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Chapter 111 - Escaping the Darkness
🕑 Added 2024-09-16 17:00:05 +0000 UTCEmily gives her friends a brief overview of her situation, from her awakening to her attempted brainwashing. She manages to hold in her anger with the help of a comforting squeeze from Juliana as she speaks about Herber’s death once more, but the pitying expressions on her friends’ faces don’t help. Her friends hang on her every word till the end, listening to her in silence until she finishes.
“That’s disgusting!” Dante growls, righteous indignation burning in his gaze.
“It is,” Enzo agrees, anger in his gaze along with a calculating glint. “But do you really need to become an outlaw? Oscar seems interested in scouting you, even if just as an ally, and I’m sure his family will happily take the excuse to destroy the Mandragos and take over their resources.”
Emily pauses for a moment before responding, taking a deep breath and considering her words, months of frozen time having dulled the edges of the truth, making it easier to confront.
“No, I probably don’t have to become an outlaw,” she admits, gazing off into the darkness as she elaborates. “However, I don’t want to stay in The Dome. I want to travel, to explore different magical phenomena, to find strong opponents to fight. I want freedom to progress.”
“You’d have freedom in The Covenant if you got out from the Mandrago’s influence,” Hester points out.
“Yeah! If you receive a family name you’ll be able to do whatever you want while using The Dome as a free trading hub,” Dante adds, his anger bleeding away as Emily shifts to a tone of acceptance and resolution.
“Maybe,” Emily acquiesces with a nod. “But I don’t plan on dealing with this quietly. It wouldn’t satisfy my anger if they just vanished and they have allies who’d probably keep making life difficult for me. I think it’s unlikely even their enemies will be too happy for Modo to lose a fourth circle mage. The idea of dancing through politics sounds like a massive headache to me: I’d rather leave the country, probably even the continent, until I’m strong enough that they wouldn’t even think of bothering me. Besides, there are plenty of other interesting places on the planet for me to explore.”
Her friends consider her words, showing mixed reactions to her plans.
“That said,” Emily continues before anyone else can say anything, a touch of uncertainty creeping into her tone. “I’m still not sure what I’m going to do after going back to Eimdon. I may end up back at The Dome for all I know. But, my main priority is meeting up with Anna again. Everything else can go from there.”
Nobody can argue with her final statement, nodding along with reluctance as an air of melancholy settles over the group.
“Your sister’s safety takes priority,” Ivor signs with respect and understanding, the others nodding along.
“I’d avoid politics too if I were you,” Dante says with a visible shiver.
“Of course you would,” Enzo says, leaping on the chance to lighten the mood a little. “You’d avoid anything you can’t blow up if given the choice.”
There are a few subdued laughs as everyone slowly moves towards their sleeping bags, sensing the end of the conversation and preparing to turn in for the night. After everyone but Emily and Juliana has settled in their sleeping bags, Tom speaks again, breaking the silence of the camp.
“We’ll miss you, you know. The Dome won’t be the same without you,” he says.
“Yeah, and if you ever find yourself near Cairnorm while on the run, you’re welcome to come hide in our family’s museum,” Hester adds, humour in her tone.
“It’s been fun fighting with you,” Dante mumbles, his face already buried in his pillow.
“I hope we meet again eventually,” Enzo says. “It would be a shame not to get to see your magic again.”
A small smile parts Emily’s lips as she listens to the heartfelt words of her friends. A light tapping on the stone floor draws her attention, and she turns her head to see Ivor sitting up in his sleeping bag, staring straight at her.
“It’s been a pleasure. If you ever need help, let me know. I still owe you my life,” he signs seriously, his eyes glistening with tears, surprising Emily.
“Just make sure J stays safe,” Emily signs back with a tearful smile.
“You have my word,” Ivor finishes with a nod before lowering himself down to sleep.
Emily turns back to face the fire, leaning her head against Juliana’s as a comfortable silence settles once more, no more words needed between them. A bubbling warmth fills Emily’s chest as she sits there, touched by her friends’ consideration and feeling a hint of regret at the idea of leaving them.
***
The next morning, they pack up camp and head into the nearby cavern.
“There’s a tunnel under this lake connecting to the upper level,” Emily explains as they pause on the shore, looking out into the pool of dark water. “The current is weak, so we shouldn’t have any trouble going up, and it’s wide enough to fit three people at a time, so we’ll go through together.”
Her friends all give signs of acknowledgement and sit down to start removing their shoes, Juliana glances nervously at Emily as they do, but Emily stops them.
“That won’t be necessary,” she says with a grin, snapping her fingers.
A flood of green and blue runes flows from Emily at her command, wrapping around the group to form a dancing barrier of colour. Tens of twisting lines spring from her feet, connecting the runes in a swirling pattern around them, joining at a single point directly in the centre of the barrier, above Emily.
Everyone shivers as they feel a twisting breeze form, brushing against them and rustling their robes as the runes around them pulse. Water droplets start appearing around them, quickly bending and joining together in a constantly shifting, rotating balloon of water.
“Woah!” Tom exclaims, reaching out to touch the barrier. “Is this another defence spell? Why are you using it now?”
“I call it windpool. It does work as a defensive spell,” Emily excitedly explains, stepping up to the water’s edge and gesturing for her friends to follow. “But it’s only as strong as a second circle spell on that front. The main draw is in its utility.”
She steps forward, out into the water, but her foot doesn’t sink. Instead, it stops against the barrier, allowing Emily to walk along the surface without trouble. Her friends are all shocked by the outcome, eagerly stepping forward to join her on the water.
“This is amazing!” Juliana marvels as they walk to the centre of the lake. “Does it work underwater?”
“That’s the whole point,” Emily responds, gesturing for everyone to stop and controlling the windpool, slowly lowering them below the surface. “We can do our whole journey back up and stay dry!”
As the barrier dips below the surface, the dark water around them mixes with the outer layer, turning into a twisting vortex descending through the lake with them held safely within. The orb of light floating above Emily’s head illuminates the inside of the barrier, only releasing a few twisted beams of light into the water around them.
Juliana quickly buries her face into Emily’s shoulder as they lower into the darkness, while the others look out into the water with interest. Approaching the lakebed, they start to spot glimpses of the looming corpse in the darkness, barely able to discern its outline.
“Is that the titan?” Tom asks, leaning close to the edge of the barrier and squinting, trying to get a clear view.
“Yeah. Wanna see it?” Emily asks, calmly stroking Juliana’s hair.
Tom nods enthusiastically, so Emily conjures a second light and sends it out of the barrier, pouring mana into it to illuminate the water. The forceful burst of light reveals the massive dead beast, sprawled across the lakebed and taking up a majority of it.
“Woah!” Tom exclaims, joined in his wonder by the others as everyone but Emily and Juliana move to the edge of the barrier to admire the dead creature.
“How did you kill it?” Enzo asks after noticing the lack of obvious wounds.
“I shot through its hearts,” Emily responds, narrowing her eyes as she spots a few shifting black masses trying to blend into the corpse. “Like this.”
She quickly unholsters the Spitter, popping out the magazine and sliding in another with a water droplet carved on the side. She raises the gun, aiming at one of the creatures latched to the corpse and flicks it into burst, squeezing the trigger. Three bullets fly out, passing through the barrier and slicing through the water outside. The blue runes delicately engraved into each bullet glow and they barely slow down in the water, gliding forward and punching three holes in the wriggling black mass.
Everyone watches as the small, second circle archite floats down to the riverbed, limp.
“I thought bullets didn’t work underwater,” Dante says with a sceptical glance towards Emily’s gun.
“They don’t normally,” she responds with a smug grin, putting away the gun and ignoring the other archites happily gorging themselves on their brethren’s corpse.
Emily turns her focus to the hole below them, only wide enough for three people, and starts moving her hands, bending the spell around them. The twisting winds gently shift, raising Tom, Hester, Dante, and Enzo above Emily, Juliana, and Ivor, holding them in three tiers on solidified layers of air. Emily ignores the exclamations of her friends and carefully lowers them all into the tunnel, watching ahead to make sure nothing is approaching them from below.
They slowly sink lower without issues. Emily only has to cast a few aqua bolts to remove two archites in their way, and the tunnel soon levels out, allowing them to walk forward again as Emily settles the barrier on the ground, dissipating the solid sheets of air keeping her friends afloat. She glances at her mana as they quietly walk through the tunnel, noting it’s fallen to half thanks to the large expenditure of the barrier.
Juliana removes her solid grasp on Emily as they start walking again, the enclosed walls and roof of the tunnel seeming to help calm her fear. They shift around as they walk, moving Hester to the front to help Emily deal with archites ahead as they push on through the tunnel.
It doesn’t take long for them to clear the path, killing the entire remaining nest and arriving at the sharp upward bend leading to the next layer. Emily shifts the barrier once more, carrying them up in an elevator of wind and water.
They break through the water’s surface, arriving in the light of the sparkling crystals overhead. They move to the shore, stepping onto solid ground and allowing Emily to finally disperse her barrier. A collective sigh is released by the group, glad to be out of the oppressive darkness of the deepest layer.
“Take a break here for a little bit,” Emily says, reaching her hand into a pouch at her belt. “I’m going to mark this tunnel to try to make it easier to find The Abyss if I come back.”
Everyone spreads out in the tunnel. Enzo, Dante, and Ivor position themselves slightly upstream, just in case something attacks them, and Tom and Hester sit against the wall, watching Emily work. Juliana sits down beside Emily, also watching with interest as she pulls out an earth crystal, space crystal, chunk of white iron, and an ingot of black iron.
“Why earth and space?” Juliana asks as Emily forms the black iron into a flat plate.
“To handle mana gathering and location transmission separately,” Emily answers as she makes two sockets from the white iron, fusing them to the black iron plate and starting to draw lines onto the plate with thin beads of white iron. “I’m going to bury this marker in the rock partway down the tunnel so it hopefully won’t move too far from the path down. The earth crystal will help draw mana in through the surrounding rock to keep the space crystal full while it sends out a signal for the receiving space crystal to track.”
She finishes drawing a complicated runic matrix around the plate, covering the top and bottom with a delicate mix of runes and connecting shapes, before dropping both crystals into place. They instantly link to the magic circle, lighting up the white metal with a brown and purple glow.
“There we go,” Emily says, pulling out a space crystal with a dull hue, lacking the usual lustre of the mystic gems. “Now we link them.”
She takes out an engraving knife, gently bringing it to the dull crystal’s surface and carving a detailed set of runes. Everyone falls silent to let her focus as her hand races along the crystal in fast but precise movements, quickly forming a spell on the crystal without shattering it. They all let out a collective sigh of relief as she finishes, everyone understanding the volatility of even a drained mana crystal.
Emily taps the crystal to the marker plate and a small purple strand of mana reaches out, connecting to the crystal and slowly returning its vibrant glow. She holds it in place until the connection breaks itself, then drops the linked crystal into her belt as she stands up.
“I’ll be right back,” she says to her friends before stepping into the water again.
She swims down twenty metres before stopping and floating over to the tunnel’s wall. Placing a palm against the rock, Emily casts a spell to soften the rock before coating her hand in earth mana and pushing it forward, displacing the stone and burrowing into it.
She keeps going for a few minutes, until her arm is shoulder-deep in the wall, before pulling it out. She places the location marker in the back of the small alcove before starting to fill it back in again. Halfway out, Emily pauses again, holding her hand out before herself with a vicious grin.
I don’t want any archite borrowing in to try to find those mana crystals, so let’s add a precaution.
A faint purple mist flows up from her belt, coalescing together to form a small black disc with silver circuits running along the surface. The centre of the disc is a disconnected ring holding a small, white, mana detection crystal and several strands of silver metal. The central ring’s wires don’t connect to the others, twisted a quarter turn out of place.
¯¯¯¯¯
[Mana Mine]
[Rank:] D
[Description:] A proximity-based magical explosive.
[Effect:] Explodes dealing massive damage when a living being’s mana signature comes within a set distance.
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This detonating should scare them off trying to burrow in for the marker for a while at least.
She flips the mine over, revealing a large rotating ring on the back as well, with zero to ten carved around it. She barely turns the indicator on the ring, moving it a tiny amount from zero, setting the mine to go off if something comes within twenty centimetres of it. Then she places the mine in the hole, facing outwards.
Emily turns the front dial counterclockwise, releasing it from a latch inside and setting off a ticking inside as it slowly starts shifting clockwise back into place. She quickly moves the stone back into place, burying the explosive before it has finished priming. After the wall is back to normal, looking identical to when she first swam down, Emily gives a satisfied nod and kicks off, heading back towards the surface.
