Postmortem Ch3 || A Perilous Path

Zone C was a darker place. Not just in terms of light, but in terms of atmosphere. The life and light of the greenhouses did not reach down here. This was a place of containment, of questions that had long gone unanswered despite numerous trials and errors. There was great pain here. All of the inhabitants of the Morpheus facility had suffered, but it was the inhabitants of Zone C that remembered.

The scene that greeted Tobias upon entry of the third level of the facility was deceptively pleasant, if it could be described as such. The dim flash of a light in the distance briefly illuminated the last dull shine on bits of rusted metal. What he couldn’t see, he could smell. The scents of metal and rust and old, rancid grease hung heavy in the air. The entryway reeked of death. Mould that fed on whatever decaying matter it could find, mildew climbing up the walls wherever a trickle of water had managed to seep through. Papers lay scattered about, long ago flattened to the ground and bound together with blood and mildew.

Tobias stared at the ground, long ago stained almost black with blood, lost in his head. So much death had happened here. He could feel it. It clung to everything down here, threatening to invade his bones so that he could join the countless others. He glanced up, staring at a wall as though he could see straight through it. So many others. A hall of bones with a population of the dead that none on the surface could ever conceive.

The acrocanthosaurus that lived down here were masters of death. They had seen it. They understood.

Beyond the entryway was the first evidence of what had been. Tanks. Massive walls of plexiglass that were several inches thick, yet some had been shattered or cracked. Tobias felt a ghost of disgust, of pain and hate and righteous wrath. They could not be contained. They could not be kept there forever.

But if the doors hadn’t opened, wasn’t that exactly what would have happened?

He glanced around, feeling oddly more cautious here than he had been even when the eyes of the remaining dacentrurus had been upon him. There was a darkness here, not just because the dim lighting made it difficult to see, though it was difficult to see. There was a feeling here as well that pervaded the air. It was deeply unsettling.

He didn’t realise he’d gone past the tanks until he nearly bumped his muzzle on not a tank, but a cage. Distant, weak lights managed to cast the strongest shadows against the walls, catching on bars of rusted metal and making them shine in the darkness like wicked teeth. Walking through the broken shadows, he felt as though he, himself, was the one behind bars.

There was a quiet hiss in the air. Surely, that wasn’t just his imagination playing up in the darkness, nor old ghosts that refused to linger quietly.

He just caught sight of a gargantuan muzzle poking out from behind one of the bars, and though the pale muzzle was curled to bare its teeth, Tobias felt relief. He was not alone amongst the hateful, vengeful dead. Cautiously, he approached the owner of the pale muzzle.

A dull, dry rattling sound joined the quiet hiss, created by a thick blanket of quills that ran along the pale acro’s back. They were much like the quills that he’d found on the previous level, though the owner of these quills was far larger - and her quills were still intact.

There were two bodies in the cage which had long ago been sprung open. Both giants bore rough, broken patterns on their hides - one of fire, one of ice. Basalt, an acro of relatively calm and cool temperament, and Rime, their fiery daughter. Basalt rumbled something, a sound that came from so deep inside their chest that Tobias wasn’t sure that the sound was something that he had heard, or rather something he had felt. Whatever was passed between the pair, Rime’s temper cooled, and she relaxed, albeit only slightly.

The pale acro glowered at the dark stranger with the pale, dead eyes. Another. Nidhogg was beaten back. There was nothing else for the invaders now, especially not now that most of the facility had fled to the surface. What did he want? Had they not tarnished their home with their presence enough already?

Tobias gazed between the pair, his muzzle turning slowly so that he could study each of them individually. They were important, he just didn’t yet know why.

“I need to go down,” he said finally. The path was so easily lost down here, tangled with a hundred, hundred others. It faded in the darkness, the path itself a mere shadow. The fact that he needed to continue was all that he knew, but not how he could get there.

Rime’s voice was flat and hard, her eyes chips of ice. “Why?”

The question brought Tobias pause. He hadn’t been able to explain “why” the entire time that he’d travelled through the facility, and struggled still to come up with an answer or explanation. Fortunately, before he could attempt to answer, Rime continued.

“The Twisted Beast no longer has a hold on the lowest levels. All those that came before you have picked our home clean, desecrated our halls with their presence as they came and went.”

Well. Most of them went. Some had not been so fortunate as to escape Nidhogg’s wrath unscathed. Or alive, rather.

“They disturbed the fallen.” Tobias’ voice had a sad tone to it, his eyes soft as he came to an understanding. That was why they felt so angry. They had been disrupted, disrespected. But that was not the answer that Rime had been waiting for. Her quills rattled as another hiss rasped through her teeth.

This outsider knew nothing about the dead.

There was another deep rumble from Basalt as they nudged Rime gently with the tip of their massive snout. She calmed, but only just.

“They did,” Basalt agreed, glancing at Tobias. The inside of their mouth was a flash of bright orange when they spoke, as though they were burning from the inside out. “But you will not.”

Tobias dipped his head, making a quiet, agreeable sound. “I need to go down. The living must be separated from the dead.” And the dead, consumed and returned to the Grave of the Ancients, as they had been for as long as the acros had roamed Zone C. Over time, peace would be restored, and the dead would quiet once again.

Basalt turned their head towards Rime, their eyes, which burned like embers in the dark, were soft and amused. Rime, on the other hand, scowled. Whatever wordless conversation occurred Tobias didn’t understand, but a conversation had been had, for Rime heaved herself to her feet without another word. She didn’t look pleased, but she would take one last stranger to the edge of the deepest depths of the facility. They just had to get past the test sites, first.

A low, growled, “stay close” was the only warning that he got that she was to be his guide along the last leg of his path. A light that lead him through the dark as it were, for her pale colouration made it easier for him to follow behind. Unlike Ginseng and Sunflower, Rime did not fill the time it took to pass through the rest of the zone with conversation. This was an ephemeral interaction in which she was giving him passage. Nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t want him to even consider making any sort of attachment to her. She wasn’t guiding him so that they could be friends. She wanted him gone from the facility just as much as he wanted to continue on with his path. He was close to the end now, he could feel it.

Rime escorted him through another corridor, which was barely large enough to fit her towering height. She was silent as they walked, though Tobias could imagine the sorts of venomous things that she was thinking. It was as she had said - the others that had come before had invaded their home with their presence, seeking an end that they didn’t know the outcome of. They were not unlike him.

When they came to an intersection, Tobias paused. His gaze was drawn to the other hall, again staring into the darkness as though he could see straight through it. There were whispers down there, both calling to him and shouting in angry tongues. Though once carefully and meticulously organised and categorised by the ones who had come before, there were now so many remains brought to the Grave of the Ancients that they could no longer be organised. They were simply added where there was space.

“Keep up.” Rime had noticed that he was no longer following, and that was his second warning. Tobias blinked, torn from the draw that he felt. She was right. That was not where the path took him, though something else did call him there. He clacked his teeth quietly and agreeably, following once again.

The halls opened up, the corridors becoming wider and the ceilings more grand. The doors, if they could be called that, were large enough to fit even a dinosaur of Rime’s size if she were laying on her side. Some of the walls had windows, but they were blackened and warped with age, mildew, and what he could only guess to be more blood. What he could see through, though, were the massive holes left by the corrugated metal doors that had been torn away or left open. Inside the rooms that lined the halls were all manner of odd instruments, left behind by the ones that came before.

Not just instruments, but more holding cells as well. Smaller ones, some that had never been sprung open. All that was left inside now were the bones of some small creature that he couldn’t make out through the oppressive shadows. They felt...sorrowful. Scared. But that wasn’t the most hideous thing that he could see. What was the most prominent in many of the rooms he could see into were the tables. Various sizes, very few large enough to hold a specimen of Rime’s proportions, but each with straps of thick leather and metal meant to bind and hold a creature in place. The leather had long ago rotted and become brittle, the metal rusted and weak, but the memories of what they had done held strong.

Tobias shook himself, ridding himself of the chill that suddenly clung to his hide. He would be glad to move on from this place. Or he would be, if the feeling of dread that gnawed inside his chest didn’t get stronger and stronger the further along the path he continued. Where was the path taking him this time? What horrible thing waited below?

It wasn’t as though there was long for him to wait to find out. Before too much longer, they reached the end of the corridor. Another staircase that would lead down into the depths. For the first time since he’d started this journey, Tobias felt a moment of apprehension. He had to go down, though. He had to continue on this path.

Tobias glanced up, turning his pale, flat gaze towards Rime. He would see her again, he knew. There was nothing to be afraid of. A sound rumbled in his throat and he dipped his head in thanks. In return, she merely glared down at him, her eyes hard as he disappeared once more into the darkness. The sooner he finished whatever he was doing down there, the sooner she would, once again, be left to the peace and comfort of isolation.