The great mountain cut the sky with its sharp edge, like a great structure of stone and metal, its tip shone in the light of the twin stars. The party reached its base, crossing the great frozen lake and the wind-swept tundra.
“What are we looking for?” Asked Ishrin.
“Anything out of the ordinary.” Melina said.
Ishrin chuckled. “Well, that narrows it down very little.”
Melina was about to reply with a witty one-liner she had ready for the occasion when she saw Ishrin take out his sword. Looking at it without magic vision, the sword looked plain and boring, just a stick of sharp metal without ornament or embellishment.
“What is it?” Lisette asked, also seeing the Liù was on high alert.
“There is something moving. But I can’t tell where.” Ishrin said.
“Battle positions.” Melina commanded.
Immediately the party fell in battle stance. Melina was like a spear tip at the front, while the two weaker adventurers covered the flanks. They advanced slowly, scanning their surroundings with each step they took, careful not to make any noise or not to be seen by hidden enemies that might be lurking above. Before long they came across the creature Ishrin had sensed. It was a large beast, towering over them, grazing the grass on the side of what looked like a beaten dirt path.
They tried to get around it but failed, because despite the strong wind that drowned all noise the monster sensed them approaching and immediately its head snapped towards them. It was, by the looks of it and of its magic field, a Tier 12 monster. Ishrin looked at Melina, then at Lisette.
“Liù.” He said.
The pixie flew out of his pocket where she was hiding from the cold wind. As her chest began to light up, both Melina and Lisette disappeared in a flash. Lisette reappeared right behind the creature, twin swords already out and swinging. The monster had tracked her movement however, and its huge horned face was staring at Lisette as if she had never moved. From behind, seeing the gargantuan mass of muscles that was the creature, a mix between a rhino and a bird with feathers on its vestigial wings but hard skin with scales on the rest of it body, as it turned so impossibly fast despite its size was something else. However, none of the three were surprised.
Just as the tip of the thing’s horn was lighting up, Melina hit it with a blast of wind from the side, her magic empowered by the environment. She then dashed into it, slamming against its head and making its horn miss Lisette, who weaved below it with exceptional grace. Her blades failed to draw blood, as did Melina’s wind blade, but her dash left the monster stunned long enough for Liù to aim.
The pixie’s chest glowed like a small nova, then a beam erupted from her and cut a huge hole in the monster, which fell to the ground like a tree being cut down in a forest. The slam made dirty, half-frozen water stain the white snow that covered the rocks all around.
“Good job.” Melina said. “We can improve, but this was a very good first fight as a team. We distract, Ishrin uses the finisher.”
“There’s also other ways I can make myself useful.” Ishrin protested.
“Yes but… we need all the training we can get. Do you also need training?”
Ishrin shrugged. “I can do without.”
“Good. It’s settled. You only intervene if we need help.”
“Okay.” He said.
Then the window to his personal storage dimension, the void of stars where time didn’t flow and space didn’t matter, opened up. The portal was big, bigger than Melina had ever seen it, almost as big as the creature they just felled.
“Now, help me fit this thing in my inventory.”
There was a small path that they saw at the base of the mountain. At the sides of this stony path in the wet dirt barren trees stood like desiccated husks, half frozen and half dried, their grotesque shriveled branches obscuring the view above. The path went both up and down the mountain, towards a valley they couldn’t see.
“I sense movement below. More Tier 12s, five at the very least.” Ishrin said.
“We avoid, for now.” Melina said.
The other two nodded.
“By the way, amazing technique earlier.” Ishrin said.
“Huh?” Melina stammered. This was so out of the blue. “What do you mean?”
“I just wanted to compliment you. I saw you dashing against the monster, that was some masterful technique and very good control of the elemental energies. You too, Lisette! Impressive movement, fluid and never wasteful.”
The two girls fell silent. “You could see us?” Melina asked, face flushed.
“He is very powerful indeed,” Lisette added. Her voice was less cold than usual.
“This is not about me!” Ishrin protested.
“Yeah but… I could barely focus on the beast, and I was the one moving! How could you follow me with your eyes?”
“Well,” Ishrin frowned. “The beast followed your movements too.”
“But it’s a monster. They are not human. They have battle instincts.”
“Still. Good form. You aren’t as rusty as you said you were.”
“Gah. You!”
Ishrin smiled to himself. Beside him, the two girls too were smiling, their spirits lifted. Receiving a random compliment was something, but receiving praise from someone as powerful as Ishrin, in their eyes, was completely different. Melina could not see any possible hidden motive beyond him just telling her that she did a good job. As a party leader, she shouldn’t have felt this warm and fuzzy inside, but as a person she did. And she liked it. Lisette only took the compliment at face value: she did a good move and was told so by someone who could judge her competence. And this, in her eyes, was the highest form of praise.
The party decided to take the path leading up the mountain, only stopping for a moment to let Ishrin cast a ritual to stave off the encroaching cold. The chill air that was numbing their limbs and movements, the blaring noise of the wind that was deafening them, and the uncomfortable oppressive atmosphere of the realm all vanished in an instant.
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“This is crazy.” Melina commented.
“Indeed, it is very useful.” Lisette said.
Ishrin smiled. “Just a small trick.” He said.
“Trick? You…”
But then Melina was forced to fall silent. Because, right as the path took them on the far side of the mountain, below the planet that even now was hanging over their heads like a looming threat, they saw the mountain for what it really was.
Hollow.
A great hole was dug in the side of the mountain, revealing its interior. Although not much light reached there, Melina could see that the mountain was nothing but a hollow shell of rock built on a scaffolding of metal, wires, pipes and plastics. She didn’t know plastics, but the sleek surfaces were of an alien substance, only now and then torn and broken, with the damage increasing exponentially as she looked closer to the gaping hole in the side of the thing.
“It’s not natural.” Ishrin said. “Neither the mountain nor the damage was caused by natural processes. This looks like an attack from above.”
“Look.” Lisette said. “The twin stars are not visible from here.”
She was pointing up at the sky, a sky that was darker and more transparent now that the light of the stars was obstructed by the mountain, projecting a cone of shadow. Twin beams of orange and blue light could be seen coming from the sides of the mountain, the light illuminating the mist and snow in the air, making visibility drop to zero. The storm, it seemed, was strongest at the top of the mountain.
Something could be seen right behind the great planet above. A small prickle of light, a golden glow that blinked and twinkled like a tiny star.
“What is it?” Melina asked.
“I cannot see it clearly.” Lisette said.
“Me neither.” Ishrin said.
Their gaze turned to the mountain. Between the scaffolding were circuits and machines, wires hanging loosely from severed conduits, pipes hissing steam and electrical sparks flying through the air. Of all people in the party, only one had seen such things before.
“I don’t like this.” Ishrin said. “Technology of this scale tends to be insidious. We are not powerful enough.”
“Do we abort?” Melina asked.
“No.” Ishrin replied. “Just… let’s be careful.”
They proceeded with caution towards the small opening at the base of the hole, where the path they were walking on seemed to abruptly end. It turned out to be only an illusion, however, quickly revealed thanks to Ishrin’s magic vision and dispelled, and the party finally entered the alien complex.
Ishrin offered to cast a couple of rituals he knew to grant them protection and increased power before they proceeded further just in case they encountered something too dangerous for them. With technology, he explained, it was always hard to tell how powerful a machine was, since it operated on principles completely different from the magic all of them were used to. Even he, the most accustomed to technology of all thanks to his many travels and his friendships in other worlds, had to admit to being very ignorant when it came to that.
“Shouldn’t you save mana for when you need to fight?” Asked Melina.
“Well, the rituals would grant us passive bonuses for fighting. Plus, I want to do the Appropriation ritual before we venture any further.” Ishrin said.
“Yeah but…”
“Using my sword uses no mana, and the same goes for my telekinesis. Liù has her own magic supply. And I… I don’t know any magic beside rituals.”
Melina nodded. He should learn some magic, she thought. Maybe she can find him a teacher when they get back to Noctis.
“I’ll need an hour.” He said.
“Sure. Lisette, let’s sweep the perimeter and make sure he can draw his rituals in peace.”
Meanwhile, unseen by the trio of intruders, something was happening deep inside the maze of machinery of the mountain. Blasted as they were by the magic light coming from the twin stars above, the mountain’s titanium composite alloys at its tip registered some sort of change. An increase, as it was, in magic density. A machine whirred to life, drawing upon the electrical power a hidden generator was making using the decay of magical particles to fuel a chain reaction in its core.
The machine sensed, for the first time in a long time, that things were changing. The realm was shrinking. The intruders, for now that it was awake the machine could sense the intruders trying to make their way to the core, had triggered a collapse. Soon, the machine knew from its core programming, the realm would shrink, and its magic density increase to the point where all of its content were going to spill into the Prime Material. And then, its millennia old directive could be once again fulfilled.
Whomst among your own
Who went far and wide
Can find the lost spawn
And bring them back to light?
The lost spawn was the banished electromechanical being that was now awakening once again.
Also, but this was unknown both to the adventurers and to the machine that was the mountain itself, something else had been affected by the shrinking of the realm. The mountain could not see that, for it was on the side where the mighty attack from the Hero of old had damaged it and put it to sleep.
Still, change was happening. It all began with the first shrinking of the walls that held the realm together. It was a minute change, but it was felt by the creatures that dwelled in the valley. They began to grow restless, the small sensory organs at the tip of their horns were very sensible to changes in the magical density, almost as if they were made for the purpose of telling them when the time was right. And the time, although not right yet, was nearing.
The pack leader howled, the symbiotic crystal embedded in its horn lighting up with magic and allowing him to telepathically send the other to the rest of the pack. Soon, the whole valley was erupting in screams and howls, but they were all drowned by the wind, unable to reach the keen ears of the adventurers at the base of the mountain.
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