The crystal blue spire spiralling above the chasm of darkness reflected in Cyra’s eyes as she sat on the precipice of the underground cliff. It was much identical to the obsidian spire above the loch Sagathan temple in form and shape but made of crystalline Sagathan lamps instead of obsidian ore. It was also inverted, with the pointy end aiming downward and a broader ‘base’ at the top.

The blue matter inside the monolith flowed like lake waves without breaking the spire’s form tranquilly. Cyra’s two children bobbed up and down as if swept gently by the aqua torrent, asleep inside the spire, like insects in amber.

… and there was nothing Cyra could do to free them.

After the fish gremlin-like creature had kidnapped her children, the Earthlochians tracked them all the way to this place. It was a giant cavern with walls like the night sky and a fissure where the floor should have been extending downwards deep into the Dim subterranean abyss. The spire floated in space right in the middle of the cavern, surrounded by cliffs connected to the walls like the viewing platforms on Watch outposts.

This area had been entirely unknown before being discovered three days ago. These pathways had never been trodden in Earthloch’s three hundred thousand cycles of history. The faediaga and shamans could only track her children’s scent here because the walls separating this section of the temple from the rest had suddenly collapsed, raising the alarm.

The cavern had many other exits, one by each cliff, leading to unexplored areas. Her flock’s faediaga had left to investigate these unknowns with much excitement. A few hours ago, Naira sent back that they might have discovered clues to help prevent her flock’s slow death. After so many cycles of tracing their ancestor’s steps under these subterranean worlds, the Lou finally rejoiced.

It didn’t matter anymore.

“Chieftainess, the ritual is ready,” Lillian called out, her staff drawing the ending line of a giant ritual array on the cliff ground. The naeman witch fidgeted nervously behind her, yet her eyes greedily shifted to the crystal spire at every chance.

Cyra stood up and walked to her designated spot, channelling manna into the magical array of the ritual.

Neither she nor her father-in-law or Lillian could make a scratch on the spire’s walls after attacking the thing for three days and nights straight.

“Lᛁᚠᛖ ᚲᛟᚾᚠᛁᚱᛗᚨᛏᛁᛟᚾ,” Cyra uttered the name of the spell. The array lighted up, and all but a speck of her manna drained out of her as the ritual cast the spell. Her astral vision flew towards Elrhain and Agwyn along with Lillian’s, augmented by primarily soul aspected manna.

Cyra saw their breaths.

“Oh, by the overgods.” Cyra crumbled. “Th-They breathe!” The stress left her being all at once. She saw the tiny specks of manna connecting the children to each other and a silk-thin lattice of meridian-like structures holding them snugly in place within the spire’s watery internal.

Their chests didn’t heave, nor did they move any muscles. But the spell told Cyra of their vitality. The currents of manna circulated within the spire with the two children as the heart, as though they were all one living creature. Their tether, still snapped, slowly repaired as it melded with the blue crystals.

Within that prison, Agwyn and Elrhain were unmistakably alive.

Lillian ordered one of her acolytes, “Bring the chieftainess away and notify the grand elder. I will stand guard.” The strain on her manna wasn’t as severe as Cyra’s.

Lillian continued with an unsure tone, “Morys will have his people search every nook and cranny of Lochuir if he has to. So will the other nobles and every cultivator of Earthloch. We will not let a single fly escape! Besides, suppose this… spire can stay unbroken with three sky realmers attacking all at once. In that case, I doubt anything else in the Siorrakty can make a dent to reach the children.”

Cyra’s mind was groggy, but the words reached her. She nodded helplessly. Whatever the fish gremlin creature was, it had saved her two treasures.

The reconer’s last scheme broke through all eighteen layers of magic Earthloch shamans had cast upon Elrhain and Agwyn to keep them and their fragile tether safe. If the fish gremlin hadn’t taken them away and stuck them inside this spire, the broken tether would have swiftly killed them with no chance of reversal.

“All we can do now is keep watch,” Lillian said. “And keep guard on both the spire and these newly discovered caverns until we find more clues.”

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Cyra winced. Lillian sported a self-deprecating smile, too. They had both vented their ire on said life-saving spire for the last three days. It was foolish, an act of anger and not calm. God forbid, what if they had actually succeeded and the spire broke before it could finish repairing the tether?

“We can also try to peer in with every magic recorded in the archives, and we will. But,” Lillian continued with a sigh. “We can’t do anything else… Not unless one of us can break through the sky and become a beyonder.”

Cyra laughed. No faediaga on the disc had reached the beyonder realm in hundreds of thousands of cycles. Ever since they lost their innate ichor and needed to source outside ichors from spirits. Ever since their slow death, their extinction had started.

But, let the undergods be damned if she didn’t try!

*****

Elrhain woke up in darkness as if floating in the sea with blindfolds. He felt the pain of being ripped apart for a split second as he gasped for air. But it was a phantom pain, disappearing with every breath he took. His vision gradually returned, as did his other senses. He noticed that the breath he took didn’t feel like air, and the light and sounds were of a peculiar tranquil quality.

He realized he was in his mindscape. Or his inner vision, or whatever this void that housed his totemic soul was. Every night while asleep, he would appear here, then either head into a part of his past life’s memories as lucid dreams or fall deeper into sleep after blanking his senses.

It was the same space where he observed the toddler-shaped dark silhouette of his totemic soul with three-sixty degree Omni-vision during each cultivation session.

However,

“Huh?” Elrhain raised his arms.

They were longer than he remembered. They had six fingers but weren’t stumpy as they should have been.

Elrhain looked down. He wore an off-white lab coat, sky-blue shirt, khaki pants, and gravity shoes. All Meta-dark plated, made for free space and low gravity.

He was an adult again! But not human. Not a semitransparent shadow showing nodes and channels as was the norm for totemic souls, but an adult version of his dhionne body wearing the same clothes he did on the Gigantomachy.

“Am I… lucid dreaming?”

Elrhain observed around him and spotted more differences.

The usually empty void was surrounded by faint glowing chains of… runes? The chains looked like they were made of gold but rusted with faintly luminescent blue rust, their links forming runic letters to shackle Elrhain’s mindscape in a spiral cage. The chains converged upon a blue door seemingly made of holo-material (glass-like tempered alloy). Gigantomachy’s CommLink application logo flickering like static on its surface.

The door was cracked. It sparked with pixels of light in the damaged areas.

Behind this door lay a corridor, the Dream Corridor as he called it, with many other doors housing many of their past life memories. At the end of the dream corridor was another blue door that entered Agwyn’s mindscape.

Elrhain drifted forward to touch the point the chains melded into the holo-material. Suddenly, they zapped with electricity, burning Elrhain’s imaginary mind fingers.

“Ouch!”

Yeah, short-circuiting rune wiring was definitely a fresh addition here.

Elrhain pushed down his panic, then concentrated on the blue door. There was some resistance, but the door creaked before sliding away with another mental jolt. Elrhain could still not sense Agwyn’s presence anywhere. He nervously resolved himself as he stepped foot into the high-tech, pseudo-brutalist corridor.

On his left and right were a series of orange holo-material doors. Dream doors. They flickered with images of his and Agwyn’s past lives in no apparent order.

These doors were cracked too, and so was this corridor. The steel edges showed signs of melting. Behind the torn apart walls lay nothing but darkness, like what the Gigantomachy’s passages must have looked like when it was being torn apart by enemy fire.

Elrhain eyed the runic chains. They ran along the wrecked walls, holding their structure together like duct tape.

His unease grew as he now ran. The boy, no, young man, tumbled forward, not used to moving with such long limbs. But Elrhain made his way past the derelict remains soon enough.

Many places looked like they were shot with plasma bullets, and others as though explosives had gone off. Elrhain had to jump across a few spots where the floor was all but gone and avoid falling into any cracked dream doors where the floor tilted to the side.

Finally, huffing and swearing, Elrhain reached the corridor’s midpoint.

The damage here was the most severe. Elrhain could imagine this being the aftermath of missile fire. Whatever the woman in white did to them caused no less damage to their mental worlds.

The path was cut off from this point entirely with a deep space with no stable foothold to get across to Agwyn’s side about thirty metres out. The walls, floor, and ceiling had their edges twisted and melted into unformed and unsafe eaves. The walls and ceiling were mostly gone, actually, with parts of the floor extending out like an open-air veranda.

Shattered remains of material pipes, alloy plates and holo-material doors floated like space debris. Agwyn’s side of the corridor looked equally damaged. But the figure of the girl he had been hoping to see was nowhere to be found.

He’d have to jump across… could he?

The runic chains stretched tautly. They extended out from Elrhain’s side of the corridor, then connected with the jetsam and flotsam like anchors, finally reaching Agwyn’s end in a similar fashion.

He could maybe use them as stepping stones? Not the chain, but the debris. He’d have to jump across as if he was playing a platformer. Assuming, of course, they could hold his weight. Mental weight. And didn’t simply fly off because of his momentum.

Elrhain took a deep breath and backed away. He’d need a running start. But then again, was he really doing this? Was he this stupid?

“…… lieeeee,”

Elrhain tilted his head. He heard an echo.

‘Could it be?’

He squinted his eyes and looked towards the other side-

“Ugh!”

“ELLIEEE!”

When a bouncy pipsqueak wearing an Exogear dive-hugged into him from above.