"Mhm…" Lia moaned, waking up, lying on Rinzen in their tent. Grabbing onto her breasts, she pushed herself up, licking her lips, feeling it was a long time ago she slept so well. "Wait…" She mumbled, then trembled, hurriedly clambering off Rinzen with a horror-struck expression. It was already morning, going by the chirping of birds and the light coming in from the outside. Fixing her underwear, she hurried out, ready to apologize, but nobody was there.
At first, it didn't look like a big deal, but it turned out to be one just ten minutes later. Everyone coming out of their tents realized the problem at once; they were two people short… Ceiline and Simbad had gone missing.
"I…" Keily stuttered, looking around, panic settling onto his face, "I slept in and…"
"Nobody came to wake you up, relax… I slept in too…" Lia murmured, feeling just as guilty.
"We will go and check the peashooters; they should have warned us!" Sion said as he rushed off with Aurora.
"We are going to search too! Look for clues!" Lia shouted, and they spread out on the plateau, trying to find anything suggesting what had happened. An hour later, they met up at their campsite again, looking even more anxious.
"All peashooters are there and working… none is missing, they all look fine, and there are no clues of anything or anybody coming in contact with them!" Sion said with a sigh.
"Maybe they are gone for an early walk?" Koa asked, but she also knew it was a slim chance.
"Simbad wouldn't have done it." Raufon crossed his arms, drumming on his biceps, "And I think Ceiline would be against it too. She is a reasonable woman!"
"Could we have all been under a spell?" Rinzen asked, "Sleeping through something big?"
"I don't think so." Lia bit her lips, "I won't say it is impossible, but I think, with our current strength, we would have been woken up by it! There is no residue of foreign mana in the air, and I can't feel anything that would point towards Ceiline or Simbad using attacking spells to defend themselves!"
"Maybe they didn't have a chance… ow…" Sion hissed as Aurora stomped on his feet with plentiful strength. "Sorry. I didn't mean it that way!"
"I get it, but- Ah!" Lia trembled, "No-Space! I… I did feel a little bit of it again when searching for them!" She exclaimed loudly, snapping her finger.
The revelation was clear to everyone. The two probably disappeared into the hidden sub-realm sometime in the night. They probably activated the entrance, or it is like the cave, leading to the Golden Claw Sect, randomly swallowing up people.
"What now?" Keily asked, looking at Lia for answers.
"First, we will examine everything!" She said, watching the seven buildings behind her. "From top to bottom! Raufon, Keily! Go, clean away all the shrubs, burn them if must! I want to see the naked rocks!"
"Yes, Boss!" They saluted, already going at it with full strength.
"Rinzen, Koa, I want you to wash the place clean! When the boys clear a section, I want it to sparkle so I can study whatever under that dirt!"
"Sure thing!" They agreed just the same.
"We," Lia turned to Aurora and Sion at last, "are going to examine the buildings! Search their bellies and climb to the top, and check the surroundings! We need all the clues we can get and try to open the door to this sub-realm as soon as possible!"
…
….
……
By the time afternoon came, the whole place was cleaned and returned to a time when nature was still kept at bay. The rocks were shining in the sunlight and revealed the many carved symbols, runes, and writings all around the floor and on the side of the buildings. Lia was sitting atop one of the pinecone-like structures, looking down from above, trying to make sense of the hundreds of symbols all around them.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Rinzen asked, climbing up next to her.
"No." She answered, annoyance lacing her simple reply. "You?"
"Sadly, no. I tried referencing it with anything we have back home, but… I never saw anything like this."
"Worse, they are all different. I can't relate them to any of our modern symbols… If I just… I just managed to get a feel of what they mean… but it does not seem like writing at all!"
"No, it doesn't." Aurora agreed, clambering up to them on the side of the building. "Sion had an idea, though." She wrote and continued after seeing Lia's eager gaze. "What if it's not writing but a formation? Or a map."
"A map?" Lia and Rinzen asked, and then Lia's head snapped backward, looking at the sky. "A sky chart!" She exclaimed, springing to her feet.
"Um…" Aurora looked at Rinzen because they had a different idea with Sion, but now she wasn't so sure about it anymore, so she remained silent.
"Of course!" Lia laughed, "I was too focused on the ground! Stupid!" She slapped herself, "Remember what Simbad said?! These seven buildings point towards one star each! Then the many symbols down there must have their reference in the sky! I get it now!"
"We don't," Rinzen answered honestly.
"Simbad told us their sequence…" She continued, watching the still-bright sky. "I bet if we can somehow activate these shitty, old buildings in the correct order, we could get into the sub-realm!"
“It… could work…” Rinzen thought about it, "But none of us really versed in it. Astronomy, I mean."
"Well, we need to think rationally!" Lia smiled, gaining confidence, "Simbad said the stars appear in order. We need to activate them in that order!"
"And… how?" Aurora signed, but Lia had no answer to that. Not yet. "Do any of you remember the order? I totally forgot."
"Well… we are better to figure out, and quick… Because Simbad probably did it by accident!"
…
….
……
"Where… are we?" Ceiline asked, looking around nervously as they were standing on a floating rock, drifting amongst the endless stars in the sky.
"Inside the sub-realm…" Simbad whispered, feeling just as alarmed, his eyes narrowed, constantly scanning their surroundings.
The sky was replaced by a black canvas dotted with millions of twinkling stars, yet it was a different view than Simbad was used to. It was not the night sky of Meriath; it was different. Even worse, wherever they looked, there was no natural land to speak of, but the cosmical space spreading towards infinity where their small asteroid was drifting around aimlessly.
"Are we… in an illusion?" Ceiline spoke up again, trying to get a feel of their surroundings, and she could breathe normally or walk around without obstructions. The problem came when she tried to jump as she started to quickly fly away from the rock they stood on. "Kyha?!"
"Gotcha!" Lucky for her, Simbad was fast and caught her by the ankles, pulling her back, but since then, Ceiline has been grasping onto his hand, afraid of letting go.
"I won't try that again…" She murmured, her heart beating in her throat. "What… the hell is this place?!"
"It's a graveyard…" Simbad whispered, and when Ceiline followed his gaze, she understood.
In the distance, a destination to where their rock was floating towards, they could see a sea of similar, giant, and minuscule asteroids alike floating around, many of them having multiple buildings in different states of ruins. They were all grey, dried up, with no more life remaining on them. The trees that once had to be verdant green were ashen in color as if they were not even real, only an imitation made out of lime rock. Their leaves were long gone, and only thin sticks were sticking out of their trunks.
"This sub-realm had been completely destroyed. We were lucky that it is still whole and it wasn't cracked apart, or we would be dead already. We are not like Lia, who could travel No-Space."
"I do not like the idea of getting sucked into it!" Ceiline complained, looking at the stars, searching for cracks, but even if there were any, it was hard to see in the dark background.
"We would have already felt its pull if that were the case, so don't worry. Our problem is that the inside was clearly smashed apart. There had to be a cataclysmic battle playing out here… I can't even imagine the powers behind something that could destroy a place like this!"
"Maybe someone at Tier 9 could do it."
"Maybe." Simbad nodded as they were slowly getting closer to the sea of asteroids. "Our first priority is going to be to find a way back."
"Who thought a walk amongst the temples would send us here… sorry for suggesting it!"
"Not your fault!" He patted her head, smiling very softly. "I didn't expect that marking them with magic would suck us in. I just wanted to make it more visually… enjoyable."
"Ahaha… well, I think the others will figure it out and come for us!"
"That is what I am afraid of! Who knows where they will emerge!" He sighed, looking back at the void. "I think to get back to normal space will be similar. We need to find the corresponding temples in here and activate them!"
"Are you sure?"
"No. But I have no other ideas!" He answered honestly, making Ceiline more comfortable than listening to false promises.
"It is a plan, at least!" She chuckled, finally letting him go and turning towards the ruins as their little, floating rock flew forward.
They were brought past multiple other chunks of the destroyed realm seeing old, beautifully built structures, some intact, some destroyed, holes punched into them, or collapsed into nothing but rubble. As they were floating past by another, scraping its vastly bigger jagged sides, the two of them jumped, using a light-lasso to grab onto a husk of a tree and land back onto its surface.
"Phew!" Ceiline looked back, watching their first traveling companion drift away after the collision, heading in an entirely separate direction. "That was close!"
"Yeah…" Simbad agreed, dispelling his magic, and they watched as the tree cracked apart, breaking into dozens of pieces like a glass statue floating there without any weight. "The gravity is weird… our weight comes from our mana and not from our physical body." He murmured, walking, testing the ground covered in a thick layer of ash and dust, getting the white smoke blown into the air every time he stomped with enough force.
"Our mana?" Ceiline asked, trying to cast a spell, and she understood it immediately. "Woah… heavy."
"Yes. It seems the realm only affects magic and nothing else. Physical objects have no weight anymore. So… be careful!"
"Because of Undead…?"
"Yes. They would be at an advantage in here… and being a destroyed world, they could easily nest in here, unbothered!"
"Yes… you are right." She looked around, ready for a surprise attack at once.
"Let's go; we need to explore and start finding those temples! I just hope they look the same… or we can gain some clues!"
It was eerie walking around in a dead world, lit by the small stars all around them, painting an otherworldly image, dominated by the colors blue and purple and their constant mixings. Ceiline couldn't tell if the buildings were originally this white or were the colors eroded away throughout the thousands of years of neglect. Using their mana to cover their legs, they moved much more safely, feeling weight behind their bodies again. Even if Ceiline tried to jump, she was drawn back to the ground without floating away.
"Where are the bodies?" She asked after they walked through multiple rows of white, smooth-surfaced, stupa-like buildings. No matter which they looked into, they were empty; no bodies, skeletons, or corpses remained, only a thick layer of ash and dust.
"I have a weird suspicion about that…" Simbad whispered, his eyes scanning the dead world.
"I'm all ears!"
"I think we are walking on... in them right now."
"Huh?" Ceiline flinched and looked down, realizing what he meant.
All they saw around them were ash-covered. Their own culture dictated that every dead had to be cremated. No bodies should be left behind… and this world being dead… could only mean…
"The Gods above… I think you may be right…!" Ceiline gasped in horror, feeling a bit sick as it would mean that millions, if not billions, were murdered here, going by the amount of ash covering everything, painting the world grey.
"Mhm…" Lia moaned, waking up, lying on Rinzen in their tent. Grabbing onto her breasts, she pushed herself up, licking her lips, feeling it was a long time ago she slept so well. "Wait…" She mumbled, then trembled, hurriedly clambering off Rinzen with a horror-struck expression. It was already morning, going by the chirping of birds and the light coming in from the outside. Fixing her underwear, she hurried out, ready to apologize, but nobody was there.
At first, it didn't look like a big deal, but it turned out to be one just ten minutes later. Everyone coming out of their tents realized the problem at once; they were two people short… Ceiline and Simbad had gone missing.
"I…" Keily stuttered, looking around, panic settling onto his face, "I slept in and…"
"Nobody came to wake you up, relax… I slept in too…" Lia murmured, feeling just as guilty.
"We will go and check the peashooters; they should have warned us!" Sion said as he rushed off with Aurora.
"We are going to search too! Look for clues!" Lia shouted, and they spread out on the plateau, trying to find anything suggesting what had happened. An hour later, they met up at their campsite again, looking even more anxious.
"All peashooters are there and working… none is missing, they all look fine, and there are no clues of anything or anybody coming in contact with them!" Sion said with a sigh.
"Maybe they are gone for an early walk?" Koa asked, but she also knew it was a slim chance.
"Simbad wouldn't have done it." Raufon crossed his arms, drumming on his biceps, "And I think Ceiline would be against it too. She is a reasonable woman!"
"Could we have all been under a spell?" Rinzen asked, "Sleeping through something big?"
"I don't think so." Lia bit her lips, "I won't say it is impossible, but I think, with our current strength, we would have been woken up by it! There is no residue of foreign mana in the air, and I can't feel anything that would point towards Ceiline or Simbad using attacking spells to defend themselves!"
"Maybe they didn't have a chance… ow…" Sion hissed as Aurora stomped on his feet with plentiful strength. "Sorry. I didn't mean it that way!"
"I get it, but- Ah!" Lia trembled, "No-Space! I… I did feel a little bit of it again when searching for them!" She exclaimed loudly, snapping her finger.
The revelation was clear to everyone. The two probably disappeared into the hidden sub-realm sometime in the night. They probably activated the entrance, or it is like the cave, leading to the Golden Claw Sect, randomly swallowing up people.
"What now?" Keily asked, looking at Lia for answers.
"First, we will examine everything!" She said, watching the seven buildings behind her. "From top to bottom! Raufon, Keily! Go, clean away all the shrubs, burn them if must! I want to see the naked rocks!"
"Yes, Boss!" They saluted, already going at it with full strength.
"Rinzen, Koa, I want you to wash the place clean! When the boys clear a section, I want it to sparkle so I can study whatever under that dirt!"
"Sure thing!" They agreed just the same.
"We," Lia turned to Aurora and Sion at last, "are going to examine the buildings! Search their bellies and climb to the top, and check the surroundings! We need all the clues we can get and try to open the door to this sub-realm as soon as possible!"
…
….
……
By the time afternoon came, the whole place was cleaned and returned to a time when nature was still kept at bay. The rocks were shining in the sunlight and revealed the many carved symbols, runes, and writings all around the floor and on the side of the buildings. Lia was sitting atop one of the pinecone-like structures, looking down from above, trying to make sense of the hundreds of symbols all around them.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Rinzen asked, climbing up next to her.
"No." She answered, annoyance lacing her simple reply. "You?"
"Sadly, no. I tried referencing it with anything we have back home, but… I never saw anything like this."
"Worse, they are all different. I can't relate them to any of our modern symbols… If I just… I just managed to get a feel of what they mean… but it does not seem like writing at all!"
"No, it doesn't." Aurora agreed, clambering up to them on the side of the building. "Sion had an idea, though." She wrote and continued after seeing Lia's eager gaze. "What if it's not writing but a formation? Or a map."
"A map?" Lia and Rinzen asked, and then Lia's head snapped backward, looking at the sky. "A sky chart!" She exclaimed, springing to her feet.
"Um…" Aurora looked at Rinzen because they had a different idea with Sion, but now she wasn't so sure about it anymore, so she remained silent.
"Of course!" Lia laughed, "I was too focused on the ground! Stupid!" She slapped herself, "Remember what Simbad said?! These seven buildings point towards one star each! Then the many symbols down there must have their reference in the sky! I get it now!"
"We don't," Rinzen answered honestly.
"Simbad told us their sequence…" She continued, watching the still-bright sky. "I bet if we can somehow activate these shitty, old buildings in the correct order, we could get into the sub-realm!"
“It… could work…” Rinzen thought about it, "But none of us really versed in it. Astronomy, I mean."
"Well, we need to think rationally!" Lia smiled, gaining confidence, "Simbad said the stars appear in order. We need to activate them in that order!"
"And… how?" Aurora signed, but Lia had no answer to that. Not yet. "Do any of you remember the order? I totally forgot."
"Well… we are better to figure out, and quick… Because Simbad probably did it by accident!"
…
….
……
"Where… are we?" Ceiline asked, looking around nervously as they were standing on a floating rock, drifting amongst the endless stars in the sky.
"Inside the sub-realm…" Simbad whispered, feeling just as alarmed, his eyes narrowed, constantly scanning their surroundings.
The sky was replaced by a black canvas dotted with millions of twinkling stars, yet it was a different view than Simbad was used to. It was not the night sky of Meriath; it was different. Even worse, wherever they looked, there was no natural land to speak of, but the cosmical space spreading towards infinity where their small asteroid was drifting around aimlessly.
"Are we… in an illusion?" Ceiline spoke up again, trying to get a feel of their surroundings, and she could breathe normally or walk around without obstructions. The problem came when she tried to jump as she started to quickly fly away from the rock they stood on. "Kyha?!"
"Gotcha!" Lucky for her, Simbad was fast and caught her by the ankles, pulling her back, but since then, Ceiline has been grasping onto his hand, afraid of letting go.
"I won't try that again…" She murmured, her heart beating in her throat. "What… the hell is this place?!"
"It's a graveyard…" Simbad whispered, and when Ceiline followed his gaze, she understood.
In the distance, a destination to where their rock was floating towards, they could see a sea of similar, giant, and minuscule asteroids alike floating around, many of them having multiple buildings in different states of ruins. They were all grey, dried up, with no more life remaining on them. The trees that once had to be verdant green were ashen in color as if they were not even real, only an imitation made out of lime rock. Their leaves were long gone, and only thin sticks were sticking out of their trunks.
"This sub-realm had been completely destroyed. We were lucky that it is still whole and it wasn't cracked apart, or we would be dead already. We are not like Lia, who could travel No-Space."
"I do not like the idea of getting sucked into it!" Ceiline complained, looking at the stars, searching for cracks, but even if there were any, it was hard to see in the dark background.
"We would have already felt its pull if that were the case, so don't worry. Our problem is that the inside was clearly smashed apart. There had to be a cataclysmic battle playing out here… I can't even imagine the powers behind something that could destroy a place like this!"
"Maybe someone at Tier 9 could do it."
"Maybe." Simbad nodded as they were slowly getting closer to the sea of asteroids. "Our first priority is going to be to find a way back."
"Who thought a walk amongst the temples would send us here… sorry for suggesting it!"
"Not your fault!" He patted her head, smiling very softly. "I didn't expect that marking them with magic would suck us in. I just wanted to make it more visually… enjoyable."
"Ahaha… well, I think the others will figure it out and come for us!"
"That is what I am afraid of! Who knows where they will emerge!" He sighed, looking back at the void. "I think to get back to normal space will be similar. We need to find the corresponding temples in here and activate them!"
"Are you sure?"
"No. But I have no other ideas!" He answered honestly, making Ceiline more comfortable than listening to false promises.
"It is a plan, at least!" She chuckled, finally letting him go and turning towards the ruins as their little, floating rock flew forward.
They were brought past multiple other chunks of the destroyed realm seeing old, beautifully built structures, some intact, some destroyed, holes punched into them, or collapsed into nothing but rubble. As they were floating past by another, scraping its vastly bigger jagged sides, the two of them jumped, using a light-lasso to grab onto a husk of a tree and land back onto its surface.
"Phew!" Ceiline looked back, watching their first traveling companion drift away after the collision, heading in an entirely separate direction. "That was close!"
"Yeah…" Simbad agreed, dispelling his magic, and they watched as the tree cracked apart, breaking into dozens of pieces like a glass statue floating there without any weight. "The gravity is weird… our weight comes from our mana and not from our physical body." He murmured, walking, testing the ground covered in a thick layer of ash and dust, getting the white smoke blown into the air every time he stomped with enough force.
"Our mana?" Ceiline asked, trying to cast a spell, and she understood it immediately. "Woah… heavy."
"Yes. It seems the realm only affects magic and nothing else. Physical objects have no weight anymore. So… be careful!"
"Because of Undead…?"
"Yes. They would be at an advantage in here… and being a destroyed world, they could easily nest in here, unbothered!"
"Yes… you are right." She looked around, ready for a surprise attack at once.
"Let's go; we need to explore and start finding those temples! I just hope they look the same… or we can gain some clues!"
It was eerie walking around in a dead world, lit by the small stars all around them, painting an otherworldly image, dominated by the colors blue and purple and their constant mixings. Ceiline couldn't tell if the buildings were originally this white or were the colors eroded away throughout the thousands of years of neglect. Using their mana to cover their legs, they moved much more safely, feeling weight behind their bodies again. Even if Ceiline tried to jump, she was drawn back to the ground without floating away.
"Where are the bodies?" She asked after they walked through multiple rows of white, smooth-surfaced, stupa-like buildings. No matter which they looked into, they were empty; no bodies, skeletons, or corpses remained, only a thick layer of ash and dust.
"I have a weird suspicion about that…" Simbad whispered, his eyes scanning the dead world.
"I'm all ears!"
"I think we are walking on... in them right now."
"Huh?" Ceiline flinched and looked down, realizing what he meant.
All they saw around them were ash-covered. Their own culture dictated that every dead had to be cremated. No bodies should be left behind… and this world being dead… could only mean…
"The Gods above… I think you may be right…!" Ceiline gasped in horror, feeling a bit sick as it would mean that millions, if not billions, were murdered here, going by the amount of ash covering everything, painting the world grey.
