Pirin leaned into the door with his shoulder, expecting that he’d have to push it with all his might. And even then, only make it budge an inch or two—considering how big of a slice of stone he was trying to move.
But the slab slid inwards with minimal resistance.
It was heavy, yes, but it felt like it floated on pure air and nothing else. Once it budged a little, it kept swinging inwards faster and faster, and Pirin didn’t try to catch it. The slab rotated on a set of hinges. It smacked against the wall with a boom, sending dust coughing out into Pirin’s face.
When the dust cleared, he found himself staring down a new hallway. The floor was flat—not even a single degree of downward incline—and the walls were tight. He could barely stick both his arms straight out to the side.
He held the torch further ahead, trying to illuminate the walls and floor. There weren’t any rune-lines on the walls here. There weren’t even any cobwebs. Just plain sandstone brick with straight lines and rigid corners.
Pirin took a few steps into the tunnel, then beckoned for Gray to follow. He debated the merits of reforming his Reyad for a few seconds, then decided that he would rather have the mobility and reliable communication with Gray. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to use the Shattered Palm for a little while without seriously straining his channels.
The tunnel didn’t have any turns or branches; it just went straight. Perfect for concentrating on his Essence. As he walked down the small tunnel, he kept his Essence still in his core, letting his channels relax.
After a few minutes, he figured he had rested as much as he could. He put his mask back on and formed his Reyad with Gray.
This time, after the bond triggered, he kept walking right away. It felt like a single strike to the gut, and he could manage that.
One day, you’ll probably not have to worry about forming and deactivating the Reyad at all! Gray said.
“I hope so.” Pirin rubbed his arms. They still tingled, and it felt like he had been punching something all evening. But with every step he took, the tiredness seemed to fade. “Seems like, the better foundation I make, the easier it is to weather the effects.”
That means you’ll be able to talk to me more, then!
Pirin let out a few quiet chuckles. “Or, you could keep trying to learn Low Speech, so you can listen in on me whenever you want.”
I could…
As they walked, tendrils of something white and crystalline appeared on the wall. It slithered in veins like moss, and when Pirin held the torch up to it, it looked like salt—just with much larger crystals.
“Saltsprays would love this place,” he muttered.
Now, I know you like sightseeing and all, Gray said. But our cores are unveiled, right? Lady Clase will notice sooner than later.
He hadn’t been running because he wasn’t sure where the tunnel was taking him, but he had to admit that Gray was right. He jogged a few paces, then broke into a full-out sprint. The hallway still didn’t turn or branch off into intersections.
The crystals, however, grew larger. Spikes of white poked off the walls, narrowing the way even further, and eventually, they began to dangle off the ceiling, too. He had to duck under a few.
“Can you still fit, Gray?” he asked.
Of course! I might— She cut herself off as she passed beside a small spike. It pulled a few feathers off her wings, but they weren’t flight feathers. I might lose some feathers, was what I was going to say. And then the salt so rudely interrupted me.
Prin ran for another minute. Even though the floor was completely covered in crystals now, it stayed flat. Was this even a downward tunnel at all? Maybe it just led to another door in the side of the mountain, and it’d be a massive waste of time. Hir Venias did say he didn’t remember exactly how—
The crystals beneath his feet shattered.
Rather than a layer on top of the stone, the crystals had formed over nothing. They fell away into thin air, making a hole wide enough to fit an entire trebuchet through.
Pirin fell. He clutched the torch tighter, waving it around. Now wasn’t the time to panic. He spread his limbs out, trying to slow and stabilize his fall as much as he could.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He plummeted through a massive cylindrical cavern of salt crystals. The torch didn’t throw its light far, but far enough that he could make out the edges. The new cavern was wide enough to fit the Featherflight across it.
But he was still falling, and the floor was nowhere in sight. If he hit the ground now, he would just become a little red stain. He thrust his legs and arms downwards, blasting out columns of air and trying to push himself up a little. But he didn’t have enough gnatsnapper Essence at the moment. Not enough to slow his descent, if such a thing was even possible.
Above, a chirp sounded.
With a flutter of feathers, Gray dove towards him. She folded her wings up and dove like a bird of prey.
“Can you catch up?” Pirin yelled, shoving his words towards her with intent.
I’ve spent the last seven years of my life diving for seafruits off the coast of the Elven Continent! If I can get going fast enough to plunge to the coastal seafloor, I think I can catch up to you!
She paused for a moment, then added, But…for good measure, I might need you to conjure a few gusts of wind to slow yourself down.
Pirin strained his eyes, trying to find the floor. Through the dust and gloom, the misty outline of a network of sharp crystal spikes emerged below him. It was rising to meet him like a charging horse.
He thrust his arms and legs downwards again, conjuring another gust of wind as best as he could. The technique didn’t bleed gnatsnapper Essence directly, but it did lose some in the form of manifested feathers.
He fell slower, but he still fell.
Almost there! Gray called. A little to your left…
Pirin directed his fist out to the side and let off a Winged Punch. It pushed him over a slight bit.
A blur of grey feathers rushed past him. Gray circled below to align herself, then opened her wings to match his speed. He tucked his arms in to catch up to her, then reached out and grabbed the pommel of the saddle with his free hand. He slid his feet in the stirrups then shifted his grip up to Gray’s nape. As gently as he could, he pulled back, then hissed, “I’m in! Pull up! Up!”
The floor was only thirty yards below. The crystal spikes were twenty yards.
Gray opened her wings all the way, then fluttered. Pirin, with his Reyad active, opened up a Whisper Hitch with her. Immediately, tiredness and exhaustion bled into his Essence and seeped up to his mind, and he absorbed it so she could fly without concern.
She had been hauling carts filled with rocks and gold all day before this. Pirin did his best to mitigate it, then fed her the most calm and refreshing thoughts he could muster. She flapped faster.
He pulled her nape to the side, drawing them into a circle and making it as wide as he could. They brushed past the edge of the cavern, slowing down with every wingbeat.
“There, at the center of the cavern,” Pirin said, pointing towards a patch of flat floor at the center of the cavern where they could land without impaling themselves. Gray swooped towards it and touched down, her talons skittering on the hard surface.
A spike of crystal waited in front of them. Gray was on a collision course, head-first. Pirin locked his legs in the stirrups and mustered the last dregs of gnatsnapper Essence. He thrust his hands out, blasting two bars of wind ahead of him.
It slowed them down just enough. Gray’s forehead stopped an inch in front of the spike.
Pirin exhaled through clenched teeth, then slipped off the saddle. “Thanks, Gray.”
You’re welcome. More than welcome, in fact! If you’d died while we the Reyad was active, we’d have both died, right? She didn’t speak for a second, then added, A bit of a gloomy thought, but…you’d have taken the mask off before you splatted on the ground, right?
“Of course, Gray,” Pirin said. “No need to drag you down with me.”
If you remembered…
“I’d have remembered.”
You don’t have the greatest track record with memory.
“It’s not happening again.” He patted her neck, then looked around. “Now, we need to get moving. I guarantee there will be others who follow us down, and we’ll have plenty of trouble coming this way.”
Which way do we go?
Pirin spun around in a circle, glancing all around the cavern. They had fallen deep—deeper than he had ever delved with Myraden—and he didn’t have any idea where he would head from here. He pulled the old Saltspray map out of his haversack, then traced his finger down the rough route that they had fallen. It didn’t appear on the map, but he had a general idea where this chamber was. Then, he pulled his hand back over to the left—towards the center of the map.
Now that he looked closely at the map, the tunnels that they had mapped out seemed to wrap around a large spherical central chamber, but never crossed through it. Just as Hir Venias had predicted. If they headed back west, Pirin figured they’d hit the central chamber precisely through the center.
When he turned west, as best as he could reckon, he came face-to-face with a wide culvert-like tunnel with a barred entrance. White crystals filled it as well, and Pirin figured that so much had accumulated that the tunnel barely had half its diameter left.
“That’s gotta be the crystal accumulation that Hir Venias was talking about, right?” Pirin asked. “The stuff this place was supposed to vent?”
I wasn’t present for that conversation, Gray said.
“Ah, yeah,” Pirin muttered, walking towards the culvert torch-first. He ducked through the grate of bars. They weren’t wide enough for Gray to fit through until he kicked off a few of the crystals that had accumulated on the bars. “We should find the Reign gems at the center of this place, then. The most powerful of the crystals here.”
Then lead on! Gray squished through the bars, then shook out her feathers. A cloud of salty dust flew off her.
For good measure, Pirin drew his sword. Whatever waited for him ahead, he doubted it would be easy.