Time passed until the second expedition finally arrived. Vivi renewed Sera’s weekly miracle and they left as a group of four; Tiriana, Vivi, Sera, and Layla were traveling together, while Rinnie had gone ahead some time ago. Vivi could hardly sit still in her seat behind Tiriana, and the elf had admonish her for being a distraction several times. Layla, on the other hand, kept her distance, staying barely within shouting distance of the others even when camping at night.
It was easy to forget the heavily-armored adventurer was even there, especially once they reached the frontier and Vivi caught sight of all the strange scenery. The cleric ‘oohed’ and ‘ahed’ at every new sight, babbling almost incoherently as she speculated about the unnaturally straight trees, the red foliage, and the colorful stones on the ground. Along the way she even spotted a few animals Tiriana and Sera had missed or never encountered, like a bird with saw teeth working a hole into the trunk of a tree far above.
When they reached the plains, though, even Vivi grew silent. The ravaged ground seemed ill-suited for such enthusiasm, and Tiriana had to focus on checking for any landmines that may have refused to detonate. Eventually the group found their way through and the fortress appeared in the distance, gradually growing larger as they approached. Sera watched with amusement as the cleric’s face went from excited to awed by the scale of it over the hours.
“Are we going to wait for Rinnie?” Sera asked when they reached the base of the rock face.
“No need.” Sera jumped in surprise as the words came from somewhere to her right, when the others were to her left. Everyone turned as a figure stood up within a nearby crater. At some point Rinnie had assembled a ghillie suit of sorts, wrapping herself in scarlet plant fibers until she blended in to the grass. Sera thought she saw vines from the base of the moving fortress and grass from the plains worked into it.
As the small scout shrugged the suit off, Sera saw that she was dressed in darkened armor now, rather than the hunting leathers she’d worn last. It was closer to that of a cuirassier than the fully articulated plate Layla wore; Rinnie’s forearms, knees, and thighs were protected, and she wore a full cuirass and a cap, but her joints were covered only with cloth and there were gaps between the plates to prevent them hitting each other.
“Find anything?” Tiriana asked, apparently unsurprised by the sudden appearance. Vivi dismounted the flokka and walked a short while off; she seemed to be praying.
“I checked out the buildings you passed over. Got a sense of what weapons they used, but didn’t find much of interest to anyone but the schollies.” The scout shrugged, brushing stray grass off her body. “I looked for tracks, tried to see where everyone went, but…in the end I came to the conclusion they were airlifted. The fuel tanks at the airfield were drained, even though the hangars were full.”
“Good catch, even if it’s bad news. No way we can trace where they went if they flew,” Tiriana said.
“I’m surprised there’s not a spell for that,” Sera commented.
“There is, but it’s been too long by now. Any traces of fuel or combustion would have been carried away on the wind by now,” Rinnie answered, surprising Sera with how genial the answer had been. She’d half expected to have her head bitten off for asking.
“I found something!” Vivi yelled in excitement, jogging back towards the group. “Most of the passages are buried or collapsed, and a few can only be used to escape, but there’s one we can use to get in!”
“Good fine,” Tiriana praised. “Where is it?”
“Thataway.” Vivi pointed towards the group’s right. “About halfway down the long side. I’ll tell you when we’re close.”
Vivi hopped up behind Tiriana again and Rinnie whistled, prompting a red-feathered flokka to pop up and startle Sera again. Had she picked that one for its coloration, or did she dye its feathers red?
It took another hour to get to the site of the hidden passage. Everyone dismounted this time and gathered around the place Vivi indicated. The cleric had Tiriana clear out some of the vines and then began examining the rocks.
“Can we not just break our way in?” Layla asked in annoyance, having finally deigned to join the group.
“We just need to…Tiriana, can you place your hand here and give it some mana?” Vivi said, indicating a spot that looked no different to Sera. When Tiriana followed Vivi’s instructions, though, a section of the wall flickered and vanished.
“An illusion?” Rinnie asked, approaching the new passage.
“No, it was solid. Some kind of…reverse conjuring. The rock dissipated into mana,” Tiriana explained, examining something carefully. “A very advanced enchantment. It’s even two way.”
“Not important. Let’s just go in,” Layla insisted impatiently.
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“I should check it out first,” Rinnie said, rejecting Layla’s demand.
“Last time I checked you can’t see in the dark.” Layla gestured towards the opening, which was shrouded in darkness shortly past the edge. “We all go together, so Vivi can light the way.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until morning?” Tiriana interjected, pointing out the fading light. But Layla was quick with a counterargument.
“Only if we needed the sun to see. Since Vivi can create a light, we can enter immediately.”
The bickering continued for a few minutes, but in the end, the group acquiesced to Layla’s suggestion. If nothing else, everyone agreed that they weren’t tired yet, and making camp inside was just as good as outside. Vivi created a light that hovered above them, intense but soft. It provided quite a wide area of illumination, but Sera could stare straight at it without any pain.
Layla led the way into the tunnel, with Rinnie in the rear and everyone else between them. For a cave, it was very smooth, clearly shaped by sapient hands. From almost the moment they entered they could already see the end of the tunnel, so straight was it, but it took longer than expected to reach. By Sera’s estimation they were fairly close to being directly under the center of the city above when they got there.
A second magic-activated door awaited them there, which Tiriana opened once she located the activator. The chamber beyond was so vast that even Vivi’s luminary couldn’t light up the far side. Sera faintly saw some pillars at the edge of the light, and a couple of meters below the door they stood within was water.
“Tiriana, could you give us a directional light please?” Vivi asked, stepping out of the way for the elf.
“On it,” Tiriana replied, holding out a hand towards the cavern. A moment later a blinding light shot out as if her hand were a flash light, the beam cutting through the darkness and illuminating a wall at least a kilometer away. The ceiling was high above, and as Tiriana panned the light from side to side, more and more pillars came into sight. From their current angle the ends of the room were hidden by the walls and pillars, but even what they could see made it look quite long.
“What is this…?” Layla wondered, glancing around. “Why build a hall so large all the way down here? And how did it flood?”
“It didn’t flood, it’s a cistern,” Sera told her, recalling images she’d seen of the Basilica Cistern on Earth. “Makes sense that a moving fortress would need a water supply between stops.”
“We haven’t used cisterns in…centuries,” Tiriana commented, apparently the only other one among them that had even heard of them. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t simply conjure water, surely they had the magic for it at their level of advancement.”
“The technology I’ve seen so far points towards their adversaries being unusually advanced in some areas compared to others. Maybe these people were the same?” Rinnie speculated as she tossed something into the water below. Tiriana caught on quickly and shifted her light, allowing them to see how long it took for the rock to hit the bottom. The water level was quite low.
“They must have used up a lot of their water while they were under siege,” Vivi commented. “They may have been getting desperate by the end.”
“Guessing will get us nowhere,” Layla commented in. “We are here to clear the area, not speculate.”
“Sure, sure. Just give me a moment to waterproof your gear.” Vivi once again proved her usefulness by bestowing another miracle, this time apparently for something so petty as keeping everyone’s feet dry- not that Sera would complain. The moment she was done, Layla and Rinnie both stepped off the ledge and dropped into the water.
For Layla it didn’t reach the brim of her boots. Rinnie, on the other hand, sank hip-deep.
“Which way?” Rinnie asked Vivi once they were all down. Vivi, apparently prepared for this, waved her orb of light forward.
“Just follow the light, there’s only one person-sized way out of this room.” The party waited for Layla to start forward and fell in behind her, assuming the same order as they had in the passage. It was rough going, having to wade through water with every step. The only sounds were splashing accompanied by the clanking of Layla’s armor, and they echoed off the walls endlessly.
Following the light, the group first walked to the center of the cistern before turning towards the rear of the fortress, walking right down the middle with a forest of pillars all around them. The size of the chamber meant a great many pillars were needed to support it, even with the arches in the ceiling that held off the crushing weight of rock above.
It wasn’t long, though, before Layla halted abruptly, raising a hand to indicate a stop. Someone, either Tiriana or Vivi, Sera couldn’t tell, started to ask a question, but Rinnie, having caught whatever alarmed Layla, shushed them immediately. Everyone stood stock still and strained their ears listening for anything out of place, but the only thing Sera heard was disturbed water lapping against pillars and legs.
“Just some loose stone, maybe?” Tiriana whispered eventually, only barely audible, but Layla was quick to admonish her.
“Lower your guard for even a second and someone may die!” she spat, voice similarly subdued despite the venom in it. “Assume we are not alone at all times.”
Having said that, however, Layla started walking again, no threat having manifested. She was tense now, though, and held a poleaxe longer than Sera was tall ready in one hand- though, to Sera’s surprise, the weapon’s head was not oversized, having a thick bodied axe head with a short blade edge to better concentrate its chopping force, along with a practical spike on the opposite side rather than a second axe.
Similarly, Rinnie had unslung her bow and knocked an arrow, while Tiriana seemed to be preparing a spell. Sera gripped her hammer tightly but stuck near Vivi at the center of the pack, aware of her own limitations.
Every few minutes they stopped, and after a couple more pauses Sera thought she had begun to hear something as well. It was hard to tell with how much every sound was amplified by the cistern’s acoustics, but the sounds seemed to be drawing closer. Each noise made the group tense up just that much more, and all speech had stopped long ago, everyone too occupied with listening to speak.
Faster than the human eye could track, something flew out of the darkness, but even so, Layla reacted, interposing herself between the rest of the party and the threat. Metal rang as her poleaxe absorbed a blow, but the strike carried so much force that even the enormous armored adventurer was forced to take a knee, water erupting around her as she sank and hiding her assailant from sight.
By the time anyone could see again, the party was once more alone.