2519 Underground Fortress (Part 1)



Every time Lith made a mistake, the Rezar would accumulate the missed air bubbles around Lith's mouth and nose, forming a cushion that helped him catch his breath and stop his coughing fit.

'Dammit, moving through the earth is much harder than swimming underwater like the merfolk taught me.' Lith thought. 'Moving works almost the same but breathing is an entirely different matter.

'Merfolk have gills that allow them to extract oxygen from water and could pass me as much air as I needed just by taking deeper breaths than usual. Underground there is no air, instead, and Nalrond has to keep a low-pressure area to draw oxygen from above and then split it between us.

'We are akin to two divers with only one oxygen tank so we can't waste any. In his Rezar form, Nalrond can hold his breath for a long while but he still needs to breathe just like me.

'What's even worse is that underwater I could still see via Solus' senses and Life Vision. Algae, fish, and marine wildlife were all visible to me and gave me a sense of direction.

'Down here there's nothing but a few insects and without Solus, all I see is an endless blackness. We have been moving for just a few minutes and I already have no idea how deep we are and how far we've moved from our starting point.

'If not for the funnel that provides us air from the surface acting as a beacon, I wouldn't even be able to tell the up from down.' The experience was truly claustrophobic and there was no indicator of the passing of time or changing of their position.

Lith could only keep the Rezar's hand tight and trust him with his life, something that wasn't in his chords at all. Nalrond could feel the tension in the Tiamat's heartbeat so he would share his Earth Vision from time to time to give Lith an estimate of their speed and direction.

The Rezar couldn't share his senses for long due to the mana poisoning that too much information passing through the mind link would cause and because he needed his focus. The deeper they went, the longer the mud funnel became and the longer it took the air bubbles to reach them.

Nalrond had to balance their descent speed with that of the air supply to make sure that Lith could breathe regularly. It was a demanding task that required his full attention and occasionally, when they moved below a sudden rise in the outside ground, to take a stop until the air flow stabilized.

After an undefined amount of time, something appeared on the fringes of Life Vision. It was a simple dot of light but so luminous that it pierced through the absolute darkness and finally gave Lith a glimpse of their destination.

The light grew in size and brightness as the came closer until it was like staring in the sun. The Eyes of Menadion caught the vigorous flow of a mana geyser worthy of a crystal mine that was focused and captured by the underground star.

Small beams of energy escaped its pull but they would be fragmented and absorbed by the ground as they moved up so nothing reached the surface.

'Do you want me to go around whatever this is or can you do your thing from here?' Nalrond asked.

Lith used the Eyes of Menadion to scan the underground complex and measure its size.

The artifact reported that the array field exceeded the range of its scanning abilities and that there was no trace of the tunnel that Solus had shown him. 

'Dammit, a complete mapping of the surface would take more time than Solus had left.' Lith replied. 'One place is as good as any other, but I can use some help. Can you take the strain from the Eyes and give me a hand or would it screw up your focus?'

'We can try.' Now that they had stopped moving, the mud funnel was stable and could draw oxygen faster. Nalrond waited for a small stash of bubbles to form before signaling Lith to pass him a Monocle.

The number and the power of the arrays in front of them was overwhelming and so was the sensory load that the Monocles put on Lith's and Nalrond's brains. They suddenly suffered from a splitting headache and their eyes teared up from the pain.

'What's wrong with the Eyes? It's never been like this.' The Rezar gritted his teeth, almost losing control over his bloodline abilities several times.

'That's because you never used them to stare at something of this magnitude and because Solus is always with me. We are splitting between us what usually we process in four.' Lith replied.

'Four?' Nalrond echoed.

'You, me, Solus, and the tower core. We are missing that as well since she has kept the stone ring.'

'Is there anything you can do to ease the pressure? I feel like I'm going insane!' The mind link with the artifact flooded Nalrond's head with information about the runes that comprised the countless arrays and their purpose.

Walls of text made of light flashed in front of his eyes, filled with many words he didn't understand due to his limited experience with high-level Warden magic. To make matters even worse, in the right corner of his vision, there was the scan progression meter.

It was still at 0% and by the time it reached 1%, hours seemed to have passed and his nose started to bleed.

'Hold on. I'm going to try something.' Lith conjured the Hands of Menadion as well and used them to draw in the world energy that escaped the arrays. 'I wish I could drain the underground complex a bit, but I have no idea of what kind of security measure they have. Not yet.'

He sent the extra world energy to the Eyes, hoping to strengthen its bond with the tower and re-establish the connection with Solus or at least with the artifact's power core.

After a few painstaking seconds that seemed to last forever, something clicked inside the Eyes and part of the burden was suddenly lifted. Lith could now perceive the tower's presence but the mind link with Solus was still jammed by static.

'Whatever you did, it worked! I feel much better now.' The Rezar's joy didn't last long.

The mental burden was still crippling and the scan progression was at a whopping 2%.

'Please, tell me that we can take a break without losing the data we acquired so far.' Nalrond voice was almost cracked under the pain from working the mud funnel despite the unrelenting fire in his brain.

'Yes, we can.' Lith's answer made him sigh in relief. 'Hold on, I'm going to lighten the load by a lot.'

'When?'

'Soon.'

'Define soon.'

'Before Quylla's marriage.'

At that point, the Rezar unleashed all of his fury in an unrelenting stream of swear words addressed to Lith, Menadion, and every single blood relative they had, questioning their morality in the choice of mating partners.

Lith silenced the mind link, focusing instead on the arrays in front of them in order to determine the weak spot of the formation.