It was clad in steel armour, or some other metal really, though the breastplate had been cleft in twain. Pale white bone, broken ribs mainly, and a bit of vertebrae were clearly visible. If she had seen this a couple of years ago, Yuriko would have thrown up. But after everything that happened, well, this was pretty much a matter of course.
Still, metal armour had not been worn in centuries, at least not by Imperial forces, so this one was either ancient or from a different, less developed country. From what she remembered of the Animatech disparity between the Federation of City-States of Rumiga’s actual city-states. If she remembered correctly, Ekelus City was the most advanced in Animatech, the highest amongst the seven but still falling far short of Imperial standards. They did practice a lot of alternative technologies though.
Ivala City, the one closest to Rumiga City, was dreadfully backward. Their technology was limited to crossbows instead of Plasma Casters or Lancets, and their polearms and shields didn’t even have the ability to collapse into smaller, easy-to-carry, forms. That being said, since the Federation’s Anima strengthening techniques, like the bigger Coalition of Independent Planes, included binding to such weapons and other items like armour and jewellery.
Sheamus Dorn and Nathan, the irregular scouts who originated from the Coalition, had illuminated her on how it all worked a few times they had met in their downtime. The idea was simply to awaken and bind to an object’s spirit, much like Fri’Avgi’s consciousness. The two would share their Animus reserve, and the binder would gain a skill or technique associated with the bound item. What that was depended not only on the physical weapon or armour but also on what the wielder’s Intent and Will perceived.
All this ran at the back of Yuriko’s head as she came up to the corpse. The breastplate’s hole had jagged edges, and there was a large hole in the middle. She thought a fist or some other weapon had been rammed into the armour and punctured it. She could tell from how the edges bent inwards. The rib cage was in similar shape, and when she got close enough, her aura washed over the body, giving her, in intimate detail, the condition of the torso.
Broken bones, mostly. Dry and desiccated, but there were bits and pieces of flesh left over in the odd corners of the armour. Her Anima perception was as strong as her own unenhanced senses, and she could see, hear, touch, taste, and smell through it. Ah, she could withhold part or all of her senses, after all, she didn’t want to taste the dirt under her feet or anyone who came within her light, for that matter. She had defaulted to touch, mostly, since she could see and hear from farther than the limits of her aura. Now, she activated sight, which allowed her to see inside the armour. Bones and dust, nothing else. No identification, no weapons, and no valuables. She could even see where the metal had melted into the stone.
“Poor fool,” Marron said as he approached and stood next to her. “Long dead and left to rest ignobly.” He sighed. “Think we should bury him?”
“Or her,” Yuriko muttered. The body was wide, half again as much as Marron, and a bit short. If it stood up, it would probably be as tall as Desire.
“What do you think killed her?”
“Something that didn’t want to eat the body,” Saki said decisively. “Whatever it was didn’t try to remove the rest of the armour.”
“The armour is sunk into the stone.” Yuriko said, answering her brother’s question, “We’ll have to pry it off and then dig into the rocks before we can bury her.”
“Or just pile stones on top of the body. The mound it’s leaning on looks like a broken-off stalagmite.” Gwendith pointed up, indicating the matching stalactite.
“Or we could just leave it alone,” Saki said. “This isn’t really part of the Avos’ request.”
“No, I suppose not,” Marron murmured, “but it would be the right thing anyway.”
Yuriko looked over past the mound and found shattered bits of stone that were probably the rest of the stalagmite. The debris was probably enough to completely bury the body. She said as much and her brother said, “Well, let’s do this quickly.”
It took only a few minutes to bury the poor warrior with rocks. Yuriko’s kinesis did much of the heavy lifting since each piece was easy to carry. In the end, they paused for a quiet prayer to the Ancestors and left.
The cavern was pretty big and Yuriko’s Anima light wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the ceiling. Some of the stalactites and stalagmites had already fused into pillars though there were more than enough still in the process of forming. Steady drips of sediment-rich water dripped from the upper formations and provided a strange echoing rhythm to their march.
At precisely the opposite wall, they found a tunnel, shaped much like the one they came down here on, and they continued through it. This one sloped up a bit, though it quickly dipped down every time. After a couple of hours, she no longer knew if they had ascended more than they descended or if it was the same. It also wasn’t illuminated, but that wasn’t much of a problem.
When they came into another cavern, they immediately saw the Wall. It was flat and even, made of bronze or some other metal of that colour, and it glimmered with reflected light. The chamber was about ten paces high and widened out towards the other end. It looked like a dead end though.
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“So, I guess the door had already been closed?” Gwendith murmured.
“No, look. There are tunnels parallel to the wall.” Marron pointed to either side of the chamber.
Yuriko squinted and activated Enhanced Sight which allowed her to pierce the shadows and see what her brother had pointed at.
“So…left or right?” Marron asked.
“Flip a coin?” Yuriko offered as she fished out a silver penny from her hip satchel.
“If it’s sigil, we go right,” Gwendith said and Yuriko flipped the silver round with her thumb. The coin spun in the air and when it began to descend, she snatched it out of the air and slapped it on the back of her hand. It was a numeral, Yuriko knew, even before she uncovered it. She could feel the markings against her skin, her aura notwithstanding.
“Left then.”
“As good a choice as any,” Marron said.
The bronze wall to the right, they proceeded with as much caution as before. Even if there had been nothing hostile so far. With her flared aura and her fingers, she realised that the wall wasn’t quite bronze but a strange alloy that reminded her of what Fri’Avgi had been made off. She called the artefact to hand and compared the metal.
It was a close match, but not quite identical. Shrugging to herself, she returned Fri’Avgi to her Anima, shrugging to answer the questioning gazes. When she tapped her fingers against the wall, there was only a dull thud, quite similar to what the sound of a finger tapping a stone would have produced.
The smoothness of the wall was unsettling too. There was no hint of damage at all. No scratches, watermarks, or any growths throughout its entire length, and for all she knew, the parts hidden underground and above were just as perfect.
It didn’t take far, maybe less than a longstride before the tunnel, and the wall abruptly turned right. As soon as they rounded the corner, she saw…light. At the far end where it took another right turn, though not a full ninety degrees. Ah, and both sides were now made of the same material, and the ceiling was a mere four or so paces above her. When she flared her aura to full and felt along the ceiling’s surface, the tactile sensation was identical to what she felt on both sides of the wall. The passage was more than wide enough at five paces.
Before she knew it, she was already bathing in the light. There were a few yells from behind her, and when she looked, she found her team still halfway down the tunnel. But she was in the light. And what light it was. Radiant.
Wait. Radiant light? From deep underground? She wasn’t that foolish as to proceed by herself, so she waited for the rest of the slow people, but she was able to look. The tunnel had bent nearly forty-five degrees, but it only continued for a couple dozen paces before it opened up to somewhere bright. She squinted and tried to stare past the glare, and her eyes soon focused on…buildings? Brown cubes with construction remarkably similar to Imperial housing greeted her sight.
“Yuri!” Marron yelped as soon as he came within reach, and he grabbed her by the shoulder and poked her side, “What in the Abyss were you thinking?”
“Young mistress, please don’t rush off like that,” Saki begged. Gwendith and Desire had hurt looks on their faces which made Yuriko feel a bit worse.
“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I don’t know what came over me.” She shook her head. “It’s just that…I don’t quite like being away from the sun, and this…”
“How did you even get there that quickly?” Marron muttered. “All I saw was a blur and then you were at the end of the tunnel.”
“Oh?” Reflexively, Yuriko checked her Animus reserves and found them nearly depleted. Her inner reserves were still at three-fourths, but her outer ones were at a dozen lumens or so. Those recovered quickly though, at a lumen every three or so seconds. The cap on that was reliant on how many runescript weavings she could make, and fit, in the inch of aura around her skin. Apparently, farther than that and the efficiency of using the gathered Animus dropped to the point that converting it to internal Animus cost double for every inch away. So at an inch, it was fine, at two inches it cost two lumens external to convert to internal Animus, at three it was four lumens to one, at four, it was eight to one. She also couldn’t compress her Anima for defence when there was too much Animus stored there.
“I must have used the fourth dance instinctively,” she finally said after too long a pause.
“Well, try to control your impulses,” Marron frowned at her, glanced at Desire and Gwendith, then muttered, “hard as that may be.”
Yuriko’s face pinked at the slur, and she was about to poke him back when he nodded towards the opening.
“Let’s see what’s there then.” He said.
The five of them made their cautious way to the opening, and once they were at the threshold, an amazing vista greeted them.
The tunnel turned into a wide boulevard, and there were even trees on the road’s centre island. They looked untrimmed and wild, but they were there. And some even sported colourful flowers and fruits.
On either side of the boulevard were a row of houses, complete with roofs. She looked up and saw a field of blue sky, and the glowing orb that was the Radiant Sun. There was no mistaking the Radiant energy that filled her.
And, straight down the boulevard, maybe a league or so away, was another massive wall, made of a dull silver metal or stone, and it rose nearly half the way up the sky. Which may or may not be an illusion. She was too far away to tell.
There were intersections crossing the boulevard every twenty paces or so too. Much of the far wall was obscured by the foliage, so Yuriko couldn’t tell if the door they were supposed to close was over there. The entrance to this place certainly didn’t have one. When she turned around to check the surroundings of the tunnel exit, she saw a sheer cliff rising up, and the ceiling was obscured by thick mist or fog.
Immediately to either side of them was a largish building, a couple of storeys tall. The windows on the upper floor looked more like shooter’s slits than anything else, and they were no glass panes or even shutters. The darkness within the building melted away from her sight when she enhanced it, allowing her to see a cracked and dusty wall beyond.
“What is this place?” Saki murmured.
“Who knows?” Gwendith said loudly.
“Well, let’s see if what the Avos wants us to do is here,” Marron said determinedly, clearly more focused on getting back to exploring.
That urge had welled up in Yuriko’s heart and she had to fight the desire to spend hours or days just looking at this place. A whole city buried in the depths of Rumiga. Who else knew it was here? Abandoned as it looked, what stories could these ruins tell?