I stared down the massive hole without a hint of reluctance. Something about the unknown down there brought me excitement like I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I couldn’t explain it no matter how I tried. Before Okeria or Jun could beat me to it, I stepped out over the drop and let myself fall.

The stone blurred before my eyes as the sensation of the underground facilities grew stronger and stronger. It felt like standing next to a furnace that burned curiosity and adrenaline, flaring both of mine like a brushfire. I waved my hand and summoned my spear, sliced a few petal-scale slashes, and grabbed on to one of them to slightly slow my descent.

{Well, didn’t think ya would be the first one ta jump.} Okeria said through my helmet. {Somethin’ must’ve got your attention, yeah?}

{Guilty as charged.} I admitted as a wave of something washed over me. The stone around me hadn’t changed in the slightest, but according to my map and Okeria’s data, I had just passed into the uniform mass. {Can’t you feel it?}

Okeria snorted, and I could imagine him crossing his arms. {Obviously not, or else I’d’ve gone first. Keep your eyes open for anythin’ dangerous or useful. We ain’t got a lot of time till Scalovera makes his move, and I’ve got even less than that thanks ta my kids comin’ through pretty drowned soon.}

Right, his kids. I’d almost forgotten about that specific time limit. It didn’t change anything about what I wanted to do, or when I wanted to do it, but it gave us a hard time limit for completely beating Scalovera. So we couldn’t make it a drawn-out war; it had to be quick, dirty, and more than likely extremely violent. Endra had to be sending more reinforcements once she realized how badly Danday lost, or they could already be here. Hiding among the people of Rainbow Basin.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. {Jun, Mortician, how about you two? Do either of you feel anything?}

{Mm… I do feel something, but it’s not really that nice.} Jun said slowly. I could hear the reluctance in her voice, which explained why she hadn’t jumped yet. {You know how you get a shiver down your back sometimes when you’re alone in the dark? It feels like that, but combined with something strangely sensual. It’s beckoning me, but I’m not sure I want to answer it.}

Mortician cut in the second Jun finished talking. {We feel a myriad of sensations–and all at exactly the same intensity. We assume that the facility invokes sensations in those with access to it, for some unknown reason, and that due to our unique biology we are experiencing the sensations meant for multiple individuals at once.}

Jun hummed in agreement. {What they said makes sense, especially if Okeria isn’t just lying to us for no reason. Did you hit the ground yet, Seb?}

My feet slammed into something unbelievably cold as if to answer Jun’s question. I shivered and bent down to get a better look at whatever the drills had stopped on, and found a sheet of metal the colour of dirty slush. Browns, stained whites, and a slight undertone of light blue shifted atop the freezing piece to give a sensation that the thing wasn’t just an inanimate piece of metal, and when I brushed my fingers up against it, the sensations from before intensified just a little.

{This is the source of the feelings, that’s for sure.} I said as I rubbed a thin film between my fingers. It was the consistency of oil, and it coated my armor with a debuff that didn’t show up on my interface. {Any idea how we’re supposed to use Acasiana’s thing to get in?}

A pair of boots slammed down next to me, and Jun audibly shivered as she took in the strangely bright sheet of metal. “Maybe we just press on the icon in our stat sheets?”

She raised a hand and did exactly that. A dull glow the colour of Acasiana’s armor overtook her interface, then spread out until it reached the finger Jun still had pressed to it. She turned to me and cocked her head to the side in question, and I just shrugged. I knew exactly as much about this as she did.

“Okay, let’s see if this works.” She said as the glow crept up her finger, then overtook her hand in a heartbeat. A little gasp escaped her lips when it shot up her arm and settled over where her core would be, and her next shudder sounded like it carried both a chill and something strangely sensual. “I am not a fan of this feeling. Let’s hope this works, and then you can open it next time.”

I stepped to the side to give her space as I motioned for her to go ahead. She nodded and bent down, pressed her hand to the metal, then gasped as another shudder worked its way through her body. The glow was ripped from her arm and into the metal, which shifted from the dirty snow sheen to that of a pristine blue-white coat of fresh snow.

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Creaking snaps echoed out from somewhere below. I took a step back and pressed my back to the wall to get away from the center of the vibration that rocked through the metal, but it spread so quickly and so effortlessly that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away. Jun glanced over at me through the expressionless mask of her visor, then the floor split open and we were falling. Through a perfectly bright empty room with walls etched to look like creeping vines and blossoming flowers.

Before I could react, my feet slammed into the new ground. I blinked in surprise and looked around, but there really wasn’t much to see. Metal all around us, mostly bronze, with the vines a deep green and the flowers a combination of red, pink, orange and yellow. Jun groaned and shook her head as she pushed herself to her feet.

“That was not what I expected.” She chuckled weakly, then cleared her throat and put one hand on her hip. “Well, if this is the facility, it doesn’t feel as mystical as Acasiana made it out to be.”

“I really doubt this is all there is to this place.” I said, then raised my arm. {Mortician, Okeria, we’re inside of what we think is the facility. It’s relatively safe to come down whenever you want to.}

A small square of silver metal arcing with electricity clinked to the ground, and in a flash of light it transformed into Okeria. He glanced around, then crossed his arms with a grunt of dissatisfaction.

“The founder of Rainbow Basin hid this away? For what reason?” He mused, then swiped one hand through the air. “Well, we’ve still got a lot of space here that’s unaccounted for, so this ain’t the only building. Do either of ya see anything like a door?”

Mortician slammed to the ground with a yelp of surprise, then dusted themselves off with a few murmured excuses of embarrassment. They limped up next to Okeria and leaned on his shoulder, which he didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Is there a map we have access to?” They asked.

Good question. I checked my map, but found that it was still the exact same lump of strangeness it had been before. Jun swiped over to hers, and from over her shoulder, I saw that hers wasn’t quite the same as mine. And by that, I mean that there was something on hers. Five square rooms, connected by what looked like walkways, with a single pentagonal building in the very center. But what made little sense was that her location marker wasn’t in any of the buildings.

It was off to the left somewhere. In a square about a tenth of the size of the other buildings. I frowned and looked off in the direction that the facility was supposed to be, and my mind wandered to the way I’d gotten into the mountain. It wouldn’t surprise me if Acasiana had used the same tech here as she did to make the safe room–if that was actually her doing and not a part of the hazard, of course.

Jun apparently had the same idea. “So how do we break through the walls? That metal looks and feels a lot stronger than the stone in the hazard.”

“Break through, huh?” Okeria mused with a smirk in his voice. “I think I’ve got somethin’ to work with. But maybe ya want ta try somethin’ else first, just in case I do some irreparable damage.”

I pressed and held on my own symbol, then held my finger there until the same light as Jun’s emerged from my interface. Excitement and adrenaline slapped me in the face as it crept up my arm, and when it reached my core, it solidified into a sensation that I almost thought I’d felt before. But I couldn’t place it. Mortician grumbled under their breath as they too called on Acasiana’s symbol, and Jun recalled hers with another shudder.

Three of us, all with access to whatever this place was. I nodded to Jun, then Mortician, and walked over to the wall that I thought was closest to the other facility buildings. I frowned down at the light that had coated my fingers and stared at it for a second, then shook my head and pressed it to the wall.

The sensation of it leaving me was almost as intense as it overtaking me. It felt like the intense crash after a sugar high, but combined with the sensations of caffeine withdrawal, but only as the light left me. When the wall had absorbed it all, there was absolutely nothing left of either of the sensations. Even the walls themselves seemed to put off less of their sensations, but I could still feel them in the background.

Jun and Mortician did the same, and for the briefest of moments, I felt what they’d felt. The intense muddle of sensations that had overtaken Mortician, and that I couldn’t make heads or tails of, but that I felt completely overwhelmed me. Jun’s chilling attraction, which almost felt like lust in a time of great strife, but that I knew I couldn’t act on.

And then everything was gone. A sharp crack, followed by a sound like scissors shearing cleanly through thin fabric split the air, and I watched as the light on the wall snapped to the nearest vine and crept up like a drugged-up snake. It completely passed every flower but the red ones, which it brightened immensely as it went, diminishing the light’s intensity with each and every one.

{Authorization Recognized: Matria Acasiana Rambola. Facilities currently powered: 0/6. Access granted to facilities: Central Rest Area, Apotheotic Gardens. Warning: without power, the Apotheotic Gardens are currently inaccessible. Turn on the power from the Central Rest Area to gain access.}

I raised an eyebrow at the text message that covered my visor, then turned to see Jun and Mortician both turn to look at me. Okeria was the only one who didn’t look like he’d just gotten a message, so this was only for us with access to the facilities.

“Looks like we’ve got to turn on the power first.” I eventually said as the metal behind me split open to reveal a completely dark room. “Who wants to go in first?”