“Do you think you’ll go to the festival at Vinayre?” Edellan accepts a soapy plate from Mikell and rinses it in cold water.
“I’m not sure yet.” Mikell scrubs at a bowl.
Edellan waits for a few moments. They know Mikell well enough to sense something is on his mind.
After a period of silence, Mikell adds, “It doesn’t feel right celebrating when we haven’t found Nola yet. She has to be nearby, but…” He doesn’t meet his friend’s gaze.
Edellan wipes a plate for longer than necessary as they tried to think of a good response. “...I’ll keep you company, no matter what you pick. Crowds make me nervous anyway.”
That earns them a teasing smile. “Thanks, but are you sure you’re not using me as an excuse to hide away?”
“Oh, I don’t need an excuse to hide. I disappear from social settings faster than ice cubes in an oven.”
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Nothing is better than a twenty minute walk filled with angry silence. Thermal and Serena refuse to look at each other, scanning the rocky environment with tense shoulders. Elle distracts herself from the hostility by sending out periodic pulses of spatial sense.
Another tunnel runs farther down from their feet with rough edges and a similar diameter to the one by Mt. Kernstone. Given the tunnel network’s vast expanse, she imagines the layers of earth chewed through like worm-eaten wood. She can’t help but to shudder at the thought.
With the long walk and frantic sprint through the forest, even her aura can’t fully soothe the exhaustion settling into her muscles. While Serena looks relatively unbothered, Thermal has slowed down significantly.
Elle takes a deep breath. “Do you think we could take a break at the shrine? We’ve been travelling for awhile now.”
Thermal glances back at her. “I believe Tiami described the shrine to be a discreet resting point. We should be able to spend some time there.”
She nods, falling back into silence. The path has been sloping increasingly upwards, and it doesn’t look well-trodden. If the map is to be believed, the trail ends at the shrine and any further exploration must be done off-trail.
Bestial maws seem to loom out of the rock walls of the mountain. Transmuted into stone, the icekoon and ironjack appear so life-like, they could spring at the trio any second. If one got spooked to the point of running though, there are enough loose rocks to send someone rolling off the ledge.
“For a Hunter’s Guild volunteer though…” Thermal continues, “...you seem to be lacking in athleticism. Perhaps you could ask the guildmaster for a trainer as reward for this endeavour.”
…Or enough loose rocks to make a death look like an accident. It’s not like he was much better in the forest.
Elle replies, “Maybe. What about you? What do you plan to ask for?”
He hesitates for a moment. “...I seek an invitation to the festival’s after-party.”
“There’s an after-party? I didn’t hear about that.”
“It is a private celebration for the Vinayre Council staff and guild masters. Diplomats from Danglawan and Basinoon will be attending, and I believe it will be an excellent opportunity to get a good foot in the door.”
Serena snorts, “If it doesn’t end up in your mouth first.”
Thermal’s eyes narrow, and Elle walks faster up the incline to avoid the incoming hostility.
That’s not the literal translation of what they said. Elle knows this somehow, but her mind automatically substitutes the English equivalent of the idiom as if she’s spoken their language for years. This gift Universal Language slips her the words with no memories attached, unlike the three languages she actually knows to varying degrees of fluency.
It’s both familiar and alien, and it’s uncomfortable to notice it. It’s like suddenly becoming aware of your own breathing and now needing to manually inhale and exhale. Nothing is wrong though, so why does her chest feel constricted?
She wants to go home. The thought seeps out from under a mentally bolted door.
Off-kilter, Elle almost misses the shrine after rounding the corner. It takes her a moment to snap out out if her swirling thoughts and look around the artificially smooth clearing off the path.
A carving of a robed figure carrying a staff appears etched into the wall above a plinth. It’s very not detailed, but the surface of the robe has been carved to look like it’s flowing. She thinks the artist put a lot of care into it.
Upon the plinth, a stone bowl sits full of ashes. For a second, Elle wonders if it’s appropriate to put someone’s cremated remains in an open container for anyone to knock onto the ground. She then remembers that Tiami said the archmage’s entirety dissolved into mana, so the ashes are likely just burned offerings.
Besides the altar, a small fire ring sits in the nook next to a covered box of wood scraps for fire. The floor looks free of pebbles, adequate for sleeping. Serena ignores the shrine and kneels down closer towards the circle of rocks. “Someone used this recently. Probably a couple days ago?”
“Do you know if it was Fesper Bleck’s group?”
“Hard to say, they didn’t leave anything special here.” She pokes the campfire ashes with a stick and stands back up, scanning the clearing. “But the only people who would use this site either had low aura or couldn’t make it back to the city for some reason.”
Elle nods, “True. People don’t need to eat anymore, so it’s not like they’d be cooking anything. Well, it’s likelier that they used this for warmth rather than cooking up monsters…” She looks up and frowns at the narrow opening in the rock which seems to go crookedly towards the sky, uninhibited.
Serena follows her gaze. “The smoke would be pretty visible. That’s probably why they checked this mountain when they realised the group went missing.”
“It’s shielded from wind but not rain. A weird place for a shrine, but I guess there were more important things to figure out at the time.”
Thermal steps forward to inspect the altar. “There are rituals that require access to moonlight, but I agree that performing them here would be a bit tasteless.”
The crimson arrow points east and downward, angled in a similar but slanted direction as the path. For first time in awhile, he pays it no attention and runs a hand along the plinth.
Meanwhile, Elle closes her eyes and sends another sensory pulse in a sphere around them. She feels the path continue uninterrupted for the maximum distance besides the stone walls of the mountain pressing into them on both sides. They won’t be bothered by monsters on the surface for the moment.
A sense of unease weighs her stomach as she once again finds a tunnel underneath the shrine. It seems like the underground network covers the entire space between Fort Kernstone and Mt. Aspirash. She suspects that the sigil will lead them down there, and the thought of fighting in an enclosed space causes the hairs on her neck to rise.
Didn’t Mikell find his sister’s necklace with a broken chain in the tunnels? And the only thing left by Fesper Bleck’s group is his necklace too…
As the minutes pass, Elle’s eyes begin to water. She wipes at them with a tissue, growing itchier as time passes for no apparent reason. Is she allergic to something here?
Finished examining the altar, Thermal looks back at them. “I cannot find any hidden compartments to this. Ms. Winnow seemed to have been telling the truth.”
Serena shrugs, “It’d be pretty stupid to hide something useful out in the middle of nowhere. Not sure why anyone would stop here at all when there’s a deathtrap surrounding the mountain.”
Elle glances at the two. Both seem to be relatively good-shape and not overly exhausted from the trek to the shrine. They can all run away again if the scouting mission goes wrong. “Why don’t we take a five minute break? We’ll need to find a way into the tunnels, and I heard they’re fairly dangerous.”
Thermal furrows his brow. “Less than an hour remains on the spell. Let us be quick.”
“It’s not a good idea to rush things. I don’t want to run into the monster that snapped that necklace and be too tired to fight back. Actually, on that note, we should probably take off anything around our necks.”
He removes a silver pendant necklace and stores it in his coat too fast for Elle to see any details. “We should avoid the beast entirely if possible and simply aim to reach the destination of the sigil.”
Serena sits down next to the fire ring. “It’s definitely going to come after us because of your spell. It’s not exactly stealthy.”
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Elle speaks before Thermal can open his mouth. “I can use my powers to sense things within 100 metres of me, so we have a little advance warning. But what do you think the beast looks like?”
Serena says, “It’s got to be pretty strong or tricky to take down groups of people. Or maybe it fights in a pack?”
Thermal sits down a bit farther away from the fire ring. “The only underground creatures that fight in packs are millichillis, and I do not believe there would be anything remaining if those attacked. I hope we do not have the misfortune of discovering a new type of monster…”
Seated next to Serena, Elle tilts her head in thought. “Maybe it’s something that mainly fights with its hands or some sort of hook? Biting a necklace is harder than a sleeve or pantleg, so it’s kind of weird those are the only things remaining.”
The necklaces bother her. If they were left at the site of every disappearance, then she’d think they are a serial killer’s calling card. However, they found Nohla’s necklace in Mount Kernstone, and Nola hasn’t been seen for months. Are the necklaces related or not?
Serena rummages through her pockets and retrieves some chalk. “I’ll make marks on the tunnel walls whenever we need to turn. I don’t think we’ll be looking much at a map if we plan on booking it as soon as we run into the monster.”
“...That is a good point,” Thermal acknowledges her reluctantly.
After a few more minutes, the group head down the path, following the arrow. Eventually, the path grows rougher, and the three have to clamber over stone-transmuted monster corpses. Knowing those are all from the same siege of monsters, Elle can’t help but be both repulsed and impressed.
Her sensory pulse finally indicates an opening hidden between a clump of statues. “Should we report this back to Tiami?”
Thermal replies, “I would rather perform more reconnaissance. This spell is of limited-use, so I would like to make the most of it. The two of you should stay up here.”
Elle shakes her head. “You don’t know what’s down there. It’ll be safer if we all go.”
Serena makes a face like she wants to argue, but she follows them silently instead. The tunnel entrance is big enough for them to walk single-file down the slope, and it seems to gradually grow wider the farther it goes.
The group glance at each other. Thermal suggests that Serena takes point since she’s clearly the best fighter, and Elle agrees to stay in the back since her powers operate best at range. While she seems unimpressed that the wizard would place himself in the safest spot, Serena accepts her position due to the unfortunately sound logic.
They descend in silence. Thermal’s crimson arrow illuminates the rugged floors and walls of the tunnel in red.
Since they’re already forgoing secrecy with the spell, Elle puts on her helmet with a flashlight from her inventory. The extra light reveals more of the passage’s quirks — ridges cover the walls unnaturally in almost even separations. She hasn’t been in many mining tunnels, but this doesn’t look like one.
She casts a few glances back at the tunnel’s opening, hoping that nothing will block their escape route. Elle grips her javelin tight as she listens for movement around them.
Only Thermal’s faint footsteps can be heard, and she has to strain to hear them as he seems to be cautious. Unlike her runners, his boots’ soles are tougher, and the tunnel is echoey.
After about ten minutes, they reach a fork in the path and opt to go right, following the arrow still. Elle warns them of an icekoon, and Serena swiftly disposes of it with a well-aimed throwing knife and an acrobatic slitting of its throat. It’s scary and kind of hot, but Elle doesn’t want to think about that when they can be trapped in a pincer attack at any moment.
At this point, the tunnel has widened enough to let two of them walk comfortably next to each other. They stay in their line formation though to give them more space for combat. Far from the opening now, the area beyond the arrow and her flashlight’s ranges appear pitch-black.
She also notices that the air continues to grow chiller as they proceed down the slope. With her best guess at their current orientation, Elle thinks they’re heading towards Vinayre’s general direction, and the cold might come from both their distance from the surface and their increasing proximity to the Ice Shield.
With her sensory pulse, she can detect two more layers of tunnels beneath with more beasts roaming them. A few of them scruffle with each other, lashing out at their kin. It seems like the monsters prefer the deeper tunnels which confuses Elle. Don’t they hunt humans? Shouldn’t more of them be closer to the surface?
Vibrations in the ground jolt Elle out of her thoughts. They start off mild but intensify with every passing second.
This is either an earthquake or some sort of monster, and she’s inclined towards the latter. Serena and Thermal stop, dropping into ready positions. Elle stretches her awareness towards the vibrations and holds it there, trying to sense the beast.
Nothing enters her field of awareness. After about a minute, the vibrations die down. The three exchange glances. Elle whispers, “Should we keep going? It was coming from up ahead.”
Thermal responds equally quiet, “We have already come from this far. We should proceed.”
Serena nods, “Okay, but we should be ready to run back at any second.”
They continue with more caution. Elle finds the lack of monsters eerie, wondering if there’s something here that terrify even them.
Upon reaching a bend in the path, Serena gestures for them to stop and whispers, “I’ll go take a look ahead. We might be close to a big one.”
Sensing no immediate threat, Elle encourages her. “Okay, we’ll wait here. Stay safe.”
Thermal nods in agreement and steps back from the corner.
Serena vanishes from sight suddenly, but Elle can still sense her moving carefully around the turn. The remaining two blink in surprise from the invisibility spell, but they don’t dare to make any noise.
Elle’s hands feel slick with nervous sweat despite the cold. She wipes them as discreetly as possible on her jacket, looking around for any monsters.
Her flashlight reveals only about 75 metres of the empty tunnel. If anything charges at them from beyond that range, she might not be able to dodge in time. She can stretch her senses a little beyond the flashlight’s range, but she doesn’t want to spend her aura so frequently. Every sensory pulse saps her energy equivalent to its duration of time held.
To distract herself, Elle glances at Thermal instead. His violet eyes dart from looking at the tunnel behind them to the corner where Serena had left them. Despite his earlier jab at her stamina, sweat covers his brown hair, and he appears even more tired than her.
He catches her gaze and raises his eyebrows.
Hearing no movement around them, she leans closer to him and whispers, “You doing alright? Is the spell draining you?”
“I am fine. The spell has a one-time cost. We should remain vigilant for monsters.” Thermal shifts away from her, ending the conversation.
Damn it, did he think she was staring at him? Geez, she just wanted to be aware of her teammate’s condition before anything bad happens. They need to be cautious about factors beyond their environment.
After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, she senses Serena returning to them. While it might be funny to see Thermal flinch, she doesn’t want him to do anything that might make noise, so she straightens and gestures towards the corner.
Serena still hasn’t lifted her invisibility spell. “Bad news, we got great worms in the tunnels. Should’ve known from all the weird ridges.”
Thermal frowns. “Are they coming this way?”
“Well, one is going away from us, but I felt the ground shaking below. There’s probably more down there.”
“We did not feel it from here, so perhaps they are quite a distance away. Since one has already left, I believe it is safe enough to proceed cautiously.”
“Are you crazy? These tunnels have no hiding spots, and my knives will do squat against them. If we run into one, we’re done for.”
“But they are slow, no? Should one spot us, we can retreat.”
Serena’s voice gains a note of anger. “And if another one comes up behind us? We’ve been lucky that nothing has snuck up on us yet, but those worms are big and tough. This mission isn’t worth our lives.”
For a moment, Thermal stays silent and looks at the ground. His chest rises and falls, breaths long but near imperceptible in sound. Then he whispers, “You and Elle should head back and guard the opening. I will go as far as I deem safe and then return.”
There’s another moment of silence. Elle can’t see Serena’s expression, but she imagines that it’s unhappy. The half-elf replies, “Okay. But if you’re not back in twenty minutes, we’re leaving without you. We’re not going on a suicide mission to rescue you.”
Thermal smiles thinly. “I am quite capable as a mage. A rescue will not be necessary.”
Elle puts a hand up. “Wait, there’s something that’s been bothering me. I noticed that the arrow has been turning very noticeably. Why isn’t it guiding us directly to Fesper Bleck’s soul?”
He replies, “The spell follows the soul’s path when it was alive. Divining the exact location of the death over a large area requires more resources and power than I have.”
Elle stores that tidbit of knowledge for later. “Okay, I think I should go with Thermal as well. From what I can tell, there are multiple paths around here, so I think there’s more exits than we know. I can guide us if we need to make a break for it.”
Serena is probably being more sensible about the situation, but Elle has a theory to confirm. Given the arrow’s direction and the tunnels’ dropping temperature, she suspects that their destination is close to the fallen city Una whose ruins have been recently blocked by the city council. If she could photograph evidence with her phone, then she might be able to gain access to the ruins.
Additionally, Thermal seems oddly determined to complete the mission. Although she hasn’t known him for long, the amount of risks he’s taken throughout their search feels out of place. She wants to figure out what he’s hiding.
Serena is speechless for a few seconds. “...You guys are so stupid, holy shit. Fine, I’ll meet you two back at the entrance in twenty minutes. Good luck.” After handing over a piece of chalk, the half-elf leaves.
Thermal signals for them to proceed, and they creep around the bend. As the tunnel continues, it splits off into more branches and winding turns. The ground occasionally shakes to the left, so they avoid those paths. Elle marks the wall at every turn.
Since her sensory pulse’s range is similar to her flashlight, Elle stops sending out those periodic pulses to conserve energy.
She starts to feel the chill through her gloves now. Twenty minutes can’t be enough to reach the Ice Shield. The spell probably won’t even last that long either. Thermal probably will have to cast it again, assuming she is correct.
The width of the tunnels have doubled in size from earlier, allowing her to fully swing her javelin if necessary. Even the ceilings look taller, making the tunnels roughly circular. Elle assumes the great worms made them, and the thought twists her stomach with dread.
As they proceed deeper, scraps of armour and broken weaponry begin to litter the ground. She sees no bones as expected of monster victims. Due to her recent arrival to Sinkpoint, Elle can’t pinpoint their specific style or origins. Their progress slows as they try to avoid jostling the remains and creating noise.
Her aura passively enhances her spatial awareness of objects next to her, so she feels the hand reaching out towards her arm before it actually touches. There’s no need for it though; her feet take her back a few metres before her brain processes the situation.
Just within her flashlight’s range, a patient great worm unleashes its trap.