BEfore leaving the city together with Ka'mal, Luthvrol, and Emery, the elven woman who was both their bodyguard and the stealthy one of the trio, they had a chance to sleep for a night and then left, passing by two rooms, which were somewhat close by before reaching the frozen forest. Not in the sense that the trees were actually frozen, but more to the type one would find in the northern parts of Canada and Russia. Sparse vegetation and a lot of snow, with howling winds that seemed to come from the emptiness of space itself. Hera had heard before that after a certain temperature, you stopped feeling more cold. Instead, it was about how much more it hurt. And she had to admit, that felt real right now. Even if she wasn't entirely sure if this was only how cold worked or some odd effect of the MAZE. Even so, she was the one doing better than anyone else.
Flint ended up creating some large fake fur coats for everyone, but it wasn't enough to fight against the temperature. Neria was able to use her control over water to make the snow around them less cold, but that, too, wasn't enough to make things better. After around one hour of traveling, 10 minutes after the healer had to start using spells to cure frostbite, Luthvrol stopped the group.
"OK, people, now, this is the part of the journey that I warned you about. From here on out, all the Harmony guardians will have to be under a sensory deprivation spell. You won't see, hear, smell, or taste anything. And your sense of touch will be reduced. All of you hold hands so we can start."
Flint groaned, "I really don't like this. What if we are attacked by something?"
"We won't be. We have people taking care of that," Emery replied.
"Is that why we've been moving in circles for, like, 10 minutes?" Vash was shaking like a tree in the wind. His feathers didn't seem to make him less cold than the rest.
"We are not moving in circles, just taking the long way around," Ka'mal said with a smile, trying to seem upbeat. But he was also shivering.
"Anyway, are you all ready? And Hera, we can't actually stop your court from coming out, so we will just be working on an honor system here. OK? You don't have to send your tiara crown thing away since it has the skill to block attacks, but we are using this skill on it as well," Luthvrol explained.
"It's her, not it. But I understand, that's OK," Hera replied, 'Dusa, is everything ready?'
'Y-Y-Yeah, my hidden blade is on your t-t-tail. I hope this works,' anyone could tell the diadem was worried about this idea, but thankfully, Hera was the only one who could hear her.
'Don't worry. Everything will be OK,' the Empress trusted the Intelligence Agency.
Well, actually, she trusted the Alliance, but only to a certain point. She also used to trust the guild, and they messed up badly. Now, she was trying to take everything in good faith while still making sure she was protected. Luthvrol explained to them how they couldn't show the actual path to the agency. At one point, they would have to blind them with some spells while the team was being guided in the right direction. That wouldn't last long, and it was just a way to keep the actual location of the shortcut a secret. However, Hera had an idea before they left the city and decided to always move with a [Venomous Tail Spike], one of the weapons the Naga used to attach to her tail. All the versions of this weapon were the exact same shape and size, with the pair of blades located on the sides, being exact copies of the Dusa's hidden blade. That way, when the day came, she could just place Dusa's actual blade on the spike, and part of the diadem might not be affected by the spell.
Hera turned to the rest of the team, "Let me stay at the end."
"Why? I figured you would want to be first," Emery asked.
"My tail. When I'm frazzled, worried, or scared, it moves a lot, and I don't want to hit anyone with the spike. I still can't control that very well," the Ophidianite explained. There was no need to be coy about her identity since they already confirmed they knew about her species and how it came to be.
"Just take it off," Emery scoffed.
"Look, you are already removing most of my senses. Can I at least have something to make me feel a bit safer? I get that this is a spy operation, and it's all cloak and dagger, but it's one thing to know about it and follow along and another to be chill with it," Hera let out a long sigh. This wasn't part of the plan to deceive them, just her honest feelings. There was still something in the back of her mind telling her that since she was the first new species, people could try to kidnap and experiment on her at any point. Sure, most of that time, that voice was quiet enough for the Ophidianite to ignore it completely, but in a situation like this, things changed.
She was being led to a secret facility by spies who should be specialized in getting rid of their tracks. And they were going to a lab that had some sort of connection to Spirits. It didn't matter how much trust she had in the Alliance; there was no way that she wouldn't be thinking that this could be some sort of trap.
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"Fine, fine. Let's just start. Everyone hold hands. It's easier for you to follow us like that," Emery walked over to Flint, who was the first in line. She first gestured with her hand as if she was tossing something on his face. A dark shadow covered his eyes, ears, and nose, almost like a mask, and then she put a dark bag over his head, "As we said, we are doing this with both a skill and an actual object to stop you from seeing. In a perfect world, we would have some noise-canceling headphones too, but we didn't have any available."
She walked over to Vash, then Neria, Skyler, and then Roan. All who were already holding hands as asked. She walked over to Hera and made the same motion, which was clearly part of a spell or skill she was using. Yet, when she did that, no mask appeared over the Empress' face. Instead, she just felt as if Emery had just tossed some sand at her.
Hera blinked a few times, rubbing her eyes to clear the particles that seemed to have entered it, "OK, I hope this was just a joke because you like me or something. If you are doing this to be annoying, it really feels unprofessional."
"What…" Emery stared at the Ophidianite with a stunned expression, "That wasn't a joke. It was the same skill I used on them. What the hell?" she triggered the skill again, and Hera felt a spattering of dirt again. This time, some of it went up her nose, and she sneezed. For a moment, she heard everything getting muffled, and her sense of touch started to numb, but it quickly bounced back.
"Right, I think I know what is going-" the Empress was interrupted as she felt more 'dirt' hit her face. This time, the impact was strong enough to even sting a bit. One more time, her senses became weaker. But that lasted for a moment, longer than before but still under a minute. She just cleaned her face and stared Emery dead in the eye, "Ouch. Can you stop that?"
"But… how are you stopping this? Even monsters who are hit can't just shrug this off this easily. Not without using a skill or something."
"Can I explain, or are you going to toss that spell on me again?" Hera tried to keep her cool, but this was starting to get annoying.
"You know what is happening?" Emery finally looked at the Empress properly and not just at the black specks on her skin.
"Yes. It's my title."
"You have a title?" Ka'mal asked.
"Three, actually. Only one is relevant here, though. Wardbearer. It makes it harder for ailments to harm me."
"But this is a curse!" Emery gasped.
"And I got the title exactly because I dealt with a curse. I'm guessing that curses, specifically, are even weaker against it. Since ailments, in general, still work. I have a friend who can do something like this, and her skill lasts longer, but it is still weaker than it was supposed to be," Hera continued.
"OK then… Now what?" Luthvrol turned to Ka'mal while Emery was still stunned, staring at Hera. The person who stopped or noticed her best skills twice.
"Let's keep it analog. We use the bag, and I can give her my earbuds. Is that OK?" Ka'mal turned to Hera, already offering his earbuds
"Can I at least pick what I'm going to hear?" Hera asked with a sigh. This was bringing way too much attention to her, and it wasn't what she wanted to happen.
Ka'mal tapped his tablet a few times, "Sure. Classical, Electronic, or a playlist with the soundtrack of various animated movies played by a symphony?"
"I'll take the symphony playlist. That sounds fun," Hera replied.
"Great, if you like it, I can share it with you later. Now, excuse me," she put a black sack over Hera's head as the music started playing in her ears.
They started walking, and while the sack and the music were enough to stop Hera from seeing the path, Dusa was still able to watch over everything. Not just that, but focusing on the ambient mana, the Empress managed to get a sense of her surroundings. It was far from being a sonar, or what she felt when using her pulse spell, but she could more or less tell the direction of nearby trees, snow, and rocks. Still, she focused on what Dusa was telling her.
First, they walked for a few more minutes, but the weather became less of a problem as a group of people approached them with some torches made to warm those around them. Around 2 kilometers away from where they were blindfolded, the group approached the entrance of a cave. However, they didn't stop there. In fact, that was only a landmark to guide them, nothing else. They continued, turning to the left between a pair of trees that were oddly similar, almost mirroring each other. Dusa missed that detail, but Hera felt how the ambient mana became a single thing instead of the usual random mess that it is.
Another half a kilometer after those trees, Ka'mal reached down into a random spot in the snow and opened a stone hatch, revealing a set of stairs heading down. He guided the group through the tunnel, and the trapdoor closed behind them, leaving the people holding the torches outside. Another 20 minutes passed before they finally stopped and started removing the sacks and the curse that Emery had placed on them.
'H-H-Hera. Remember to be s-s-spoked,' Dusa said.
'Thank you,' Hera held on to a smile.
After a few moments, she felt someone touching her shoulder and flinched a bit too aggressively, even pointing her tail in that direction.
"Calm down. It's just me," Emery's voice came through as the music stopped.
"My bad. I should've turned that off sooner. We are here. Well… Ish," Ka'mal sighed.
Looking around, they were in a dark cave, only illuminated by the lights created by the trio of spies. Aside from that, there were no discerning features to be seen in the place. No specific type of rock or stone, no moss, no smell, nothing. It was the most generic cave Hera had ever seen.
"This is it?" Vash asked.
"This is the path. Actually," Luthvrol sent his light a bit ahead, revealing a doorway, "That is the path. It is a room, a secret room that we hold. In there we can move through the pit, a large shaft with various doorways that led to other places. We just have to wait now since they only open that room at certain times.
"How can you keep an entire room a secret?" Skyler asked.
"Well…. We sort of don't. Most of the upper echelon of the Alliance knows about it. But every single doorway connected to this place is located in a hidden location. And our headquarters is in one of those doorways," Luthvrol explained.
"What about the other doorway? To the headquarters room, I mean."
"That one was only found recently, and we are positive that it won't be a problem," the dwarven spy continued.
"Why is that?" Roan asked.
Luthvrol turned to Ka'mal, who nodded in response, permitting him to speak, "Because the other doorway takes us to the 27th layer. Inside a cave, blocked by the next MAZE wall.