The great mountain cut the sky with its sharp edge, a towering structure of stone and metal, and its tip shone in the light of the twin stars. The party reached its base, crossing the great frozen lake and the wind-swept tundra.
Ishrin studied the mountain with much more interest than he let on, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. Earlier, he had detected something passing by, but his miser strength had not allowed him to intercept the strange signal before it wormed its way into the structure. It unnerved him.
I have seen things like this before. But they do not belong here, and the level of technology does not make any sense. Why is this structure here? Where does it come from?
There had been a theory, back when he had studied the ethereal pocket realms attached to his old planet of Eternia, about their origin. Some scholars had postulated that those realms were remnants of an age long past, from before the universe was as it is now. After meeting Albert, Ishrin was left wondering. What if the multiverse as it was… was not the first? What if there had been others before? What if this was just another iteration of existence, spanning until eons before entropy finally caught up with it, only for Albert to destroy and remake it all over again?
He shook his head. Melina too was studying the strange mountain with care. “We are looking for anything out of the ordinary,” she said. Noticing the smirk—which she didn’t know was rather forced—about to appear on Ishrin’s face, she added: “besides the obvious, of course.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t about to say anything.”
“Sure you weren’t,” she said playfully.
Lisette stared them down. “We need to focus.”
Melina was about to reply to her with a witty one-liner she had ready for the occasion when she saw Ishrin’s head snap to the side as he took out his sword. Looking at it without magic vision, the sword looked plain and boring, just a stick of sharp metal without ornament or embellishment.
“What is it?” Lisette asked, also seeing that Liù was on high alert.
“There is something moving. But I can’t tell where.” Ishrin said.
“Battle positions.” Melina commanded.
All the mirth and smiles disappeared from their faces. Even Lisette, who had been the most serious of them all, somehow managed to become even more serious and focused. They took positions.
Melina was like a spear tip at the front, while the two weaker adventurers covered the flanks. They advanced slowly, scanning their surroundings with each step they took, careful not to make any noise or not to be seen by hidden enemies that might be lurking above. Before long they came across the creature Ishrin had sensed. It was a large beast, towering over them, grazing the grass on the side of what looked like a beaten dirt path.
They tried to get around it but failed, because despite the strong wind that drowned all noise the monster sensed them approaching and immediately its head snapped towards them. It was, by the looks of it and of its magic field, a Tier 6 monster. The three exchanged looks.
“Can Liù fight?” Melina asked.
“Of course,” he said. Nods followed as the rest of the party agreed on the strategy.
The pixie flew out of his pocket where she was hiding from the cold wind. As her chest began to light up, both Melina and Lisette disappeared in a flash. Lisette reappeared right behind the creature, twin swords already out and swinging. The monster, however, managed to her movement and its huge horned face stared at Lisette as if she had never moved. From behind, the monster was a gargantuan mass of muscles, a mix between a rhino and a bird with feathers on its vestigial wings but hard skin with scales on the rest of it body.
Even though the speed with this it turned had been impossibly fast, despite its size, neither of the three were surprised by it.
Just as the tip of the thing’s horn was lighting up, Melina hit it with a blast of wind from the side, her magic empowered by the environment. She then dashed into its side, slamming against its head and making its horn miss Lisette, who weaved below it with exceptional grace. Her blades failed to draw blood, as did Melina’s follow-up wind blade, but her dash left the monster stunned long enough for Liù to aim.
The pixie’s chest glowed like a small nova, then a beam erupted from her and cut a huge hole in the monster, which fell to the ground like a tree being cut down in a forest. The slam made dirty, half-frozen water stain the white snow that covered the rocks all around.
“Good job.” Melina said. “We can improve, but this was a very good first fight as a team. We distract, Ishrin uses the finisher.”
“There’s also other ways I can make myself useful.” Ishrin protested.
“Yes but… we need all the training we can get. You are the oldest and most expert fighter, are you not? Or do you also need training?”
What is this about? Is she still mad about the tracking ritual exploding in her face? I apologized for it already.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Ishrin shrugged. “I can do without.”
Then the window to his personal storage dimension, the void of stars where time didn’t flow and space didn’t matter, opened up. The portal was big, bigger than Melina had ever seen it, almost as big as the creature they just felled.
“Now, help me fit this thing in my inventory.”
There was a small path that they saw at the base of the mountain. At the sides of this stony path in the wet dirt barren trees stood like desiccated husks, half frozen and half dried, their grotesque shriveled branches obscuring the view above. The path went both up and down the mountain, towards a valley they couldn’t see.
“I sense movement below. More Tier 6s, five at the very least.” Ishrin said.
“We should avoid them, for now.” Melina said. “Liù needs to recover, and I don’t feel like fighting alone.”
Ishrin grunted. She was right. As the only Tier 6, she was basically the only one besides Liù who could really fight the monsters without risking her skin, and with even a glimmer of hope to inflict some sort of damage.
They walked for a while. As they did, Ishrin replayed the fight in his mind. He had been paying close attention to the magic the girls had used, and he felt like the team needed some encouragement. It didn’t occur to him, not until much later, that what he was about to say would have other effects. His social skills still needed some work.
“By the way, amazing technique earlier.” He said.
“Huh?” Melina stammered. This was so out of the blue. “What do you mean?”
“I just wanted to compliment you. I saw you dashing against the monster. Haste plus elemental control to boost your speed? That’s some masterful technique and very good control of the elemental energies. I have a spell, called Steadfast Walk, Great Leaps, and I think it could suit you very well. I’ll teach it to you if you’d like. You too, Lisette! Impressive use of Grand Haste, fluid and never wasteful.”
The two girls fell silent. “You could see us?” Melina asked, face flushed.
“He is very powerful indeed,” Lisette added. Her voice was less cold than usual.
“This is not about me!” Ishrin protested.
“Yeah but… I could barely focus on the beast, and I was the one moving! How could you follow me with your eyes?”
“Well,” Ishrin frowned. “The beast followed your movements too.”
“But it’s a monster. They are not human. They have battle instincts.” Melina said. It was at that moment that she realized… perhaps the words she used to rouse some emotional reaction from Ishrin earlier were actually true. He did not need training at all, because he was that much stronger, despite his low Tier.
“Still.” Ishrin continued, unaware of her thoughts, “good form. You aren’t as rusty as you claimed to be.”
“Gah. You!”
Ishrin smiled to himself. Walking next to him, the two girls were smiling, their spirits lifted. Lisette paid no mind to it, although she did wonder why her face was doing that. Melina, on the other hand, felt warm and fuzzy and to no small amount ashamed of herself for how she treated him. True, she simply wanted to poke him a bit, but she felt silly for having succumbed to childish strategies. In truth, she wasn’t even sure about what she had hoped to accomplish with it.
Her thoughts swirled for a while, a vortex with Ishrin as its center. She liked him, and he was a great resource for her to get what she wanted… but was there more? Or was she just attached to him because he was the one person who could grant her what she wanted?
She shook her head. Sometimes she wished she didn’t have this level of introspection, for it made many things much harder than they needed to be. Unsure as she was, she felt exposed and scared, and wished for nothing else but to retreat away from him. Hoping that he would notice, and that he would chase her as she did so. Illogical, childish, silly. And yet… she hoped.
She showed none of the above to the rest of the team. Even as she was distracted, she and the rest of the party reached a consensus to take the path leading up the mountain, only stopping for a moment to let Ishrin cast a ritual to stave off the encroaching cold. The chill air that was numbing their limbs and movements, the blaring noise of the wind that was deafening them, and the uncomfortable oppressive atmosphere of the realm all vanished in an instant.
“This is crazy.” She commented despite herself. He was a source of wonder, and sometimes she wished he wasn’t.
Ishrin smiled. “Just a small trick.” He said.
“Trick? You…”
But then Melina was forced to fall silent. Because, right as the path took them to the far side of the mountain, below the planet that even now was hanging over their heads like a looming threat, they saw the mountain for what it really was.
Hollow.
A great hole was marred in the side of the mountain, revealing its interior. Although not much light reached there, Melina could see that the mountain was nothing but a hollow shell of rock built on a scaffolding of metal, wires, pipes and plastics. She didn’t know about the existence of plastics, but the sleek surfaces were of an alien substance, only now and then torn and broken, with the damage increasing exponentially as she looked closer to the gaping hole in the side of the thing.
Ishrin walked up to her and only stopped when he was at her side. He did not appear surprised in the slightest by the strange sight, as if what he was looking at was nothing more than just another strange building to his eyes. She wanted to curse him, feeling quite useless.
“It’s not natural.” Ishrin said. “Neither the mountain nor the damage was caused by natural processes. This looks like an attack from above.”
“Look.” Lisette said. “The twin stars are not visible from here.”
She was pointing up at the sky, a sky that was darker and more transparent now that the light of the stars was obstructed by the mountain, projecting a cone of shadow. Twin beams of orange and blue light could be seen coming from the sides of the mountain, the light illuminating the mist and snow in the air, making visibility drop to zero. The storm, it seemed, was strongest at the top of the mountain.
Something could be seen right behind the great planet above. A small prickle of light, a golden glow that blinked and twinkled like a tiny star.
“What is it?” Melina asked.
“I cannot see it clearly.” Lisette said.
“Me neither.” Ishrin said.
Their gaze turned to the mountain. Between the scaffolding were circuits and machines, wires hanging loosely from severed conduits, pipes hissing steam and electrical sparks flying through the air. Of all people in the party, only one had seen such things before. Such a sight also helped Melina to ground herself again, and her mind cleared. She would need to deal with these thoughts sooner or later, but for now she needed to act as the leader of the expedition, not like a starstruck teen.
“I don’t like this.” Ishrin said. “Technology of this scale tends to be insidious. We are not powerful enough.”
“You seem to know what this is, can we deal with it or do we abort?” Melina asked.
“I don’t think we need to just yet.” Ishrin replied. “Just… let’s be careful.”