Tempesti didn’t remember falling asleep against the wall, awakening with a soft groan at the thousand kinks in her neck and back that crackled as she stirred from her position. The teruda remained, fluttering almost lazily about the shrine, occasionally landing on the windflowers before resuming their exercises. A tired smile crossed the senshi’s face as she watched them, still half-asleep despite the stiffness throughout her body. Before awakening to the strange little butterflies she hadn’t entirely convinced herself that they were more than the product of her exhausted mind.

Even with the Tower’s decrepit state, being here somehow felt…right. Not in the sense that to leave was to commit a crime (well not entirely), but in the warmth that grew with a burgeoning sense of unfamiliar acceptance. She had belonged to this place once, or rather, the other her did. But now. Now this Tower was hers in all its decaying splendor. Despite the bloody memories she knew waited unseen in the recesses of her starseed, she found comfort in this fact. Stories about restoring these places captured her imagination like little else and despite her decided lack of skill in masonry and engineering, Tempesti wanted nothing more than to give this world a second chance. Give this prison the opportunity to be something more. Something more that, of course, extended to the house of the dead she knew rested beneath her feet, the true base of the Tower. The thought of that pit turned her stomach, and for a moment (several moments) she considered simply returning home and relegating that excursion to some other day, preferably one in the distant future.

But she knew. She knew there could be no reclamation until she looked this horror in the face, many times. Most likely. Countless years of pain heaped upon pain couldn’t be undone in a moment’s attempt at acceptance, no matter how earnest. Still. Everything had to have a beginning, even if it wouldn’t necessarily have an end. She rubbed her eyes, only vaguely aware of the dirt she smeared onto her face. A long shower awaited her at home, a reward for at taking these first steps. With an embarrassing amount of faltering and hesitation, Tempesti made her way across the sanctuary.

(Note: sweep this later. Bring trash bags and towels.)

If not for the buckling railing around the edge, it would have been easy to miss the top of the stairwell and the descent into the blackness below. Her trepidation did little to slow her, after all, losing this momentum would be unforgivable. Resting her right hand against the wall and holding her phone in her left, Tempesti took her first anxious steps into the crypt. The cold glow of her phone’s flashlight illuminated the stairs beneath her feet and little else, but the stone beneath her fingers felt rougher as though hewn with cruder technique from cruder materials than the levels above.

(Note: bring camping lanterns and a stock of batteries.)
A flash of color against the shadow brought her to a halt. Pushing her anxiety further back, she followed the beam of light to what appeared to be a small lantern housed in a shell of intricate stained glass, remarkable in its dust-caked but nearly pristine state. The lantern’s base consisted of a single flat, bronze disc held in place by a hinge and hook. Atop the base, as far as she could tell, was the light source itself. Frustrated by the lantern keeping its secrets close behind the precarious fragility of its encasement, she snapped a photo and hoped the flash would give her some sense of what lay within. Amidst a riot of colors the silhouette of what appeared to be a crystal sat within, content in the knowledge that she was unwilling to disturb its rest until she knew how to do so without destroying the whole. A glance along the illuminated wall revealed that these lanterns punctuated the walls at regular intervals, each a potentially good specimen for study if she could figure out how. With great reluctance, Tempesti returned her attention to the task at hand as the first flight of stairs ended in a wide, circular landing.

The room’s austere simplicity was striking, especially in contrast with the overabundance of detail in the architecture of the chambers above. A sharp gasp escaped the senshi when the circle of light illuminated a pale face in the dark, her shaking hands sending the phone clattering across the stone floor. With a nearly desperate speed, she snatched up the device, swinging it about wildly until it landed once more upon the silent figure. A woman of colorful glass stood before a large, rectangular box built directly into the stone below. Tempesti’s blood pounded in her ears with the realization that this was her. One of her. Some ancient, long-dead her laid to rest alongside who knows how many other versions. She swallowed hard and became keenly aware of the dryness of her mouth. Being intellectually aware of what waited down here did nothing to prepare her for the sight of her own mortality rendered in stone and glass many times over. Should she decide to shove aside the heavy stone lid she could probably get a good look at her own skeleton, she even had a nice selection to choose from if this one didn’t catch her fancy. A wave of nausea threatened to overtake her.
Not now.
Not now.
Work to be done.
She snapped a few more photos of the chamber with its fractured art and unreadable text. Four sarcophagi for four Sailor Tempestis, each marked and documented. More items to check off of her list before making her way further down. More tombs and more exploration to do before she could take the time to wallow in this.
(Note: bring a lot of camping lanterns.)

A single floor down she found a chamber much like the previous one, if somewhat more crowded. Nine here. Nine faces. Nine tombs. Nine sets of bones. The portraits were more…uniform down here, as though drawn from the memory of a character from a story half forgotten. Shards of broken people, girls and women who would remain nameless until she learned to speak their stories. It felt bizarre to consider the idea that each sarcophagus contained the remnants of an entire life. That these bones once housed thoughts, desires, loves, dreams just as real and extensive as her own. That they were at once hers and not hers. The implications made her head ache and she wondered if her presence here counted as a haunting. She was, after all, returning their single shared spirit to their resting place.

(Note: bring fresh notebook next time.)

She knew only one level remained.

The lowest level, reserved for her most hated self, a figure shrouded in loathing and shame that transcended centuries. The not quite final resting place of the Mad Tyrant. Even the knowledge that she would never, could never recover this woman’s memories did nothing to drive back the fear drilled into the mind of her most recently dead self. Madness and cruelty were always a single misstep away, after all. It was only the Tower and its rites that contained the monster within. She knew she’d shed blood below, many times over many lifetimes. From duty, from fear, hers and her planet’s. The bloodstained stone that awaited her would suffer no denial, no refusal or rejection. It may no longer be her role to bleed for some imagined threat, but she owed restitution for countless years of inaction hiding in this Tower. This knowledge alone drove her downward into the depths, descending a seemingly endless spiral until she arrived into this final sanctuary.

The brilliant white and gold of the statue seemed almost to glow of its own accord bathed in the phone’s light. Though fragments of arms, blades, wings, armor lay scattered across the ground, she knew this scene well. A winged, armored woman stood triumphant, her boot planted on the stomach of a figure contorted in madness as she plunges her blade into the madwoman’s heart. Sotiria’s final moments mythologized and set in stone in a bombastic tribute to the dynasty that claimed her empire. She could only imagine the contents of the script emblazoned on the floor beneath. But then, the statue was not the point on which her greatest dread hinged. The air caught so violently in Tempesti’s chest that for several long moments she feared she might never breathe again. Dark brown stains marred the white stone surrounding the statue, proof of centuries of sacrifice, the cycles of Purgation which bound wayward souls to the stone of this island. Doubling over, the senshi gagged, dry heaved before catching herself on the edge of the blood-smeared altar on which she knew she had died many times. The phone landed forgotten near her feet. She wanted to be angry, to feel a resurgence of the fury that blazed through her, but the sight only evoked sadness. Grief for who she was and who she might have been.