More importantly, the lowest reaches of the Crater were blanketed in a thick, impenetrable gloom. At first he thought it might have been a second zone of night — something separate to what the rest of his team had spotted. A moment later, he realised it couldn’t be. The edges of it were hazy — a smooth gradient that spread outwards. Like smog, it spilled out through the basin, working its way higher.
He could see the darkness — it was just so thin he needed a great deal to spot it. Regardless, it seemed like the effect grew more and more potent towards the centre of the crater. Its deepest reaches were utterly impenetrable, even to him.
Yet, still no reaction from his Skill. It was like Truesight didn’t even register the darkness was there.
He frowned, focusing.
The centre of the Crater came into focus — nothing more than a haze of deepest black, utterly impenetrable. There was no glow of mana to it, either — another impossibility. There did seem to be some motion to it — a swirling flow, as if it was a dense gas eddying in the wind.
Strange.
The very centre of the black coiled over itself.
Kaius froze. The shifting, impossible motion continued. There was nothing there — no change in light level, no reaction from his skill. Just a pure black that he could somehow see moving. It was like there was a richness to it. Some nonvisual quality his mortal mind could only interpret as texture and motion.
“Kaius?” Porkchop asked, concerned at the sudden tension that surged through him. “What can you see?”
“I…don’t know.”
Yet more midnight folded over itself, the not-motion similar only to the mind bending nature of VOS, or the strange not-directions he’d fallen through when Ekum had granted him an audience
An eye opened, then another, and another. They skewered him, his breath catching in his throat as he was nailed in place. Scattered and immaterial, yet visible all the same. Void-like square pupils; an iris of pitch; sclera of purest dark.
“Get down, Kaius,”
Suddenly, he saw.
A lake of power covered the basin, stretching from mere strides beyond the bottom of his tree, to the deepest depths. There was no mana, just an aura with a gleaming metallic sheen. It was dark, almost slate-like. The tone of a metal he recognised, but had only ever seen in tiny, grain-sized quantities — too valuable to be used for more than a trace component of alloys, no matter its properties. A metal beyond mythril, beyond even shining cellestine.
“Kaius!”
“...Adamant,” he whispered.
He stared at the spirit, for there was nothing else it could be, and nothing else he could do.
Everything went black, a void swallowing him whole. The eyes appeared, so close he could reach out and touch them. They were smaller now, maybe the size of his fist instead of larger than the trees themselves. Arranged like the points of a triangle, the black-beyond-black orbs spun slowly.
Distantly, he heard his friends yell in surprise, scrambling into motion.
The eyes watched him with the same idle curiosity he might reserve for a gnat that had caught his attention when it flew a little too close to his face. If he could have moved, he would have fallen to his knees to pray that the spirit wouldn’t swat him.
Adamant. He didn’t even know how strong that was. He wasn’t enough of a fool to try analysing those moving patches of not-black.
Something prodded him in the eye. Kaius didn’t blink, a trickle of sweat running straight down his brow to bead on the tip of his nose. Mana sparked, a mere iota, but more dense and pure than anything he had felt before. Fiery agony consumed his eyes, gone a moment later. His health didn’t budge — whatever the spirit had done, it hadn’t harmed him.
Yet.
His heart skipped a beat as the branch in his grip shattered, leaving him holding nothing but splinters. Staying frozen, Kaius hoped beyond hopes that the noise wouldn’t provoke the spirit.
Orbs of midnight slid away from his face, drifting closer to his hand. They spun a little faster. It was a change that made him scream to move — but what would be the point? He could do nothing, nothing! Far better he did his best to avoid aggravating the living force of nature.
Then it was gone. There was no sound and no expulsion of power. It just vanished, the sun returned, and everything was as it was.
All except for the crater that was now swallowed in a lake of inky black. Truesight could pierce it, though only just. He was still better off than Kenva — maybe able to see twice as far.
Kaius fell out of the tree.