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Chapter 598: Placing Trust in the Dead

Leon twisted and turned through another teleportation tunnel until he landed on solid ground so suddenly that he immediately lost his balance and fell on his ass.

With a grunt of surprise, he quickly oriented himself with the dark place he now found himself in and pushed himself to his feet.

Once again, he found himself alone in a dark cave, but unlike after being pushed into the pit by Jormun, this cave was much, much larger. It was just as empty, though—or so it first appeared.

[You all right, boy?] the Thunderbird thundered into Leon’s mind.

“Yeah,” he instinctively responded out loud as he turned in place as he took in everything that he could see and sense. “What happened?”

[It appears that the enchantment that you activated lacked a target, so it simply grabbed you instead,] Nestor explained. [Hard to really say for sure without actually being to see what happened, but I would hazard a guess and say that you’d have to pluck that string of power in a different way than you did to designate a target, and without a target, the enchantment was designed to teleport the user. Pretty standard design, to be honest.]

“Makes sense,” Leon whispered. “Kind of hard to wrap my head around it without being able to see the runes and know what they’re doing.”

[And such is just one of the many reasons why the ancient runes are hardly used anymore,] Nestor replied. [Though, you’d do well to study them, they’re far more powerful than modern runes if used correctly…]

“I think you’ve made that abundantly clear already,” Leon growled, his mind quickly turning back to the events at Nestor’s lab. Nestor wisely stopped talking, and Leon turned his attention back to the cavern he now found himself in.

The cavern was shaped like a tall cylinder, and he stood in the center, with all the black stone walls about two hundred feet away, and so smooth that they could only have been created, not formed naturally. The ceiling, meanwhile, stretched so far above him that not even with his magic senses could he see it. He took a few seconds to inspect the walls both nearer to the ground and higher up with his magic senses, but it soon became clear that they were bereft of any details that might catch his eye.

The floor, however, was where his interest was captured.

The black volcanic stone didn’t immediately make it apparent, but there were shallow grooves carved into the floor by obviously magical means—they were too even and precisely carved to have been done by hand or nature. As Leon bathed the area in his magic senses, he quickly realized that he stood in the center of a large array of several huge, terribly intricate enchantments, each one made up of thousands of runes. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make much sense of them, for they were mostly made of more ancient runes. The modern runes that made up part of the enchantment array were almost entirely relegated to the outer edge of the room.

“What is all this?” he asked aloud. He felt Nestor’s own magic senses project out of him, though the dead man’s range was awful. He didn’t feel it, but he assumed the Thunderbird was doing the same and inspecting the area around him.

[It’s not a training center,] Nestor observed. [I can’t see the whole thing, but I can also rule out anything designed for war, defense, or manufacturing.]

The Thunderbird was silent, and with not much else to do, Leon crouched down and caught his breath. He’d told the Thunderbird he was fine, but that was mostly just physically. He still couldn’t contact Maia, and the anxiety was starting to get to him. He stood back up after taking a few deep breaths, though—he needed to get to her and the others, and crying on the ground over his mistakes and failures wasn’t going to make that any easier.

Turning his attention back to the few parts of the array that weren’t made of ancient runes, he noticed something right away.

[There’s a lot of light runes here,] he observed, going back to speaking with his soul realm residents mentally. [Maybe this place was built for medical purposes?]

[Light runes aren’t just used for medical purposes,] Nestor said. [When used by a warrior, light can be a dangerous weapon, and it can greatly heighten the speed of its user. Light is also a great defensive option, if you know how to use it. To heal is only one narrow aspect of its applications, and even then, it’s just an offshoot of what light magic truly excels in: interacting with the body.]

[How do you mean?] Leon asked, thinking he understood but asking for clarification anyway.

[You know that darkness magic is unparalleled when it comes to interacting with the mind, correct?] Nestor asked, taking on a didactic tone.

[I’m well aware of that, yes,] Leon replied with little patience in his voice.

[There’re no opposites when it comes to the magical elements, but in this case, I think that saying that light is the opposite of darkness is not unwarranted,] Nestor lectured. [Just as darkness can influence the mind, light magic can influence the body in all kinds of ways, not just with healing magic.]

[Interesting,] Leon conceded, [but that hardly narrows down what these enchantments are used for…] His tone was more bitter about the situation than accusatory against Nestor, but the dead man got defensive anyway.

[Without being able to see it, there’s not much more I can do,] Nestor said.

[You’re not leaving my soul realm,] Leon shot back.

[Wasn’t asking to, just pointing out my limitations!]

Suddenly, the Thunderbird spoke, and the other two duly shut their mouths.

[This is blood magic,] she murmured, though her inhuman voice still resonated within Leon like the rumbling of distant thunder. [I’d also say this is a three-dimensional enchantment, the whole thing is just powered down right now. If it were active, then there’d likely be runes floating through the air. These enchantments on the ground are little more than anchors and channels for magic power.]

[Is there a way to turn it on?] Leon asked.

[You want to turn on a mysterious enchantment that does who-knows-what and is strongly connected to light magic?] Nestor asked in alarm. [Unwise.]

Leon remembered that Nestor originally died due to poisoning by light magic, but he felt that was different—he wasn’t messing around with a chunk of rock that had been filled with divine power.

[There’s nothing else here!] Leon protested as he raised his arms to futilely gesture at the walls. [I don’t have my flight suit, and this is all that’s here! No doors! No ladders! No other enchantments or anything else magical that I can see! So, yes, I’d like to activate this and see what it does and if it can get me back to my people and out of this hole.]

When he was done, he took a deep breath. Failures and time spent away from his friends and family while a watery hell was likely being released on the surface was testing the limits of his patience. He was keeping himself in check as much as he could, but his heart raced so fast that he could hear the blood pumping through his head as clear as day.

[All right, all right, no need to jump down by throat,] Nestor muttered. [I’d be willing to bet that something like this is self-powered, so you’re not going to find a power source—you are the power source.]

[So I should be able to just activate it myself?] Leon asked.

The Thunderbird answered, cutting Nestor off just as he was about to respond.

[This thing… It looks rather familiar.]

She went silent for a long moment, during which neither Leon nor Nestor spoke a word.

When she spoke again, she said, [Leon, I don’t think this is a dangerous thing, but I would still highly advise caution when dealing with it. I can’t sense anything else in your vicinity that can help, but such a thing as this was likely built by the Primal God—I can see traces of its power in the stone. This place… was not built for you. Do what you must… but use caution.]

Leon gravely nodded, taking the Thunderbird’s words to heart.

[In that case,] he replied, [I’ll try whatever I can, first.]

He was a seventh-tier mage, there had to be something else he could do. The walls were too smooth to climb, but maybe he could use his strength to carve handholds. He instinctively flexed his right hand, calling upon his family’s blade, but when it didn’t appear out of his soul realm, his mood instantly dropped a notch. Still, he quickly ran over to the wall and felt around.

Unfortunately, the stone was hard and dense; he felt like he might be able to punch and kick and blast a few good handholds from the ground, but the ceiling was more than twenty miles away—and for all he knew, it could be much more than that—and he wouldn’t have the space or the leverage to do that further up. Climbing was out; he’d need another way.

He returned to the center of the room and stared directly up, his seventh-tier eyes straining to see anything in the gloom. The place wasn’t completely pitch black, so there had to be light coming from somewhere… Unfortunately, he couldn’t see anything; there were no visible light sources, despite the dim light that was undeniably present.

Leon conjured a ball of fire into his hand. He did his best to make sure that he packed it with enough power so that it would burn for a long time, and then used as much of his strength as he dared in such an enclosed and subterranean place to fire it straight into the air.

He watched it rise like a ball of molten stone fired from a Flame Lance, casting a great deal of light into the cavern. Not as much as a flare would’ve, but even with his bow, a flare would’ve only been able to travel a mile at most up the shaft. His fireball rose higher, and higher, and higher, and higher. He watched it until it became little more than a tiny speck far, far above him, shining like the Nexus in the night sky.

And then it winked out, and Leon had only learned that the shaft was almost unfathomably tall.

Still, he decided to try one last thing, and only if that failed would he try the enchantment on the floor.

Leon gathered his magic power, preparing himself to use magic that he’d only used on rare occasions; his magic power blew through his body like an unceasing gust of wind, and his element-less power became that of wind magic. Wind then began to gather around his legs, rising in a small cyclone in the same manner that Leon remembered Nestor had used when his magic body invaded Leon’s soul realm. Leon doubted his ability to fly without Anzu or his flight suit, but he’d give it a try in any way he could.

Leon packed his legs with power and jumped. He easily cleared a hundred feet and kept going, while at the same time, he pushed his meager skill in wind magic to the limit as he tried to keep himself not only aloft, but also rising.

For a moment, he thought it might work; he rose up quite high, and he could feel his wind magic giving him a boost, but then he began to slow down, and then when he wasn’t able to properly adjust his wind magic, he found himself suddenly being knocked off-kilter and spinning through the air until he fell back down to the cavern floor.

Being a seventh-tier mage, the only thing hurt on impact was his pride, and for the first time, he was glad Xaphan wasn’t with him. He didn’t think he’d ever hear the end of the demon’s mocking if he’d seen Leon’s disastrous attempt to fly unaided, especially since Xaphan had demonstrated that very power during his fight with the angel.

‘Xaphan…’ Leon thought as he pushed himself back to his feet, brushed himself off, and glanced upwards. ‘Yet another reason to get out of here as soon as possible…’ He was sure that Xaphan had beaten his feathered opponent, but his need to get out of this place only grew as he thought about his demonic partner still fighting while he was down in this abyssal pit screwing around with wind magic trying to fly.

Still, Leon gave his flight idea three more tries before he abandoned it—two with wind magic before it became clear that he had neither the power yet to keep himself aloft with anything resembling control, and once more with fire magic, with the hope that its explosive power would be the key he needed.

He got some good experience from the attempts, but other than that, his only reward was a few bumps and bruises and redoubled remorse for letting that female fire mage destroy his flight suit. He hadn’t the time or the materials to try and repair it, let alone create a new one, but he resolved to make that a priority once he got out of this place.

If he could get out of this place.

[See anything new?] Leon asked his soul realm residents as he went back to the center of the cavern, feeling slightly dejected at his failed attempts, though given how the day had gone, not too surprised that he’d failed.

[Nothing on my end,] Nestor said, [but our Ancestor flew off a little while ago, said she’d be right back.]

[Just flew off? Without any other explanation?] Leon asked.

[That’s right,] Nestor confirmed, sounding just as confused as Leon did.

Leon paused a moment as he thought about. The only thing he could think of that the Thunderbird would need to fly out for was the Great Black Dragon—then again, he also wasn’t sure what the appeal of being out in the Mists of Chaos was, so maybe there was something else out there that needed seeing to. Either way, a quick scan of his soul realm showed Nestor to be correct: there was no Thunderbird in sight.

[I guess she’ll come back when she feels like it,] Leon said with some bitter resignation. [That just leaves what to do about this damn thing.]

[I’ll help if I’m able,] Nestor offered, though given his physical situation, Leon knew it to be little more than an empty offer.

Still, he was grateful, and he thanked the dead man, then knelt down in the center of the great enchantment array.

He reached out with his power and tentatively let it begin to interact with the runes inscribed upon the floor. However, despite his caution, as soon as his power began to interact with the runes, the response was immediate and dramatic. The thousands of runes began to glow with power and sucked up every last spark of power that Leon released from his body.

Leon panicked a bit, not expecting that immediate and strong of a reaction, and cut off the flow of his power. However, before he did, he could see the walls vanishing into pitch-black darkness magic, and additional runes forming in the air above him.

[Looks like our Ancestor was right on the money,] Leon said to Nestor as the cavern quickly returned to normal as the magic in the runes faded.

[I saw,] Nestor whispered. [I wasn’t able to see much, but I’d say this is definitely the work of more ancient runes.]

[Did you see anything dangerous?] Leon asked. [Anything that might shed more light onto this thing’s purpose?]

[No,] Nestor admitted.

Leon frowned, but there was no other way out of this place that he could see, and his need to return to Maia and the others only continued to grow. He supposed he could wait for the Thunderbird to return, but he still couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that time was of the essence. If that brief update he’d received from Maia had been accurate and the Legion fleet had been ravaged by Jormun in the form of a massive, terribly powerful serpent…

Leon began to reach out with his magic power again, not willing to wait any longer. He continued to do so with great caution, and he held back considerably, but his magic power began to flow into the enchantments again. Once more, the countless runes began to glow with arcane light, and the walls were covered in darkness. In only a matter of seconds, the walls had given way to an abyssal darkness that had Leon almost feeling like he was standing on a lone stone platform hovering in a featureless black void, not dissimilar to a spatial tunnel, though without the oppressive and stifling atmosphere.

A moment later, countless thousands, perhaps millions, more runes began to take shape out of light in the air. As they winked into existence, Leon found himself marveling at the scale of the enchantment he was seeing, and how these runes formed great arcs of light connecting parts of the enchantment on the ground and pushing the entire enchantment array into the third dimension and proving the Thunderbird almost prophetic with her analysis.

This time, as the walls faded away into darkness, causing it to seem like he was standing upon a relatively small stone platform in the center of a black void, Leon quickly glanced at the runes on the ground and noticed something new there: a familiar bronze hammer that was so large as to be unwieldy in the hands of a mortal; an onyx bracelet; and a leatherbound book with robust sealing enchantments etched into its cover.

‘Jormun’s things,’ Leon thought, and he greedily reached out with his magic and stuffed them all into his soul realm.

If he needed any proof that this was where Jormun had been sent, then this was it.

He cut off the flow of his power once more, and he watched as the titanic enchantment scheme quickly faded and the cavern once more returned to normal, leaving Leon staring disbelieving at the floor where those three items had just been.

“Did that… was that real?” he wondered aloud.

[Seems like it was,] Nestor replied. [I guess that pirate beat you here, and if that guess is true…]

[Then I think we might know what this enchantment is designed to do,] Leon finished. Jormun had been human before falling into the pit, and now, he was apparently a gigantic serpent. Something happened here that turned from the former into the latter, and it was no great stretch of the imagination for Leon to guess that the blood magic enchantment array with hundreds of light runes was the reason for that change.

But if that were also true, then this might not be a real exit. Jormun had found some way to ascend back to the surface, but that wasn’t necessarily the work of the enchantment array.

Nestor was silent for a long moment, and Leon didn’t say anything else, either. After several long seconds, though, Nestor said, [This enchantment is most definitely blood magic, our Ancestor’s keen eyes didn’t misread the signs. This thing is designed to interact somehow with people like us—or, I suppose, like you, given that I now longer have a body. It stimulates power within the blood, but I can’t say if it’s even compatible with you. It looks exceptionally complex, and things like these are often tailored to specific physiology.]

[Our Ancestor said that it was safe for me to use…] Leon murmured, but he also remembered when he’d been told that the visions and instincts he’d been feeling since arriving at the Serpentine Isles was probably because of something—the Primal God, he now reasoned—had been stimulating his blood.

Even if this enchantment could stimulate his blood, that didn’t make it a good thing.

[I would hesitantly agree,] Nestor said, the hesitation he claimed he felt practically dripping from his voice and making Leon feel quite uneasy.

[Then I should continue?] Leon asked, though he already knew he was going to do so anyway. Despite the risks, his situation hadn’t otherwise changed—he still needed to get the hells out of this place by any means he could, and this enchantment was the only thing around that had even a sliver of promise at doing so for him.

He really didn’t want to activate this enchantment, but the thought of Maia up top battling a giant serpent, the thought of Anzu at her side, and the thought of him stuck down here in this abyss was convincing him to place his trust in the Thunderbird and Nestor’s speculation that this wasn’t a dangerous enchantment.

[I’m not going to make a recommendation,] Nestor said with almost aggressive resignation. Leon could almost see him backing away with his head bowed, eyes closed, and hands raised as if he were showing that he wasn’t participating in whatever was going on here. [Our Ancestor told you to do what you had to do, and as far as I’m concerned, you need no other advice.]

[You’re a truly opinionated man,] Leon drily stated. [I’m glad to see your passion and expertise shining through.]

[Being an expert on enchantments doesn’t make me the font of all knowledge on them, especially when they grow this complex!] Nestor shot back. [I can’t even see the whole damn thing! Something like this, designed for blood magic by a Primal God, is something that I’d need time we don’t have to examine it and get a good idea of what it’s supposed to do!]

Leon sighed, all the excitement at finding Jormun’s hammer and the other two objects having faded. [Well, it hardly matters; I don’t think I can power this thing on my own. It hardly seemed close to being fully powered the last time, and I poured a lot of my power into it. If I push this too hard, and it leaves me too drained to fight…]

[You have alternatives,] Nestor replied.

Leon was about to argue back that he didn’t, until he realized what Nestor was talking about. And he wasn’t happy about it at all. He’d resolved to never use it, to get rid of it. It was a relic of his Clan that had been put to terrible purposes and could be an awful crutch that might stymie his growth.

Leon quickly located the power crystal he’d taken from Nestor’s lab, still stored in his soul realm in an almost forgotten location within his vault. It wasn’t too big, perhaps about the same size as both of his legs put side-by-side; glowing a faint yellow-white, indicating it was still flush with power.

But Leon bit his tongue on his instinctive rejection of Nestor’s idea. He had his pride and his desire to do things on his own, but in the past couple months, he couldn’t deny that maybe his initial rejection of his Clan after his possession by Nestor was a little overzealous. He didn’t want that power crystal to become a crutch, but if he could gain some benefit from it in this situation, letting it open a possible route to free him from this place to return to his people, then letting his pride demand that he not use it was a little foolish.

Without a word, Leon closed his eyes in distaste as he conjured the power crystal from his soul realm.

Anything else he might have wanted to do or ask Nestor was pushed out of his mind as soon as the power crystal touched the stone floor, for the enchantment array suddenly activated with a speed that it hadn’t when Leon had been powering it; the thousands of runes on the ground instantly began glowing, the walls vanished without a trace as darkness magic consumed them, and enormous bands of light appeared above Leon, reforming the gigantic array of modern runes in the air, far more than had ever appeared while Leon was using his own power for the enchantment array. He’d intended to try and activate the enchantment as slowly as he could, and to remove the crystal if he noticed anything strange, but the enchantment array simply sucked down the crystal’s power too quickly.

The power crystal at his feet sputtered, and in less than a second, its internal light cooled to a duller yellow-orange, indicating a massive drop in contained power, and one that wasn’t even close to being done, yet. As more and more runes of multi-colored light flashed into existence above him, Leon watched the power crystal drop even more to a fuller orange, and then to a dark red.

He couldn’t watch further, for he started getting a strange feeling in his body as the enchantment started to finally interact with him. He had no idea what was going to happen, and he trusted Nestor and the Thunderbird when they said that this probably wasn’t dangerous, but he couldn’t help but feel significant fear at what was going to happen.

He was expecting a teleportation portal to eventually appear, at which point he’d leap through it without so much as a glance backward. But none appeared, and he could only hope with more and more of his being that Nestor and the Thunderbird weren’t wrong in assessing the danger of this enchantment.

It started with some itchiness in his skin, which he hardly noticed until it had spread across his entire body. This itchiness soon became painful, and he watched with horror as his skin started to split open like old leather. This pain then sank deeper into his body, and he felt his organs begin to shift around in his body, and then his bones began to break and twist.

He tried to scream in pain, but his body was soon drained of energy, and he collapsed to the ground, unable to move, or to express his pain at all as the enchantment went to work on his body. His mind was so preoccupied with that pain that he couldn’t regret his choice to activate this enchantment; he couldn’t even notice as brown feathers flecked with gold spots sprouted from the cracks in his skin. He barely realized his chest was expanding beyond the limits of even the most mightily built men, or as his fingers were forcibly retracted into his body, or as his arms were bent, broken, and twisted into new shapes. He didn’t notice his body as a whole rapidly growing and tearing out of his clothes, or his feet erupting from his boots as they were twisted into talons covered in glittering black scales.

He simply felt like he was burning alive, and he couldn’t even scream.

His hair soon fell out, replaced with more black scales. His skull shattered and reformed, becoming more angular and slightly narrowing his vision. His mouth was pushed forward, and hardened into a golden beak that sparkled with silver-blue lightning. The scales that covered his head soon swept down along his rapidly-thickening neck, soon meeting his feathers and seemingly going to war. His scales pushed down over his still-growing shoulders, forcing the feathers to molt, only for those scales to crack and break apart for more feathers to push through. The scales pushed again, but were broken up by feathers before moving past Leon’s rapidly-growing chest.

After several rounds of this, the scales stopped pushing and retreated to his neck, but the feathers that continued to sprout across his body took on a pitch-black hue, losing all the brown and gold that had previously adorned them.

The last thing Leon felt before he lost his human mind to all the pain and the new sensations and instincts that flooded his body was the pain finally spreading to his eyes. He didn’t realize it, but his bright gold eyes had begun to darken to a vibrant red-orange color.