The tunnel is empty.

Many tunnels are empty of anything interesting; Stygian usually flies through these tunnels without much thought to them. They're empty in the sense that all there is is rock and dust and maybe a couple spare plants scattered about.

This tunnel is empty in the sense that nothing should be here. Stygian feels like he's stumbled into some place he's not supposed to be; somewhere he shouldn't have been allowed to be in in the first place. Like he took a right turn in Orion when he should've taken a left, and now he's stumbled into some place he can't go back from.

There's a single thought that comes to mind when presented with such a scene:

What the fuck.

Yeah, that sums things up nicely.

Stygian's a solitary kind of bat—always has been, always will be—and he's okay with it. He passes by other Gembound here and there, but it's always a brief interaction. He's content doing his own thing; shocking birds out of the sky for a meal or just to test his aim, napping in trees, wandering. The usual.

Yet, somehow, the tunnel makes him feel alone. Like he needs someone to be with; like he shouldn't be on his own in a place like this. The prickle of something watching rolls down his back; he glances over his shoulder and chirps, but all he hears is more empty space and the slopes of the rock that are nothing but barren.

He's surprised he's still breathing, in a place like this. It feels like there shouldn't be any air to in the first place.

He nearly misses the crack in the wall. Or, that's what he mistakes it for at first; an alcove in the stone that goes too deep, and despite his best judgement, he does a double-take when he hears it. In a tunnel where there's literally nothing else, no plants, no gems, no dirt, no ice, just rock, it kind of stands out.

Despite his even better judgement, he kinda wants to go in.

Like, he already feels like he shouldn't be here in the first place... might as well go for broke, right?

That's the kinda thinking that's going to end up with him hurt, and he knows it, but the crack in the wall kinda... calls to him. Kinda makes him want to go in a little.

Well, no time like the present, right? He hopes he doesn't get stuck.

..

...

...the crack in the wall is deeper than he thought.

Smoother than he thought, too; different from the jagged, rough walls of most tunnels. As if something dug it out and came back later to round it down.

It's at once darker and lighter than he expected a strange crack in the wall leading to caves know where to be, too. Lit by some unseen light source, but the light doesn't fall right; the pattern of shadows and light reverse themselves.

An ear twitches. Something is whispering to him.

Is something... down here?

Is something calling him?

Should he keep going?

He shouldn't, he knows. Any Gembound within their right mind would turn the fuck around, right this instant, and pretend they never saw this place. He knows the whispering isn't right. Isn't speech. Isn't... probably isn't a fellow 'Bound. There's nothing good waiting for him down here.

He should leave.

He keeps going.

He isn't quite sure why; pulled by a force he doesn't even understand, maybe. Or maybe it's just simple curiosity. Simple, stupid curiosity, pulling him to see this through. Pulling him to see what's down here. Pulling him to some ultimate fate, whatever that might be.

Down and down and down he goes... down the rabbit hole. Down into the darkness. Down into the monster's lair.

The sweep of whispers drew him along their cascading tide.

White turned to black, black to white; and what was sanity-? What had it ever been?

The deep earth stank of faint sulphur and old, stale air, despite the constant shifting of it here, almost like a breeze--or the brush of a finger along the fur of Stygian's spine.

Farther still, in the pulse of voidlight, he will find it: the Altar to a nameless god, a wordless promise of sacrifice to an unknown force. The slab lies bone-white, but the light itself is a lie; beneath its shroud, the stone is Oil-black.

@Stygian

The borders between things blur. What is light and what is dark? What is voice and what is thought? What are the whispers and what is him? What is the pebble to a tide—the firefly in a hurricane?

Something is moving in the depths, and yet, Stygian knows there is nothing here at all. There is nothing living here; just like there was nothing in the tunnel. He is the only mind in the darkness, in the damp.

Is he?

The tunnel opens. In the depths, sulfur like fire in his senses and whispers searching, speaking, grabbing, touching—he feels something crest his spine but barely flinches. Does not dare to look over his shoulder; does not move, but to whisper a note of echolocation into the darkness.

Something tugs at him, dissociative; as if threatening to tear body from mind, soul from flesh. Ivory white fills his vision, the color of a hunter's prize—but this is no prize. No trophy.

He hears the shape of the room, but barely pays mind to it; hears only the shape of the great slab of dark rock. It fills his ears, his head, his mind, his soul—there is nothing else in the darkness but the Altar. There is nothing else in the darkness but the Altar. There is nothing else in the darkness but the Altar. There is—

He draws closer. Has to. Cannot step back. Cannot tear himself away from it. The room, in a disconnected fugue state, seems to both shrink and grow at once, lengthening and shortening like something out of a dream (out of a nightmare), but the Altar stays the same. The Altar is in front of him.

He draws close. His breaths feel labored, as if something is standing on his chest, like sleep paralysis.

He reaches out to touch—brushing a single talon over the faux-white stone.

"What... the fuck are you...?"

'What... the fuck are you...?'

The whispers thickened, became something tangible, became a weight in the air that pressed in on him from all sides. A presence poured into the room, up, around him, past the Altar, full of Chaos and hunger and the terrible, looming patience of a predator.

It waited.

What came were whispers, laced along his ears, into his brain: a power greater than he was capable of conceiving, greater than this cave, than all the caves. And it was watching him, its full attention on him now: that predatory wait, with the impersonal indifference that came with it. It wanted him. But it would not take him. Not this one, no.

"I AM... HUNGER." And his world swam, dizzying with ravenous need, yet his feet were still firmly on the ground. "I AM... POWER." A rush of it, impossible, overwhelming--and Stygian could taste of it, if he so desired. Was he predator, or prey-? "I AM... CHAOS." A thread of madness, revelling in destruction, rules and consequences stripped away in favor of fangs and fire.

Yet still it did not overwhelm him; still the bone-white Altar gleamed before him, the room churning with sensation and voice but he was left to make his own decision. Perhaps the Voice wished to see what he would do. Perhaps that was the fun of it. Perhaps Stygian was somehow special.

"AND WHAT... ARE YOU?" A prod, tendril of shadow; no great eyes opened in the dark, but he was being watched.

And... he was being judged.

"DO YOU WANT THIS?" the great Voice asked, and Chaos was slipped across the Altar, offered him, just in reach, that trembling madness and indulgent power. All he had to do was to reach out, and to claim it.

Or to reject it.

The Hole waited, its breath held, and watched to see what he would do.

@Stygian

The presence intensifies from a demon pushing into his chest to an all-encompassing, all-knowing flood, shearing his senses from reality. It speaks without throat; fills the room without body, without fur or skin or scale to fill the space. No warmth, no light. Only coldness and the dark.

That familiar dark, the dark he is accustomed to hunting in, and all the weight of a fellow predator, and Stygian almost gives into the sudden urge to bow.

He has never known nobility, nor rule. No power beyond the power of the wild and the rule of strength and this being, this vastness, this presence that puts the caves to shame in size and weight, the closest thing to a ruler he will ever know. Perhaps even those kings that still exist in the caves would be put to shame by Chaos unending—he wouldn't know.

All he knows and all his world is and all he is is an audience member, enraptured, unable to turn away and unable to do anything but listen.

And he is so very small.

He feels not fear but shame, beneath it all; shame, that he is not nor ever will be as great as this vast predator before him. This being which would snatch leviathans in its jaws and rip them apart—even the most fantastical predators Stygian could envision in his mind all fall prey to the impossible vastness of It.

It could snatch him up in an instant, if it wanted. It could swallow him into the shadow, into the darkness and he would never be seen again. There would be nobody to know he came here; only the vaguest memories of those he has interacted with for but brief moments to herald his memories.

The darkness whispers to him, and he knows the fear of death, and he is humiliated before it.

What pride he's collected in his short life scatters like ash to the wind. What has he accomplished, really? What has he done to earn his place in this world? He thinks himself a hunter but what has he slain in these caves, really? Birds his own size? A few measly insects?

The life of an insect to the darkness before him is like a grain of sand to him. Tiny. Useless. Nothing.

A tendril of shadow, snaking into his head, his soul, and he cannot muster words. What words could he give, that would not feel like excuses?

Judgement, like an endless maw hanging above his head, waiting, waiting to devour him whole, and he breathes. Waits in an endless moment for death to follow.

No death comes to him. No darkness. No emptiness. A single question; of power. Of want.

His vision is spinning and his body is untethered, gone, floating somewhere in the endlessness, no right or up or left or down just there, in some unending abyss, but his mind is steady. His mind is clear.

He sees… madness. But—power. Power that he never knew before this day; thought himself strong with his lightning and with his wing but now knows there is so much more than his tiny world of trees and caves and birds caught on the wing. There is more than just his sparks. More power than he could ever think of.

There is always risk to the hunt. Risk that the prey will fight back, fearing for its life. Risk that what one hunts is not what they'll find—once, Stygian had pursued a fleeing bird through a tunnel, only to nearly fly face-first into a colony of dragonbats. What they did to that bird kept him away from that tunnel entrance for a cycle. He is aware of the possibility of getting hurt or worse.

But if he was afraid of danger, then he wouldn't call himself a hunter, now, would he?

And in that infinite, unknowable madness, he sees himself amidst the flock, full of fire and lightning and power, true power, and weighs the judgement upon his soul with it.

The darkness has taught him—he is nothing.

But he could be something.

And in stories like these, there is always something poignant which falls from the main character's lips. Some phrase rich with meaning and life, something with power behind the words.

But in reality, all he says is a single, trembling word.

"Yes."

He reaches forward.

Flesh and blood reached for pulsing shadow, and for the instant before they met, the world held its breath. And then-

Contact.

There was no voice, this time: only the embrace of Chaos, sudden and complete.

The world was torn away beneath him. He was sent spinning into a blackened sky, a world beneath him awash in emerald fire. Plumes of black smoke rose from below, buoying him higher on their heat: an effortless, dark-winged flight. The stench of fire filled tiny nostrils. The sounds of distant roars, and screams, echoed from below. The smoke churned and swirled like a thing alive, spreading out to thickly blanket the rock, and Stygian rose above it all.

And while the scene busied itself with choking his senses, his heart and mind were taken by something else.

By whispered promises of violence and war, and above it, victory. By a lust for combat so complete it left no space for anything more--no space for his doubts, his fears, his shame. All of it was replaced: by ferocity, and certainty, and a tenacity so strong it felt like madness. He could bare his fangs, wild-eyed; he could descend into that intoxicating cloud and rend and tear and spill the blood of the weak. He could send his power down, and tear flesh from bone in searing shudders of Chaos magic. And it--all of it--would feel divine.

But scenes and promises were empty without action. And the smoke in the Hole brought more than empty promises. With its touch came power: a wash of it, a dizzying, sickening taste of rotten, Oiled black that curled into Stygian's veins and made him something more.

How long he lay like this, he would not know: it might seem like seconds, minutes, days. But when he came to, he would find himself on his back, alone in the Voidlit dark, and with a new knowledge, granted without words:

Return to this place, indulge yourself, and in time, you will taste true power.

Stygian has gained Four Corruption Points, and is now Touched.

@Stygian

He sees—

He sees... war.

He sees destruction, fire, combat without any combatants to see, only hear. The shrieking and roaring of creatures down below that he could not put a name to if he tried—green fire burning high, destroying, devouring all it lays its touch upon. And him, not swept up in the tide, but soaring over it; riding on the thermals of Chaos, king of all he beholds.

No shame, no fear, no doubt—only bloodlust, sudden and complete. For a moment, waking thoughts are crowded out by destruction, death; for a moment, he imagines a colony of dragonbats, slaughtered at his feet. No—more, greater! Surely there are monsters in these caves that are greater than those great beasts? Perhaps even things that could command magic, too—beasts that could wield the storm like he could. That would be the greatest achievement of all.

Power. Power promised, and power given; just a touch, just a taste, but even that consumes, corrupts, overtakes—

...

When he wakes, the cave is silent, without breath once more. The presence is gone, and with it, it feels... empty. A temple without its God. Without the fire of Chaos, a chill presses in.

He shivers; not with the temperature, but with the weight of power that's been pressed into his veins by the dark. A whisper of it brushes by his ear, a voice without a voice.

The dark is still with him, then. Watching him. Judging him.

Full of wildness, dizzy with the knowledge of power granted, he spins and lashes out, stone burning upon his wing—

—a lance of lightning springs from chest to smooth stone wall, electricity burning against his fur. Too much, too fast; but the lightning is there, and it is bright, and Stygian cackles at the dark flash it makes in the voidlight.

He will track. He will hunt. He will prove himself, as more than just the small thing he was cowering before the altar. He's better than that, now.

Heart racing in his chest, he makes his way back up through the dark tunnel.

;;exit Stygian