1
Carmelia patiently verified the switch types and instructed both operators on how to correctly handle them. Following the brief tutorial, on the count of three, Millanueve and the Prince managed to active their respective handles nigh simultaneously, or close enough, while the others held their breath, ready for anything.
The effect was less dramatic than expected, but not a disappointment by any means. Faint noise of rock grinding against rock carried from the shady back of the hall, the tremors almost entirely absorbed by miles of bedrock. A wide slate of stone pulled down there, revealing a narrow corridor beyond, in which total blackness awaited.
The mechanism and the path alike remained in virtually pristine condition, suggesting infrequent use. What the obscure passage had been for and where it led, if anywhere—the information had become diluted over countless generations and faded in the realm of legend even among the members of the ruling class. If Yuliana’s grandfather had heard of the secret, he hadn’t passed it on, and she was no less surprised by the discovery than the rest of them.
As far as could be gauged from the entrance, what they were looking for remained still ways ahead and deeper down. What more could await them after the portentous shrine? What could come after “death”? Only those who had once constructed this forgotten path and walked it to its end could know. Since none of them was around to part with the information, all the explorers could do was see the answer for themselves.
“The handles must be operated again to close the way,” Carmelia told Izumi. “You should take the sword.”
Izumi recovered her weapon and the crew proceeded deeper into the earth’s embrace. For two among them, that narrow stone passage brought all too vividly to mind the accursed ruins of Eylia with most unpleasant associations.
The hand-crafted corridor carried on for quite a while, before it turned more natural by surface, and more narrow, a mere crack in the earth, only allowing progress in single file. Since the way was strange to Yuliana too and she was unarmed, she willingly traded away the lead position. The summoned champion came next one on the line but she didn’t seem any more eager to proceed. There was no room to wield a sword as large and she could hardly see six feet ahead of her.
“You can go first,” Izumi graciously offered the Prince.
Looking equally reluctant but compelled by his honor, the man drew his saber for added comfort and dived after Carmelia’s fiery butterflies into the crack, Izumi and the others shortly behind. They crept on without daring to speak, their shadows climbing the rough walls about them, and the path kept going downward. If the cavity connected to the surface elsewhere and the daemons had found it, the explorers were in for an unpleasant surprise. But Carmelia didn’t seem to sense any danger and they carried on without stopping under tense anticipation. Neither was there any suggestion of ascent and the tunnel kept on declining. It went on for perhaps sixty yards as it was, before turning right at a mild angle and became even steeper. Coarse stairs had been hacked into the floor to prevent visitors from slipping and plummeting blindly down. There were a few wider chambers along the way to ease the claustrophobic impression, but no clues regarding what awaited. There were no graves this far down, no mummified corpses of ancient dwellers. No pottery or fossilized tools to suggest living arrangements. Only empty, rusted torch holders bolted on the walls. They were encouraging enough to keep the explorers going.
And then…
“I see light,” the Prince suddenly said. “There’s something up ahead.”
He quickened his pace and skittered down the short steps, and the others followed with hurried heartbeats. As he had reported, they could see the tunnel end a short distance away, exiting to a larger space.
“—Whoa!”
At the mouth of the passage, the Prince abruptly cried out, stopped short, and cast his arms to his sides. Izumi stilled barely before bumping into his back. Millanueve came up behind her and didn’t react as quickly, and ended up tackling the woman. She snatched a tight hold around Izumi’s midriff so as to not fall over. At being so suddenly grabbed from behind, Izumi, not accustomed to being touched at all, yelled with a start.
“HUAAAAAAAAH—!”
Everyone stopped and turned to look at the woman with expressions of pity.
“...I’m sorry,” Millanueve mumbled in apology.
“...It was on purpose!” Izumi claimed with a cough. “I was only testing you. Didn’t get anybody? My, what courageous company we have...”
She turned her accusing eyes at the Prince next. “What’s the big idea, big guy? Don’t make such sudden stops! Terrible things could’ve happened to someone’s underwear!”
“I had very little choice,” the man said and pointed grimly ahead. “The way is collapsed. See for yourself.”
They gathered as close as they could and looked. The tunnel opened into a wide, cylindrical pit. Under the glow of Carmelia’s illusions, they could see that the cavity was at least forty feet wide, and nearly fifty deep. The light they had seen came from a small hole in the concave ceiling, which likely reached to the surface, but otherwise the cave was entirely featureless.
The path ended here. Only a small, balcony-like extension protruded over the nothingness at the exit, guardless and bare, but they could reach nowhere from it, up or down. The pit was obviously of artificial make, but the walls were too smooth to climb and no other way was visible. If there had once been stairs or an elevator, they had to have crumbled over the centuries.
In other words, the heroes again found themselves at a dead end.
“I can make out an opening in the wall, at the bottom,” the Prince said. “The way seems to continue deeper from there.”
“Lia, can you get us down?” Izumi asked the sorceress.
“Perhaps,” Carmelia answered, “but I should caution against employing wide area spells this far outside the castle. The enemy is sure to take notice. If this is to be our escape path, we should avoid drawing unwanted attention here for as long as possible.”
“A point taken.”
“But is there any other way but magic?” Yuliana asked. “It’s a long way down. We’d need to bring a lot of rope, and not all the civilians can make the climb. Knights might be able to carry them, but it’s still dangerous and would take a great deal of time…”
“We don’t even know what’s down there,” Millanueve said.
“It might be an abandoned water reservoir, or a sewer line, and not lead anywhere people can go,” the Prince added.
“You’re right,” Yuliana said. “We need to make sure what’s there, before we bring the others.”
“So, what, we do the leap of faith?” Izumi asked. “Is there a haystack below?”
They peered over the ledge.
Nothing was there. Almost fifty feet onto solid rock...No human could make the landing in one piece without strong reinforcement magic. A drop of only ten feet had been quite painful even with Gram active. The power of gravity was not to be underestimated. Technically, if only she survived the fall, Izumi could restore herself with Ohrm and scout ahead—but only a complete lunatic would willingly go through such an agony. What if she lost consciousness before casting the rune and died without ever regaining her senses? What a random way to go.
“Maybe we should give up on this way?” Yuliana said, as if having read the woman’s mind. “It just keeps on going deeper and deeper underground. How would burrowing into such a cavern save us? This can’t be the right place.”
“Well, the ancient Langorians did go to the trouble to build it,” Waramoti commented behind them. “I find it doubtful they did so only for the sheer thrill of spelunking. I’m certain there is a hidden purpose to this—whatever it is—even if it eludes us for the time being.”
“But there’s no way down,” her majesty argued. “Don’t even think about climbing those walls! One mistake and you’re gone! Moreover, even if one of us did get down, somehow, they’d have to climb back up the same way in case it’s a dead end. The rest of the tunnel may have collapsed in an earthquake, for all we know.”
Unable to deny this, the crew fell under a dejected silence.
Izumi sat down on the edge of the pit and gazed down.
“She said the key to our salvation is beyond...Ai-chan wouldn’t send us on a wild goose chase with her own neck on the line. No way. This has to be it. Can you take your moths deeper down, Lia?”
“They are monarch butterflies,” the sorceress corrected.
“Are you asking for a tsukkomi too!? You were supposed to be our voice of reason!”
The illusory butterflies floated downward and grew brighter, dying the walls of the pit with their orange glow.
“What are you thinking, Izumi?” Millanueve leaned over and asked.
“Had there been stairs once and they collapsed, there should be rubble left at the bottom. But, as I thought, the floor looks completely clean. So how did the builders get down there to continue the passage? A temporary scaffold? A rope ladder? No. That doesn’t make sense. If they didn’t want anyone to get here, they would’ve sealed the door and removed the switches too. They didn’t want this place to be easily found, but still accessible if there was a need. Which means, just like with the door, there should be a way down that is not immediately obvious. Yes. I’m thinking this is another puzzle.”
“Not another one!” Waramoti cried. “Were all the ancient people just that bored?”
“There’s probably something there they really didn’t want outsiders to get.”
“Such as? Is it anything we want to get?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well...We shall leave this to you then, Izumi,” Yuliana said, patted the woman’s back, and turned to leave. “It seems right up your alley.”
“Good luck,” Millanueve told Izumi and left to follow after Yuliana. “Try to get it done by lunch time, okay?”
“I’ll be in your debt again, specialist,” the Prince said and left after the others.
“Hey!” Izumi yelled after them. “Where the heck do you think you’re going!? This isn’t the time for the comedy act! Help me think!”
2
A way down in where there was none...The companions sat down at the tunnel opening to crack the riddle together.
“Any ideas, Lia?” Izumi asked after five seconds had passed.
“I am loath to disappoint you,” Carmelia answered, “but my knowledge of old Langorian engineering is far from comprehensive. Besides, most of my mental capacity at the moment is spent sustaining the protection above ground and scanning for the enemy. Therefore, I would ask for the bare minimum distractions necessary.”
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“My, are you getting tired?” Izumi jokingly asked. It didn’t seem even possible.
“Yes,” the sorceress admitted against expectations, her eyes stoically closed. “After holding up a maximum-intensity barrier for nine consecutive days, I am indeed getting tired. I hope and pray this detour brings us a solution.”
Izumi regretted her joke.
“You shouldn’t push Master Carmelia so!” Millanueve scolded the woman. “You can depend on the rest of us too!”
“Okay. Then, what do you think, Nue? How did the ancient people get up and down?”
“Eh?” The girl fell quiet and tried to think, the effort visible on her face, and the progress of it displayed by her face turning gradually redder. “...Uhum, the ancient Langorians...Er, those with royal blood could secretly grow wings, and were able to float down without hurting themselves…!”
“That’s a pretty impressive theory, but please don’t force yourself...”
“Could I grow wings too, if I tried my hardest?” Yuliana wondered.
“Is that what you should be thinking now!?”
The others doubled their mental efforts.
“Royalty aside, even normal people needed to get down from here,” Izumi contemplated. “If something broke or a wall collapsed, they had to bring workers and tools to fix it. Human magic is pretty limited in scope too. A mechanism easily accessible to a layman, if only you know where to look, the same as back in the shrine and in the library…”
“Another switch?” the Prince suggested.
They looked around the tunnel entrance, but there was nothing like the switches they had found earlier. It was possible the mechanism was masked with magic, but Carmelia didn’t seem to think so.
Izumi gazed left and right, then knelt on the edge of stone, and peered far over it.
“Hey, what are you doing!?” the girls questioned her, afraid she was going to fall over.
“Ah, there’s something here!” the woman remarked and leaned yet further down. “I can just about reach it.”
“What is it!?”
Izumi felt round edges on her fingertips, a depression in the otherwise smooth stone surface, and there was a slimmer bar, like a metallic handle going across it. She got a light grip and tried turning it. The handle was stiff, but eventually gave in and she rotated it half a circle.
The floor suddenly shuddered and she hugged the corner, for a moment scared she would actually fall. Accompanied by a low rumbling, long bars of stone protruded out of the dust-covered wall, forming a set of loose stairs going down the left hand side. The fine seams masked by the dust of centuries, none of the steps had been visible before.
“Oh, was that it?”
However, after reaching to barely a quarter of the pit’s circumference, the stairs stopped appearing. The groundbreaking discovery didn’t take them to a much safer distance from the bottom.
“Is it stuck?” the bard pondered.
“No, I didn’t get that feeling,” Izumi said. “It wouldn’t have stopped so clean at ¼ around, if it were broken. I think this one switch is only meant to open a part of the way, and we have to find more switches to activate the rest of it.”
“Where are the others then?” Waramoti asked and surveyed the walls again.
“I may already have an idea…”
“There is a small pressure plate on the wall, above the last step,” Carmelia confirmed the champion’s fears with a superficial mental scan. Like the stairs, the mechanism was covered in dust and couldn’t be seen at all from the top without extrasensory perception.
They turned their gazes towards the lonely spot over the depths, far apart from the safe zone. Without guardrails or ropes, one would only have their sense of balance to trust on the way to activating it.
“Is magical backup still out of the question?” Izumi asked.
“The mechanism is quite old. It could break if operated by my combat-type telekinesis,” the sorceress answered. “I recommend activation up close, by hand.”
“I’m so not going there.”
“In that case, allow me,” the Prince offered and took a step forward. “Compared to the crow’s nest, this height isn’t much…”
Before he could take a step further, the noise of grinding stone abruptly started again. One by one, the stone bars were pulled back into the wall, and the way vanished before their stunned eyes.
“Oh, nice,” Izumi remarked, “it seems the stairs are also timed. I’d say you have about twenty seconds, so better not tarry on the way. Good luck.”
“Ehh….”
Izumi operated the switch below the ledge again and the footholds re-emerged.
“Dash it all!” the Prince exclaimed and went cautiously climbing down, hopping from block to block, worried the ancient steps wouldn’t endure his weight. But they were of solid stone and intact even after ages of abandonment. He reached the end, balancing on one foot, and wiped the wall, looking for the switch. It was a block the size of a fist, the hair-thin seams barely discernible even up close. He fitted his knuckles against the square and pushed. The plate went in by an inch, and he heard the mechanism spring to action.
But the way didn’t continue where he stood. Instead, another set of stairs appeared on the right side of the entrance, parallel to the other, to the companions’ great confusion.
“Oh, it’s a multiplayer level,” Izumi noted. “Should’ve guessed it, since there were two switches above too.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Waramoti asked her. “Get going, hero.”
“What?” she frowned at him, making no move. “You would send an old woman to such a dangerous place? No way!”
“The Prince is going to die if you don’t do it!”
“You’re right, so get going. Show them what you’re made of, ‘Heaven’s Hand’.”
Izumi grabbed the bard by the belt behind his back and tossed him down the stairs. He stumbled down a few steps to regain his balance and spun back outraged.
“What are you doing!? Are you trying to kill me!?”
“As if you could die, even if you were killed!” she chirped. “Go on! I'll be cheering for you!”
“I’ve told you this a million times; I’m an impartial recorder, not a—”
“—Quickly, before the steps are gone!” the Prince roared from across the well.
Swallowing his complaints, the fear of falling to his death alongside, Waramoti hurried down to the bottom of the second set of stairs and felt the wall, looking for the switch. To his great relief, he found it at the spot mirroring the other one across the pit, and pushed it.
More stairs appeared, now again on the opposing side, extending the path for the Prince. He hurried forward and went on to look for the next trigger, but the steps behind him wouldn’t yet disappear.
“I see, I see,” Izumi observed above, “the timer is extended when a new switch is pushed. Why, this is easy mode!”
“Then trade places with me!” Waramoti shouted back. “It doesn’t feel so easy down here! I hate high places!”
“Eh? You never hated them before.”
“Because we were never in high places before! It’s always somewhere underground!”
“We’re still underground now, though.”
“You know what I bloody mean!”
Instead of joining in the middle, the direction of the paths reversed partway there with a few longer corner steps to take around the turn. The altered shape of the path caused more stress for the climbers.
“There’s no switch on the wall here!” the Prince reported from the corner. “Where is it?”
“Running out of time here!” Waramoti yelled.
“Embedded in the last step, in the far end,” Carmelia informed them.
The Prince dropped down to lay on the narrow sandstone bar and groped the head of it, still a drop of over forty feet directly below him. But the feel in his fingers was not what he expected.
“What is this!?”
The switch was the same type as the one at the very top, with a rotatable handle. How wicked of the builders to randomly mix the two!
“Turn it clockwise!” Izumi yelled from above.
“What the blaze does that mean!?”
With a bit of trouble, he turned the handle and Waramoti escaped his doom with a second or two to spare.
“Oh, I can’t bear to watch!” Millanueve exclaimed and covered her face, while Yuliana appeared to share the sentiment.
Then a disaster happened.
The stairs weren’t all in such a good condition. At the second turn on his side, Waramoti hopped onto the lower set a little too carelessly. He landed close to the tip of the already fragile stone, forgetting to control his weight, and it gave in under him without a warning. He fell straight through. No one was there to help him. He tried to catch the edge of the step in front of him, but his hands slipped off the dusty surface and he kept on falling, too surprised to even cry out.
“Bard!” the Prince shouted. He drew his saber and cast it across the pit without hesitation. The enchanted blade sank into the wall between the bard’s back and the strap of his lute, and so the artist was left hanging in the middle of nothing like a beetle pinned in a biologist’s collection.
But while Waramoti’s life was spared, his rescuer was left to fate.
Without anyone to activate the next switch, the whole stairway would soon retract. None of the other switches on the way could be operated until the path had reset, after which it would be too late.
The Prince looked up. He couldn’t make it back in time, no matter how fast he climbed. It was hopeless. Over thirty feet left to the bottom. He looked at the entrance and Yuliana, seeking some final words to part with, but couldn’t get his voice out.
...Then, with a steady purr, the next set of stairs extended before him.
“Relax!” Izumi called from the other side, having replaced the bard. “I’ve got you covered!”
“When the Hel did she get there…?”
After some more switches and stairs, Izumi was able to recollect the suspended minstrel, and the remaining half of the stairway was completed without incidents. As soon as the last steps met the floor, the full course was locked, the timer disabled, and the others were able to follow without additional acrobatics.
“Let’s—let’s not do that again!” Waramoti caught his breath, leaning on his knees, and felt his heart. “And I mean never!”
“The reward had better be worth the thrills,” the Prince concurred as he sheathed his saber.
“That was much, much too dangerous!” Yuliana agreed with a shudder when the women rejoined the company. “I can’t believe my ancestors built such a thing!”
Millanueve looked ill and didn't comment.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Izumi said. “The old people appreciated character. Right, Lia?”
Of the company, only Carmelia seemed no different from her usual aloof self. Or no, there came an odd change about her air as soon as she reached down to the others. She ignored Izumi’s question and stepped past the group with an uneasy frown.
“This is…?”
A tall corridor led out of the well, then to connect with another area. Through the unobstructed end, they could see a streak of faint blue light. The sorceress’s attention was drawn to the opening and forgetting all else, she left to approach it without reservation, like a child lured by a distant rhyme.
The rest of the fellowship hurried after the caster. Through the brief corridor, they emerged in a vast cave far, far under the stone foundations of the city.
It was not a treasure that awaited them, at least not the conventional type.
Most of the room lay completely empty, but the prodigious dimensions and extraordinary design of the place alone evoked wordless awe in the spectators. Even if once natural, the cave had been heavily modified by human hands in the later ages, and resembled a modern dry dock in layout, as far as it was removed from water; there was a lengthy, deep basin framed by brick-dressed platforms and old scaffolding. Large machinery was set up by the far side wall, great windlasses and lengths of chunky chains hung from the ceiling, and massive copper-cased cylinders nestled in the corner.
Yet, before any of the finer details of the interior, the explorers’ attention was captured by the outlandish shape in the very middle.
Without any contact to land stood a magnificent vessel unlike any seen before on human waters, strange even to the king of pirates. It was roughly the size of a standard barque, but instead of wooden boards, it was crafted of sleek, pale metal, regal and airy in appearance. No sail was attached and there were no masts either, no rope rigging, only the streamlined base hull, at places sharp, at places curved, its image evidently influenced by the diversity of aquatic life. There was no pronounced fore- or aftcastle either, but a covered structure in the middle of the deck, vaguely resembling an upturned seashell, made of material colorless as ivory, and a line of broad windows ran across it on the deck side.
They all stopped and stared at the foreign apparition, speechless and breathless, full of dread and wonder in equivalent measure. But in one of them, the alien craft brought about an impression many times stronger.
“It can’t be…”
Carmelia gasped as she stared at the object and took a step closer, looking profoundly shaken.
“The Solveig. The High King’s ship.”