Zachary followed Maxius the Younger and Quinn, brother of the Flying Man, until they vanished into a system of caverns. Annatiki urged caution, as to not reveal their existence. The guards at the door of the cavern were extremely sensitive and suspicious. It was a shame, because Zachary lost track of the boy Quinn. As he tried to follow the boy through the mine cart shafts, he realized quickly that they were designed to provide a random outcome. He gave up when he realized the odds were less than one out of sixty four of picking the right shaft. Annatiki warned him it was likely hundreds of times less likely than that.

Being the chosen Knight of the Elder Saint had some perks. He had super human strength, stamina, speed, and was invisible. Those attributes were all very useful down in the caverns. He was a literal ghost, haunting the walls, stalagmites, and rooftops of the underground cities below the Theocracy.

You are not the first, Annatiki said in his mind.

What happened to the others? Zachary asked.

They ended up in bad spots, the weapon self destructed and erased all evidence that it existed, and they died down in those caves.

Wonderful, Zachary thought.

All Knights must face death, Annatiki said.

He began to explore the caves and get a feel for how to get around. The caves appeared to be deliberately designed to frustrate any attempt to navigate. The natives to the cave, however, had a habit of rolling dice to decide which way to go next. Zachary tried to imitate this gesture, and indeed found that more often than not he ended up on the main 'highways' of the deep underground."

The etherborne you seek is in a special location to the west, Annatiki said. They have already manifest their powers, but are inept at using them.

Annatiki continued to feed him information from her spy planes. The oculomancers knew the general area of where the etherborne was hiding, but he was deep underground and they could not hit him with missiles. The winding, twisting passages would often lead Zachary in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go.

You have been on the opposite side of this passage, Annatiki said. You have access to more of my power than you realize, melt the rock and pass through it, cool it on the other side after you are done.

Remarkably, it was not too hard to figure out what she was talking about. Indeed, he was able to control her power to some degree, and melt the rock, swim through it, and cool it into a solid wall once on the other side.

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Annatiki warned him against swimming through the rock for too far a distance. He could end up popping out into a chamber in clear view of thousands of people who would give witness to the event. What he needed to do was to find an accurate map of these caverns. That would allow him to pass through walls only into small corridors where it was unlikely to encounter people. He was also invisible, and capable of simply murdering anyone who saw an invisible blob of air pass through a molten lava wall.

Zachary finally found a good map in a room high above the floor of an open mining shaft. The high-quality ethersteel ore in the mine was going to be sent to a handful of factories where it could be worked into drills the like. He used the map to navigate to the area where Annatiki had said the witch had manifested their powers.

After scouting the area and slipping through more than one molten wall, Zachary had isolated the room where the witch had been staying. He snuck into the room when it was empty and hid under the bed. Then, he melted the rock below him and swam down one level to the hallway directly below the bed. Then, he waited, invisible, in a secluded area nearby and waited.

Annatiki had her spy aircraft monitor the area. When the witch was almost directly overhead, exactly where the bed was, Zachary waited about a half an hour and then approached the spot. Annatiki confirmed that the witch had not moved. He was likely asleep.

Zachary melted the ceiling and slipped through the rock into the room. Lying under the bed, he could hear the witch above him snoring softly.

Hunter protocol initiated, deploying unit C.

Whatever it was, it was not the voice of Annatiki.

The silver blob appeared on his chest, seeping through his clothes. It turned into a spider, crawling menacingly, and silently, towards the witch sleeping softly above. After a short while there was a gasp, then silence. The spider crawled down under the bed again and seeped into Zachary's chest.

How the hell? Zachary asked.

It's a specific alloy designed to create a maze in the soul of the witch, Annatiki explained. It's a method of killing inexperienced witches regardless of their relative strength. The weapon seeps into the victim's body and surrounds their heart with the alloy. The heart is the locus, the point at which the soul connects to the body and the point that is required for a witch to user their powers.

After surrounding the hart with the alloy, the Unit snaps closed all open holes, severing any critical arteries. Blood instantly stops flowing through the witch's body. The counter to this, is to grasp at ether and heal the damage. However, only the soul can grasp at ether, and the soul is trapped in a maze created by the alloy. The victim dies by simply not having any blood flow through the body or the brain, as the soul tries to navigate the maze. It takes about a hundred thousand hours of practice to become skilled at navigating the maze, so that this weapon ceases to be effective if the witch is old and familiar with this alloy.

Killed because of inexperience? That made a lot of sense. Zachary had lost more men that way than he could count.

He melted the floor and swam down into the caverns. Then he ran, like a ghost, through the endless caves, and waited for news of his next victim.