Nadir Zenith

[Features: Non-erotic. A little dark lol]

It was a dark and lonely night. I hadn't been back to the enclave for three days now. They'd catch me if I returned. I pulled the red jewel from underneath my cloak. Dangerous, it was far too flashy in this dead city even with it's luster so dark. It still glimmered like a beacon here in the darkest of days and darkest of nights in the darkest of cities. This rotting cesspit. Glimmerpool. What a stupid name for a stupid place. It had a much more familiar name on the tongues of just about everyone else.

Black Pool.

It fit that name in many more ways than just one.

I stowed the garnet colored jewel back in my cloak and began skulking. Only a fool walks, only the young and hardy slink, and only children scurry. If you were a noble man, no you weren't. And you'd be dead soon enough if you tried to pretend you were. Nobles don't come down here, not even the rougher ones. That's level three. This is level four. I've heard the damned place goes deeper, all the way down to six, but I've never confirmed it.

My mind was wandering, skittering over different trains of thought like ole Mikey with peddlers before he got caught. Poor Mikey. Never heard from him again.

I shook my head and focused. The Enclave would be looking for me by now and my daze had lasted too long. I wouldn't survive if I wasn't careful. I shouldn't have survived this far and not all of my facilities were online. I felt like one of those old contraptions the engineers tinker on. Faulty, dying or dead, and only sometimes slowly coming back to awareness. I knew what would help, what had already began helping, but it failed me every time.

The reasoning was simply, there was just no time. Had to move, keep moving, move move move. Stopping was death and yet I wouldn't be right in the head again until I stopped. A conundrum but not one I could, literally, spare any focus on. It merely slipped around my head and gave me a sensation of frustration. Great, helpless frustration, exactly what I need while my mind falls apart.

I walked by a corpse. Not a surprise, not the first, won't be the last. And that was for the day. I had had others speaking, of how finding corpses in the street wasn't a daily affair in other parts of the kingdom. Goddess above, how I wish that was where I existed. But the only thing harder than surviving Black Pool, was leaving it. Get through the gangs, get through the nobles, get through the old war golems, the even older relics of a bygone era, and finally, you'd have to get through your hardest challenge yet. No, not the kingdom's forces, that came afterwards.

Yourself.

A simply concept, but it was so, so hard for a rat to walk into the light, to saunter around like it was natural. The rest of the world was not mired in darkness, it didn't rain horror and despair literally, it didn't rip apart your soul as if it was childs play, people didn't just disappear into the dark without any human or mortal species being the cause. There was sunlight and blue skies and green grass. I had seen it, once. Back when a fire had burnt in me and my luck had been more than any man I had met before. It had to have been, I had survived the experience. I had heard others talk about it being like a purification.

Oh how right they were.

But you see, the problem isn't the purification. No no no, the problem is what it's purifying. We've all been here too long, we've all long forgotten something that scares us when we think about it too long.

We aren't the humans we inhabit, not anymore. We've been hollowed out, scooped out, and something else resides in us. In our bodies. In the place where a soul use to be.

That thing is us.

Getting purified is... it's like dying in reverse. Death is always a simple affair for most man and monster. You either die instantly, or you die slowly. But it's a weakening effect that's for sure. Your breathing slows as your blood drains our or as your life force leeches out of you, your mind fades, your heart stops pumping if it's still in one piece, and finally, you die. Like fading into the eternal darkness, but for the long run, around Black Pool.

Purification is wholly the reverse. You feel stronger, and stronger, life flooding into you, weakness you didn't know you had leaving you, breaths coming easier, feeling better than you ever have before.

And then you realize and know, with certainty, that you are dying.

How does a man or woman, creature or beast, deal with that? They flee, they flee and they never go back.

I was warned, over and over and over again. Despite the horrors of this world, this city, this terrible and horrible location, the ones who have made it share that singular kindness with each other. For how horrible is it, not only to be trapped, but know that you aren't trapped by others, but because of what you are. Because of what you ARE.

I shook my head. Not good, not good. My head is trying to swivel through my memories, build myself back up. Not good. Have to keep moving. Body tingling.

I move left.

A shot rings out beside my head. Fuck.

"Malcana, get back here."

Marlow doesn't shout, he knows he doesn't need to. In truth, that was as much a warning shot as I could've asked for. It still would've killed me if I hadn't dodged, but he could've made sure it at least nicked my ear with slightly better aim. I can't go back though. That's not how it works. That's not how it works at all. The jewel...

Another shot, a side leap, nearly knicks my legs. The bullet goes through the concrete. The time for playing is over, the time for thought is over, I enter a dead sprint.

They chase me, through the crowds, through the darkest gutters and over the dead. People die, gangs are slaughtered, monsters fall. Marlow was not sent alone, after all. Though he doesn't need much help. I slip through The Park and pray it hasn't been cleared like usual. Normally, a death sentence. Now, it might just be the closest thing I have to salvation.

I fall, not unusual, not in the park. The darkness is even more all encompassing here, somehow thicker, a beast king residing in The Park I've heard being the cause. No one has ever made it that far into its territory to know for certain. It can't be a beast emperor, not yet, or this block and possibly level would be dead.

Then again...

More shots. Fuck!

They hit me. One straight through the heart, the other through my upper spine. A fatal hit for a human, another for incapacitation. But we were all more than human. My blood was quickly failing me, manual forced pumping only letting me move for a few more feet, my spine barely reconnecting with delicate wisps of darkness and shadow.

It was enough.

The darkness here was always more than just darkness. Not the void, never the void, the void didn't care for the area around here. Too much personality for that yawning chasm of, well, darkness. Odd how their can be a place even too dark, no, maybe just too different for our own. No, no no no, my thoughts were slipping, falling, trying to reconnect. Not good, need to fix my heart before it's too late.

That damn purification. It both weakened and strengthened me. Such an odd feeling, such a weird situation. It partially destroyed me, nearly killed me, thus making me weaker. The heart shot was actually nearly fatal because of it, instead of needing to cut off my head and burn my body, or use Onyx rounds. Hilarious. The Enclave would be laughing their head off if they knew.

On the other hand, I was currently using the real me, the me that had fully infested this body with shadow, emptied it's soul out like a pitted core, and scooped myself in, to remake a heart. It was black. Goddess, how I was starting to hate the color black. Give me a little bit of grey, hell, I'd take a blue. Purple even. Not a red though. That would be a bit too much.

I slammed my head on the ground. I didn't know where I was, the fall and movement of a few feet in The Park could've landed me anywhere. Once upon a time it was a flat grass, I heard, in an ancient era. Now it was a tunnel complex where space either didn't work right or a powerful delusion was under everyone. Most people suspected both. Those few feet meant I could be miles, in any direction, from my pursuers. Was it safe? Goddess no. It was a minor miracle I hadn't been set upon by any ants within moments, let alone anything truly terrible. In my current state, I was food.

I took a step, surprising even myself. Then I grimaced. I was recreating my body, but not alone. The jewel was glowing. Dim light, sure, but no light was the norm here. I was relying more on vague soul senses, echolocation (which The Park famously fooled), superior spatial perception (standard training for The Enclave elite), and smell.

That last one was the only reason I managed to save myself by tripping.

A mantis, always carrying an iron smell from all the blood on them. A scythe wizzed over my head... I assumed. I couldn't actually tell but it wasn't my first time in a life or death situation. Shortly after I got here I had-

I don't even know what saved me. Instincts? My brain had become a blend of nonsense again, memories and feelings, and I had stepped without thinking. Now I heard the mantis. It's scythe like arm striking against the hard rock behind me. So, I was in the tunnels. You never truly knew. The Park was annoying like that. I couldn't use any of the normal attacks in my arsenal, my spine had barely been repaired moments ago and my heart was still being built. My body was slow, my magic was useless, I was critically wounded, and my mind was trying to leave me.

Luckily, I hadn't come unprepared.

A knife appeared in my hand. Crappy weapons knives, but everyone has them. I wonder what that says about the world. You get into a knife fight with someone, everyone loses. You lose, they lose. Even for us, about a third of the people who 'win' knife fights still die to wounds afterwards. Pistols are a better weapon, magic even better. But if you're fighting someone with a scythe like a mantis?

A knife is more than enough.

I blinked and finished my thoughts, but my body hadn't stayed still. It had recognized I was going to die and had moved, even while my stupid thoughts had bounced around about knives and weapons. I had dodged the first six strikes by jumping, falling, or leaning back, only losing an arm and getting a few lacerations across my body in the process. Considering my blood felt closer to the thick oil used in the old relics, I was happy for that.

Now I was close and it's head was in the optimal angle. It wasn't impossible to stab this thing to death, methodically tear it apart, but that was wasteful and I was partially dying. A single moment of absolute timing brought my slow arm up to its fast moving head, my knife through its brain. It fell limp, unresponsive.

...

I moved, my brain had tried to pull itself into different threads again, but I had shut that down. If I can't think without going on some inner monologue, don't think. Now I was somewhere else, still the tunnels of The Park. I nearly gasped out loud when I saw where exactly I was though.

The Park was dangerous but it was still a neccesary location for training and resources. Weapons, medicine, armour, advancement, and more. Life would always be shit in Black Pool but it was better to be alive than dead. And if you got really, really, really lucky, you ended up living for a while or even becoming a gang boss. Some tried to become nobles. But these weren't the type of roots that allowed you to rise there. Besides, they had their own access to The Park up there. Some kind of sky access or something on the higher floors. Ridiculous.

I shook my head, I was getting distracted, my brain trying to reach to the jewel, failing, because I was refusing, but the process had already started.

The location, right. Right. The Park, dangerous. The location, a safehouse of mine. The chances of getting here were zero, unless I had taken the right pathways. My brain wouldn't have been able to find those pathways on a good days. It seems my instincts were more honest somehow. Good to know, might be able to, might need to be able to, use that someday.

I walked in, the signs outside undisturbed, my eyes peering through the specific illusions I had set up to act as false equivalencies, and my mimic pouch not trying to wake up and eat me. It was really my safe room, not an ambush, illusion, or something pretending to be it. Was it safe? Honestly, that question nearly scared me, because the answer was 'almost'. Having somewhere safe in Black Pool was impossible, having something close to it was a miracle. Normally, the answer would be a solid no.

But I had been outside.

That changed everything. My body wasn't as tied to everyone else as it once was. At a great cost, but still, it meant that a good 80% of the normal methods wouldn't work. With my heart blown out and only reforming due to help from the jewel, that almost eliminated every other method as my entire body would slightly change. It was never truly 100% safe, of course, but it would probably buy me at least 12 hours of unmitigated relief.

A literal, true, miracle.

My luck had always been good, better than most, better than any I had ever seen. I had survived after all. That made me rise to elite status purely on that fact alone. I had lived longer than even some imprisoned engineers. That was a real hallmark of success. The engineers... focus.

Miracle, rest, jewel, integration, escape, freedom, repair, renew.

Those last two might be out of order. Finally, I let myself drop away, into a dreamful sleep.

.

.

.

I had arrived at Black Pool longer than I can remember. I was young. Boy. Scared. As I should have been. No one goes to Black Pool for good or normal reasons. The first level might have the 'commoners' but those were closer to noble servants than anything else. And that's what I had been. A noble servant. Just a general one, thank the Goddess. I got to see and hear what happened to people that served masters and nobles individually.

It was torture. I wasn't spared physical activity or exhaustion just because of my age. Wasn't immune to wounds or attacks. I was expected to die. To get run so ragged, get so wounded, by torn to shreds so bad, mentally, emotionally, and for others hopefully physically, that I would never be able to return from the mire I was sent into.

Every day, darkness. Not darkness I could feel or see through like now, true and utter darkness. While others walked through it without any issues, I was blind. Me and plenty of others, utterly, totally, blind. Words came from the darkness, pain came from the darkness, food came from the darkness, all without warning. All in surprise.

I never saw the faces of most of the nobles. Just heard their voices. Never saw anything, for years and years. I had started to believe I had been born blind, been born a slave. Maybe it was even true, considering.

Because I died.

Who knows my name, I didn't have one as that boy who slowly grew into a man. But one day I died and one day I was born. It was nearly the same day. Nearly.

Many died, so many died. The lack of presence was all I ever got. But I could smell some of them after they died. The smell of rot, as I had to haul their bodies to a pit I had to be careful to measure. I don't know what killed me, part of me believes I just gave up one day and died, just like that.

But after I did, the real me, the true me, took over. Like it did with everyone else here. What was I? Maybe someone else knew. Part of this darkness, that was all I knew. Born from it? Maybe. Literally a part of it? Possible. Summoned by it? Who knows? But I infested my own body, I took on all these memories, I arose out of a pit of the dead, my own bodied hauled off.

And I was still a slave.

What had changed? Nothing. Dead and still a slave. Come back to life only to suffer more. That was when a fire broke into my despair. A tiny spark but compared to others, it was a bigger difference than between night and day.

I had escaped, past the servant level, past level two somehow (that was foggy even now. drugs will do that I guess), and finally to level three. Where all the more rough nobles are. I was a man now. It had taken years to get down here and in that time, I had survived by the skin of my teeth countless times. I had discovered new 'abilities'. Weak soul sense, 'dark' vision, shitty spatial perception, and an okay sense of hearing.

I did not.... I did not........ I did not come out of level three unscathed. What I had avoided while young, was not avoided as an adult. I had never hated before that moment, I realized. Funny, how that works. It's one thing if it feels like a whole world is torturing and killing you, it's wholly different when three drunks are raping you. It hurt, but it wasn't the pain, it didn't even compare. It wasn't the helplessness, I had gotten use to that ever since I was born. The humiliation hurt but it was almost a.... welcome shock that I could still feel that emotion at all. I would've thought I had never had any to begin with.

It was the loss.

I had so few things left to lose. My body was a myriad tapestry of the things I had lost or never had. Level two with its more, playful nobles, had only shown me that in higher detail. Weapons, armor, and items were the least of things. The lack of experiences were a stronger medicine to swallow. They had never been cut, they had been tortured, they had never suffered true despair and died. The list of things they hadn't been through was longer than anything I'd ever known. The list of things they had was the hardest most of all. Even if you put them in the exact same situation, they'd have something I could never get back. Hope and happiness.

I couldn't remember the last time I had felt either of those things.

So losing my virginity to drunk bastards was like losing a body part permanently. I had killed them. It hadn't been easy, whatever we are was notoriously difficult to kill. However, there was a bar next to us with alcohol. You'd think they'd try to keep fire more controlled as it was such a major weakness.

I had burns all over my body by the end of it, the bar and three other buildings burnt down, and at least a dozen were dead.

I fled and within a year, had managed to escape to level four. It wasn't merely a problem of size, although Black Pool often felt like it was an infinite quagmire of eternal terribleness. Getting down a level was not straightforward. You couldn't just go down. Well, you could, but you'd most likely end up not making it. That drop was a long, long ways down. They simply called it the Crater Pit past level one. I had accidentally dropped a man down in my drug fueled rampage on level two, nearly falling myself, and managed to enter a spatial distortion (I think? It's all so blurry) to reach level three.

By chance, I saw his corpse fall out of the 'sky' three months later.

There was no convenient bribing of a servant and sneaking to get down here and no drugs to supposedly (and I guess they did work really) heighten my spatial perception. Well, okay, that last one's a lie, but I was on the run and the city's grey drab buildings had been replaced with tunnel wilderness for too long for me to find my way back. That only left The Park.

How I had survived that, I will never know. That is what had cemented to me, that I was lucky. There were far, far more dangerous things that go bump in The Park, than anything I ever imagined possible. I almost envied it in a way. The area was deadly. No, suffering per se. You were either dead, or alive, and you'd probably be dead. It felt like it was a much more pure form or way of life than anything I had experience so far.