Unbound

Chapter Eight Hundred And Thirty Nine – 839

Zara studied the statues. Each one was a work of art. The mastery of form was evident in the clean lines of their limbs and the realistic drape of their robes beneath the armor. Save for its bone-white coloration, the armor could have very well been metal, so convincing was its texturing. But beautiful art or no, what truly captured her attention were the details upon each of their backs.

Embedded in the backs of every statue were a series of Belais crystals. They formed shapes that expanded in concentric circles down the length of what would be their spines, and each one shone with a deep pinkish-purple light. Belais's crystals were truly a mystery to her and to everyone else on the Continent. The composition of them had long been debated, but none had ever been able to isolate their details, let alone recreate them.

Tern grumbled, lowering his glasses as he stepped away from one of the statues. "If only I could figure these out," It had been one of his great goals to recreate a Belais' crystal, and one of his few failures. "They're such excellent repositories of power. If we could only replicate them, they would make our Manaships a hundred times more efficient."

Zara nodded. She'd heard the complaint before. There were a few golden goals when it came to the technology of the ancients, and recreating their power storage was high upon that list.

Without warning, a faint humming emanated through the stone at her feet. It was different than before, and Zara glanced toward the central glyph. It lit up just as the lift began to descend.

"I thought we were on the bottom level," Elowen said, turning away from another statue. "How are we going any further?"

Alister brought up the directory. It manifested from one of the statue's backs, showing to all of them a visual representation of layers one through seven, as well as their own relative location. The blip that represented them was descending well beyond the marking for the seventh.

"I suppose we're about to find out," he said.

Broken crystals surrounded them, forming a tube that the platform dropped between. Pieces of it were shattered, as if damaged in a great battle, and Zara felt the entire thing groan slightly with increasing regularity. It held, thankfully, but it set her on edge. The fighting above had ceased after that last terrible roar, but none of them knew what truly laid out beyond the platform’s barrier. Eventually, however, the lift slowed, and the glyph at the center shimmered before pulsing three times.

Zara studied it. "Harmonics, something has happened.”

Guests Of The Warden.

Please Step Off The Lift.

The ward around them flickered before fading away entirely. Everyone aboard traded cautious looks.

The Warden Has Made His Choice.

All Guests Are Safe.

"I suppose that's as much assurance as we can expect," Zara muttered.

She stepped to the edge of the platform. Just beyond was a raised pathway that ran straight into the dark. It was made of the same bone-white stone that everything else had been made of, though this was inlaid with a patterned edge of gold. It was easily wide enough for ten people to walk across it, arms outstretched, and still have room for more. She could see no more than twenty strides away before the shadows consumed it.

Still, no learning comes without risk.

Zara stepped off the platform and onto the path. The moment her heel touched the bone-white stone, the edging gleamed. Sigils came to life, picked out in various hues that manifested Mana constructs, only a fingerspan from its surface. Light welled outward, traveling along the entire length of the pathway and illuminating at least several hundred strides of uninterrupted stone. Nothing else, however, was visible. Just the velvet dark.

"Grandmaster, look! The illumination construct is similar to Enna's Spiral.”

Zara turned around to find Elowen once again bent low over the edges of the pathway, her thick fingers hovering above the golden inlay.

"I see it," Tern said. "She derived her works from the study of ruins, but was unsure of their provenance. It seems they were Nymean."

"There are hooks here, though," Alister pointed out, "every span or so. Enna’s Spiral was an orbital pathway for glyphs to propagate across a surface. But what do these accomplish?"

Atar reached out a pale grey hand and twisted his fingers. Suddenly, the light spread, illuminating secondary pathways that had been all but invisible. ᚱaɴоΒЁṧ

"They're nodes," he said, "designed to keep the arrays separate until accessed. In this case, they activated wards against sight and sound."

The fire mage blinked. "Excellent. I earned a level in my sigaldry Skill."

To either side of them were further straight pathways, each leading off at least a hundred strides before terminating at large hexagonal roundabouts. Rising up from around them, now brightly lit, were elaborate structures made of soaring curves and graceful arches. Fluid patterns were shaped into the bone-white stone where metal and gemstones had been worked into the matrix of the rock itself. Trees dangled artfully from cornices, flowers only just budding before doorways of delicately shaped gold.

"Felix!" Zara cried out.

A rippled cocoon encased the man, freezing him in place for a single horrible heartbeat—before it shattered. Mana burst outward, shards of power hurled away from the altar and Felix's gasping form. Zara summoned her Skill, erecting a wall of water, but before they reached her, the shards were pulled back.

Back into the Chalice itself.

The wind died, the light faded, and the lot of them were left with a deep, resounding quiet. Atar rubbed at his ears. "Bloody ruin, Felix! That just about popped my eardrums."

"My ears are still ringing," Alister said a bit too loudly. He shook his head. "Anyone have a Healing Potion left?"

"Take it," Atar pressed the bottle into his boyfriend's hand. "Just stop yelling."

"What?"

Zara ignored them, focusing instead on the Unbound before her. He still stood at the altar, but she was surprised to see disappointment etched across his face. "Was there an issue? Is the Chalice bound to you now?"

"Huh? Oh, that wasn't a binding." He held up the Chalice. It was still shifting between materials, though its hexagonal shape remained constant. "This thing was still connected to the Primordial of Tenebrous Aeon...or it was bound to the Chalice. It's kind of hazy on the difference. Either way, I had to remove the binding before I could access it."

He swiped his hand, and a blue window rotated into Zara's view.

The Tenebrous Aeon Has Reliquinshed Its Hold Over The Wellspring Chalice.

ERROR!

The Wellspring Chalice Cannot Be Bound At This Time!

Below that, a series of numbers was displayed, and they slowly ticked downward.

"What is this?"

"That's a timer for a week-long cool-down."

Zara pursed her lips, a spike of annoyance pushing through her control. "I suppose it is to be expected with an artifact as powerful as this."

"I guess." Felix sighed. "I really wanted to find out what the first Set Effect was." He hefted the cup, which was easily twice the size of any normal drinking vessel. "At least it's lighter now, for some reason."

"I would guess that it no longer acts as an anchor for this place," Zara mused, gesturing to the structures around them. "The potency of such a thing would make anything heavy to bear. Do you hear that?"

Felix paused. "No?"

"Precisely. The resonance has ceased, which means the stalwart protections of this place have likely vanished. Unbinding that artifact has effectively rendered this prison useless."

Felix chewed his lip. "Useless, huh?"

Zara watched the man, suddenly wary. He bore an expression she'd long associated with...unexpected revelations. "What are you thinking?"

He grinned. "Just something a monster put in my head. I think it’d be unfair to take this cup without leaving something in its place."

He reached into a pouch in his jacket and extracted an object the size of his palm. It was coated in a thick, fibrous shell, and it all but sucked in the ambient Mana around them.

Zara smiled, joy flitting through her caution. "A Seed of Remembered Light."

Felix tossed it in the air before catching it. "We’re gonna need a lotta dirt.”