Seras stared across the massive void in front of her. The expanse was so wide that she couldn’t see the other side, if not for her software mapping the space with acoustics, then she’d have been staring into the abyss.

Above she saw the occasional glowing yellow and fuchsia flowers of the tunnels they had first been in. There was a clean line above them where the glittering rock of the Levitational Galena ended and the overgrowth of the first tunnel returned. And some vines hung below the line and into the glittering cave.

They stood on the ledge of an enormous shaft. The shaft was so large Seras could have stuck a mega tower in here and still had room. Below their ledge the shaft went down so far it almost seemed endless.

With the exception of the upper part of the shaft everything was made from the Levitational Gelena they had been seeing since yesterday. Meaning that everything with the bounds of the shaft floated free of gravity’s constraints. Though not perfectly.

There seemed to be fluctuations in the strange anti-gravity environment, huge gray crystal clusters slowly rose and fell, some even moved across the open space as if caught by some weak invisible current.

The crystal clusters ranged in size from a large Heidel, to that of a bus or train car. They reminded Seras of gray metal aragonite, or Stibnite.

“I take back what I said.” Athena muttered, “this is a true marvel. Just look at the size of it! And this is all underground too, how far down does it go?”

Seras looked down, she then looked to a nearby rock and kicked it over. It fell for about a second, then it just tumbled forward on a straight course, still carried down by its initial momentum. Then it hit an ivisbile current and began to tumble further from them before it began to rise upwards, then fifty meters above them it began to fall, then it rose again, until it joined the crystal clusters in their strange dance.

“Well that’s a bust.” Seras muttered.

“It was a good idea, and now we know the effects not even.” Athena tried to console her.

Seras felt an eye twitch, “this really shouldn’t be possible. This isn’t how gravity works. At all. And I swear some of these crystals are pulling things in one moment, then pushing the next.”

“That’s because these are pure floatstones. They’re highly sensitive to magic fluctuations, I think just using an essence ability near then will cause a change. And look at how many are here, we’re starring at a fortune in pure floatstone!” Athena marveled.

“We’re also at the end of our tunnel.” Seras pointed out. She gestured outwards to the strange anti-gravity shaft, “unless we see a sign saying ‘exit here’ then we’re lost and all that walking was a waste of time.”

They were standing in an alcove at the end of their tunnel, the gravity here was a bit weird, but not to scale of the shaft itself. They could see evidence of the Omeda’s presence, and even some thick metal cages and the remains of a small camp, but little else.

“It looks that way. We had assumed the Omeda had a way out of the labyrinth through there tunnels, but I’m beginning to doubt that.”

“Think this might be some sort of meet up spot?” Seras asked.

“Maybe, I don’t know much about illicit activities, but I strikes me that the Labyrinth would make a decent meet up location for shady groups. Out of sight, hard to stumble upon, and stretching for thousands of miles.”

Seras nodded, “Yeah, I can see it. There were similar spots like this back home. Old tram tunnels that were abandoned, parts of the city that got built over instead of bulldozed, and old mining tunnels from centuries past that pop up in basements. Whoever the Omeda were meeting could take the prisoners and then disappear into the labyrinth. Theres probably at least a dozen other caves that poke into a shaft of this size. Both above us and below. Fuck!” Seras cursed, the sound traveling far and echoing back to her.

“Do we need to go back and try a different route?” Athena asked.

Seras scowled. “I don’t know.”

“Should we try the roof shaft again?”

“I don’t know?”

“Or, maybe we can try to cross this space, find another route forward?”

Seras was getting frustrated, unreasonably so she knew. But they had been stuck down here for days, she was down an arm, in an endless amount of pain from the abilies she had advanced, and was tired. So tired.

Literally nothing in her life was ever easy.

Why did it always need to be an uphill battle?

Seras jolted as a hand landed on her shoulder. She turned and saw that Athena had walked over to place a consoling hand on Seras’ shoulder. “It’s alright to not have all the answers. It’s a bit selfish of me to expect you to always know the right thing. Maybe we should take a break to rest, eat, and let ourselves decompress. Then we can think of things more clearly.”

Seras opened her mouth to snap a retort, but she recognized the action for the mistake it would have been and shut up. Athena was right, if that was all it took to set her off then Seras really shouldn’t be making decisions right now. “Yeah, yeah your right. Wanna walk back up the tunnel to bed down?”

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“And miss this view?” she asked incredulously.

“It’s more dangerous out here in the open.” Seras stated.

“Just like the tunnel would be? Any monster coming down would have to be blind to miss us.”

Seras scowled, but she really didn’t feel like arguing. “Fine, lets bed down.” Seras summoned up the bed rolls and aura tent for the night.

~~~*~~~

This was the third time Athena and Seras had slept together in the tight tent meant for one. Athena was just glad the strange Outworlder had two sleeping rolls, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep otherwise.

Then again it wasn’t like separate bed rolls were helping. Seras said she didn’t need to sleep often, even before the magic, but down here she had to take short naps to keep their wits about them. The problem was that Seras was not a light sleeper, she tossed, turned, kicked, and refused to stay on her side of the small tent.

And she always had a pained look on her face.

Her condition meant that she felt pain at all times, even when she was asleep. That was when Athena got to see just how badly it was effecting her. The Outworlder was good at masking her feelings and hiding behind a obnoxious grin, but when she was asleep all her walls came down.

It was heart breaking to see, and even worse to know that Athena might be able to help relieve her burden if it weren’t for the woman’s broken arm.

That morning, or the underground morning equivalent, Athena woke and knew that Seras was already awake. She knew this because the striking women wasn’t sprawled all over Athena, drooling slightly as she rested.

Athena got up and emerged from the small tent and saw Seras sitting on the ledge of the alcove, legs dangling over the side, watching the spinning clusters of floatstone. Athena opened her mouth to make a comment about how strange it was to wake up with a dry shirt, when Seras tossed a rock into the floatstone field.

She watched as the rock shot forward unaffected by the pull of the world, then fell as if the rock just remembered it was supposed to fall, only for it to change its mind later and float back up. As it approached one of the clusters in drew in close, whipped around to the other side as if it were being tethered by invisible strings, and then flying off to the other side of the shaft.

There was a soft click as it struck the wall, and Seras immediately through another rock, this one at a different angle.

She watched a similar course of events, but instead of whipping around the cluster the rock was pulled directly onto one of it tall spear like growths.

The moment the rock stopped moving Seras chucked the next rock.

“What are you doing?” Athena asked.

Seras didn’t react to her approach, she just waited for the rock to hit the wall of the shaft before she chucked another. “Trying to figure out how these crystals work. I’m close. I think there’s two different kinds of magic at play. An attractive force, and a repulsive force.”

Athena approached and saw as the rock approached the crystal cluster and was then flung backwards, like a pebble skipping off a lake.

“The long crystals, that look like stibnite, I think those ones attract. While the stubby pentagonal one’s repulse. Like magnets, except with gravity.”

“I see, and is that helpful?” Athena asked.

“Maybe, if we want to navigate the shaft, I was just bored and curious.”

Athens frowned and considered what Seras had said, “what’s Stibnite?”

Seras finally shifted, she gave Athena a piercing look before she seemed to realize something, “oh right, magic makes elements and minerals weird. It a crystal of Antimony from my world. Forms long gray bristles, like that out there.” She pursed her lips and considered something else, “actually, even on my world people might not know that. Mantel started off as a mining outpost before it grew into the mega city it is now. It’s still the largest mining and refining hub on the planet.”

Athena nodded, though she really didn’t get it, she still had no idea what Antimony was. “So, are we going back or moving on?”

Seras sighed, “decisions out of our hands now. I checked my map when I woke up. The tunnel behind us closed in three different places.”

Athena felt her heart quiver, “was it a cave in?”

“Maybe, could just be the labyrinth moving. Might be that it closed one tunnel to open a new one. I only get to see the absence of a viable path. I checked the set of tunnels I traveled when I first came to the world, only a small segment extending from the city astral space is left.”

“Your ability lets you see changes in the tunnels?”

“Yep, I think it might be interacting with aspects of ‘Net connection’. Net connection is supposed to let me replicate the Net from my world, but I don’t have divine permission for it to work. But on my world the Net also updated maps when roads changed, or when their were car accidents, or a terrorist attack. My map shows me where I’ve been, and its location on the surface. I think the Net aspect might be telling me that its changed, but it didn’t update the map because I haven’t been to the new spot.”

“Sounds complicated.” Athena said.

“That’s me, ten kinds of complicated and fucked up. I couldn’t even get normal powers when I got shunted into a magical world.” She muttered.

Athena stared at the outworlder and once again tried to imagine what it would be like to suddenly be so far from anything you knew or understood. She imagined herself winding up naked and hairless on the streets of Mantel. She’d never been to the city, but from Seras’ descriptions she imagined bright green toxic looking clouds, busy streets from over population, loud alien noises, and people killing each other in the street over any petty issue.

She wasn’t sure she could do it. But Seras had seemingly taken on all the strangeness and adapted, it was admirable.

Athena hadn’t turned off her vision power since Seras brought it up. ‘Eyes of the Surgeon’ was an interesting vision ability that had only a few entries in the magic societies, usually from Healing with Ministration confluence. Her parents had wondered if that meant Athena would one day be able to choose which injuries she took on.

Mostly she just found it disturbing. To see a person’s body in action, to bones move, muscles contract, and even the release of sweat. Of course, she couldn’t focus on every aspect of the body at once, not until her spirit attribute advanced more.

In that regard Seras was actually more pleasant to see with her ability. Sure, it was disconcerting at first to see the degree to which she had changed herself. But after Athena got used to it she found it was less unnerving than seeing biology at play. It was like watching pullies and gears at work, nothing disturbing about that.

And since her ability was one of the first and most consistently used ability, she had it was also her only ability to reach bronze, which had the interesting effect of letting her see the nerves running through a person’s body, as well as some of the signals being sent. She could see a person’s pain through the ‘sparking’ of their nerve endings. She could see fear as a murky haze flowing through a person. And even arousal as a thousand little fireflies.

Seras had all three this entire time. Pain, pain as her own soul twisted and screamed in her body. Fear at the constant danger they were in, even now Seras was tense and terrified despite looking calm and relaxed. And… well Athena tried to ignore that last one. It wasn’t fair to see a person’s whole being light up in signals they couldn’t control, and she refused to bring up how Seras’ whole being fluttered when she finally noticed Athena’s physique.

That had been the most embarrassing moment in her whole life.

What was more interesting was the Seras had no real biological organs. All Athena saw was the slightly pink blobs of biomass where Seras’ organs should have been. Even mor curious was how the mechanical elements were hooked up to the biomass as if it were all still normal. Wires running through Seras’ brain, some sort of mesh lining in the vague shape of a stomach, and hollow metal reinforced bones with marrow inside.

Her eyes lingered on the metal arm still hanging in its sling. She could see the clean break along the metal born, torn wires, and broken artificial muscles. Some aspects of it had joined back up, and it and speed up a bit since Seras killed the plant monster, but the skin had still refused to close and the black blood that flowed through the rest of her body refused to enter the hand. If Athena tried to take the injury, she had no doubt her own arm would completely fall off.

Whether or not it could heal from there remained to be seen. But a visit to a real healer would fix that if Athena survived the blood loss.

She could do it.

Take on Seras’ pain and give her a good night’s rest for once. All Athena had to do was let her arm get ripped off. She heard of warriors who would cut off a limb trapping them, but that was with the rush of combat and desperation. How many warriors could look at their arm in cold blood and swing an axe?

For the millionth time Athena cursed her powers, cursed her essences, and cursed everything else for making her this way.

And quietly she cursed herself for being a coward.

Athena was about to say something else when both of them shuddered in unison.

A bronze rank aura fell over their shoulders, a powerful one. She felt she was drowning in a pool of honey, her lungs struggling to pull in air. She tried pushing out with her aura to get a moment to breath, when a second one descended.

“Dead gods fucking dammit!” Seras roared as her aura surged forward with all the rage of a forest fire. Impossibly it seemed to be holding its own against the bronze ranked auras, or at least enough to prevent herself from being suppressed. “One, fucking, moment, to feel sorry for myself. That’s all I fucking wanted!”

A small object appeared in her hand before she tossed it down to the two bronze rank monsters flying up at them.

Athena saw the grenade start to shift from its original trajectory, but saw no more as Seras tackled her to the ground a moment before it exploded.

She felt one of the auras shiver in pain, but neither faded in intensity.

Like it or not they needed to fight two bronze rank monsters on their own.