“Stay with me…”
The voice was low and sultry, the tones promising pleasures unending if he gave in.
“Stay with me…”
Despite the unspoken promises, Leon recoiled. He spat a silent curse and summoned Iron Pride, viciously swinging it through the shadowy figure that he could still only see in the mirror. However, the reflected figure didn’t even flinch as Iron Pride passed through its midsection, catching on nothing solid.
“Stay with me…”
He felt a tingling sensation race along his scalp, like fingers running through his hair. Something pressed against his mental defenses, seeking entrance from any angle it could find. Distaste ran through Leon even faster; he’d had more than enough of alien creatures messing with his head, and he wasn’t going to stand for some cursed mirror doing the same. He began to summon the power of the Thunderbird, ready to fight off whatever this shadow thing was—
“Pathetic,” Nestor growled, his tone one of deep disappointment. His fingers twirled in the air, and a moment later, a glowing rune struck the mirror. All pressure on Leon’s head dissipated; the mirror’s surface went black as pitch and so opaque that it didn’t reflect anything at all, and behind Leon, the rest of the party gasped for breath. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one who’d been attacked by the mirror.
Striding forward, Nestor slammed a metal fist into the blackened mirror, shattering it instantly. Bits of black glass fell around him, disintegrating into dust before they hit the ground. Behind the mirror lay a passage, just as dark, but infinitely more inviting than the mirror that had stood there before.
“A shadow demon,” Nestor explained. “Made to guard this place in lieu of enchantments.”
“That… I never saw anything like that before…” Justin gasped as he forced himself to stand straight. Everyone’s disguises had faltered, but now that the shadow demon’s mirror had shattered and all pressure had abated, their disguises righted themselves. Leon, however, guessed that they were going to need replacements soon. They were already running on a bare few hours left…
“An added security feature after you were discovered?” Alcander suggested. “It only makes sense to overhaul security measures after a breach was found…”
“Maybe…” Justin whispered.
Focusing on the matter at hand, Leon asked Nestor, “Is the demon dead? Or otherwise still a threat?” He could still feel the thing’s hands on his head, but the sensation was fading, and if it tried again, he was going to make it wish it never left the Elemental Plane of Darkness.
“Possibly,” Nestor admitted. “I am no demonologist, but this felt like a fragment. A singular artifact that Kamran traded for? Or perhaps a piece of a demon left here, and we’ve only announced ourselves?” The dead man regarded Leon closely. “You have the most experience with demons here out of anyone. You’ll have to tell us if you sense any demonic power.”
Cold anger settled in Leon’s gut like a rock. He supposed he should have been more vigilant, but Hasahlain’s maps and intel had left him particularly overconfident.
‘Better reminded this way to keep my eyes open,’ he thought. Though they had been affected by the shadow demon, none of his party had been incapacitated, or even given any long-term ailments as far as he could tell.
“I’ll do that,” he said as he projected his magic senses, looking particularly for any sign of demonic power. He could sense the magic flowing through the walls, and many more enchantments further down the dark corridor, but nothing immediately jumped out at him as demonic in nature. “Where are we?” he asked.
Justin retrieved one of Hasahlain’s maps—a three-dimensional wireframe of the entire palace island, including the secret passages. He started zooming in on the section of the palace that they’d been brought to upon arrival. “I was never here myself when I still served Kamran,” he admitted. “But… we should be… here…” He pointed out a spot on one level of the map that didn’t look anything like where they now found themselves.
“We’re not going back,” Daryun said as he rapped his knuckles against the closed wall. “Not unless we want to tear this down and probably alert everyone to our presence.”
Zhang responded resolutely, “I recommend we continue on, until we find something we recognize. If Prince Nestor has shown anything, then the defenses that Kamran has in place won’t prove any great hindrance.”
“Finally,” Nestor proudly exclaimed. “Someone recognizes my brilliance!”
Leon let his exclamation pass without comment. Instead, he faced the dark corridor, Iron Pride in hand, and took a deep breath. Cassandra and Valeria joined him, though it was Valeria who laid a hand on his arm. When he met her gaze, despite her disguise, he could see her silent plea.
Keep going.
“Let’s go, then,” he said as he strode into the dark, as he did his best not to think about how narrow it was—barely wide enough to let him fight comfortably, if the need arose. What he did think about, however, was just how deep they seemed to be; a thought that only grew stronger as the corridor dipped downward, heading deeper into the earth.
“Wasn’t this palace supposed to be floating?” Alcander asked from behind, the Paladin taking up the rear with Nestor walking just behind Leon. “How much deeper can it go before we pop out into that storm we’re floating over?”
“Quite a bit deeper, I’m sure,” Nestor said. “If we’re in an unmarked section of tunnels, then I’m guessing there will be spatial magic at play. We’ve already run into one such portal.”
Leon frowned, wondering again if they shouldn’t have just gone through that portal instead. Its function may have been to blind anyone who saw it by showing them the ‘correct’ path, and in doing so, obscure this secret tunnel.
Already, he could tell that this secret tunnel was very different from any other passage in the palace, if only due to the lack of ornamentation. It had more in common with the sally gate than any other place he’d seen, being little more than bare stone without even light sources in the walls. But there was plenty of magic, as the occasional alarm and sensor enchantment that he or Nestor had to undo proved.
But then, a voice came echoing through the dark, actually reaching their ears instead of resounding through their minds.
“You do not belong…” The shadow demon’s voice, low and dark. “You are not Kamran…”
A part of Leon wanted to respond, but instead, he kept his mouth shut. Better not to engage, he figured, and a glare over his shoulder ensured that the rest of his party was of a similar mind.
“Whatever you seek, you will not find,” the demon continued. “But you will stay here, never to leave…”
Leon felt a pulse of power, and tendrils of darkness sprang out of the black walls. The shadow demon was powerful, but with a swing of Iron Pride and a wave of silver-blue lightning, every tendril was banished. The rest of the party immediately armed themselves, their disguises barely keeping up.
“Thunderbird…” the demon whispered, its voice rising with fear before its power retreated down the corridor.
A chill ran down Leon’s spine as he realized his mistake, and after only a moment to ponder the ramifications, he tore off into the dark. The rest of the party was not slow on the uptake, and ran after him.
The shadow demon’s power flitted down the corridor as it descended deeper than it should have, with the corridor slowly growing steeper. By the time that Leon was practically sliding downward instead of running, he knew that he’d reached the point where he might have hesitated if he didn’t sense the fear in the shadow demon’s power.
But because he did sense that fear, he pursued hard and fast.
The corridor eventually turned downward even more severely, into a dark vertical shaft that Leon’s magic senses couldn’t penetrate. The demon’s power was more intense at the edge, and Leon guessed that this was where it had based itself—or where Kamran had set it up. He didn’t much care about whatever it might have been guarding, but absolutely could not leave it alive after it revealed that it knew his heritage.
He launched himself into the shaft. He couldn’t sense any great enchantments protecting it, and it took little more than a quick swish of Iron Pride to disrupt what few alarms remained in the shaft at this point.
The experience of passing through the darkness was like submerging himself in oil. It clung to him, sticking in every uncomfortable place that it could reach. But it wasn’t able to get through his skin, and he sank through it quickly. He could feel the rest of the party sinking with him, their weapons gleaming with power. Only Justin seemed to be struggling, and Leon guessed it was because he lacked origin power.
When Leon hit the ground, he landed feet first, and a wave of lightning burst from Iron Pride. The darkness shrank away from him as if terrified, and Leon scanned the large chamber he’d dropped into.
At first, he’d thought that he was going to find himself in an immense underground chamber, but instead, the walls revealed themselves quickly. They were the same bare stone as the rest of the corridor had been, but springing from the ground, Leon saw various shadowy plants and trees, as if the real plants had been taken over by the shadow demon’s power. These plants did not recede from his power but instead waved in it as naturally as if his lightning was a gentle breeze.
Ahead of him, meanwhile, he saw a modest portico carved into the stone. To his right and left were more tall doorways, and to the naked eye, they opened onto hallways that sank only a few feet into the stone before ending, having gone nowhere. But to Leon’s magic senses, these doorways were alight with spatial magic, and he mused that these were alternative entrances to this temple-like structure buried deeper than should’ve been possible for the floating palace island.
The rest of his party formed a circle, alert for any threat that might come from around them. The only sign of a possible threat, however, was the shadowy figure on the top step of the portico, standing between the middle two columns of the hexastyle façade. The demon didn’t speak; it only stood there, frozen in fear.
“Please,” it whispered, its voice now quivering with fear and coming without any hint of mind-altering power. “I will not speak of you…”
Leon advanced confidently, but alert for any sign of threatening power. The demon shrank back to the modest doors behind the columns, but it quickly ran out of room to retreat. Leon stalked up the stairs, his power radiating from his body so mightily that his disguise warped and distorted, the bracelet struggling to maintain itself in the maelstrom of power that surrounded him.
“I will not…” the demon pleaded again.
A slight ping of sympathy echoed in Leon’s heart, but it was banished when he remembered that it identified his Clan. It was working with Kamran. He simply couldn’t allow it to live.
In a flash of lightning, he darted forward, burying Iron Pride in the demon’s shadowy body. The shadows covering its form dissipated on contact with the Adamant, and beneath was a body of black glass, similar to but far duller than Xaphan’s obsidian skin. Iron Pride broke through the hard surface and bit deeply into the demon. The demon barely even fought back, preferring instead to shiver in fear, and Leon again felt a pang of sympathy.
But then, he allowed his power to surge through the blade, passing through and being amplified by the Iron Needle, and the demon shattered into dust. With it went the darkness in the chamber, and even the shadowy plants began to immediately wilt.
With nothing more than dust on the ground, Justin walked up behind Leon and said, “Apologies; I had no idea a place like this existed, or that it was defended by a demon.”
Leon, frowning as his disguise finally failed, the bracelet snapping in half and falling to the ground, asked, “Was there any indication that it did? Or that there was a demon here? As much as I would’ve appreciated knowing what was waiting for us, I don’t expect you to be omniscient.” Justin visibly relaxed as Leon retrieved one of the spare disguises and slipped it around his wrist, returning to his relatively nondescript disguise.
“That’s more on Hasahlain,” Valeria said. “This should have been revealed.”
“This may be something that only Kamran knows about,” Nestor responded. “The demon seemed to believe that because none of us were him, then we ‘shouldn’t be here’. Hmm. Why don’t we head inside and see what it was protecting?”
“How much time do we have?” Leon asked, though his eyes certainly locked on the wooden doors, aglow to his magic senses with a thousand different enchantments that would surely alert the entire palace above them to their presence if they carelessly barged through.
“I can’t say when Ariana might head to the meeting,” Justin said. “But I… as curious as I am about this place, I don’t believe we should take too much time…”
“This shouldn’t take long,” Nestor confidently stated as he wove a tapestry of a dozen runes in as many seconds. Leon felt the magic flowing through the doors bend away, the flow never stopping, but the power of the enchantments no longer covering the door. They could enter without anyone the wiser.
Curiosity was something that had gotten him in a lot of trouble in the past, but he realized that he just couldn’t come this far without knowing what lay beyond the doors.
“A quick peek,” he ordered more to himself than to anyone else as he gingerly laid a hand on the door, almost as if expecting it to try and bite him. But the wood remained solid and unchanging, and when he pushed, the door swung inward easily.
The chamber beyond was small and simple—small enough that Leon was almost shocked as he stepped within. There was no furniture, nor décor of any kind. There was just a large marble sarcophagus in the center of the room, shining white in the darkness and looking altogether far too brilliant for such a dour place. This sarcophagus should’ve been the centerpiece of a grand temple in a place bathed in sunlight, not in the spatially-distorted depths of Kamran’s palace.
“Ah,” Nestor whispered almost regretfully. “A tomb.”
Now that he could see what the chamber contained, Leon was suddenly reluctant to step further inside. He scanned the outside of the tomb with his magic senses, but he couldn’t detect any identifying marks. There was no way to know who was interred within. There was an amount of power within the sarcophagus, but as far as he could tell, that was only fairly standard enchantment work to stave off rot and keep the body within pristine.
“Let’s go,” he said quietly. As curious as he was, opening the thing went a little too far for him. He knew he’d be livid beyond what any human language could describe if Artorias’ tree were cut down, or even if any of the tombs of his Raime ancestors in Teira were disturbed. As much as he detested Kamran, disturbing the dead felt like going too far.
His party retreated past the portico, and he closed the door behind him. He felt like he was always going to wonder who was interred here, but he didn’t need the mystery solved.
“One of these doors,” he said, eager to move on, “is probably our way out.” He pointed to the other two doors in the chamber aside from the shaft they’d fallen in from. The spatial magic in the stone surrounding the doorways was proof enough that they led elsewhere.
“You think they’ll keep us in the palace?” Alcander asked. “They could lead anywhere.”
“Even thinking we’ll remain in the tunnels would be lucky,” Daryun whispered, sounding more disturbed than even Leon did at what they’d found down here.
“The way out up there is blocked,” Leon said, pointing back to the shaft in the ceiling. “We’ll try our luck here. Unless anyone can sense something I can’t, we’ll just choose one of the doorways and try it.” He mostly looked to Nestor for any insight, but the dead man shrugged.
“No way to know where they go without going through,” he said.
“Fine,” Leon said. “Then… this one.” He chose one of the doorways and strode toward it with more confidence than he felt in his heart. Still, he was eager to leave this tomb behind, and he didn’t even look over his shoulder as he passed the doorway and immediately found himself elsewhere.
A small chamber, richly appointed with plush carpets and a couple chairs around a table. He and the rest of his party stepped out of an empty alcove, and on the opposite side of the room was a heavily enchanted door which Nestor immediately set about opening. The rest of the party was quiet while he worked, the implications of what they’d found along with the worry that they might be discovered weighing heavily on all of their minds.
It almost felt like an eternity for Nestor to get the door open, but when they did, they finally had some good news. The hallway beyond was wide and tall, but Justin recognized it immediately.
“We’re still in the tunnels,” he said with audible relief. That same relief passed through the rest of the party. “We’re close to the ninety-second tower,” Justin continued. “Come with me. Ariana might already be there…”
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