The following day Jack made the choice that the emotionless state seemed to be the best for his current purposes and repeated the spell. However, the second casting of it used the last remaining paper that he had access to. This meant that from then on, he needed to be more mindful of his limits and absorbing mana on a regular basis to keep the spell going. If he ran out of mana and got himself stuck somewhere, that was it. He had no second chance.
Even with that restriction, Jack kept his promise. Every night as he explored, doing his best to map out and memorize the twisting corridors of his prison he would make sure to find his way back to where the animals were being stored. He knew it was a needless risk but he couldn’t help himself. One of the nights after what felt like yet another fruitless trip, he let the cat out of the cage and held it in his arms. It was small and emaciated. It was clear that while they weren’t starving the animals they also weren’t overly concerned with their health. Not too surprising considering how quickly they seemed to be going through them. In just a few short days, Jack had noticed more than half of the animals that had been in the room prior had been exchanged with new ones.
There was a soft meow from his lap causing Jack to refocus his attention on the cat he held. He picked back up the petting of the animal that had stopped when his mind began to wander. As he pet the creature, he took the time to focus not only on its physical aspects but on how it felt to his mana as well. Even though it was a nonmagical cat without any active mana, it, like all living beings, still had a mana signature. Muted and dull compared to one which could use mana, but still present.
While the main reason he came back every night was to give attention to the cat. He made sure that he used at least some of the time to improve the disguise to his mana signature. That way he could justify to himself that his returning was more than just simply satisfying his selfish desire for companionship.
He continued petting as his mind drifted again thinking about what he had discovered over the last few days. Most nights he had been trying to expand his search in the same direction that he had gone the first night. Getting more of the corridors mapped out in his mind. On one of the nights however he decided to go the opposite direction to see if he could find the common room and route to the testing area that he had seen on his first trip there. He was surprised when he had not been able to find any of the rooms that he remembered in that direction. Either this compound was much more confusing than he had assumed, or his room had been changed after the incident. Both seemed possible considering some of the strange turns and directions of the hallways. It was almost as if…
Jack started. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the layout of the compound could have more meaning than the standard ease of access and organization that would usually guide a floorplan. He knew that to keep ambient mana gone like it was required a massive undertaking in terms of spell work, much less to allow for it to be sustained. He would have dismissed the thought that popped into his head as lunacy, the shear effort and cost that it would take to do such a thing would have been beyond astronomical. Except. He had seen other things in this place that fell into that same category. The mana crystals that were so perfectly shaped. Whatever it was that was powering all of the artifacts in the facility. There were things of wonder here. Far beyond what the average person had any idea about.
It seemed like madness, could they really have made the entire building into an array? Every corridor and room part of the design? Perhaps the corridors were the array lines with the sigils being in or between the rooms. If it was actual a massive array then the question was, if they would have made it into a full three-dimensional array or would it be a simpler two-dimensional one?
There was a sharp pain in Jack’s hand along with an unhappy sound. The cat had bitten him lightly, protesting his now tight grip on its body. “Sorry little one. My attention should be on you right now, shouldn’t it?” He sighed softly and again resumed petting. “I hope you’ll still be here by the time I have managed to find my way out of this place. If you are I’ll make sure to take you with me. I swear.”
Giving the cat a soft hug and one last pet Jack gently put it back into its cage and closed the door. The night was just starting and he had a good bit of work to do. His plans now changed, instead of what he had originally been going to do, he was now going to try to find out if his theory was true. To do that he would need to take some measurements and see if he could find some kind of stairs or elevators.
The night went by and Jack did not find anything of the sort. As did the following. It was on the third night of testing the hypothesis that Jack discovered something he had been missing. He had started writing out a map during the day to try and trace out the hallways. On the third night he found that if the hallways truly were the straight lines they seemed to be, there were intersections that were missing. With one area of his drawn map showing two hallways that should have run into each other but with no connection between them.
It was then that Jack realized that he had been thinking too linearly. He hadn’t even considered the idea that if it was a three-dimensional array, it could very well be in the shape of a sphere or some multifaceted shape. Where the lines of the array could be going closer to and away from the center of it along side equidistant layers. Jack started to get a headache thinking about just how the building had to be shaped for such a thing to be possible. This also meant that he had no real way of knowing the entire scope and size of the building.
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In the end his best choice was to simply continue on with his current plan. The further he explored, the better he could make an estimation of what and where he would need to go. While his time each night was limited, the mapping and exploration would eventually pay off. Every night he was able to explore a bit further and now that he knew that the hallways were multidimensional it calmed him down and reassured him that he was doing better than he had thought.
Two more nights went by. One of which was a bust. Somehow, he managed to hit four different patrols and ended up having to hide for the majority of the time he was able to be out of the room. The other night was far more successful. While he hadn’t yet managed to find the way out of the building, he did find the hallway leading to the common area he had seen before.
He came at it from the opposite direction then he had previously, as he passed the prayer room on the way to it. He checked out some of the hallways surrounding the commons and found several rooms that were filled housing people. It had taken him hours to find the room over the course of the night. Now that he knew where it was Jack estimated that it would take almost half an hour of walking from his room to get to this section. That alone was telling for just how massive this building truly was.
Happy to have found a more distinct landmark to help him better figure out the layout of the building Jack turned around for the night. Before he fully left the area, he stopped to take a closer look at the room filled with religious iconography. Walking in he saw that more then just the symbol on the alter, there were many more covering the walls. Jack moved closer to get a better look. When he did, he recognized a couple of them. They were symbols representing specific agier. With that realization he whirled around to stare at the central icon. He knew for a fact he had seen it somewhere before. If only he could figure out who exactly it represented.
Jack paced across room for a few minutes trying to remember where exactly he had seen it. His contemplations were interrupted as the sound of footsteps began to make their way down the hallway along with a light glow. Jack hurriedly looked around the room for a place to hide. The only spot large enough to obscure him was behind the alter. He dove behind and hoped that whoever was patrolling would move along quickly. Those hopes were dashed when the guard entered the room instead of simply passing on by. Jack’s heart began to beat faster as he tried to figure out if he had left some kind of marker or trail that the guard had noticed. Going over in detail everywhere that he had been and what he had done.
His thoughts were interrupted as the guard quietly began to pray. “Oh, lords and ladies. Thank you for your kindness and guidance. I stand here this night to ask you to watch over me and my family and to thank Lord Telipar for the kindness that his family has given me with this second chance. I know I am unworthy of my lord’s attention, sinner that I am, but I still wish to say my thanks. It is thanks to you and yours that I can see my little girl every morning when I get home. That I can put food on the table and no longer fear that my “friends” will pay a visit to my home. So, thank you Lord Telipar for everything. I promise tonight, as I do every night, that I will continue to work hard and do my best for you and your family.”
Jack stayed crouched uncomfortably behind the alter not daring to move a muscle, no matter how painful the position was. Eventually he heard the guard leave and crawled out from his hiding spot. Telipar. Of course. He really should have been able to make that connection. He had seen the symbol included in at least two different crests during the investigation before he ended up here. It was part of the Telipar Industries logo, as well as part of the symbol that was the party signature of the Day’s Watch.
He didn’t know how he had missed it before. Perhaps it was because it had been mentioned that Carlos Ross-Telipar had been new to the group that he didn’t think that the group itself was connected to the company. Thinking about it, there was no way that the heir to a branch of agier descendants like the ones in the city would be entrusted to a group of outsiders. Day’s Watch was most founded and supported by the company.
Jack was more then a little irritated with himself. He should have seen the connections much earlier. One of the very first things that he had learned while researching the case had been the that the company and family had been involved with the ruins in the north, having been the driving force behind the experiments that established contact with the now forbidden plane. Who else would have been knowledgeable enough about and interested in the materials from such a place to have created an entire complex designed specifically to counter the entity that had crossed over.
Besides that, Telipar Industries still sponsored numerous trips and missions to collect fragments and samples from that region. If they would collect animals affected by the remnants of what happened there, of course they would do the same with people. One thing puzzled Jack with that line of thought though. If Dilacy was affected by the same thing that he had been, why had her parents not been told of her being hospitalized here? From his interactions with Dr. Trovihn it was abundantly clear that he had been informed not too long after his wife had been brought in. Was there some reason that the Fawlers’ had not been informed? Or was Dilacy not being held here like he had thought.
There was only one way to figure that out. He needed to find out if Dilacy was really here or not. The rooms and hallways he had spotted earlier that held the other patients suddenly jumped up in priority.