Unbound

Zara studied the statues. Each one was a work of art. The mastery of form was evident in the clean lines of their limbs and the realistic drape of their robes beneath the armor. Save for its bone-white coloration, the armor could have very well been metal, so convincing was its texturing. But beautiful art or no, what truly captured her attention were the details upon each of their backs.

Embedded in the backs of every statue were a series of Belais crystals. They formed shapes that expanded in concentric circles down the length of what would be their spines, and each one shone with a deep pinkish-purple light. Belais's crystals were truly a mystery to her and to everyone else on the Continent. The composition of them had long been debated, but none had ever been able to isolate their details, let alone recreate them.

Tern grumbled, lowering his glasses as he stepped away from one of the statues. "If only I could figure these out," It had been one of his great goals to recreate a Belais' crystal, and one of his few failures. "They're such excellent repositories of power. If we could only replicate them, they would make our Manaships a hundred times more efficient."

Zara nodded. She'd heard the complaint before. There were a few golden goals when it came to the technology of the ancients, and recreating their power storage was high upon that list.

Without warning, a faint humming emanated through the stone at her feet. It was different than before, and Zara glanced toward the central glyph. It lit up just as the lift began to descend.

"I thought we were on the bottom level," Elowen said, turning away from another statue. "How are we going any further?"

Alister brought up the directory. It manifested from one of the statue's backs, showing to all of them a visual representation of layers one through seven, as well as their own relative location. The blip that represented them was descending well beyond the marking for the seventh.

"I suppose we're about to find out," he said.

Broken crystals surrounded them, forming a tube that the platform dropped between. Pieces of it were shattered, as if damaged in a great battle, and Zara felt the entire thing groan slightly with increasing regularity. It held, thankfully, but it set her on edge. The fighting above had ceased after that last terrible roar, but none of them knew what truly laid out beyond the platform’s barrier. Eventually, however, the lift slowed, and the glyph at the center shimmered before pulsing three times.