“This just isn’t right,” Wendy said, horror written across her face as she stared through the open door.

“What is it?” Bert asked with a sinking feeling.

“There are no words,” Wendy said, backing away. “I’m not going in there, and you can’t make me.”

Bert hurried over to see what fresh horror awaited them and gagged.

“What is it?” Bud asked, drawing his bow as he focused mana into an arrow.

“What happens when a whole bunch of animals are penned up behind a closed door?” Bert asked, leaning away from the doorway with a wince.

Bud looked around the door and merely shrugged.

“How did they get it on the walls?” Wendy asked in disgust.

“The goats were on the ceilings,” Bud offered helpfully.

“Yuck!” Wendy said, with feeling.

“I’ll sort it,” Scruff said with a sigh. “My plants will love it.”

Five minutes later, the group silently descended the stairs while plants flourished in the deep.

“Hey, at least we solved one mystery,” Bert said as he led the way.

“What mystery?” Wendy asked. She stepped gingerly down the stairs with her hand over her mouth and nose.

“Now we know what those sewers smelled like,” Bud said with a laugh.

“I hate you all so much,” Wendy said while the others laughed.

Wendy continued to grumble as they came to the bottom of the stairs and were greeted with… chaos.

The room was once an entranceway to the level, Bert was sure. The trampled remains of wood and stone lay underfoot while the walls were scoured with marks from horns and dented from impacts.

The animals had apparently not all fit on the stairs themselves. Glancing around the room showed three doors, all broken down except one.

The heavy metal door was dented and scratched but still intact. Bert examined it while Scruff grew vines over the other two openings.

He first noticed the grooves in the ceiling and confirmed the matching set in the floor after clearing away some of the rubble and… mess.

“Come give me a hand with this!” Bert called over to Bud.

Between them, they managed to figure out that they had to pull the door towards them and then slide it aside.

Wendy and Scruff joined them just as they slid the heavy metal aside. The door stuck in the track, half open. The dents were just too much for it to open any further.

Lily sent some Fae lights through the door, showing clean white stone and gleaming metal beyond. Nothing moved in the minute or so they watched, so they stepped inside. Bert was just about to start exploring the room when Scruff caught his arm and pointed to an archway to their left. Her eyes were glowing with a soft green light.

“Living plants, or something, through there,” She said softly.

Bert nodded, and they moved across to the archway, with Bud and Wendy keeping a wary eye on the rest of the room. The space beyond the archway was large, low, and crowded. At first, Bert thought he was looking at the trunks of thick trees until he saw the things moving gently inside them.

Scruff stiffened as Lily added more light to the room.

“Are they plants?” Wendy asked. “What the fuck?”

Bert just shook his head, having no idea. The dark green towers looked like plant tissue, but each one held a partially see-through sack cradled in the center. Blood, or something like it, definitely pulsed through veins on the sacks, and inside, a series of forms grew, floating in a pale liquid.

A soft pattering beside Bert made him look down. Drops of blood were falling from Scruff’s clenched fists.

“Scruff?” Bert called carefully.

“Can you see what they did?” She asked, her voice cracked and choking with emotion.

“No,” Bert said, “Can you tell us?”

“I don’t have the words,” She hissed. “For this… abomination.”

Bud carefully approached the nearest tower, bending closer to the sack to examine it.

“Are these things the monsters we fought?” Bud asked.

“Get out,” Scruff said, her voice shaking. “All of you.”

“Scruff,” Bert put a hand on her arm.

“Please,” Scruff said, “Please, go.”

Bert nodded and motioned the others back. The moment they were clear of the archway, vines closed it off from sight.

“What was that in there?” Bud asked Bert. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. The flesh on the plants was… wrong.”

“I have no idea,” Bert admitted. “This is all a bit beyond me.”

They all turned to the vines as a roar of anger, pain, and pure hatred came from behind the vines. It was Scruff’s voice, but not like they had heard before. There was a primal aspect to it. The sounds of tearing and destruction continued for a long time.

When the vines cleared away, a weeping Scruff collapsed into Wendy’s arms, sobs wracking her body. Bert and Bud looked through the archway into a sea of destruction. There was nothing left but tattered bits of flesh, plant, animal, and something in between.

After long minutes of Scruff whispering to Wendy between sobs, they finally started to understand. Whoever had run this place, whoever had built it, wanted to create those hybrids that had attacked them earlier. Bert knew that on Earth, that would have involved a massive amount of technology. Here in this world of magic, it was apparently just as hard.

The creators of this house of horrors had done something that no one else had ever managed. The plant’s flesh had seemed so strange because it was Undead. They had created an undead plant. They used that as a bridge between the species. Something about the undead flesh allowed the fusing of species. Nestled in a womb of undead flesh, the creatures were grown from embryos created by the pillars.

Each pillar was infused with the flesh of the two species to be mixed together. Once the pillar was created, all it needed was mana, and the pillar would simply grow the creatures until it ran out of flesh.

“No one can know about this,” Scruff snarled. “No one. Ever.”

“Then we better not leave anything behind,” Bert said. He raised both hands, summoning Heat runes on every surface he could see. He poured mana into the ruins, feeling the heat scorch his face as he turned the room into an oven. As soon as the room was blazing, with glowing walls and ceiling, Bert replaced the runes with chill runes. He poured even more into these runes, and the temperature plummeted. The walls cracked and shattered, a flood of soil flowing into the room as Bert cut the runes, casting a turn rune into the center of the room in their place. The rune created a miniature tornado in the room, sucking the smoke, soil, and charred remains into the center.

He only stopped when the soil began to fall through the archway.

==============

The rest of the level held nothing to match the horror of the breeding room. It was mostly offices, with the occasional area that resembled a laboratory or a storage area. They destroyed any remaining notes or writing that they came across, just in case.

Scruff was still not back to her usual self when they found the set of stairs leading down. She was quiet and withdrawn, with hunched shoulders and tension radiating through her body. Wendy stayed close to her, just in case she didn’t react to something in time.

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The thing was, there was nothing to react to so far. This was a ruin, not a dungeon. Things weren’t jumping out at them from every corner or waiting to attack. The training automatons, the hybrid creatures, all of it was behind them now. The quiet was almost worse than being attacked.

They were all jumpy when they started down the stairs.

“Huh,” Bert said as they stepped off the stairs. It seemed they had finally made it to the bottom of the structure. And their reward for all of this seemed to be nothing more than a single large room.

Pipes led up from two large machines on either side of the stairway. They took up the entire back half of the room. Bert examined them carefully, only to step back in shock.

“What? Wendy asked.

“Air, Water, and heat,” Bert said. “This is the central heating and plumbing system.” He looked non-plussed. “I don’t know why it’s so weird to find these in a ruin, but it is.”

“Expecting something more?” Wendy asked. “I think I found something that would qualify.”

Bert moved to join her in front of the stairs. Now that he actually looked, it was strange. The front half of the room was curved, almost a half circle, but stretched and elongated. The floor featured a complex set of symbols arranged in concentric circles, while the far wall was dominated by a mural of a great tree with several indentations in it. A small metal orb was placed in the lowest space, amongst the roots of the tree.

“Can you feel that?” Wendy asked, holding her hand near the circle on the floor.

Bert reached out, noticing a faint pull on his mana. The closer he got to the circle, the stronger it got. Blinking a few times, Bert activated Mana Sense, a skill he had not used in a very long time.

The room became a whirlpool. Bert wavered and steadied himself as he watched all the colors of mana sucked into the circle, seeping into the floor and being funneled beneath the floor to the machines at the back, the floors above, and the orb in the mural.

“Whoa, that’s trippy,” Bert said, canceling the skill before it gave him a migraine. “This thing is a mana collector, it’s literally sucking in all the surrounding mana.”

“Gross,” Wendy said, making a face. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Not everyone has the mana tides,” Scruff said blandly. “As someone who just got them, let me tell you, it is life-changing.”

Dim figures began to form in the center of the circle, half there and half not. They looked like a combination of the shadow creatures and the ghost creatures that attacked the Waystation the night before.

They were forming slowly, but they were forming.

“Guess night has officially fallen,” Bud said drily. “Any idea how we turn it off?”

“Destroy the circle would be my guess,” Bert said. “I just don’t know how big an explosion it would make if we did.”

Wendy swung her claws at the circle before anyone could stop her.

The sharp bone simply bounced off, leaving Wendy yelping and waving her fingers.

“Fuck, ow!” She hissed, “That thing is tough.”

“Did you miss the bit about an explosion?” Bert asked.

“You were guessing,” She huffed.

“Still,” Bert said. “Plus, I want that orb, whatever it is.”

“I can charge a shot that should pierce the circle,” Bud said. “Maybe best if I do it from the stairs?”

“Okay,” Bert said. “Let me just get that orb thing. I think it might tell us something.” He edged around the circle, keeping as far from it and the things forming in it as possible. Wendy and the others fell back, Bud dropping to one knee as he started to charge up a powerful shot with his bow.

“Get ready, just in case we need to run once I grab this,” Bert called.

“Why?” Scruff asked. “What do you think will happen?”

“I have no idea, hence the running away,” Bert grinned and grabbed the orb. It fought to stay in place, but he yanked it free and froze as the half-formed creatures in the circled screamed and faded.

He ran for the stairs anyway, just in case.

The stairs shook under their feet as vibrations started to run through the walls.

“What did you do?” Wendy accused him immediately.

Bert checked with his Mana Sense, seeing the mana running wild through the systems as if suddenly uncontrolled and chaos was raging.

“Okay, shoot the circle!” He called, looking frantically around to see if there was anything worth taking.

Bud released the arrow at the same moment that Bert cast Reclaim Knowledge at the nearest of the large machines flanking the stairs.

Rune Knowledge Acquired!

Rune: Water Learned!

Congratulations!

His vision spun, and he felt dizzy as the knowledge settled into his brain. He raised his shield on instinct, pulsing mana through it to create the mana shield. A huge wave of released mana smashed against it.

“Time to go!” Bert yelled, and the four of them turned and sprinted up the stairs.

The trip back up through the ruins was chaotic at best. They slipped and slid through the ruins as uncontrolled mana caused random effects around them. Pieces of the floor turned into liquid, and parts of the wall aged and crumbled to sand. Worse than that were areas where the walls seemed to be leaking blood, sap, or slime. On more than one occasion, they saw areas catching fire as strange creatures erupted from the shadows, chittering and howling at the fleeing group.

“Mana Storm!” Scruff screamed.

Bert thought it was as good a name as any; the floor ahead of them dropped away, empty voids sucking at everything in the room. They leaped over it, feeling the pull on their bodies as they cleared it.

“How much further?” Wendy gasped.

“One more floor,” Bud called as they emerged into the sewers again.

They dashed along the walkways, seeing strange creatures like living slimes crawling from pipes and amongst the plants at the bottom of the sewer.

“Fuck, that’s gross!” Wendy gasped as the sewer pipe they were just exiting shivered, the stone dropping away to reveal pink, pulsing flesh.

They dived out the exit, Bert’s roll letting him see the tunnel snap closed behind him.

He dragged Bud upright and pushed him towards the stairs as Lily faded into view.

“The archway won’t last long! Hurry!” She snapped before buzzing off up the stairs.

“Why is Lily naked?” Bert asked.

“She burned up,” Wendy laughed. “Did you think Pixies were born with clothes on?”

Bert shook his head, filling it under ‘to be ignored,’ and hurried after the others.

Lily had been right about one thing. The archway of flowers and vines was twisting and bucking as they ran up it. Bert felt more than heard the thump of its collapse as he rolled across the forest floor.

“Everyone okay?” Bert called as he lay gasping on his back.

A chorus of ‘yes,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘fuck you’ reassured him, so he took a minute to get his breath back.

=============

“So, was it worth it?” Wendy asked, nudging him as they walked back to the Waystation in the darkness.

“What?” Bert asked.

“The orb!” She snapped. “The thing that caused all that!” She waved vaguely back the way they had come.

Even though he still clutched it in his hand, Bert had almost forgotten the thing.

It was a metal orb with a complex pattern of runes and symbols engraved on it.

Bert cast Analyze, hoping it wasn’t just some complicated magical plug he had yoinked.

Solpara Control Core 1/12

The Gift of Sight

??Unknown??

“Uh, I can’t tell,” Bert admitted. He held it up for her to see.

“Try harder, Dad,” Wendy grinned. “Mum is going to want to know what we just risked getting buried alive for.”

“Good point,” Bert admitted. He turned the orb in his hands for a long time, finding nothing new, and eventually cast Reclaim Knowledge on it simply because he ran out of other ideas.

He stopped as the forest around him vanished. Before him was a tree, but not a tree; it seemed to be there and not there at the same time. One second, it had roots; another, it had tendrils like an anemone, then roots again. The branches became coursing mana, or great roads, and then were branches again. The leaves themselves shifted before him, becoming whole worlds and dimensions before returning to leaves.

And the tree was looking at HIM.

Bert tried to scream, but he had no mouth, no body, nothing. A consciousness the size of a universe surrounded him.

He felt shock, then amusement from the entity. Finally, he felt it recede, and a series of images slammed into him with the force of a waterfall.

Swept into the deluge, Bert was carried away.

He saw a new berry form on the tree, then be plucked and placed into the world contained in a single leaf. The berry bloomed, growing into a building. A civilization grew around the building as Bert watched. Then time blurred, and war raged.

Bert watched strange people with long skeletal forms battle against people with glowing knotwork. Again and again, the skeletal people lost. Finally, they were driven to only their central building. It shimmered and faded, taking the skeletal people with it.

A new world appeared, with the building in it. The Skeletal people surrounded it, an entire civilization casting a single spell. And in the center, the building that had grown from a berry.

The building shivered, shook, and eventually cracked apart. The pieces were taken, and the people scattered to the four winds. A single piece lay forgotten in the ruin. A spark of life that formed a seed.

The great entity pulled the seed from that leaf, weeping at what was done to it. It duplicated the remaining seed and scattered the results amongst the leaves.

Each one grew into a building but they were crippled. A shadow of what was. The buildings were found by the Fae, who took pity and bound one of their own species to it to let it survive.

Bert gasped in silence as he realized these buildings must have been the first Waystations.

Meanwhile, the visions changed to follow the skeletal people. They experimented on their own little pieces of the building, eventually binding it to their will. They used these bits, stolen from the thing that had raised and protected their civilization, to recreate the abilities of their enemies.

The war with Fae continued, more even now than ever before. In the end, it was not enough, and the last of the Skeletal people, the Solpara Bert guessed, escaped into spells of their own creation. One by one, the places of power were taken, but the Fae never stayed.

They never found the pieces, and they never solved the mystery.

The images stopped on a familiar ruin as it was buried over time and deep inside a part of the forgotten whole.

The visions faded, and Bert was left looking at the tree once more.

Each fruit, seed, berry, or nut was unique. A gift to the worlds in the leaves.

One had been broken… and he now had two pieces of what was once whole.

The visions faded, and Bert woke up, looking at the dark night sky while Wendy and the others panicked around him.

“Worth it!” He laughed. “So worth it!”