Chapter Text
The air in the Deeper Dark is stale. The scent of moss and mold is almost overpowering. Despite it being so cold, the caverns are humid. The strange climate allows the even stranger plants to thrive here. Even the stone in the walls pulses with life from the sculk that permeates it. The cave system is a self-sufficient ecosystem and a mystery to even its creator. It’s a complex organism with a beating Heart all its own.
His Heart still beats. For two thousand years, it beated outside of his body, and it still beats now that it has been returned to his body. It matters not that the body died, for that body was never his alone—or, rather, that Heart was never his alone.
One must be careful when messing with things beyond one’s understanding, lest one creates something beyond one’s control.
The last thing he remembers is pain.
Coincidentally, the first thing he feels is also pain. However, this time its not the pain of a blade slicing through his shoulder but a searing headache as the very world itself screams at him.
He tries to breathe, but as he opens his mouth, vines enter instead of air. He recoils, coughing out the plant matter and closing his mouth. He reaches up, his arm shifting through roots and soil. He grabs hold of a vine and pulls himself up, forcing through dirt and tendrils. He reaches out again and this time finds air, clawing his way to the surface. His head breaks through the sculk, and for the first time in seven years, Xaroth breathes.
His muscles ache as he pulls himself out of he ground, heaving the resurrected body out of the earth. He stands at the foot of the newly formed pit and stretches his back before dusting himself off. “Been a while since I’ve had to do that.” He turns around to see his body’s grave.
Xaroth Sunfield
Died in the name of peace
His death marks the end of the Goblin War
“Touching,” he remarks. He rolls his shoulders, trying to work out any stiffness lingering from rigor mortis as the sculk works its wonder once again. Dying has become a routine he has practiced more times than he could care to count.
As he flexes his left shoulder, he feels something jab him in the ear. He turns to see a mass of calcified material jutting out of his shoulder. “New body, new complications. What else to we have?”
He looks to his right shoulder to see that the fabric of his shirt has been completely torn away to reveal a mass of sculk where skin should be. “That’s probably how he died,” he concludes as visions of yelling and a fire ruby blade flash into his mind.
As he looks forward again, he finds that his head is unevenly weighted. He reaches his hands up to his skull and finds two structures protruding from his cranium. They’re both covered in sculk, and one appears to be taller than the other, as if part of the left one had been broken off. The right one continues to branch off like—
“Antlers . . . ”
Memories flood into his brain. He looks down at his tattered shirt. “My Heart.” He fumbles with the buttons down the front, opening his shirt to reveal more sculk covering his whole torso. Calcified formations akin to ribs embrace his chest, creating a shell around where his Heart would be—where It should be.
He rests a hand on his chest, and underneath the bone and sculk, he can feel It beating. He breathes a sigh of relief. It hasn’t been stolen. “And, by the looks of it, it’s gonna be a lot harder for anyone to steal It even again.”
He collapses to the ground and reads the grave stone again. “‘Xaroth Sunfield.’” He curses. “That’s my name. I died. I’m supposed to be dead—I’m supposed to be DONE WITH THIS.” He buries his face in his gloved hands.
Xaroth pulls himself to his feet and rebuttons his shirt. He steps forward and stares into his grave. Not much was buried with him; even his armor is gone. He reaches down and pulls his cloak from the pit of sculk. He drapes it over his shoulders and walks into the other room. Xaroth sits down at the bench next to his pond and begins sifting through his memories.
What went wrong?
The world seems to have an answer as more screams of agony enter his head, interrupting his meditation.
“Agh, what do you want from me?!” Xaroth clutches his head as the sculk on his skin writhes in pain.
Emotions that aren’t his own dart through his mind: pain, outrage, fear. Then a concept enters his head, something about strength, a guardian, a protector.
Xaroth groans. “A warden.”
A signal of affirmation floats into his mind.
You have got to be kidding me. He rests his head on his hand, giving his neck a break from the uneven weight of his antlers. “So, you want me to find out whats hurting you, and then I can die in peace?”
Either the sculk doesn’t understand Xaroth’s question or it simple doesn’t care because the only response he recieves in return is the screams, a horrid message of agony drilling into his skull like a migraine.
He sighs, eyes drifting over the still waters. I still have two thousand years of memories to sort through. Xaroth’s head continues to ache. This could take a while.