It wasn’t that often that my habit of dropping myself into the dark unknown to face certain danger was quite so literal. In this case, I was falling through the inky-black void into some sort of underground cave to find a coffin that was definitely being guarded by some sort of powerful force. Sure, the ghosts outside had decided I was okay and actually led me here. But that didn’t mean that whatever was in this place would agree with that assessment. Or that it wouldn’t just decide to test me in its own way. A way that could be pretty nasty. I had to be ready for anything.
Even as I fell, I held up my staff with one hand and triggered a slight boost from it to slow my descent. At the same time, my other hand touched a spot on my leg, activating a spell I had already placed there. Immediately, the dark vision magic kicked in, and I could see. Which gave me a really good view of the massive cavern I was in. This place was positively enormous. I had already fallen about twenty feet, and there was still another thirty to go. From one wall to the other was about three hundred feet across. And it was empty. Just a big empty dirt cavern with no apparent tunnels or anything else.
Persephone hit the ground far ahead of me, straightening up without any apparent reaction to having fallen for over fifty feet. Then again, I’d already seen her fall from orbit without being remotely bothered by the impact, so this wasn’t exactly a surprise.
Landing next to the Revenant, I turned in a quick circle, staff up as I scanned the cavern. I was searching with both my eyes and my other senses, including my necromancy. I tried to detect any death energy, but it didn’t help. Not because there wasn’t a response, but because there was too much of one. There was death energy everywhere in this place. The whole cavern and area around it was completely drenched in the stuff. It was like looking for light while standing in the middle of the sun.
Grimacing, I looked at Percy and quietly asked, “You see anything special?”
Her head shook. “No, Flick,” she informed me quietly without actually looking my way. She was too busy continuing to scan the cave. “I don’t see anything. But there’s a lot of necromancy power in here.”
“Tell me about it,” I murmured. And the fact that she didn’t immediately start doing so said a lot about how accustomed she was to being around us by that point.
Okay, this was weird. From what I’d heard from the ghosts combined with what I’d sensed, I really expected to find something more than an empty cavern in here. Especially considering Elsworn had said there would be other tests and challenges. Sure, the place was big, but there was nothing here. Unless the coffin was buried underground? I really wasn’t sure. And with the overwhelming amount of death energy I could feel, it wasn’t going to be as simple as sensing where the coffin was and digging it up. I didn’t really have time to go over every inch of this place. Hell, it was even worse considering this thing wasn’t necessarily in the ground. Maybe it was buried in one of the walls, or even the ceiling itself. Nor did I know for sure how deep it might be, wherever side of the cavern it was on.
No, there had to be a better way to deal with this. First, I started walking. With my staff held up defensively, I paced the whole cavern one step at a time, moving from one side to the other repeatedly, each time moving a few steps over. I was trying to see if my item sense would pick up the coffin in the ground below. Sure, it was a long shot, but it was better than trying to just dig randomly. The very thought of that possibility made me feel tired.
Percy stayed a few feet away, following me the whole time while watching my back. The two of us were ready for anything to jump out or suddenly appear, but it never did. I walked that entire cavern as quickly as possible, and nothing happened. Nor did I sense the coffin anywhere below me. Again, not surprising, but I would’ve kicked myself if I didn’t try that first and it ended up working. Either the thing was too far down, or it was shielded from my senses. Or, I reminded myself, it was in one of the walls too high up for my sense to reach. If I had to cover every inch of those… we were going to be here for even longer.
Right, that didn’t work. What now? Crouching down in the middle of the cavern once more with my staff held against the dirt, I frowned and tried to think. I couldn’t find the coffin by sensing for it, and there was no way I could just dig this whole place up. There had to be something else I could do.
Hold on, maybe there was. Looking at my staff again, I switched it into the bow form. Then I drew a concussive energy arrow, took aim toward the far end of the cavern, and released it. The arrow hit the ground a few feet from the wall and sent a shower of dirt everywhere.
Percy had already jumped to her feet, looking for a threat. Belatedly, I assured her it was okay. Then I adjusted my aim, drew another arrow, and released it. Again there was a shower of dirt and a small indentation in the ground. I repeated that over and over again, charging my bow when I needed to. I sent a couple dozen arrows through the cavern that way, constantly sending dirt flying in every direction.
Looking around at the holes I had made, Percy grimaced. “I’m very sorry to say this, Flick, but I really don’t think you’ll be able to dig up this cavern with your bow.”
Giving her a small smile, I shook my head. “That’s not what I was doing,” I assured her. “See, I figured this coffin has to be protected by more than just dirt. And what’s the best way to protect something when you can’t stand in front of it the whole time?” As I was talking, I had walked about fifteen feet to the left, near one of the holes I made with my bow. My foot reached out to brush some dirt that was seemingly floating in midair, on an invisible shield. “A forcefield.”
That had been my plan. I spaced my arrows just about as far if any area had some sort of protection on it. Creating holes all over the cavern and allowing the dirt to fly into the air before dropping back down revealed the spot where the invisible shield was. The blast created a hole and the flying dirt landed on top of the forcefield that had previously been underneath it.
Percy clapped, making a slight blush cross my face as I crouched by the shield. Tapping the dirt around it to find the edge, I brushed more away without actually touching it. I wasn’t sure how the forcefield would react to that, and didn’t want to risk some sort of violent response.
Fortunately, I had a thing for this too. Thanks to all my magical training with so many impressive people, I had a lot of spells in my repertoire. Which included one from Wyatt. I didn’t have Tabbris and her perfect memory, but I did have the book I’d written many spells down in, so I summoned that from the storage space in my pocket and flipped through it to find the right one. Soon, I was using my image inscription power to draw on a blank metal tablet from the same storage space.
Percy watched the whole time, very curious about what I was doing. So, I explained, talking her through the whole thing before setting the readied spell tablet next to the shield. It took about five minutes to do, but when I was done and activated the thing, all the runes I had drawn on the thing vanished. A moment later, they were gradually replaced by more writing, this time in English. It was the details of this shield. Wyatt had taught me a spell to identify magic. I wasn’t as good at it as him or even Koren, but I could do this much. Even if it did make me want to close my eyes and take a little nap. Had it really been this long of a day? The thought of doing even more made me yawn before forcing myself to focus.
Picking up the tablet once it was done being filled out, I studied the description. “Okay, it’s a powerful shield, too strong for me to break just by hitting it. Or both of us for that matter. It’s draing power from something below, nothing I can reach and not death energy so I can’t just pull it out. Damn, I was really hoping it would be that simple.” Ugh, even with my level of stamina, this situation was exhausting.
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Shaking that off, I continued. “We can’t just dig down under it and then over, because it’s a bubble. Judging from this, I’d say the bubble’s about twice the size of a coffin. Though now that I say that out loud, they never actually said it was a human coffin, did they? It could be one for a bigger species. Or a smaller one for that matter.”
Straightening up, I paced slowly around the whole forcefield, frowning thoughtfully. “It’s too strong to beat by force, too advanced to disable with any little tricks, I can’t just drain the energy out of it… There has to be another way to turn this thing off.”
None of these spells I had access to would be enough to stop this thing. So if I couldn’t get past it that way then I had to… what? Frowning thoughtfully, I continued to stare at the dirt sitting on the invisible shield for another minute while mulling the problem over in my head. There had to be a way to get past this without taking days to do it. I just had to figure that out. I could do this. Just think, Flick. Calm down and think it through.
So, I did. Closing my eyes, I rocked back on my heels, still crouched in front of the thing. My lips moved silently as I talked to myself inside my own head, weighing options back and forth. Through it all, Percy remained silent, watching me as I thought it through. This forcefield was so strong. How was it possible that it could just sit here for all this time and have a shield that was so effective?
As soon as I had that thought, my eyes opened. It wasn’t possible. No matter who would put this thing here, I refused to believe that they would make a shield draw that much power constantly. If they were good enough to make a shield like this, then they were good enough to not waste so much energy and effort. Why would they need to? The shield only needed to be here if someone was about to get to the coffin. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time this thing was just sitting here in the ground. Hell, as far as I understood from the ghosts outside almost no one ever got this far anyway. So having the shield be here like this all the time would have been an absolutely colossal waste of power. I didn’t think whoever had set this up would do it like that. Especially when I thought about how long this coffin was supposed to be here. This wasn’t a short-term thing. The person or people who had set this up wanted it kept safe… maybe forever. Definitely centuries at the very least. They wouldn’t have made it constantly take so much power. And honestly, I didn’t think there were many things in the universe that could keep a shield like this going for so long anyway. If there was, that probably would have been more of a prize than whatever was actually in the coffin.
With all that in mind, I straightened up and looked around once more, feeling that Necromantic energy still flooding the chamber. That was the hint. That was what I was supposed to do.
Moving over to Percy, I took her hand and told her what I was doing. She gave me a broad smile before offering her other hand. Then, I closed my eyes and focused on the energy around us. I pulled it closer, wrapping the energy around us like a thick cloak. Because that’s essentially what it was, in every sense of the word. I was cloaking us in that energy, covering every inch of our forms with that death magic.
It took several minutes of just standing there holding the energy tightly against the two of us. But finally, it worked. The dirt lying on top of that invisible shield fell. The shield was gone.
The truth was that I had been slightly wrong when I said that the shield was being projected by the energy source inside. Well, not wrong, but I didn’t have the whole story. The thing inside was projecting the shield, but it was doing so by drawing power out of Percy and me, magical power. In much the same way as how the Bystander Effect drew energy from the humans it was affecting, this thing took energy from the two of us to power itself. It was pretty brilliant that way, honestly. The thing inside the shield took our energy. That was why I had been feeling more tired than I should have, even with my stamina boosts. That way, no matter how much magical power someone had, they would never have enough to break through the shield. Because it was draining their energy to fuel itself. I had no doubt that the thing was set up to drain even more magical energy if someone was actively using magic. That was why simply making that spell-identification tablet had been so tiring when it really shouldn’t have been. It took far more of my energy to do so. Someone trying a huge spell to break through the shield would definitely knock themselves out in the process.
Which was where the death energy came in. I had considered just using a bunch of magic to exhaust my reserves enough to make the shield drop, but I was pretty sure that would’ve left me in a coma or something considering this thing was draining so much power even from me using a minor spell. Instead, I had completely covered us in that death magic, essentially to hide us from the thing that was draining our energy. I made a thick cloud of the energy that was already here to disguise my own power. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if that would have worked if I hadn’t been a Necromancer and Percy a Revenant. Our own power was already so close to matching what was in the chamber that I was able to hide us. And it had worked. The thing inside thought we were gone and it turned off the shield. Or it just didn’t have any more power to keep it up without actively draining us. Either way, it was off.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be certain how long I would be able to keep hiding us before the thing inside would notice and put the shield up again. So, I had to move quickly. To that end, Percy and I carefully moved right over to where the shield had been and I let go of her hands to lay down on that spot, pressing my face right into the dirt as I focused on my item sense. Please, please be within range of– yes, there it was. I felt the coffin just a few feet below, with a crystal sitting on top of it. That had to be the source of the shield, the thing that had been draining our energy. I couldn’t sense what was inside the coffin itself. Either it was empty or the contents were still shielded.
Straightening to my feet and positioning my staff right over the spot, I summoned Gus and Jaq from their little storage space and waited until they were in position. Gus, my grapple-mouse, was pointed straight down. As soon as he was ready, I took a deep breath before stabbing down into the dirt with as much strength as I could muster, backed up by a slight concussive boost from the other end. The staff was driven hard into the ground, and I felt the grapple open up to catch hold of the crystal down there. Then I yanked it out and spun, giving the crystal a toss as hard as I could away from this spot before it could activate the shield again.
Of course, I didn’t want to lose access to something that could be useful, so I didn’t let the crystal just shatter against the ground or wall. Instead, I used my five second freeze power to stop it in midair once it was far enough away that it wouldn’t be a problem anymore, jogged that way, and took hold of the thing. It was almost hot to the touch, so I quickly put inside one of my extra-space storage bags to keep it safe. I’d look it over more closely later.
With that done, I went back over to the spot where the hole from my staff was. Percy and I exchanged a look before I reached into another storage bag and pulled out two shovels. Again, these were a product of Wyatt insisting on equipping me for every possible situation. Also, just because I thought it was funny, I’d had both shovels autographed by Gabriel Prosser.
The two of us dug up the coffin. It was a hell of a lot easier without that spell draining my energy, that was for sure. Still, I was sweating as we finally got all the dirt out of the way and stared at the thing we had uncovered. It was a normal, human sized coffin like any other, though maybe a bit more ornate. Come to think of it, the thing looked more modern than it should have. This definitely wasn’t just some random pine box they tossed a body in. Whoever was buried in this thing was important.
Before doing anything else, I carefully checked the whole thing over for more traps or tricks. There were about a dozen of them, and I took the time to disable each. Then I went over it again just to be certain, or at least as certain as I could be. When I was relatively convinced that it was safe, I nodded to Percy. She took one side of the coffin while I took the other, and we hoisted it out of the hole. The two of us shoved the thing out onto open ground before clambering up to kneel by it.
Now was as good a time as ever, so I grabbed the lid and started shoving it up. It was locked, but that didn’t last long against my strength. With a grunt, I forced it open, braced myself, and peeked into the coffin.
I had entertained many different thoughts about who or what could have been inside this thing, what Ehn would have considered ‘source of great power.’ Some of those thoughts were a fair bit more wild and ridiculous than others. But out of everything I had considered as a possibility, none came close to the truth. Because when I looked into the open coffin, the only thing I could see… was a nineteen eighties style tape recorder.