I moved swiftly but silently through the dark, glittering tunnels of Aldhyor, my senses alert to every sound and my spiritual sight active. I knew that I only had a limited amount of time before the rashi realized I’d escaped and sent their spirits hunting for me, and I wanted to explore as much of the place as possible, especially the spots the guard had said were forbidden. I assumed some of those were meeting chambers, sleeping areas, and the like, but they might also hold items of value or secrets I could use to get leverage over the rashi.
The moment I’d gotten free, part of me had wanted to simply have Sara guide me back to the exit and get the hell out of Dodge. In fact, I still hoped to, but the truth was, I had a mission to complete, and I felt fairly certain that this place had something to do with it. That the rashi wanted to capture and interrogate me—and the odd way it happened—led me down some interesting rabbit holes. I wasn’t sure if any of them led anywhere, but the only way to find out was to gather more information.
I knew where the others were being held, and part of me wanted to go find them. I even found myself taking a few steps in that direction before I stopped, realizing that there was no reason to look for them, and several reasons not to. If nothing else, they would probably be a liability rather than a help since I felt certain Bregg was the only one of them who knew how to be sneaky. Plus, I had no clue just how involved they were in my capture. I didn’t necessarily think that they’d led me here specifically to deliver me to the rashi, but I couldn’t be sure. Even if they weren’t, they might feel obligated to report me to the rashi, and thanks to their silent communication, I wouldn’t know about it until it was too late.
“Actually, John, I can help with that,” Sara interrupted.
“What?” I asked, derailed from my thoughts.
“I can help with not knowing about their communication—at least, I can thanks to the last spirit you claimed. Here, look.”
I stopped as a notification appeared before me, one I’d seen many times but that held new interest for me.
Spirit Melding: You have Melded a Menskallin Spirit!
Class L Mortal Spirit
Spiritual Power: 85
Benefits: Prowess +3, Skill +2, Vigor +1, Silent Communion
Silent Communion
Active Ability
You can tap into the mental communication network used by the Menskallin. Doing so only allows you to sense communications, not to initiate or respond to them. Range and depth of communication vary with your Perception and Intuition stats, respectively. It’s unknown if this ability can be sensed by those in the network.
“Wait, you figured out how to tap into their chat?” I asked, slightly amazed.
“I’ve actually had an idea of how to do it for a while,” she said deprecatingly. “The network itself isn’t very complex, really. The problem is, it’s shielded from magical eavesdropping, no doubt to keep outsiders and the Oikithikiim from penetrating it, so getting into it would either require a great deal of power—which would certainly alert everyone to the penetration—or coopting existing access.”
“You mean the guard’s spirit?” I asked as understanding dawned on me.
“Exactly. The guard was already linked to the network, so when you melded its spirit, I grabbed that link and attached it to you. Unfortunately, it had already partially degraded with his death, so it’s only one-way, and its range is more limited than it would probably be otherwise.”
“What’s this about them sensing it?”
“Well, while the communication is one-way, it’s not entirely one-way. It takes a small amount of energy to activate, and it’s possible that could flow back down the link. If it does, that energy might be identifiable as being you, or at least not being the guard. My guess is that the longer the link’s active, the more likely you are to be discovered.”
I grimaced and closed the notification, leaving the new ability alone for the moment. It wasn’t worth the risk of alerting the rashi to my escape. It was frustrating as hell to ignore it, though. I’d been wanting to eavesdrop on the fucking Menskie telepathy ever since I realized what it was. Now, I could, but doing so was too big of a risk to take unless I had a really good reason. It kind of sucked to finally get something I wanted and not be able to use it.
“Sorry, John. It’s the nature of the communication. The whole point is to tell the other Menskallin who you are and reveal any of your secrets. I could subvert most of that intent but not all of it, I’m afraid.” She sounded genuinely contrite, and I realized I was being a bit of an ass.
“No, Sara, I’m sorry. I know that you’re doing the best you can, and it’s way better than anything I might have done. I’d rather have some ability to listen in than none whatsoever. I’ll just have to be careful with it, is all.”
I slipped through the tunnels, following the guard’s directions toward the closest off-limits area. As I walked, I practiced holding a spell-form Sara showed me in my thoughts. It wasn’t very complicated, doing little more than sheathing me in a cloud of spirit energy. The energy was diffuse and spread out like an invisible fog that hung near my body in an oblong shape. I practiced powering it with my various land spirits, tapping their power and using Draining Aura to keep the cloud going.
“I’m not sure how effective it will be, John,” Sara admitted. “My guess is that any land spirit that sees you right now will think you’re just another land spirit, but a more powerful one might see through the shroud and spot the other spirits beneath—and a letharvis almost certainly can.”
“Would I be able to power it with a high spirit? And would that hide me more effectively?”
“You could, and it would, but only for a while. High spirit energy is just so dense and potent that it damages you to use it at all. You might get seven minutes of concealment from it, but that’s probably it before you’d start injuring yourself again.”
I paused for a moment as an idea popped into my head. “What if I used Kadonsel?”
“What do you mean?” the ojain asked. “Used me for what?”
“Would I be able to power this spell with her energy?” I continued, ignoring her question. “And would it hide me from a letharvis?”
“That…” Sara fell silent for a moment. “It might work, yes. At least to hide you from a spirit. I’m fairly certain that high spirits can detect mortal spirits, but I don’t think they can affect them as much as others—otherwise, the one you melded could have simply dominated you the way it did all the nearby land spirits. It wouldn’t work against a letharvis, though. Her spirit’s invisible to them, remember?”
“I’m not sure about this,” the ojain said nervously. “What if you lessen my spirit, outsider? Will that lessen me?”
“I think I can keep replenishing you with my aura,” I replied. “If I can’t, though, I can always stop before it actually hurts you.”
The Oikie remained quiet for a few moments. “Okay, give it a try.”
That surprised me. “You’re on board with this?”
“I want to know what’s happening, too, and I don’t want you to get caught. If this is the best way…”
I nodded, then reached down and tapped the woman’s energy, drawing it up into the spell. At the same time, I diverted the power flowing in from my Draining Aura and fed it into her. The area around me was lousy with spiritual energy, needless to say, so the power flowing in was more than enough to offset what she lost. The only real question was if she could absorb it quickly enough to restore herself. I waited a few seconds to see if there was any change, then nudged the silent spirit.
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“Kadonsel? Are you okay?”
“Ooh,” she hissed. For a moment I thought she was in pain, but I quickly realized that I was wrong. “Oh, that feels good! The energy—it’s so thick! I can feel it inside me…” I couldn’t help but snort in laughter; that certainly wasn’t what I’d been expecting her to say. I guess that no matter where in the Doorverse I’d been, part of me was still twelve.
“I think she’s fine, John,” Sara said humorously. “I’ll keep an eye on her, though, just in case.”
I felt a little more secure as I slipped down the corridors of Aldhyor. Of course, my little shroud wouldn’t do much to hide me from guards, but it hopefully would conceal me from their spirits. I knew that Aeld and Bregg both used spirits to find things for them, and I assumed the guards could do the same. I still had to move cautiously, listening when I neared side tunnels or intersections. The damn silent communication the Menskies used made that harder; I kind of missed guards who passed the time with meaningless small talk. Of course, for all I knew, the guards here did the same, just not in a way I could easily tune in.
Traveling through the corridors also reminded me that this wasn’t just another valskab, it was a freaking volcano. The rough stone of the tunnels was warm to the touch, and it grew warmer the deeper I delved. Faint vibrations rolled through the tunnels regularly, tingling the soles of my feet and ruining my Groundsense ability, and faint but sharp odors of sulfur and chlorine occasionally wafted through the air. I glanced down thoughtfully as another shiver rippled through the floor.
“Sara, is the volcano erupting?”
“No, John,” she laughed. “You’d know if it were; it would be a lot hotter and noisier than this. It is active, though.” She paused for a moment. “In fact, it’s much more active than I’d expect, all things considered.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember how I said that the volcano couldn’t be too active, or there wouldn’t be so many valskabs nearby? Well, the heat and vibrations you’re feeling suggest that there are active magma flows nearby, and that they’re pushing upward from below. Normally, those are signs of an imminent eruption, but it doesn’t seem like the rashi is worried about that.”
“Would they be able to actually stop a volcano from erupting?”
“In theory, absolutely. A volcano is just a manifestation of fire, earth, and lava—with some water and steam thrown in. With enough power and strong enough spirits, it should be possible to contain or control one. In practice, though, with a volcano of this size, you’d need a high spirit of at least class P or better, by my estimates.”
“Would the spirit that the rashi had immobilize me qualify?”
“Maybe. It would be at the very lowest end of the power scale needed, though.”
“Which might explain the activity, right? If the spirit’s barely strong enough to control this thing, it might be a bit more rumbly than expected.”
“True, but then, I’d think there would have been a lot more incidents in the past,” she mused.
“Maybe it was stronger, but the rashi’s been using it for something?” I asked. “Either that, or they also have control over a high spirit of class P or better.”
“That’s not possible,” Kadonsel interjected. “No one could possibly control a class P high ancient! Even if all the ojaini in Almella joined together, I don’t think that would be possible!”
“The rashi might have found a way to,” Sara agreed with me silently. “I think you’re right, though. If that high spirit is the spirit of this volcano, it’s barely strong enough to contain it, and that could be bad for this place in the near future.”
I reached the first prohibited area without incident, mostly thanks to See Spirits. The mortal spirits of guards and patrols were easily visible, it turned out, even through walls, so I had no trouble avoiding them or slipping around them. I could tell where stone walls hid the entrance to a room thanks to the presence of wind spirits on the other side of the wall, and unlike the door to my former cell, most of the entrances to those rooms weren’t held by a stone spirit. That made it relatively easy to send my own earth spirit out to open a hole in the wall, slip inside, and let patrols pass by, or to travel between rooms by going through their walls without using the passages to avoid stationary guard posts.
The entrance to the prohibited area was a wall of blank stone, beside which two guards stood. A powerful earth spirit held that door and the walls surrounding the area, but a circle inscribed into the wall of an adjoining room held that spirit out and let me pass through the wall with relative ease. The space beyond was empty, little more than a large, circular chamber with multiple exits. I checked the first of those and found myself inside what was obviously a bedroom or sleeping chamber. The room was fairly spartan, with little more than a bed, a wooden chest containing folded clothing, and a thick, soft mat on the floor with a small brazier set in front of it. I tossed the room quickly, discovering that the clothing was just several pairs of robes of varying heaviness, all deep golden in color—and that whoever lived here hadn’t really left anything personal for me to find. Sadly, there was no hidden journal or cryptic note tucked into a robe or slipped beneath the mattress. In fact, as I rose, I realized that I actually hadn’t seen a single bit of Menskie script my entire time in this world.
“That’s probably a result of their peculiar communication method, John,” Sara suggested. “They likely don’t have a reason to write things down when they can communicate at such a deep level. The entire valskab can share the work of remembering things or teaching the young, so writing might not be necessary for them.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I sighed. “It would make things a lot easier, though.”
“And when has any of this been easy?” she laughed.
Just to be safe, I went to the remaining six rooms leading off the central chamber, but each was more or less a carbon copy of the first, and none had anything in them to differentiate their owners except the sizes and fit of the robes. From that, I could judge that of the seven members of the rashi whose quarters I’d seen, three were female, and none were very big. That didn’t tell me much, obviously. I didn’t even know if there were more rooms like this; for all I knew, there could be twenty or thirty letharvisa in the rashi. About the only interesting thing I noted was that while every room had a similar floor mat and brazier on it, only one brazier looked to have been recently used. That one still held some kind of aromatic ashes that reminded me of incense; the others were cold, empty, and clean.
I slipped out of the chambers and wound my way to the next prohibited zone. My tension and anxiety rose with every minute that passed. I knew that at some point, the rashi would figure out that I’d escaped, and they’d send their spirits out looking for me. I hoped that my Kadonsel shroud would hide me from them, but I had no way to know if it would or not. Besides, I knew that even the best disguise could be penetrated if someone looked closely enough. I’d probably realize that happened when their tame high spirit found me and grabbed me again. I had to fight the urge to hurry through the corridors, knowing that rushing would simply make it easier for them to catch me. Killing one guard didn’t seem to raise the alarm, but if I went through the place butchering them, the rashi would catch on quickly enough.
The next room honestly made me think of a smoke room or some kind of meditation chamber. A purplish fire burned in a pit dug into the center of the room, and the ceiling overhead rose like an inverted funnel, ending at a dark passage that carried smoke away from the room. The small hole didn’t let the smoke escape quite fast enough, though, so a haze filled the air, one that smelled vaguely medicinal and made my head swim slightly the longer I spent in it.
“The smoke is soporific, John,” Sara told me. “It’ll put you into a relaxed state if you breathe it long enough. I think you’re right that it’s a meditation chamber of some sort.”
“Well, I’m not really in the mood to meditate right now,” I chuckled. “Maybe once we figure all this out, I can come back here and enjoy some relaxation. God knows I could use it.”
“Agreed,” she laughed.
The next location was deeper in the bowels of the volcano, and the temperature continued to rise as I descended. I noticed far fewer guards and patrols in those depths, and I wondered if that was because of the uncomfortable temperature or if the entire area was off-limits. Not that it mattered, except that if no one was supposed to be down here, I’d stand out like a sore thumb to any letharvis who could see all my spirits clustered around me. The lack of guards did make it easier to move around, though, and I slid down the passages until I found a room that seemed to border on a much larger space beyond—and one that had a wall that practically blazed with the power that filled that space.
I stopped and stared at the wall in mingled awe and excitement. It pulsed with a bright silver light that I almost had to squint to look at, even through the stone. I had a feeling this was where I wanted to go, but unfortunately, the brilliance washed out anything I might have seen beyond it. That meant that I’d be going into the room blind, unless…
“I can compensate for it, John,” Sara assured me. “Give me a bit.”
Seconds passed as the radiance slowly dimmed, ebbing until it was little more than a soft glow. I could see the stone spirit filling the wall, at least, but I still couldn’t detect anything behind it. I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and etched a circle into the wall, blocking out the earth spirit. Rather than opening a full door, though, I had my stone spirit slip in and open a smaller hole, one just large enough that I could peer through.
A pencil-sized hole slowly bored its way into the stone, looking almost like a bubble flowing along a tube of thick oil. I controlled the spirit tightly as it slid through the rock wall, making sure that it moved slowly enough not to draw attention. The final layer of thin stone slipped out of the way, and as it did, muffled voices drifted down the tube, their words garbled and too quiet for me to make out more than a word or two. Apparently, though, those few words were enough—at least, enough for Kadonsel.
“That—do you hear that?” she asked excitedly.
“What about them?” I replied, trying to tune her out.
“They—don’t you hear what they’re saying? They’re speaking Oikithikiim!”
“She’s right, John,” Sara said gravely. “That’s not Menskallin.”
I blinked in surprise and stared at the small hole for a moment before willing the earth spirit to widen it enough that I could see clearly through it. I pressed an eye to the hole and gazed through it eagerly, turning off See Spirits so that I wouldn’t be blinded by the radiance in the other room. I couldn’t see much; the room beyond was large, and all sorts of odd, crystalline stalagmites seemed to be in my way, but after a few seconds, a figure walked past my vision.
A figure with four legs. There were Oiktihikiim in the deepest part of the most sacred site in the Haelendi, and the sight of them set my stomach churning and rumbling with the feel of imbalance.
Yeah, there was no way that was a good thing.