“Alright, we’ve taken enough of a detour.”

Alisson said sternly, checking his gear.

“What do we do now?”

Alisson looked at me blanky. “We finish the mission.”

I averted my eyes uncomfortably. “But if it’s true that Sidonia is…”

My voice trailed off.

“Regardless.” Alisson declared. “With all I’ve seen of Freigat, and what Eufrozina has told us, finding that item is of strategic importance.” He tightened his hand. “I’m not doing it for Sidonia. Our fratello still need us.” He then looked at me with a wry smile. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing either.”

I nodded.

This whole mission might just be an excuse to get rid of me. Might. Me and Alisson made a mutual pact: That if Sidonia’s intentions were actually pure, then we wouldn’t speak of this. But, that remains to be found out when we return to the homeland.

Alisson was furious when he realized Sidonia’s possible intent. In some sense, it felt like Sidonia was the traitor, not us.

Alisson and I approached the steel door at the end of the cliff’s road. It was large, and thick. Enhérejär indicated that we needed to go through it. The both of us stood before the door, about to wonder how we were going to open it when suddenly steam was released from its edges. The large steel doors slowly parted. We both cautiously walked through eyeing the surroundings. There was a blue light tracking us. Up on the ceiling, distended from some kind of metal arm, was a rectangle with a clear blue lens.

As we walked by it, the object rotated so that it always faced us, like it was watching us. We both continued nonetheless, thankful that the door seemed to be automatic in some sense.

Another tunnel greeted us, similar to the last one. This time though, I didn’t go and pull a stupid prank on Alisson.

We walked through the tunnel in silence, our guards up, but nothing out of the ordinary happened until we exited the tunnel. It opened up into a small cavern. A single building lay within the cavern, surrounded by a pit that had probably once been a moat of sorts; a single bridge was the only way to it. The building was of unique construction, it wasn’t just a large rectangle as much as it was a nested fortress. Alisson and I continued down the road to the bridge.

We were anxious of its stability at first, but it appeared to be made of solid steel, and was in good condition. None of the shells or craters that had littered the city of earlier were found here, it seemed pristine almost.

As we approached the building, walking over the massive bridge, I noticed two other tunnels in the cavern that were connected by a road, which wrapped around the building. This road in particular looked very familiar.

“…Mage rails?”

Alisson voiced my thoughts, and before I could concur, a sudden roar sounded in the distance. At first dully, but it quickly increased in volume as whatever was emitting neared. I saw lights down one of the holes in, and then, a blur exited the tunnel, moving straight along the mage-rail looking road. It was so fast that it was hard to garner any details about it, other than it was fast and rectangular, and moved only along its designated path. It reminded me of a Basilisk, but it only stuck around for a few moments, before disappearing into the other tunnel on the other side of the buildings, its noise fading away.

It didn’t look like a beast, more like some kind of contraption. What it was for, was anyone’s guess. Me and Alisson continued onto the building, Enhérejär growing larger and larger in radius; to almost ten meters now. The mana in this place was thicker than Freigat, according to Enhérejär’s radius.

We cautiously stepped over the rails, wary for another one of those machines to come screaming by, but none did. We came before what looked to be the once immaculate entrance to the building. A fine layer of dust covered every surface. The doors weren’t giving in, so Alisson kicked through the glass of one of the frames.

Immediately, a loud alarm blared, followed by a sudden voice,

“[Security System Armed.]”

The voice seemed to come from above somewhere, like the alarm. We both stepped through the broken door frame unhindered as the alarm wound down, basking the area in silence once more.

“I wonder what that was about.”

Alisson shook his head. Those words were foreign, what they meant was probably long lost to the passage of time. The building’s insides were nothing special, a few sitting area here and there, desks scattered about, and what looked to be a few plants. On closer inspection, these plants were fake, what they were made of to still be in perfect condition must’ve certainly been strong.

After sweeping the first floor, and finding essentially nothing, Alisson rose and lowered Enhérejär again, determining that we needed to head upwards. For Enhérejär to be so responsive and accurate must mean that we’re close.

Once again, we’re confined to the cramped space of a tiny stair shaft. As we ascended, the walls became ever more degraded, the layers of rust mounted and by the time we reached the top of the staircase, the stairs themselves were in complete disrepair. We cautiously crept through the top floor, finding empty rooms. This place was not as neat as the lower levels, there was evidence of a struggle of some sorts…Blood stained hands streaked across walls, torn fabric fluttered loosely, and some walls were completely caved through. The place was eerily silent, but that didn’t stop the two of us from homing in on the source of all the mana here. There was single door that was oddly thicker and more metallic than the rest. Around it were multitudes of what could only be warnings, with their bright yellows, reds, and oranges.

What exactly it was trying to warn against, we didn’t know. The actual doors of the imposing entrance were already broken in, so we cautiously stepped through, our weapons up.

Almost immediately, two things happened. Our magic lights instantly went dead, and Enhérejär collapsed back into a sword with incredible speed.

“What the…” I murmured, staring at my hands.

Alisson tried casting a light spell, to no effect. That was when we realized that this area was completely devoid of mana.

“Strange that the center of a mana dense region would be the opposite of it…”

Alisson mused, a source of light winking on. I was surprised to see a bright white light, wondering how Alisson had casted a light spell, when I realized what was in his hand. It was Sylph’s non-magic light source. It seemed to work fine here. It wasn’t like a flame, emitting a point of illumination, rather the cylindrical device emitted a powerful beam of light, and Alisson had to shine the light over where we were going.

We continued on down a long, dark corridor. The blackness was so thick here that I could see clearly the shape of the light as it pierced the darkness before us. Various unidentifiable pieces of mangled metal and twisted debris lay scattered over the floor, forcing me and Alisson to tip toe our way through the corridor, not wanting to disturb anything.

There was something wrong about this place. It was unlike the other buildings of this city. It didn’t feel empty. This corridor was just too damn tight, and the oozing darkness didn’t help the claustrophobic atmosphere.

My eyes darted to the walls, my instincts telling me something sinister was very nearby. I was so focused on watching the walls that I almost tripped on a piece of metal on the floor. Alisson caught me, but as I was doubled over, I saw clearly in the wall, an eye, staring right at me. It was within a crack, a tiny, miniscule crack in the wall, that a massive eye stared back at me, like something had shoved its face against it to peer at us.

“Alisson!”

I hissed, and indicated to the eye. The both of us immediately prepared for combat, staring down the crack in the wall, but nothing came of it. It didn’t look like a painting, or some kind of, inanimate object, my gut told me that was an eyeball that belonged to a very real creature.

Eventually, we relaxed, and warily, we started to move past it. The eye tracked us, watching us pass. I could hear a subtle deep breathing. Then, without warning, the eye moved out of the sight, leaving the crack barren of anything but a black void. cautiously, Alisson flashed the light into the crack, but it revealed nothing; not a room, not another corridor or anything, just void. Like the light simply ended past that wall.

Alisson and I flashed wary glances at each other, but we continued on, only to find not a few seconds thereafter, another eye in a different crack in the wall. Rather, it looked to be the same one as before. We moved passed it, watching it as we went, it moved to another crack further down the corridor, as to keep us in its sight.

With that, I realized just how degraded the walls had started to become in the corridor, larger and larger cracks were cropping up, and more numerously so as well. With every few meters, every new crack, the I could see more and more of the eye. I could see how it moved between the holes in the wall, breathing its deep, ominous breaths.

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A light came into view ahead of us, and I breathed a mental sigh of relief. It seemed to be emanating from a doorway, one that was broken in. As we stepped closer however, something descended from the ceiling above the doorway. It looked mechanical, made of metal. I saw clearly a familiar shape, a barrel similar to the magic weapons we’d found earlier, and like the one Alisson had stolen from that thug in Scratskoslovotskaya.

Then, from the mechanical arm, flashed a red laser. Its beam cut through the darkness, and landed squarely on Alisson’s chest. A second later, I heard a loud bang, like an explosion had gone off. I looked to Alisson, to suddenly see him clutching his chest, and doubling over.

My eyes widened as the laser shifted over to me.

Thinking quickly, I pushed Alisson to the floor, and dove down with him.

Another explosion sound went off, but I was still alive, so clearly it hadn’t hit me.

We were in the middle of a long corridor – no cover.

This place had zero mana – no magic.

I had only a second to scour my environment, to look for something to use. I found it. I metal plate that lay discard at the edge of the corridor. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. I rolled over to the wall of the corridor, the laser now having adjusted its sights directly onto my head. I grabbed hold of the heavy piece of metal, and lifted it up at contraption, obstructing the laser from reaching forehead.

Another explosion went off. The metal piece rebounded in my hands, taking a heavy force from something.

Well, I’m not dead, so there’s that.

I scrambled to my feet, and knelt near Alisson, bringing him up with a hand before once again the machine fired, and the plate I held jolted back as an ear piercing noise rung through the corridor. I got Alisson up onto his feet, so at least he wasn’t dead. With him in tow I pulled him forward as fast as I could. All the while, the contraption kept on shooting at me. As long as I kept the metal in front of the laser sight, I was safe.

We closed in on the machine. I held the piece of metal directly up to it as I slipped through the door way, pulling Alisson. The machine fired one last time before I pulled Alisson and myself around the doorframe, and out of line of sight of it. Thankfully, it didn’t try to fire through the wall.

The area here was run down, and nothing seemed special about it, other than a loose light that hung form the ceiling, glowing a pale blue dimly.

I rested Alisson against the wall. He coughed, but I couldn’t find any blood on his chest.

Then, I saw it. the gleam of metal. It had punched through the outer Black-Energy gear we have on like paper, and cracked through Alisson’s steel plate, shattering it. It was stopped by his gambeson. More aptly, what had caught the object, was a thicket of metal string – Lavjoure’s woven metal seemed to have saved Alisson’s life. It would’ve gone right through his heart otherwise.

I yanked the piece of metal out of him, examining it for a moment in the light. It had a conical tip, and was extraordinarily shiny. I flicked the piece of metal away, and made sure that Alisson was fine.

“J-just blew the wind out of me was all…”

He said tepidly, dazed. Well, we were walking down a quiet corridor when suddenly that thing just attacked. I’d be in the same state too, if I didn’t have a second to regain my senses in the time that Alisson was attacked.

He had dropped Sylph’s light in the commotion, I could still see its beam pierce through the doorway as it lay on the ground, shining toward us.

We couldn’t go out onto the surface with the punctured gear, so I worked to seal Alisson’s armor as he regained his senses. During the few moment respite, the machine fired suddenly, and my heart jumped in fear. But, it wasn’t at us. The machine continued to fire rapidly for a few more seconds until I heard a horrific tear of metal, along with heavy breathing, emanating not a meter away from around the corner. The breathing dulled, and faded into the distance.

“Come on, we need to keep moving.”

Alisson shakily rose to his feet. “Without Enhérejär, we can’t be sure which direction to go in…we’ll just have to search this place top to bottom…”

With Alisson back on his feet, I finally took a moment to take in the surroundings, illuminated solely by that dangling light. It was a relatively small room, with rows of what looked to be file cabinets lining the walls. Approaching one of the cabinets, I opened it, and found stacks upon stacks of paper, all with unreadable steganography on them, some bearing pictures of foreign graphs.

“I’m willing to bet that what we’re looking for is somewhere here…”

Alisson said, digging through one of the cabinets. Any that had locks, we broke open. Most bore only documents, which were tossed aside. Eufrozina didn’t bother describing the item we were looking for in detail, simply assuring us with confidence that we’d be able to tell what it was. Box after box, container after container, we began to grow more desperate, pushing aside papers and unidentifiable trinkets. Some boxes held excesses of minerals, others of multicolored liquids.

“I’m sure Lente would wet himself if he saw all this…”

Alisson muttered, attempting to fill the air with something, but in his tone I could still make out his unease, and desperation. Our movements became more frantic until suddenly, pushing aside a stack of papers, and kicking up a cloud of dust in the process, I spotted a black cylinder. It was about as big as my forearm, and was incredibly heavy as well.

I laid my fingers on it, and knew immediately that this was it. A surge a energy flew into my body, like an explosion, it caught be by surprise and I stumbled backwards onto my butt.

“Celis?”

“I found it…” I smiled weakly.

Alisson quickly neared me, and together, we hoisted the cylinder out of its container.

“I can feel the power radiating off of this thing…” Alisson muttered. “But its not mana…it’s something else.”

I stared at the black cylinder. “Authority.” I looked to Alisson, “What Eufrozina’s said, about someone’s authority level and all that… I think this object has a high authority level.”

We both stared over the cylinder. “Whatever it is, I don’t see how its supposed to make you better with magic.” Alisson rolled the cylinder over in his hands, examining it.

Its ends were tapered, and had some sort of ports, or lids to them.

Alisson shook his head. “I’m sure Lente and the science division back home will be able to decipher it. For now, we need to get out of here.”

Alisson slipped off his backpack, and slipped the heavy black cylinder inside it.

“A-are you sure you want to carry it? It’s pretty heavy…”

Alisson shook his head once more. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be weighed down quite a bit, so I’ll need to rely on you to protect me if things get serious.”

I nodded. Gathering ourselves, we headed for the exit. We left the room to find the mechanical contraption that had once shot at us torn to pieces on the floor.

Wordlessly, Alisson slipped his back pack off again.

“Alisson?”

He powered on his Black Energy gauge that we’d pilfered earlier.

“Just reminds me, what if the object is dangerous?”

He poked around in his backpack for a moment, but the gauge read green. He sighed. Off hand, he swiped the gauge over his arm, and it immediately flared to yellow.

“Our gear must’ve already absorbed a lot of Black Energy…” He muttered. His eyes drifted over the broken mechanical contraption strewn about across the floor. “Celis, take some pieces of this machine. With Lente in my head, and now that we know we’re headed home, we have plenty of room to take scientific samples.”

I nodded, and started to pluck pieces of the machine into my bag.

Mindlessly, Alisson poked the Black Energy gauge through one of the cracks in the wall. It went from green to red within a split second, clicking ferociously, like the void beyond the corridor’s walls was Black Energy. Alisson withdrew his hand quickly. “I…think we should wear our masks for the rest of our time here.”

Trying not to pay attention to the eye glaring at us from the void, we started down the corridor once more, picking up Sylph’s light as we did. The eye, as it had before, shifted along side the wall, from crack to crack. Breathing ever more heavy. One of the cracks in the wall was especially big. I could make out both its eyes, and a vague fuzzy shape of some kind of creature. It stood not a meter away, but Alisson and I kept stoic expressions, fully aware that if we were to show any kind of emotion to it, we may end up like the mechanical contraption.

We passed the overly large crack in the wall without incident, the creature breathing heavily, flashing its eyes at us. Alisson didn’t point his light at it, and good he didn’t. We managed to exit the corridor with little fuss after that. As soon as we stepped through the doorway, mana flooded into me. It was incredible, my entire supply, refilled almost immediately.

We held off on testing the regeneration power until we were outside of the building, and back onto the bridge. Alisson fired off Pictunee spells, over and over again, into the walls of snow. He looked to me with a smirk.

“The object’s authority level must be increasing our regeneration by merely being next to it. It’s like we have a limitless supply. But…” Alisson’s voice drifted, “We still don’t know yet if mana comes from in the world or its generated within ourselves…If its from the world, we may exhaust the local resources if we push it, and who knows what effect it may have on us.”

I nodded.

Regardless, we weren’t afraid to deploy mage lights on our way back. We reached the rocky cliff face, still bearing witness to the blue glowing city, and then we entered the long tunnel once more, headed back toward the underground city.

“I don’t want to raise any flags or anything…” I started, “But I don’t think getting out of here will be a walk in the park…”

Alisson nodded. “I know how you feel. I wish everything were simple.”

Despite our words of doubt, we walked through the tunnel, then through the city, without any incident. Noticeably, the two large intimidating humanoid machines with treads were nowhere to be found. Thankfully, we reached the doorway that led to the generators without running into them. Then, it was to the control room, where Alisson had supposedly turned on all the power supply for the whole city. We could still hear the broken spirits pounding away at the door. Evidently, they’d deactivated the two generators, but weren’t happy at all about the rest of the power that we’d turned on.

Alisson looked to me warily. “Let’s save ourselves the trouble.”

With that, he then pressed the button that he had before, and immediately, all the power was shunted away, and the lights above winked off. The movement of the spirits slowed until eventually they moved no more. After that, we punched through the large door with an overwhelming magic barrage. We stepped over a dozen still bodies of distorted and dirtied dolls, resting peacefully on the stone floor.

From there, it was a straight shot to the stair shaft. We started the ascent with little confidence, sure that something was going to happen, expecting every groan and whine of the stairs to give way to a full-blown collapse or the like. Despite the air of unease, and getting fairly exhausted from walking up so many flights of stairs, we made it to the top uneventfully. With our masks on, we exited the building, and stepped onto the snowy surface of the Deadzone once more. Unlike a few hours ago, the storm seems to have cleared up, and the sky for the time being was clear. Well, as clear as the Deadzone could get – the sky was still covered by a thick blanket of gray high above, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

Me and Alisson started back the way we came, toward Eufrozina’s city, our prior tracks already having been covered up by the storm that had just swept through here.

“At present, we have two hurdles remaining.” Alisson started. “We have to get back through the Deadzone. Judging by our experience on our way here, we shouldn’t have much to worry about. But then, when we reach Scratskoslovotskaya, we’ll have to contend with Andestine. I’m sure they’ll be there.”

His fist tightened.

“Right now, we have what seems to be an extremely important item. How we would put it to use though, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “We need to return to Sidonia. She needs to hear everything we’ve discovered. She’ll make the right call.”

“And if she doesn’t?” I asked with sharp eyes.

Alisson exhaled heavily. “One problem at a time, Celis. For now, let’s just focus on aiding our country, our fratello. If it turns out that Sidonia’s actions run opposite to our people’s survival then…well, we’ll deal with it when we get there.” He shook his head. “It’s hard not having an infallible figure to rely on, now that, now that I know the truth.”

I nodded in agreement.

***