Chapter 64: Chapter 64 – Bones Of An Old World

“Why is there so much light?” Adeleya asks, summoning a small orb to add to the already bright halls. We’re not expecting vampires down here, but I’m still happy to make this place as bright as we can make it.

“The stone is special, it’s developed its own natural æther veins over time, providing a faint warmth, light, and making it more resilient,” Garth explains. “Ancient enchantments are weaved through the natural veins, all of it pulling at the thick flow of æther from the wells. It’s one reason why the cities were built atop these wells, because while there’s usually plenty of æther around for normal enchantments, something this intense requires a concentration of æther that you just can’t find outside of a well.”

“What sort of enchantments can we expect?” Lothar asks. “Anything we should be worried about?”

“The enchantments here are safe, but when we get to the new section of ruins it could get dangerous,” Garth says, urging Nadia to the rightmost path at an intersection. “Enchantments meant for heating can decay and flare up like a furnace. Whole rooms can be frozen over by cooling enchantments, and sometimes entire ruins are flooded through, or filled with dazzling lights.”

“That can happen?” I ask. “I thought an enchantment would just fail when they break?”

“It can go either way,” Lothar answers for the man. “When it’s just a channel to help you with your casting, then there’s no chance of it going wrong, but if it’s a proper enchantment, forming magic by itself, the part at the very end that contains the shape of the spell can be damaged, making a slightly different spell.”

“A weightless enchantment, like on the door, could be broken to instead become incredibly heavy,” Garth says. “One of the other frustrations we have to deal with. Worse is when these ruins have warp doors instead. You don’t want to know what happens when the magic is misshaped then.”

The paths we walk are almost too clean, and there are no seams on any surface as far as I can see. All the stones have been shaped with magic to smooth them out perfectly, making me think that the separated stones above were intentionally split apart to be that way.

The light from the walls, floor, and ceiling is more than enough to see by and if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so quiet, I’m not sure I’d even believe that these are simply uninhabited ruins. If an ancient elf just walked from the room ahead of us, I don’t think I could be all too surprised by it. If I could’ve crawled into a ruin back when I ran from my village, I would’ve been so much happier living out in the wild.

What could have made them leave these places?

These ruins are nicer than most of the homes I saw in the city, and they’re better defended, too.

If my family could have hidden in the ruins under Cildr, maybe they could’ve survived the attack. We could’ve lived in a place like this. So why didn’t we?

So that elders could keep their secrets?

“Just down that path to the left,” Garth says. “The new part of these ruins was hidden behind a secret door. Or, it was a secret to us.”

“How did you find out about it?” Adeleya asks. “I mean, a secret door doesn’t just open on its own, does it?”

“One of our members came by to inspect and found the door open. We’re thinking an enchantment was activated from the inside by the monsters that are nesting down there, with how the switches are set up, it makes sense at least. Through here, don’t touch any of the mushrooms.”

The room widens around us and I struggle to contain a gasp. Nadia freezes up entirely, her jaw dropping and her wide eyes shining.

The room is unusually wide and tall, instantly dispelling the feeling of being underground with a ceiling that glows bright blue. It’s a variant of the same stone used elsewhere, but with a slightly different colour glowing through it.

Looking down, there are patches of soil overgrown with mushrooms taller than I am, crowded with other colourful sorts trying to fill up the patches of land given to them. We have to skirt around the edges of the room to avoid them all.

“We think that these were specialist farms at some point,” Garth explains. “The mushrooms took over with no one to tend to the place. These are extremely valuable to the right alchemist, by the way, but also incredibly toxic. We’ll want those stairs going down.”

Adeleya watches the mushrooms carefully and from the glow in her eyes, I think she’s eager to start a fire to roast them all. Before she can act out her temptations, Nadia leads us to the branching room that Garth points us to.

It doesn’t take us long to get down to the secret door that he’s describing, it’s in a room set apart from the others, with water flowing through channels carved in the floor. The door itself is pressed to the side of the room, similar to the first door we came across, it’s leaning against the wall to reveal a set of downward steps to a world slightly darker.

Clumps of soil are scattered about without any care at all, dulling the lights. The walls just by the entrance are split apart, and tunnels are dug through the gaps, letting something inside.

They’re making themselves a home here, that’s for sure, but the tunnels in the walls suggest that this is just a smaller part of what they call home.

“Adeleya, prepare to burn them out. Garth, the tunnels are only on the one side of these doors?” Nadia asks.

“Yeah, never had to deal with them before the door opened up.”

“Good. Close the doors behind us, and we’ll kill them when they pop out of the tunnels,” Nadia looks between us. “Does anyone have any other thoughts?”

“There could be strays that are behind us,” Lothar says, looking back into the main complex of the underground city. “We probably don’t have time to check, but we should assume that they’re around.”

“Agreed,” Nadia nods.

“Can we block up the tunnels?” I ask. “Do we have any earth mages in the camp?”

“The buggers just dig their way back through after we block them up,” Garth replies when we turn our attention to him. “If they’re dead, we’ll close them properly, but what’s the point?”

“We’ll be able to see if Adeleya’s magic got them all. If something has dug its way through the wall, then that’s proof enough that there are more to deal with,” Nadia explains. “Let’s get to it immediately, we’ll block up the tunnels once we’re done.”

I’m still lagging behind the rest of the team, as they jump to their roles. They’re so much more familiar with each other, and if anything, I’m getting slower. I’m forgetting what my role is in our group, having to push down my instincts to do things my own way.

They all cleanly watch each other’s backs with their weapons out and ready. Adeleya wastes no time in stirring together her magic, staring into the distance as she chants, refining her spell and shaping it to task.

As the door closes behind us, I lean my longsword against the wall and draw my shortswords, guarding the tunnels ahead of us. A few small movements far ahead catch my eye, but whatever it is that I see, it’s gone before I can focus on it.

“Something ahead,” I announce, the same moment as Adeleya’s chant comes to an end.

Her flames roar as the temperature of the room instantly rises. Winds stir around us to control it, as she releases the flames down the small tunnels, feeding the fire into the earth.

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It doesn’t take long for the screaming to start.

A few flaming creatures, a half meter long and covered in blackening skin burst from the other tunnels along the hall.

I thrust forwards with my swords, scissoring the first between the blades and severing its head from its body. For the next, I simply thrust a sword through its skull. I don’t even have to think as I slaughter those close enough to be dangerous to our group.

They don’t put up much of a fight, and those at the end of the hall don’t even try running at us, simply burning up and dying where they stand.

“That’s enough fire,” Adeleya says, letting up on her spell. “I’m keeping the air from flooding back through, but I’d like to give it a few more hits. If I push it enough, I can poison the air on them.”

“Understood,” Nadia nods firmly. “Lothar and I will sweep through the rest of the facility catching those that are getting out and locating a few more tunnels for you to hit. You stay here and watch over the door. The air isn’t an issue yet?”

“Shouldn’t be an issue yet,” Adeleya nods, holding her staff close as she leans against the wall.

Nadia leads the way into the tunnels, careful of her every step and watching ahead.

Garth is standing to the side, running his fingers over the wall, summoning a dark script over the surface as if it were a sheet of enchanted paper. I don’t recognise any of the letters.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been alone together,” Adeleya says keeping her voice low. I glance at Garth, but she shrugs with a small laugh. “Are you really alright, Syr? You’re not just pretending?”

“I’m alright.”

I can feel the pressure of attention on my back, and I know that she wants more than that. She treated me as a little sister; like family. We’ve grown distant since then, and I can’t even blame her for it.

“It hurts,” I admit. “I thought that maybe I found someone who… Making Rea forget me, hurts. It doesn’t hurt as bad as when I lost my village, but it’s the same sort of pain. I need to get strong enough to fight off the bandits all over again, but this time maybe she’ll still be alive, waiting for me to come back.”

“Syr, why haven’t you asked us for help?”

“There’s nothing you can do.” I stare at the burnt corpses on the floor. “None of us are strong enough. If you want to help, then you need to train like I am. Maybe in a decade, we’ll be strong enough to win… I’ll think about asking for help when it’s time to fight. Until then, I’m going to focus on training myself.”

“Alright, just… please trust me, Syr.”

“I do,” I say, shaking my head.

I didn’t want to bring anyone with me while I was learning my necromancy, and while I’m glad that Lothar was there to save me, he still shouldn’t have been there. I know that he is bothered by it, and Adeleya would be too.

Even at the moment, Crow is in my bag waiting for me to be strong enough to repair him. I can’t show him to everyone, because ugly and broken as he is, they’d just be more bothered by the sight of him.

They’d think less of me.

They’d even hate me just a little bit, even if they’ll pretend otherwise.

Rea, I don’t think she would. I haven’t known her for long, but I don’t think she’d mind any of the weird things that I do. The weird things that I am.

“Thank you for trusting me, too,” I say, my back still towards her. “I know I can be weird sometimes. I’m really happy that it was you guys who found me.”

“Me too,” her voice is warm and reminds me of relaxing in the warm hot springs. The longer I’ve been away the more I want to return, the warmth, the steam, even the terrible smell of it. I want to go back.

“The deep well?” Garth mutters surprising us.

He presses his hand to the wall reading the words that move over the surface.

“What’s that?” Adeleya asks.

“This place is associated with something they called ‘the deep well project’. I’ve never heard of it before, but I can recognise these other two words, roughly they should mean, ‘source of all æther’. Were they trying to find the origin of magic itself?”

“That sounds serious,” Adeleya says, inspiring a snorted laugh from Garth.

“Sounds serious, sure. Scholars have been theorising about the source of all magic since the first people figured out how to cast. It’s not surprising that the ancient elves were investigating it, too. Unless we can prove that they actually found something, or that this ‘deep well’ is real, then it’s just ancient scholars asking the same questions we are today.”

He continues talking to himself up until Nadia and Lothar return, their weapons bloodied. We continue the slaughter for another hour, Adeleya burning out the nest twice more before we leave, by then all the screams are quiet, and we are as sure as we can be that the nest is dead.

Walking back to the surface, I shiver in the darkness outside, down there it’s impossible to know day from night. The shadows flicker with new life as massive bonfires rage all around the camp, and thousands of lights shine from the walls that surround the town. Guards standing on basic little stands, watch for anything coming towards us, more twitchy than they were when we arrived.

A howl splits the night as the moon rises tall and bright overhead. That’s not a wolven, and it’s not any breed of wolf that I can recognise.

More rise to follow the first, too rough, too deep, too desperate and hungry.

“We’re not getting much sleep tonight,” Lothar chuckles nervously, touching nervously at his necklace.

“Doesn’t sound like vampires,” I say, rolling my shoulders as I move my sword around.

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