10moorem
patreon
Chapter 66: Gehenna
🕑 Added 2025-11-27 22:23:57 +0000 UTC-Alexander POV-
‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate,’ were the words emblazed on the intricate brass and gold gates that barred entry to any who were not welcome. To call the entry austere would be a lie, they were the height of decadence – a symbol of vanity wrapped up in two enormous doors.
Two enormous bleach white skeletons hung upon the gate, one pair of their arms clasping the gates shut while the other pair beckoned invitingly. Flames lit the empty sockets of the false cadavers, and if you listened
In order to get to the inner sanctum you needed to pass through one of four tunnel exits, though no matter which one you passed through you would end up in front of these gates.
Am I mixing my references a little by including Dante’s Inferno? Sure, but the vibe was immaculate, which forgives all sins.
Crafting the gates themselves hadn’t taken long, but adding the finer details did. Imbuing the gate with the concept of ‘suffering’ was a chore, yet well worth the effort in my eyes. It had required thousands, if not tens of thousands of runes, words and symbols that related to the concept in question.
Upon the gates were larger representations, engravings denoting a man clubbing another with a rock, of a human forcing another into bondage, of a mother throwing her child against the rocks and other gruesome images.
It made for a disturbing sight, only growing more so the longer you looked at it.
And that was to say nothing of how it felt.
Even I, being its creator and someone keyed to be exempt from its effects, could feel a stinging sensation upon the surface of my skin. Like microscopic lashings biting their way into my nerves.
My power recoiled from the gates, refusing to interact with it, forcing me to use the wireless command interface to open and close the gates.
I could only imagine how it would feel to an actual intruder.
Passed the gate was a single narrow path, falling into a deep oblivion on both sides, forcing one to tread carefully. In truth, it was a glorified viewing area, it gave a great vantage point that allowed whoever was dumb enough to trespass a glimpse at what awaited them.
As well as a bunch of illusions made solely to fuck with them.
Stare too long into the abyss below? You’ll slowly start seeing wriggling, grasping, hands beckoning you down, as well as hundreds of beady white eyes gazing upon you. Look back and you’ll seeing smiling figures leering at you from the tunnel you came from, before quickly darting out of sight. Look up, and you see the sky crack in places – strings dangling from the gaping wounds in reality, searching for a puppet to play with.
Essentially? It was a massive haunted house.
This hypothetical infiltrator would also be capable of seeing the immense city that would encompass the barren chamber I had created.
Barren, because I had yet to build the city.
You see there was a problem with ShardPunk, much like the species it originated from it lacked creativity. Unlike many of my other specialties it lacked a defining style to characterise it. NanoPunk had its chrome and futurism, CyberPunk had that gritty neon-filled look, SilkPunk took inspiration from East Asia, and so on.
ShardPunk didn’t have any of that. It used what worked, and didn’t care for appearance, only function.
Efficient perhaps, but not very helpful when I wanted to craft a city that would blow anyone who saw it away.
But, after giving it some thought, I realised It might be an unexpected gift.
I could decide on the theme. Instead of following a pre-set blueprint on what defined ShardPunk, I would be the trailblazer defining it.
So I got to thinking, coming up with – and discarding – ideas one after another.
Eventually I settled on a classic. Gothic Architecture smacks for a reason, and plays super well with the themes I’m going for here.
I lay out the groundwork in the centre of the city-sized room. That was where I would build the largest, most eye-catching edifice in the entire city – one capable of being seen throughout the entire chamber.
This was theatre after all, one massive lie. If an infiltrator ever did arrive here that would be the first place they would look. So I would do my best to ensure it was the largest, deadliest, most time-consuming structure I could make. Traps everywhere, monsters nesting around every corner, paths that loop back and hidden chambers everywhere.
And what better framework to use than an enormous chapel, a dedicated place of worship for the fictitious deities of this fake city. I had already started a black and yellow colour scheme outside, so that was something I was going to follow through on.
I gazed at the ground I planned to build my church, mapping out dimensions and calculating materials and the stress they would be placed under. The tallest building, in my old world, was the Burj Kalifa – which towered somewhere around 800 meters or so – look, I didn’t have access to Wikipedia anymore, give me a break.
I had already crushed that milestone with several of the buildings I had crafted in Jinzhou. Nanomaterials making for ideal building materials for large structures.
This would be larger still, as I estimated the highest point of the chapel would reach somewhere around 1,500 meters in height.
I would have liked to continue my continuous references to the number 5, but building a chapel over 5,000 meters tall was a bit much, even for me, and building one that wasn’t even 600 meters in height would be too small.
Perhaps I would make it 1,555 meters tall?
I shook my head, focus!
I began with the foundations, digging deep. Because, of course there would be an underground section too. The super materials that made up the anchors cut deep into the rock and dirt, the material flowing like water under my command. Once far enough down the material expanded, forming a circular structure still attached the the feed leading down.
Next came the reinforcement of the surrounding stone itself. For this I spun nanomachines from the surrounding air molecules and directed them downwards, commanding them to bond to the strata itself – strengthening it.
Next came the basement, or rather the dungeons.
The word caused a brief reminder of a girl, weeping in a gilded cage – causing me to wince momentarily in regret.
A portion of blame for that fell on my shoulders, and I would have to do something to rectify that – assuming I could.
But, for now, I resumed my construction, allowing the guilt to bubble back down – still present but pushed to the side for a brief period.
The dungeons began to fill out, filthy cells full of cobbled floors and rusted bars came into being. Skeletons of men, and stranger creatures besides, began to occupy the prison.
In another section of the basement a much grander room began to form, gold and obsidian making up the walls and floor of this room. Runes and marking were ever-present, and the floor held intricate channels that all led back to the centre of the room.
The enormous stone altar that these channels led to was, at once, the grandest and most humble aspect of this room. It was simple rock, rough and crude in its design and stained with dried blood.
It was a place of appeasement, a place of sacrificial offerings. Where blood and life would be exchanged for favour from the city’s dark patrons.
There were smaller rooms, across the dungeons, dedicated for the same purpose but none as grand as this one.
Finally I added the stairs, all made of a dark stone - a chill ore that would freeze a man numb if he stepped upon it. There were multiple, some simple and others elaborate in their design.
Brick by brick I covered up the dungeons, the alter rooms and the corpses, and began on the ground floor.
Thus I began work on the nave – the main body of the church. Five rows of sturdy pews formed out of the ether, and trailed towards a single yellow lectern. What would typically be an eagle in most churches was instead a hunched figure of yellowed brass, the gaunt gaze of the figure burrowing into all who would attend this place of worship.
Throughout the long and winding hall there were the stained glass windows that many would expect to find in such a place. Yet the images they showed were off. Saints and martyrs were present, yes. Angels and saviours, too.
But their faces were twisted. Rictus grins cut across matronly guises. Screaming, terrified, faces looked back with pleading eyes. Grotesque and perverted eyes leered down from on high.
Those observant enough to notice might also see the way those eyes followed them, scrutinized them.
But it was the window at the end of the church that was the most bizarre A curled five pointed star sat in the centre of that window, bare of any other symbolism – as if it had swallowed everything else up to leave only itself
Then there was the mould, a yellow creeping thing that creeped its way around the pillars of the church, warped and aged the pews and cradled the pulpit in thick leathery vines.
From the artificial sunlight outside you would be able to see spores of it dancing in the sunbeams, choking the life out of anything that entered.
It was the first defence I had added to this place.
In truth the mould was one super-sized organism. It lacked much in the way of senses, but it could sense vibrations and was very smart – most of its mass being neuron-like structures. Meaning the more it spread, the smarter it would get.
Up to a point anyway. Lag would start affecting cognition at a certain size. Not to mention I had put safeguards against any kind of runaway growth.
Still, it was smart, and capable of a lot more than simply being a choking hazard. In truth it only began with choking, after ten minutes the mould would begin interfering with the central nervous system and begin increasing aggression and excitement. Those infected would begin to suffer from extreme mood swings, going from crippling depression and psychotic rage within only a few seconds.
Various glands would also be co-opted by the spores. The parotid, submandibular and sublingual glands being those targeted first. Essentially, it turned those infected with contagious saliva – capable of spreading the infection through bites.
A poor man’s zombie virus.
Or, super-rabies.
Basically the same thing.
Of course, should an enemy come prepared this organism had one final trick.
It could explode.
No, I’m not kidding.
The mould was expressly designed to ferment a natural gas inside the largest collections of mass it possessed. Pieces of itself it could then fling at a person in order to explode said sac.
Crude, perhaps, but effective.
Most of the material here is made of stone and non-flammables anyway, so only the pews were likely to be destroyed from this.
I frowned, as a sudden though struck me. I’d probably have to hide any notebooks I made in non-flammable containers if I decide to make them, wouldn’t I?
Well, that wasn’t too much work, plus it wasn’t like I had decided to make any of those yet.
Well, besides the local bible equivalent – which was just a book filled with cryptic looking, but ultimately meaningless, symbols and letters.
Needed to give the nerd something to obsess over, y’know?
Not that anyone would ever get down here, but it’s the thought that counts.
I added a few more little details to the floor, a few effigies and statues to make the place feel properly lived in. Extra tiny details that most would miss. Half melted candles, scuff marks and signs of use on the pews and small cracks along the stone floor.
Then came the next floor, and the next, and the next and so on.
Those I left empty for now, the only exception was a single mural painted upon the domed ceiling of the church. It depicted a solitary figure, swathed in pale yellow robes. They were not extravagant, instead they appeared like something some ancient scholar might wear. Plain, yet dignified.
The figure gazed down, its posture sharp and attentive. The arms so close to its side that thy were swallowed up in the billowing cloak. For the face, that most intrinsic part of humanity, there was nothing. Just a deep void that stared out from beneath a yellow hood.
The pitch black surrounding the figure only added to the eerie allure, the bright yellow more capable of drawing the eye against such a bleak background.
I was done, for the moment.
There were many more details to agonise over. Which monsters to add, what rooms should be filled with what, etc.
However I decided to take a break from the church for now, as it was gearing up to be my most time consuming build yet. It was important to pace myself, lest I begin running on creative fumes.
Instead I turned my attention to the empty surroundings, nothing but bare rock and dust cast in an alien glow from the distant lights above.
Alone, the temple seemed austere, even dignified. The black stone I had made the building out of seemed to swaddle the church in shadow, allowing it to blend into the background if not for the few splashes of yellow.
Those mostly came from the windows, whose haunting gaze shined a dismal light into the cavernous abyss that made up the sanctum. Gargoyles and depictions of much stranger beings stared down from the black masonry walls, fantastical beasts that observed the world outside the church with predatory eyes.
All in all a success, yet I knew it could be better.
First I marked a boundary around the church, plotting out where I would later add the grounds of the church. I wasn’t sure whether that would include a graveyard or not, but I would get to it when I get to it.
Steel bars erupted from the ground where I had marked the boundary, lining the edges with barbed filigree save for a single spot that faced the entrance of the church. There I added an arch, where any intruders would likely enter from.
Assuming they didn’t just, you know, fly or jump over the fence.
They wouldn’t do that right? The brickwork I had done to the arch was immaculate, and definitely worth seeing!
Next I marked the streets, I played around with a few ideas for the layout, but decided very quickly that I didn’t want to use a boring grid plan like many modern cities used. Yes, it was functional, but it was also ugly as hell – like a lot of modern architecture.
Uniform repetitive patterns just seemed so dull, not to mention I didn’t want this city to be easy to navigate. I wanted long and winding paths, one which curved and spiralled back into each other. I wanted roads that seemed to constantly lead to unexpected places, and if I had to use obtuse city planning and manipulating space itself then that’s what I would do.
Eventually, after a few hours of messing around - drawing and redrawing pedestrian paths - I came to a layout I was satisfied with. All that was left to do was raise the rest of the buildings and add in a bit of charm.
AN: Uggghhhh! This chapter fought me! It fought me a lot! So it’s being split into two chapters. We’ll probably finish the underground city building next chapter and pick up with what’s left of the PRT’s infiltration team.
So yeah, the city is going to be a weird mix of Yharnam, Carcosa and Hell. Quite the weird mix.
Thanks for reading, please leave a comment – maybe suggestions on what to add to this city!
Comments
Christopher the Mothman
I feel like the latin over the main entrance is a bit overplayed. Putting an indecipherable language above it that forces you to understand on an intrinsic level seems much more fitting, giving it an ageless quality that makes it seem ancient and hinting that this city is what inspired every depiction of hell through every religion. You could probably do the same with the unholy bibles, where they are strange languages that are inherently unique to every reader to drive them mad in the same way that that one sci-fi horror movie New Horizons did. Making all who come to the hellscape of a city into immortal zealots that just continually add to the defenses. The only way to stop the new denizens of Eldritch hell? Necromorph style.
Sky_Arceus_77
Yep, this whole city is most defenitively inspired by Fear and Hunger
