“Now that you’re done arguing with a spider,” Jimbo got everyone’s attention, “Does that mean we’re done fighting unholy abominations? Are we here?”

He looked around, but it was all dark outside the barrier as it had been for hours.

“We have arrived.” Kuja stated calmly, “I don’t sense anything down here either.”

“Our old friend spent a great deal of time enchanting this place.” Cira paced around the side leading to the staircase and stared at the ground. “He must have let us in. We will need to modify these arrays on our way out or it will become troublesome upon our return. How far is the all the equipment we seek?”

Now the old Archaean woman offered a rare bright smile, “It is all here. We arrived quite some time ago. If everyone is ready, I will show you around.”

Cira returned her expression in kind, excitement and relief lingering in her voice, “Just a moment. I’ll turn on the lights.”

Slightly less than a minute and a half later, Lamplights blanketed the ceiling to reveal something that looked like a prehistoric alchemy workshop. The center was raised like a small hill and open in the center where a golden basin big enough to cook a whole stromrak into a stew was attached by a small bridge on either side.

“I suppose we should stop to look at the incipient vessel first.” Cira let her elder lead the way. Her pace was slow, using her staff as a cane, but Cira didn’t want to rush her here of all places. They quietly walked down toward the middle of the room until reaching a staircase. It wasn’t long, but it carried them to the first instrument of Cira’s re-creation.

“I must admit.” Kuja clacked her staff at the top of the stairs. “This part of the process is extraordinarily painful.”

There was such equipment to melt metal for casting within Breeze Haven’s forge, and this looked like an oversized version of it.

“Looking at it now,” Cira’s tone deflated, “I’m suddenly less excited.”

“We’ll just get you piss drunk.” Jimbo shoved his flask at her. “When you pass out, We’ll just dump you in.”

“Brilliant.” Cira took a drink even though she wasn’t melting down today.

“Not a good idea, Child.” The wisest among them rained on her parade. “You must be of sound mind going in, lest you be put back together ‘piss drunk’. The silver lining is, after a point, you will not feel anything at all.”

“Can’t wait…” Cira stared deep into the kiln before looking around the surrounding platform. “Hey, what is all this?”

She led the group to the other side of the incipient vessel where a writing desk sat. Unlike most things down here, it wasn’t decrepit whatsoever. The rich, unblemished stain brought out the bright colors in the wood nicely and there was a closed book sitting next to an ink well.

“I don’t believe this belonged to my ancestors.” Kuja picked the book up, “’Notes on the essence melting basin’… did that man leave this?”

“Oh…?” Cira pulled open the top drawer and it was stuffed full of papers. “Hmm. Evidently he has been working on his shadowfication—specifically how fast he can transition between states. How interesting… He can become shadows much faster than he can turn back. That didn’t do us any favors. This page here seems to describe his thirty-fourth reforging results.”

“A-are you certain?” There was a look of shock painted over Kuja’s face, “I was once told my people stopped after the tenth. Beyond that point, they risked permanent deformities or other unavoidable mutations. Even soul dissipation, at least that’s how the stories went.”

Cira wasted no time stuffing all the necromancer’s work into whichever pouches had room, then made Tawny put the desk in her ring. “Turns out that necromancer was more impressive than I gave him credit for, but he certainly didn’t seem the type to mind trading his humanity for power—or even for the sake of research. It will be worth looking this over once we return topside.”

It stood for reason Cira would have plenty of time to inspect the incipient vessel—inside and out. Partially for this reason, she moved on to the so-called ‘emulsifier’. This was down another set of stairs which ran along a metal slide which Cira could picture her primordial soup running down.

In her father’s design, this stage of the process was handled by the ‘Essential Blender’. This part sounded like the least fun to Cira initially, but if she stopped feeling pain at some point while being melted down, she could take a modicum of solace.

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Naturally, this artifact was incredibly important to Cira’s rebirth. Fed from the soup slide, the device took advantage of a phenomenon called ‘proximal aethereal compression’ to blend one’s corporea and aetherea completely. Like turning coal into diamonds, but using pure aether and souls. Elsewise, well, she probably wouldn’t come out right if at all.

At a glance, the emulsifier worked through the same principles. It almost looked like a heavily enchanted pressure cooker.

“You sure we shouldn’t get Skipper involved?” Jimbo thought so too. It came as a surprise that such a scurvy fellow would be familiar with pressure cookers, but apparently, they were popular artifacts at high altitudes. Owing to their increased efficiency in areas of low atmospheric pressure, even novice artificers could produce them.

“That will make an excellent lesson for my students. One which will require no instruction from me. It’s perfect.” Cira had only given them one real lesson so far, which she had just realized again. “Anyway, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble adapting the first two artifacts without further enchantment. Take anything that looks like that scraggly old bastard left it behind and let’s return to Breeze Haven.”

It was tempting to spend the day down here, but Cira realized she had no idea how long they’d been exploring the tomb. She felt about ready for bed, which was never a good sign, despite her nap. Turned out, James was the only one with a watch.

It took a few minutes to scoop up everything the necromancer had spent centuries stuffing the Cairn with and overriding his runic formations, but they were back on their way in short order.

Cira actually felt a little sad that the goliaths completely avoided them on the return trip. Even the massive scrawny one near the stairs was curled up and frozen like a statue. It was a very uneventful trip through the Third Tomb as not even Undina decided to show up again.

The flame sprites were much simpler this time around as they could not penetrate the barrier of shadows. They could burn holes in it over time which would be a huge pain in the ass for Cira, but none of them lasted that long. Everyone’s aura was heaping with mana, and they now had experience dealing with the sprites. Their approach was futile and the crew was unafraid as they drowned or suffocated them until reaching the stairs.

“Let’s pause here. It’s time for a test.” Cira sat on the steps to catch her breath and sipped cold water she condensed with her bare hands while her junior artificers carved Sunbearer Coins from the walls.

The real test was how long they would go before saying something. That answer was an hour and a half at roughly six hundred coins.

The slimes also struggled to penetrate a darkness far denser than their own, but it gave Cira an idea. As the border between light and dark, her barrier had natural sides. It was simple to regard something incoming, especially if it was the same element of a different potency. This made it simple enough to craft the Sunbearing Ward Formation.

Her artificers slumped at the sight of every slime instantly exploding into light on contact with the barrier, but Cira was of the opinion having a surplus of unused Sunbearer Coins was never a bad thing. The artifacts they tirelessly crafted would potentially come in handy one day and it was great for their practice.

When they reached the residential district, The peoples’ gift to Cira was entirely gone, replaced with a bloodstain so large it made her mildly uncomfortable. Accompanied with the stench, it was no tough decision to leave quickly.

I wonder what the necromancer thought of this. He better not mess with my citizens, or I’ll have to make him Mac’s cursed subordinate.

To make the spectacle even stranger, goblins were passed out all across the pavilion, shadows rising off their bodies like morning mist. Thinking about it, that pile of food had to be multiple tons worth of meat. Cira wasn’t sure how many goblins resided within her territory, but that felt like a lot of food. Looking at them now and feeling the fluctuations of mana in the air, it seemed they were getting stronger. Perhaps she was witnessing a stage of their digestion process. It was best to leave before refuse was purged.

They walked through the silent streets—it seemed everyone within her goblin kingdom got their fill, and she strangely felt satisfied knowing as much as they quietly ascended.

There was one single bug on the top floor. A sturdy beast of a beetle with a singular horn protruding from his face.

Boy did Cira’s mages mess him up. In seconds, he exploded into exoskeletal shards which quickly dissolved into holy light. She wasn’t even sure what the paladins did there, but she was too tired to care. This was a similar feeling to when she woke up in the middle of the night at the dining table and had to drag herself to bed.

“You doin’ okay?” Shores asked from what sounded like a distance but when Cira turned, he was right beside her. Suddenly disoriented, she swayed to the side and almost fell over. Luckily, Shores was there. “Whoa! Somethin’s wrong with the captain!”

She had only had a few sips of liquor over what felt like damn near a full day, but it didn’t feel like that. Her head still pounded from earlier, and she was dizzy. Her body didn’t want to move as quick as she wanted, or apparently as precisely. Almost like it was delayed—disconnected.

“I’m just tired.” Cira pushed off the man and shambled herself through the cave’s passageway. “Leave me be.”

Using Shadow’s Quill as a walking stick, Cira lead the doubtful core-members of the Dreadheart Armada out of the cave and across Archaeum’s plateau.

“Stupid girl.” Mac jeered. “Fiddle with fate and this is what happens.”

Cira didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she felt the strain on her essence. It was neither her soul nor her body, but both which bore the burden. One could say her very existence took the brunt of whatever sacrifice she accepted in summoning the Avatar of Fate.

“I’m too tired for your riddles, spider.” She replied.

“I’m saying you better hope you live long enough to get the materials you need.”