There was an alteration to the pitch darkness, a hue of warmth added into its sightlessness, at first scarce more than a show of phosphene. But as we scaled the walls, this change grew discernible from the noise behind own eyelids, though no shape did it yet betray, only a tinted sea of unfathomable dark.

The struggle went on for a small eternity until the air rushed against Litzia’s wings in earnest. And her wings she spread freely as we soared the space above the stone walls. Our nerves finally freed, and so were partly our sights. For the most part it was still an utter darkness, and there was no way to tell how far aloft this space stretched, if it did not all the way to the heavens, but underneath us -- far, far below, I marked the sources of the faint light that had given a tint to our sightlessness. These were lines upon the earth, faint and crinkled, that crossed and rent the surfaces like a system of complicated rivers or canals. But if these were unwholesome lights, at least they afforded us some degree of respite from the mute terror of sightlessness. We were drawn to them as moths to fire, for there was naught else to fly for.

As Litiza glided downwards, I found no suggestion of warmth or fire from the faint lines, but the fluorescent glow they emitted suffused insufficiently across a sprawling land of monotonous patterns. So vast, too vast, it challenged our senses of direction, making it doubtful that the underbelly of Tithonus could possibly contain all this. The portal into the mountain must have by some sorcery taken us to some area beyond mortal knowledge or aught known existence. The pitch black sky aloft was without aught celestial beings to mark its immense unknown. I did think we were underground still, for the air though less suffocating, was stagnant and stale to my nostrils. I wondered if any place nestled under the earth could be of so great a size, for the glowing lines stretched onto an infinity, without aught cavern walls or ceiling to catch their reflections. And there was no wind or even the slightest breeze. No sounds but Litzia’s guttural breathing and beating wings.

Closer to the earth, the outlines of things appeared clearer. Things of queer shapes dotted the landscape and superimposed their shadowy forms over the faint lights, being no ordinary stalagmites wrought by nature’s hands but seemingly twisted creations of deliberate shapes gnarlingly reaching skyward. I tried and failed to discern some senses in them, but the shapes were too illogical to be beasts, too solid to be plants, and unmoving even as Litzia wheeled close to the earth, scare aloft their uneven forms.

“I wonder if this is not the fiery hell they say lies hidden beneath the Underland,” I said.

“Why? This is not unlike the Under, but these lights are strange to me, and these things…”

“Who knows, but we were told to re-enact the episode of the Dawn’s old legends, and they said her berth was once hidden beneath the Underland; I daresay that is not far from hell itself.”

“There be no fiery cauldrons for the condemned as far as I could see,” she said flatly.

Presently the wyverness chose an open place near to a crack in the earth to land. Still perched on her back I examined the glowing fissure, but its breadth did not allow aught attempt at its bottom, for it sounded deeper than we could spy from beyond the edge, and the warm glow did not flicker to aught wind to suggest fire. Of heat, there was little, but only enough to fancy that it was a real light, and had a source.

Then I turned, and cried out. The dark shapes whose nature we could not guess from aloft were now revealed from an angle where the light freely illuminated. An abomination, if ever it lived, hung its enormous, ugly size over us, staring lifelessly ahead through empty sockets. Its gaping maw was lined with teeth-like things, but too long and too weirdly shaped to be possibly hinged at one end. The appendages it sported were of no known winged beast, be they limbs or tentacles. Such a thing could not exist, should not stand in balance upon the earth, but it did. All shapes that thronged this hellish place did, and stared aghast at us from their doubtful immobility and eternal rests. I was made small and vulnerable, in all petrified even as the fell things.

Litzia bared her fangs and coiled round to face the creature, her wings withdrawn, ready to shoot upward. But indeed the thing moved not, being as still as the quiet earth we trod.

“If this be hell, then I daresay these are not alive,” she said warily.

“But what are they?” I swallowed, and stole a look at our surroundings and other towering shapes, their strange appendages I could but vaguely discern.

“Let us hope we never find out. Is there no end to this place? Where could that woman be hiding?”

The soil was soft under Litzia’s claw and gave in to her every step. Never in my life had I worked the Mother Earth for her bounties, but I daresay no plant may grow in this lifeless soil, if any real plant could grow indeed in this near dark. In the end we found nothing of value there, saved an unnerving fright, and took to the sky again, afterward scanning the dim surface at a guarded distance aloft the unmoving creatures. It was a truly endless grotto, for though we went on to fly and fly one unaltering course, there was never an end.

At length, I ventured, peering over Litzia’s wings, “Perhaps we must go deeper still.”

“You mean to plunge in there?” she nudged her muzzle at the fissures. “Are these lights hers?”

“I don’t know. But we aren’t getting anywhere flying about.”

So once more Litzia lowered her altitude and came to glide among the gnarling shapes, searching for a crack wide enough to admit us. Though they varied in size, the shapes and degree of illumination did not, as if a vast light source lurked beneath our feet, even vaster than the land we soared upon. All but identical, save one. It came first to Litzia’s keen eyes once we rounded a wide shape no smaller than a hill, if hills had wiggling limbs extending like an upturned willow. It was a change in the hue of the light from a wide portion of the fissures, a faint accent of ghastly green over the warm ember. As we looked it grew intense, and throbbed like the beats of a glowing heart. In turn lighting spurted from the earth with a great crash of thunder at its heels.

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In awe and caution, Litzia brought us close to the show of flashing lights. And upon our approach, the thundering to accompany the lighting echoed the surface, lagging even as the roar of a flashstorm, untimely after each flash. Peering over the crack we saw that it was wide enough for a pair of alares to descend with care, but how deep it went we could not tell, for the ember light, when not accented by sorcery, was too intense for our eyes to penetrate.

Then there came a lull to the shifting lights, and no more sound rose from the depth. The land then fell into utter silence as before.

Of a sudden, Litzia folded her wings and bore me like an arrow over its zenith, plunging into the fissure.

Just as soon, the clamor roused once more, and a new barrage of lights with greater intensity than before assaulted our sight and blinded mine. I trusted only to Litzia now, for her slit eyes had prevailed amidst the storm of reflections bouncing and magnified by the fissure’s sides, her ears closed against the manifold blaring. Once I regained my sight, I saw that these walls glittered and echoed the lights from below as though made of crystal or some endless veins of gemstones. Of their hardness we were thankfully spared from learning, for Litzia was deft enough even in her rapid descent to dodge the protruded edges. Down and down below, the clamor now broke into different, confused cries, bent and corrupted by the uneven surfaces. And yet there was little doubt they were human voices, even mixed in were wyvern shrieks.

What it augured we both could guess - the source of our anxiety, and what had little with the captain’s elaborate ritual. Litzia held her descent no longer, but at once let go of her control and plunged straight down with her wings all furled and caution abandoned.

This proved fatal recklessness.

We felt the rumbles upon our skin the further down we went. And close were the tremors transmitted through the stone of some shattering the battle below us had affected. There was a slide, and a fragment of the fissure broke and fell and was caught in the middle of it. I saw it from aloft, and knew that it would be our sudden and ungentle stop. My training came to a true test, as I swung the runestaff from my back, sliding it beneath my arm and securing it against my torso.

The blast went off, flew true. But in my panic I did not – dared not – control the power therein. And so it shattered not only the obstacle but the walls on both sides. There came mayhem, chaos, and avalanche.

Few options were there but to smash through. Litzia did, bearing the bulk of the flailing hard stones. But I was battered also. And these were nothing like mere pellets in a squall, but might smash skulls and bones. And also unlike a squall, the onslaught ceased ere long.

Litzia half fell through an unresisting barrier into an open space. Even so bruised, she soon regained control of her wings.

Most of the light had vanished, giving place to a scene of destruction: what might have been once tall polished walls, made of like architecture as the tunnel that had led us into the mountain but wide enough now to admit two wyverns’ wingspans, now had been wrought and carved in by great blasts. Marred also were foul tendrils which issued from the ancient walls and latched onto the stone with deadly grips, standing like columns leaning on either side, or laid across the pathway even as gnarling roots of some vile vegetation. Something in me feared these roots and their likely association, as though they were the deep-reaching extensions of the nightmarish creatures far aloft.

There was a sense of movement near to a turn at the end of the corridor where the glow could not reach. But nearer at hand, where the black roots were illuminated insufficiently, were two unpledged alares crouching in the shelter of a battered root.

“Valerian!” I cried aloud.

My voice recognized, the knight of golden hair lifted her head, and at first I thought her runestaff-wielding arm twitched.

“Aster! Litzia! Come here!”

Next to her, Wisteria glared at us with less forgiving wariness, though she did not protest our approach. Landed, though pledged still, Litzia and I inquired the pair of what happened. Even as we spoke their eyes still turned with caution periodically to the darkness at the end of the corridor.

“We were attacked,” explained Wisteria.

“By who?” Litzia asked.

She shrugged, “The attackers were swift, clever, and struck from the dark, we could not ascertain their identity, save that their runes were powerful.”

“Is this a challenge of the ritual?” Litzia narrowed her eyes, ever distrustful of affairs related to the captain, “I was never in doubt there would be violence to be had down here.”

“A safe assumption,” said Valerian. “I have only partaken in this ritual once before, but that there are foul things of unimaginable nature in this place I am almost certain.”

“Or something else from without,” Wisteria said, “my enemies are numerous, and most of them bold.”

“Mayhap,” Valerian frowned, “The attack was deliberate, we could be sure, and by a runic weapon. But things are… different here. Strange and fell things that obey no laws of reason.”

Litzia did not react to this strange remark but turned away sharply, muzzle lifted to study the air. “We can’t hide here forever. Whatever your assailants were, if you two could contest with them thus far then with us the chances are doubled. We should go together.

“That is true,” Valerian said, “Wisteria, shall we?”

Their pledge was formed with their intertwined hands. And with a flash a slender beast appeared, dark and solemn, whose black horns curled from her skull to point sharply forward, and whose scales were rough and riven as bark.

She prowled restlessly even as Valerian mounted. And as soon as she did, the wyvern took off wildly.

“Easy, sister,” said the knight.

Wisteria hovered but long enough for Litzia and I to gain their altitude. Just as soon she bolted ahead. But now that we were in the air, Litzia easily matched her pace.

“You fly recklessly,” I related my sister’s thought to the young wyverness, “Litzia thinks you should find the use of patience and caution of greater benefit in this situation.”

She snorted, and Valerian frowned. “She recognized the pattern,” the knight said, “or the imitation of that which she knew well since her younger days.”

And there was no need to speak out loud of whom she hinted at.