Further down the path, after roughly an hour of travel, I came into a clearing. Unlike the entryway, this area was not a bendy, enclosed space, but a wide open space with a ceiling that rose twenty feet into the air. Pale blue, bioluminescent roses bloomed throughout, growing some luminous blue or dark-red fruits off their stalks, depending on their rank.

Slimes, wolves, bears, spiders, various centipede-like creatures, etc, — both monsters and beasts — were scattered throughout the open cavern in packs or on their lonesome. Some of the insects and a red slime snacked on the blue-roses’ fruits. Everything else moved around them, purposefully avoiding the radius of their light. Many were drinking from a pond of water in the center of the area.

One of the wolves, as they were drinking from the water, suddenly found itself wrapped by a tentacle from beneath the surface, and was dragged under in the blink of an eye with a yelp. Rather than back up, its pack-mates grew less wary of the water. The polypus at the bottom sated with their fallen.

How it got in there, I have no idea, but how do Polypus get anywhere? They’re in most bodies of water for some reason or another. Perhaps this “ancestor” purposefully put its brood everywhere it could before leaving for wherever it went.

Perhaps I should make like the polypus and snack on a few from the safety of its depths? Or take out these blue-roses and the blood-fruit, as I like to call them. It’s not a terrible idea, but… How much time do I have to waste? If Geistig’s right, then Tishina shouldn’t be in any danger, but that doesn’t mean that I can just waste time. Wherever she is right now, there’s no guarantee she’ll stay very long, and her scent could disappear before I reach her if she goes deep enough. It’s best not to waste time.

I shifted back into the Ostean Giant Flytrap’s monster form, tracked Tishina’s path, then reverted back to Oil toad form. I continued on, sticking along the walls as I traveled, until I reached a tunnel in the wall that Tishina had gone through.

A faint voice echoed out, singing words in a vaguely familiar language I did not know. The ancient tongue of Vorfahr’s race.

I peered around the corner, sticking my head out, and saw a cavern filled with small, hairy, bearded men with leathery wings hanging from the ceiling, and a giant wolf standing on two legs in the center of the mini-cavern. The wolf met my eyes, and the low-rumbling beginnings of a howl emanated from its throat.

Before it could alert its packmates, wherever they were, I lashed my tongue out at it. My tongue passed through the illusion, striking solid ground, and the howling continued. A symphony of howls echoed back behind me.

Shit, it just had to be a Deceitful Wolf, didn’t it. I turned around, but the wolves had already circled and filled the entryway behind me, cutting off my escape.

Between the army of wolves and, given my luck, more deceitful wolves, I’d rather take my chances with the bat-things. I’m sure I’ll die regardless, but if I’m lucky, maybe they’ll fight each other over my corpse.

I hopped forward, over and around the bipedal wolf monster. Neither the bats, nor the wolves moved at this point, as if they were waiting for something. The singing bat, however, sang louder, softer, more majestically, with a heavy, raspy timbre.

Another joined in, harmonizing with the first. Then another, and another, until they formed a choir.

I know not their song, but it filled me with a sense of beauty and awe, fear and sadness, emptiness and remorse nonetheless.

I stopped in my tracks, waiting and listening. There was no hostility in them. They did not use their song to lure me into a false sense of security. They did not wound me. They just… sang. The cave faded around me, irrelevant to the song. One by one, the bats fell from the ceiling, encircling and landing on me. My knees weakened, and my eyelids grew heavy, as the lullaby lulled me to sleep.

multo ante tempus tuam

Putavimus nos esse deos.

O stulti fuimus!

et nunc Deus dereliquit nos.

relinquentes invicem

oblitus es qui fuimus

testimonium maiorum

ubi nulla fabula narranda valet.

quantum vis?

est tanti quid constat?

si vestigia nostra sequimini

et succedant ubi nos defecerint

nos servabis?

aut nos in tenebris relinquere

sicut nos fecimus vobis?

The song continued as I slept, accompanied by a vision of the stars. They rotated around me, blurring with trails of blue and red and white as they moved. A metal vessel, eclipsing the very sun behind me stopped in front of it.

Out from this vessel poured small, grey, bearded men by the millions. Dwarves? No, dwarves don’t look like this. The ancients?

Where am I? Why am I here? I looked down, and saw my body. Not Rhannu’s, as I had become accustomed to, but my own. My original, half-Dryad body. I pinched my cheek, but it had no feeling.

A dream, and nothing more. Those bat-things must have put me here. I constructed a mind-bridge, but my surroundings did not change. I poured in more and more mana, condensing it, but I was already in the dream, and my actions would not wake me. So long as I’m here, I might as well see what this dream is.

I flew over to one of the ancients, using my space alignment to move my incorporeal body through the emptiness of space. I stopped in front of one of these beings, and tried to see what it was holding. It looked like a light-enchantment on a flat rock, but it was too small and detailed for it. Images flashed on it faster than I could comprehend.

The vessel above me extended out two giant tubes on either side of the sun. The ancient in front of me dropped its device, letting it float off into space.

Every one of the ancients dropped what they held, and opened their arms to embrace the sun, its gravity pulling them in.

The metal vessel vibrated intensely, and a substance that could only be identifiable as liquid neutral mana poured out through its tubes and into the sun.

The sun condensed, changing to a mildly blue hue as more and more of the neutral mana poured into it.

The ancients continued on, burning up as they sped into the star. When the last ancient had thrown themselves into it, the vessel followed suit, aiming its point at the sun, and moving forward.

When the sun grew to consume and eclipse the vessel, for a time, nothing happened. But gradually, over hours, it condensed back down, fading from its once brilliant radiance to a dark void of nothingness. When it finished collapsing into the black star, it burst out at both ends, spewing out an avalanche of neutral mana on a universal scale.

The universe's spin slowed, then stopped. One-by-one, the stars burst, exploding in supernovae or fading from existence. When the cataclysm finally finished, nothing was what it used to be.

And the chorus softened, ending with one final message.

dolemus pro peccatis nostris.

Nos paenitet hubris nostris.

omnes enim pro peccatis nostris puniti sunt

et pessimum est futurum.