“Fuuuck that,” Marcus said as he and the rest of Leon’s squad stared down into the hole that Leon had dug.

It hadn’t taken long for Leon to dig up the entrance that the bird had spoken of. Not even two feet below the ashy depression, his shovel hit stone, and only a few minutes after that, Leon had uncovered a square stone slab about six feet to a side. The slab was thick and tremendously heavy, but with his seventh-tier strength, Leon was able to lift the thing out of the depression, revealing a steep staircase made of black stone that led down deep below the volcano. So deep, in fact, that the light from the early evening sun didn’t reach the bottom of the stairs.

The passage was tight and narrow, barely wide enough to allow a single armored man of Leon’s size to descend without tucking in too much. Leon could easily see why Marcus had reeled back once it was revealed; even he was getting claustrophobic just staring down into this abyss. For all his power, Leon couldn’t see the bottom of the stairway.

Quickly projecting his magic senses, Leon tried to scan for the bottom. He didn’t want to descend down these stairs without knowing everything he possibly could about what may lay below. Hells, he didn’t want to descend at all, just the thought of it was making his feathers slim down in fear…

‘Feathers?’ Leon thought, momentarily confused as to where that feeling came from.

He didn’t sense any magic swirling around in the smooth black stone bricks, so he was unpleasantly surprised when his magic senses were immediately scattered at the entrance of this deep, foreboding stairway.

“Let’s all back up a bit…” he said, waving back his squad and several of the Legion marines who had stepped closer to have a look. He and Maia were the only two who stayed close by.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” Alix whispered as she stepped away from the stairs.

“Same here,” Marcus added. “I am not walking down that death pit! You can chalk me up to an intense fuck no!”

“I think you made that perfectly clear just a few seconds ago,” Gaius pointed out. His voice was a little calmer and steadier than Alix or Marcus’, but his face had paled considerably once Leon had opened the shaft.

There wasn’t an actual magical aura that Leon could perceive emanating from this abyssal stairway, but he couldn’t help but agree with everyone else that this black maw was about as welcoming as a snake pit. His heart couldn’t help but race faster as he stared deep down into that pitch-black darkness, and all desire he had to run Jormun down died swiftly as the darkness seemed to swirl around deep below.

He did not want to go down there. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of dark and terrible things might live in such a place. Things that might not take kindly to someone like him, someone full of life and power. As he stared down into the stairway, sensations began to crawl up his body of scaled hands brushing against him, of cold winds swirling around him, of countless black eyes filled with hatred, longing, and malice landing upon him.

Leon shivered in quiet terror. There was nothing down those stairs but death and horror, and no matter how much his claws rent the flesh of the creatures down there, there would be no end—

‘Claws?’ Leon thought, again wondering just what was going on with him as the strange instinct pulled him out of the awful reverie he’d lost himself in.

The bird was still there, perched on the fallen log and staring at Leon as he quietly freaked out about descending down these stairs. It remained silent, seemingly doing nothing more than waiting for when Leon had need of it again. Finally, as Leon took a couple stumbling steps back from the mouth of this abyssal stairway, he filled his body with the Thunderbird’s lightning and glanced back at the bird, his body calming down significantly as the power he’d inherited from his Ancestor inundated his every cell.

“What… is all this?” he demanded to know, his voice trembling with fear and anxiety, his eyes narrowed in suspicion as they locked upon the bird. There was no magic emanating from these dreadful stairs, but Leon still found himself affected enough that he no longer hid his suspicion of the bird. It had proven itself helpful, but after his experience with carelessly trusting Nestor, Leon wasn’t about to allow himself to trust something so easily again.

“I… couldn’t tell you,” the bird replied.

From behind them, Leon heard Marcus murmur, “This just gets so much better! Pirates, krakens, talking birds, now this shit! Pit of death, that’s what this is! Pit of death!”

Ignoring Marcus for the moment, Leon said, “You knew about the map at the second island. You knew where those ruins were. You knew where this was. You know more than you’re letting on. You say you want revenge against those who killed your aerie, but unless I get some answers, we’re just going to blast this entrance to bits and move on. I’m not going to lead my people down this thing without more information.”

“Some sense, thank the Ancestors,” Alix muttered as she took another few steps away from the stairs before doubling over in nausea, her shiny brown hair falling over her face and hiding it from view.

Alcander walked over to her, and though he was looking a little pale as well, he at least had enough poise remaining to lay a friendly hand upon her shoulder in solidarity.

“Are you… saying you don’t want… my help?” the bird asked, its strangely resonant voice not changing at all even though its feathers puffed up a bit in seeming indignation.

“I’m saying I don’t trust you,” Leon replied. “I’m saying I don’t know you. I’m saying you could give me any story you wished and I would have no idea if it’s true or not. I suppose I’m saying quite a bit more than that, too, but I think you get the gist. Now, you lead me and my people to this dark, dank hole in the ground and you expect me to just walk down into it without a word? I think not.”

The bird was silent for a long time, its feathers slowly slimming back down to its normal size. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, it simply said, “Fair,” and flew away without further fanfare.

Leon was surprised, almost to the point of calling out after it. He’d wanted to speak with it a bit more, to feel it out and see if his slowly growing trust wasn’t misplaced, but he supposed the bird took offence and decided to cut its losses. This was fine enough in Leon’s mind, though he was somewhat regretful that the bird hadn’t shared more of what it knew—and it did know more, of that Leon was certain. But for all that, Leon still didn’t trust it; there was just something about it that rankled him, something that had his instincts, if not screaming at him to get rid of the bird, at least had him constantly on guard.

Maybe it was just how the fact that no one had been able to see it before, or maybe it was just the fact that it was a talking bird, but Leon felt that it was just better to get a little bit more distance rather than keep following its advice without thought. But, with the bird’s departure, he was left with a bit of a conundrum: what to do about this unfathomably deep pit the bird had led him to.

The stairs themselves were completely unadorned. They were made of large black stone bricks, shaped into rough rectangular boxes and held together with, as far as Leon could tell, standard mortar. There were no signs of magic at all in its construction, nor were there any hints of magic flowing within the stone, despite Leon’s inability to project his magic senses past the entrance.

It screamed ‘trap’. It screamed all kinds of strange magic and terrible danger. Leon didn’t want to go down there.

But, as he stared down the pit, his heart hammering in his chest, his body screaming at him that it was a foolish thing to do, he knew he was going to. He had to stop Jormun. He needed to know what the man was doing, and if what was at the bottom of these stairs could give him any kind of clue, then Leon was going to find out. He couldn’t just let the man release some kind of apocalyptic beast upon the world. Leon had struggled greatly to keep the sense of justice that Artorias had instilled within him alive after his father’s death, and even though Trajan had tried to kindle it again, Leon had wound up indulging his more introverted instincts instead.

But this, Leon wouldn’t let slide. He couldn’t. This was so much more than just letting two Princes he didn’t care about tear apart their Kingdom. This was something that could affect the entire plane—the scale and depravity of it Leon had seen in the ritual site on the previous island. Leon could almost feel the disapproving gazes of Trajan and his father every time he thought about just letting this go.

That Jormun had tricked Leon so completely was a not inconsiderable factor, too. Leon had both personal and moral reasons for wanting Jormun stopped. This mission was no longer about Octavius for him.

So, Leon knew that he was going down into that pit. He’d see what was at the bottom, and if he could disrupt Jormun’s plans at all, he was going to.

With hardly another word, Leon walked back to the mouth of the stairs. His heart raced in his chest, his vision wavered as he cast it down into the abyss, and a strange echo resounded in his ears—almost as if some horrific monster were roaring in the distance, and the sound was only just barely reaching his ears.

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“Leon…?” Gaius called out, but Leon largely ignored him as, in a flash of light, a sheet of spell paper appeared in his hand.

Leon held out that paper, aiming the inscribed spell down the hole, and only a moment later, a bright orange flare was fired down the stairs.

Whatever power was keeping his magic senses from pushing past the door didn’t work on the flare, which Leon was grateful for. He was mildly concerned that this would alert anything down there to his presence, but that was a small price to pay for getting a better idea of what he was going to walk down into.

The flare rocketed down the stairs at terrific speed. Since Leon had fired at a downward angle, the flare soon began to drop and bounce down the stairs, the ball of orange fire sputtering every time it did so. Down and down it went, until the light would’ve only been a tiny pinprick orange in the deep abyssal black of the stairway to mortal eyes.

But Leon’s eyes were much greater than that of a mortal’s, and he watched like a hawk as the flare kept falling down the stairs, down into the deepest depths of the island, until it eventually winked out as the magic that kept it burning was exhausted.

It had cleared at least half a mile and had not reached the bottom.

‘Shitting fucking shit,’ Leon thought, wondering just how deep this pit was that even his flares couldn’t reach the bottom.

And knowing that he had to go down there.

“Alcander, Gaius, Alix, Marcus,” Leon said, his voice quivering only slightly as he did his absolute level best to keep his fear under control. He also called over the Centurions who were monitoring the area and keeping it secure.

“We’re not going down there…?” Alix asked as she walked over, her body starting to shake. “I’ll go if you need me to… but I really don’t want to go… I don’t like the idea of having that much rock above me in such a tight space.”

“I don’t blame you,” Leon said. There wasn’t even enough space on those stairs to spread his wing—to spread his arms, and Leon felt like that reason alone was responsible for at least half of the anxiety he was feeling. He also felt like he was starting to understand just why the Thunderbird Clan had chosen a building aesthetic for its more important facilities that emphasized nature, taking pains to build much bigger and wider open spaces and to enchant the ceilings of their buildings to look like the sky. For beings descended from birds, such a confined space as this stairway would never have been tolerated.

At the very least, though, Leon could feel a few pangs of excitement that tempered his dread and nervousness. Exploring some old ruins of long-dead civilizations wasn’t a new thing for him, but it would be the first time he’d ventured into such a place that wasn’t connected to the Thunderbird Clan.

“I’m going down there,” Leon declared, to the horror of just about everyone else. Only Maia stood with him, her expression unchanged. “I don’t expect anyone else to join me. I can’t imagine what might be down there, what kind of traps or monsters or other unspeakable things might await us. Hells, maybe it could be worse than horrors from beyond our plane: there could be nothing at all down there, and we might’ve wasted our time.”

Leon smirked, but whether it was his delivery or just the oppressive terror that was leaking out of the pit, his joke didn’t even bring the tiniest of smiles to anyone’s face.

“But,” Leon continued, not dwelling on that, “I need to see what’s down there.” He turned to the Centurions. “You will keep this entrance secured. I don’t know what might happen down there, but I want to know that I can always retreat this way if need be. No marines are to follow me down there.”

The Centurions nodded their agreement, and Leon saw the three fourth-tier mages sigh in quiet relief that they wouldn’t be venturing down those stairs.

“The rest of you, I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you want to join me.” The rest of Leon’s squad slowly nodded, but Leon’s eyes were soon drawn towards Anzu. The young griffin had grown a lot in the few years since Leon had found him abandoned by his mother. He was on par with a fifth-tier mage, and viciously strong as well. But he was too big to follow Leon down that hole—not that Leon would ever try to force him. “Someone has to stay with Anzu,” Leon said. “He can’t follow me, so at least one of you has to stay behind.”

“That… won’t be me,” Gaius said almost immediately, to Leon’s obvious surprise. “I was sent by Sir Sigebert to stay with you and to collect reports for him. I’m not about to just watch you head down this hellish thing and not go with.”

Leon slowly nodded in appreciation. Alcander, Marcus, and Alix, however, all exchanged quick, guilty looks. Leon didn’t need to know what was going through their minds. They weren’t going to accompany him, he could see it in their body language. They felt guilty about it, enough that they were hesitating to say it out loud.

Perhaps Leon could’ve ordered them to head down there with him. Perhaps they might’ve gone with him if they had a greater sense of loyalty to him. Leon knew that he didn’t command enough of their respect—not even from Alix—for them to risk heading down into this pit for him, which only made him even more appreciative that Gaius and Maia were going to follow him.

And he knew that Maia was going to, too. He didn’t even have to look at her to know that. He could sense through their connection that she wouldn’t tolerate him even asking her to stay behind. He felt a bit guilty about dragging her along, especially since she’d been injured during the night before, but he was grateful to have her support, nonetheless.

“You three stay here,” Leon said, not wanting to wait any longer. “Keep Anzu company for me. The three of us won’t take too long. Even if what we find is too big, we’ll come back and report back to everyone what we find.”

“Leon…” Alix whispered, guilt and fear dripping from her voice, but Leon interrupted with a quick wave before she could finish.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s a terrifying thing, and a deep risk to venture down there. It would be safer to remain topside. But we won’t stop Jormun by staying safe. We won’t do anything by staying safe. We have to take risks sometime, and I believe that this is a risk worth taking. I’ll gamble with my life, but I won’t gamble with all of yours. Stay here, stay safe, and if anything happens, get word back to Sigebert and the others.”

With that, Leon turned and walked straight into the pit. He felt like if he waited another moment, the pressure of the pit would overwhelm him, and he’d never head down there. So he didn’t hesitate.

Gaius and Maia were at his back, only a few steps behind him, lending him strength and keeping him on his toes. He owed it to them to get them out of this place alive, too—for all his talk of risk, he wasn’t intending to leave his caution up here as he headed down this abyssal stairway.

Leon descended the first several dozen steps quite quickly, just enough to commit to this course of action. It was just far enough for all traces of the jungle breeze to die and for the air to grow dusty and stale, along with a few faint whiffs of burning sulfur that had been left by the flare.

But there, Leon paused for a moment. He was now past the entrance, and hopefully, past the point where his magic senses would be scattered. Unfortunately, as he tried to push his magic senses out of his body to scan the staircase, he barely managed to project them more than about ten feet from his body before they were scattered.

[Can you sense anything?] Leon asked Maia. As an eighth-tier equivalent being, he hoped she could see father than him, maybe even overwhelm whatever was blocking their senses with her power.

[No,] she replied, crushing that hope.

Leon took a deep, steadying breath as he fished another spell out of his soul realm. This one was much like a flare, but both much longer lasting, and much dimmer. After he activated the spell, a small ball of fire about the size of a large candle’s flame began to burn about a foot in front of him, and with little more than a thought on his part, began to descend the stairs. One it had gone down about thirty steps, Leon began to follow it, grateful that whatever was blocking his magic senses wasn’t blocking other kinds of magic.

He was more than powerful enough to see in the dark, but there was something about the darkness here that made it nearly impenetrable to his vision. This tiny candle spell helped a great deal, extending his vision dozens of feet in this claustrophobic passage.

But didn’t seem to matter all that much, for the stairs just kept going, on and on and on. The weight of the rock and soil above them seemed to grow ever heavier, and it killed any desire to speak they may have had.

The air seemed to somehow grow even staler and more stagnant with every step they descended, while the walls seemed to press in on them from all sides. After a few minutes of walking while this feeling continued to grow, Leon realized that the stairway was, indeed, subtly growing narrower as they moved, with the walls almost scrapping against his pauldrons as he proceeded on down.

Leon heart rose into his throat as his dread and muted terror rose in tandem. He liked nothing about this, but he needed answers, he needed to know exactly what Jormun was doing and how to stop him. And he hadn’t quite reached his mental limit.

From behind, Leon could hear Gaius’ breathing getting faster and shallower, and while Maia didn’t seem physically affected, Leon could feel her fear rising through their connection. He didn’t know how much more of this any of them could take.

Finally, as the walls narrowed so much that Leon had to start turning his shoulders to keep moving with his armor, and right before he made the decision to turn around and send for a few Legion engineers from the fleets to make the days-long journey here and widen this passage, Leon saw the end of the stairs. The flickering light of his torch spell licked at the bottom of the stairs, bringing some slight relief to him. They’d descended nearly a mile into the earth, and while it had hardly been physically strenuous, Leon’s nerves were frayed.

He didn’t know what he would’ve done if the passage hadn’t widened at the bottom. Probably turn around, as he’d already been about to do. But fortunately, as Leon emerged at the bottom of the stairs, he found that they opened onto a fairly large open chamber several dozen feet to each side.

For a moment, as Maia and Gaius emerged behind him, Leon took a deep steadying breath and recovered from that descent, with the other two doing likewise.

Gaius signaled that the moment was over when he muttered in awe and fear, “Where have we found ourselves?”

His feelings Leon could understand, for the chamber was something to behold. The walls, ceiling, and floor directly ahead of them were unworked stone, looking natural in their rough and imperfect appearance. The wall on the opposite side, however, was about as far from that as it could be, and stood in stark contrast to the simple brick passage of the stairway.

The other side of the chamber looked like the entrance to a huge temple structure, with a grand portico supported by two rows of beautifully carved columns of polished black granite. Just beyond was a massive arched doorway big enough to let a stone giant pass, and in a pair of alcoves to either side of the door stood a pair of stone statues of serpent-headed men at least eight feet tall wielding long stone halberds. Wrapped around each columns were relatively crude stone reliefs of countless serpents writhing and twisting around each other as they appeared to strive to reach the ceiling, and as Leon’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling of the portico where these serpents were trying to climb, his blood froze as he saw a final, massive statue.

On the ceiling of the portico, curled around about a dozen stone beams, was one more immense serpent, carved from what looked like green jade, its head—at least as large as Leon’s entire body—hanging down over the central entrance about eight feet off the ground, one large ivory horn extending out of its forehead and curving back over its neck, its eyes two massive glittering rubies that sparkled in the light of Leon’s torch spell.

“I think… we’ve found our destination,” Leon quietly said.