Unbound

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.

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.

"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.

"Homes?" Elowen said, confusion evident in her voice. "I thought this was a prison."

"As did I, my dear." Tern peered at the nearest structure. "Zara, do you hear that?"

She did. "Harmonic resonance, similar to what we experienced on the lift. The houses, they're transmitting a vibration through their structures."

Atar tossed his head, clearing his white hair from his grey face. "To what end?"

"What does a house do?” Alister asked. “It shelters."

The fourth mage flipped a finger beyond the pathway, and it transmitted across the air as if he'd impacted liquid light. It was nigh invisible, except where it rippled, releasing an ascending glissando that caressed Zara's senses like the hand of a gentle giant. She understood. The houses were constructs meant to amplify the shielding within the crystalline cells. Under the light of the revealed pathways, however, she saw that most crystals were gone now. So what was the point of them? And where was all this resonance coming from?

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She turned back toward the center pathway. "I believe there are answers in this direction.” She began to walk. "Atar, illuminate the other pathways as we go. I would like to see more of what this Wellspring has to offer."

"A good idea," he agreed.

As they walked, the golden illumination spread, revealing the chasm walls. They were broken and riddled with deep caverns in place of the green-gold crystals that had once grown from them. Before she’d thought many of the crystals had been eradicated, but now she saw that there wasn't so much as a shard left of any of them. Zara sniffed. The scent of beasts had all but faded. Now it smelled almost fresh and somehow fragrant, like freshly tilled earth steeped in spices.

As they walked, however, they saw more than just empty chasm walls. A sprawling expanse of complicated ruins surrounded them, spreading along the pathways in increasingly complicated arrangements. They were imposing structures with architecture of looping swirls that were carved with exacting precision. The resonance grew stronger as they moved, and it was clear that these, too, were amplifiers. And the power running through them was coming from the large hexagonal platform ahead of them. A platform where she spotted a man in a black coat, pale tunic, and simple green trousers.

Felix.

He waved at them all. Zara allowed herself a sigh of relief before walking onward, and the others followed close behind. Their steps were muffled, the clop of her heels nearly as silent as if she trod upon a grassy meadow. The hexagonal platform grew rapidly, detailed now with a fractal pattern that reminded her of a territorial seal. But in the center was a recessed pit. Surrounded by steps inscribed with ancient sigildry, it was a beacon in the dark, and Felix stood at its center.

As did a wide altar of some kind. Sharp obelisks stood at nine spots around it, each carved with innumerable tiny sigils. Magic flowed through them, strong enough for anyone to see it.

"What is that?" Darius asked, pointing atop the altar.

Felix stood before a small cup that had been set at the very center of the altar. It was made of stone, or perhaps metal, or wood. The exact material seemed to change whenever Zara blinked. Designs were inscribed in its hexagonal sides and along its stem and base, but they shifted constantly, as if the object couldn't quite decide what it was.

"Another piece of the Empyrean Regalia?" Zara guessed, taking a step down into the pit. "It was here all along?"

Felix nodded. "It's called the Wellspring Chalice, after all. I hoped it was here, but honestly I wasn’t sure." He leaned over the altar, not quite touching the sigils that shone atop of it. "The last of the Kept was guarding it. A Primordial so powerful that I’m honestly unsure how the Nym managed to capture it.”

Zara could feel the power radiating from the cup before them. It sang, a vibration so refined that it took her several heartbeats to realize it was mingling with the protective resonances of the ruins around them.

"It was used to hold the prisoners here.”

“A keystone, yeah. My Warden's Authority tells me that this entire prison was designed around it, powered by it. Now, with all the Kept gone and the Wellspring emptied, I should be able to do this."

He grasped the Chalice around the stem and lifted it. The rings of sigaldry around the altar flickered twice, then went dull, their circuit broken. Felix grunted in effort as he raised the Chalice high.

"Hoo boy, that's heavy."

A groaning bass drum thundered across the chasm, bouncing off the buildings around them in a fury of sound. Wind rose up as if driven by that beat, whipping Zara's robes around her so violently she had to put effort into holding them close. The other mages were little different, driving Alister to erect barriers around them all.

Felix looked up, clearly reading a notification before swiping it closed.

"Yes!" Felix shouted above the wind, and the Chalice in his hands lit up like the sun.

Power spun out from the earthen cup, first in waves of vapor, then in thickened streams of liquid. They rushed around Felix, forming a small cyclone that surrounded him and the altar, weaving between those nine obelisks, as if forming a basket with him at its center. It blocked him from Zara's sight, the power opaque, before the Mana turned crystalline.

"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.”

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