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The first was the caves were extensive. Miles upon miles upon miles of stone tunnels, nearly all natural as far as he could tell, spider-webbing deeper and deeper into the plane.

His second problem exacerbated the problems of the first: his magic senses were almost useless for navigation. Illusions riddled the tunnels, fooling his magic senses and trying to turn him around. It often wasn’t until he got fairly close to the illusion that he was able to see it for what it was, meaning that his magic senses had been essentially relegated to a more personal range rather than being able to easily map out the underground. After all, if he couldn’t trust what his magic senses were telling him, then what use were they?

Leon was frustrated, but he clamped down on that with patience. After the first day of wandering the tunnels as systematically as he could, he returned to the surface to speak with Anzu. He’d told his griffin to wait a week, but Leon honestly hadn’t been expecting it to take that long. After that one day, though, Leon started worrying that it might take longer than that, and thus needed to link up with Anzu to hash out a new plan.

They settled on Anzu staying at the top of the Divine Scar for a month, and if Leon needed longer than that, the griffin would return to the Brown Bears for another month. If Leon still hadn’t shown himself by the end of that, Anzu would return home. They both had comm lotuses from Tikos, of course—with some gear made by Leon’s researchers to enhance the flower’s capabilities—but Leon had already tested his and found that it didn’t work that well so far beneath the ground. Or because of the illusions, or the aura of the Iron Needle, or a hundred other reasons he was able to think of off the top of his head. He wasn’t sure which one was the problem, only that his comm lotus, even with the improvements made to its capability, wasn’t working well enough to stay in contact with anyone once back down in the tunnels.

But back down into the tunnels he went anyway once he and Anzu were on the same page. He wasn’t ending his expedition just because it was a little frustrating—to do so would only prove that he was unworthy of wielding the Iron Needle, and with the Thunderbird herself watching his every move, even with her apparent refusal to make so much as a single solitary chirp, he wasn’t going to even entertain the idea of backing down.

So, two days after first venturing down into the rift, Leon found himself still without any idea of where he should be going. He wasn’t entirely lost thanks to a plethora of markings he’d left on the rough walls of the caves as he went, but there were so many tunnels to explore that it was hard to stay oriented regardless.

On the plus side, he hadn’t encountered any more banshees or ice wraiths, though that wasn’t to say his time beneath the earth had been all that peaceful. Every few hours, he’d encounter a larger tunnel or cavern, some even coming close to rivaling the gigantic cavern that housed the graveyard of the Primal Gods beneath the Serpentine Isles in size, and rarely were these larger areas uninhabited.

Huge serpents, their eyes milky white, venom dripping from their exposed fangs and burning holes in the floor. Great black spiders big enough to tear apart a carriage with their chelicerae alone. Even a few troops of apes, their tough bodies covered in strange blue fur, but only tall enough to brush against Leon’s hip when standing fully erect. Strangely, Leon found the apes to be the most problematic to deal with, given their relative strength—most of the apes were sixth and seventh-tier—and strong cooperation between themselves.

However, his proudest kill down in the caverns was a male lion, about the same size as the snow lion he’d killed to awaken his bloodline, but ash-colored and strong in earth magic. The lion seemed to be blind, but he kept an eye on Leon anyway, and with the equivalent of eighth-tier power, Leon actually had to work a little to kill him.

So, as Leon trawled the caves, he also made silent plans to give Elise the lion’s hide to have tailored into something or somethings. Its fur had been the softest Leon had ever felt, and he’d had some trouble even skinning the beast it was so tough.

But above all, Leon was thankful for what he hadn’t yet encountered rather than for the weakness of the creatures he had: any living example of the creature whose skeleton he’d seen earlier, which even now still decorated the cave entrance, and which had been carved into the wall blocking further passage down the Iron Needle’s path. He hadn’t seen any further signs of artificial structures, either, which he wasn’t sure was a good or bad sign.

It wasn’t until the end of the second day, however, that things started to get more interesting than engaging in mindless violence against creatures as sapient as the average tree stump.

He’d been trying to figure out some way to navigate back to the path that the Iron Needle cut into the rock but on the other side of the carved wall, and experimenting with the slight charge that he could feel in the air. There were variances in it, the charge of buried lightning drawing him onward into the tunnels. Unfortunately, simply following the strength of the static-like charge like a game of hot-and-cold—which he felt could only be coming from the Iron Needle—led him to several dead ends.

It was with disappointment in his heart from yet another dead end that he set off on a new path and was immediately confronted with a cavern on the other side of an illusion. The cavern had been blasted to pieces by powerful magic, shattered stone covering the floor, wide cracks swallowing vast piles of rubble, dust falling from rents in the cavern’s ceiling, and slight traces of earth and wind magic still in the air. Most of all, however, was a huge bloodstain nearly covering the far side of the cavern.

The bloodstain was faint and fairly old—nearly a week, by Leon’s estimation—and had been nearly covered by falling dust. However, whatever had made the bloodstain had been dragged down one tunnel, leaving a trail that Leon found easy enough to follow.

The bloodstain didn’t travel far before disappearing—the corpse it came from likely having been picked up or brought into a soul realm, Leon figured—but fortunately, the tunnel it was taken into didn’t fork too many times. When it did, Leon found it easy enough to examine tracks and continue following a trail that had started at the beginning of the bloodstain.

The track was made by some quadrupedal creature with large claws if the scratches in the rocky floor were any indication. By the length of its gait, Leon thought that it was not only about twice as large as Anzu in his griffin form, but had also been moving at a fairly decent clip.

‘Possibly feline,’ Leon had speculated. ‘Wind magic, too, if this slight magical residue in the air came from it and not what it killed. Wind magic seems strange to have in a cave, but a large predator has other methods to secure prey than just magic. Might be fun to fight, though. Maybe social animal if it’s bringing food back? Possibly sapient, too… Might as well check it out, not like I’ve found anything else worth investigating…’

Leon’s speculations didn’t cease until he turned a corner and passed through yet another illusion. What was causing these things he couldn’t be sure. The walls were no longer covered in darkness and he couldn’t detect any signs of runecraft—modern runecraft, at any rate. Given his lack of expertise with darkness magic in general and illusion magic in particular, Leon couldn’t make any more concrete assertions about the illusions.

However, when he passed through that illusory barrier and saw what was on the other side, such thoughts were far from his mind.

He saw trees, trees with wide, red leaves shining like stars. Glowing blue flowers illuminated much of the dirt floor and the immense cavern beyond. He smelled grass and flowers, bringing some comfort, but this underground forest was terribly uncanny, and not just because it was somehow growing thousands of feet beneath the surface of the plane. Rather, there were no birds, no buzzing of insects, no wind blowing through the leaves. The ceiling of this immense dome-shaped cavern, at least twenty stories high at its lowest point, was dotted with glowing crystals, making the dark ceiling look like the night sky.

In fact, as Leon stared at it, he realized that it was an exact copy of the night sky. He identified not only the closest eleven stars, those that revolved around the other planes of the Divine Graveyard planar cluster that Aeterna was a part of, but also noted the bright white crystal in the very center of the domed ceiling was without a doubt the Nexus.

With a deep breath, Leon forced his attention back to the problem at hand instead of staring in wonder at what he was now seeing. As he did, he took special note of the magic in the cavern and identified a prominent current, something that felt fairly familiar. He’d used something quite like it in the graveyard beneath the Serpentine Isles and had seen the ninth-tier tree sprite do likewise when it was manipulating the enchantments in its canopy. There were ancient runes at play in the cavern, likely keeping the ceiling from collapsing given Leon estimated that the massive Frozen Mountains lay directly above, and he presumed also ensuring the forest didn’t die off from lack of sunlight.

Leon quickly got his head back in the game. Thankfully, now that the cavern had somehow turned into a forest, Leon found that tracking the thing that had made the bloodstain was much easier. The loamy earth beneath his feet was soft and left tracks easily, which the creature he was following hadn’t bothered to hide. Given how it had seemed to crash through the underbrush, Leon could plainly see its lack of caution, and thus, its lack of fear.

He forced himself to remain on guard as he followed the trail through the dark forest, over hills, and even a stream at one point. At another point, he encountered half a dozen banshees, practically rising from the ground as he proceeded. They numbered half a dozen, but a single bolt of lightning was enough to destroy the entire lot. Leon hardly even slowed down, let alone stopped.

What succeeded where the banshees failed was reaching the end of the trail. Leon walked out into a clearing and, for the first time since leaving the carved wall, found something that looked built by sapient hands.

‘Or claws, or whatever,’ Leon thought, not having much confidence in there being any human civilization down so far beneath the Frozen Mountains.

In the center of the clearing was a ring of seven stone monoliths, each one about four stories tall. Upon them were carved various animalistic figures of all shapes. Notably absent from any of the monoliths was any identifiable script or magical runes. In the center of the ring of stones was what seemed to be some kind of table or altar, circular and rising to about waist height for Leon. It was large enough to fit a large elephant with room to spare, and given that it was stained reddish-brown by what Leon recognized as long-dried blood, it had seen many creatures laid upon it.

Leon frowned as he took it all in, his eyes drifting toward the largest of the monoliths. It was simpler than the others, though for a reason that had Leon more curious about it than the others: it depicted only a single creature, the same tusked monstrosity that had been carved upon the wall near the entrance, the same kind of creature whose skull tracked all newcomers to the cave system.

This creature had been carved so that its eyes glared down at the table as if to evaluate a sacrifice…

‘… Though that could just be me making assumptions…’ Leon thought. For a moment, red eyes and golden hair flashed through his mind, and he wondered what that adventurous Princess would make of this place.

He found little else within the clearing and began to explore the rest of the cavern, using any large tracks he could find to guide his path. Unfortunately, with the disappearance of the tracks of the large cat creature he’d followed before, he found little else within it, other than signs that it was inhabited by fairly weak creatures and a few more large passageways that he could explore. These tunnels were particularly large, however, two so much that they seemed almost like further extensions of the cavern rather than tunnels unto themselves, save that the ceiling dropped to only about fifty feet high within them rather than more than two hundred.

Leon was rather disheartened by this. Two days had been frustrating enough passed wandering around these tunnels, and while he’d given the place a cursory exploration, he felt like he could spend at least a month checking every one of the underground forest’s hidden nooks and crannies, let alone beginning on the new tunnels, forested and not, that he’d found.

‘Time for a change,’ Leon decided as he stared back in the direction of the stone circle. ‘I am not going to spend months down here,’ he vowed to himself.

Upon returning to the monolithic stone circle, he started looking the place over in greater detail. He didn’t find anything particularly new, but he did sense a strange conflux of magic in the air around the bloodstained table. There were no identifiable enchantments, but as magic flowed through the cavern and around the clearing, it seemed to slow down above the table, swirl around a bit, and then flow back outwards into the currents already running through the underground forest.

The more Leon stared at this strange phenomenon, the more he was convinced it was the work of some kind of ancient rune. For what purpose, he couldn’t say definitively, but he could hazard a guess.

The table was heavily bloodstained, that much was plain to see for anything with the power of sight. ‘… And smell,’ Leon noted with some displeasure. Given how sacrificial it seemed, Leon made the logical jump to the obvious: this was a place of sacrifice, probably to whatever tusked creature was so prominently represented upon the largest monolith.

This created some concerns for Leon. Firstly, it meant that to argue against the presence of sapient creatures down in the forest seemed a terrible idea. While the monoliths were old and worn smooth where they hadn’t been carved, the sacrificial circle had been used for that apparent purpose as recently as a week or so prior.

Secondly, it possibly—or probably, in Leon’s mind—meant that the gargantuan skull back at the entrance of the rift was likely not the creature depicted on the wall and the monolith, but rather just one of that creature’s species. There were undoubtedly more he’d have to contend with. Given the ritualistic dominance they had, and the presence of strong monsters down in the tunnels, Leon guessed that they were probably strong enough to pose a threat to him, if not stronger.

Not an encouraging thought, but one he couldn’t ignore, despite having not a lot of trouble with the locals thus far.

Thirdly, he guessed that the magic around the table was doing some work to identify when a sacrifice had been made—or so he hypothesized. And with that hypothesis came a mad idea, one that he liked the more he thought about it.

So, after about an hour of wandering around the clearing, he decided to take that risk and began to prepare. If he was going to do what he wanted to do, he might find a way past the wall and closer to the Iron Needle. But it was also a terribly dangerous thing to do, though how dangerous he couldn’t say, not without knowing more about what was down in the caverns, first.

Before he set out, he started setting up wards around the clearing. Nothing particularly fancy, but if he was going to what was on his mind, then he wanted every possible advantage he could bring himself. Fortunately, there was quite a bit of magic in the environment, allowing him a fairly sizable budget for such things.

He set up a light shield that he could call upon if needed. It wasn’t too strong, but anything was better than nothing. He also set up an illusion to show that everything beyond the sacrificial table was just fine. Then, he took advantage of that fact by placing a large number of explosive spells—both fire and lightning—around the monoliths. He then prepared all of his antimagic gems, gave his gear one more check, and thusly finished his preparations. He didn’t want to go too hard on the potential defenses and make them obvious to whatever might come.

With a wave of his hand, Leon conjured the corpses of five seventh-tier apes from his soul realm and dropped them on the altar without much ceremony. Almost immediately, he felt the magic power flowing above the table flex slightly, and he hurriedly turned himself invisible and retreated to the edge of the clearing. He replaced his family’s sword with his new thunder wood bow and tried to clamp down on the excitement that he might finally have a chance to use it in a real combat scenario.

He waited for not too long amongst the trees. He didn’t sense anything with his magic senses, the forest seeming as dead and silent as it had when he first entered it, so the first indication of the newcomer was when its shadow passed overhead, startling Leon more than he cared to admit.

He glanced up at what he just arrived and nearly all of his eagerness for battle disappeared.

What he saw above him, flying as if it were swimming through the air, was a massive beast, its head as tall as the Thunderbird itself. Two huge, wickedly-sharp tusks jutted out from the sides of its small face, and its head was dominated by a massive triangular plate. The creature was covered in brownish-orange hide, which looked faintly scaled to Leon’s eyes. It was clearly a quadruped, with a long, sinuous, lean, muscular body, and a furred, cat-like tail waving about in the air behind of a similar color.

Most concerningly of all, however, was that its aura, as far as Leon could tell, matched that of Anastasios and the Grand Druid. This monster was the equivalent of a tenth-tier mage.