It feels like ages since the first day I fell into here, I thought as I slowly moved deeper into the ruin, my fingers tracing over the scars on the wall. Has it already been over a month since I started playing this game?
Lost in thought, I lost track of time as we crept forward, knowing that the Adventurers ahead of me would be busy admiring the small, decrepit ruin before filtering up the switchbacks and up towards the higher elevation. After steadily moving for a time, I eventually reached the shattered remains of the doorway and stepped into the long rectangular room, seeing my friends standing on one side of the room, with Stanton and his retinue on the other. The air was thick with tension as the two groups regarded one another warily, Lazarus and his friends having been watching us with guarded expressions ever since the battle.
“I can lead the horse up the switchbacks while you all look around,” Sierra offered to Samuel, breaking the awkward silence that had filled the room, save for the agitated whinnies coming from Stanton’s mount as it became more and more irritated by being underground. “He’s starting to get a bit nervous.”
“Ah! I think that might be a good idea,” Samuel replied, dodging the animal’s half-hearted attempt to bite him before offering the reins to Sierra. “Here, and thanks.”
“No problem,” Sierra said, accepting the reins and slowly leading the horse towards the far end of the room and into the passageway that led towards the switchbacks. “I’ll wait with him by the entrance up top.”
“So, if you haven’t guessed,” I began, motioning to the room around me. “This is the second Nafarrian ruin that we found.”
“It certainly isn’t as well preserved,” Quincy commented pessimistically as he looked around the room. “And the damage to it is rather considerable.”
“That’s because it was nearly in the center of whatever destroyed the Nafarrian city here,” I said, motioning to the doorway that we had entered. “I believe that when the city still existed, this chamber, and the tunnel that we just passed through, was once far under the city.”
“Which certainly fits what we know of the Nafarr,” Donovan agreed. “The sewer system in Eberia, for example, goes quite deep.”
“You have no idea,” Lazarus muttered. “Runs nearly the entire length of Eberia too.”
“Was there anything of interest in this ruin when you first entered it?” Stanton asked, his expression markedly less excited than when he had visited the Hub.
“Actually, yeah,” I replied with a nod, motioning to Razor on my waist. “There was an undead skeleton trapped in here, for ages based on my guess. When I first entered the room, it attacked me, but I managed to kill it and recovered a relic from it that I used to create my sword.”
A spark of excitement surged through all the mages at my mention of the skeleton, their bored expressions suddenly focusing on me with a laser-like intensity.
“Lyrian, you didn’t mention anything to me about finding a risen skeleton in here!” Donovan exclaimed.
“Hmm?” I grunted in surprise, turning to look at Donovan, then back towards the others. “I didn’t think it that important to mention. It was just a skeleton.”
“Just a skeleton?” Stanton gasped, his face turning red as his hands reached out towards me, all the other mages sharing a similar look on their faces. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“Idea of what?” I asked, glancing towards Lazarus and my friends, seeing confused looks on their faces as well. “I don’t understand.”
“That skeleton,” Donovan began, “may have been the first physical proof of the Nafarr that we have ever even heard of. In all our time in Eberia, we have never as much as uncovered a shard of bone to prove that they truly existed.”
“Oh,” I replied, the revelation causing me to pause. “I had no idea…”
“We only have their creations to base any of our theories off,” Samuel added. “The structures they left behind, artifacts, collections of weapons and armor. But nothing to indicate how they may have looked.”
“We saw the Slave King,” Constantine interjected, glancing sharply at Samuel and Quincy. “Was that not a good enough look?”
“The Slave King brought himself into existence by forming his body out of Æther,” Samuel replied shaking his head. “For all we know, if he truly wanted to, he could have formed himself to appear as a dragon.”
“What did it look like?” Donovan asked. “Did it look any different than a human or elvish skeleton?”
“Uh, I really didn’t think to pay attention to that sort of detail,” I replied uneasily, feeling everyone’s attention on me.
“You have to remember something!” Quincy demanded.
“Well, it was pretty dark, and it was trying to kill me,” I stated a bit defensively as I scanned the room, trying to remember my battle with the Decaying Commander. “But I think that the skeleton was about my height, or at least would have been had he not been missing pieces of his arm and leg. It looked like he’d been killed by burns all over the one side of his body…well, at least before he rose once more.”
“As for how he looked,” I continued, wracking my memory for any shred of detail that I could recall. “I don’t think it looked too different to how a typical human skeleton would. The skull may have been a little differently shaped, but it also wasn’t in the best condition. It may have just been decay.”
“I see,” Stanton said with disappointment, the other mages echoing his sentiment. “There was nothing else in this chamber?”
“Nothing,” I affirmed, waving my hands around at the debris that still filled the room. “I picked through the debris that you see here and didn’t find anything interesting. Just shards of metal from the broken door and some other scraps that may have once been furniture ages ago. That’s about it.”
“No one would have gone through the trouble to dig and carve this room out without some sort of purpose,” Quincy commented as he finished his inspection of the area. “Did you detect anything of interest with an Ætherscope?”
“Uh, actually, I never thought to scan the area,” I said, looking over at Halcyon and Caius, knowing that it was Donovan’s first time in the ruin. “Did you guys?”
“I didn’t,” Halcyon replied, shaking his head.
“Didn’t cross my mind either,” Caius admitted with a shrug.
“Well, no time like the present I guess,” I said as Quincy reached into his pocket and pulled out an Irovian Ætherscope.
The room fell silent as all the mages, myself included, followed the man’s lead and drew their own Ætherscopes, spreading out around the room, trusting in the wand to draw attention to any stray sources of magic that lingered in the area.
Holding the length of bone firmly in my hand, I activated True Sight, instantly seeing the lingering shadows in the chamber fade away as my augmented vision pierced through the darkness. Walking slowly, I then scanned the room carefully, seeing nothing of interest appear in my vision at first glance, my feet eventually leading me towards the switchbacks and standing between the collapsed route leading downward and the other leading to the surface when something finally appeared in my vision.
“Huh,” I grunted in surprise as countless dark blue wisps appeared in my vision, the color indicating that whatever I was seeing was far away and nearly at the edge of my range. “I see something from over here!”
“You do?” Stanton’s voice was the first to answer as everyone rushed to join me at the base of the switchbacks, their eyes focused intently at the wall straight ahead of us.
“I just barely see something too!” Quincy added with excitement in his voice. “I…am not certain what it could be, however, it is very faint…”
“It is too scattered and small to be the Ley Line,” Halcyon said as he slid beside me. “Too faint as well…it’s hard to tell exactly what it could be.”
“Ah! I saw something move!” Samuel’s sudden shout caused all of us to flinch in surprise and look back at him, seeing him staring downw
ards at the collapsed route.
“What do you see?” Donovan queried as we all followed Samuel’s gaze, canting our heads towards the ground when the speechless mage didn’t reply.
Almost immediately after shifting my vision, I saw several bright blue and white wisps appear in my vision, their position slowly moving beneath us. Judging from the brightness of the signatures, whatever they were, they were much closer to us than the fainter signatures we had just seen seconds earlier.
“There is something beneath us,” I said excitedly while continuing to gaze downwards, some of the wisps blurring together into one indistinguishable blob of magic as they moved further away from us, towards the other signatures in the distance.
“There must be another chamber deeper underground,” Quincy whispered while pointing at the blocked passage.
“Possibly a lower level that was part of a larger network?” Samuel suggested, his eyes widening in excitement as he twisted to look back at Stanton and Quincy. “That would explain the signatures that we saw further away and the ones moving.”
“Maybe,” I replied, shifting my glance between the bright sources of magic beneath us and the fainter sources further away. “But what could it be?”
“Possibly a route towards the Ley Line?” Samuel offered eagerly. “If the city once sat where the lake is now, then practicality would demand that the Nafarr access the Ley Line where it passes under Aldford, instead of miles away at the other ruin.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Donovan interjected, dampening Samuel’s excitement. “We hardly know enough about the Nafarr to comment what was or wasn’t practical for them, let alone how they used the Ley Lines in the first place to power their technology.”
There was a pause as Samuel and Quincy turned their heads towards Stanton, the elder mage shaking his head slowly.
“That statement is not entirely accurate,” Stanton said slowly, clearly choosing his words with care.
“I don’t understand,” Donovan replied flatly, suspicion evident in his voice. “What part of it exactly? Has there been a ground-breaking discovery about the Nafarr since I departed Eberia?”
“No,” Stanton stated evasively but didn’t elaborate any further.
“Then what the hell are you talking about?” Halcyon cut in before Donovan could reply, all of us shifting our attention away from our Ætherscopes and onto the noble. “You know something that you’re not sharing.”
“Understatement of the fucking century there,” Sawyer muttered loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Quiet,” Stanton demanded, turning his head to look at the red-armored warrior out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t—”
“No, I think we’ve been quiet enough, Stanton,” Lazarus interrupted harshly. “We’ve just made a major discovery here. Be fucking honest for once in your life and tell them what they need to know.”
“You are in no position to dictate anything to me!” Stanton growled, glaring at the man as he spoke. “The sooner you remember—”
“But I am,” I interrupted forcefully as I watched the argument unfold before me. “And I am curious to hear the answer to Donovan’s question.”
Head spinning in my direction, Stanton’s eyes narrowed as they landed on me, his words coming out in short and clipped tones, “That information is privileged.”
“We’re in the middle of an underground ruin on the edge of the frontier for fuck’s sake!” Constantine practically yelled, taking the words right out of my mouth. “Who the hell are we going to tell?”
“Regardless of where a secret is unveiled, the moment that it is let loose it no longer under your control,” Stanton countered, glaring at Constantine’s profanity.
“That’s a bullshit answer, Stanton,” I growled, tired of the man’s evasiveness. “Remember, you’re the one who came to us for help, and it’s obvious that you know something that could make sense of what we all just saw. So, either you tell us now, or we find out once we dig our way down there.”
Silence fell over the room as all our attention focused onto Stanton, the noble staring back at me with half of a scowl on his face as he weighed my words carefully.
“What I am about to tell you does not go beyond this audience,” he ground out, meeting the eyes of everyone he could in the cramped hallway. “Is that clear?”
“Like crystal,” I answered, hearing a chorus of weary acknowledgments around me.
“Some time ago, a chamber, a massive chamber, was discovered in the depths below Eberia by my House,” he began, speaking as if every single word he said caused him physical pain. “After studying the equipment recovered from it for a time, we believe that we have a theoretical understanding of how the Nafarr drew Æther from the Ley Line.”
“Some time ago?” Donovan repeated as he pushed past Halcyon beside me, and took a step forward towards Stanton, his voice hardening with anger. “How long is ‘some time ago?’”
“A decade. Perhaps longer by now,” Stanton answered with a dismissive shake of his head. “I am not certain.”
“House Denarius has hidden such a monumental discovery from Eberia for a decade?” Donovan spat, his arms trembling as if he wanted to physically strike the noble. “You bastards! You have no right to—”
“Watch your tongue!” Stanton snapped, his voice taking on a dangerous tone as it echoed through the tunnel we’d crammed ourselves in. “Do you think the other Houses aren’t doing the same with their discoveries? Do not be so naïve!”
“That doesn’t make it right!” Donovan exclaimed.
“‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ belong in the province of Justicars and Magistrates!” Stanton spat back at the mage. “They are foolhardy things to cling to when your nation’s existence is at stake!”
“Goddamn you nobles—” Donovan began to snarl, his anger starting to get the better of him.
“Donovan, now is not the time!” I called his name loudly, reaching out to grab the man by the arm despite understanding his anger and pulled him behind me before he did something rash. Giving the mage a sharp look, I turned my attention back towards Stanton and continued to press him for answers.
“How did the Nafarr tap the Ley Line?” I asked in a sharp tone that I hoped would make the noble reconsider an evasive answer.
“Physically,” Stanton replied. “By sinking large poles of an Æther conductive metal into it, which we believe drew the Æther into reservoirs for storage and transport. The scale of their work in that chamber dwarfed anything that we had ever seen before.”
“So, they could have done the same here as well,” I said, watching Stanton’s face carefully for any sign that he may be hiding or evading the truth.
“I am certain they did,” Stanton stated. “Based on the signatures that we all saw through the Ætherscopes, I believe there is a lower section to these ruins that continues southward in the direction of the Ley Line. With luck, it may still be intact, at least up until the point of the rupture.”
“You think that the rupture happened where they tapped it,” I stated, catching on to the words left unsaid by the noble.
“It is likely,” Quincy acknowledged, answering for Stanton. “Whatever event that destroyed the Nafarrian city here would have been cataclysmic, enough to cause the bedrock that surrounds us to shift. If whatever the Nafarr built into the Ley Line shifted as well…”
“It would have torn the Ley Line right open,” I finished.
“We have no way of knowing until we see it with our own eyes,” Stanton said, motioning with a hand towards the collapsed route deeper into the ruin. “We should begin excavation at once and with haste. If this happens to be a dead end or if we need to dig further…”
“Digging out a collapsed tunnel isn’t something you rush,” Drace interjected, already knowing that the project would fall to him to complete. “We’d be looking at several days, if not a week or more to clear a way down, and that’s assuming that we don’t run into any complications.”
“Time is not on our side for this—” Stanton began to warn impatiently before Drace cut him off.
“Which is why we are going to do this right,” the big man stated in an annoyed tone, refusing to back down. “You’re not going to be the one who’s swinging a pickaxe or carting stone away here, risking being buried alive if something goes wrong. A collapse because we rushed will set us back even further.”
“Do what you must to ensure the integrity of the tunnel, but do it quickly,” Stanton ordered, his face twitching at Drace’s implication that he was of no help. “But we all know what is at stake here.”
“We do,” I agreed, feeling the same surge of annoyance as I knew Drace did. “But with that in mind, however, I think this is a good time to make a few points clear before we go any further.”
“Oh?” Stanton asked, his feigned curiosity unable to completely hide the steel in his voice. “What may those be?”
“Uh…” I heard Lazarus grunt from behind Stanton’s back as he shook his head at me.
“First and foremost, going forward, you are going to stop spouting orders at us,” I said, hearing Lazarus curse as I ignored his warning. “You are a guest in Aldford and have no standing whatsoever in this town beyond what people give you as a courtesy due to your rank in Eberia. A courtesy that you will find waning the more you continue to overstep your authority.”
“Overstep myself?” Stanton seethed in between clenched teeth, his eyes widening in anger. “You’re the one overstepping, Lyrian. You forget that my house owns Aldford, and I am here as its representative, without its investment this town wouldn’t have ever even existed!”
“And without us, Aldford would have been raided by goblins, or destroyed by a horde of spiders, or captured by an army of Adventurers, or razed to the ground by a Nafarrian Slave King!” I retorted, holding my fingers up in the air as I counted each event. “Your House may have brought Aldford into existence with gold, but we paid for it in blood!”
“Your diligence in defending Aldford is appreciated,” Stanton growled, his tone indicating the exact opposite. “But your actions buy you no claim to the town over House Denarius’s.”
Legacy of the Fallen Page 24