Leon made his way over to the door that had more scratches upon it.  The edges of the trapezoidal door made it seem like whoever had tried to force it open didn’t realize it slid into the wall, and instead had tried to pry it free from its frame.  The gray metal door had clearly resisted quite well, for it didn’t seem bent at all from the many attempts that had scratched it up.  Likewise, when Leon examined it a little closer, he saw some burn marks and other scratches that indicated more magical means were used to try and force the door open.

Still, however, the door remained there, seemingly none the worse for wear, aside from a few scratches upon its face.

[Dirty primitives,] Nestor haughtily said as his magic senses left Leon’s soul realm and examined the door.  [The Clan’s metallurgical technology would ensure that these doors remained sealed, no matter how much force they brought to bear upon it.]

[Looks like they tried to force this one open a lot more than the other one,] Leon observed as he cast a quick look back, otherwise ignoring Nestor’s arrogant observation.  [Definitely some attempts to get it open with magic over there, though.  Could their magical attacks have been absorbed by the door’s enchantments and used to power them, allowing them to use the controls to get them open?]

[A possibility,] Nestor conceded.  [Most secured locations wouldn’t use such means as they represent a security risk.  However, depending on what exactly this place was, then there could very well have been such back-up measures applied, allowing the doors to be operated even if the power were to fail.]

Leon smiled and placed his hand against the scratched door and summoned his magic power.  He tried to channel some of it through his hand and into his metal, but his magic power stubbornly refused to get through the surface.  He couldn’t sense any magic power actively flowing through the metal, either.

[Is this some kind of specialized anti-magic substance?] he wondered ‘aloud’ to Nestor.

[There may be some resistance—just as some materials, like gold, silver, and copper, will conduct magic power, some will insulate from it.  Using insulating materials was fairly common for safety, if for nothing else.  Plus, it would help our enchantments be that much more magically efficient, preventing bleed-off of the magic power flowing through the conductors.  As for any ‘specialized’ substances, well you’re not likely to find anything like that outside of a few very secure places, at least on this plane.  Our Clan’s old capital and the like.]

Leon nodded and pulled his hand back.  He walked over to the other door, reasoning that if it had less scratches, it was probably easier to open.

And indeed it was, for he’d barely put his hand against the metal before a tiny bolt of silver-blue lightning erupted from his skin like static, entering the metal and causing it to slide into the wall, revealing a long, dark corridor beyond.

As soon as the door opened, Leon dropped into a defensive stance, his body sparkling with silver-blue lightning.  However, there was little else aside from darkness waiting beyond the threshold—darkness, and several more doors on either side of the corridor.

The corridor matched the Thunderbird architecture he’d come to find familiar, being trapezoidal in shape, though the entire place was still devoid of magic power, leaving the walls bare and the usual white fire lighting absent.  It was also quite wide, as if built to accommodate a lot of traffic.

With a great deal of caution, Leon began to advance down the corridor, his footsteps loudly echoing in the empty hallway.

He found reason to double his caution when he reached the alcoves with the first set of doors.  The door to his left had fallen to the ground, revealing nothing but dirt and rock behind it, but the door to his right was still intact.  More concerningly, though, was that crumpled to the side of the door was a skeleton, long rotted away to bone and bits of torn and desiccated cloth.  However, it was only half a corpse, for everything below the waist appeared lost behind the door, as if someone had been chopped in half by the door when it last closed.

Leon scowled and approached, his magic senses projected as he watched out for anything at all that might jump out at him from the darkness.

He bent down in front of the skeleton, noting that the area around the door was quite dusty.

[Looks like this guy’s been down here a long time,] Leon thought, sharing it with Nestor.  [I wonder how long it’s been; not like there seems to be much in the way of carrion down here.]

[This facility was likely not airtight, and plenty has caved in,] Nestor pointed out.  [There could very well be places that allow scavengers access.]

Leon hummed in acknowledgment.  He couldn’t discern much from a skeleton with nothing but scraps for clothing, but his eyes drifted a bit, and he noticed something rather distressing in the dust in front of the door.

Footprints, and other evidence of foot traffic.  Quite a bit of it, too.

Leon shot back to his feet and looked around again, but again, he saw nothing.  After a moment of looking around, he confirmed that the door was dead and not even his magic power could open it.  So, he turned around and began to hesitantly walk further down the corridor.  Now that he was keyed in for what to notice, he could see quite a few footprints on the dusty ground.  Some appeared human sized, but others appeared quite a bit bigger.  In some of the deeper layers of dust, he could also see long marks of something large and flat being dragged along the ground.

The next set of doors were both dead, but there was quite a bit more dust this deep into the corridor.  If Leon had to guess, all of the dust was most likely from when some other rooms and corridors collapsed.  Regardless of how the dust got there, Leon could see quite a few tracks in it now that it was thicker.

Proceeding onto the last set of doors before the end of the corridor, Leon found that one of the doors was open, but revealing nothing but dirt and rock.  The other door, thankfully, was marginally less dead than the others, allowing him to open it with a bit of applied magic power.  It slid painfully into the wall, screeching bloody murder as it did.  Even then, it didn’t even fully open, but Leon was able to look past it and see what was within.

Inside, he saw a fairly large room filled with counters and various metal arms on tracks dangling from the ceiling.  With just a single look, Nestor cried out, [Ah!  I know what this place is, now!  It’s a golem manufactory!  A small one, most likely, but that’s what this room was for!]

[It built golems?] Leon asked.

[Yes,] Nestor confirmed.  [The need for automated workers was high, but since it takes a mage who’s achieved Apotheosis to make proper golems powered by wisps, they can be surprisingly rare despite their utility.  Still, our Clan had manufacturies set up wherever we found ourselves, liberating us from the need for physical labor.  Though, I’m unsure if this place was actually one of ours and not a vassal Clan’s.  Given its size, now that I think about it, it’s probably not ours.]

Leon frowned, and he remembered the missing silver and copper.  [Could some of the golems still be active?] he asked.  [Could they be the ‘ghosts’ that the workers above saw?  Maybe they stole the silver and copper, acting on old instructions to move supplies for manufacturing?]

[An interesting theory, and not one that I can confirm or deny based on what we’ve seen so far,] Nestor replied.

Leon nodded again and after poking around in the room a bit, finding nothing, he walked back out into the corridor and turned to face the final door, directly opposite from the door he’d come in from.

He approached, and as with the door opening into the corridor, this one opened with barely more than a touch and a spark of power, revealing a large, circular magic lift.  There were magic lights around the lift’s edge, barely enough to let a mortal see in the dark—emergency lights, Leon knew.  He took a deep breath and got on the lift.

The lights flickered, but a single control rune appeared on the wall.  With a quick touch, Leon caused the lift to start to slowly descend.  The lift only went down one floor—the factory seemingly only being two stories tall when it was above ground—and the door that appeared before him was already open, revealing another long, dark corridor.

Leon had done little more than take a single step out into the corridor before a weak, quiet voice came echoing down the hall.

“Have you… finally come… to end my torment?”

Leon froze, his blade appearing in his hand with a flash of light.

“All others… who’ve come… were killed…” the voice whispered.  “Please… end this…”

The voice whispered no more, and when Leon hesitantly called out, “End what?” he received no response.

[Nestor, what in the hells was that?] he demanded.

[Sometimes, condemned criminals were used to power necessary infrastructure,] Nestor said nonchalantly.  [You ought to be fairly familiar with the specifics.]

Xaphan crackled with antipathy as he said, [I certainly am.]

Leon scowled.  [So, someone’s still down here, being used as a magic power generator?]

[That’s my guess,] Nestor replied.

With some distaste, Leon began to walk down the corridor.  As he did, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, so he froze, summoned his lightning, and assumed an aggressive posture.

One of the doors to his right opened, and three large golems came trooping out, much larger and burlier than the ones Leon had seen in the archives below Teira that now resided in his soul realm, and much closer to the golems used by Nestor in his lab.  They weren’t armored, but they definitely looked strong, if rather dilapidated.  One even limped, and all were made of green, oxidized bronze, showing just how little maintenance they’d received in the millennia since the Thunderbird Clan had ruled here.

The three golems made a salute, seemingly ignoring Leon’s aggressive stance.

[Ah.  Don’t expect much from these things, Leon.  They’re little more than labor golems.  They were designed to move heavy things from one place to another.]

Leon relaxed a little bit, but not completely.  “Can any of you understand me?” he called out to the bronze figures.  “Raise your hands!”

None of the golems responded verbally, but all three raised their hands into the air.

“That’s something, at least,” Leon murmured.  Addressing them again, he ordered, “Show me the power room!”

His hope that they could understand him seemed to pay off, as they began marching in unison further down the corridor, stopping at the next door on the left, halfway down the hallway.  Leon followed, and when he poked his head into the alcove, the door slowly slid partway open, just enough to allow him to get into the room beyond without squeezing.

What awaited beyond was a fairly familiar sight—he’d seen something similar in Nestor’s lab.  It was a fairly large chamber, and directly across from the door was a panel with a dozen crystals about the size of his hands put together dotting the wall in a four-by-three grid.  All but one were completely opaque, like cloudy white glass.  The last one glowed a faint red, dull and barely visible even in the dark, showing just how little magic power remained within.

To the right and left were six large platforms, upon which were corpses held aloft by huge organic-seeming roots dangling from the ceiling.  Five of these platforms were inhabited by corpses, their bones tangled up in the roots, though a few of their smaller bones, such as fingers, toes, and jaw mandibles had fallen to the floor of their platform.  Two of these corpses were fresh enough to still have some skin and hair attached, though they were still extraordinarily desiccated.

The last platform, however, held a man still barely clinging to life.  He struggled to look up as Leon walked in, his body thin and frail, his head covered in thin gray hair.  He appeared to be little more than skin and bones from what little Leon could see, and his aura was barely more than first-tier—though, if Leon knew anything about the roots that impaled his body, it was that they were extremely damaging to the body’s magic foundation.  Justin and Xaphan both had been so physically damaged that they’d lost nearly all of their power.

In the past ten years, Justin had managed to climb back to the third-tier, but it had been quite the struggle, and he was still weak enough at that level that he rarely left the small villa that Leon and Valeria had purchased for him—Leon knowing just how frequently the man left thanks to the fact that he employed all of Justin’s servants, and liked to keep tabs on him, just in case.

Leon froze when he realized the man in the roots was moving, but after a moment, he realized the man wasn’t a threat at all, and he began to walk forward.

“Who are you?” Leon called out as he slowly walked across the room, as alert as he could be for any possible threats that might jump out at him.  The memories he had of the last time he’d been in a facility like this were still fresh in his mind, and anything that thought they could try and invade his body was going to be met with the tempest that swirled just beneath his skin.

The man seemed to struggle to breathe, but he eventually gasped, “Prisoner…”

[Look to his platform,] Nestor said.  [In a place like this, his crime would’ve been inscribed—assuming he’s old enough to have been from my time.]

Leon did so, and he saw, carved in an old, but still readable runic script, the sentence, ‘embezzler, thief, traitor – condemned to death by exmagication in service of the Storm King’.

Leon’s expression darkened, and he paused in his approach.  “This for you?  Serious crimes you’re accused of,” he observed.

The man offered no words, he barely seemed able to keep his head aloft.  He didn’t even try and argue that he wasn’t the accused, tacitly admitting that the inscribed words were for him.

“Who were these other people?” Leon asked aloud, noting that there were no crimes inscribed beneath them.

“Explorers…” the condemned man whispered.  “Thirty years… maybe more… ago… two came here… captured… brought here… and others… many years… before…”

[This place built golems,] Nestor reminded Leon.  [To trespass here would’ve been a serious crime, for these places were the backbone of our Clan’s labor force.  Without other instructions, the golems were likely ordered to place any trespassers within the roots to keep this place operational.]

[Get some use out of them if they were criminals?] Leon asked.  [Not just let them languish in a prison somewhere if their bodies could be used?]

[That was the thought, yes,] Nestor confirmed.

Leon sighed and turned his attention back to the man barely breathing in the roots.

Embezzlement.  Theft.  Treason.  Serious things, but he wondered just how deserved this fate was, and how high up this man had been to still be alive here eighty-thousand years later.  However, a moment later, he focused on the roots and saw quite a bit of light magic flowing through them, probably keeping the man alive.  It seemed that most of his drained power was being cycled back into his body to keep him alive, if in this physically deteriorated state.

Leon glanced at the other platforms and their corpses.  They hadn’t lasted nearly as long, but he soon put that thought out of his mind.  It seems they were only guilty of trespassing—and even that charge was shaky given the fall of his Clan and their lack of sovereign rights over this land.  Their laws no longer held sway here.

He then briefly glanced out the door and noted that the three labor golems were still waiting patiently by the door.  He supposed that they were responding to his blood, and that was why they were being so deferential rather than trying to hook him up to one of these things right now.

“Harsh…” he whispered.

[Necessary,] Nestor countered.  [Crime and subversion are deterred by strong punishments.  Given this man’s charges, he was likely a government official, and was caught stealing from the Clan.]

“Please…” the man whispered as Leon apparently went silent from his perspective.  “End me…”

Leon blinked in surprise.  “You don’t want me to free you?”

The man said no more, just giving Leon one of the most pitiable looks he’d ever seen before his head sagged down, the man losing the strength to even keep holding it up.

[This man has been condemned to death, do not free him,] Nestor urged.  [He hasn’t served his penance.  Releasing him would be a mistake.  He’s sentenced to die here.]

Leon could hear the scorn and derision in Nestor’s words, and he could understand.

“What did you do to get entangled here?” Leon asked the man.

“Freed slaves…” the man responded with labored breaths.  “Helped… to escape…”

[That doesn’t sound like treason to me,] Leon pointed out to Nestor as he glanced back down at the inscribed crimes.

[That might depend on when it took place,] Nestor replied.  [If it happened after my father’s death and during our Clan’s fall, then he aided the enemy and weakened our cause.  For that, he deserves what he’s suffered.]

“Please…” the man whispered.  “Death…”

[Leave him,] Nestor said.  [These are the consequences of his actions.  This is his punishment.]

Leon closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, a knife appeared in his hand.  The man’s eyes darted to the knife for a moment, but then returned to Leon’s face.  His look of anguish faded slightly as Leon approached.

Slowly, Leon lifted the blade to the man’s neck, and he waited a moment to hear anything he might say.  A protestation, a plea for mercy, anything.

But the man remained quiet.  Instead of pleading to be released from the roots, he seemed to sag even further, pressing his neck down onto Leon’s knife.

With a sigh, Leon drew the knife across his neck.  It didn’t seem like there was anything else he could do.  Even if he freed the man, he doubted he’d live long enough to even reach the surface, even with Leon’s healing spells.

Besides, the man had asked for death, and Leon didn’t want to even think about how he might deal with eighty-thousand years spent languishing in this dark hole.  If the man wanted the release of death, then that was what Leon decided to bring him.

As the man’s lifeblood ran down his neck and onto the roots, it flashed bright red as the magic power it contained was expended.  Leon felt it coalesce about ten feet to his right, and when he spun to confront what was going on, he saw the man standing there, a wide smile on his face.

“Thank you,” the man said.  “I’m in your debt.  I only wish I could pay you back, somehow.”

Leon quietly relaxed, recognizing this as the man’s magic body.  It wasn’t often that a mage would let their magic body leave their soul realm—the things were incredibly fragile, and having it be destroyed would be devastating.  Pain, extreme loss of power, mental degradation, soul realm damage, and more could all result from such a loss.

As the man continued to bleed, his magic body smiled again, and then dissipated, the magic power that had been used to project it now dissolving into the environment’s ambient magic.  The man had finally died, and without anything to tie it to something—like Nestor’s ruby—his magic body unraveled and became part of the magic in the environment.

And Leon was left with much to think about, most pressingly how exactly he was going to explain all of this to Katerina and Talal.

—-

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