Alma 94 Heaven Built Upon Hell

"P-Please have mercy, sir! I don't know what you're talking about!" said a disheveled man in a ragged voice. He looked paler than a corpse as he begged on his knees to be spared.

Aside from a certain ghost.

"We'll see about that, won't we?" said the indescribable shadow as it stepped towards the kneeling man. It'd chased the man into an empty, abandoned alley far removed from sight.

The trembling man continued to beg for mercy as tried his damnedest to persuade the shadow into letting him leave. He'd give the monster anything it desired as long as it'd spare him.

"L-Let's talk this out, sir! I-I've got money — tens of millions of credits, all yours if you let me go! I can get you anything with my family's resources! Beautiful women and men, priceless artefacts, status and power — whatever you desire, I can get it for you, sir!"

…And if bribes would not work then he'd resort to threatening it, instead.

"D-Don't! Stop! I'm a member of the Dragoncrest family! Don't you get it?! My family owns this entire region! If you do anything to me, my family will hunt you down and flay you alive! My family's conquerors will make you wish for death once they catc—"

A scream echoed out of the dark alley, but it'd never reach anyone's ears. He'd been taken; spirited away into an artificial world of darkness created by the shadow.

His own subconscious. He'd been trapped… in his own mind — inside of a dream that Lu'um had constructed for Reed to use.

A false, nightmarish world where he could interrogate their targets for information without causing a disturbance in reality. They'd torture people in a way that'd never give away their identities or leave a trail.

It was an idea that Lu'um had proposed, much to Reed's surprise.

Dreams, by definition, are vague, ambiguous things in the first place and… everybody has a nightmare every once and while, right?

Most of the time, people forget their dreams after waking up, anyway.

Still, haunting people in their sleep like a bogeyman felt a bit unpleasant to Reed. He'd do it, but didn't want to get too accustomed to the act of doing it.

That was that last thing he wanted to happen — for it to become normal to him. He'd keep himself in check, remind himself why he was doing it in the first place.

Not to make people suffer. I just want answers, nothing more.

It'd be a cold day in hell before he'd needlessly abuse his powers to make others suffer without a justifiable reason. He'd rather die than let himself become a heartless tyrant, a power-tripping bastard.

He'd seen it happen all his life — how power corrupted people.

The slums had taught him everything he needed to know about people in power. How power brought out the very worst in weak, ignorant idiots. All his life, he'd been at the mercy of unworthy clowns who'd grown accustomed to the power they possessed.

From the rich to the poor, the law-abiding to the criminal. It didn't matter. They were all the same, no matter their station in life…

Reed sighed and said, "It seems that this one didn't know anything either, huh…" The man they had broken had been a contender and high-ranking family member of the Dragoncrest family that they'd tracked down over their hunt for information on Astrid and Sebastian.

He grabbed the broken, babbling contender and said, "Tell me what you know or I'll show you what I'm really capable of…"

The man sobbed and incoherently said, "Nooo!! P-Please… I can't tell you about it! I-If I do, they'll take me down there and never let me leave! I-I… I don't want to go down there!"

"Speak! Before I carve the truth out of you myself!" said Reed. He grabbed the man's head and extended one his hands, which he'd turned into a terrifying claw of rotting gore and sharpened bone.

He gently caressed the man's face with his mangled claw and then put one of his sharpened bone fingers in front of one of the man's eyes.

"AHHH! P-PLEASE, MERCY! I DON'T WANT TO GO TO XIBALBA!! I DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN THERE EVER AGAIN! I-I CAN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING!"

The man howled in desperation, sobbing incessantly in between his deranged pleas for forgiveness. Reed had finally broken the man to his core — he had completely lost his mind.

It was a terrible thing to witness and it sickened Reed deep inside. He did not want to do this, but he'd already sworn an oath. He couldn't back down from his own word, especially when he gave it to her.

He was a walking down a fine line and knew that one day, he'd have to make a choice. Naturally, he hoped that such a day would never come, but with his atrocious luck, it was all but guaranteed.

His morals and the oath he'd made were incompatible with one another and he knew that. Even so, he'd persisted to keep them both, the innocent, well-intentioned fool that he was.

One called for righteousness, fairness, and freedom — to uphold what had never been afforded to him back in his world.

The other called for him to abandon everything he held dear if it meant winning. Making sure to prioritize the safety of the people he cared about over his morals.

He continued to ponder what mattered more to him but couldn't find an answer to the question, and it frustrated him to hell and back.

"Ka'an, there's no point in keeping the dream up anymore, he's of no use to us anymore — we have what we need. I know where they're keeping them."

Reed sighed in relief and pulled his consciousness out of the dream-construct.

Thank god… I don't know if I could've handled watching that any longer than that.

He opened his eyes and saw that Lu'um had already opened up a spatial tear. Reed massaged his forehead and looked at the sleeping man who had a distressed expression on his face and grimaced, but said nothing.

Was hurting others, especially innocent people who'd nothing wrong, in order to protect what he cared about truly righteous?

Was it truly fair for him to abuse innocent people in such an underhanded, malicious way with his overwhelming power?

What was true freedom? Was it terrorizing, imprisoning, and breaking innocent people in a nightmarish, artificial prison?

Reed grit his teeth in frustration.

Was someone like that worth trusting?

Did someone like that even deserve the right to judge others about trust?

…Was it not hypocrisy at its finest?

He turned away from the sleeping man and pushed down his feelings. He had a job to do. That was all that mattered right now. He couldn't let himself get distracted anymore, not at the final stretch.

Reed walked into the spatial tear and closed it shut as soon as he entered the void. The faster he was gone, the better he felt...

Xibalba. It'd been a top-secret research facility during the height of the initial conflict against the Infested, millennia ago before the first Otherworlder had been summoned on Mulia.

The facility had been the center of a series of important projects that'd become critical later on in the Great War. The guiding pillars, the altar system, and the heavenly barriers had been created in Xibalba at some point in time.

It was a place that had accomplished much… at a price. Xilbalba had been given special freedoms. It had not been restrained by the morals, ethics, and laws of the Ancient Mulian dynasty.

Xibalba had been black site and had operated on its own terms.

The… questionable experiments that'd been conducted deep beneath the surface of the continent had given the Ancient Mulians some of the most advanced technology ever conceived.

They had fused that which should have been forbidden — taboo on all accounts…

Experimentation on the limits souls possessed…

Experimentation on extrdimensional travel via Infested…

Experimentation on live Infested specimens for the use of…

Experimentation on paracausal manipulation of space-time via…

There were no limits in Xibalba — anything that'd push the envelop of what their research was fair game. With a nigh-infinite budget, the research facility charged headfirst into the pits of hell until...

An serious accident occurred.

After that, the research station was throughly purged, sealed, and forgotten. Everyone single person who'd been part of the clean-up mission had their memories erased.

By then, the Infested had already overrun a majority of universe, and the Ancient Mulians had been pushed back on their original homeworld…

The end had already come. In an act of desperation, the Ancient Mulians abandoned their final stronghold, the continent of Mulia, and retreated into a hidden pocket domain.

Xibalba had long since been forgotten after that until a fateful day when a couple of bumbling fools stumbled upon its entrance, looking for treasure. 

...After thousands of years, hell had been opened once again.

Chapter end