Long past was the time of legends. The times of heroes and monsters had ended in calamity and termination. The aftermath was a reshaped world, one without gods or fantastic beings. For decades the corpses were strewn across the land, their lifeblood fueled the lands for eons. The only life that existed in this destroyed world were the unheard of plants that sprouted via this fresh ichor. Some remnants of the old gods stayed. Over the years as new creatures formed, the relics only became more powerful over the ages. Yet as their strength grew, their resources grew insufficient.

Octavia always hated cleaning the barn. She loved the animals so this was her duty, but dead gods it smelled terrible. And the incessant noise drove her to madness. She always came out of the barn drained and needing time for herself. Of course time for herself with her schedule usually meant doing menial chores and escaping to her mind. There was some tranquility though she didn’t work every day, just most of them. When she found her mind wandering, she would think of a normal life. Not extravagant dreams of big fans blowing on her and her favorite food in a bowl being served. She imagined a normal life being around friends and having some wealth, not anything excessive just enough to get by and splurge some times. Both of her parents were off doing back breaking labor while her and her brother tried to maintain the farm. Her brother did shockingly well at his menial chores, the problem was that Cyrion just wasn’t old enough to help with the hardest of them. Being only 10 years old, most of his time went to his tasks or school, because he actually had a life path. What was Octavia supposed to do with her life? She’s not going to any wonderful college to start a life long and fulfilling career. Even if she could, what even was her dream job? She hadn’t even been to school since she was in fifth grade, why would people even think about an uneducated 18 year old for important jobs.

“Hey Octavia, I think you missed a couple spots in the barn,” He said.

“Cyrion! You’re supposed to be at school, or doing chores, or literally anything that will get you away from me,” Octavia said, already sick of this conversation.

“Yeah but we got a lunch break, aaaaaand I really think I deserve this break, I mean we’ve been doing so much, it’s hard on a young man like myself.”

“Cyrion, you’re supposed to do a lot of stuff in school. And calling yourself a ‘young man’ is a bold turn of phrase,” She snapped back.

“Goodness sister you seem on edge, perhaps taking this break with me could help?” He replied in a tease, not truly realizing she felt terrible.

Octavia sighed deep from her chest and asked, “Cyrion, how has your day been? If you’ve done so much then you may as well talk about it.”

Cyrion responded and rambled for a long time. Octavia on a better day would have listened to him and tried to go along, but just not today. As per usual, she found her mind wandering again.

 Obviously she, like other children, had heard the wonderful stories of boys who barely became men slaying a majestic beast and saving the town. Sometimes Octavia wished she could have that fame and heroism. What would it feel like to be an emanating beam of hope to som-

She was too stuck in her mind. She wandered off of her farm and was…somewhere. Where did Cyrion go? Octavia tried calling for him, and the sound only left her lips. There was no echo, it didn’t even sound like her voice traveled. Octavia was in very thick woods, the sun barely came through the canopy. The trees and roots ravaged each other for a taste of the lifeblood of the forest. The air was thick with the smell of… green? It was the smell of when you fall in a bush face first, but amplified ten fold. It strangled her with how overwhelming it was, but there was a strange sense of primordial essence in the forest. It felt like Octavia stepped into the wrong time. The environment wasn’t made for her, so aggressive and powerful. Even the air wasn’t made for her, so ancient and heavy. 

Octavia tried to understand her surroundings and get a good grip of just what area she was in. She looked into the labyrinth of trees, noticing that after a certain amount of distance there was some black, almost veil stopping her from seeing more. She started walking into the direction of the blackness, and the void almost walked with her. The veil always went further as she tried to get closer. This alone gave her an immense sense of dread. What put her on true edge was turning around and seeing a path that was completely clear. The veil still surrounded this area, clearing around said path. In front of her was the path she walked, and then what looked like the correct path to go down. It was almost like a trail, it had ornate gateways looming over every ten feet. She tried to do everything to ignore it, she walked in the exact opposite direction for ten minutes? Five seconds? The sun acted strange, obviously it wasn’t in the same spot it was before she was lost in her thoughts, but it was different. She couldn’t describe it but it was like it was farther away. Like the earth decided to push itself away, or something pushed it away. 

When she looked back where she came from, the cleared path grew longer, trailing her.. Something came over her, it felt like something intruded into her brain. It told her to go back, to walk the path and come upon a delicious life. Octavia tried to resist, but a sense of tranquility overcame her. She didn’t even have to try to walk. In a state of almost unconsciousness she walked the path, stumbling through the for-

She woke up. She was laying in a meadow when she came back to the world of the conscious. She was on her back facing the sky. She tried to see what time it was, but the sun hadn’t changed at all. It was stuck in the same spot it had been whenever she came to this place. She sat up and had to mentally step back because of how shocked she was. In front of her was an ostentatious shrine. It was so elaborate that Octavia really thought it would be too much. Upon further thought, she wondered what it was that necessitated such a grand gesture. From the shrine there was a towering structure that seemed to have no purpose. The formation was an earthy tone, not just brown but a complex mix of hue, and there were bizarre what she could only guess were plants growing from them. The plants took the eye away from the structure, although it stood as an unexplainable obelisk. It was curved in such a way that if it was man-made, it would have taken years to craft the curves in such a way. Looking back down, Octavia noticed that the shrine was  very obviously much younger than the monolith.

As Octavia went to step closer to the structure, she realized that there was complete silence in the meadow. This was the last item of knowledge necessary for her to try and run from this wretched patch of land. As she took her first steps into her sprint, a deep pitch screamed throughout the field. Its overwhelming and deafening power made her fall to the ground in agony, but the moment her legs stopped fleeing, the tone stopped. She looked back to the column. Promptly, the wind came to a gentle caress across her face. It was almost beckoning her to investigate closer. Her brain told her to run for the hills, damn that wretched noise she wanted to get out of her. But her body was out of sync with her mind. Her legs happily obliged with the environment's call. She walked up to the altar, every step increasing her dread. It was only a couple of steps, but she felt an increasing sense of making a wrong decision. Everything about this place was wrong, she hadn’t even felt the sense that life beyond the plants existed here. There were no distant deers to be found, birds in the distance getting away from this corrupted fragment, truly it seemed as though not even a worm stepped near these ‘sacred’ grounds.

Finally, she placed only one foot on the step of this epitome of unknown faith. She heard something. It had taken her a moment to realize but it was finally a noise. It was the soft breath of something, it sounded close. She frantically looked around, and found not even a single molecule of dirt was disrupted. Seeing no danger, but sensing some all too well, she decided to continue to walk up the ziggurat. As she got closer to the structure coming from the ground, she got a better look of the surroundings of this thing. Surrounding the structure was a giant hole, it had to be a few hundred feet deep because Octavia truly couldn’t even begin to see near the bottom of the hole. Looking at the upheaval, she realized that other than the strange plants it had something else on it. Ingrained into this thing were large tubes. As she walked closer to it, they started to undulate. 

As it moved, an almost chunk began to appear. It was magenta and seemed at one point like it was in a liquid form. It made its slow ascent and the plant matter growing besides it livened up, as the plant in a basement lights up at the nearest sight of sun. as it made its way, Octavia felt a dread build in her. This isn’t normal, magenta isn’t just something you see. How was this going to end?

She buckled to the ground, her head felt like it was going to explode. Something was making noise in it. An ear splitting, world shattering amount of noise, It was like thousands of horse drawn buggies stomping her head at once. It had a rhythm to it, it took her a moment to realize this as her head felt like it was caving in on herself. It had rhythm and a beat to it, like a poet inscribing a melancholic tale about a lover. Was something speaking to her? Was this an attempt at language? Or was this above her in a way she could never understand? Finally this vocalization stopped, and she looked back at the monument. Only, she began to wonder, was this really a shrine, or an offering? She noticed the magenta thing in the tube had begun to once again become liquid, getting comfortable on the road it was made to follow. Octavia felt something in her say to get closer, to see what was actually going on there. As she stepped closer, she saw a small leak in this conduit. There was a guiding essence in her, telling her to touch the magenta blood and to make it become part of her. It will make her whole, totally and truly complete. How could anything bad happen with the blood of a god within her?

This voice hand guided her, with the gentleness of a lover. She put her hand to this spout of eternal essence. The magenta in her hand looked wonderful. She drank from it as the dehydrated sailor drinks from saltwater. In an instant she was on the floor.

She saw everything. Anyone that had existed, people who stayed only a thought, ideas that were barely formed scraps that were made on a whim. She saw the beginning and heat death of the universe. She saw the slow chipping away of every single rock that had been formed.

She heard the words this time. This primordial being had one thing to say.

“Unworthy.”

She felt everything as her body burst open. It was over in an instant, but excruciating the entire time.

The land and the beast that forever laid under it absorbed her spirit and gore from the grass. There was another surge of magenta plant matter as its power grew, biding its time.

Cyrion couldn’t say what happened when his parents asked where Octavia was. When he saw her this morning after they started walking, her eyes just glazed over and she kept walking. He tried to stop her, desperately pulling her back to their farm and life. Eventually he lost his grip then fell face first onto the ground. When he came to look back up, she was just gone. Octavia’s footsteps didn’t go further than when he last saw her.