The team followed the tracks inside. Zaina and Raya carried oil lamps, which illuminated the entrance and caused the others to cast long shadows that shifted and danced on the walls following the rhythm of their footsteps.

The stone floor was tilted and it showed hairline cracks that extended across the corridor. After careful observation, Nua saw that they crept up the walls, all the way to the ceiling. Since the ziggurat has been discovered after an earthquake, this was not surprising. When she focused her attention on the tracks for the mining carts, though, she noticed they had a slight bend to them. According to the Antiquarian scroll, this excavation site was about five years old.

The deeper they went inside, the more noticeable the damage became. Occasional stone fragments littered the floor. The party passed a soot-coated door, which was drunkenly hanging on its crooked frame. Nua could not get rid of the impression that the ground shook not once, but several times. Could some of it have been caused by the people who discovered the building in the first place? Mage-engineers commanded the forces of destruction; it was common knowledge. Had they worked here? Probably so.

Nua remembered the underground corridors of the Southern Temple, untouched by time, adorned with silver and golden scripture, mysterious sorcerous workings, and machinery. Here, the walls had either eroded or had been stripped bare of anything that looked precious. Her companions did not even bother looking into the first couple of rooms. The explorers, maybe the original team or perhaps their subsequent counterparts, plundered the interior in a thorough, systematic, and brutal manner. Contrary to Idris’ words, someone’s attention was not above the pocket coppers.

The king was silent all the time, but despite his mental shields, Nua could tell that he was in one of his dark moods.

“Are you all right, Anki?”

“Reasonably,” he answered. “I did not expect… Honestly, I do not know what I expected. Minimum respect for the discoveries from an ancient era? I guess they really hate us, though.”

“I don’t think it’s hate. It’s kind of… not thinking and not caring. What was the word? Contempt. Contempt for everyone that is not them.”

“That would be even worse, young one.”

Meanwhile, Zaina gestured for them to stop.

“There is unstable ground ahead,” she warned. “I guess they blew the whole thing up after they were done.”

There were sighs of disappointment coming from the group.

“Can we get around that?” Oswald asked.

“I could listen to the Muses,” Quintus proposed.

“No need,” Nua started, but no one heard her; her voice was too quiet. She cleared her throat. “No need,” she repeated a bit louder. “The rooms we passed on the left have this particular shape, remember? We talked about it before. There is probably a hidden passage in there.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to try,” the poet nodded. “I’ll save the ether for later.”

The adjoining chambers looked just as bleak as the rest of the corridor, but there was one difference. One of the walls seemed to be built of smooth sepia-colored metal, and despite the dark, singed marks that told volumes about the effort of the previous explorers, it was intact.

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“Engine room,” Anki said. “This part of the building was made with increased structural stability in mind.”

“Is there a way down?”

“There should be a technical passage, separate from the part that contains machinery. Of course, they made it all shut down; they blew up the door to enter the building, and then safety measures fell in place.”

“Can I open it with my ether?”

“You weren't granted access, and they tore away the control panels, probably for precious metals. Garden-pissing, uncouth, filthy barbarians.” The king’s scorn was palpable. “They have likely taken appliances from the privies, too. Wait for a moment, I will see if there’s anything I can do from the inside.”

He went through the door. Nua started inspecting the metal wall, and then all the others, brick by brick. She didn’t expect to find anything on her own, but Zaina was doing the same, and the girl did not want to be the one who waited for the ready answer.

There was a multitude of traces on the walls that upon close inspection revealed destroyed reliefs, singed marks where the scripture should be, and snakelike hollows with unknown purpose. Zaina turned out to carry a whole array of tools in her belt pouches – a chisel, a little hammer with a split tip, and several that Nua did not recognize. She was sticking them into every crevice that seemed suspicious. That was reasonable; the girl did the same at the scrapyard, only that she used her old blunt knife at the time. After a short deliberation, she took out her new weapon. It was too wide and unsuited for any kind of delicate work, but she did not have anything better.

Anki returned, smug as a merchant who made a fantastic deal.

“Good news?”

“The installation on the other side is intact. Channel the ether through here,” he flew to the wall. “Don’t skimp on it. Let’s try to short-circuit the workings.”

Nua slowly moved to the indicated spot and stuck her knife into the hollow that remained after the removal of whatever was in there before, then waited until no one was looking. She poured a large portion of ether through the knife. She never did that before, but when she was fighting the Antiquarian, she had noticed that to a certain degree, weapons worked for the ether like the extension of her limbs.

What followed was a sudden burst of energy and a display of lights that made her fall on her butt, evoked several startled curses, and rendered everyone into battle poses. A crackling array of silver, blue, and green symbols appeared, arranged in a three-dimensional shape that was almost round but not quite; if Nua knew the word, she would recognize a perfect icosahedron.

“I…I think I pressed something.”

Oswald frowned. “There is writing in here,” he said. “Wait a moment. Scorching fire that roams outwards. Sounds like a trap. We should exercise caution.”

Nua caught Anki bursting into hysterical laughter.

“What?”

The king had to calm himself down before answering.

“If the current knowledge of our script is that distorted, Flavius was courting death no matter how far he would get into the temple.”

“What does that really mean, then?”

“Fire escape.”

“Oh.” Nua wasn’t sure if she understood. “So it’s safe? How to open it?”

“I think you already did. Be patient. It’s a thousand-year-old etheric mechanism.”

The floor trembled. A low rumble, like distant thunder, rolled behind the metal wall. Then, half of the barrier receded into the ceiling.

There was a staircase inside, illuminated with glittering silver runes.

“By the ancestors,” Lykomedes whistled. “This is real. No one has been there before.”

“Careful,” Raya stepped closer and held up her hand. “Quintus, I think this would be the time to call the Muses.”

“Do that,” Zaina muttered. “I can’t shake off the impression that it was too easy.”

“No fire though,” Oswald grunted. “So far, it just looks like a couple of stairs. Are you feeling challenged by stairs? Let’s check for traps and we’re good.”

“Remember, we are not going all the way down,” said the priestess, “We find the first room, take the relics, then come back.”

“Yeah,” said Lykomedes, his awed voice expressing an entirely different opinion than his words.

“Scout ahead, Anki,” Nua wrapped her arms around herself. “I hope that we will both quickly find what we’re looking for.”