Vayra first tested her basic Bracing technique to see how far it would carry her. She filled her legs with Starlight Arcara and leapt, blasting through the air, but nowhere near as far as Myrrir had. She hadn’t practiced her Bracing techniques, and even if she had, she didn’t have an enhanced body with the same purpose.
‘Lift, Vayra,’ Phasoné scolded. ‘And use the internal Warding, for the Stream’s sake!’
Vayra activated her Ward technique, then, at the same time, concentrated her will like she would for a Reach, and lifted up on the starlight Arcara within her channels. It buoyed her like a current of air, lifting her, and giving her jump an elegant longevity.
She sailed through the air until she reached the ledge and landed in a crouch beside Myrrir without even making a thud. From the looks of things, his landing had created a spiderweb of cracks all throughout the platform.
She turned to face the Chambers’ entrance. It was wide open, unrestricted, no brick wall or runic code blocking it. “No…Chambers Company meddling? No fueling the runes to open the entrance?”
“If that was the case, I wouldn’t have volunteered to come with you,” said Myrrir. “No, the entrances here have not been tampered with. This is their original form.” He tucked his head down and stepped into the gloom of the tunnel.
“Why Muspellar, then?” Vayra conjured her seer-core and followed Myrrir in, then held out the orb of condensed starlight to illuminate their way.
The hallways of the Chamber were angular and plain, just like the Vale Chambers on Muspellar, and there were no natural lights within. The hallway slowly sloped downward into the earth, and even underground, in the distance, a magenta haze hung in the air.
“Muspellar was a busy industrial planet,” Myrrir said. “It was an ideal location for training their recruits.”
“And this…?”
“Barra Secundus is an isolated farming and mercantile planet,” Myrrir said. “Its biggest export is furs. The Company would rather send sparse expeditions to raid the Chambers than use it for training.”
She nodded, then ran out in front of him. She had the light, so it made sense to lead.
“Do you have a plan?” Myrrir asked.
“We need to get as deep as we can as fast as we can,” Vayra said. “Whenever we find a downward sloping tunnel, we take it. I’ll have Phasoné keep note of our progress so we don’t get lost.”
“As good as any plan you guys come up with, I suppose,” Myrrir muttered.
“You have anything better?”
“There should be a chute somewhere,” he said. “A vent of sorts. It would’ve once led to the surface, however it will have long since been covered in dirt.”
“For what purpose?”
“The Dragon Gods built these chambers as a means of communication and transport. They transmit messages, and they used to transport the Dragons themselves through the Stream as nothing but spiritual energy—hence the need for a strong Vale Core. That functionality has long since degraded, but would’ve needed to vent Arcara to the surface somehow.”
Vayra nodded. “So we find a chute, and it’ll lead us down into the depths. Got it.”
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They traversed the Chambers at a light jog, using their enhanced Admiral-stage endurance to sustain themselves. Vayra relied on her enhanced healing to sustain her muscles, where Myrrir powered through the process with the use of his regular body, feeding it mana to strengthen his muscles and use less effort to traverse the distance.
The tunnels descended, both sloping gently, and sometimes relying on winding staircases to drop vast distances into the earth. There were a few thin shafts to let in light, but nothing that indicated a deep Arcara venting chute.
Eventually, they reached an intersection where both options led across flat ground. Vayra stopped, then turned right after picking at random, but Myrrir said, “Wait. The other way.”
“Why?” she whispered. “How do you know?”
“Use your spiritual sight,” he explained. “Look closely at the rocks and trace the routes the Arcara travels. There’s a tug to the left. It wasn’t as strong before, but we’re getting closer to the chute.”
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She activated her spiritual sight. Before, on Muspellar, when she’d used it in the halls, the walls had just been a mix of colours, but she’d since refined it. Probably not as well as Myrrir had, but she hadn’t had as long to work on it. Ruts of deep purple light, previously invisible to her mortal eyes, ran along the walls to the left. In the distance, a deep presence glowed beyond the rock—and along with it, she felt some spiritual beasts congregating.
Reluctantly, she said, “You’re right.”
They ran to the left. She conjured her scythe nonchalantly as she ran, and Myrrir drew his sword.
The tunnel swerved and turned a few times, with only one option to travel, and the presence of the spiritual beasts grew stronger—and closer. They left a faint wisp of danger in her senses, but not as threatening as she had expected.
Finally, they rounded a sharp corner and came face to face with a cluster of five upright, man-shaped monsters. They had the same shape as Muspellar’s magmaspawn—black rock bodies with cracks and gaps, horns, and a humanoid face—except instead of glowing orange magma, pale purple light lit their eyes and the gaps in their form.
She stopped where she stood and backed up. She’d never fought five at once before.
And then Myrrir sprinted past her. In a single swipe, he bashed one in half, scattering its rocky remains across the room.
Right. Last time she’d fought magmaspawn, she’d been a Quartermaster. These…were probably still rated around the same. Quartermaster or below.
She threw her scythe into the room as hard as she could, and it cleaved and smashed a straight line through the clump of purple magmaspawn, smashing their bodies in half or cutting through them with ease. Only one remained, which Myrrir crushed with a spear of gunpowder.
They stood among the dispersing essence of the magmaspawn in a broad room. Along two walls, other tunnels sprouted, but directly ahead was an opening. There was no wall, only a drop off into a deep, cylindrical chamber nearly a hundred feet across. She ran over to the edge and leaned over. There was no railing, no walkway in it. A whiff of imagination arose from Phasoné—the goddess pictured a column of violet Arcara surging up the chute and venting into the sky above.
Only now, there was no sky. Just a silted over, clogged ceiling.
“That’s our way down,” she said, then stepped over the edge. There was no sense in waiting around for more fodder to catch up with them. “Phas, you’re keeping track of the way we came, right?”
‘I am, but focus on not falling to your death!’
Vayra held out her arms and activated her internal Ward, then supported and lifted the Arcara within her channels, slowing her fall. She descended like a leaf in the wind.
Myrrir jumped behind her, but instead of buoying himself, he simply dropped. In the dim light of her seer-core, she watched him fall to the pit’s floor and Ward himself. He collided with the stone and sent up a plume of dust and smoke. It rose up high enough to choke Vayra as she fell, and blocked her sight as she descended.
The chute had to be at least a mile deep, maybe two, and by the time she reached the bottom, the air was significantly warmer. She landed softly beside Myrrir, then launched a Starlight Palm to disperse the dust. A high-ceilinged tunnel ran off in each cardinal direction, each wide and tall enough to fit a galleon through.
The Vale core, whatever it was, had to have an intense spiritual presence. They could track it that way. Vayra shut her eyes and drew on her extra senses. She took a step in each each direction, trying to determine which way would make the tingle in the back of her neck grow stronger or weaker.
North. There was something powerful to the north, stronger than anything else in the Chambers. When she set her senses on it, a weight pressed down on her core, and pressure pushed on her shoulders. The Vale Core had the spiritual presence of an Emissary.
“North?” Myrrir said. “That’s the direction I’m sensing.”
“North,” Vayra confirmed.
They set off through the tunnel. When she activated her spiritual sight, the walls shone so bright it made her eyes hurt, just like the first time she’d used the sight, and she couldn’t make anything out. She deactivated it almost immediately and rubbed her eyes. Even now, the godly forces outmatched her.
She wasn’t ready. Her stomach sank and her hands trembled.
Then a calming presence welled up inside her, passed over from Phasoné. ‘Remember, Vayra,’ said the Goddess, ‘you still have time.’
Not much, and that was no excuse. Vayra had to do what she could to get herself ready.
With each step she and Myrrir took down the culvert, a chittering sound built in the walls, far closer than she’d ever heard it. The stones beneath her feet vibrated, and a sweet, honey-like smell filled the air. “Myrrir?”
“The walls,” he said.
She glanced side to side. The cracks in the walls began to glow purple, and magmaspawn emerged from the voids, pulling themselves out and attaching black rocks to their form.
Vayra tugged her pistol out from her belt and pointed it, then blasted a beam of starlight out through it. It blasted the creature in the head, disintegrating it and scattering its energy all across the wall.
But more emerged on all sides, and even in front or behind. Hundreds of heads peered out from the walls, and hundreds more followed.
“Run!” Vayra called. “They’ll overwhelm us if we don’t move!”
She didn’t bother with a spiritual scan or analysis. They were deeper, and these magmaspawn had to be stronger than before.
Myrrir didn’t protest. They sprinted down the center of the hallway, running down an aisle of light as the creatures closed in on either side. Whenever one staggered in front, she blasted it with a beam of starlight from her pistol, or Myrrir destroyed it with a jab of gunpowder.
Their walkway grew tighter and tighter, and magmaspawn reached for them. One caught her across the calf and slashed her skin, but she kept running.
Up ahead, a warm magenta glow seeped down the tunnel, filling the edges and cracks with a new shade of light. They had to be getting close, but there were too many magmaspawn. Their chitters and screeches grew so loud it was nearly unbearable.
Then a deep bellow vibrated through the hall, sending tremors through her chest and making her throat shudder.
All the magmaspawn halted, then scattered, running the opposite direction.
Vayra glanced at Myrrir.
He shook his head.