Outworld Liberators

Fay, Oswin, Jackson, and Jenkii pressed on through the corridor, and after another dozen minutes of controlled running, they began to hear the sound of flowing water.

The passage opened into a vast ruin. To the left, sheer stone walls rose in dark silence, their ledges broken by narrow stairways, shattered knight statues, and strips of moss clinging to forgotten alcoves.

Near the center stood ruined arches and pillared galleries hanging over a deep chasm, where a pale waterfall poured down into a green pool below. Cracked paths wound around the water, crossing broken platforms and precarious steps.

To the right, more stairways climbed the cliff in jagged turns beneath hollow doorways and collapsing terraces. Everything about the place felt ancient, hidden, and ceremonial, as though they had stepped into some buried sanctum left behind by a people who had vanished long ago.

Oswin drew out a small yin yang plate filled with simple oil and water. It was one of the more useful little tools Radeon had taught him to use, a timer of sorts.

Once qi was poured into it, the shifting divide between black and white would move according to how much time had passed since the last infusion.

When Oswin checked it now, the line had already crept between five and six.

They had been inside the secret realm for more than five hours.

Jenkii, ever curious about Oswin's odd little gadgets, leaned in at once to peek over what he was doing.

Fay noticed that and, being trained by Radeon to read the smallest turns in mood and expression, at once felt mischief stir in her.

"Oswin. Look to your left," she said in a grave voice.

Oswin turned at once. His face nearly brushed against Jenkii's.

He jerked back so fast that he almost stumbled, then coughed into his hand and fought to keep the false skin over his metal frame from betraying him.

When he looked at Fay again, it was with a wounded sort of glare.

"Focus, Sister Fay. Danger may be all around us," Oswin said.

Jenkii only blinked. She had felt nothing strange at all.

"What were you looking at there? Let me see too," she asked.

Choosing not to answer that, Oswin instead explained what the yin yang plate had shown. The mood sobered at once.

"This should be our last search for fortune in here," Jackson said. "If we push too long, we might get shut out of the second layer."

Everyone agreed. Without wasting more words, they began taking turns absorbing spirit stones, making certain their qi reserves were filled before they went any deeper.

Oswin studied the chamber in silence. The light itself made him uneasy. It was a simple enough trick. Men were not creatures of the night, and the moment a place seemed bright and open, something in them always wanted to loosen its grip on caution.

That was what bothered him most. He was certain the air here had grown brighter by degrees, gentle enough that most would never notice it until their guard had already dropped.

He did not reach for any obvious divining tool this time. Instead, he slipped a small piece of elemental darkness ore from his sleeve and kept it hidden within the fold of his robe.

The ore was highly sensitive to light and would always try to recoil from it, as though pushed away by some unseen force.

Beneath his false skin, Oswin's steel hands remained steady enough to catch even the faintest tremor.

There it was. A tiny motion. Almost imperceptible.

The darkness ore was shifting.

Oswin did not shout a warning. He did not even let his expression change. Instead, he quietly raised his qi and pressed rounded steel sticks beneath the jaws of Fay, Jackson, and Jenkii, sending his voice through qi into the steel so it carried through bone like a conductor.

"Ready yourselves. No sudden moves. We do not alert the enemy."

No one played the fool. They understood at once.

Together, they began moving as casually as they could, the sort of easy pace that said they had noticed nothing at all. Fay even turned her head toward the falls and pointed as if something else had caught her attention.

"I'm a bit thirsty. Do you think we can drink that?" she asked.

Jenkii answered at once, seizing the chance to sound natural. Pretending skillfully was beyond her, so honesty served her better.

"Sister Fay, I think it's pretty yucky. What if some rat already pissed in it?"

The talk went on from there, loose and ordinary. They spoke of the stonework, of the old railing designs, of the moss on the walls and whether it held any useful nutrients.

All the while, Oswin guided their pace without seeming to do so. He had already chosen the safest doorway through divination.

The others understood the lesson well enough. Not every fight, even a winnable one, was worth taking if danger could be slipped past instead.

At last, the enemy showed itself, frustration dragging it out of hiding.

It was small, almost child sized, yet there was nothing harmless in it. A swollen bald head sat atop a starved, sinewy body, its ribs and tendons standing out beneath taut skin lit from within.

Huge black eyes swallowed most of its face.

Its mouth bristled with crooked needle teeth, and from its back sprouted thin translucent wings like those of some diseased moth.

The creature darted straight for Jenkii, as though certain she would be the first to break and attack.

Still, Oswin caught her hand before she could move.

"We should all eat together after this. What do you think?" Oswin asked in an even tone.

Fay and Jackson did not tense. Jenkii, who had been just about to roar, froze instead at Oswin's grip. Then understanding came to her. It was a warning, not a question.

"Yeah, we should," Jenkii said.

If she could not fight, then she would think of food instead. At once, her mind went to the godly meals waiting back at the Cuisine of the Radeon Spirit, and the thought was enough to keep her steady.

So they kept walking.

Step by step, they entered a stretch of swallowing darkness, and that was when the rest of them revealed themselves.

Not one. Not three. Twenty.

Twenty of those ominous light fairies hung in the dark, their bloated heads and black eyes watching with naked malice.

One of them, maddened by being ignored, shrieked and hurled a spear.

The weapon shot past them and punched clean through five huge stone pillars before it came to a stop, the holes around the impact hissing and sizzling as though the spear carried some caustic corruption with it.

Only then did the danger fully settle in their bones.

Oswin's caution had saved them again. That was the worth of a diviner who was truly prepared.

Above them, the steel ceiling creature slithered back through the dark.

The face formed in the metal drew into a deep scowl, plain in its disgust.

It clearly loathed those blighted fays, yet for all its hatred, it remained restrained.

Even that thing did not wish to stir trouble with fellow creatures of the ghostly realm, and the restraint left it simmering in visible frustration.

After a few silent minutes in the dark, they fastened the ropes around their waists again and resumed their cautious pace. Jenkii bore it for as long as she could, but curiosity soon began gnawing at her heart.

"Why didn't we attack?" she asked at last.

"You saw how little of that cavern was actually illuminated, right?" Oswin said. "If one creature could light up only a small corner, then how many more do you think were hiding?"

"Jenkii, don't trouble the diviner. He clearly knew what he was doing," Jackson said.

"I was only curious. Wouldn't it be better if I knew these things too?" Jenkii shot back.

"Let us not get strained over small matters," Fay said. "Drop it, both of you."

That ended it. The group fell silent again.

Not long after, they came upon what seemed to be the end of this stretch of inheritance grounds.

Before them stood a small hill of solid gold. Around it, black runes crawled across the ground like a sealed boundary.

Oswin stepped forward first. He gathered plain qi without using any art and hurled the energy toward the hill. The moment it crossed the black runes, the qi scattered and dispersed as if swallowed by the air itself.

He narrowed his eyes, then switched methods. Flame gathered in his index finger, and he tried to burn the runes away. After a full minute, the glossy surface over the markings only darkened.

When he wiped at it, there was nothing beneath but the same untouched pattern.

Fay, Jackson, and Jenkii had been watching him closely and already understood what he meant to test.

"Should we try?" Fay asked.

Oswin nodded. There was no harm in seeing what each of them could do.

Jackson moved first. His blood sword bit down on the runes in a shower of sparks, but the blade only shrank a little from the effort. It left no real mark, not even a proper scratch.

Jenkii was next. The Blooming Lotus Consecutive Arts would not work here. That art needed a target with intelligence, sentience, or at least a soul to answer her blows.

Runes were only markings. So she abandoned finesse and simply tried to smash through them. Again and again, her axe came down until her arms shook and her breath turned ragged.

In the end, she collapsed onto the ground panting, having gone all out for nothing. Jenkii knew the problem was not the weapon, but herself. She still could not draw out its full potential.

Then Fay stepped in and called on her underworld flames. One burst. Two. Six in all. By the end of it, she was left with only a faint blush on her face and a disappointed shake of her head.

"Give me a moment," Oswin said. "Let me think how we should handle this."