The aspected mana crystals were packed away into bags by the girls and carefully labeled. I just pulled the unaspected mana crystals into my Dimensional Pocket for now. I knew I could turn them into SP or burn them to boost the mastery rating of my skills, but doing something like that in the middle of a dangerous area was dumb, so I would handle it later.
Instead, the sixteen of the clear crystals vanished into my ability to be dealt with later.
It took a bit of shuffling to make space in Rieka’s dimensional pouch, but we got everything tucked away. I could tell that Shayla and Jane were both excited at the sheer wealth that they had tucked away and waiting for them now. Rieka and Kassandra were grim though, clearly having realized how big of a target it would make us if someone found out before we got home.
While the girls packed things away, I zipped off a quick message to the queen using my Contact Contracted Companion power.
Queen Coldeye, we have confirmed the presence of a human-era ruin and secured additional treasures. I’m alerting you of the fact we have eight more palladium coins as I am sure your treasury will wish to secure them. They are currently in my possession and will remain there for security until you are ready for the exchange under the advice of your daughter. We have not finished scouring this location, but expect to have it secured and ready for hand over to your scholars within the same timeline.
I received an answer within a minute while I was leading the girls back out to the first room, which made me smirk.
I appreciate the update, Liam. Please give my congratulations to my daughter’s team. This is above and beyond my hopes. I will devise appropriate rewards for them and for you as well. I would order you to keep them safe, but something tells me that it would be an exercise in pointlessness, considering how you act and react to threats to their persons already.
“Queen Gemma has been informed of the palladium and is already preparing a reward for you ladies,” I said aloud as we reached Kassandra’s runestone barrier by the other door.
“What? How?” Jane exclaimed with an excited bounce, her eyes wide and sparkling.
“His communication power,” Kassandra reminded her small friend dryly. “He’s in contact with the queen to pass information, remember?”
“Oh!” Jane blinked furiously and she shook her head, laughing quietly at herself. “Sorry, I’m just kind of out of it after that. This is going to be so big!”
I smothered the desire to turn her statement into an innuendo, and then hushed Kassandra with a look when I saw my dwarf lamia turning to say something, amusement sparkling in her eyes.
“Focus, ladies. We still need to clear half the ruins before we can leave here. We haven’t found any records of what they were doing here, so we need to be extra careful in this area. Is everyone ready? Coins recharged or exchanged?”
“I wanted to say something about that,” Shayla said, drawing attention to herself at the back of the group. Her antenna wiggled slowly through the air and she held up her spell rod, displaying that some of the coins in her rod were still drained and dark. “I think the charge in the air is clearing out?”
This got all of the girls to check their spell rods, with Kassandra confirming that hers was mostly empty still. She’d apparently drained the rod entirely healing me and only a smattering of the coins in it were showing a charge.
Pushing Manipulate Element out again, I could still feel the mana radiating from the stones and resisting my influence, but by watching my regeneration I could confirm that the density of mana in the air was lower.
“I think she’s right. It feels like it’s slowing down for me too. Either we’ve burned through it, or it’s leaking out to the surface now that the door above is open?”
“That’s far more likely,” Rieka said with a sigh and a nod. “I almost want us to seal up the doors to keep the density high, but it’s better to let it naturally dissipate to make it safer here. Maybe the traps will deactivate if the ambient mana drops enough?”
“We can hope,” Kassandra muttered as she quickly swapped her coins out so that her rod was fully charged again.
Once they were set and Kassandra had disabled her runestone barrier, we started down the second hallway. This one was far more heavily damaged, with large rents in the walls, floors, and shattered furniture everywhere. The airlock room had the metallic plates torn up in several places and the second door leading out had been twisted off its housing and tossed into the corner.
Unlike the other side, this airlock opened into a long, wide hallway. It was about twenty feet across and ran for a good hundred feet before terminating in another shattered and destroyed barricade. No doors opened off either side, and from the looks of the wreckage in the hallway, something had torn its way out of the facility and ripped down several artificial walls set in the corridor.
The girls kept to the previous formation, allowing me to move ahead of them and test the floor for different traps that might be waiting for us. That didn’t stop me from triggering some of them, since not all of the traps were mechanical in nature.
I’d made it halfway down the tunnel, having resumed my iron-scaled form but swapping over to the dactyl-clubs of a mantis shrimp as a weapon, when the stone plate I’d stepped on glowed in reaction to my presence. Nothing about the stone had felt out of place when I checked it before, so I threw myself backwards out of the way moments before a flash of fire revealed the low-slung body of a wolf whose fur smoked and flames danced along the strands.
Before the creature could even react, a bolt of lightning caught it in the snout and a spear of ice slammed into its chest. The fire-wolf was knocked flying down the hallway before dissolving into a cloud of mana with a choking noise.
“Summoning traps,” Jane hissed in dismay. “This is going to get dangerous quickly if there are more of those. We need to find out what floor stones are safe to walk on.”
“Got it,” I replied, picking myself back up and shifting my left arm into the quick-moving segmented scorpion tail once more.
Using the tail, I rapidly probed the flagstones underfoot, checking for any more traps like the first one. The girls quickly got out hunks of chalk and mapped out the path that we’d taken to get this far before following after me.
I triggered four more summoning traps within ten feet of the first one, showing that we’d gotten rather lucky so far. We also confirmed after the fact that throwing stones onto the trigger plates wouldn’t set them off, it required a person.
Each of the new traps summoned some smaller elemental creature. A serpent that swam through the air and spat poison, a water-dripping bird that could project cutting jets of pressurized water, another wolf that was armored with plates of stone, and a dog-sized lizard that breathed gouts of fire.
None of the creatures got far, as my girls were keeping careful watch and if I didn’t eliminate the creatures, they didn’t make it far from me.
“These feel so ineffective to me,” Shayla grumbled as she edged slowly through the designated safe route. “They aren’t that dangerous to someone who knows to look for them. They take, for most, one spell to bring down.”
“Yes, but someone who doesn’t have magic would struggle more. And with how many traps there are, I am betting that they intend for one summon to chase the triggering person onto another trap, and be overwhelmed by numbers,” Rieka suggested as she followed close.
“That’s just devious,” Jane said in awe, bending down to put an X of white chalk on the stone under foot. Her tufted tail flicked overhead, helping her balance while she worked. “Something I will have to remember if I ever have to design defenses. Quantity is a quality all its own. Not against our Liam, but still!”
I glanced back at Jane as the mouse girl talked, the complement making me smile appreciatively. That was the only reason I saw the chunk of the wall beside her glow when her tail brushed against it.
Reacting instinctively, I spun and launched myself through the air just as Jane stood upright. The little scholar’s eyes grew wide as she saw my armored form hurtling her way, but to her credit she didn’t try to get away from me. After the traps earlier, Jane knew that there would be only one reason I’d be throwing myself at her, so she met me in midair.
Her small weight smacked into my chest and I scooped her close to me as the flare of energy from the wall lashed out, forming into a massive spider made of stone that pounced to where she had been standing.
Instead of hitting the mouse kin woman though, it slammed into my back with an angry chitter and I felt claws scraping over my iron scales. Snarling in anger, I seized on the first method of defense that I could think of.
Foot-long spines erupted from my back, each one sizzling with entropic energy for a bare second as they perforated the monster clinging to me. I dropped the elemental effect almost immediately, not wanting to risk it spreading to the rest of my body as I landed on my shoulder with Jane clutched to my chest in a dive.
Rolling, I triggered two more of the summoning traps in my tumble, but I was more focused on keeping Jane safe. My girls were quick and eliminated the summoned creatures before they were able to get their bearings.
I skidded onto a third trap, clutching Jane to my chest with my left arm that had shifted into the massive shield-claw I used. My right arm lashed out with the dactyl club there to crush a smoldering scorpion that looked like it had been made of barely hardened lava. Taking half a breath to get my bearings, I skipped over to the marked area the girls had been in and quickly checked the room over.
“What the hell happened?” Rieka demanded, now ahead of me.
“Walls are trapped,” I panted, still holding Jane tight to my chest. “Her tail tapped the wall. It was light but it did happen. I need all of you to be very careful now. Shayla, keep your wings in tight. Rieka, your tail too.”
“Understood, Liam.” Shayla said, her wings fluttering before folding behind her neatly. Rieka paled but nodded in agreement, her tail falling limp to trail behind her.
“Thank you, Liam.” Jane’s voice was a muffle squeak from where she was pressed to my chest and I relaxed my left arm to peek down at her. She was staring up at me and trembling faintly, but looked to be fine.
“Who would trap the walls?” Kassandra demanded, fire in her tone as she doubled back to come check on us, her spell rod held high and ready to utilize the limited healing magic she knew if we were injured.
“Someone who desperately wanted to protect this hallway and what’s on the other side of it,” Rieka growled. “Come on, I’m willing to bet whatever disables these traps is on the other side of the hallway. Single file girls, be ready for anything.”
I gave Jane a bit more time to calm down before I released the little mouse girl. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she scampered over to Kassandra while wrapping her long tail around her own waist, tucking the end under the length to secure it.
The rest of the passage went easier. I triggered another six traps on the floor, eliminating half the monsters before my girls could, but the other three were knocked out with either blades of wind, bolts of lightning, or rays of burning light. Kassandra kept her eyes on the walls and ceiling in case anyone accidentally brushed against them and triggered another trap there.
Reaching the barricade of wreckage and the shattered door that lay there, we all breathed a sigh of relief. We hadn’t found any further traps in the last twenty feet of the hall and happily proceeded through the door.
Another airlock lay there, just as damaged as the first one, but opened into a familiar room. A massive brass circle was set in the floor with ancient and faded inscriptions for a summoning circle drawn in chalks, waxes, and other mediums. Tables for notes, records, and supplies were spread around the edges of the room, though they now lay in wrecked piles. Blood also liberally stained the walls and floor in this room, partially obscuring the drawings on the floor.
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A entryway was set into one side of the room that had the same submarine-style door on it, but the top half had been torn off and the hinges shattered, leaving it crumpled to one side. A sign sat above the door that I squinted to read.
“Control Room,” I murmured aloud and pointed to the door before going back to scanning the room.
The last time we’d been in one of these larger experimental summoning rooms, that entropic creature had been lurking in the darkness. While the room was trashed and showed even more signs of combat than I’d seen in the Shadow Mountain facility, this room still felt ominous.
“Let’s go,” Rieka ordered and we trooped around the edge of the massive summoning circle.
While we walked, Kassandra and Jane kept glancing towards the circle and I could hear them murmuring what they were able to make out from the mess that had been made of the room. I let them talk while I watched for any more stray traps, but nothing twigged on my senses beyond the fact this room had a higher density of mana than the other rooms did.
Dipping my head into the control room, I found a series of levers and diagrams that were beyond complex. When I confirmed there were no traps present, I turned the girls loose on it to figure out what needed to be done to disable the traps. My mental scores were good, but I was missing the grounding on magical diagrams to really understand what was on the walls in here.
Jane and Kassandra had been talking in whispers up until I called out to them, but they both rushed to assist me with Jane blushing furiously as she hurried in Kassandra’s wake.
“Jane and Kass? Can you two take a look in here to see what you can figure out? I can’t make heads or tails of these diagrams. Rieka and Shayla, if you two want to help them, go for it. It’ll be a little tight though.”
“It’s fine, Liam. I’d rather stay out here and keep watch,” Shayla said shyly, scooting over so she could lean into my back, her right antenna lightly stroking the side of my face.
“Same,” Rieka sighed, glancing around the room with more than a bit of trepidation. “I can’t see any threats out here, but being back in a room like this is giving me all sorts of anxiety.”
“Me too,” I agreed with a snort. “The air is thicker with mana in here, too. I wonder if it’s left over from whatever destroyed the place?”
“That would make sense,” Shayla said quietly, her antenna continuing its affectionate wiggling. “If we take into account the directions of the wreckage then whatever destroyed this facility originated here. The traps up to this point would indicate that this was the highest-security location.”
“But to what end?” Rieka asked, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning sidelong against the wall beside me, opposite from Shayla. Her ears flicked thoughtfully while she considered for a long moment. “What was it they were studying here? It looks like, despite whatever preservation magic was in place, any written documents are long gone. There aren’t any corpses here either. Sure, we got a load of useful supplies out of the storerooms, but the secondary score of these facilities is to find information.”
“It’s obvious that this facility was secret, they heavily trapped the door and concealed it. But there was a map leading to this location inside the Shadow Mountain facility, like it was something that could be visited easily,” I added to the conversation as well, voicing my own concerns.
“That’s likely the building above. I bet that it was an academy or some place of study, while this facility was the secret section. Shadow Mountain was pretty high-security though. Those barricaded walls, the tram, the guards. Not to mention the underground entrance.” Rieka ticked off ideas as she talked and I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
“But they were both working on some kind of summoning experiment,” Shayla added on. “We didn’t really find much to confirm what that experiment was, beyond studying summoned creatures in Shadow Mountain and here… I’m guessing they were working on discerning formulas for specifically targeting summons?”
I was about to add to Shayla’s idea when Kassandra gave an excited yelp from inside the control room and there was a loud clack of metal on metal.
“Got it!” Kassandra crowed as I tensed to hurry in after them if something was wrong. “Traps are disabled, and that includes the one on the front door. Jane, can you write up a tag we can hang on the lever and label it? I don’t want to risk someone accidentally turning this back on.”
“On it,” Jane said and there was a rustling of parchment a moment later before Kassandra slithered into sight.
My dwarf lamia was a mess. Her face was smutched with dirt, dust, and blood and her normally lustrous mane of red curls was disheveled. She had changed into fresh clothes after drying off, but those were already covered in dust and dirt from moving through the ruins. Tear-tracks still marked her face and her eyes were dark with exhaustion, but she smiled proudly.
“Knew you’d get it figured out, Nugget,” I said proudly and caught her up in a hug, hoisting her small torso higher so I could stand upright and kiss her like she deserved. Kassandra cooed into the kiss and wiggled happily in my arms, wrapping hers around my neck.
“Jane got most of it, I just figured out which lever linked to the traps first,” Kassandra admitted when she finally gave up my lips, turning to smile over her shoulder at the equally disheveled mouse kin woman.
“You still figured it out first,” Jane said with a smile and a dismissive wave, her tail twitching happily despite still being knotted around her waist.
“Only because you recognized so much of the diagram,” Kassandra counted.
“Then you both deserve congratulations then,” I interjected and squatted to set Kassandra down on the ground once more. She gestured to Jane to get over here, grinning.
The small scholar hesitated for a moment before hurrying over and throwing herself into my arms, hugging me tightly around the neck and burying her head in my shoulder.
I squeezed Jane close with a smile, happy that she was comfortable enough around me for a hug like this. The wiggling of her rounded ears tickled the side of my face, but the sensation of the full-figured mouse girl clinging to me was just too adorable to let something that small bother me.
When Jane finally got her fill and separated, we all took a moment to gather ourselves. Unsurprisingly, it was Rieka who was ready to get to work first.
“Okay, we need to confirm the traps are all disabled now and then we can start studying the facility. Liam and I will head into the hall to check that first. Then we need to go over this room and look for clues. We’ve got a few days before we need to head back to the town, and I want to fully study this area, as well as the buried building on the other side.”
“Got it!” Kassandra gave Rieka a smartass salute, sticking her tongue out to further it. “I doubt we are going to find anything here though, sadly. Whatever hell came through this place took everything with it.”
“Still, we need to look to be sure,” Rieka asserted and the girls gave nods of understanding.
Checking the hallway was easy enough, since I knew which stones I’d stepped on to trigger the various summons. I checked half a dozen to make sure, but none of them reacted. So I shifted my fingers into claws and dug one of the stone plates up, cracking the others around it before flipping the one that had triggered the spell over.
Revealed underneath the stone was a complex array of a summoning circle and runes both on the bottom of the stone, and top of the one underneath it, along with a cable of copper that ran through the whole thing to conduct power to the ritual when it was triggered.
“Well… that might be worth a fortune by itself,” Rieka mumbled as she studied the ring. “If mother can find a way to power and set these up in the castle. Would make for quite an interesting last line of defense.”
“I’d not recommend it,” I countered, gesturing for us to head back to the other girls in the larger summoning room. “I know we eliminated them quickly, but those creatures acted erratically. I doubt they had any directions or guidance to them, too likely that they’d attack friends as well as enemies.”
“Still, it might be something we could work out. I guarantee that if she can figure it out, mother would love to have something pre-prepared to summon you to her if she needs it. Like have it worked into her throne and linked to a carving she could press in an emergency.” Rieka hummed thoughtfully, her tail bouncing back and forth as she walked at my side.
The princess jumped when I gently stroked the fluffy mass of her tail after it bounced off my hip a few times before melting into my side with a sigh. I’d let my defensive shifts fade away, transferring back into just a pair of pants that I conjured from my Dimensional Pocket ability.
“Well if she can work one out, then she’s welcome to use it. If it helps reassure you that she’s better protected then I’m happy to have it,” I said with a shrug and squeezed her against my side, getting a happy hum from Rieka.
We arrived back in the other room to find our three companions all standing in the back corner of the room, studying the wall intently. Shayla was the first one to spot us returning and gestured for us to join them. Jane saw the larger woman move and turned to wave as well.
“Liam! Shayla found this spot on the wall that looked odd, can you check it with your earth magic?”
“Sure. What’s off about it, Shayla?” I called back, releasing my grip on Rieka so the two of us could trot over.
“It was the pattern of the wall. Starting here, the stones changed patterns and then resumed over here. It’s subtle, but the change of pattern caught my eye,” Shayla said shyly as we arrived.
Studying the wall where they’d pointed it out, I was able to pick out the spot where it transitioned just as they said. If they hadn’t said something and we didn’t have one of Shayla’s bright lights right above us, I’d have missed the shifting in the pattern.
Holding out a hand, I began to to project the mana into Manipulate Element but as soon as the mana drained from my pool, I felt a surge of energy come from that section of wall.
“All of you need to back up, right now,” I ordered, gesturing for them to step back from the section of wall.
My girls didn’t hesitate, immediately shifting to take up positions that would put them safely behind me so I could focus and standing with their spell rods at the ready. The laxity that had settled in with the confirmation the traps were disabled was gone.
“What do you sense, Liam?” Rieka asked as I forced the spell out and felt it rebound off the stones themselves. But oddly enough something tugged at the spell and drew my attention between the stones.
“Something is very off, I think this is a concealed door,” I muttered and followed the sensation.
Manipulate Element flowed around the stones and outlined a roughly rectangular shape. I didn’t sense any mechanical portions running into the door shape, just a set of hinges in the wall and a latch. Since I was able to reach the other side of the door, I focused on feeling for more traps like the electrical one that had tried to fry me.
Seconds ticked back as I combed the thick bricks for any signs of danger, but after almost a minute I gave up.
“Feels clear, but this is definitely a concealed door,” I said after a long moment. I could tell there was something on the other side of it, as the space behind the rocks was hollow in the shape of the door, but what it was I could not tell.
“Be very careful, Liam,” Shayla asked and I nodded.
Reaching out with my Manipulate Element ability again, I tapped into the entropy once more, thinning it down into a blade that was as wide as a credit card and most of a foot long. I slid that blade between the stones where I sensed the latch, being more subtle than I had in the past.
There was a quiet sizzling noise and then the door popped free of the latch and swung forward, the difference in pressure causing it to react. Hooking my fingers in the edge of the door, I gave it a tug and pulled open the hidden doorway.
As soon as the door swung free, I was hit full in the face with another blast of concentrated mana as it rushed out into the room, but that wasn’t what had my attention. Instead, that was locked on what lay on the other side of the doorway.
Sitting in a cubby that was about five feet across was a bizarre apparatus that looked like a large funnel linked into a mixed metal and glass tank. Runes glowed all over the tank, shimmering with a familiar neon purple light. The tank was about the size of a gallon milk jug, but entirely empty save for a pale-gray hand hovering in midair, severed at the wrist. It appeared to be suspended by the enchantments I could see engraved on the container. Above the large funnel was an elaborate machine hooked to a glass bulb full of pale gray sand.
What was more concerning though was the hose connected to the bottom of the container that was unhooked from where it connected to another box. It appeared to have rotted away from the clamp and was just lying on the ground. My concern centered on was the billow of mana I could feel washing out of the end of that hose and into the room.
As I watched, the machine shifted and a single grain of sand dropped down into the funnel, sliding down and falling into the jar to land on the chip of bone, where it sizzled and puffed out of existence before more mana flooded out of the bottom of the jar.
The sound of that sizzle and the reaction told me all I needed to know, and I immediately backed up, pushing the door closed.
“Nope. Ladies that is off limits, I am sorry.” I said while closing my eyes. “I have to contact the DSR about this. It’s better if you four all pretend you didn’t see what is in there.”
“What is it?” Jane asked curiously, clearly unable to help herself.
“Better not to know,” Rieka answered for me. “If Liam is this firm on it, just trust him.”
“Fair, sorry about that. I just couldn’t help but be curious,” Jane apologized before the girls started working on studying the rest of the room to let me do what I needed to do.
I was focused on the message I was composing while leaning on the door to keep it shut, but I felt a surge of love well up in my heart for all four of them at their understanding and trust in me.
Liam
Cari? I need to report another DSR related issue here. I already destroyed a summoning circle tuned for entropic creatures, but I just found some sort of apparatus that is utilizing what looks like a hand from something in your neck of the woods. It’s dropping bits of sand on it and the machine spits out a billow of mana. The whole thing appears to be self-perpetuating, but the runes on the jar are the same color as the notices I get from the System.
My daemon was always quick to respond, usually within minutes or seconds when I contacted her. I’d chalked it up to a mixture of my being her only case and Cariad wanting to give a good first impression since she was still new to the Dimensional Service and Repair. But I was counting on that now, since my gut was telling me that she would want to know about this, and immediately. Which was confirmed by her message a moment later.
Cariad
Liam, for the love of all things you hold dear, do not touch that apparatus. About fifteen seconds before your message arrived, our entire department went into high alert when the System sent a priority message for urgent containment. I just checked the records and you are standing inside the alert zone. I’ll be there as soon as I can along with Mr. Cerebaton and a containment team. Keep your girls away from it, please?
Liam
Understood.
Opening my eyes once more, I cleared my throat to get the girls’ attention.
“Ladies, we are going to have some visitors in a minute. They are going to be rather intimidating, but they are on our side. Please come over here and stand with me?”
The girls didn’t even question my request, dropping whatever they were doing and hurrying over to me. Which was good, because they had no sooner arrived at my side than I finally got to see how it was that Cariad and Cerebaton managed to be so sneaky when they arrived and left.
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