know where to channel that anger. There wasn't anything her to punch, or block, or...
There was just this. A lonely, scared child, wrapped up in prismatic webs that seed to be what, stealing his mories? But Onyx had rembered who he was; he'd rembered Sev, and he knew enough to comfort his cleric. What was different here? What made this different from what happened with Onyx?
They were in a dungeon simulation of a bonus room. Was this part of the simulation, or was this external to it?
"Can you tell us what you do rember? Anything about yourself that you rember?" Sev asked, before the silence could stretch on for too long already, he could see Aurum beginning to fidget beneath the webs, as if forgetting that they were there. Every so often he would move too much again, and the webs would tighten around him, and he would rember.
"Um... yeah! Yeah. I dunno. I don't rember much." Aurum seed to try to gather himself. "My na's Aurum, but you already knew that. I'm a god, I guess? Never really felt like it. But I have a bunch of angels, and sotis they tell what to do, if I'm not sure. They play with a lot, when I get bored, and they teach things. Sotis they get a little sad, 'cause they tell I can't grow up. They dunno why; they say it's just the way it is.
"Sotis I get people that pray to , and I wanna help them. But I don't know how to help them, and I think sotis I hurt them instead... I try not to. The angels told I can't just give away powers. I gotta think. There are rules. I don't rember the rules...
"I wanna see them again." Aurum trembled a little bit in his spot, the movent causing a dozen webs to shake along with him, scattering into fractal cracks. "I miss them. I miss the people that prayed to , too. I like them, even if they're not all very good, But I don't rember any of their faces"
Aurum stopped talking, and began to cry.
It was an odd sight. He drew up into himself, breaking a few of the webs as he did so, and not seeming to care as so of the other webs tightened around him, and then he just... shook. His shoulders heaved. But he was quiet, no sound escaping from him.
"Aurum?" Sev said, and then when the god didn't reply and just kept crying, he sighed. "Aurum, we're going to figure sothing out, okay? Just... give us so ti."
He turned to Derivan, and spoke quietly. "He's not pretending, is he?"
"Not to the best of my knowledge," the armor answered. "I... we must find a way to free him. We cannot leave him like this."
"I agree," Vex said. His voice was small, and he looked on the verge of tears himself, but damn if the lizardkin didn't also look determined.
"He's also actually a child," Misa muttered. "How... why? A child shouldn't be a fuckin' god."
"We're going to get him out," Sev said. "We're going to figure out what to do with him after that, but for now... whatever this is, I want to tear it down."
"Easier said than done," Misa said. She ramd her mace into a nearby cobweb not difficult, considering the things were everywhere, and clinging to them even now and the weapon simply slid through, leaving the web intact behind it. "These things look fragile, but they're not."
"When you attack them," Vex pointed out. "We can move through them fine. Aurum can too, a little bit. He broke a few just now."
"So they're impervious to attacks, but not... movent?" Misa frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"They are not impervious to attacks," Derivan said. "They are impervious to weapons." He demonstrated by striking through one of the webs near him; it tore apart easily enough as his arm struck it, and fragnts of glittering light fell to the ground.
Vex watched for a mont, then began to strike out with his dagger. A series of quick, precise strikes not at the webs, but in the air, carving out runes and a spell circle glowed; from that spell circle ca a burst of ice that blasted forward, cutting through a number of webs...
...and leaving them intact and unhard afterwards, having gone through the webs with barely a whisper. The wizard grimaced. "I was hoping that would work," he said. Derivan patted him gently on the back.
"Manaburn worked before, didn't it?" Sev suggested.
"On the chains, and it spread through them all. I don't want to actually set this place on fire," Vex said with a grimace. "Aurum's still trapped in most of those webs, and I don't know if it'll hurt him."
"We can't run through every single one of these webs," Misa said. "If we go down there we're going to be as trapped as Aurum is."
"There is what you are holding," Derivan said. "The spark that we retrieved from the dungeon. It was able to preserve the village in so way prevent its full dissolution, yes? Perhaps it can serve another purpose here."
He paused, looking around. "Even if we are able to remove these webs... we do not know how to return Aurum to his plane. It is not a true solution. Nor do we know how to preserve your village, Misa, so that we can return to the dungeon without them being destroyed.
"We also don't know how to use this," Misa said, lifting up the spark to look at it.
She paused. The rest of them did, too, staring at what was in her hands.
It was pulsing with a golden light.
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