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Chapter 1079: Wailing Dirge I

It was hastily built, consisting of no more than a field that had been sufficiently cleared for several thousand soldiers to assemble. Only about one thousand had formed up after Leon’s order to muster a force for this purpose.

Three days had passed since his discovery of the formerly inhabited cave. He’d initially explored it, but hadn’t found much aside from the remaining buildings and the bodies. Some showed signs of violent death, but given their age, Leon couldn’t be sure if those signs were real or a result of damage over however many long eons they had lain there.

Most disturbing was the tunnel that continued on the opposite side of the cave’s entrance that extended deep into the earth of the Nexus. The tracks that Leon had been following continued down that tunnel, and it seemed that whatever technique it was using to disguise itself was dropped, for the darkness that he sensed in its tracks grew more powerful and noticeable at that point.

It wasn’t strong enough for Leon to guess the power or nature of the creature that made those tracks, but it was enough that he knew it posed some amount of danger to his people. On top of that, his magic senses didn’t manage to travel that far down the tunnel before running into an enchantment that scattered them. Unwilling to lead his small party into a possible trap or unknown and dangerous situation, Leon ordered the fissure leading into the village heavily guarded by powerful mages and then fell back to Artorion.

Once there, he arranged for the honored burials of Ioan and his team and then began to arrange a proper expedition into the tunnels. Over the next couple of days, however, additional survey teams were attacked in a similar manner to Ioan’s, and not once did the monster leave survivors, giving his preparations more urgency. In the last attack, even a sixth-tier mage had been killed. It seemed clear that this mysterious creature wasn’t going to stop, and that there were other entrances to this tunnel system.

Fortunately, Leon’s survey teams had done a good job of mapping out the area despite the attacks, revealing to him more than a dozen caves that had small villages in them and long tunnels leading down below. Now angry and motivated to find this creature and kill it, he’d assembled a thousand warriors from the Tribes and his Tempest Knights to storm these tunnels. The Jaguar, Alix, and Alcander were staying behind to coordinate the expedition, but Anastasios and Eva had volunteered to join the expedition. Valeria, Cassandra, Red, Marcus, Gaius, and Lucianus were joining Leon’s group.

Standing upon a hastily erected stone stage in front of the assembled mass of people, Leon inhaled and then said in a voice like booming thunder that reached every ear on that field, “Over the past four days, twenty-three of our people have given their lives to secure this land! The creature responsible moves about through the caves we’ve marked! We’re going to find this thing, whatever it is, and kill it! Our fallen brothers and sisters will be honored with the blood of our first enemy since arriving in the Nexus!”

Punctuating his declaration, Leon let a little of his power leak, causing storm clouds to gather overhead and for a few bolts of lightning to roll through them. The ground shook from the thunder as the dark valley of Artorion was briefly illuminated as brightly as it was during the day. Even louder and more earthshaking was the stomping and shouting of the assembled battalion as their bloodlust was stoked and their killing intent spiked.

Leon stepped back from the stage, letting the individual unit leaders take charge. The smallest group was following Anastasios and Eva through one cave, but Leon would be leading his group, plus one hundred Tempest Knights, through the original cave he’d discovered.

A fire burned within him; first, the three arks lost before they’d even reached the Nexus, and now some cave-dwelling monster saw fit to attack his people. He had to answer this challenge with blood.

The journey back to the cave was short, and Leon led the way into the cave. Once he stood again in the old village, Iron Pride in his hands and his pseudo-Adamant armor covering his body, he stared down into the tunnel at the back of the village. It was too small for Ulta suits to easily pass through, let alone fight in, as were all the tunnels in the other discovered villages. They’d be fighting the old-fashioned way.

In contrast to his stoic and serious demeanor, almost as soon as Cassandra entered the village, she began looking around in wonder, oohing and ahing at the craftsmanship. Outside of the wind and the rain and carved from the walls of a remarkably intact cavern, the rather simple, though compelling artistry in the architecture was easy to see. Geometric patterns covered the columns of each building’s portico, and words of an unreadable language had been carved above almost every doorframe. There didn’t seem to be any other art in the cavern, whether wall painting or statue. There were, however, dark crystals set into the walls that Leon assumed were both decorative and supposed to be magic lamps, though the enchantments powering them were long-decayed into non-functionality.

“Writing’s clearly based on the runes,” Cassandra happily observed as the Tempest Knights slowly filtered in behind Leon’s people. “Not intelligible, though. Might be hard to translate, but maybe not impossible…”

“Who cares about the words of the dead?” Red dismissively growled. “Why should we heed the words of those who fell long ago?”

Cassandra spun around, a look of utter disbelief marring her features. “There’s… so much we can learn from those who came before us! Maybe they left records behind that could explain who they were and why they were here! Maybe even who or what killed them! And if we can find out that information, then we’ll have an easier time killing this thing!”

“I’ll just set it on fire,” Red arrogantly replied. “That usually solves my problems.”

“Yeah? Well watch where you point that fire snout, I don’t want to have to sift through dust and debris to learn about these people…”

Red responded with nothing more than a grunt. Given that this monster they were hunting had killed so many of his people, Leon almost agreed with her lack of regard for the village—he wanted to kill this thing with extreme prejudice, and to the hells with anything in his way—but the logical side of his brain agreed with Cassandra that they should try and preserve as much of the ruins as they could. None of them could know what secrets they might hold, and if they simply destroyed the ruins, then there’d be nothing remaining.

It didn’t take long for the Tempest Knights to filter in, especially with Leon ordering the fissure widened by an earth mage to facilitate their operation.

“King Leon!” called out the seventh-tier captain of the unit, “we’re ready!”

With no more response than a thin grin, Leon began striding purposefully down the dark tunnel through which his magic senses couldn’t fully penetrate. His people fell in behind him, while the Tempest Knights followed them.

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Despite how quickly and confidently he moved, Leon remained on guard, bathing the surfaces of the tunnel around him in his magic senses, looking for any sign of a trap. A hint of magic, a little scratch in the wall that might’ve been man-made, anything at all. Making this endeavor harder were the traces of magic left behind by the creature that remained strong enough to be noticeable, while the tunnel itself had stairs carved into it, showing that it was at least partially manmade.

Down and down Leon trod, maintaining his gait to obfuscate his growing concern. The tunnel was large enough to fight in and was growing larger as they went, but a sense of claustrophobia was setting into Leon’s head, making him constantly question whether or not the tunnel walls were closing in around him. He was constantly aware of the sheer weight of the mountains above him, and how muffled sound seemed to be so far below the surface.

Finally, he arrived at a grand, if simple, portico, with an empty gateway flanked by rows of monumental columns holding the cavern ceiling forty feet above his head. Like the village above, the columns were marked by geometric carvings while there were more carved words above the gateway. Amongst the columns, Leon could sense the remnants of many defensive wards, but nearly all had decayed, leaving only the one that scattered his magic senses to remain active. He kept his guard up just in case he missed any, though.

What caught his attention more than the wards, however, was what lay beyond the gateway. The tunnel continued for a short way, then opened up into an immense cavern with a footprint as large as the entire valley and all its mountains above, in which were nine enormous columns almost a mile thick apiece. A city had been carved into those columns, rising upward in beautiful urban spirals and terraces, while ghostly, translucent trees and other foliage littered the ground around these columns. A river of ethereal blue-white water ran through the forest, giving off pale white mist that obscured the cavern floor up as high as Leon’s knees. Shadowy creatures seemed to appear at the edges of Leon’s vision, drinking from the water of the river, but when he tried to look at them directly, they vanished.

Nowhere could he see any evidence of living humans, not in the city, not in the ghost forest, not along the banks of the river. Neither his eyes nor his magic senses could penetrate the river mist, leaving the ground obscured. The mist, when it reached the base of the nine city-pillars, bent upward, as if it were being pulled up by an unseen air current, forming glowing strands trying to reach the ceiling. Invariably, these strands of mist vanished less than ten feet off the ground.

The ceiling, meanwhile, was alight with glints of magic that somewhat resembled stars. When Leon turned his magic senses upon these glimmering points of light, he sensed a web of light magic more robust than what he could currently see with his physical eyes. He guessed there was supposed to be an artificial sky, but these lights were the only remnant of that vast enchantment.

Most unnervingly, the entire cavern was as silent as the grave. No skittering of insects, no rustling of ghostly leaves, and certainly no shuffling of strange monsters with a taste for human blood.

Compared to the village above, the gate showed signs of violence, as Leon saw when he cautiously led his people through the opening—on the ground to the right and left were two bronze doors, clearly part of a set, and carved with intricate reliefs. Around the edges of the doors, Leon could see evidence of runes, though they’d been so scratched and destroyed that he couldn’t tell if they were modern magic runes or if they were the altered writing system runes that the locals used. These doors were dented and mangled, as if something large and powerful had come barreling through.

Undaunted, Leon pressed on, halting only at the top of a set of stairs leading from the portico tunnel to the ground, about ten feet below if Leon estimated the depth of the mist correctly.

“Strange,” Valeria whispered as she halted beside him. “I never thought I would see one of these so soon…”

“You recognize this?” Leon asked.

“Only from old stories told to me by my father,” she answered. “Caverns like this form from the magic of the Nexus all over the place. People don’t usually build cities within them, though, because the magic that flows through here is supposed to be toxic over long periods of exposure. Some believe that the rivers that flow through these caverns all connect to each other, forming a great route down which all souls pass on their journey to the afterlife.”

“Interesting,” Leon whispered. “How does Reconstitution fit into that? If there is no Nexus for several hundred years at a time, do the souls just get stuck?”

Valeria grinned and shrugged. “Some say the mist comes from souls that dissipated while they waited to flow to their resting place. Others believe that all these trees are planted by wandering spirits using human souls as the seeds—they say that one must never leave the river when they die, or they’ll never see their Ancestors.”

Leon frowned deeply. “Disturbing.”

“And fascinating!” Cassandra gushed. “I know what I’ll be doing over the next few years! This whole place is going to need a lot of cataloging!”

“That’s not happening until we find this monster and kill it,” Leon growled. Cassandra’s grin turned grim, and when Leon glanced over his shoulder at his followers, he ordered loudly enough for everyone to hear him, “Fly from here on out. I’d rather not tread through this mist if we can avoid it.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he took a step forward into the empty air above the stairs and continued to float forward, keeping at least ten feet above the mist at all times. There were a few hills that he could see poking through the mist, though none had any sign of life other than the ghostly foliage, so he didn’t once think of landing.

As he flew, he rose further into the air to not come close to the translucent trees. He couldn’t sense any real magic in them, but given their strange, not-quite-there nature, that only served to further disturb him.

The dull silence was broken by a distant din to the south; another of the teams Leon had sent into the caves arrived, this one led by Anastasios and Eva. The two elder mages noticed him only a moment after he noticed them, and they rose into the ‘sky’ to join him.

“Explore this place!” Leon shouted to them. “Find that beast!”

“Ha! No need to worry about us, Leon!” Anastasios shouted back. “Though this place is odd, our quarry cannot hide forever!”

“The arrogant are always killed first, Ana,” Eva chided.

“No they’re not,” Anastasios protested. “In the stories, they’re always broken by their experiences, leading to character development!”

“Only if they’re main characters! Focus on the task at hand! This isn’t a story and you’re not the main character! I don’t want to have to pick up your bloodless body and haul it all the way back to Artorion!”

Anastasios rolled his eyes but chuckled good-naturedly. “If anyone’s going to be carried, it’s you, my dear…” He shot Leon a quick wink, then led his part of the expedition out to survey the edges of the cavern.

“They’re certainly getting along,” Leon remarked to Cassandra.

“More than I care to contemplate too deeply, honestly,” she flatly replied. “Let’s see what’s in those buildings, right? If our monster is anywhere…”

Leon nodded, though his heart sank a bit when he looked back at the city spread across all nine mountainous pillars. There were buildings enough for more than a hundred thousand people there, and searching them all manually with the numbers he had was going to take a long time. And that wouldn’t even guarantee that they’d find what they were looking for.

But he angled himself toward the closest of the gigantic pillars and settled on searching it from the top to the bottom. He ordered several Tempest Knights to surround the pillar and keep an eye out for anything that might move, then led the bulk of his people to the palatial building at the top of the pillar.

A long colonnade surrounded this building, with a long circular terrace carved from the stone from which one could look out over the entire cavern in any direction. The huge spiraling staircase that ran the entire length of the city’s main street started below the mist on the cavern floor and terminated at a large monolith in the center of a forum that served as a courtyard for this ‘palace’. The terraces were separated from the forum by thick stone walls, while the forum itself was surrounded by a grand peristyle of pale blue columns. The walls behind the peristyle columns were, unlike the cave villages above, awash in color, and covered in frescoes.

Leon landed in the center of the courtyard, right in front of the monolith. Its face was mirror-smooth, but carved into its face were words not of the unreadable language he’d seen before, but a heavily stylized form of the language he was familiar with, which the Thunderbird Clan had brought to Aeterna, and which had become the plane’s common tongue. These words appeared carved in haste as they were slanted and not centered along the monolith. Six lines they were in total, the writing growing scratchier as they continued, as if the graver had been in a hurry.

Our Home, a Field of Aesus

Sought in dreams, Found in need

Tested and Pursued, We built our Home

Foundations of blood and bones, Cast aside were our chains of iron and fear

Ten free generations lived and loved here

But now for us comes a wailing dirge