Chapter 45

“Our homes are built on the tombs of those who died before us. Our magic, pried from the cold hands of corpses. There is more in this universe that has been forgotten than shall ever be learned anew, and it is for this purpose that this institute will stand.”

—Foundations, Karth Veilbohr

All of the time spent in the central chamber hauling around crates and putting together equipment wasn’t wasted, even if Sylvas did feel a little bit trapped once again. His senses were expanded out in every direction as they made progress, and by the time that their base was established, he had a decent map of the surrounding area down. There were numerous chambers arrayed off the four main passages from the central one, several of them with shafts leading up to the higher levels of the pyramid. It had been decided that their work would begin down here, where the most pertinent information was liable to be, and then they could work outwards and upwards from there through the rest of the structure. The logic was that this was the most defended position and ergo would have been where the residents made their last stand and left behind anything that they were going to leave behind.

Despite the presence of the red sand everywhere throughout the structure, there were signs that things had been pretty well preserved down here. Furniture that had broken down through impacts rather than decay. Many of the side rooms were still shut thanks to the breakdown of the mechanisms that would have operated the doors, so there was liable to be a bounty of artifacts for the academics to get overexcited about.

“Reckon this will be as comfortable as the bunks at least.” Ironeyes observed the sleeping bags rolled out on the stone floor.

“Just like home.” Kaya agreed. “Sleeping on rocks.”

The other recruits seemed to be less enthusiastic about the concept of sleeping on the hard stone floors, with the exception of Havran, whose latest embodiment had left him a little bit incorporeal at all times. He’d taken to sleeping on the floor of his room back in the Blackhall claiming it felt soft as a bed. For him, this was probably an improvement.

At least they wouldn’t be sleeping on them for quite some time. The rest of the night would be spent pushing out the perimeter and making sure that there weren’t any nasty surprises hidden anywhere in the complex. There had been traps built into the temple complex back at the Blackhall, and in many of the other explored ruins, and given the strategic importance of this place, it seemed likely that the Strife natives would have layered on protections of every sort here too. Yet with all that they had explored so far, they’d had found. Truthfully it was starting to become downright unsettling.

More concerning to Sylvas was the fact that they’d found nothing of significance yet. Here was the central chamber, the heart of the pyramid and it was an empty space. Perhaps whatever the natives had been trying to protect from the eidolons had dissolved away with time, perhaps the eidolons had gotten to it or perhaps there had been another strategic retreat, and whatever had been stored here was safely in orbit and already picked over.

With his paradigm, he had something of an advantage when it came to exploring. To map out an area, everyone else had to physically enter each room and check for exits. He already knew the layout of everything around him before he arrived, so a quick scan for Eidolons and traps was all that was really required. They were on the lowest level of the pyramid, hard against what used to be the ground level of Strife, and his senses showed solid rock all the way down beneath them except in a few places where he assumed there had once been pitfall traps. He marked each area where his gravity sense told him there was a drop as he made his way along the corridors, but he didn’t have any real fear of triggering them. He could fly as easily as he could think, so a hole wasn’t exactly an oppressive enemy. 

What did spark his interest and one of his other senses, was that there seemed to be Eidolons down below. Some of them seemed to be trapped in the pitfalls since they’d first wandered into them, others felt as though they were embedded in solid rock with some hints that they may have been tunneling and it had collapsed behind them when he carefully examined the feedback from his probing. Or rather, when Mira examined it meticulously and explained it all to him.

Vaelith accompanied him as he did his work, helping him mark big crosses on the floor of the passages where he thought a trap to be. There were other hollows in some of the walls that had once contained mechanisms that had fallen into disrepair, some near to the pitfalls and some that were not. They both took extra care to mark those too as best as they could, if only for the researchers, since they were the most likely to not be paying attention to their surroundings and end up doing something foolish.

Yet despite all of this, something about the layout seemed subtly off to Sylvas. Not only was there no hint of whatever they were looking for, Mira had to keep adjusting the information that his senses were gathering because they were ever so slightly skewed. His eyes would show him a straight, flat passage, but his gravity sense would insist that it was dipping to one side. Every room felt like it had a lower corner. It was only when he paused to examine the warping himself that he was able to put his finger on the problem.

It wasn’t a gravity well, as such, just a slight dip. A place where the gravity of the pyramid was ever so slightly distorted. Using the combination of all the faulty data that his gravity sense was offering up, it was a relatively easy task to identify the location of this little oddity. Abandoning his previous mapping task after having Mira shoot back a copy of their findings to base camp, Sylvas and his attendant guards began making their way through the side rooms, interlinking passages and ancient locked doors towards the dip. They soon crossed over into an area that had already been mapped, one that it seemed had been assigned to Gharia. 

That makes things easier at least. Sylvas thought as he strode through the area, his senses outstretched. Before long he felt his friend’s presence register in the distance ahead of him, soon to be joined by Bael and Kalisdrothan nearby. All three of them seemed to be gathered around whatever was causing the dip in his perception.

He came out of one of the side doors into the chamber, startling the two elves, but not Gharia who barely even glanced up at his sudden appearance. She was used to him by now, it seemed.

Bael, usually so restrained, almost yelped, “Sylvas?”

“The very man I was just suggesting we fetch.” Kalis’ face lit up as he spotted both Sylvas and faceless Ardent guard accompanying him. “We have found something remarkable here. A rare find, an incredibly rare find.”

Sylvas walked further out into the room, feeling the presence of the dip in the realm of gravity and looking at the towering two pillars and connecting archway that seemed to be causing it. “And you need me, because it has something to do with gravity magic.”

“A remarkable deduction! Indeed it does. Please, take a look and let us know what you think.”

Sylvas moved slowly as he went about to do exactly that, keeping his distance from the distortion’s source just in case the ambient effect of his own gravity mana had some effect on it. Two of the pillars stood on opposite ends of a plinth, both of them curving inwards. Everything was inscribed with a dense layer of script.

“There have been numerous descriptions of these in the historical texts of dozens of extinct cultures, but we’ve only encountered two functional units before in the full breadth of the Empyrean’s history.” The professor explained as Sylvas inspected the device. “It is upon the back of them that the vast majority of interstellar travel was built. Just a partial understanding of the allowed us to devise the jump-gates that allow ships to travel between systems without the need for a gravity mage onboard.”

“Hyperway Gates is the currently preferred terminology.” Bael quickly cut when his cousin paused to take a breath, filling in the obvious gap for Sylvas. “Though I was always fond of the old elvish ‘Gates of the Heavens.’ It has more poetry to it.”

Sylvas crept a little closer to the odd indent in the gravity, careful not to physical touch any of it it. “So you think it functions like a jump-gate, but… just on a smaller scale?”

“Well, not a jump-gate exactly. Rather at this size it should work like a portal. Connecting to a matching sister gate. I presume that pairing is why the native population were so keen to keep it out of the eidolon’s control. It would have granted them access to wherever this connects.” Kalisdrothan seemed positively giddy as he spoke, which Sylvas could completely relate to. They’d already found one remarkably preserved ruin of note, if the portal device could be reactivated, then there was a decent chance at finding another.

“What is the usual range?” Gharia asked, if only to be included in the conversation.

It launched Kalisdrothan into a new lecture. “That is the curious thing about the technology. While technically they could have been aligned in such a manner as to traverse great distances, as jump-gates do, those we found were used for movement within the same planet they were found on. Though they were a great deal smaller…” 

“Would them being larger then allow them to reach orbit?” She immediately asked, making the obvious conclusion. “What are the chances that they could connect to one of the citadels in space above us?”

“Well, theoretically, that’s entirely possible, and perhaps a good use of resources if I’m to be honest.” Kalis replied with a nod. “But what’s curious is that we’ve never found any of these devices up on the citadels, and since these relics, at least the ones we found, require a sister gate to function—”

“Unless used by a mage with gravity affinity.” Sylvas couldn’t help but interject.

“—unless used by a mage with, right, yes I was getting to that. A gravity mage could theoretically use one to open a portal to just about anywhere, and would have been required to make the initial connection between the gates, but beyond that—”

“What the professor is trying to say, is that he doesn’t think it links to any surviving station.” Bael helpfully interrupted when it was clear that the man was having trouble getting to the point.

“Erm, yes, exactly that.” Kalis said after a short pause, the man then looking down at the alien machine and shrugging. “Hypothetically, it could have led off-world to a ship in orbit. Or possibly another planet in the system even. The surviving natives of Strife may have seen their demise was inevitable and made plans to escape to another colonized world. If so, we may have living natives of Strife still alive somewhere out in the cosmos, just waiting to tell us everything that we want to know about what happened here!”

“But of course, we won’t know until we open the gate.” Sylvas wrapped up the thought neatly for them.

“So let us do so!” Kalisdrothan said at almost the same moment that Bael spoke over him. “Not yet.”

The two elves looked at each other, but Bael pressed on. “We have no idea what will be found on the other side of this gate, it could be teeming with eidolons. The natives of strife, if they have survived and hidden themselves, perhaps buried deep underground, may be hostile to invaders such as us. It would be advisable to assemble appropriate plans and defenses before diving in.”

Gharia nodded her agreement. “It’s been here this long, it isn’t going away overnight. We should regroup and lay out our plans for tomorrow.”

Kalis looked between the two of them with dismay, turning to Sylvas’ guards for support but finding nothing in their featureless expressions. He then turned to Sylvas, who took pity on him. “I am just as excited as you to crack this thing open, but there is no point risking losing everything we could still find here when a little preparation could get us everything.”

Realizing he was entirely outvoted, but not realizing that he was in technically command of the whole mission and thus could easily overrule them all, Kalis backed down. “Miss Gharia, if you would be so kind as to remain on watch here until we can establish a guard rotation?”

“Sure.” She let her tail flick a little now with her own excitement.

“Then let’s recall the rest of our teams and see what has been discovered.” He clapped his hands together and headed out. Leaving the rest of them to make heavy eye contact and then trail after him.

Finally, something’s happening, Sylvas thought as a spark of excitement bloomed in his chest. Now maybe things will get a little bit more interesting.