Chapter 188 – The Unspoken Hurt (VI)

Chapter 188

The Unspoken Hurt (VI)

The cave itself was rather damp but also… surprisingly warm? Like, I expected it to be warmer–on account of it blocking the wind and such–but I actually could stop using the Art and just enjoy the… nope, it swung the other way.

Within two or three minutes, I was outright sweating with how much raw humidity just assaulted me. It’s like someone took a bat to my sweat glands, and now they are crying.

… wow.

We walked quite slowly, never making a sound and blending in with the seemingly never-ending darkness. However, it was relatively quickly into our journey that I picked up on the stray tendrils of odd energy–it wasn’t quite what I felt when Lilia used her magic, though it did feel related.

It was like a mixture of warm and cool swirling and twining in an eternal dance, and it was quite… heavy.

The feeling only grew stronger the deeper in we went.

It was about two hundred feet in or so that we stopped, with Lilia signaling us to; it quickly became evident why, as we reached a slight dip and bend, at the end of which I saw a faintly flickering light.

She drew out a few extra runes and gently shook them all as stirs of unknown energy permeated the air around us. The world around, I found, started blending into itself–like someone smudged a perfectly fine painting, but only so much that it gave an unsettling feeling without being immediately obvious.

And when I tried focusing on those individual spots, I found that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

We resumed walking, slowing down even more if possible, and slowly made our way to the end. The humidity persisted, growing, even; I don’t have any experience with spelunking, so I don’t know if these conditions are normal or odd. The only time I came close to ‘exploring’ a cave was that time Jim dragged us to the forest behind our place where there was a small opening in the cliff, not even a cave.

By the time we came to the edge of light, it felt like I’d exited a pool. Just like with the cold outside, at some point it became impossible for the art to deter the humidity any further.

It wasn’t hot, which was the worst bit, I think–just… humid. Like the air itself felt kind of heavy.

I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced anything like it–I’ve been in humid places before, of course, but even there the heat was felt. Dry places were a nightmare of their own, of course, but there’s just something about the combo of humidity and heat that has me screaming for a winter (which I hate even more, oddly enough).

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I took a peek beyond the edge of the gap and saw it open up into a rather large chamber–strange, crystalline structures emitted a faint glow, though most of the harsh, crimson light came from the six containers placed into a hexagonal shape.

They were all levitating about two feet off the ground, spinning in a circle, seemingly made out of a strange metal. Their centers opened into hexagonal pairs, locked opposite one another, and were oozing smoke-like scarlet vapors that drifted upward with and against gravity both, coalescing toward the elevated center–into a spherical orb hovering just a foot or so above the suspended body.

“No need to hide like vermin,” a voice broke through the darkness, startling me; I instinctively pulled my arms back and hid the kids behind me. “Oh, come on out. You are just in time to bear witness to something that has never been done before.”

Lilia was the first to step out, with Zhu right behind her.

Seeing there was no point in ‘hiding’ any longer, I also walked out, with the kids right behind me. Long Tao was the last, appearing quite interested in the strange containers and ignoring everything else.

“If it isn’t Little Zhu.” It wasn’t a man but rather a woman who spoke; looking over, she was seated atop one of the stones, leaning lazily against another one, with a smirk on her face. “You’ve grown.”

“You really are trying to do it!” Lilia gnashed her teeth. “Are you insane?!”

“… hm,” she hummed. “Insane? Hah. Insanity is merely an adjective the weak use against the enlightened,” she added. Yeah. I’m gonna love this gal… “I’m at the brink of achieving something that all our forefathers deemed impossible, and you label me insane?”