The remainder of the night and the next few days were uneventful, but there was one change. Faelan smiled more. Her confession freed her from a mountain of pain and stress.
Every tunnel varied in shape and size, but Crow knew this wasn’t his element—never would be. Sometimes they trudged through waist-high mud, crossed underground streams, and killed some beasts.
As promised, Song Lin also joined them for a time every day. She usually waited until she saw something interesting to come out. She made Crow harvest most of it while she supervised, and Faelan kept guard. Mainly, she instructed Crow on how to transplant things inside his SoulScape.
*Let me out.*
“Now?” Crow asked while he and Faelan climbed down a slippery, moss and scree-covered slope. If the moss didn’t make him slip, the loose scree did. It was very treacherous ground.
*At the bottom. You should be approaching Broken Glass Lake, right?*
“Yes, that was on the map for today,” Crow muttered distractedly.
Crow was so focused on placing his feet that he spoke out loud. Sound traveled quite a distance, and he underestimated the acoustics. Stealth didn’t prevent that, but at least his vision was strong enough to see the entire slope, so he grabbed Faelan’s shoulder, and both stopped moving. Scath exited a side tunnel, and they both could hear them scrambling about, looking for the source of the sound.
*Yes! Capture one.*
*No fucking way. This slope is too treacherous to approach them. We’ll kill them; you can do whatever you want with their bodies.*
*But—*
*Lin’er! It’s too dangerous. If we encounter them again and have a safe way to approach, then we’ll do it. Not here.*
*Fine.*
Almost as if scripted, Crow and Faelan lifted their bows and released a Drop Dead Arrow. The sound of the string propelling the arrow forward was so slight that the natural cave sounds disguised it. The arrows were as silent as the journal claimed. Crow nocked another one and took down the third Scath.
Neither of them moved, waiting to see if their actions alerted more. Looking at the corpses, Crow sighed internally. The only thing he hated about those arrows was that they were a pain in the butt to recover.
“Grab one body; we’ll move quickly. Any danger, ditch the corpse,” Crow said under his breath so only Song Xue could hear him. She nodded, and both increased their speed to travel down the slope faster.
Crow grabbed two of the bodies while Faelan took the remaining one. At the bottom, they went in the opposite direction of the Scath’s entrance. They didn’t need to alter their course because it was the tunnel they planned to take, anyway.
A few turns later, he realized why the Scath didn’t come from this direction. Nightstone jutted out of the massive cavern in large clusters. Even the lake in front of them was lit up because its bed was layered with crystals, too. It was a beautiful sight—breathtaking. There were also a few boats on the shore near a small village that was hastily abandoned.
He didn’t hesitate to bring Song Lin out now. Many of his people wanted to come out and look around, so he had Acco ferry them. Meanwhile, he entered the most prominent building, which looked like a gathering place and dumped the bodies on the ground. He could have carried them in his Shield, but he felt weirded out doing so.
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Song Lin’s experiments didn’t bother him, but he left her alone to ensure the village and lake were secure. The thing that worried him was why the village was abandoned. Fade warned everyone, so it made sense that some left, but not the entire village—especially when they had plenty of Nightstone.
Otto and Acco stood on the shore looking into the water when Crow approached them. After spending a few hours investigating, he found nothing. There was only one entrance to this place besides crossing the lake. He couldn’t even sense any formations.
“You guys notice anything weird about this place?” Crow asked softly. Maybe it was the paranoia of being unfated, but he never felt at ease when things were too easy.
Otto pointed into the water, and Crow immediately saw the problem. At the bottom were boats, bodies, and other manmade objects, but they’d all turned to glass and broke into multiple pieces. Some shattered completely.
“Now you know why this place is called Broken Glass Lake, but the question is, were those things real or somehow transformed?” Acco asked.
“I doubt it’s the water’s doing,” Crow said. “The boats of signs of recent use. So they aren’t afraid of crossing the waters.”
Plop!
Acco and Crow looked over to see Otto grinning.
“Rock. See happen.”
It wasn’t the way he’d test, but Crow monitored the stone as it sunk into the strange landscape below. It struck a glass object that looked like an open book and shattered it. The pieces of glass tumbled to the ground alongside the stone, which never changed. Crow half expected the rock to turn into glass, but it didn’t. Observing the other pieces, he realized they were all once organic or living material. Wood, flesh, and fibers were all the base materials for the glass objects.
“What do you think? Handmade?” Crow asked the other two, but his eyes didn’t leave the scene below.
“No,” Song Xue said after suddenly appearing beside them. Acco screeched in horror, and Otto chuckled.
“You know what this is?” Crow asked her.
“Mmm, Frigid Mana. It is so cold that it froze everything solid in an instant.”
“That shouldn’t make it transparent, right?” Acco asked.
“No. Something else did that,” Crow muttered. Not one of the glass objects was whole, but from the ones still mostly intact, he could see holes that had no fracturing around them.
“There,” Song Xue pointed, and every pair of eyes turned toward where her finger pointed. Thin filaments from a blue, almost transparent, plant structure waved about lightly in the water. At first glance, it appeared completely harmless, but Crow felt threatened by its presence upon watching it.
“That’s an Artic Star Anemone,” Nadia said. She was curious about what they were doing and came to observe. “And it definitely created what you see below. Those filaments tendrils will consume frozen organic material, and you see the husk left behind.”
“Why isn’t the water freezing if it’s that cold?” Acco asked.
“Two reasons, the first of which is the water is in constant motion. Second, that thing secretes something into the water to prevent it from doing so. The water is probably only that cold in this area because the anemone groupings are avoiding those Nightstone clusters. Don’t ask why because I don’t know.”
“Artic Star Anemone. Is it possible to capture those things?” Crow asked.
“No idea. I can only think of waiting until your Source is strong enough to condense your Mana Sense.”
“You mean the solidification stage?” Crow knew it was possible to condense his Mana Sense into a physical state, allowing him to interact with the world around him. That was a long way off, and he wasn’t even sure anymore since his Mana Sense had mutated along with his bloodline upgrade.
“Yes. Then you could pull it out without touching the water or it.”
“What if I used my vine spell?”
“Abilities are different because they are directly linked to you and your Source. They’d freeze faster than you could draw it out. Those things are powerful enough to contend with a Ruby Shield, probably. Mana Sense is the safest method because you manipulate ambient mana to achieve your goal.”
“Well, then I’ll have to come back to acquire them,” Crow sighed. His target was that ice planet he made from the glacier in Wistman’s Woods. He wanted some of the coldest creatures he could find to add, and this thing would work great. “Is it safe to cross the water by boat?”
“It is. I’m assuming what you see below is because the boat sank or a fight. The people living here weren’t fishing but ferrymen. It is hard to see from here, but another village should be on the other side. It’s strange that it’s dark over there because it had Nightstone clusters like this side does.”
Crow activated his vision and tried to pierce into the darkness but couldn’t see any buildings. He wondered if he should morph into the Silver-Eyed Crow and check it out first. Something felt wrong over there, but he sensed no immediate danger.