B4 Chapter 435: Briefings and Plans, Finale

Kaius perked up, shuffling back in his seat as he sat upright. Finally, they were going to hear about their part of the job — and it was a good one at that. Anyone with Delver aspirations dreamt of exploring some abandoned Imperial settlement at some point in their life, though most never got the opportunity. An active ruin with automata was almost suicide for anything less than a team of veteran Silvers, usually multiple. People still tried. Unsurprising, considering the potential value such places held.

As Bronwyn took his seat again, Ro returned to centre stage. Waving her hand over the lectern, a coloured light projected over the map of Deadacre and its surrounding lines vanished. Below it, the parchment shimmered as the ink on its surface swam and rearranged into a new form. Kaius blinked in surprise — he hadn’t realised that even the map was controlled by artifice.

Soon, a cross-section of Deadacre dominated the wall. Directly beneath the streets of the city, Kaius could see a criss-crossing network of sewers and tunnels, with larger, even older constructions just beneath that. Oddly, despite the density and complexity of the cross section, it only covered the upper third of the parchment. The rest was blank.

“Are those lower tunnels and vaults the Imperial ruins?” Kenva asked.

“No, we would have found them long ago if that were the case. They’re the oldest foundations of the city. A catacomb. This is what we knew of Deadacre until we had our run-in with Old Yon. Unfortunately, now we have discovered this.”

Ro waved her hand again, and deep beneath the old catacombs, several thin access ways appeared, drilling deep into the earth. They breached massive, gargantuan rooms and tunnels that bored through the ground beneath Deadacre, stretching far beyond even the city walls. Much of it was hazy and clouded, filled with holes and partially obscured, and Kaius could tell that only the very top layer had been even partially explored. With a twist of Ro’s hand, the perspective shifted to a top-down view. A clean circle showed the outline of Deadacre’s walls, while the rest showed the mismatched sprawl of the Imperial ruin, stretching out beyond them almost to the very edge of the circle of dead ground that surrounded the city.

“An Imperial bunker.”

Kaius looked at the map with interest. Imperial ruins were spread all over Vaastavir, and with the ubiquity and strength the Eternal Empire had once had, they were semi-common. Yet most had either been repurposed into modern settlements, utterly flattened by time, or long since explored. Every few years, though, some forgotten installation would crop up. They weren’t too dangerous if it was some civilian settlement lost in a jungle, or a simple mine forgotten on the side of a mountain. Yet, sometimes they were not so simple. Sometimes they were old industrial factories buried deep in the earth — or worse, noble or military bunkers full of ancient traps, misfiring weapons, and war automata.

“What do we know about it?”

Ro winced. “Precious little,” She swept her hand over the half-filled-in segments of the map. “As you can see, we’ve barely even explored the upper layers. From what we can tell, old Yon and his men had been using the very top levels somewhat, but they didn’t do much exploration beyond finding the odd bolt hole to retreat to. Neither have we. So far, what we’ve seen looks civilian, but history has proven that bunkers like this can often hide more important installations toward their core, deeper beneath the earth.”

Ianmus leaned forward, resting his head on his hands as he stared at the map, a focused furrow on his brow. “What’s our goal? Simple scouting or an attempt at a shutdown?”

Kaius paused, pondering his friend’s words. A shutdown? How would a single team disable an entire facility larger than a city?

Rieker responded to Ianmus. “Scouting. Though obviously, much will be left to your discretion. If you find that it’s active and dangerous, and you can safely shut down the facility, that is, of course, preferable. That said, if it’s a military or noble installation and you find defences of a more active variety rather than just decaying runework do not feel like you must press on. If the protections are dangerous enough to give all of you pause, then it is a significant enough installation that it will draw tomb raiders and treasure seekers. Delvers and noble families all over Vastavar will be clambering for a slice of the reward for its shutdown, as well as claim a portion of whatever is found.”

That was all well and good, but he was still rather lost by how something like this could even be shut down. If it was resilient enough to last for millenia, what could they possibly do?

“How would we even deactivate something like this?”

Ianmus turned to him. “If it’s similar to the others I’ve seen detailed in Mystral records, the centre of this installation will have some form of mana-gathering station, usually on the lowest levels. If we can destroy or render it inoperable, the whole thing quickly runs out of energy.”

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A mana-gathering formation large enough to power something bigger than most cities? How in the gods name was that even possible? That was mind boggling! Only the gods knew how much power something of that scale would need.

He’d known that the Eternal Empire was advanced in their runework and magic, but to this extent? That set a fire in his belly — one that left him eager and curious. He needed to see this for himself. Who knew what sort of insights he could glean from what must have been amongst the peak of imperial artifice?

Next to him, Porkchop tilted his head. “So we just break it? Not deactivate it? I would have thought something like that would be valuable. Your kind always seem interested in picking things apart.”