With one final heave, Niko pushed through the wall of dirt, the crumble and crush of hundreds of pounds of earth falling away to a larger tunnel. Dust flared to the air, and Niko coughed to clear his mouth of the taste. Dubiously, he scanned around their exit, looking for any signs of danger, or any indication as to why both he and Skye had felt so ill at ease for much of their dig parallel to this tunnel.
“Looks clear,” Niko called out his findings, with Skye kneeling out from around the relative security of their own tunnel, bow with arrow ready at hand. The half elf dropped the half meter step from where they’d come out at, looking down both sides of the larger bore-hole they now found themselves in.
“Earth Wyrm tunnel,” she declared after a moment's inspection of the walls, having remembered what they’d seen before, “Big one, though. We must be pretty deep.”
Niko cringed at that, before eyeing the incline downwards, “Well, hopefully it’s long gone. Should we check deeper down the tunnel first, see what was giving us the heebie-geebies?”
Skye smiled fractionally, “Heebie-geebies?” She shook her head, getting the meaning of the words through context, “I think we poke down a little ways, but we don’t go looking for trouble.”
That was reasonable, in Niko’s opinion, especially since neither of them looked forward to being away from the rest of their team for so long. Even besides that, neither of them was especially in love with the idea of being stuck underground again.
Still, they dutifully moved down the incline of the larger tunnel, keeping a measured and quiet place. Once more, the ambient essence levels began to decline precipitously, and Niko couldn’t help but feel unnerved at the sensation. Every step of the way, he half expected something to attack them, but in spite of his gaze sweeping the walls, he found no trace of another creature. With how little ambient essence was in the air, he figured anything with less than perfect control was going to light up like a bonfire to his Aether Sight. Somehow, he doubted even stealth patterns would be helpful there.
And, if something was that powerful, Niko doubted it’d be in this area. From what he figured, creatures avoided low essence zones. Whether the Memory Thief was an exception, or if it had abandoned its lair for some time, he didn’t know.
Granted, he still watched for anything that lacked essence, too. As far as he knew, everything on this world had essence in it, but there was no sense in not being careful. Even so, neither he nor Skye found anything as they journeyed downwards. The only change was when the essence in the air actively stopped moving, instead having thinned out so much that both he and Skye felt when they passed some kind of boundary line. It was strange, a feeling like he’d just entered a bubble, only the inside of the bubble was a vacuum, entirely lacking essence.
His essence immediately struggled against his control, and Niko had to press with a considerable amount of his willpower to keep it contained in his body. Besides him, Niko noticed the concentration on Skye’s face as she struggled to do the same. Her control, while formidable, wasn’t at the level of Niko and Ronald, and Niko saw flitting sparks of essence fly from her body and pull down the tunnel with rapidly building speed.
“Only a little bit farther Niko; I’m barely able to hold onto my essence, here.” Skye scowled, looking down the non-straight tunnel as it bent slightly off to the side.
Niko nodded, “Stay farther behind me, just in case. I’m not losing anything just yet.”
Wordlessly, they continued down, and Niko felt his efforts to hold his essence magnify. Only a few more meters down, at the crook of a turn in the tunnel, were they about to call the venture off. Skye was losing short bursts of essence, and Niko was beginning to cast off sparks as well.
Before either could declare that they’d gone far enough, they saw it.
“Oh, no…” Niko felt his stomach drop at the sight of vermillion crystalline growths, some spike-like, and many that looked almost like shells, protruding from the walls of the earth. Skye saw the same thing, and gasped quietly at the beautiful, but eerie sight. With his Aether Sight, Niko saw plainly the flares of essence that moved off of their bodies flow into the formation of sparkling matter. Like a living thing, parts of the formation wiggled, and the forward most part grew ever so slightly further up the tunnel.
‘Peck, is this a living thing?’ Niko asked himself with no small amount of alarm, ‘Is this going to just keep growing?’
The two, in a mixture of horror and fascination at once more seeing a weapon that they’d helped deploy in the underground of Greenleaf, couldn’t help but stare a few moments longer before Niko got his bearings. “We need to go.” Niko backed up, seeing more of their essence being used to feed the growth of whatever this was.
Skye didn’t need to be told twice, immediately darting backwards and up the tunnel in all haste. Neither of them knew exactly what that was, but now Niko made a mental note to ask Mithel what exactly they’d unleashed in the underground. Only once they passed the ‘borderline’ where essence once more existed were the pair willing to talk.
“How!? How did it get this far out?” Skye’s eyes darted to the tunnel, as if she expected to see the vermillion growth creeping up after them.
To be fair, Niko feared the same. “I don’t know. But I think we need to double time it back to Riizen. If nothing else, we need to tell Crowe and Camille.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Skye nodded, but then cringed, “Ugh… this is going to be awkward to bring up to Anya.”
Niko shared the look, before he ground out, “Nothing for it. Even if this ends up hurting our relations, it’d be much worse if we tried to conceal it.”
The half elf nodded, before pausing, “Should we… see if this outer edge is growing at all?”
‘Good question,’ Niko thought to himself, regarding the edge of the bubble with his Aether Sight. That wouldn’t be a bad idea, and in fact if it wasn’t growing, that would mean a lot for the immediacy of the threat.
Decision made, Niko was quick to say, “We can stay for a few minutes to examine it. After that, we should really start off. It’s probably early morning right now.”
Together, they felt at the edge of the bubble, waiting and trying their best to actually sense where the boundary was. Skye set out a few loose stones from the tunnel, roughly marking where the edge was based on the sensation of it against her skin. Niko watched on, using them to estimate a little better where the void began.
What was supposed to be a few minutes of watching rapidly became a half hour of tense examination. Occasionally, Niko would look down the tunnel, but never did the expected wave of vermillion come. When neither spoke up about the time they were spending, they sat for another half hour.
All Niko could think about was if this was an unending ecological disaster, something fed by essence that in turn grew and absorbed even more essence. His instincts practically screeched danger when he’d been close to it, so he didn’t dare think that it would be harmless.
After a full hour had been spent watching, they finally decided that they’d watched for long enough. The results let them both breathe a little bit easier.
“I didn’t notice any movement.” Skye nodded to the stones, “If it actually is growing, it’s so slow that I don’t think it’ll be a problem in the short term.”
“It’s possible that the bulk of its growing ability is spent,” Niko hazarded a guess, before frowning, “Well, maybe not. Maybe the concentration of essence is such that it’s repelling the essence in the surroundings? Like, met a kind of equilibrium in the environment?”
Skye held her hands up in surrender, “Your guess is as good as mine, and I’m no expert on how essence flows. We’d probably need to speak with an archmage for that. Maybe someone in Riizen.”
The two felt the moment when it was time to leave, turning together and prowling back up the tunnel where they’d originally come from. Niko was so wrapped up in his own head, that when Skye spoke, he almost jumped. “It’s odd.”
“Hmm? Yes? What’s odd?” Niko blinked in confusion, looking around to see if there was something that caught her attention.
“Well, the Memory Thief isn’t something I’ve ever even heard of. What are the chances that something like this lairs in a place with such low essence?” She tapped her thigh, “That, and the depleted spots near the hornets.”
Niko hummed thoughtfully, “Well, maybe it already lived here? Maybe the low essence is why it left?”
“Maybe,” Skye gave a slight assent, “And I guess maybe the hornets were the ones causing the depleted zones…”
The Phorus contemplated that internally. The hornets clearly had exacerbated that situation, but he wondered if they truly were the root cause of the dead spots. He’d noticed one around the time that the hive had likely been young. Was the hive the cause, or was there something else he was missing?...
“Something to look out for,” Niko finally stated, “I’d hope it’s just a coincidence, but…”
Skye sighed, “Yeah. With the pilgrimage, who knows?”
Silence settled on them again, the only sound their own footsteps and clacking claws on the stone of the bore-hole. Essence gradually thickened the higher they went, until Niko began to feel much more at ease. He relaxed his hold upon his psuedo-body, letting his will rest as the essence within him stopped trying to escape. With a sigh of relief, Skye did the same.
“I don’t know how people like Orson do that all the time,” disdain colored Skye’s voice, “We’re only tier two and it feels awful to have to do that all the time.”
Niko snorted in amusement, “Lots of practice, probably. Gotta wonder where high tier people end up hanging out, though. Do you know the highest tier territory of the Kingdom?”
“I think the highest tier official territory of Arnost is tier five. But, you never really know, could have higher ones with their information protected.” With a shrug, Skye answered, before adding, “The Republic has a pair of tier five territories, while the Empire supposedly has a tier six, but I don’t know if that’s actually true or not.”
Niko mulled that over in his mind, happy for the distraction. From a national perspective, it must have been excellent to have such land nearby, both to cultivate their own power, and to get higher tier materials. Peck, he could see them use it as a lure for retiring powerhouses, just so they’d be able to relax themselves.
It was an interesting thought, but one that Niko set aside as he felt the ambient essence climb to tier three. And, from the looks of it, they were still quite deep underground. He feared that was an indication of what was to come.
Sure enough, several more minutes of walking had them enter into an area that was tier four in essence, and now Skye and Niko both moved with far greater caution.
The breach to the surface didn’t look like the mouth of a cave, more akin to a rift, a crack that had collapsed inwards, leaving a ramp and what looked to be another tunnel going down the other side. Niko imagined that whatever Earth Wyrm dug this tunnel, they’d gone too close to the surface, realized there was no more earth to chew through, and dove back down, forming the arcing tunnel. He wondered if they ever dug straight up or straight down, but imagined that they likely wouldn’t. Who knew what kinds of cavities and caverns existed in the underground?
“Fresh air, final-” Skye began, before pausing just at the bottom of the pile of rubble.
Niko stopped in his tracks as well, looking outwards to see what Skye had detected to bring her up short so suddenly. For a moment, he didn’t realize what the issue was, but then all at once it occurred to him. Their path to this point had been well lit with the light stones on his pack, but up above, where he expected at least the dim light of the moon reflected off the leaves, was instead an eerie glow of colors.
The pair exchanged wary glances before carefully clambering up the rubble…