Chapter 7: [Prologue 7]: Trials

"The stone..." whispered Kaion as he fished into his pocket and pulled out the stone that the Light Mage had given him. It was glowing ever so faintly, just enough for him to make out within the pitch-black darkness of the cave.

Kaion took a step forward and the stone glowed with a slightly brighter intensity.

"This'll work," Kaion smiled, before continuing on his journey, one hand holding the stone, while the other traced the wall. The deeper in he walked, the brighter and warmer the stone became. There were instances where the mine tunnels separated into multiple branches, though using the stone as an indicator, Kaion followed the paths that made the stone glow brightest.

Soon enough the stone was glowing just as bright as a torch would, and Kaion was able to see what was drawn on the map.

"Figures," Kaion sighed in defeat. Even though he could now see the map, it wasn't as if he knew where exactly in the cave he was, so it was as good as nothing.

[Well, now that I have the stone to guide me, I don't really need this,] thought Kaion. After stuffing the map back into his pocket he began surveying his surroundings. The tunnel's walls in this section were vastly different from that of the beginning section. These walls were smoother, like they had been made with some type of machine, or a refined magic spell. Kaion took it as a good indicator that he was close, and continued his journey.

***

"How far is this place," Kaion whispered to himself. It had been about 4 hours since he entered the cave, and his feet were beginning to hurt. He was barefoot, and the rocks in the cave weren't the most forgiving if you stepped on them -which even with cautious steps he managed to do a few times.

As Kaion continued walking, his steps now more like limps, he noticed strange patterns emerging on the walls. They were like imprints, wavy lines within the walls converging at some point out of view. The stone seemed to glow brighter in the direction they went, so Kaion followed them posthaste.

"This has to be the place," Kaion whispered in awe. The wavy lines all came together to create the image of what looked like a massive magic symbol, with a hole at its center.

"I just place this here..." as Kaion brought the stone close to the hole in the wall, streams of brilliant blue light jumped from the stone to the wall, feeding power to the lines that depicted the symbol. Once Kaion pressed the stone in, the whole wall came to life with a bright blue energy.

"What was that?" whispered Kaion as he heard the silent whirring of some unseen machine, before the wall began rumbling. Kaion began moving back, afraid that the tunnel might collapse. However, a moment later, he saw that it wasn't the case. The wall in front of him began cracking at the boundaries of the massive symbol, before sinking in and moving to the side.

Kaion was speechless, though he had seen his fair share of minor magic back in the slums, he had never seen such... unique sorcery. The opening led to an odd-looking room. Odd because it contained contraptions that seemed out of this world.

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Blueprints and schematics of all sorts were plastered on the walls, and some sort of artificial light, that didn't flick or dim like normal lamps did, was fixed to the ceiling. The walls of the room were just like those of the tunnels before, smooth with weird imprints running along them.

Kaion slowly entered the room, staring at the structures that the schematics depicted. One of them depicted a long worm-like machine with small wheels atop a long line. The structure had a depiction of smoke coming out of a tube at its front section, and weird writings underneath.

[I wish I could read,] sighed Kaion as he moved on to the next drawing. He was uncertain why, but his heart began fluttering as he stared at the pictures. A weird longing filled his mind, it felt as if this was something he had ought to know. Something he had ought to be doing, even though he had no clue what it was that he was staring at.

The next schematic depicted a large ship or something that looked like a ship. Kaion had seen ships many times at the bay, however, he had never once seen the weird spinny thing that was attached to the one in the drawing. This one had smoke coming out of it as well, and many detailed lines coming to and from the spinny thing.

"Why are all of them on fire?" wondered Kaion as he looked at the drawing of the smoke before moving on. There was a single desk at one corner of the room and on top of it sat a contraption that emitted light from one end.

"This ought to sell for something right?" whispered Kaion as he inspected the device. There were imprints on the device as well, leading to the hole from which light came out of. Kaion squinted his eyes and looked at it from the side before realizing that there was a stone where the light was coming from.

Scared that it might burn him, he left it alone, though the curiosity about how it worked did not leave him.

"Is this where I was supposed to go?" wondered Kaion as he looked at the desk. There he found several rusted metallic rings with rectangular projections evenly spaced out along their circumferences. There were six of them in total, each and every one of them a different size.

"What is this place anyway?" Kaion slumped on the chair to take a rest. His feet were killing him from walking for so long, and the back of his throat was dry, if only he could have a sip of water.

*Tick tock*

Now that he wasn't so overwhelmed, he could hear a faint ticking sound. He searched the room for the source of the sound and found that it was coming from a circular contraption on the wall. It had numbers 1 through 12 written at even spacings around its circumference, and had two sticks, one long and one short, pointing at different numbers.

"Interesting," Kaion whispered, standing up to inspect the intriguing contraption.

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