Soulsong Quest


Authors
hitodama
Published
2 years, 6 months ago
Stats
2269

Elsie's adventures during the Conservatory event.

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After her disastrous first transformation Elsie escaped back to the Conservatory, fearing to face the creature she had created. She was planning on hiding to the Temple of Silence, but to her surprise she sensed a mysterious force that was clearly pulling her to another direction. The Esk was already feeling shaken and wary so she wasn't exactly thrilled about it, but the sensation was so strong that after some hesitation she started to shyly tiptoe towards the Temple of Sound.

The grand temple was just as imposing as the first time Elsie had seen it, but there was also one major difference: in the cool marble wall there was a small but very ornate door that looked like it was made specifically for someone of Elsie's size. And the door was open.

"I really don't know..." the Esk mumbled, still unsure if she was truly supposed to even approach the building. The place had felt so unwelcoming just some days ago that it was incredibly hard to believe it would now ask her to downright step inside!

After circling the temple like a suspicious cat for quite some time Elsie was finally close enough that she could peek inside from the doorframe. There seemed to be nothing all that remarkable: more marble, some fountains and another door on the other side of the hall, though this one seemed to be closed. No other Esk could be seen inside, so Elsie concluded it was likely safe to take a few steps in, as she could always dash back out if she heard someone coming. That turned out to be a misconception - as soon as she was inside, the door behind her banged shut.

"NO! No no no, this can't be true!" Elsie panicked and tried to push the door back open with all of her might, but it didn't budge an inch. Although a low creaking noise revealed that the other door behind her had now opened instead...


---


Elsie spent quite a long while just cowering behind the closed door and eyeing the newly opened one very suspiciously. Now more than ever this all felt like a trap and she would've rather done anything else than stepped deeper into its maw. But despite her best efforts she couldn't come up with a plan that would've set her free, nor was there anyone else coming to save her from her plight. Oh how much she wished she could've had Weary by her side right now!

In the end Elsie did start reluctantly inching towards the only exit there currently was. The door opened into another bright hall that seemed to have a huge spiral staircase in the middle of it. The stairs lead somewhere so far below that the Esk couldn't even see to the bottom, at least partly because an impossibly tall water spout was covering the center of the staircase. Legs shaking from fear Elsie had no other choice than to start traveling down.

For some time everything seemed completely normal. Then the whispering started. At first Elsie wasn't even sure if she was imagining it, as it was almost covered by the rush of the water. But slowly the voices grew louder and so did the poor Esk's anxiety when she started to recognize who they belonged to. The human girls who used to laugh at her. The boy who once pushed her into a puddle. And then... Her father. Yelling horrible things at her and suddenly also staring straight at her from the face of the wall. Elsie whined and sobbed and started to run in terror, but the voices and images just kept coming. The evil spirits of the hot springs, the mad catfish of the frozen lake, disappointed, imposing Raaga, screeching Seventh...

And then Elsie slipped and plummeted down, down, down into the endless pit.


---


After a long fall to the unknown Elsie finally hit the bottom - or more precisely sank into it, as it was in fact water. It was dark and murky down there but not uncomfortably cold, so still in shock from her terrifying experiences in the staircase Elsie just floated there, motionless, slowly sinking deeper and deeper. To a Freshwater Esk the experience was soothing, like an embrace from something familiar and beloved. After some time movement returned to the Esk's body, starting from her eyes that began to focus into their surroundings.

At first Elsie thought that she had been thrown out of the temple, but even in the enormous water-filled space she could in fact still find the faint outlines of marble walls and floors around her. Other than that she didn't see much anything at first; just bubbles here and there. They were oddly large bubbles to be sure and their surface seemed to be decorated by some sort of scribbles, but bubbles were still merely bubbles. Only after gathering herself enough to swim around a bit did the puzzle pieces fall into their places. In the far side of the room there was also an altar... Very familiar in design. It looked exactly the same as the ones Elsie had seen in the mountains and it made her understand what the scribbles in the bubbles were: images of her past mistakes. A tight feeling of regret flooded into the Esk's stomach.

"Can't I really do anything right?" she sighed in despair, looking at the bubbles that displayed the altar centerpieces that she had abandoned and broken in her previous quest.

Even if this experience was just as far from pleasurable as the last one, at least it was clear to Elsie what the temple wanted her to do now. The center slab of this altar, too, was broken and scattered all over the room, so quietly and wearily she started to gather the pieces back together. When she had all of them she poured her energy into them, returned them into one and inserted the disk into the hole in the altar. This made the altar light up and disappear, leaving behind only an entrance into a dark, tight hallway.


---


The newly appeared hallway turned out to be more like a scarily dark tunnel than anything else, but fortunately for Elsie it didn't take long before light started to shimmer in the distance. The Esk swam towards it and finally found the water's surface as well as a much more normal temple room than the previous one. Well, the now shallow water was still doing some weird stuff like flowing and dripping up towards the ceiling, but at least the whole place was no longer submerged nor void of light.

Elsie was still not exactly eager to explore anything in this intimidating place, but as she was certain that just waiting around wouldn't get her out of it, she started to scan the area with her eyes. She couldn't find an exit or much of anything really, but after a while some sort of movement within an upside down waterfall caught her attention. She stepped closer only to find... Herself from the waterfall. The reflection wasn't an exact match, but instinctively Elsie knew it to be her; after all it looked like how she sometimes felt, with shabby fur, defeated pose and expression of someone who had completely given up.

But all that Elsie could disregard with a worried, sad sigh. What really piqued her interest was the fact that the reflection had something tied to its legs. It was hard to tell at first with the water constantly moving and all, but to the Esk they looked like chains. Her gaze followed them and their other ends seemed to be attached to something. No no, someone. There was another figure that Elsie hadn't noticed at first and seeing who it was really made her heart sink. It was, once again, herself. Her old self, the one who she had been before turning into an Esk. The one who she couldn't have forgotten even when she had so desperately wanted to.

Elsie couldn't look at the reflection any longer as she really, really didn't want to think what such an image could've meant. She broke it by splashing her paws into the unnatural waterfall and in the process she got her whole front body into it, too, only to find out that when she looked at the wall behind the water now, it had an open door in it. It hadn't certainly been there before, but Elsie didn't care and just dashed towards it.


---


Even before she reached the next room, Elsie noticed how the air was getting colder on every step she took. Eventually it was easy to see why: the coldness was emanating from the huge ice sculptures the newest hall was filled with.

"It's Weary!" Elsie shrieked in amazement as soon as she realized what the main statue in the middle of the room represented, "with the whiskers and crystals and everything!" Aside from her creator their shared boundary was also depicted in ice, the room being filled with frozen lookalikes of mangrove trees and their roots.

As this was the first nice scene she had encountered in the whole temple so far, Elsie tiptoed tiredly to the side of the ice-Weary and decided to take a little break. The floor was admittedly really cold, but knowing it couldn't really hurt her immortal body she just tried to ignore it the best she could.

"Why can't you be here for real", she sighed to the regal sculpture, gazing onto its expressionless face.

"I'm not wise like you, Weary, I don't have any idea why the temple is doing all... This. Unlike in our previous quests, it doesn't seem like I'd need to do something for the temple, but like it's trying to do things for me instead. And... They feel like mean things, evil things. But why would something like a sacred temple try to bully anyone? I don't get it, I really don't..."

After Elsie's monologue something started to happen. It was slow at first, but after it started to pick up speed Elsie realized that the ice was actually melting. It saddened her and she stood up, not wanting to lay in a puddle of melted Weary. But to her surprise the melting water didn't start to form puddles at all - instead it refroze in new places and transformed the homely scene of mangrove swamp into something really sad.

"Why..? Do you just have to ruin this, too?" Elsie whimpered when the floor became littered with icy garbage and the majestic sculpture of Weary turned into a miserable looking creature that dangled its head and was barely able to stay on its feet. When a piece of a nearby mangrove tree cracked and almost fell onto her, Elsie dashed shakily through the next door leading her onwards.


---


After racing through the door into a long corridor Elsie decided to sit down for a moment in order to steady herself. She felt like she was getting way too tired to go on for much longer; for how long was the temple going to keep her here anyway? She was just about to start mulling over the miserable option of never getting out when she noticed that the corridor was suddenly getting darker. A looming shadow grew larger and larger, so in order to not get completely swallowed by it the Esk was once again forced to proceed.

It didn't take long for Elsie to spot something white in the direction she was heading towards.

"No... Oh no no no..." she sniveled as soon as she recognized the form of the pale ghost. It was once again Weary, but this one was in the same state as the real one was currently in, too: hibernating under the mangrove roots.

"I-I've tried everything, but I haven't found a way to cure him! Believe me, I would do anything if I just knew how!" Elsie ended up almost shouting at the temple. It didn't answer, but the shadows were almost reaching her heels and even if she did her best to avoid looking at the sight in front of her, she did notice that it was sort of evaporating ever so slowly into the air. In her heart she knew that Weary's spirit was doing the same.

"I don't want him to become an evil Trespasser! I can't lose him! I can't! I..." She paused, shivering with fear, nearly covered by the shadows now.

"It... It's not about me, isn't it? It's about him." The creeping shadows stopped.

"I have to do it... Right? Otherwise he will disappear completely, be gone from this world." The shadows fell back and the evaporation of the apparition slowed down. Everything from the temple walls to the dusty air was waiting.

Eventually Elsie turned to face the projection of Weary, looking at it with a heart full of sadness but also understanding.

"I will... Do it. I will transform you", she quietly promised.

As soon as Elsie had said the words the shadows disappeared with a gust of refreshing wind. The mangrove roots around Weary also sank back into the floor and finally the apparition lifted its head up and looked silently straight at Elsie. Elsie met its gaze and then walked through the ghost. She didn't need to take more than a few steps until she reached the next door... The final door. It let her out of the temple, with the weight of responsibility on her shoulders but also with the determination that helped her to carry it onwards.