ALL NOVEL Chapter 94: Cry
The statue stood there motionless, as statues usually did. But my eyes were glued to it. There was something about it that I couldn't put my finger on. Was it the mere presence of something like a statue on an otherwise flat surface? Or the eerie black material it was carved out of? Maybe it was the size of it?
It wasn't massive, but it wasn't small either.
Estimating its size from this distance was not easy, at least not for me. However, when I compared it to the seekers moving around the statue, it must have been twice the size of a regular human. And that was without any pedestal, which it didn't have.
It didn't need one, though.
'So majestic...'
It was a statue of a woman brought to her knees in battle. She was wearing armor, damaged from a fight, pierced by several arrows - one broken protruded from her chest, the other three from her back. The blood that gushed from the wounds ran down her armor to the ground, glowing with the same white light as the runes on the black floor into which it seeped into, litting up the hexagonal rune lines around her.
She wasn't dead, though.
With her helmet lying at her knees, still holding a sword in her hand, she was crying hard, her tears glowing the same white color as her blood streamed down her cheeks. The statue of the woman seemed more alive than any statue I had ever seen, almost as if she was real, just frozen in time, a black giant screaming at heaven in grief, but unheard - as I had done so many times before.
'Huh? What the fu..?'
Not knowing for how long, I found myself crying no less hard than the woman down there.
Embarrassed, I took a deep breath to soothe my battered heart and wiped away my tears before anyone could see me crying, or at least anyone who hadn't seen me already.
What was it, though?
'Sympathy? Or simply something I just needed to get off my chest?'
No doubt it made me feel better, but I haven't cried like that since Esulmor. Was the statue to blame, then?
Wanting to ask Ria who the woman was, I refocused on my domain and found her right behind me, trying to grab my tail.
"Come on, Sage?" the little kitare squealed pleadingly as my tail escaped her grasp. "Just a little hug."
She went for another dive, trying to catch her, but instead of my tail, she hugged my waist as I turned.
"Aww..." Ria whimpered in disappointment, looking up at me. "You woke up already? I haven't had time to hug Sage yet."
"Wait, you knew that I would...?" I asked, but didn't finish the sentence. She knew what? That the sight of the statue would make me cry, to feel deep sorrow and unfairness. That sounded ridiculous.
Yet when I looked down, Ria avoided my eyes, the guilt written all over her face, "M-maybe..."
Instead of anger at her, though, fear bit into my guts.
'Was it some kind of mental attack? Mind mages?!'
No, it couldn't have been them. The little rascal brought me here, knowing it would happen. Plus, except for the sudden sorrow, I haven't noticed anyone else messing with my mind.
Still...
"Ria, I'm not angry, but please… please, tell me what happened. How did you know I was going to cry?"
"Everyone who looks at her will," the little kitsune said, shrugging as if it were an everyday thing. And it likely was. Despite what had happened, when I looked around, hardly anyone was paying me any attention.
'What a clever little rascal,' I thought to myself, realizing her mischief.
She knew what the sight of the statue would do to people, what it would do to me, and despite everything she told me about the city, she deliberately left that part out. Instead, she wanted to use the moment of my cry to hug my tail.
I couldn't blame her, though. If I were her, I'd probably do the same.
But unfortunately for her, Sage seemed to have a mind of her own. While I was busy getting the sorrow off my chest, my tail evaded all of her attempts at hugging. As disturbing as it seemed at first, it was likely just my subconscious reacting based on my perception, whether it was through the domain or hearing. The same subconscious that held back my farts without me having to explicitly focus on it. And good thing my subconscious did so. Otherwise, what Ria did would be damn dangerous.
"Okay," I said slowly, trying to digest what I had just gone through and what my little guide tried to do without my permission. "Ria, I promised to let you hug Sage, and I will. But first, tell me who that woman is. Why does the sight of her make people cry?"
"I don't know why. That's what labyrinths do."
"All of them?"
"Um-hmm."
"They all make you cry?"
This time, the little kitare shook her head, giggling at my cluelessness. "Some will make you happy, others will make you feel pain, and one is said to make you sing and speak in rhymes. I wish I could see that one."
A sudden image of a similar square and a monolithic black slab with a statue and people singing around it popped into my mind. On the one thought, terrifying; on the other, kind of funny.
"So, that's what that woman's statue is causing all over Eleaden?"
Ria gave me a questioning look. "No, there is only one Traiana, here in Castiana."
"Oh, I see..."
Wait! Traiana, as in "Traiana's tits" swear? That Traiana?! I almost asked Ria about it, stopping myself at the last moment from mentioning it in front of her. Stupid, for sure. Everyone seemed to use a variant of the swear. She must have heard it already, yet…
Traiana's tits - what did they look like? Annoyingly, we were too far away for me to get a better look.
"If you want, we can go see her," Ria suggested after seeing ogling that woman's chest.
"W-we can?"
Between the statue and us lay one massive problem: the black monolith interweaved with runes taking people away to the depths beneath a city apparently full of beasts.
"Is there a safe way to her? Won't that black floor move us into the Labyrinth?" I had my doubts about my survival inside, about how much the beast could help me in there, or whether I would eventually become one of them, hunted by the seekers, but I was terrified to find what would happen if I showed up there with my little guide. Getting her in danger because of me once was enough; pushing my luck by letting her hug Sage was more than foolish, so risking a walk to the statue just to get a better look at her tits felt like asking for the worst to happen. After all, with my luck, I wouldn't be surprised if I stumbled on that one-in-a-million chance.
Despite my fears, though, Ria shook her head. "You have to be a registered seeker for the Fallen's Cry to let you in. Don't worry, Korra. Follow me," she beamed and headed down the stairs to the black monolith, a teleportation platform of some sort, and to the statue of Traiana, leaving me with no choice but to follow her.