As soon as they were all gathered around him, Andy put some of his recently acquired extrasensory skills to use. He started channeling mana into the threads that ran between himself and his friends. Instead of his usual localized zones, he created where the rules of physics were his to bend. His was was to keep a constant change across them all. It was time to learn to really fly, not just fall with style.
“Bill, Ralth, are you able to follow my channeling and copy it?” He called to two of his friends, whose abilities allowed for such manipulations, just as he felt himself getting lighter on his feet.
“I can follow the lines; I think I can replicate it. Bill, try taking control of your own flight. I’m going to match what Andy is doing through you in three, two, one.” Ralth finished off his countdown, giving the capybara the time he needed to organize the threads around himself. Bill began floating off the ground alongside Andy.
“I got it, and I’m pretty sure I can control my height and speed. This was a great idea, Andy.” Bill responded as he pushed himself higher.
“Good. Now, let’s get everyone else into the air as well. I’m tired of being slowly stalked. If this is supposed to be our library, it’s about time we made that clear!” Despite the fear of moments before, Andy found the idea of controlled flight exhilarating.
Within minutes, they all soared up into the heights of the What Is Wing with no true ceiling anywhere in sight. Andy scanned his head across the infinite of his new view and it proved impossible to fully take in. The harder he tried to focus on distant areas, the more things seemed to shift around him. This wasn’t overly surprising to him; he knew the Under Library was in a constant state of growth and change, but to experience it this directly was giving him a headache. He forced himself to look at the various other things he now had within his view.
He could see groups of monsters in flight all over, several of them fighting other groups. He guessed the biggest monster got the best dinner situation up here. There were hundreds of different horrific beasts that he also decided were best to ignore for now. Something else had caught his attention.
There was a shimmering mana thread so large he had trouble calling it such. It was more like a chain of energy weaving through the air above them. It was calling to him, pulsating his name, begging for help.
“Hey, Libby, should there be a giant chain of mana running through the air here?” Andy asked, unsure what to make of it.
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“Oh, you felt it too. I was wondering about that.” Ralth added.
“No, there shouldn’t be, but I can also feel it. It almost seems to be guiding us somewhere.” Libby answered.
“I think we should follow it. It feels like the right thing to do. I know that seems strange, but I swear there’s something on the other end of it that we need to see.” Andy had no idea how he knew that or even why he believed it, but at this moment, he was sure this would get them to whatever remained of the last chief engineer.
Andy maneuvered himself to the chain. He reached out to feel the flow. It was like nothing he had touched as of yet. Zoz may have called their mana refined, but this had been engineered on a whole new level compared to anything they had ever done.
The lights in the Under Library went out.
“Dammit, what did yos do now? I hate this place in the dark!” Twonger yelled immediately.
“I just touched the mana. It shouldn’t have caused this!” Andy wasn't sure of this, even as he said it. He had no idea what this flow controlled.
“Hello, I’m sorry for leaving you all a message this way, but after you disappeared from the wing, I didn’t think I had any other choice.” A voice had begun playing in Andy’s head and from the look of everyone else, it had in theirs as well. “I needed a way to secure the energy needed to house the Under Library as well as preserve it should you all return. To that end, I built this mana chain. It circles the entirety of the What Is Wing and contains enough refined mana to bring everything back online. I will secure my physical form in the heart of the wing. The chain should guide you to whatever remains of me. Do not attempt to reintegrate the mana until the wing has been resealed from the Abyss.” The voice ended.
“That was the chief engineer’s voice. That also confirms the idea that we lost a lot of time in the primals.” Libby said.
“Do we just follow the chain like the voice said?” Serilina asked.
“It’s the only light, so I’m following it!” Twonger had used his mana to propel himself forward before anyone else could speak.
“Let’s go. At the very least we know this will get us to the center of the wing, and that’s where we’ve been trying to get.” Andy wished he knew what they were about to fly into, but Twonger had a point. The absolute darkness behind them was much less inviting than the light blue glow of the engineer’s last work.
So they all flew following the chain as time and distance seemed to blend around them. Andy quickly realized it was best to just follow the chain and now try to focus on how far or how long they had gone. He assumed it was another of the weird functions of trying to go to the center of something that had no true center. He stopped considering it as the chain had come to an end.
“I think we’re here,” Andy said. His words echoed into the darkness.