rose nursery rhyme

The downward staircase was very long, but the space gradually became wider. The light of the torch was shaken by the wind as the two passed by, and the sound of footsteps echoed in the aisle.

Sidi: "How much longer?"

This road is really too long, and the steps go all the way down, already extending to an extremely deep underground.

Where does it lead?

Brice reassured the child: "Come on."

Sidi: "They live here?"

The walkways are in disrepair, the floors are dusty, old and dated and obviously haven't been passed by for a long time.

If the group of 'vagrants' lived down here, their living conditions should look terrible.

Sheedy didn't mind getting dirty at all, he just didn't think the place was very fun.

"This is a passage." Brice explained to him patiently, "It is a passage connecting the ground and the underground. There are many channels to communicate with the world in Exiled Land, and this step is just one of them."

Because it is relatively remote, it happens that no one has used it for a long time.

Sidi jumped down the stairs in twos and threes. He found a small stone from nowhere and pushed the stone down with his toes.

Bryce knew what interested him most: "Through the Exiled Lands, we can reach the Abyss."

Xidi stopped bouncing around and tilted her head to look at Bryce: "Under the abyss?"

Bryce: "Beside the abyss."

Although the land of exile is deep underground, it is not to the extent that it can directly connect to the bottom of the abyss.If you have to say it, it is like a hollow in the center of the continental edge section, half facing the abyss. Although it is rejected by the mainland, it still belongs to the mainland in the final analysis.

Inside lives another civilization that has been built over the years.

When Brice left the abyss, he happened to pass by here.

Sidi: "What if we don't come down?"

What if they didn't know the Exiled Lands existed and just walked across the ground?

Bryce: "If you only walk on the ground, you will eventually come to the edge of the abyss."

But there is nothing on the ground, even more barren than the forbidden land they passed through before, only faults, rolling stones and sand, and the howling wind all the time.

The place is dangerous and desolate, and one more step can directly fall into the bottomless crack, which is more in line with the general people's imagination of the 'abyss' and the end of the continent.

But it's very boring, and if it's the end of the journey, it will only make people feel disappointed.

After an unknown amount of time, the two finally came to the end of the passage.

At the end was an iron door, unlocked and tightly closed, with dark red rust all around.

Bryce pressed his hand on the door, and the rust seemed to be alive, avoiding the place where his palm was pressed, slowly receding to the surroundings, and finally spread to the wall of the passage.

The iron door opened silently.

"Welcome to Beyond the Abyss," he said.

Outside the door is another world.

……

No one really knows the history of the exiled lands.

This is a place hidden by the whole continent. The creatures on the ground never talk about it, and they never approach it. No one knows how the first group of wanderers found this place. After deciding to live underground, they What a price to pay.

They were the pioneers, the trailblazers, the ones who brought life to the Exiled Lands.

The dome is high and far away, like a dark night sky without stars and moons.

The iron gate opened in mid-air.

The Exiled Lands is actually an underground city.

The scale of the city is huge, but underground resources are scarce, and building materials are in short supply, so most of the buildings are made of local materials, using mountain rocks or bricks and soil.There are also some who are not particular about it. They simply adapt to local conditions, find a raised place and dig a hole in it. In short, the architectural styles are different. There is me in you, and you in me are crowded together, and no one looks the same as the other. next to each other.

Their end is a cross-section of the continent. I don’t know how it was formed. Rock layers of various textures and colors squeezed each other, forming many different patterns. There are also rock tabletops protruding from the wall, forming many large platforms. There are also houses on it.

There is even a wide range of soil, with different plants growing here and there. Because there is no sunlight in the Exiled Land, the energy supply depends entirely on magic. One after another, light clusters hang in midair, continuously emitting light and heat .

They are said to be homeless, but their homes are more stable than other races on land.

On the other end, far away, separated from them by a whole piece of land, one could see a mass of invisible black.

Maybe beyond that is the abyss.

There is no skylight underground, so the lights are on all year round, scattered in the city, and there are light sources connected in a line, surrounding the entire settlement.

It was as if all the stars in the sky had fallen to the ground.

The door they came out of was very inconspicuous. There was a small platform outside, and then there were thin and long steps leading to the ground below.

Sidi: "Is this the 'Land of Exile'?"

It seems that it is much more lively than many places they passed by.

An isolated underground city.

There were no railings around the table, so Xidi didn't care. She walked to the edge and looked down with interest.

Half of the boy's body was hanging outside, the neckline was open, and the pendant of the 'God's Eye' fell out, dangling in mid-air.

Brice stretched out his hand to pull the man back, stuffed the pendant into the child's collar and put it away, and then carefully tied the tie on the neckline for the man.

"I didn't have time to tell you before." He said, "People in Exiled Land have their own beliefs."

Sidi: "What do you believe in? The rose of thorns?"

This place is so close to the abyss, and it is inextricably linked with the abyss. It seems reasonable for people to believe this.

Bryce: "They don't believe in the rose of thorns, they believe in the abyss itself."

At this time, the two of them had already descended to a platform along the protruding steps. The place here is not big, but they can settle down close to the scale of a small village. The house is made of stone, and there are people in the village. Don't be surprised, just look at it twice at most, and then go on with your own business.

I don't know what I'm busy with, and all I hold in my arms are bundles of slender branches.

Although not often, they are used to receiving new companions.

This is the land of exile, and everything that appears here is reasonable.

On the other hand, Xidi, when she came back to this place for the first time, found that it was very different from what she expected, and it was completely different from the outside world, so she immediately became interested and looked at the creatures passing by curiously.

The reason why it is called a creature is because it is true...not all decent human beings here.

Of course, there are still more human figures, at least everyone basically has two arms and two legs, but the races are obviously different, and they obviously live together, but their looks are different.

Xidi tilted her head and watched a man with a horn on his forehead pass by, and then turned to the other side, just in time to see a pair of small wings sprouting from behind a girl who was holding a bunch of branches and humming, flying low and thin. The long black tail hangs down behind, the tip of the tail dangling intermittently.

This can be fresh.

Xidi turned back and tugged at Brice's sleeve: "What are they?"

As far as he knew about the racial characteristics, it didn't seem to grow up like this.

I don't know how Brice saw it so accurately: "One-sixth of a unicorn, and one-half of a demon."

Xi Di blinked: "Half-race?"

He used to be called a half-breed too.

Brice: "Yes, but they have gone through too many generations, and their bloodlines are very mixed. I only picked the part they showed."

Siddie: "You can see that?"

Brice's tone was modest and low-key: "All life in this world has been under my control since birth, and their life and death are beyond my control. I just know the bloodline, which is nothing."

Besides, he also lifted the restrictions on himself, and it was the closest moment to the abyss in all these years.

It is not too much to say that he is half the master of this world.

It's a pity that Juggernaut has no interest in the world at all, all he cares about every day is how to coax his own children.

Xi Di praised him very face-saving: "You are really amazing."

Then immediately put the matter behind him and asked, "What are they doing?"

They have passed through the small settlement just now and came to another area. Although the people here are not holding the branches, they are obviously busy with something together. There is a feeling that everyone is working hard for the same thing. atmosphere.

Bryce: "Sacrifice."

Sidi: "Sacrifice what?"

Bryce: "The people here depend on the abyss to live, so they pin all their hopes for life on the abyss. Every once in a while, a group sacrifice ceremony will be held. Each settlement will produce a sacrifice, gather together, and finally plunge into the abyss. In a wicker man."

The wicker man made a support out of wood, and then weaved a huge human-shaped cage with wicker, trapped the sacrifices in it, and then burned it... Counting thousands of years ago, it was once a kind of sacrifice and torture tool.

But now this custom has disappeared on the mainland because it is too dangerous and wild.

Another reason is the prevalence of 'rose of thorns' these years.This religion does not use too many foreign objects to sacrifice, nor does it crusade against heretics—because that is the proof of the spirit being controlled by emotions—from this point of view, the Rosary Sect actually has some merits.

After all, the believers are not harmful to outsiders, and they are all focused on tossing themselves.

Bryce: "Of course, the 'Wanderers' are a fairly united group. They will not use their companions to sacrifice at will, so they are sacrifices, but in fact, most of them are just animals and handicrafts."

The way of offering sacrifices is not to burn them, but to throw them directly into the abyss.

Sidi: "Have you seen those offerings?"

Bryce is a thorn. When he was still at the bottom of the abyss, he should have encountered such a wicker man sacrifice.

Bruce: "Yes."

Sheedy was interested. "What happened to them?"

Bryce: "It fell."

Sidi: "Where did it fall?"

Brice patiently explained to him: "I don't know, because the abyss itself has no bottom, and the so-called 'rooting' of thorns is just a symbolic metaphor. I can only control the part of the continent where life exists. at..."

No one knows what the bottom of the abyss looks like.

Most likely, it is a mass of eternal, immortal nothingness.

The author says:

Orthodox Western Fantasy, orthodox dungeon (nonsense, in fact, it is not orthodox at all)

After these ten chapters, the nursery rhymes will be over, and then I will decide whether to concentrate on "The Other" or finish the short story and start a new article based on everyone's feedback~

The other has already posted two chapters, if you are interested, you can go and have a look~