Astrum Irae

Rigel was suddenly shocked awake by the powerful roaring of water. He jolted upright only to immediately be hit by a massive wall of water and crushed under the tremendous pressure. The fierce currents whipped him around and spun him until he couldn't tell where up was or had any discernible sense of direction.

The water calmed, eventually, and left Rigel squirming from a lack of oxygen. He opened his eyes and saw a faint trickling of a green light gleaming down towards him from what he assumed to be the surface. Desperately swimming towards it, Rigel suddenly felt his ears pop and the pressure push down on his head.

He quickly flipped around and started swimming in the opposite direct, pain and exhaustion completely starting to overtake his consciousness. The oxygen deprivation was starting to make everything look and feel funny, but Rigel could only keep swimming upwards.

Rigel burst through the surface, gasping for air until his lungs and throat turned raw. Aside from grabbing oxygen, his next thought was of where Eureka was.

"Eureka," he called, somewhat feeling a sense of déjà vu regarding the scenario. Rigel swung his head around, trying to put eyes on the girl to no avail.

"Eureka!" he called once more, but was only met with a faint echo of his own voice. This came off as strange to Rigel- why was there now an echo when previously when he was yelling there was none? While it did bother him, Rigel felt no compelling thoughts regarding the matter.

The gnawing pain of his shattered hand bothered Rigel quite a bit, but it did remind him that he tried to heal the other one. He pulled his hand of of the water and inspected it. There was, indeed, a rune inscribed right onto the palm of his hand.

Rigel tried to inspect it further and touch it, but his situation- treading water while completely exhausted- didn't assist that endeavor much.

The rune wasn't too complex, from what he could see, unlike those that appeared in some anime in his past world. Instead of having hundreds of intricate little designs and carvings, this rune was something like a helix spiral with a couple of extra dashes and lines strewn throughout. It glowed faintly in the illumination provided by the cavern ceiling. Rigel was not sure whether the glow was a reflection of that light or was provided by the rune itself.

"Water, abide my bidding," Rigel once again tried to command, but the mana consumption on top of the lack of assertiveness in his tone and intent led to a complete failure of the spell. The searing pain from the excess mana burning away inside of his body stung quite badly. Rigel tensed up his working hand into a fist and squeezed to alleviate some of the pain.

Rigel spat out some more blood and shook off the thought of trying to use magic once more. It might have actually killed him at that rate.

Rigel stay floating in place for a few minutes, but the water was slowly but surely draining him of his heat energy. He soon lost most motor control of his working fingers and toes. Starting to panic slightly, Rigel tried to think of a game plan. Eureka was gone somewhere- be it the bottom of the reservoir or safe in a room on the surface; he didn't know. Rigel himself was slowly starting to get hypothermia and had no discernible way of leaving the water.

If Rigel tried to use magic, it could possibly inflame and further damage some of his internal injuries he suffered from the fall down here. Using magic seemed too dangerous unless it was a last-minute attempt at surviving. The layout of the cavern didn't seem to have changed since he passed out, except for that strange echo he had heard previously.

Rigel frowned at the prospect; if there wasn't an echo before, there should have been a way for the sound to escape. Now that there was an echo, the room must have been sealed a little tighter. This could be from the hole they fell down earlier, or there was actually another way of escape that he didn't notice. Regardless, there wasn't one now.

Rigel thought and thought, but the miserable scenario and horrid quality of his own body left him mostly unable to focus on much. His teeth were chattering back and forth, his entire body was nonstop shivering, and the intense cold pain ached his very core.

Just as Rigel was starting to lose hope, a faint glow enfolded his soul. Eureka, in all of her glory, lifted Rigel out of the water and flew him around. In this lucid dream-like state, Rigel observed and inspected the layout of the cavern with acute accuracy, discovering to his awe and ample excitement that there was actually a small cavern just 10 feet up off the waterline!

Eureka, manning Rigel's soul, flew him over to the opening in the wall and dropped him down. Rigel slammed into the stone hard and cut himself up even more, but he didn't mind at all; he was free! Rigel hopped up onto his feet and started running down the tunnel and down into the earth with heaps of vigor. The ground slowly but surely started angling more and more downwards until the decline was too much to even maintain balance on. Rigel slipped and tumbled down the tunnel, which didn't mind his fumble and kept sloping downwards. He picked up copious momentum on his way down, sometimes hitting himself against a stray rock.

Rigel's escape was slowly becoming a nightmare- every passing blow took another chunk out of him, each worse than the last. Finally, Rigel smashed into a wall and dropped to the ground. It was too dark to inspect his own situation, but Rigel didn't care. He most likely had half of his body weight taken off of him by now, but apathy was all Rigel felt on that front.

Rigel tried to stand up, but his legs couldn't support his own weight and snapped in half. Rigel felt a vague, faint sense of pain and danger, but just started crawling instead of doing something about it.

Rigel felt his exposed guts catch on a stray, jagged rock, but kept crawling. His organs stretched and spilled out like a stretched stuffed animal being pulled in half. While his intestines were acting like a newfound tail, Rigel just kept on crawling until, eventually, his arms snapped as well.

Now this was a problem; Rigel couldn't move forward without any of his limbs. Despite common sense dictating that, Rigel still tried regardless. Now a mere half-destroyed head and a mostly shattered rib cage, Rigel rolled down the tunnel using mostly only his own mass and gravity.

Bouncing down uncontrollably once again, Rigel took another round of beating until he struck a large rock very hard and his head snapped off of the rib cage. This head, however, could hardly be described as Rigel's. The entire right side of his brain was exposed, and even then most of that was excavated out as well. A vast majority of his skin and hair had been scraped clean off, leaving only a fleshy mass of bones and muscles. Furthermore, his jaw had been broken off. Hence, this skull flying down a nebulous tunnel would be an appearance most grotesque for the average person or adventurer.

Light was eventually visible to Rigel, who was absolutely ecstatic. The so-called light at the end of the tunnel quickly approached, and the appalling, misshapen head flew out of an opening. Rigel saw with his one working eye, a sight. The ocean, in all of its fury and raw might, was a few thousand feet below Rigel.

Rigel had shot out straight into a monstrous thunderstorm, the likes of which he had never seen even on television before. Humongous swells the size of skyscrapers ripped through the ocean, distorting the air and presence around them. The very seabed, as one passed, could be seen as the water was pulled up and into a wave. In the sky, fierce thunderbolts stuck down into the water, electrifying everything in the vicinity.

As Rigel fell closer and closer to the water's surface, thunderbolts struck down with increasing frequency and the swells congruently gained more and more height despite the lack of water for them to pull up in the first place.

Rigel tried to scream, but his vocal chords being God knows where disallowed any such actions. Just as he was a few hundred feet above the exposed ocean floor, a massive swell slapped him out of the air and devoured him.

...

Rigel suddenly jolted awake underwater, pressed up against a stone ground by the water pressure. Not having any time to comprehend what just happened or where he was, Rigel started once again frantically swimming towards the surface, body now seemingly completely intact. The sudden change in pressure blew his eardrums out and momentarily phased him out of swimming, costing him valuable time before he drowned.

Rigel tried his hardest to swim upwards, but he had complete oxygen deprivation and was still suffering from intense injuries. He felt his consciousness leaving him and slowly let his eyes close. Rigel gently drifted back down to the cavern floor, energy almost completely spent. Just as he touched the stone bottom, though, Rigel noticed a faint, green, luminescent glow illuminating a small portion of the ground, spelled out in a pattern-like rune, just a few feet away.

Rigel felt compelled to crawl over to it with the iota of remaining energy and effort he could possibly muster, no matter the cost. He pulled one hand forward, grabbed a rock, pulled himself with it, put his foot against another rock, kicked off, pulled one hand forwards, grabbed a rock, pulled himself with it, and so on until he painstakingly reached his destination.

The little, glowing rune in front of him was attractive to Rigel. He reached out to stroke the rune in front of him but felt himself, even with the mental boost of the rune, dying. His limbs and body were starting to convulse from the oxygen deprivation; he had been underwater for minutes at this point. No matter how hard he tried, his arm would not reach out and grab the rune, so Rigel collapsed while grabbing for the bright inscribing. As he crashed against the ground, the tips of his fingers barely reached the rune.

A vast, powerful aura emanated from the spot where Rigel had just barely reached, engulfing Rigel in a warm, comforting light that isolated him from the water. Gentle healing magic caressed Rigel's very soul as it purged his lungs of water, mended his shattered hand, pieced together his cracked rib cage, fixed all of his various internal injuries, and peeled away the dead skin and replacing it with fresh, new skin.

After the blissful healing process was done, Rigel felt a force drag him downwards through the rune and into the ground. Rigel was not too worried and trusted that the rune was working in his favor after enjoying the lavish healing treatment.

While Rigel felt that he was being moved by the rune, he couldn't see through the green light enfolding him, so he had no clue what was really going on or where he was going, other than downwards.

After a relatively short amount of time, Rigel felt the magical aura fade away, leaving him laid out on another cold, stone floor. He slowly glanced upwards and saw Eureka passed out just a few feet away from him, injuries seemingly evaporated.

Elated, Rigel immediately tried to sit up and run over to her but quickly fell over. It seemed like Rigel was at his physical limit despite the therapeutic treatment received by the rune, and he once again let his eyes drift closed and had his mind wander off elsewhere.