End of Book 1 – Chapter 130: The Prodigal Son Returns

One moment Kaius was standing at the peak of a dwarven citadel deep below the earth, then the world shifted, blurring for a few mind-bending fractions of a second as he was torn along an impossible axis. Something moved within those depths, something large and curious, something that inspired a primal terror within him. Then he was snatched away.

His stomach lurched, and he stumbled forwards, kicking up a pile of loose leaf litter. For a moment he reeled, struggling to process the experience of translocation, before he shoved it to the back of his mind when Porkchop let out an excited chitter. Having dived nose first into the soft earth of the forest, his brother was currently enraptured with rubbing every handspan of his surface along the ground.

“Dirt! Normal dirt, with dead leaves and insects!” Porkchop moaned, digging his crystalline claws into the ground.

Kaius smiled at his bond-brother, before he craned his neck and stared at their surroundings in awe.

They were back in the Arboreal Sea.

Blessedly normal trees sprouted up around them in an unbroken tide that stretched as far as he could see, while brush and grasses poked up in the small gaps in the canopy, drinking in the warm summer sun. Kaius stepped forwards, into one of the beams of light, and soaked up its soft embracing heat.

It had been so long since he had felt the sun. To be graced with a summer’s noon upon their exit was fortuitous indeed.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and just felt the thrumming life around him. The rustle of a tepid breeze passing through the trees, the subtle buzz of innumerable insects flying through the air, the chirping of birds, the scent of discarded leaves slowly decaying into mulch.

It was all so pure. So different from the cold mechanical Depths. It had been easy, at times, to gloss over the gaps in its illusion of life. The odd behaviour of the depths-born, the utter absence of lesser forms of life, and a dozen other things. That difference was blinding now that he had returned from his trial.

Spinning in place, he looked back to the portal that they had passed through. It was a pillar of stone, a rough natural block with a circle of the systems immutable and shifting runes on its front face. Where once they would have glowed blue, now they were dull. Spent, until enough time had passed for them to recharge – at least if someone wanted to use it as an entrance that is.

That wasn’t all, at the base of the stone lay two pristine artefacts, nestled on top of the pile of leaves that had accumulated against the portal due to the wind. One was a softly gleaming crystal. Black like obsidian, a dull pulsing orange welled up from its deepest reaches, just barely visible in the daylight.

The other was a metal box. Thin, rectangular, and oddly curved on one side, it had a number of straps and attachment points, but nowhere obvious to carry it like a bag. Weirder still, it didn’t seem to have any kind of opening or latch.

Kaius’s heart quickened. He tapped into True Sight.

Spent Forgeheart:

Unique – Tier I

The drained heart of a warengine, even valued treasure is sometimes discarded.

A valued crystal, glimmering with the remnants of esoteric life, abandoned after the majority of its power was spent. A valuable material for forged alloys, its affinities make it a prized option for supporting the growth of newborn metallic soulbound artefacts.

Material (Life, Crystal).

…

Merchant’s Reinforced Dimensional Saddlebag:

Unique – Tier I

What’s this for? Fragile high-value goods and smuggling, mostly. Sometimes both.

A solid reinforced box of potent arcane infused titanium, its interior is lined with spatially aligned alloys, and engraved with a dense runic formation. Allows access to a small dimensional bubble, approximately the size of a large chest, that may be used to store non-living and non-spatially-enchanted objects.

Depths-wrought Artefact.

Auxiliary Equipment (Dimensional Bag)

Durability II, Dimensional Container I, Self Repair I

Kaius was already moving.

“Oh holy fuck, Porkchop!” He yelled, diving for the box before he scooped it up and held it in his hands. Despite its solid metal construction, it was deceptively light, even if it felt incredibly sturdy.

“What is it?” Porkchop asked, concerned as he ran over to his side.

“We got one! We actually got one!” Kaius stumbled over his words, a wide sweeping grin on his face.

“Got what?” Porkchop said, shoving his head past his shoulder to peer at the Merchant’s Saddlebag.

“A spatial artefact! It’s small, but we should be able to fit everything in here! See?” He swung off his pack, holding it close to the artefact as he funnelled the slightest brush of mana against it.

There was a soft pop, and his bag vanished. Kaius could feel it inside the artefact, an intuitive sense of everything it contained, though it vanished when he stopped interacting with it with his mana.

Porkchop jumped back, shocked at his bag’s disappearing act. “Holy shit!”

“I know! Do you have any idea how expensive these are? We’re gonna have to hide it in one of your saddlebags!” Kaius spun, shaking Porkchop by his jowls.

His brother shook him off. “Quick! Put the rest of our stuff in it, I wanna see if it all fits!”

Porkchop hunkered down, and Kaius ran to his side like a giddy child, picking at knots with hurried fingers as he pulled down the rough bags they had managed to convert into clunky saddlebags from things scavenged from the dwarven city. Kaius funnelled their food supplies, extra water, and his precious spices into their new container, immensely pleased when he saw it was still just barely over half full.

Saving one of their rough stitched bags, they shoved the dimensional container into it, tearing a few holes so that they could secure it to Porkchop’s barding from within. It looked suspicious as hell, but it would do until they made it to one of the villages and they could commission a leather cover, and a proper set of under-armour for Porkchop.

Kaius stepped back, pleased with his handiwork.

“What of the other thing? That crystal?” Porkchop asked, looking past him to where the Forgeheart lay forgotten on a pile of leaves.

At his brother’s prompting, Kaius felt his joy surge once more. “It’s one of the materials I need for my sword,” he said happily. “Though I’m not sure what to do with it.”

He walked over, picking up the glassy stone. It was warm to the touch, like a stone that had been left to bake in the sun. He drew his blade a handspan, and tried touching the material to his weapon. Nothing happened, though he did feel attraction between the two when he attempted to pull the stone back. Then he tried the handle, where the bonding formation lay hidden underneath its wrap. Still nothing. Kaius frowned.

“We might need to stash it for later. Maybe I need a smith, or to ‘forge a link’, whatever that means. Hopefully it’s the latter, I don’t exactly want to go around telling everyone what I have.”

Porkchop nuzzled him. “We’ll figure it out. Either way, we got some good rewards. Why don’t you pack it into the Merchant’s Saddlebag to keep it safe?”

Nodding at his friend’s suggestion, Kaius stowed it away. At the end of the day, even securing it in the first place had gone a long way to solving one issue he had wondered about. Perhaps, with a few more Guardians, he could obtain the rest of the rare materials he needed.

With their loot secured, Porkchop had quickly returned to enjoying the simple pleasure of their return to the Sea, kicking up clumps of dead leaves as he sunk his heavy digging claws into the earth below.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Kaius smiled, before he turned back to the portal. Before he had been distracted by their rewards, he’d been meaning to check something he had heard about.

He focused his True Sight on the system’s formation.

Great Depths Portal: Locked – 3 daysLayer: 2Biome: The Great Warren (explored)

Kaius nodded in satisfaction, he had heard that most analysis type skills would give some insight into the access ways to the Depths that dotted the land, but it was good to get confirmation.

Dropping down, Kaius flopped down to the ground and leaned back heavily onto his hands. He simply stared at the forest around him, still struggling to process that they had actually done it. Even after more than a year in the Depths, it had been a constant push to the finish, a constant threat that hung over his head.