The spell flickers into life around him as the script twists into being from his careful movements, and a wave of air pulses out to bounce against the solid walls of the room. Painting a picture in his mind of the presence of things. This was connected to his mind by the combination of Dark and Earth with a touch of Fire, but was tricky in the exact measurements of it's type. Though it wasn't perfect the resonance of the script allowed him to see how the odd mana was affecting him. All the doors were various sizes rather than only the middle one, but it was hard to get anything else from such a method. Looking around again, he taps his chin in thought, unsure which door to enter first. It kinda seemed like going into the middle door was keeping him away from things the mana source didn't want him to see or be near. Which might be a good thing considering the violent reactions of mana he had seen before. Then, he turns to the left-most door before going up to it and pressing against the engravings. They didn't move and the door didn't either.

Growling, Yana traced the patterns on the door with his hands, but it was like touching a normal wall. If it wasn't for the clear, stone, hinges to one side it would have him further questioning his perceptions. Yet, they were still marked out in his mind by the running script, and he could find them with his hands even if his eyes refused to see them. He pushes his hands into spiraling engravings with a trace of mana, the rainbow kind of pure mana. Suddenly, the door shifts and his hands move inward, and causing him to stumble forward. No, blast of air meets him as he recovers with a short hop, and no creatures jump on him leading to a generally positive point. The only odd thing is the green-purple mana wasn't present in the room before he opened it, and so it floods the space within seconds. Then, it gets pushed back out the door as it closes behind Yana, moving too silently and closing before he realizes.

The room slowly lights up with a uniform white light, and Yana can look around without any issues. Though what he sees is far from things that he understands or expects. A collection of glass tubes connect variously shaped glass chambers with nothing in them. There is also a series of stone boxes on the wall to one side with broken edges and patterns on them.

"It looks like something living used to be in those boxes," Yana says to himself, touching the stained floor near the edge of one box, "Well at least in this one." There was no smell yet it was clear that something had leaked out of this box, and it was something blackish green. Those were colors he had seen in the streets of the human Hold often enough when he passed through the outskirts. The colors of rot and decay were fairly easy to tell at a glance, but the odd thing was the lack of any mana in the room at all. Looking around he couldn't see any mana in the air or surrounding space. It was all kept tight into the materials that were made from them.

Running his finger across one of the walls he finds tiny grooves set into the stone. Upon closer inspection he could see that it was actually some kind of extra small script that was somehow powered by the mana running through the material itself. This had him running his hands and eyes across every surface of every object or part of the room, and he found that every space seemed to have such writing within it. Within being the operative word in this case since it didn't seem like it just was etched or engraved into the materials. So much as they were form from the mana that made the item up, more accurately, formed from the absence of mana. This was a level of mana control and construction that, perhaps, his Mother could do with practice. Yet, would be nearly impossible to do without an incredible amount of practice and knowledge.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It was tempting to think that this place was a kind of Dungeon, similar to his Mother, but it was unlikely since such a supreme being would have just prevented him from entering this place by sealing it completely. This was more like a guard would could only tell you to go away, but couldn't hurt you because it would look very bad. Similar to Guard Leeroy who was often put on garbage collection duty because of his habit to needlessly push or attack people. Yana found himself musing about such a man going into any truly dangerous situation, or being allowed out of the town for any reason by himself. Would likely be a short bellow of rage and aggression followed by several minutes of watching him be torn apart by something. The image of squirrels oddly forced itself into his mind, and an amused chuckle sounds into the room.

Stopping mid wall petting, he focused on the air around him more carefully. Could all this be a mental illusion that the mana had forced on him because he thought he won? That image of the squirrels was odd to have show up, and the fact that his, ordinarily focused, mind wandered to that fool of a human was suspect in its own way. Then the air around him shattered like glass, and he was standing back in the previous room with his hand on a shattered wall that looked similar to the one that had a door in it. His eyes flickered to the other walls, and they remained the same as when he used his echo-location script to sound out the room. His mind spinning through the possible solutions and possibilities for what was going on. Then, they crashed on something extremely obvious.

This mana was affecting perceptions and the mind. That "ghost" they had found a week ago was some kind of mana construct using a copy of a mind. Running his hands across the stone around him, the subtle bumps and troughs on it would be passed off by most as natural wear, but he could almost picture the tiny scripting. The green-purple mana must be some kind of mind or domination mana that was used to create illusions that would act just like the real thing so that experiments could be run. It must have been something common in the distant past, but lost to time due to a war or something. That always seemed to be the way of things in this world of humans, and even the beastkin would likely be similar if it wasn't for the social situations they found themselves in.

So, something must have shifted in the mind or script used to control this place in the past, and over the years it would interact with everything. Causing people to see things that they wanted to happen or feared would happen. Maybe it only started after the construction of the Keep, but Yana would bet a lot that it was happening before just to animals. There were still questions, like how a living illusion had managed to get so far away and even start turning into something like his own kind but far cruder. That was just odd on its own, though he had a couple theories on the matter in his head, and he would bet a fair bit that the rest of the doors in this room would hold part of the answers. He would just have to enter each and try to piece together the devices and concepts.

He rubbed his hands together, this would be fun.