Chapter 7: Mia’s Roots

“How mysterious. I wonder why it’s glowing like this.”

Mia scooped up a handful of water and watched as it drained through her fingers. The act did not leave her with a glowing palm. She’d thought it was the water that was glowing, but the mechanism seemed to be something else.

“It looks sort of like the light from fireflies. Maybe there are organisms in the water that glow,” said a pensive Abel before falling completely silent for a few seconds. Then, he restarted with a hint of apprehension, “Say, Mia, do you think this was done on purpose?”

“Huh? That what was done on purpose?”

“This.” He gestured at the water. “You remember how Sion said the cave we were in showed signs of being man-made, right? I was thinking, whatever is producing the light in this cave, maybe it was put here by someone. On purpose.”

Memories of Esmeralda’s story flashed through Mia’s mind.

“An evil cult and its underground shrine, huh... I see. That spooky story of hers suddenly feels a lot more plausible, doesn’t it...?”

Granted, she didn’t actually think they’d happen upon some sort of unholy sanctum down here. Abel, however, had realized the more important corollary.

“Depending on how you look at it, that might be a good thing. If people had a hand in making this place, then there must be a way to get in and out.”

“Oh, that’s true. There might be an exit up ahead then!”

Even if there wasn’t, the path extended in the other direction as well. As long as they followed it, they might just find their way out. Feeling her mood improve, her steps grew lighter.

Unfortunately, the series of winding tunnels they walked through opened onto not the fresh air of the outdoors, but a massive underground chamber. The titanic cavern dwarfed all the others they’d seen so far.

“What...is this place?”

It was a baffling sight, eliciting awe and bewilderment in equal parts. The blue light that had lit their watery path now filled the chamber. It wasn’t that whatever was in the water now hung in the air. Rather, crystalline rocks pervading the area refracted the cerulean glow in a million directions, lighting the entirety of the cavern. And standing in the middle of it all, illuminated by the eerie blue diffractions...was a shrine.

Built with rocks so clear they looked like ice, its gigantic pillars and the roof they held were all completely transparent. The structure was a kaleidoscope of reflections, so permeated with the surrounding light that it appeared to be glowing itself. There was something magical about the crystalline shrine, as if it had popped straight out of a fairy-tale. And like most sites of unearthly wonder in stories, there was something foreboding about it. It felt...wrong. The otherworldly sight struck Mia as not just odd but, somehow, almost profane.

“I-It exists... There really is a shrine down here. I’d never have imagined... Could this be the evil cultists’ underground shrine?”

“Who knows? Though the fact that it’s hidden in a place like this suggests it wasn’t built for entirely virtuous reasons...”

He said little more, gazing upon the structure with silent astonishment. She didn’t blame him. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this in their lives. Little about the place could be deduced from its appearance. In what era was it built? Using what methods? By whom? Its architectural context was a complete mystery. There was one thing about it that was clear though...

“Whatever it is...it gives me the creeps,” muttered Abel, voicing the exact sentiment Mia was feeling.

She nodded in agreement. She was gazing upon surreal beauty—the stuff of dreams and fantasy—yet what she felt was a peculiar aversion. Not disgust, but close. Shrines were meant to represent the glory of God. They were supposed to be built with a guiding philosophy of harmony that sought beauty in wholeness. The one before them, meanwhile, gave off a sense of discord. Of imperfection. It wasn’t a definite feeling but rather a vague intuition—things they expected to find were not there, while places that should have been empty were instead filled. No single aberration was particularly significant, but every little deviation from the expected norm compounded on the prior, resulting in an uncanny whole that was unsettling to look upon, as if it were constantly scratching invisible claws across the nerves of its observers.

“The church of the evil cultists...”

She doubted there were many other structures that embodied the term so well.

“You know, Mia, whenever I hear ‘evil cult,’ the first thing I think of is them.”

“Yes. The Chaos Serpents. I was thinking the same thing.”

They were people who hated and opposed the establishment of man-made order. If this structure was truly created by them, its twisted design that ran counter to all convention would make sense—an architectural symbol of profanity, sacrilegious through its very existence.

“I think we might have just made an unexpected discovery in an unexpected place!” Mia said with excitement.

After fumbling for so long through the fog of mystery that surrounded the Chaos Serpents, she might have finally seized one of their slippery tails.

“Come on, let’s go take a look inside!”

With eager steps, she made her way into the structure.

“This...is really something...” Mia said as she gazed around the shrine’s dreamscape interior.

Everything—the floor, the walls, even the ceiling—glowed, bathing her in pale blue light. It was as if there was a small azure sun here in the depths, determined to carve out a kingdom of its own in defiance of its fiery counterpart that governed the lands above.

“For some reason, just standing here makes me uneasy...” she muttered, taking another look at the surroundings.

The shrine had no door or partitions. Inside was just one large open space, adorned by nothing but the thick supporting pillars. And, Mia realized with interest, one other feature far in the back of the chamber. Displayed with seemingly intentional prominence, it was a large slab of stone, cut whole from some cliff or boulder. As the sole opaque object in the transparent shrine, the solidity of its gray stood out against its ghostly blue backdrop.

They walked over and examined the slab.

“Something’s written on it...” said Abel before sighing and shaking his head. “No good. It’s not Continenta. Do you have any idea what language it is, Mia?”

“Yes, actually. This is written in an ancient language of the empire.”

The language that Mia regularly spoke was Continenta—a universal language used throughout the continent. The inscription on the stone, meanwhile, was in a language used long ago in the Tearmoon Empire. She actually knew her way around this ancient tongue too. Learning it had been part of her basic education as a princess.

“Can you read it?”

“As a matter of fact, I can.”

“Really? Brilliant as always, aren’t you?”

She couldn’t resist a smug grin at his compliment.

“I sure am.”

“Is it hard to read?”

“Nope. Not for me, at least,” she said, her sense of competence inflated by her uniquely relevant skill. “It’s a piece of cake. Allow me to read it for you.”

With hands placed confidently on her hips, she leaned forward and examined the inscription. At first, she still managed a few hmms and aahs for scholarly effect, but they quickly dwindled. Soon she was staring at the stone slab in complete silence, her brows furrowed in an increasingly deep frown.

The ancient words carved into the stone slab told of a man and his twisted conviction. Or, perhaps...his curse. The man, a victim of atrocities that left him bereaved at the loss of all those dear to him, grew to harbor a poisonous hatred that festered at the bottom of his heart. When he came here and discovered this shrine, he also happened upon the Serpents who, driven out of the continent proper, had been hiding on this island.

Finding rapport and resonance in the Serpents’ ruinous ideology and antipathy toward all man-made order, he soon found himself yearning to realize—or, at least, exploit—their entropic ambition to take revenge on the world. The Serpents told him that there existed in the continent a region known as “the Fertile Crescent” where the land was blessed with heavenly favor. The region, with its consistently plentiful harvests and abundant food, guaranteed the order and stability of the entire continent.

This made sense to the man, for he knew that food was the mother of mercy. So long as men could feed themselves, they could forgive most hardships, or failing that, at least tolerate them. It was only when they starved that they took swords in hand and resorted to wanton violence. Therefore, if he wished to destroy all civilization and plunge the world into chaos, he would need to do something about the Fertile Crescent; its abundance stood in the way of his revenge.

What should he do?

The answer was simple, for the man had been gifted with great intellect. His sharp mind cut like a blade, paring away the superficial obfuscations of human nature to reveal the abyss within. He was a sage of evil, possessing an amazing understanding of the wicked hearts of men.

What, thought the man, should he do with his mighty intellect and his poisoned heart?

He should spread views and beliefs that would defile the Fertile Crescent. He should propagate an ideology that breeds scorn and contempt for agriculture and the production of food.

Where, the man thought, did his greatest challenge lie?

It lay in speed. He needed his ideas to spread quickly and efficiently.

How, the man thought, would he achieve his goal?

The answer was, again, simple. He would build a nation there. Then he would systematically disseminate a doctrine of anti-agriculturalism. The process would feel natural, for the seeds of ruin would be encased in the fruit of regal legitimacy, allowing them to grow undisturbed in the rich, unassuming soil, whereupon they would taint the Crescent’s people and drive them to defile their own bountiful farmland, forever robbing it of its fertility.

And so resolved the man.

He would build a nation that drenched the fertile moon-shaped crescent with tears of suffering. Such was his twisted conviction...and his curse gave birth to an empire.

The man’s name was Alexis, the first Tearmoon emperor.