Chapter Forty - 040The room ahead was as dark and quiet as the stairwell had been, but in Felix's Manasight it all swirled with color. Evie stalked ahead, moving low to the ground and as quietly as possible. Felix couldn't see much, being stuck in the back, and after two gut wrenching minutes Evie returned, her eyes brightening significantly as she stood up straight.
"I was wrong. Can't find anything," she whispered. "If someone was here, they left no trace. Even the dust ain't disturbed. Everyone fan out though, see if you notice anything I missed."
The other four climbed the rest of the way into the room, inspecting it for the first time. Felix's vantage widened until he could see a oval-shaped room containing four open archways and a single odd depression in the center. He stepped closer and found that it was a pentagonal hole, with two tiers of seating in it. The very center was the lowest and contained a boundary of carved stone.
It's a fire pit with...tiered seating. Reminds me of those old conversation pits from the 70s.
Weird, but not too remarkable. Felix kept looking.
The floor was more of the same pentagonal tile, mazed with stress fractures and coated in a thick dust that, just as Evie said, was undisturbed until they trudged through it. There was no sign of anyone, either via his Tracking Skill or his Manasight, no matter how he strained the ability.
Felix turned back to the women, his Manasight still flaring from his inspection of the room. Both of them were vaguely humanoid shapes dominated by the green-gold of life Mana, a blurry line of power that branched like small saplings along their spines. But for a few flickering moments he could spot flashes of other colors sparking within their bodies. He blinked and they were gone.
Ugh. He rubbed his eyes, feeling them strained after relying on the Skill for so long. So no one is here. What did Evie sense, then?
"Nothing is here," announced Atar, walking from one of the side rooms and dusting his robes. "Just dust and more impeccable sculptures. Who exactly lived in this place?"
"Not a clue. My father's library is extensive and still I have not heard of an entire city within the Foglands." Vessilia put her hands on her hips, clearly entranced by the stonework all around her. "It is truly fascinating."
Felix saw Atar smile in her direction, a familiar light in his eyes.
Felix smiled to himself, turning toward one of the archways and noticing yet another stairwell. This led up, much as the last, with the same smaller stairs set into the center.
"Third and final check. Nothing. Anyone else?" Evie asked from across the room.
"...No," offered Atar while fiddling with a pouch at his belt.
"Zilch over here. Just dust," Felix added.
"Vess?" Evie prompted when the young woman didn't reply. She looked up guiltily from inspecting the walls, eyes wide.
"Mhm? Oh! No. Nothing at all."
"Okaaay," Evie drawled, stretching her shoulders and arms. "Then we make camp. We can't stray too far; gotta let Maggie find us somehow."
They did just that. In a short piece of time, the five of them had settled in, not having their packs or even blankets to lay out. Instead, as the wait turned to an hour, Vessilia and Atar had drifted back to the walls and Evie paced and fretted near the stairwell. She wasn't nearly as calm about her sister going off into danger as she projected.
Does she have the Acting Skill too?
Unsure what to do with himself, Felix sat at the edge of the tiered depression, idly petting Pit's fur/feather combo. Somehow the combination was smooth and soft, not nearly as coarse as he would have expected.
I need to get away. Gotta take care of these vials soon. Can't imagine they'll last much longer without refrigeration.
Unwilling to wait any longer, Felix stood and made his way to the stairs on the far side of the oval room, Pit close behind him.
"Where're you going?"
Felix looked back over his shoulder at Evie, who, despite her question, was barely paying attention to him. "Can't sit still, so I'm checking out the floor above us."
Evie nodded, then brightened. "Good! Keep an eye out for anything weird, and don't do anything I would do."
"I think you got that backwards," started Felix.
"No I didn't." She was already back to pacing.
Felix felt a chuckle bubble up in his chest. What a weird girl.
He started up the stairs. Cute though.
The stairs spiraled upward for a few minutes, decorated much the same as the previous one. So it was a galaxy of magic that guided him upward, his Manasight having to work double time in order to pick out what was stair and what was the flash of inlaid precious material.
Why do simple materials like these make my vision strange? It was more than colors, it was a vibrancy to these metals and gemstones that almost oscillated in his eyes. As disconcerting as it was beautiful. Analyze doesn't ping them as anything special. Just silver and copper, lapis lazuli and serpentine. Not even really rare fantasy metals like mithril or anything.
So caught up with these sights, Felix only barely registered that the stairs were ending. So he was startled when he found a solid wall directly before him. Painfully so, as he thunked his forehead against the rough stone, and stumbled backward two steps in surprise.
"Ow! What?" Felix rubbed his head. "Why's there a wall here?" Felix considered the mortared stone before him, eyeing the makeup of its dusty brown Mana shot through with jagged veins of silver. It was like any other wall in the tower and completely unremarkable for that fact. Annoyed, he turned around.
Then he turned around again.
W-where are the stairs?
They were gone. Felix was in a narrow room; a hallway, really, no more than five feet wide but stretching forward another fifty feet. Triangular alcoves lined the path, each heavily shadowed but filled with sculpture of some sort. Pit whined, picking up on Felix's distress.
The stairs had vanished into thin air. Or had he been teleported? Was that a thing? Or...
Or did the walls move?
Felix wasn't sure why he found that more creepy than being trans-located by magic, but it was. He tapped the walls again, pushing against the floor and baseboards in the hope that he could activate some hidden catch. But nothing was there. Analyze sent back the same information as any other wall, and his Manasight caught nothing else. So it was with a rapid pulse that he took step after step down the new corridor, Pit padding behind him with his wings tight and tail low.
There was no dust, he noticed. His steps brought back the clean sound of hard leather on harder stone, with a slight scrape as he pushed off his back foot or pivoted. Every sound felt close and immediate, as if nothing else existed except him and his boot noises. As he passed the first of the alcoves, he saw white statues of animals on simple, fluted display stands. He Analyzed them as he went. There were detailed recreations of large cats called Kanwar, birds called Fellhawks, Grey Wolves, and even small, Fat-Tailed Lizards. But as Felix strode further down the hall, the statues grew...strange.
Each subsequent alcove repeated the same types of creatures as before, except each of them had been altered in some way. The Kanwar had grown scales and small horns, the Fellhawk had gained fangs, the wolves grew another set of legs, and the lizards...they gained wings.
Oh what the hell. Skinks are gonna follow me forever. What is all this?
The corridor came to an end with each of the animals having gone through a complete metamorphosis, turning into altogether different beasts than they started. Felix Analyzed them and came up with four new names: Harnoq, Tenku, Wendigo, and a Wyvern.
Not Skinks at all. Something totally different.
"Tenku, huh?" He eyed Pit, who sniffed at the sculpture. "One of your aunts or uncles, buddy?"
Pit simply snorted in disdain and walked ahead. Felix smiled and followed.
The room opened out into a larger chamber, an ovular one almost identical to the one below, only without any adjoining rooms, just a single darkened alcove on the far side. It even had the same tiered pit. The two largest differences were the total lack of dust here, as if someone had just cleaned the room, and the absolutely massive bas-relief murals dominating every single wall.
Exploration is level 20!
Much like the ones below, they were far better preserved than the countless carvings outside. They also heavily featured natural formations. One wall was entirely filled with a split peaked mountain made of thick, dull iron, heavily forested and featuring two peaks that appeared to have been sundered in two at some point. Second wall had a sprawling forest, rendered in silver and serpentine stone. And the last wall featured a waterfall above a sprawling lake, the water picked out with lapis lazuli and pieces of near translucent alabaster.