“Okay, there is a lot here that might be useful or relevant, but nothing that is worth us digging it out,” Rieka declared after she’d spent a handful of minutes with the other girls inspecting the damaged equipment and shattered tables.
“Something to leave behind for the scholars then. But! We did learn something important here,” Jane chattered, the mouse kin having regained some of her pep from before, when the trap on the door had nearly gotten her.
“Oh?” I asked, glancing back from where I’d been carefully manipulating the spell to cut away at the door’s lock even more.
Rather than just punch about willy-nilly with the corrosive power of the entropic energy, I had been carefully excavating the locking mechanism of the door by scrubbing the bead in regular intervals like it was a hovering eraser. This had left behind a hollow spot that was roughly round in shape and about the size of a small watermelon, all while wielding a pip of energy half the size of a marble.
Letting the entropy spell fall away as the girls approached me, I felt the same gust of energy swelling into my body as my mana supplies rapidly refilled.
Jane skidded to a stop, catching herself against my hip and blinking up at me with wide, sparkling eyes while her large ears wiggled happily at the knowledge she’d gained.
“Whatever happened here, it wasn’t peaceful. There are claw marks in the wreckage there, combined with scorches, distortion from heat, and other signs of fighting. It has the feel of a barricade, but why would a barricade be over there away from the door rather than by the entrance?” Jane rattled off in a rapid-fire patter. “It’s very odd, like someone had attacked from outside.”
I nodded in agreement with her summation thoughtfully.
“Another thing to consider is that, until I started working to open the door, it was locked shut, so something sealed this place up. Was it something that got out and locked the door behind it? Or was it like the Shadow Mountain facility that was sealed behind something?”
“Only way to find out is to delve deeper,” Kassandra added, settling in on my opposite side with her spell rod warily ready and aimed down the dark tunnel ahead of me.
“Yes, and if they had traps on the stairs, then there are likely traps here too. I want all of you to stay well back and let me lead. Shayla, can you send some lights down the tunnel for me?”
“What about internal lights? Shadow Mountain had those voice-activated ones,” Rieka suggested as Shayla conjured another brilliant sphere of light.
Shrugging in agreement with Rieka’s point, I faced into the hall and called out in a loud voice.
“Lights on.”
Everyone fell silent and listened for several long moments, but there was no response from the ruined halls. After waiting about ten seconds, I shrugged and gestured to Shayla to continue as she had been.
“Was worth a shot. At least it confirms this is different from the other facility. Well, more different at least,” Rieka said sheepishly. As Shayla’s light spell soared past me, I reached back to pull the wolf-eared princess to my side and plant a kiss on her cheek.
“It was an important point to check,” I reassured her and Rieka buried her face in my neck with a happy hum before wiggling free to ready herself.
I paused to check the tunnel now that it was better illuminated, and I was gratified to see that there wasn’t some kind of nameless horror lurking in the tunnel for us. The passage stretched along for several hundred feet as Shayla’s spell arced in a straight line down it before the orb impacted the ceiling, telling me that the tunnel was sloping downwards.
Shayla was quick to adhere several more lights to the wall, allowing us to easily see everything up to that distant light. Before she did more than that though, I held up a hand to stop her.
The curvy moth woman paused and blinked at me in confusion, her obsidian eyes reflecting multiple white points of light in a fascinating fractal pattern from her light spells.
“I want to check something, Shayla. Can you open up your spell rod so I can see the coins in it?” I asked gently.
Shayla hesitated for only a moment before she began to work the catches on the ornate scrollwork that would release the hinge holding the stacks of mana-imbued coins in the hollow center of the baton-shaped rod.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw both Rieka and Kassandra’s expressions harden, but Shayla had complied before either of them said anything. So I bent to inspect the stack of iron coins inside the rod. There were about half a dozen copper coins at the very tip as well, but the majority in the rod were iron.
Did I just ask something insensitive? Is this like digging through a woman’s purse without asking? I wondered as I studied the coins. The last dozen or so of the iron coins, the ones closest to the grip, were the dull color of plain iron.
Shayla was blushing as I studied the contents of the rod intently, but she let her gaze fall from my face to the spell rod and stared in confusion.
“What?” Shayla muttered, and the concern in her voice drew the other girls in to find out what she was talking about.
I didn’t speak, but indicated the dull coins. And right before our eyes, the dull iron began to take on the iridescent shimmer of mana once more. Within thirty seconds, all of the coins in the rod were shimmering with the same level of mana, showing none that were actually drained.
“How in the world did that happen?” Rieka breathed in astonishment. “Liam, did you take that ability to charge coins finally?”
“Nope,” I said, my lips turning up into a smile. “But something that I noticed earlier. The very air in here is highly charged with mana, so much so that my personal reserve is almost charging faster than I can use it.”
“That… that should be impossible,” Jane stuttered in awe before she began patting her belt furiously, checking her pouches and digging about.
The little scholar mouse found what she was looking for and scooped a handful of iron coins out of the pouch, each of them glittering with mana.
“These were drained! I put my drained coins in that pouch last night,” Jane muttered in excitement, her tail thrashing furiously behind her, the fluffy tip bounding off the walls and floor in quick order.
“Okay,” Rieka said firmly, dragging the girl’s attention onto herself immediately. “As far as I know, there are no records of high densities of ambient mana causing problems for people, but we all need to be careful. If any of you start feeling woozy or odd, speak up. Since the coins are regenerating so quickly, we don’t need to worry as much about conserving mana in here. In addition, any metals that can accept mana down here will likely be charged.”
“So keep an eye out!” Kassandra interjected with a happy bounce, punctuating the statement with a flourish of her spell rod. “We found a lot in the last facility. So if the same luck holds, we might be able to make out really well here too.”
“More to the point,” I said as the girls began shooting happy grins to each other. “If there is this much mana in the air, then it is highly likely that any magical traps in the area are still active. I don’t know what to look for with those, so I need you girls to be extra watchful.”
“We got it, Liam!” Jane chirped, bouncing on her heels excitedly. “I desperately want to know what is causing the air to be so full of mana. If we could find some way to replicate it for the academy, then training mages wouldn’t be so expensive!”
“A good goal to have,” I said with a laugh, lightly mussing Jane’s hair. The gesture made her squeak in surprise and blush, but the mouse kin woman didn’t flee, so I called that a win.
Heading down the tunnel, I led the way ahead of the girls by about twenty feet. They moved in a diamond formation behind me, with Shayla in the back and Rieka in the lead of the diamond, while Jane took the right side and Kassandra the left.
As we traveled, I made sure to sweep the stone of the tunnel with pulses of energy from Manipulate Elements on low power, simply feeling about for any irregularities in the stone that would indicate traps. The stone itself still refused my attempts to alter it, with the power I sent out simply skating off the stone like water rolling down a hill. The walls and floor were made up of tightly fitted stone blocks that were very regular in shape, so any variance was easy to spot.
I found the first trap roughly a dozen yards down the tunnel, one of the cut stones that made up the floor was slightly raised and I paused to indicate for the girls to stop and wait for me to check it.
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Unlike the door above, I couldn’t penetrate the stone to find out what lay beyond it, and I was unable to detect an opening where some kind of danger might come from—like the blades from the wall earlier—so I used a lump of white chalk that Rieka had provided me with to mark the edges of the stone so the girls could avoid it.
I could have used the entropy magic to just melt the stone away and try to disable it, but I felt like that had too much of a chance of triggering the trap instead. Burning through the door had taken some effort and put pressure on the door, so it was best to just avoid them.
This continued on down the hallway, sensing for and marking out the traps that I could. I didn’t get them all, triggering one that shot a spear out of the wall at waist-high when the trigger block was flush with the floor. Thankfully, the spear came from the left and the natural iron-scales on my skin shed the blow without a problem.
The tunnel would have taken probably ten minutes to traverse at a normal speed, but with us creeping along and having to pause every hundred feet or so to mark out another trap, it was far slower going.
“There has to be something that could disable these traps. There are more here than most nobles put on their vaults,” Kassandra grumbled as she carefully wound around a section of the floor that I’d outlined with chalk to indicate that it was dangerous.
“Maybe,” Rieka agreed from her spot on the other side of the patch. The trigger blocks filled most of the tunnel, so the girls were taking it one at a time. “But if they are smart, the method to disable the traps is on the inside of the facility.”
“That or they are just bastards,” Jane grumbled as she trotted in Kassandra’s wake once the dwarf lamia’s long tail was safely coiled past the blocks. “Can’t ignore that idea.”
“Fair point,” Kassandra sniggered, shifting to hold a hand out to catch Jane when the mouse kin nearly tripped as she bounded by, but Jane recovered easily and landed beside me with a quiet pat noise.
Shayla was silent as she worked past the trapped floor, her wings flaring occasionally to help her balance while she moved slowly, something that I approved of since Shayla was the only one of my girls that got anywhere near my size.
Once she was past the danger, Shayla gave me a small but proud smile, her antennae wiggling happily over her head before bopping me on the cheek lightly as she stepped past to flick another light spell into the darkness ahead of us.
This spell, unlike the others, only traveled a short distance into the dark before it stopped abruptly, impacting on a solid wall of heavily reinforced iron that blocked off the passage. The wall was pierced with a single, solid-looking door that had the appearance of a submarine hatch with how it looked like it would seal perfectly to the wall if it had been closed.
But the door wasn’t shut.
It hung about a third of the way open, and the light that Shayla had sent down there was stuck to the wall just above and to the left of the door. That light showed that the wall was solid and undamaged, all except for the bottom of the wall below the door, where dark stains still clung to the dull iron.
“Okay, now it’s getting eerie again,” Kassandra supplied helpfully into the silence.
Her words had the effect of breaking the sudden stillness of the moment and I snorted in amusement. Focusing, I sent another ripple of mana outwards, feeling for the layout of this room and what lay beyond. I didn’t sense any issues, but the far side of the door felt like it was heavily damaged with many scratches and scrapes inscribed on it.
Moving carefully, we approached until I was within ten feet and the girls kept twenty feet back from me. Using my right arm, I adjusted my Shape-Shifting until it was long enough to swing the door fully open, revealing the back of the door to the girls.
“Oof,” Kassandra grunted and I glanced back to see her squinting at the doorway. “That is a lot of runes… I’m really glad that door is open right now. Liam, do NOT lock us in, please?”
Turning my attention back to the door, I focused and realized that the hundreds of tiny scratches I’d thought were damage, actually were intentionally placed there, because they spelled out various concepts that I recognized from when Kassandra had been working on runes before. Things like ‘protection,’ ‘durability,’ ‘vengeance,’ and ‘fire,’ were all present and repeated in layers.
Moving carefully, I entered the room first to confirm it was clear, high-stepping to clear the bottom edge.
The stain that marked the underside of the door was thicker on this side, pooling all around the door in a large, misshapen puddle shape. But as my armored feet settled down onto it, I felt only stone under me.
What was it that the girl’s said? Blood can rot away, but it still can leave stains as the pigments and trace minerals will simply sit there as they aren’t organic? I thought while scanning the room carefully.
Much like the area at the base of the stairs, this room was utterly trashed. Tables lay in broken fragments all over, with shattered bits of glass or twisted hunks of metal. But unlike further back in the ruins, or even in the Shadow Mountain facility, this area was untouched by the passage of time. No corrosion marked the metal or stone, not a single bit of rot marked the wood. The only sign of the passage of time was the fact that the puddle under my feet—which I was almost entirely sure had been blood—was dry as a bone. But despite so much blood, there were no bodies here.
Time holds no sway here, I thought and felt a chill run down my spine. That chill settled into my reservoir as the mana I’d just expended returned to me.
“Liam?” Kassandra called from the hallway, breaking me out of my distraction.
“Come on through, just be careful. The floor is kind of gross,” I called back.
“Used to that. Lamia, remember?” Kassandra called back playfully before wiggling over the door, her sinuous body making the passage easy, though she wrinkled her nose at the floor before turning to study the wall and door behind her while the other girls all trooped in.
“This looks like a welcoming area, or some kind of checkpoint,” Rieka muttered, coming in to stand on my left side with her spell rod held out.
“Agreed. I’d put money on it being a checkpoint, though. Given the location and the doors over there,” I said, gesturing to the far side of the rectangular room.
Two doors like the first hatch were set into the wall, both hanging open as well. More stains marked the floor and base of the wall near them. The other thing that made me think this was a checkpoint was the particular style of the wreckage. Just like the girl’s had said, there was definite combat damage to the twisted metal and wood, but I could still make out large panels that reminded me of dividers or actual barricades, rather than something like someone just tipping a table over and hoping for the best.
“Oh sweet gods.”
Jane’s sharp exclamation brought me about in a tight spin to find her and Kassandra peering at the wall intently, though both of them were white as sheets.
“What?” Rieka demanded, the princess’ voice sharp in annoyance.
“We need to prop that door open, we cannot take a chance of it swinging shut,” Kassandra declared sternly, turning to lock eyes with the princess. “I don’t know about the other traps in the tunnel, but if that door is closed, it is set to project enough fire magic to fill that tunnel’s entire length with fire. There are several other rune clusters in here that I’m not understanding, but that one scares the life out of me.”
“We just have to be careful of the traps though,” Shayla said, though the moth woman was also rapidly growing pale.
“No, Shayla,” Jane cut her friend off with a glance, her tail laying limp on the ground behind her for once. “It’s not a trap. It simply does it.”
Silence fell on us for a long moment before I broke it.
“Got it. Give me a second.”
I strode over to the nearest pile of twisted metal and fished out a hunk of iron plate that had several large scores in it that looked like claw marks. Bracing myself, I reinforced my limbs and wrenched the two foot plate into a wedge shape before hurrying back out to place that on the far side of the door and then kicked it hard enough that the edges of the plate wedged between the stones of the wall at the base, pinning the door open.
“There,” I said with a satisfied nod. “That’s as secure as I can make it for now. Come on, let's check the rubble for information and continue on. No closing any doors without confirming that they are safe to do so, okay?”
The girls gave serious nods and we started working through the room.
Moving slowly, I checked for further traps, but this anteroom appeared to be clean of them. With that confirmed, I turned my girls loose to check things over.
Kassandra and Jane set about copying down the runes and enchantments on the back of the door, scribbling furiously while they talked in low voices. Rieka and Shayla worked side by side to comb through the wreckage. While Rieka muttered to herself, Shayla had her sketchpad out and was quickly drawing a map that I guessed was a recreation of the room as best as they could guess.
Me, I stood watch between the two other doors after repeating the same ‘open and wedge’ maneuver that I’d done before. The door on the left showed no runes at all, while the one on the right had another mess of scratches and inscriptions on the back of it, but not as many as the main door. Both of them opened into smaller rooms with blood stained floors and another set of doors each.
Reminds me of an airlock or something, I thought silently while studying them.
I continually flared Manipulate Element in order to check for changes, but it just kept reporting to me that the walls, floor, and ceiling were all saturated with energy and resistant to my attempts to alter them.
Should I upgrade the Manipulate Element ability and try then? It would help if that could let me disable traps. I considered the thought for a moment before ultimately discarding it. There was no way to know that it would help, and I wanted to hold the SP I had in reserve. My Grant Power, Ward Companion, and Dimensional Pocket were all nearing mastery, and I wanted to be able to upgrade them first and foremost.
The girls didn’t take too long to exhaustively search the area, we knew that would be something we could do later once we confirmed that there weren’t any threats lurking about. The stillness in the air and the sense of a place lost to time had me believing that we wouldn’t find anything, but I refused to take chances, and my girls all agreed, based on their actions.
The four of them converged after a handful of minutes, coming together to join me between the two doors.
“Well, that confirmed my suspicions,” Rieka sighed as she settled into my side naturally. I didn’t wrap my arm around her, as I needed to remain wary, but it was good to have her there. The other three soon mirrored Rieka in finding a spot that they could touch or lean on me for comfort.
“Which were?” Kassandra asked when the princess didn’t elaborate on her own.
“Whatever caused the damage to these barricades?” Rieka gestured to the piles of twisted metal and shattered wood. “It didn’t come from outside. All of the damage is on the faces that would be directed towards the inside of the facility.”
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