"Speak for yourself."
Around them were deposits of rusted weaponry, and a number of tomes covered with calcified dust. Whatever qualities this place had as either an archive or a weapons hall had been eroded with whatever pushed this city beneath the continental shelf. If there was any chance anything real could be salvaged, that would be at the gradual pace of the machines.
They had waited long enough. They could not wait any longer.
Familiar despair wrung itself within her chest, but as the hope of discovery fell away from her, it was almost numbing the way her disappointment stemmed itself, bottled up deep inside her.
"I know my roots very well, Colonel. And my people come from a world apart from whatever this is."
Sired from the Wandering Master, to Rama the Tiger King. Taught to uphold the skills necessary to fight, to protect those who could not. The legacy of two-thousand years had that passed to Kaibyo and her.
Losing all of that drove her forward for almost eight years now, along with all of those who took up the Red mantle.
But there was one thing she was certain of, and that was the faded, unspoken tale etched around them. Kenshiko widened her eyes and they seemed to absorb the darkness held in those obscured shapes carved in the walls and shattered dome of the ancient library.
Again and again, the Dragon arrived, come to crush the world beneath him. From sky, to sea, the plains, the peaks, the Dragon preyed upon peoples and doomed civilizations time and again. By pain of tooth and claw, again and again it assailed the world, and when it rallied them, ancient terrors were brought into its thrall to enact the submission of humankind. In its great shadow, armies of darkness gathered under this uncanny shape. Kings lost their crowns. In their fear, untold glamour and utter submission.
The apparent shape of this tale was one distressingly familiar to Kenshiko.
Girimekhala.
There might be figments, familiar patterns, but sometimes there are no answers. Unless there was something connecting this creature with That Man, she was only hoping to find something in the parallels that might not be there.
"How?"
So far this expedition had been less than productive, but before she could write it off, there was one thing she had yet to see with her own eyes.
"You never mentioned how you found this place," Kenshiko said as she continued to forge ahead. "All I know is you found the Major in this pit."