Alma 96 The Ninth Layer of Hell

It was endless. If anything, the place seemed more like a godforsaken labyrinth than a research station. They trekked for more than three hours on foot and still had not even scratched the surface of the damned place.

How far does this fucking place go down?! How much space did these assholes need?! I can't even begin to fathom the amount of the work that must have been done to dig this far down…

Over the course of their descent into hell, the lonesome pair had traversed through all manner of places. Xibalba was a world of its own, rather than a research facility as Lu'um had described it.

They'd traversed past abandoned, silent underground cities that'd been built in vast pockets of unearthed cave and soil. Vast stretches of unused, empty space and an endless amount of sealed doors, gates, and barriers.

"You said this was a research station, right?"

"Yes, that's right," said Lu'um.

"…Why are there entire cities down here, then? I thought this was supposed to be a research station, not an underground kingdom," said Reed in an annoyed tone.

"Xibalba was designed as a self-sufficient research and development station, Ka'an. Secrecy was of the utmost concern, so it was built with to operate without the need of any external assistance."

Reed shook his head and said, "That still doesn't explain why this place is so goddamned massive. What the hell were they doing down here that they needed so much space? It doesn't make sense."

"I told you, Ka'an. Research and development. This where most of our greatest achievements were created. The Divine Furnace was constructed here along with our fleets and their flagships. Grandfather Ulbo's ship, the Joyous Divinity, was also built here too, at one point in time. We also constructed the entire Heavenly Barrier system piece-by-piece down here…"

Xibalba, at its peak, had once held more than half a million workers, scientists, and engineers all working down here. The universe's greatest minds had been united under a single banner in the name of survival.

To that end, they'd peer into the Devil's mind and steal his damned secrets. They'd fight the Infestation on its own terms if need be.

Nothing had been off the table to them when the fate of their reality was at stake…

And so, they descended into bowels of Xibalba in silence. There was nothing more to be said about the place, other than it was a labor and a half for them. The biggest issue was that the place did not have any power at all.

When the research station was decommissioned, it'd been shut down permanently. The extermination squads destroyed the station's the reactor cores after they'd accomplished their objectives, effectively shutting off power to everything inside the station.

None of the elevators, transit systems, or altars worked at all, which meant that they would have to travel by foot. What could have been a short rescue had turned into a largely uneventful miniature odyssey of sorts.

There's... nothing down here either, huh. I thought this would be a suspenseful rescue mission, but this turned out to be a damned pilgrimage instead.

He didn't know what layer they'd made down into, but he knew that they'd made it quite far. Not too long ago, his tome had informed him that it'd lost connection with the surface.

They had still not made contact with anyone, despite the progress they'd made. Reed didn't know whether to be happy about that or not. Sure, he'd prefer to not deal with any enemies, but not at the cost of his legs wearing out to the bone.

They'd barely used any Anima since they'd entered, for good reason. It'd make the trip down much, much faster, for sure, but it'd give them away to anyone Animsensitive in the area. That was something they couldn't afford to do, not with hostages on the line.

If they got caught, it'd ruin the rescue attempt and possibly endanger Astrid and Sebastian.

Reed had made it explicitly to Lu'um before they'd started that Astrid and Sebastian's safety took priority over everything else. That what they'd come for — to rescue, not to slaughter.

Find them and get them out. That was the mission.

Once Reed got them, he'd open a spatial tear and take them away somewhere safe. That was where his part of the mission would end.

Lu'um, on the other hand, would stay behind and make a thorough sweep of Xibalba to take care of the intruders inside. She'd handle the messier part of the mission and then reseal the research station for good.

That was the plan they'd made, but now... Reed had doubts.

"We still haven't found anyone yet. You'd think they would have put a roaming guard or two in one of the upper layers, but we haven't seen a single soul in here since we've entered," said Reed.

Something's wrong. We've almost reached the bottom and we still haven't bumped into anyone…

"There's a good chance that they might've anticipated our arrival. But if that was the case, we should have been ambushed long ago in one of the upper layers..." said Lu'um.

"If this is isn't a trap, then what is this?"

Reed and Lu'um pushed their concerns down and trudged on, nevertheless. They both understood that they'd have to verify the truth for themselves, whether or not they'd been played. Whatever the answer was, it laid down at the bottom of hell…

Eventually, they pierced the deepest levels of Xibalba — the restricted section. It was where the other halves of the damned were kept, those who had been sacrificed to the Infested.

The upper halves were kept above in heaven as supposed "war criminals" who were meant to have become slave workers for the construction of the Mulian fleets... if they weren't turned into bridges for the research division.

It was safe to say that the slaves preferred to serve the Mulian engineers rather than the scientists in Xibalba. It'd become well-known among the slaves that being selected by the scientists was akin to being put on death row compared to those who'd been chosen to build their warships.

It was better to spend one's life working as a slave than be chosen by the devils in the research division. The stories, the rumors that'd spread of those chosen to volunteer for "research work" terrified everyone.

There were stories… about what went on in the deepest levels of Xibalba. Of the Devil and his acolytes who ruled the heart of the research station. Only madmen who listened to the forbidden words lived in the restricted section.

As soon as they entered the restricted section, something changed.

There was something about the air in the bottommost layers that smelled of despair. Even the Anima in the restricted section seemed chaotic and disorderly.

Reed shivered reflexively and said, "What in the hell..?"

Lu'um grabbed one of Reed's arms, pulled him close to her, and said "Don't pay too much attention to it, Ka'an, or it'll get to you. This place is cursed — the evil done here has permanently affected the space here in a way that cannot be undone through conventional means."

"You don't say..." said Reed. He conjured an extra mote of light and sent it forth as a scout for them and then felt his blood freeze.

It was red. The entire place had been dyed crimson.

The walls, the floors, the ceiling… all of it.

"H-Hey, is that... what I think that is?"

Lu'um dispelled Reed's mote of light and said, "Close your eyes and let me handle this part myself, okay? Just hold on to my hand and follow me…"

Reed kept quiet and said nothing. He had no intention of denying the offer she'd proposed. There were some things better left unseen.

"…This was where the research division performed their experiments and made contact with the being that they'd painstakingly captured — an Infested Pupa," said Lu'um in a low voice.

"Pupa?"

"An Infested in the pupal stage of development, in between the larval stage and the adult stage. It was a specimen that'd cost the Mulian Dynasty a lot of lives to acquire… but it was worth the cost."

"The majority Infested you've slain so far have been larvae. Mindless, feral weaklings who only pose a threat in great numbers, but pupae are completely different, Ka'an. You should know — you've already slain one some time ago in the past."

"You don't mean?!"

"The same one, Ka'an. The Lesser Nightmare you killed during your final exam. That was an Infested pupa — a young one at that, too. They're mature enough to regain their intelligence and are capable of causing immense destruction on by themselves. They abominations feed on stars until they go dark and can single-handedly poison entire planets by themselves."

"Pupae are directly connected to their masters, the Outsiders, who possessed the knowledge we wanted. Thus, an idea was proposed. If we captured an Infested at the pupal stage, could we not coax it into giving us the information we wanted? Larvae were useless and adults were too powerful to capture and contain, so it would have to be a pupa…"

"So that is what we did — we caught ourselves a pupa. We played with fire."

Chapter end