Kain took his time walking through the seemingly impossibly large room, taking many minutes to walk a few hundred feet through the dirt to the structure. Despite her usual excitement, the room over-awed her into silence. As the two came closer to the structure, more and more shards of broken glass littered the floor, some covered in red blood, but none of it crunched or shattered under Kain and Luna’s weight.. The blood-bathed stone structure in the middle of the room was even larger up close than it was from afar, climbing up higher than the tallest of the reptilian creatures. There was a stairway in the middle of the closest wall to them and along the walls of the base of the structure were many artistic, detailed, and ornate carvings depicting various images and scenes, most painted in blood from above . To the right of the staircase was a nearly blank wall with two central figures, both having at least half of their bodies’ stained red; one was a giant serpent, very similar to the one that the two saw on their way into the room, which was on the right of the image, looking left, and the other was a large humanoid covered in armor and holding a warhammer, which was on the left of the image, looking right. The legs and arms of the humanoid were stubby, looking like a dwarf from many fantasy series Kain had seen on earth.They were both of about equal size. Kain looked at the wall for a while, soaking in every detail. His sudden halt brought Luna out of her over-awed daze, causing her to look at the carving as well. She did not even ask a question, simply memorizing the carving and marveling at the work of art in front of her. The two enjoyed the beautiful art for a while longer, despite the blood, before Kain wordlessly walked to the right of the stairs with Luna on his shoulder.
The next wall was also split into two sections, separated by an ornately carved divider, depicting a dense net og vines, flowers, and leaves. On the left of the wall, nearest to the first carving, the carving depicted the giant feathered serpent and the massive armored dwarf battling, starting from the top right, moving left until it hit the border, then moving down a scene and moving right afterward; there were only eight scenes on the wall. The battle started with an image of the serpent receiving a blow from the warhammer, recoiling back with the blow. The next scene showed the dwarf receiving a blow from the serpent as it whipped its tail around, clashing with the helmet of its opponent. The humanoid then struck at the serpent with the hammer, which seemed to miss. The serpent, in the next scene, bit at the arm of the dwarf, crushing the arm in its bite. The sequence moved downward where the dwarf stepped back from its opponent, holding its arm to its chest as if nursing the wound. The serpent shot forth, flying through the air in the next scene as the dwarf looked up at it. In the second to last scene, the dwarf threw its warhammer at the flying serpent, killing it as the weapon embedded itself into the head of the serpent, sending it flying to the right of the scene. The last scene was the dwarf lying on the ground, seemingly dead by snake venom. The two studied the scenes for a while before Kain silently moved to the other side of the divider and gazed upon the scene there.
The next scene was much more ornate and detailed, but only held a single image: the image was of the two previous figures, the serpent and the dwarf, lying on the ground. From their corpses, 12 figures rose up; from the corpse of the serpent six smaller serpents rose up, each having a piece of the warhammer embedded into their bodies, and from the dwarf six similar figures rose, each having a limb being discolored seemingly due to venom. Kain stared at the image for a while before Luna piped up, ‘So… what is this?’ she asked it almost without expecting an answer, but she received one from Kain.
‘I think this is a creation myth. Two titanic figures battling and killing each other and setting the stage for the creation of the universe is very common in human societies.’
‘So what’s a creation myth? You’ve talked about mythology and religion before and I never really got it.’ Luna asked.
‘Hmm… have you ever wondered where you came from?’ Kain asked.
‘From my mother.’ Luna replied innocently, ‘I have never really thought about it. Not like I was intelligent enough to anyway.’ She pouted cutely.
Kain chuckled and found a spot with relatively little glass, dusting it off and sitting down with his legs crossed. He said, ‘Okay, so where does your mother come from?’
‘From her mother.’
‘And-’
‘Where does she come from?’ Luna said, jumping off of his shoulder and landing on his knee.
He grinned, saying, ‘Yep. I think you get the point. Eventually, humans with some degree of security will ask these questions. They will eventually wonder who the first human was and I think that it applies here as well, though we still have more to look at.’
Luna hummed, asking, ‘What’s the point? It seems like a waste of time to me. Couldn’t they stop wondering about the past and start worrying about the present? I, again, don’t know how it is for humans, but I think that it’s a waste of time.’
Kain gazed into her red eyes as she sat on his leg. He replied in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I think that you don’t think about it for two reasons: one, you already generally know where your mind came from, and two, you’ve never had any time alone in a safe place to wonder about these things. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start thinking about it then.’
‘That’d be nice.’
Luna jumped back onto Kain’s shoulder and the two moved on to the next side of the pentagon structure. The side was whole and unbroken, not being split by any divider, though there were two halves to it. On the left side, there were scenes of the six dwarves being intimate at the top. Below them were scenes of even more, smaller dwarves being intimate. The pattern repeated another 2 times before, at the bottom, there were hundreds of tiny dwarves all carrying warhammers and wearing armor, charging right. On the other side, a similar scene of serpents being intimate followed the same as the dwarves where, at the bottom, there were hundreds of serpents charging to the right. The serpents also, Kain noted, had different powers; some flew, some burrowed based on their location in the carving, and some simply slithered on the ground. In the middle, carvings of conflicts between the two groups became more and more dense, as more and more combatants were added to the fight.
Kain looked at the carving with mild amusement and asked, ‘So, you figure this one out?’
Luna huffed, saying, ‘I have, thank you very much! This… what is it?’
‘A carving’ He chuckled.
‘This carving is saying that the 12 original creatures had children and their children had children until there were hundreds of them. Throughout the whole thing, groups fought each other for some reason, eventually culminating in a war, as you called it. There! I can figure these things out!’ Luna spoke triumphantly.
‘You got it mostly correct. You-’
‘What did I get wrong!?’
Kain sighed with a smile, saying, ‘The only thing you didn’t figure out was why they fought. I can come up with a few reasons based on a human’s mentality, but they may not all be accurate. I think the reason they first fought was because their ‘parents’ fought and killed each other. Other than that, maybe a fight for resources was the nature of their first conflicts. After that, however, I think that it becomes an issue of vengeance and hate.’ Kain finished his sentence in a more contemplative tone.
Luna asked confusedly, ‘Vengeance? Hate? What are those things?’
Kain looked to his shoulder, ‘You don’t get that stuff? I thought that you had essentially mastered most human concepts. Do those two not count?’
‘Well, I know some things from my time living as a normal rabbit and I pieced together other concepts like war from your stories and explanations. That does not mean that I have every human concept mastered. Religion is still one that I don’t get, for example.’
Kain chuckled. Looking at the reddish-brown rabbit on his shoulder, he teased, ‘Your analytical side is showing again.’ The only response was a grunt of pride, so he continued with the earlier conversation in a more serious tone, ‘Well, I guess that makes sense. You didn’t get a copy of all of my life experiences, even if we agree that I did influence your personality. But, anyway, hate is… very complex for humans. It’s nearly impossible to accurately define, but I would say that, in the most basic of terms, it is an extreme dislike for someone or something.’
Luna turned back to the carvings in the center of the wall, the upper portions stained scarlet. Without looking away, she asked, ‘So what makes it so complicated?’
Kain looked at the carving as well. He watched the progressive escalation of the battles. More warriors, more death. He even noticed that the expressions on the faces of the dwarves became fiercer as it progressed. He sighed, saying. ‘It’s not… It’s a very specific type of emotion, I’d say. Many use it as a more quick way of saying dislike, but for me, hate is an irrational disgust for something or someone. It incites rage, wrath even. I’ve… had a history with it.’
Luna turned and looked at his red eyes. She blinked and looked at the wall again, saying, ‘If it’s irrational, then how does it start? Why does it continue?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
Luna went silent for a bit, soon saying in a chipper voice, ‘You want to know what I think?’ Kain hummed in affirmation, ‘I think that it’s pointless to worry about it. There’s no way to change it if it’s irrational, so why bother?’
Kain chuckled, rubbing her head which caused her to close her eyes in enjoyment. He replied simply, ‘I agree.’ The two moved to the fourth wall, but on their way, they saw another ornate door that was in the center of the edge opposite of the stairs. They noted it as their next stop after the structure was fully explored.
The next wall was also unbroken and portrayed various battles between the dwarves and serpents all around it in detailed and beautiful carvings. There were dwarves in armor fighting various serpents with different powers and it all surrounded two slightly larger figures clashing in the center. Other than the beautiful carving, there was nothing of note. The fifth wall was split into two sections like the second wall. On the left was a carving of the two sides retreating, carrying the corpses of their fallen and sporting wounds from gashes and tears to bruises and chunks of body removed. It also showed the two central figures from the last carving dead in the center. On the right side of the divider, there was an ornate image of a gathering of serpents above a figure that looked like the creatures that once inhabited the tower. The collection of battered serpents all dripped their blood onto the creature, which caused it to become alive, as the carving portrayed the creature with open eyes. The final carving was one of various landscapes with towers nearly identical to the one they were standing in dotted around, all being guarded by armies of robots and having the creatures coming in and out of them.
After a short silence, Luna gave her opinion, ‘I think that it is saying that the war caused their numbers to drop to the point that they needed a group to help them, so they created the creatures that lived in this tower to do their work for them. How was that, big brother?’
‘I think you’re right. Though, there are a great deal of important moments missing. Like, how did they get the robots? Or, why were they built? Either way, we won’t find answers by sitting around here. Let’s go up here.’ He said, pointing to the stairway up the structure that they had circled back around to. Luna nodded, prompting Kain to climb the stairs.
