.
The mouth of the entrance tunnel into the cavern looked like somebody had excavated it after time had buried it. The path leading out of it ran through a long trench cut into the sloping terrain that had covered the entrance somewhere during that last ten thousand years. It went for about five paces, out to where the terrain descended to meet it.
My heart was just a little bit in my mouth as I walked out into the open air of Ilim Below with Brigitte in my arms, because I had never tested my Vampire Cloak on demons before. She was none too happy either, being at the mercy of whatever I could do to defend her while having my arms full of Brigitte.
It had been a little over five weeks since we emerged from the cavern under Carael, but the lighting felt identical. Open spaces had that same twilight level, mostly generated from the subterranean mosses and lichens clutching to the walls and roof, and the moonglow grass underfoot, that thrived on mana rather than sunlight. This was not Oberon’s palace, where his spells were allowing the sunlight falling on the hilltop above to pass through a dozen or so paces of solid rock to light the cavern below. The energy that drove this far deeper world flowed from the veins of the underworld, channeled through the mysterious walls that held back under billions of tons of rock.
The opposite wall in the distance ahead of us was easily a mile and a half away. The roof formed as that wall and the one behind us arched overhead to join in a massive vaulted ceiling was at least twice as tall as that roof in Carael. I had called it ‘seven hundred paces down’ based upon the floor. Measured from the surface down to the ceiling over our heads, it wasn’t even four hundred.
This was a place that not even Senhion’s knowledge could explain. In Carael, I could gawk at it and be lightly amazed, because I was ignorant of the math. Here, my pathetic knowledge inherited from my former Fundamental Realm Celestial Maiden self could only stagger under the weight of the knowledge that, even in her native realm, this place was simply, incontrovertibly impossible.
Senhion could only lend me the weak explanation that she had grown to understand, that beings from the Harmonic Realms, especially going above the Second Harmonic, operated under laws of reality completely alien to the Mortal Realm or even her native Fundamental Realm. She had known of small things possible in her native world that could never be achieved in any of the hundreds of trillions of universes of the Mortal Realm, things that the laws of base reality could only deem preposterous, but those were silly simplicities, trifles, toys such as floating mountains, perpetual motion machines and castles in the sky. Fantasies than any mortal could easily imagine.
Gaia, senior engineer supervising the structure of Huade’s planetary crust itself, came from a level far above such kindergarten pranks, and could, where she felt it necessary, apply her skills even to the degree of designing structures that overwrote the very laws of physics, substituting the laws of the realms above, to allow this place to stand, even if the walls couldn’t possibly bear it. She could redirect the mana flows that issued from the cauldron of the planetary mantle, flowing through the crust and into the atmosphere, to follow paths along those walls to provide sustenance to the plants that would feed the animals and sustain the people in this underground ark that she built. She could ensure that aquifers beneath would carry water to all parts, and mists would condense out of both the humidity and the flows of water mana, even sometimes against the laws of gravity. And, most important perhaps, she could regulate the flow of heat to insure a livable environment, no matter where the laws of thermodynamics preferred that heat to flow.
I realized I had come to a halt at the point where the slope reached the level of the path. Brigitte was looking at me with concern. It couldn’t be helped. I had just re-experienced what a young Senhion, not yet a thousand years old, experienced when she first confronted this subterrestrial world. I had just remembered that first moment that Senhion looked upon this, assessed the impossibility in an instant with what, to my point of view, was her mighty mind, and realized that the immortals she now worked for weren’t merely seniors from her world or perhaps the great beings from the realm above hers, but from a height far beyond what she understood.
This was a really bad time for this paralysis, or for focusing on anything other than here and now. I steeled my mind and surveyed the grounds around me.
Just downslope, as Dilorè had described, lay a ‘base’, at least as a demon might design it. To ward off the falling mist that would fall from time to time, they had created crude shelters by raising thatched roofs on standing poles, sometimes with cross-braces and sometimes with additional poles leaning in to keep them upright. None of it would have withstood even a minor storm, but, of course, the worst they had to fear here was the occasional increases in the constant airflow, driven by unknown forces.
Some of those roofs simply covered piles of objects and scattered, empty mats, but in others, distorted figures could be seen lying prone on the mats, or in a few cases, sitting and working on weapon maintenance or some other task. Most of these creatures were wraiths, with occasional hags mixed in. In one shelter, a pair of them appeared to be wrestling.
Judging from the number of unoccupied shelters and the lack of demons elsewhere, a majority of the occupants were not present. Out on patrol, perhaps.
I could see where the meal that Dilorè described had taken place. There were the remains of some animal left over a burned out fire, and the ground around it and the rocks and logs that were placed as crude seating was littered with other bones, the remains of previous meals.
Brigitte was looking at that animal with distinct disgust. I made a note to ask later, although I figured it was what I could see from here, that it had literally just been spitted and cooked over the fire, without prior gutting.
Beyond this appalling scene were better built pavilions, with better roofs and in some cases even low walls standing half as high as the poles creating a more rigid structure. Under one of them, I could see chairs and a table, and a fiend sitting with a group of imps. It looked like they might be studying a map.
I had an urge to see that map, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Especially not with a quartet of larva warriors flanking the pavilion. I didn’t know how many more imps or fiends might be around, or if fiends were even the highest level present, so I did not want to give them cause to show me.
Looking to the right and left, I could see that they had not really tried to secure this entrance at all. The base was a half dozen paces downslope, where the ground flattened out. With an unobstructed path, we could easily parallel the cavern wall, skirting the base, never getting closer to it than we were now.
That raised my hackles a little. It was begging me so hard to walk that direction that I couldn’t believe there weren’t alarms, or traps, or something.
Brigitte turned her gaze the same direction, her eyes narrowing. I figured her thought process had gone the same direction. They couldn’t think that none of their captives would ever attempt to escape and return to the surface. They had to at least monitor the approach to the entrance in some way.
She stretched her hand out, pointing. I took a step that direction and she seized my arm and squeezed hard, her head giving a quick, violent shake No.
Pointing again, she waited for me to look closer. Then I saw a faint, dark tracing under the moonglow grass. It ran along, for a bit, then branched here and there. She pointed to another spot, and I saw more of it. Eventually, I could make out a webwork. The Dark mana in it was almost too faint to see. Not as insubstantial as the Darkness of my vampire sense, but similar in some way to the faint afterglow of a just-deactivated fluorescent bulb in a completely dark room. I could see it, but I had to look very slowly.
Common sense said not to step on them, but I was uncertain as I crept forward what would happen the first time my footstep passed over one. When I reached the first moment when I had to step across one of the threads, every fiber of my body was primed to immediately take flight and not look back. Bowing to that impulse, I grew my wings and raised them, keeping them at ready.
I had confidence I could take on the demons I had seen, but what I could see was a base mostly empty of its occupants. I wasn’t sneaking to avoid losing to them; I was sneaking to avoid alerting them to my existence. The second they knew something was there, I had to get out before they had any chance of determining what it was.
My foot passed across, and relief washed over me when nothing happened. I continued, into the next area between the lines. In the silliness that came from relaxing nerves, I remembered a stupid child’s game played on the sidewalk. Step on a crack / Break your mom’s back! I was a very loyal son at that age, and that rhyme had pissed me off.
Forcing the stray thoughts out of my brain, I continued forward, pace after pace, continuing across the webwork underfoot.
A larva warrior, what I guess I would have called a skeletal warrior in my role-playing game days, was stationed around where the base ended. He appeared to be acting as a perimeter guard, looking around this way and that, confirming to me that they were not lackadaisically dismissing the possibility of intruders or escapees. Which further confirmed to me that this webwork I was picking my way through was a real threat.
Another skeleton was walking toward the first from within the base. He didn’t appear to be marching the perimeter or anything, just headed straight over to him.
Possibly, he was on his way to relieve the one on duty. These creatures require rest like all creatures. Rather than undead, they were non-corporeal demons bonded to preserved skeletons as a means to manipulate the physical world. The physical skeleton is dead, but the demon sleeps and takes breaks, and we had either the bad fortune or good fortune to have shown up just in time for a shift change.
It turned out to be bad luck. As the newcomer larva approached the guard, he suddenly stopped and looked in our direction. Or more specifically, he appeared to be looking in the direction of my feet. With my armload of fox-girl, I couldn’t remain on one foot for long. I had to go ahead and place the other down. As soon as I did, I knew what he had seen.
My foot visibly pressed the moonglow grass. It wasn’t defined enough to be clearly a footprint, but it was obvious that the grass was moved in a way that it shouldn’t move on its own.
Vampire Cloak hides my presence, but effects on the environment around me can give me away.
The larva warrior immediately began moving our direction, with the guy he was supposed to relieve following.
