Orti Anima Sanguineque: Chapter 7: My compass is my curiosity

Late merry Christmas to everyone. I hope y’all will like the chapter.

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POV: NIKOLAOS "BRIAREOS" PETROPOULOS

The eastern path that I had chosen feel…different, absent, as if not real in some way.

That's the only word for it. Absence.

The stone here doesn't pulse like it does near our base. It doesn't breathe. It just is. Static. Silent. Like a photograph instead of a living thing.

It's unnerving.

I've been walking for maybe thirty minutes, Tarnished form comfortable around me like a well-worn coat. The staff in my hand hums faintly with golden light—grace, concentrated and shaped into utility. The crown hovers above my head, flickering between visible and invisible depending on... something. Intent, maybe. Or relevance.

I'm following what sounds like water. In my briefing before we split, I'd mentioned that Tartarus supposedly has rivers—Phlegethon, Cocytus, maybe even the Styx. Rivers mean boundaries. Boundaries mean territories. Territories mean inhabitants.

And inhabitants mean information.

The sound gets louder as I walk. Not the roar of rapids or the crash of waterfalls. Something quieter. More insistent. Like whispers layered over whispers until they create the illusion of water.

That should probably worry me more than it does.

The terrain is changing. The rough stone of the main cavern is giving way to something smoother. Carved, maybe. Or worn by countless feet over countless ages.

I stop at an archway.

Because that's what it is. An arch, carved from the black stone, rising maybe twenty feet high and twice as wide. The surface is covered in markings. Not writing exactly. More like... impressions. Shadows of writing. Like someone carved words and then carefully removed them, leaving only the memory of meaning.

I step closer, running my fingers over the stone.

The moment I touch it, something jolts through me. Not pain. Recognition.

My mind fills with images, impressions, sensations:

—darkness giving birth to light—

—night spreading wings made of void—

—shadow learning to love shadow—

—the first darkness, before Chaos knew itself—

I jerk my hand back, breathing hard.

What the fuck was that?

I look at the archway with new eyes. The markings aren't random. They're a record. A message. A warning.

This place is old. It feels older than everything else I’ve ever seen or crossed in this place. This place feel like my mom, Gaia, like my bastard of a new father, Ouranos but as old if not maybe older than the primordials themselves.

I'm about to back away, tactical wisdom says don't poke ancient mysterious things when I hear it.

Singing.

No. Not singing. Humming. A low, resonant sound that makes my bones vibrate.

It's coming from beyond the archway.

Every survival instinct I have is screaming at me to turn around. To go back. To signal Chris and Elijah and get the fuck out.

But I'm also a lore guy. The kind of guy who likes to solve mysteries, who hate not being in the known. And this place is a story I don't know yet.

I hate not knowing.

I take a breath. Center myself. Check my equipment, staff, seal, miracles and incantations ready to cast at a thought. One of the Blessing would let me move faster than thought if I need to run. Radahn's Great Rune would let me tank whatever hits I can't dodge.

I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

I step through the archway.

The world changes.

Not gradually. Instantly. Like stepping from one photograph into another.

The stone beneath my feet is no longer black. It's dark blue. Deep, endless blue, like looking into an ocean at midnight. And the air...

The air is cold. Not physically cold. Conceptually cold. The kind of cold that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with absence. Absence of warmth. Absence of light. Absence of comfort.

This is what cold would be if cold were a philosophy.

I look around.

I'm in a corridor. Massive, easily a hundred feet wide and twice as tall. The walls are the same midnight blue as the floor, smooth and perfect. No cracks. No imperfections. Like they were grown rather than built.

And on the walls...

Oh.

The markings I saw on the archway are here too, but larger. Much larger. They cover every surface, flowing across the stone like frozen rivers. Except these aren't empty impressions. These are still writing. Still meaning.

I can't read them. But I can feel them. They press against my mind, trying to communicate something vast and important and utterly incomprehensible to someone who's been alive for a second time in what was probably less than a day.

The humming is louder here. It's coming from deeper in the corridor, where the blue darkness thickens into something almost solid.

I start walking. Slowly. Staff held ready. Every sense I have cranked to maximum.

The corridor doesn't change as I move. Same blue stone. Same impossible markings. Same cold absence.

But the humming gets louder.

And I start to feel... watched.

Not by eyes. By something else. By the space itself. Like the corridor is aware of me. Measuring me. Judging whether I'm worthy of passage, if I'm not something that should be eaten in retaliation of daring to come here

The gamer part in me knows this feeling. It's the feeling you get before a boss fight. The moment before the fog gate. When the game is deciding if you're ready but in real life.

I keep walking.

After what feels like miles but is probably only minutes, the corridor opens up.

Into a chamber.

Calling it a chamber is like calling the ocean a puddle. This space is vast. So vast I can't see the far wall. The ceiling disappears into darkness so complete it might as well be the void itself. The floor is still that midnight blue stone, but here it's polished to a mirror shine. I can see my reflection looking back up at me, and my reflection looks wrong. Too many shadows. Too many depths.

In the center of the chamber, maybe a hundred yards away, is a structure.

A throne.

No. Not a throne. A seat. Simple. Elegant. Carved from what looks like crystallized night itself. It gleams and doesn't gleam simultaneously, existing in a state of perpetual twilight.

And on the throne...

Nothing.

No one.

Empty.

But the air around it shimmers. Like heat haze, except it's not heat. It's the opposite of heat. It's the shape of something that was there, left an impression, and then departed so completely that even its absence has form.

I approach slowly. Staff raised. Ready to cast.

The humming is coming from the throne.

No. From the space around the throne. From the absence itself.

I'm maybe twenty feet away when I notice something at the base of the throne.

Marks in the stone. Scratches. Claw marks, maybe. Or finger marks. Like something or someone was dragged away from this place. Forcibly.

And around those marks, the blue stone has darkened. Almost black. Like a stain. Or a scar.

I crouch down, examining them more closely.

The moment my fingers touch the darkened stone, the world lurches.

Vision. Memory. Something in between.

Two figures.

One is darkness given form. Not the absence of light, the presence of dark. Night personified, wings that span horizons, eyes like dying stars. Female, if such concepts apply to primordials. Beautiful in the way extinction events are beautiful.

Nyx.

I know her name the way you know your own heartbeat. Instinctively. Fundamentally.

The other figure is simpler. Less decorated. Darkness as shadow rather than night. Erebus. Her brother. Her consort. Her equal.

They're standing in this chamber. Or a version of this chamber. The throne is here, but it's occupied. The figure on the throne is...

I can't look at it directly. My mind slides off. But I get impressions: vastness, age, something so old that "old" is an insult to its existence.

Nyx and Erebus are speaking to it. Their voices are layered, harmonized, creating sounds that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space.

"—cannot remain—" Nyx.

“— the heavenly loom breaking—” Erebus

“—Wrong siblings, things changing—” Nyx

"—the balance shifts—" Erebus

“—the sky will/has cast down his children—" Nyx

“—too early—” Erebus

The figure on the throne doesn't speak. Doesn't need to. The chamber itself responds, the walls humming with meaning that bypasses language entirely.

"—three children of earth and sky, imprisoned unjustly—" Erebus.

"—their presence disturbs the foundation—" Nyx.

Another hum from the throne. This one feels like a question.

"—no, not the children themselves—" Nyx sounds... frustrated? Can primordials feel frustration? "—their existence is different but that shouldn’t be an issue. The circumstances are what are the issues. Gaia bleeds grief into the substrate. She cares, she is wounded much more than she should have been. Her pain seeps down, down, into the deepest places—"

"—and what Gaia touches, changes—" Erebus finishes.

The figure shifts. I still can't see it properly, but I feel the weight of its attention moving. Considering.

Then it stands.

The chamber SCREAMS. Not with sound. With existence. Like reality itself is protesting the movement of something that should remain still.

Nyx and Erebus both step back. Not in fear. In respect. In acknowledgment of something greater than themselves.

The figure descends from the throne. Each step resonates through the blue stone, through the walls, through my bones even though I'm watching a memory that happened eons ago.

It approaches the darkened marks on the floor. The scars. Touches them with something that might be a hand.

And speaks.

The voice is not a voice. It's the absence of voice. It's what you'd hear if sound died and left an echo. But somehow, impossibly, I understand:

"THIS DEVIATION IS AN ADVANTAGE. EARLIER,  THEY WILL WAKE ME."

Nyx and Erebus exchange a glance.

"—the three children?—" Erebus asks.

"NOT THEM. WHAT COMES AFTER. WHAT THEIR IMPRISONMENT BIRTHS. WHAT THEIR FREEDOM DESTROYS."

Another pause. The figure turns to face them, and even in memory, I have to look away. My mind can't hold the shape of it.

"THE BALANCE IS ALREADY BROKEN. THE SKY FATHER HAS ENSURED IT. WHEN THE CHILDREN RISE AND THEY WILL RISE, THE OLD COMPACT ENDS. TARTARUS WILL NO LONGER BE PRISON. IT WILL BE BATTLEGROUND. THEN THRONE. THEN GRAVE."

"—what would you have us do?—" Nyx's voice is careful. Measured.

"PREPARE. WHEN I WAKE AGAIN, IT WILL BE BECAUSE THE WORLD ABOVE HAS FORGOTTEN WHY I SLEEP. YOU WILL REMIND THEM. OR YOU WILL JOIN ME IN THE DEEPER DARK."

The figure returns to the throne. Sits. And as it settles, the chamber begins to change. The blue stone darkens. The markings on the walls start to fade. Not disappear, fade. Like they're sinking deeper into the stone, hiding themselves.

Nyx and Erebus bow. Once. Then turn and walk toward the corridor, toward the exit.

As they pass where I'm standing, Nyx pauses.

She turns. Looks directly at me.

Through time. Through memory. Through the vision itself.

Her eyes are black holes given purpose. And they SEE me.

"—curious—" she says. "—an observer from after. How far after, I wonder?—"

I can't move. Can't speak. I'm not really here. I'm watching a recording, a memory embedded in stone.

But she's looking at me anyway.

"—tell my distant self—" Nyx says, and her smile is the smile of someone who knows how stories end, "—that the children of earth and sky are not the danger. They are the catalyst. The real danger sleeps beneath this throne. And every act of imprisonment, every act of war, every drop of divine blood spilled in Tartarus feeds it. Tell her: the more they struggle to contain chaos, the more chaos they create.—"

Then the vision ends.

I'm on my hands and knees, gasping. My fingers are still touching the darkened stone, but the connection is broken. The memory is over.

Holy shit.

I sit back, trying to process what I just saw.

Nyx and Erebus were here. In this chamber. Talking to... something. Something old enough that even primordials showed deference. Something that sleeps beneath this throne.

And apparently, our imprisonment, mine, Chris's, Elijah's is part of some kind of cosmic domino effect that ends with that thing waking up.

"The more they struggle to contain chaos, the more chaos they create."

Fuck.

That thing knew like really knew about us, not the original version of the Hechatoncheires, us, Chris, Elijah and me.

We're also apparently apocalypse maidens.

I need to document this. I need to tell Chris and Elijah. I need to—

The humming stops.

Just. Stops.

The sudden silence is deafening.

I freeze. Every instinct screaming danger.

The throne is still empty. The chamber is still vast. But something has changed.

The air is moving. Not wind. Something else. Like the space itself is breathing.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

And with each breath, the darkness above me descends. Just slightly. Incrementally. But noticeably.

The ceiling is lowering.

No. Not lowering. Approaching.

Something in the darkness is coming down.

I stand. Staff raised. Golden light gathering at the tip, ready to cast.

"I mean no disrespect," I call out. My voice sounds small in this vast space. "I'm just passing through. Seeking knowledge. I'll leave if I'm not welcome."

The breathing continues. The darkness descends.

I can see shapes now. In the black above. Not solid shapes. Suggestions of shapes. Wings, maybe. Or tentacles. Or something that shifts between forms too quickly to track.

"I'm one of those who will be called Hechatoncheires," I try. "Child of Gaia and Ouranos. Recently imprisoned. Recently arrived. I don't know the protocols here, and I apologize if I've violated them."

The shapes pause. The breathing slows.

Then a voice. Not the voice from the vision—that was absence-made-sound. This is different. Younger. More present.

"Child of Earth and Sky," it says, and the words echo from everywhere and nowhere. "You walk in the Hall of Sleep. You touch the Throne of the Deep Mother. You witness what was and speak to what is."

I choose my words carefully. "I didn't know this was the Hall of Sleep. I was following the sound of water. I found an archway. I entered because I'm trying to understand Tartarus. I mean no harm."

"Harm," the voice muses. "Such a mortal concept. You cannot harm what sleeps here, child. You can only wake it. Or feed it. Often, they are the same thing."

The shapes in the darkness coalesce. Solidify.

I'm looking at a face.

Not a human face. Too large. Maybe fifty feet across. Female features, if such distinctions matter for entities made of living shadow. Beautiful in a way that hurts to perceive. Eyes that reflect light that isn't there.

"I am the Watcher of the Deep Mother," the face says. "I guard her sleep. I maintain her rest. I ensure that those who would disturb her are... dissuaded."

"I don't want to disturb anyone," I say honestly. "I'm just trying to learn."

"Learning is a form of disturbance," the Watcher says. "Every question asked ripples the waters of what is. Every answer given changes the shape of what will be."

"Then I'm already disturbing things just by existing."

"True." The face smiles. It's not a comforting expression. "But you are interesting. The Deep Mother stirred when you touched her throne. She has not stirred in ages uncounted. Your existence pleases her."

That is simultaneously reassuring and terrifying.

"May I ask," I say carefully, "who the Deep Mother is?"

"She is the First Darkness. The darkness before Nyx gave darkness form. The darkness before Erebus gave darkness shadow. She is what darkness was when darkness was only potential. Before it became Night and Shadow, it was simply Deep."

My mind races, connecting dots. The primordial family tree is complicated, but if I'm understanding this correctly...

"She's older than Nyx and Erebus?"

"She is what they were born from. Chaos bore many children. Nyx and Erebus were her heirs, her hands, her voice in the upper world. But the Deep Mother chose to remain. To sleep. To wait."

"Wait for what?"

The face tilts. "You saw the vision. You heard her words. She waits for the balance to break so completely that her waking becomes necessary. She waits for the world to need her again."

"And our imprisonment, that's part of the breaking?"

"Part of the beginning of the breaking. Your father imprisoned you out of fear. He may argue otherwise but this is the only truth. Fear of your strength. Fear of your potential. But fear is a seed, and seeds grow. His fear will breed rebellion. Rebellion will breed war. War will breed change. And change..." The face's smile widens. "Change feeds the Deep Mother. Every act of violence in Tartarus strengthens her. Every drop of divine ichor spilled here nourishes her. Every prisoner who suffers here adds to her dreaming."

I feel cold understanding settle into my bones.

"Tartarus isn't just a prison," I say slowly. "It's a farm."

"Very good, child of Earth and Sky. Yes. Tartarus is where suffering is concentrated and refined. Where pain becomes power. Where the discarded and forgotten are rendered down into essence. And all of that essence flows here. To this chamber. To that throne. To her."

The face begins to recede back into the darkness. "You may go, Briareos. You have learned what you came to learn. More than you came to learn. Return to your brothers. Tell them what you have seen. And know this: the Deep Mother watches you. All three of you. With great interest."

"Wait," I call out. "What happens when she wakes?"

The face is almost gone now. But I hear the voice one more time, echoing through the chamber:

"When she wakes, child, the distinction between prison and kingdom will cease to matter. Tartarus will become what it was always meant to be: the foundation upon which the next world is built. The separation between the upper world, the encercling third, Sheol and this place will be no more as it had been at the beginning. And you three—you Hundred-Handed, you will decide whether that foundation is made of tyranny or freedom."

Then silence.

The darkness recedes. The breathing stops. The chamber is just a chamber again. Empty throne, blue stone, fading markings.

I'm alone.

I stand there for a long moment, processing.

Then I turn and walk the fuck back toward the corridor, toward the archway, toward where I originally came from.

My mind is racing with implications.

The Deep Mother. An entity older than Nyx and Erebus. Sleeping beneath Tartarus. Fed by suffering. Waiting for the balance to break.

I could be wrong but if I wasn't, if the little details and hints so far given were correct, would that mean that the true identity of the deep mother is that of the creator God of all Greek mythology, the one from which everything comes?

Chaos?

I really hope it was not the case because sure, dealing with a primordial like Ouranos especially with our abilities was cool but dealing with the creator deity of this universe, the primordial among primordials?

That was something I was less confident in.

And also, we’ll apparently be the ones who'll determine how the pseudo-apocalypse will begin.

No pressure.

I'm halfway through the corridor when I feel it. A vibration in the stone. Rhythmic. Getting stronger.

Footsteps.

Big footsteps.

Coming from ahead. From the archway.

I pick up my pace. The Tarnished form is good for many things; one of them is enhanced speed. I'm practically flying over the blue stone, staff clutched tight, crown flickering with golden light.

I burst through the archway—

—and immediately have to dodge.

Something massive swings through the space I just occupied. I roll, come up in a defensive crouch, staff raised.

And get my first good look at what attacked me.

A giant.

No. Not a giant. A colossus. Easily a hundred feet tall, made of what looks like crude stone stacked into a vaguely humanoid shape. Its head is a boulder with two glowing pits for eyes. Its arms are tree trunks reinforced with metal bands. It moves with ponderous grace, like a landslide that learned choreography.

And it's not alone.

Behind it, I can see more. Dozens more. A tribe of stone-giants, all heading in the same direction. East. Toward...

Toward the sound of water I was following initially.

They're not attacking me specifically. I was just in the way.

One of them notices me now. Turns its massive head. Those glowing eyes focus.

It raises a fist the size of a car.

This place really had it for me, didn’t it?