Ring 6 - The Wastes

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Ring Name: Envy - a.k.a (The Wastes)

Ruler: Lyra / Leviathan

"Like All rings, we will start on the outside and work our way to the centre"
"Like All rings, it has its own 'skybox'.

Not to be confused with "The Void" this ring has several names

The Wastes, The Abyss, The Nowhere, The Sewers Of Creativity's Fountain.

All fitting names as Lyra being the way she is created her ring based on how she is and the curse of the envy gem, a D-tier background demon at best cursed to forever be forgotten and fade into the background and so she made her ring as a vast dark continent of all things that have faded from memory or never existed, way back near the demon realms creation she asked its guardian at the time "The Darkness" if she could have an audience with the creator of the realms "The Architect" witch she got, in this meeting, she asked, "The Architect" to make the run-off/sewers of "The Fountain Of Creation" run directly into her ring witch after a bit of back and forth reasoning "The Architect" agreed.

So now every idea that never made it from the void to the realms or from people's minds all end up here, every beta concept you vaguely remember like project dream or every beta design or scraped idea like the chef ghost of Luigi's mansion all end up in the Wastes,
or at least some twisted ruins will end up there so the house from the only Project Dream beta shot will be there somewhere but it will be in a bit of a run-down state maybe half sunk into the ground and one or 2 wilting palm trees around it, but all of it will be embedded in the pearl sand as no greenery like grass grows to give off that eerie atmosphere where there should be things here to finish this picture like grass or stone paths but there is not, just the main thing lost in the middle of nowhere.
Leading to the most unique of all the rings, standing out from all the other rings for not having one single megastructure like "The Factory" or "The Hive" and not having a set cohesive design like "The Sea" or "The Battlefield".

The main motif of The Wastes is a light yellowish-white pearl sand and pearl sandstone desert juxtaposed to a sky of eternal night, however unlike the eternal night of the lust ring with its cosmic blue sky littered with stars and the shining full moon, The Wastes eternal night is a strange pure black sky with a smaller moon and a sparce handful of stars all in a eclipsed state all black but with a single thin boarder of colour around its dark core, however as you pan down to the horizon things do brighten up very slightly but only get stranger, fading from black into a dark blue sky hosting strange ringed purple planets, tiny green planets and a giant dark aqua blue planets sinking below the horizon, illuminating a far of landscape of stone henge like structures and ruined castles all silhouetted against the sky, properly visible creating a uncanny valley effect of looking like there is more just off in the distance but also seeming like a fake illusion as the perfect silhouetting makes them seem fake and just drawn onto the skybox witch is the case as these fake ruins are to give the illusion of a even grander scale and set the tone of a world of forgotten ruin a endless wasteland where no matter how far you walk you will never reach anything of importance and moving down one last time we start out journey.

Landing as always on the outer edge of the ring to start our journey to the centre, but 1st as always we turn back and look to the outside and this one time the illusion is broken, the edge of this ring is known as the blackness or the black sea, as we reach the end of the ring we see why it has a description of a dark continent as reaching the edge of the ring the land mass ends, the entire outer edge of the ring is a cliff side the land mass in a perfect circle dropping about 10ft into a sea of pure blackness, dotted with a few particles of glowing white to almost look like a sea of stars, the liquid having a shine to it and having a more thick consistency akin to that of crude oil or tar but unlike them, it's not sticky and so will mostly run off the body when removing a body from it like normal water.
This sparkling black ocean expands outwards for about 5 miles before reaching the skybox, However, while there is no "Fear Aura" making you want to turn and run deeper into the ring, reaching the edge is still impossible due to the dark ocean emitting a gravitational pull rivalling that of a black hole, whether this is the water itself or something below the waves is unknown but it makes crossing it impossible as anything place in it like a boat is pulled under even if its the lightest of models they are still instantly pulled under, any attempts to build overall has the same effect where once you get a few feet out from the cliffside the gravitation pull is so great that it just rips though even the strongest materials as if they were paper with giant chunks of wood and stone and metal all just splintering and being pulled down below the black waves hence the name fools bridges as only fools now try to leave this dark continent of forgotten creations.

However, this is somewhat inconsequential as even if you found a way to negate the gravitational pull that is the least of your troubles as the bigger threat lurks below the waves creatures dubbed "The Children Of Lyra", these creatures swarm the black ocean and are both extremely hostile and extremely powerful we are talking Arch Demon serving directly under Lyra in her castle strong.
These creatures look like a feral primordial version of Envy herself, huge 10ft lobster, dragon, shark things, armour plating like Lyra making them immune to damage, huge pincers with the same crushing power of Lyra, webbed feet and a shark fin for swift movement and the same seaweed around there limbs and neck that always points upwards just no puppet cross floating above them, However rather than Lyra's flatter mouth these have a longer more powerful dragon-like muzzle that can bite through steel as if it were flesh.
As with all envy creatures they have an "Envy Gem" embedded in their chest or between their breasts depending on gender which makes what they do all the more deadly which we will come back to in a moment after finishing their description.
in keeping with the Lyra theme like all others while the gem is fully embedded into them they still have a waterlogged rope around their chest for the illusion of it being tied to them rather than being embedded, and lastly, one bigger change while Lyra is "bald" having a more fish-like head covered in horns and scales and her 2 big ear fins, these creatures do not have the ear fins and their head has a full head of hair that covers there eyes however it is not hair but more a hanging moss and while you can't see their eyes that deep emerald glow from there eyes shines through the moss.

As you journey round the edge of the ring you will find why the gravity of the black water was inconsequential as you will see hundreds of cliffside fishing villages and fool's bridges all laying in ruin as it does not take much to provoke the "children of Lyra" and once provoke they leap 10ft out of the water on the land, hundreds of them just swarming the bridges and towns destroying everything in there path laying waste to all those that wish to intrude on the black ocean and what makes it worse is like all creatures they bear an envy gem so you will never see it coming after all most especially on the outer edge many do not possess a high level of observation aura to see passed the power of the emerald and so the villages and bridges will be swarmed and everyone there killed before most will even realise.
Now while sinners and natural born demons do normally respawn on the outer edge it could be the case that some do end up becoming more of these feral shark-lobsters creatures as while the spawn point is random and this is considered the biggest ring of them all mainly due power of the emeralds creation the illusion of scale, it has been documented in ripped and destroyed textbooks or some rare cases in villages that have found a way to live in harmony with them that every so often some will fall into the water and are never seen again even after hundreds of years implying that they did not die but either become one of them via a unknow method or are being held below the waves by these creatures.

So with no way to cross our cosmic ocean we turn around and our journey beings across this dark continent towards its centre,
with this one having one of the more shorter descriptions due to being a place of everything and nothing at the same time the envy ring being the biggest ring even a straight shot from the edge to the centre takes 1,000 years and only getting bigger with this ring being basically the sewer of creation since pretty much forever eventually even ideas forgotten by time become forgotten, so even the forgotten forget these things and these things eventually just sink down or crumble into the sands pushed down and the already forgotten stuff pushed outwards to make room, expanding the land so if you have ever played something some long forgotten beta or watching something really obscure when you were small that it seems no one else has ever seen or played but you remember it so vividly and know it was real but there is not a trace of it anymore or any information online either from being to old or your search is just to vague more than likely it ended up here long ago and has long since been lost to the sewers and sands of creation but if you dig deep enough you may find what your looking for from all the things that never were.

and so we walk and walk across an endless desert of nothing there is some life a few cacti and shrubs a few lakes and rivers of green glowing liquid and most importantly giant pieces of seaweed rising upwards despite not being underwater, the wastewater from the fountain of creation, indispersed though this land and ring will be ruins of things, buildings, towns, cities and forests that never came to be all starting to taken by the sands all seeming to be empty as if you are the only one in this ring, of course, this is not true all these places are indeed populated there are many envious souls sent here but like Lyra and the named "Children of Lyra" in the dark ocean all souls and creatures of this ring bear a gem of envy in their chest.

as described in Lyra's bio these glowing green emeralds are unbreakable gemstones that emit an aura that affects both the creature and others, for the soul that bears the gem it amplifies their envy hating everyone and everything that has something better than them be it more money more fame more popularity etc and making them feel they will never get any of these things, they are just NPC's, background characters at best that will never be good enough, making them extremely hostile and externally it admits an aura that makes everyone around them just ignore them as if they were not there hence it appears we are alone in this ring, in reality, there are creatures and souls all around you but without a very highly tuned level of observation aura that can break through the Envy Gem's spell you will just think you are forever alone.
for most souls that have been here for a while, they have at least developed a very basic level of observation aura which allows them to see shadows most in this ring, that live in these ruined communities will see everyone around them as generic human-shaped shadows with two glowing green dots where the eyes should be and the Envy gem floating in the shadows chests,
this, in turn, does make the envy ring the 2nd most dangerous ring and 2nd hardest to reach the centre as at any moment anyone or anything can just kill you and you would not have ever seen it coming due to the gem's power blocking them out of your mind or making them just seem like another generic background object you would never pay attention to, while cities and their residents have come to a mutual understanding, murder is rife within these ruins when it comes to travellers, as if you are trying to reach the centre then you would have been travelling for years and thus have lots of resources, you will have things they don't have and thus they are envious of your things and are driven to kill you so they can have the things they don't and years of travelling can be wiped out in an instant to something you could not even see spawning you back on the edge of the ring next to the dark ocean.
After a few tries most give up and settle down in one of the ruined villages on the edge of the ring getting some level of observation aura to be able to see all the other failures that have given up and never want to travel inwards again and now we know the secret, while at 1st we thought these finish villages were abandoned as there is clear battle damage from the children of Lyra we can see with our observation aura that some not all do indeed have souls populating them, never trying to venture out into the black water only ever making some stairs down to the ocean and fishing off of small docks attached to the side of the rock face and never wanting to venture out as they will just fail again, while fishing should any child ever come to them they give some of there fish or vegetables they have grown as a offering to the children in a attempt to befriend and co-exist with them as while the children are more primitive and instinct driven they seem to have enough sentience to see a village offering food as a place to feed and so seek not to destroy it, some even developing basic speech to better communicate with these ruined villages.

But we press on and we reach the only other portion of the ring, that being sewer lake, a lake of glowing green waste that surrounds Lyra's castle this lake is still big and will still take a good few months to a year depending on the boat to get from the shore to Lyra's Castle, around the edge of the lake will be some strange plant life and a few ruined columns or small houses but nothing big, its hard to even say if Lyra even has any arch demons as while there are a few ruined castle dotted around just a short trip away from the lake no one has ever seen anything that would be considered an archdemon and by the logic of power the Envy gem, Lyra would not need them as the role of an archdemon is to guard the centre and perform a purpose of some kind or order of some kind.

with Lucy in "The Factory," her arches are business-related acting as region managers controlling money flow, production flow and such making sure their region of "The Factory" is running at optimal performance all living deep within "The Factory" close to Lucy's office with a thing of if you want to get to Lucy you have to see them 1st.

for Mommy Mammon in "The Sea," her arches are all on islands in the area of "The Sea" just outside of El Dorado serving as gatekeepers to El Dorado, as to Mommy, her ring is a game with the prize being reaching her and to get to her you have to go through the archdemon area of the sea where they are told to either kill or subjugate any coming there way as to stop them reaching the centre either sending them back to the start to try her twisted game again or become a soul now trapped on an arch's island forever serving them.

for Bella in "The Hive," her arches act as royal retainers and obedience officers all based near the queen's chamber as her royal guards and ensuring that all souls know their place and if a drone is out of line well seems like some done needs another round of brainwashing in the conversion centre to remind these weak souls why they are mindless drones.

Lyra, on the other hand, does not require any of these things most die before they reach her castle either clamed by envious souls on the way or by the sea life living within the lake itself attacking the boat and eating any that fall overboard, there are a few rumours that some entity's around and maybe in the lake are classed as arches but its unknown, but in these small houses are single entities that would class themselves as ferry men knowing safe passage across the lake for a price, it is said by these so-called ferry men that there are entities in the lake itself known as "Sea Queens" entity's that have never been seen above the water but might have something that lets them know when someone is setting sail and commands the creatures of the lake to attack the boat but none have ever been seen so it's hard to say.
but like the rest of the ring setting sail gives us a very brief description as while the journey is only a year long at most unlike the greed ring's sea there are no islands as it's just a lake so its 1 whole year of nothing but a sea of glowing green, with only the great sewer pipe in the sky to guild you as its located directly above Lyra's castle.
after our voyage, we arrive at our centre and the place where no one has ever returned from Lyra's Castle.

The biggest and most eye catching structure in the ring, Lyra's castle is a gigantic castle of stone and copper pipes and shoots funnelling all of the sewer water around the castle, the outside of the castle also adorned with aquatic gargoyles and heads spitting out the water, the castle is also overgrown with moss and other bioluminescent plants covering the ramparts and pipes, with the moss growing out of and over the giant stone bricks and like Lyra and the wastes her main asytetic of the sea weed is present, giant pieces of it growing from the stones and wrapped around the pipes, all of it pushed upwards despite the lack of water and water current with the whole castle topped off with one big elegant spiral designed tower rising out the centre of the castle with the overgrown tower's top and battlement brickwork pushing outward into a funnel shape so to catch all of the water falling into it, as high above in the centre of the rings sky box imbedded into the sky box itself is Lyra's pride and joy, her gift from "The Architect", a huge copper pipe coated in layer of the unbreakable gem of envy pouring the sewer water from the fountain of creation itself down into the castle and out into the land.

Walking into the main hall of the castle we are greeted to what is basically a lake a huge expanse of deep green but clear water allowing you to see the down into the lake to a point but its to deep to see the bottom, this massive watery dome has lyra styled heads around its perimeter spirting the green water into the lake, dotted around are moss covered statues of Lyra all in different poses also spitting the water into the lake, all of them having the seaweed attached in the same places as hers all rising upwards, all of these statues sitting on deep grey stone pillars rising from the lake, around the centre area and near the back area off in the distance are a few pillars with spiral staircases and hallways that lead deeper into Lyra's castle once again all placed upon giant mossy stonework coming from the deep of the lake, all of these structures are connected by basic rope bridges that follower her aquatic them of the rope being a green water logged colour and the wood also being a dis-coloured water logged colour all warped and cracked from the water the ropes and planks covered in moss and barnacles and algie and of course seaweed.

As we move deeper in something feels off the place seems abandoned with not a single guard or demon to be found, we walk through hallways that fit the sewer theme, half-moon-shaped tunnels with stone paths on either side of the fountain's sewer water that flows through the middle of the hallways, with the same small wood bridges present if a crossing is needed, rooms like kitchens, guest bedrooms also following the run down sewer theme, the deep grey brickwork with moss and algie growing out of it, copper pipes running round and though the brickwork, holes in the walls locked via iron bars with the fountain's used water pouring from them down to the floor, with the water falling into small channels that go round the edge of the rooms flowing into the main rivers in the hallways that will eventually flow out to the glowing lake outside.

And as you move higher up the castle towards Lyra's chamber suddenly you cant move as if something has grabbed hold of you, you feel its cold slimly skin pressing against your back, the sensation move under your arm and up your chest to your neck, your neck feels as if its been pressed against razor sharp glass and it could be cut at any moment, you struggle to grasp the feeling trying to figure out what it is and then for that brief moment you gain a level of observation aura that is just enough to break though the curse of the envy gem and you see that the glass is not glass but the edge of a big green claw, and you realize why the castle is empty and why there is no guards there is no need Lyra's Master Gem is so strong that you will never know she is there till its to late and only now do you realize why it felt off as you ventured deeper in because that feeling was her standing next to you and following you the whole time, but there is no time to struggle as before you can move Lyra's scorpion stinger on her tail hits your arm, your body goes numb and you black out.

what happens after that who knows, with the power of the envy gems no one cares, you are worthless, you are a loser, just a background character that was always going to fade into the background like all things here, some say that the venom form Lyra's stinger eventually transforms you into one of the monsters of the dark ocean as they look like her, you losing yourself to the primal instincts of the monster you have become, some say you die and wake on the edge of the ring with all memories erased, how many times have you walked these forgotten shores and travelled this dark continent 5 times, 10 times, 100, 1000 who knows and who cares as long as you bear the green gem of envy in your chest no one will ever care about you and like your memories you, yourself, everything you are is doomed to be forgotten.
And while I leave Lyra's castle as you succumb to your fate I'm not sure but swear there was one more Lyra statue fountain than there was when we come in, it must just be my imagination, yes it must be after all I only came to pay my dear Lyra a visit and there was no one else with me.