Limbo

Deep under the earth, in the forgotten catacombs of a fallen kingdom, a creature marched on and on. It waded aimlessly from corridor to corridor among the seemingly endless stone galleries with nary a thought of purpose or direction, it did not need them.

For if there was a time when it could feel in the back of its head a sensation of having forgotten something very important, and a time before then when it knew its own name, now it did not matter anymore. Madness erased from its mind any semblance of identity or reason, leaving behind only hunger and the urge to satisfy it.

If the poor creature could protest such insults, it may flaunt its superior faculties compared to the rest of its kind. For where they used only their claws and walked on four, this wretch perhaps retained the most of its humanity, remaining bipedal, and even wielding a particularly large femur bone as a club.

Using its decent might, the wretch hunted the weaker denizens of the catacombs as well as the weaker members of its species for food, making it one of the more successful participants of the miserable ecosystem that inhabits these forsaken halls.

The wretch marched on without rest, sometimes crossing hallways it had never seen in its hundreds of years of existence, and other times moving in circles without making any progress. But it nonetheless remained unbothered by the futility of its actions, for it will inevitably run into either prey to eat, or predator to eat it instead. Regardless, both outcomes, whether it feeds or is fed upon, will have it continuing to wander the halls hours later, to once more partake in the cursed cycle that all the creatures here have been forced to endure for centuries now, and may continue to suffer through forevermore.

This time around, however, this particular wretch would earn its freedom. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for it, it found its way into a special, isolated part of the underground maze. Away from the center of the crypts where the largest and mightiest creatures fought endlessly and meaninglessly in a Sisyphean effort that wounded none of them but often crushed weaker passersby, and away from the entrances to the inner mausoleum where beings of living darkness dwelt, and let none, weak or strong, enter further in.

This rather remote area of the underground complex lacked the iconic look of the rest of the Yvtari catacombs that consisted of gnawed bone, thoroughly scratched stone floor and the occasional mad, unintelligible etching on the walls. The halls here were untouched by the stupid and animalistic brutality that the inhabitants of the catacombs were known for, the ground being instead covered in a layer of dust that grew thicker the deeper the wretch headed in, its steps leaving deep imprints in the dense ancient dust that almost resembled snow.

The creature continued to walk unperturbed by the changing scenery around it, after all it lacked the intelligence to realize these changes, let alone question them. Passing from burial room to another, through identical corridors, it eventually left the chessboard-like layout of the catacombs and found itself in a long straight hallway leading further onwards to the unknown. Because of the simple mind of the wretch, this lack of possible directions meant that its fate was sealed.

The hallway ended in a strange room that was unlike the monotonously identical and infinitely repeating burial rooms filling the rest of the catacombs. The chamber was rather spacious and circular in shape, its walls and floor spotlessly clean, its domed ceiling adorned with countless glowing white stones whose gentle light gave the room a solemn atmosphere.

But the most eye-catching feature of this room was the gigantic black sword suspended in the air in the middle of the room by equally imposing chains made of an alabaster white material that radiated such purity and holiness that simply looking at them sent waves of sharp discomfort through the wretch's already damaged soul.

The sword seemingly restrained by these chains was a massive object that looked more like a cruel, unwieldy mass of dark steel than an actual, usable weapon. It was over four meters long from pommel to point. And upon the sword's fuller was carved, or perhaps grafted, a strange heart, spreading veins across the blade's metallic surface all the way down to its point, and glowing with soft, eerie crimson light.

Upon the heart itself was a beautiful azure gem, cut into a nearly perfect spherical shape that nonetheless retained its facets' sharp glint, each of them glimmering individually and combining to give the gem a breathtaking appearance. The precious stone did not even seem out of place nestled in the grotesque stone-like flesh of the sword heart; its beauty eclipsed whatever was around it.

The wretch, however, seemed unimpressed and continued to stare at the room and all in it, its gaze eventually landed again on the sword and its heart, for it recognized it as flesh and wanted nothing more than to devour it. But before it could take a step forward to try and reach up to the sword, the azure gem's glow began slowly intensifying, as if it were waking up.

As the gem's glow grew brighter, a quiet humming and then a violent rustling came from the chains as they shuddered to contain whatever the sword was attempting. The chains rattled louder and louder and the whole room seemed to tremble before everything fell deathly silent again. Suddenly, a clear soft feminine voice rang from the sword, or rather from the gem embedded in it.

"Hmm... another one."

Before the wretch could register what it heard or perform any reaction, it felt unimaginable pain running through its entire body. It only managed to let out a weak shriek before falling limply to the ground, bleeding out of its every orifice. Its blood never got to stain the spotless gray stone floor, instead floating up to the colossal sword and getting absorbed by the red veins running across its body. As they soaked in the putrid yet still ether rich blood, their glow intensified until the sword heart let out a singular beat that shook the whole room.

Satisfied with the conclusion of the creature before it, the sword, or rather the thing sealed within it, turned its attention to the rest of the room.

It has been twelve years since it last woke from its slumber, yet all seemed to be the same as it had left it. From the nullstones shining from the ceiling to the chains and magic circles sealing the blade, all seemed to be unfortunately still functioning, despite the passage of time since their creation.

Turning its attention away from the tools of its imprisonment, the sword voice performed a thorough scan of the underground complex, its findings giving more frustrating information.

It seemed that apart from the one wretch that randomly wandered into its sealing chamber and died for good, every other life signal since its last scan twelve years ago was accounted for, revealing that nothing really happened.

No ambitious mage with a death wish wandered in too deep, no hero in gleaming armor came to purify this unholy place, nothing happened as these ruins remained frozen in time. It seemed that ever since she awoke in this room, bound in a blade itself bound in chain, little moved in this place, and nothing changed.

"Perhaps in a few thousand years I would gather enough power to break free on my own." the voice sighed, even though she knew full well that even with such an insane time frame, the artifacts used to seal the eldritch blade would never realistically be broken without external help.

It seemed that the madness that befell all who dwelt in this place was finally getting to her.

Just as she began wallowing in bleak and depressing thoughts, a rumble suddenly ran through the ether all around her. Focusing on it, she traced its source to the other side of the underground maze of halls.

It was a distortion in space, someone or something seemed to have opened a portal to here.

Yet looking closer, this distortion did not resemble any portal signal the voice was familiar with and was more akin to a violent tear in space instead. Shortly afterwards a new and strange energy joined the ether of the underground, the voice recognized this as the unique energy signature possessed by the enigmatic Origin elementals.

"What would an Origin elemental be doing here?" She wondered if any of the cultists that were active during the fall of Yvtar and that now wonder the halls as wretched did or brought something that would attract the attention of the mysterious creatures.

'But if so, why appear now?' She wondered.

Puzzling as they are, it is well established that Origin elementals go to great lengths to avoid humans and their activities and are then avoided in turn. For one of them to appear here of all places is nothing short of bizarre. The voice was intrigued, if even a bit eager. For even if this event does not bring true change to this place, it at least promises to be quite interesting.

Further investigating the source of the magical disturbance revealed the presence of a human, not a mage but rather an uninitiated civilian with their faint ether emissions. And what's more, there was a detail that made no sense to her whatsoever, as it seemed that the civilian was the source of the elemental signal.

This confusing find prompted the voice to double and then triple check her findings, and as she finished thoroughly combing the site of the spatial distortion, she was left with an utterly shocking conclusion.

An extremely powerful spatial rip that would've required the combined efforts of at least a dozen Archmages tore through a distant hall in the catacombs, spitting out a single civilian human boy that seemed attuned to the Origin element, defying all established knowledge that the mysterious, ether-affecting element could only be accessed by its own elementals.

Many thoughts and emotions ran through the voice's mind. She was overtaken by the giddy excitement of observing a phenomenon previously believed to be impossible, she wondered if magical knowledge in the surface world advanced enough to make such an impossibility feasible. But once she was done pondering the implications this had on the many fields of magic and her excitement calmed, she was once again left confused by the strange circumstances of this person's arrival into Yvtar's underground catacombs.

It was then that the spatial tear closed, leaving behind its passenger and breaking the voice out of her meandering thoughts.

"I wonder what led him here, weak as he is." The voice doubted any amount of preparation would allow the new guest of the catacombs to survive here.

Her thoughts then grew colder as she pondered a possibility.

This could be the chance she has been waiting centuries for, to attain freedom and escape from this limbo, to see and experience the world and its magic again. She calmed herself down, pondering the strangeness of this person's arrival, and realizing that it would take more than luck and wishful thinking to escape the hell that was this place.

"It would be a shame to let the others get him." She murmured, resolving that any chance is better than nothing, and that she would not let this one go to waste.