“What? What is it?” Grace asked, her eyes flicking between my face and where I was staring at the ground.
“There’s a huge structure buried in the ground! It looks like something made by the ring builders, and there’s magic inside it,” I said excitedly, already scanning for an entrance or something.
I couldn’t tell too much about the place, but what I could see of the place reminded me of the way the ring builders liked to do things.
“That sounds important,” Adam said, also frowning at the ground like he could mysteriously peer through it. “I want to go look.”
“Hold on, let’s go about this cautiously,” Troy said with authority, reining us all in a little. “I agree that we need to check this out, but let’s not go rushing off into danger without checking the corners alright?”
“Aye aye, captain,” Grace nodded, unclipping her helmet from her belt and putting it on. “Let’s suit up then.”
The rest of them got their helmets on and we moved through the long grass towards the underground facility.
There was absolutely no sign of it as we pressed forward, nothing but simple grassland for miles ahead of us, the hazy outline of some mountains appearing on the horizon. Underneath the ground was another story.
It was hard to make out individual details about the place since there was so much earth in the way, and I could only really see the general shape of magic down there. It was like being able to see through objects, while also seeing the objects in their entirety. It took a lot of guesswork and squinting to figure anything out, unless there was something bright, like the obviously magical thingies down there.
“Do you see any way to enter this place?” Troy asked after a minute or two of walking. “Because I don’t see shit.”
“Yeah it looks like it arrives at the surface just over here,” I nodded, pointing towards an innocuous looking patch of ground fifty yards away.
He turned and started in that direction. “Alright, let’s go check it out.”
Still nothing appeared to indicate there was anything below us but dirt and stone, and when we reached the spot where there had seemed to be an entrance, we found more grass and nothing else. Still, I could see it down there, just beneath the surface.
“Stand back,” I told everyone, waiting for them to move out of the way.
This would be my first time using an offensive spell, and I was a little eager to show it off. I called the knockback spell and aimed it at the ground. Tattoos of white flowers wrapped delicately around my wrists for a moment, and then there was the whump of the spell as air was forced violently into the ground. A divot was blasted into the dirt, sending grass and soil flying away from us. Crap, it was going to take me a while to dig down.
Except as I readied my next attempt, something strange happened. The ground began to shake slightly, and right before our eyes it opened up, soil pouring into a hole as a hidden door began to grind open using ancient mechanisms.
“Alriiiight,” I said with uncertainty, taking a few steps back. “I didn’t do that.”
“That’s not suspicious at all,” Adam murmured sarcastically, peering into the dark hole.
As he did so, lights began to flicker on inside, revealing a stairwell that trailed down for several yards before leveling out into a hallway.
“I think it wants us to go inside,” Kit said, glancing between the group and the hole.
Stepping up beside me, Grace put a hand on my shoulder. “Yeah… but Ryn isn’t going first.”
“Hold on,” Troy cut in, stepping up to the entrance too. “It opened when Ryn used a spell. It reacted well to her magic. I’d say she should definitely be the one to go first. So long as she has that shield of hers up.”
Grace’s posture indicated she wanted to argue with him for a second, but she seemed to decide against it, stepping back with a shrug instead.
So putting up my shield as he’d said, I took the first step down into the strange complex below us. The architecture was definitely the same as all the other ring builder stuff we’d seen, and it strangely reminded me of how advanced human tech was always portrayed in science fiction. It was all utilitarian bevelled lines.
The hallway had clearly been build using prefabricated parts too, sections of steel tunnel bolted together with precision perfect seams. Along the roof were strip lights that provided an even, yellow-white glow.
It was all decidedly futuristic looking in a way that was hugely jarring compared to the life I’d been living these past months. Going from what was essentially the medieval era into a science fiction bunker was beyond strange.
It wasn’t long before we arrived at a foyer-like area, complete with very old dead plants in little containers. Couches that seemed just a little too big and slightly too wide were arranged around too high tables, and off to the side were a series of what looked like elevators.
“This is so weirdly familiar,” Kit mumbled, looking around at it all. “It’s like… it’s so normal.”
“Yeah, and I can’t figure out if I like that or not,” Grace replied, walking up to run her hand through some of the dust that had collected on the back of a couch.
“There haven’t been any weapons aimed at us yet,” Troy said. “Let’s continue, see if the lifts still work like the lights do.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I was silent as I approached them, the team spread out behind me. The lifts, like everything else, appeared to be simple and functional in nature. There was a button to call them, although it was a little higher than I was used to seeing, and a little screen above displaying some symbol I had no hope of understanding. Other than that, it was just the futuristic nature of the place that was different.
I pressed the call button and a chime sounded, followed by another sound that had me practically jump out of my skin with fright. An alien language spoken by an alien mouth was playing from somewhere, and the whole group of us had been startled by it.
No gun turrets popped out of the wall though, just the gentle hiss of the doors sliding open to allow us access into the lift.
“Huh,” Kit laughed nervously. “I think we just heard the voice of one of the race that built this world.”
“I think we did too,” I said quietly, moving into the lift with a rising sense of… not forboding, but a general intensity. We were going to discover something here, I just knew it. Or maybe something would discover us?
Once everyone was inside the steel lift with its complete lack of aesthetics, I peered down at the little panel before me. It looked like some sort of touch screen, and when I moved my hand to poke at it, it lit up. Displayed across the glassy surface were several buttons labelled in a script I couldn’t hope to understand.
“I’m just going to pick at random,” I told the group, pressing one of them.
The doors pinged quietly and then closed, and there was a faint vibration in the lift. No sense of movement though, my stomach didn’t feel like it was lurching up into my throat or anything. Then, just as quickly as the doors had closed, they opened again on a room that was still in the process of lighting up itself for us. Anticipation rising, we moved out a little into the wide space.
“Alright, this is clearly an open plan laboratory,” Adam said in a tone that was almost offended. “This place is straight up weird with the way it isn’t weird,” he complained, then laughed and pointed at a nearby desk. “Shit, look at that. There’s a fucking spoon. It’s straight up just a spoon.”
He was right too. The place was full of incredibly strange looking equipment, but as far as the desks and cubicles were concerned, they were alarmingly familiar. Some ancient person had long ago put their spoon down next to their bowl and left it there for thousands of years. There was a pile of dust in the bowl that must have been the remnants of their meal.
“Let’s spread out everyone, but stay within sight of each other and don’t touch anything. I mean that, alright? No one is going to release some deadly nightmare fuel monster by accidentally pressing a button,” Troy told us seriously. “I am not good with horror.”
“You’re not good with horror?” Adam asked incredulously. “The hardass soldier can’t do horror?”
“No need to tease,” Troy chuckled good naturedly, taking his helmet off. “I was unfortunate enough to watch alien when I was small. Scared the shit out of my tiny young mind.”
“Oh damn,” I said with a cheeky smile. “This place must be pretty bad for you then.”
“Alright, alright,” he groaned, shooing us out into the lab. “Go on kids, find some alien horror that you can unleash on the world.”
We all laughed and did as he said, any tension we might have been experiencing having evaporated with the jokes and banter. Everyone else took their helmets off too as they looked around at the place.
The room was arranged into two halves, four rows of cubicles near the elevator, followed by a whole bunch of strange looking alien scientific equipment, then another four rows of cubicles and so on. The whole pattern was repeated three times in total.
I wandered over to a desk at random and looked down at it. There was a slate of black glass at an angle that implied it had been some sort of computer workstation. Off to the side against the back wall of the cubicle was a little statue or figure sitting on the desk, depicting some sort of strange… thing. I could vaguely make out a head and two legs, but the rest was entirely alien to me. It looked like someone had combined a chicken, a balloon and an anteater into one strange abomination of a creature.
When I moved in for a closer look, a little card of the same black glass as the computer flickered to life, and I let out an audible gasp.
Displayed on the little screen was a set of three… beings. Aliens, probably ring builders. They were humanoid, but impossibly thin by human standards, with tall heads that widened out into a bony frill. It was reminiscent of a triceratops’ shield, but far more graceful and delicate looking.
The eyes on the three aliens were large, with recognisably circular pupils and grey irises, while the mouths were thin and lipless, omnivorous teeth on display between them. Their skin seemed to be leathery in texture, with bony looking scales across their shoulders. They also wore clothing, simple and form fitting grey shirts and trousers with square cut collars.
Most notably though, they were all standing together, long, thin arms held about each other, the smallest of the three in front of the other two. It was quite clearly a picture of a family, probably the family of the scientist who’d worked at this very desk.
They were like us. They weren’t scary batronauts or anything like that, although they did have leathery skin and stuff. Still, they ate with spoons and took pictures with their families and pinned them up in their work spaces. They were so much like us that suddenly I felt a little pang of sadness for them, because their absence on this vast ring didn’t bode well. I hoped that some of their species still existed, because I’d love to meet them.
“Ryn!” Grace’s voice called through the room, interrupting my inspection of the desk. “Come look at this!”
Moving away from the desk and the picture, I headed deeper into the room, to where Grace was waving me over. She was standing in front of a bulky piece of equipment that looked like it was meant to contain something, keep it from getting out. I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle to life as I approached, and the telltale smell of intense magical energies hit me.
“Look through here,” she whispered excitedly.
Coming up beside her, I peered into the little glass viewport that she was motioning me towards. What I saw had my eyes widen and my breath catch in my throat. Visually, it was a dark orb of rippling transparent energy, pulsing with a strange life. Magically speaking, it was wrong.
It wasn’t wrong in an awful, terrifying sense though. It wasn’t some magical cancer or world eating void of death and destruction. Instead, it was like looking at a three year old’s attempt at writing their own name, with the magic I was used to seeing as the parent’s flowing handwriting.
“What is it?” Grace asked, her face coming in to crowd me at the view port, wisps of her hair brushing my cheek.
“Shitty magic,” I blurted, my mind not at all paying attention to what I was saying as I felt her so wonderfully close to me.
“Uh, what?” she asked, turning to frown at me and bringing her face so breathtakingly close to mine. Her small, perfectly shaped lips were right there, her larger bottom lip just begging to be sucked on or nibbled at. Calm down Ryn, calm down, she’s a friend, not food.
“It’s shitty magic,” I told her again, trying to rally my thoughts back into intelligent mode from mess mode. “Looks like they were experimenting with making magic or something? It’s very strange, that’s for sure.”
“Alright,” she said, mercifully backing off a little. “So they were messing around with magic, that’s not what I expected actually. I figured that all the sci-fi stuff would be doing its own thing, while all the magic stuff would be too, if you know what I mean?”
“Me too, which makes me really keen to try and figure out this place,” I nodded, taking several deep breaths in an effort to clear my still very addled mind. “Want to keep looking?”
“Yeah, let’s check out that big pipe looking thing,” she smiled, her hand reaching out to briefly brush my arm.
Again, just like that, she destroyed my ability to think about anything other than that simple touch. Grace, please, oh please… have mercy on me.