Chapter 198 – Lost Places

“Where’s the Gate?” Mirian said. “And how do you know? We didn’t find anything in that cave.”

“I know where the Gate is because it wasn’t in the cave,” Gabriel said, still smiling. “It’s a simple matter of process of elimination. If it’s not in the city, not under the city, and not under the dunes outside the city, it must be in the only place we haven’t checked. Go ahead and guess.”

“Just tell me,” Mirian said, impatient.

“Make two guesses, then I will.”

She thought of their recent conversation. “You’ve deduced a network of Labyrinth generated passages somewhere near Mahatan.”

“No, but close.”

Mirian thought. They started walking back towards the city, which meant Gabriel thought it was there, or near there. But he just said a place we haven’t checked. “The Mahatan Royal Palace?” The palace was forbidden to enter, but contained all sorts of riches. Viridian would want to see the jeweled lotuses. Torres would probably love to see the ancient spellrod designs. Mirian hadn’t found any sort of deep tunnels or underground areas large enough to contain an Elder Gate, so she’d eliminated it as a possibility without actually infiltrating it. Perhaps she’d been too hasty.

“Hmm? No, I’ve been there, though I suppose you haven’t. A lot of fancy stuff, all of it useless to us because it doesn’t have a lever to pull labeled ‘stop the moon from falling.’ Well, I’ll tell you.”

***

They stood before the Mahatan Oasis. It was ringed with lush greenery, and the wealthy and poor alike of the city came often to walk the shores or to pray at the blessed waters. “You think it’s there?” Mirian peered down. The waters were murky. Large spell engines to the north and east were positioned to prevent sand and soot particles from blowing into the waters, but they only filtered out the majority of debris. Long ago, the waters had apparently been crystal clear. That would have been beautiful to see, she thought. Briefly, she imagined Jei standing by her side as they looked out across the waters.

She suppressed her emotions again. “I don’t suppose you have air bubble or air from water?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t have them in that massive grimoire of yours,” Gabriel said. “How do you prepare such a massive spellbook, anyways?”

“I steal it,” she lied. “You can steal several books, then rebind the pages into a single book. Just make sure you strip any tracking glyphs out.”

“Or kill the arcanist you take it from,” Gabriel said, tapping his head.

Mirian looked around. “Okay, well, I’d rather avoid pissing off every person in Mahatan by violating the sacred waters, so I’m going to sneak in.” She took out a piece of parchment and began scribbling down a list of crystals. “If you could go to a few arcanist shops and get these conduit crystals, that would be great. Alternatively, an alchemist should have the base elements needed to create the crystals. I’ll meet you at the inn.”

“I do the drudgery, and you get to do the fun exploration?”

“Yes, because I’m properly prepared,” Mirian said, tapping her head.

“How are you going to sneak in?”

“Very carefully,” she replied. As soon as they’d parted, she sought out a smithy. She telekinetically knocked over a jar of oil to distract the smith, then used lift object to grab the anvil. Then, she ducked into an alley, checking that no one was watching. She cast total camouflage, then levitated straight up until she was well above the city, heading out over the oasis. The sun was high enough in the sky that most people weren’t looking up. There were people all along the shore, so she aimed for the center of the waters. Technically, since she was surrounding herself with an air bubble, she wasn’t touching the sacred waters, but she doubted any magister or Holy Sentinel would see it that way. She used manipulate water to hold the surface of the water still as she descended into it.

The buoyancy of the air bubble was a problem for moving down, which is why she’d brought the anvil. It was easier to let gravity pull her down than to try to propel herself.

Below, the world was dark. Above, the sunlight glimmered. As she dropped, the light above her faded. She cast a light spell, letting it shine bright.

The steep slopes of the oasis were some sort of marble, and the rock glimmered with white and pink tones. Then, she caught a glimpse of an old arch. Then a chunk of an old pillar. Her heart pounded. She still was maintaining her levitation spell, and as she went deeper, she increased the mana flowing through its glyphs so that her descent slowed.

Then, it loomed in front of her, emerging from the depths into Mirian’s light with a suddenness that startled her, shifting and moving as it always did, even thought it was still.

The Gate.

Mirian brought her buoyancy into equilibrium so that she could approach it and brightened her light. Like the Luamin moon illuminating a dark landscape, the dark shapes in the depths resolved themselves. She beheld the ruins of a great city. Dark scorch marks marred the beautiful stonework, but even after all this time, she could make out the motifs carved into the buildings. Her heart caught as she examined the old statues. Most of the depictions of the Elder Gods were similar enough she could identify them, but the tools they carried seemed so different.

Her eyes settled on a statue that was clearly Altrukyst, though the object he carried resembled no lantern she’d ever seen. And instead of the hole in His chest with the two orbs linked by a chain, the stone was worked in complex concentric spheres.

It resembled the Gate that was before her now.

Her eyes lingered on Xylatarvia. Her hand usually rested on a great ship, complete with great sails and complex rigging. This thing, though, looked nothing like a ship. There was no visible deck, and it resembled an modern Akanan tower turned on its side. It didn’t even look like a modern spell engine-driven ship. Instead, it was like there were three cups attached to the back, and a little umbrella sticking out of the front. Was that supposed to be the sail?

Then her heart skipped again. She had missed it initially, but one of the statues covered in detritus was the ninth Elder God. Just like in the Vault of the Labyrinth, three swords pierced the chest of this unknown God.

What does it mean?

She had given Gabriel his mission to go get crystals out of convenience, but also so he’d be busy and wouldn’t know how long she could sustain spells with her mana. The longer she was down here, the less plausible any lie about her capabilities. She tore her eyes from the statues and began her search for what she had begun to think of as the ‘conduit’ room. Much like core conduits arrayed in a spell engine, the creatures that ran the Gates seemed to have something similar, only they seemed to interface directly with the conduit crystals rather than a panel of glyphs. She couldn’t quite figure out how that worked. Perhaps they were like myrvites and had access to natural spells?

She brightened her light more to better reveal the ruins.

Again, the buildings looked so strange. Within the stone, she could see corroded steel beams. But that implied the pre-Cataclysm civilization had used construction techniques that had only recently been discovered. A scholar of the Viaterria would want to know about this. She had known about Torrian Tower and its lost techniques using glyphs in construction—but what else had the long lost generations mastered?

How much had been lost in the Cataclysm?

And another thought: How much will be lost in this one?

The door to the conduit room seemed to be well hidden. Mirian went back to her spellbook, looking through her ‘utility’ section. She knew the approximate dimensions of a conduit room, and she knew the composition of the crystals on the panel. She could specify a spell that looked for those things. It was, admittedly, a bit hard to do while also holding levitation, lift object, enhanced light, and air bubble spells.

Mirian cast. She felt the mental tug as the spell revealed a location to her. It was now clear why she couldn’t find it: the room was buried under one of the large collapsed structures. The amount of mana and spellpower it would take to move such a thing was daunting, even for her.

The adjustments to her soul in the Endelice had allowed her to absorb small amounts of ambient mana. The adjustments to her soul in the ruins of the First City had allowed her to sense remnants of soul energy. When fighting Apophagorga, she’d realized she could siphon pieces of soul energy and then ‘degrade’ it to turn it into B-class mana. Why not siphon the souls I can sense directly? she thought. That would increase the amount of mana she was regaining by a lot more than what was normally possible through natural regeneration or even the boon she’d gained in the Endelice. Enough to do some real work down here.

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Mirian anchored herself at the bed of the oasis, dropping the anvil on the stone and then hooking her feet so she could release both the lift object and levitation spells she was using to achieve neutral buoyancy. That would free up more mana and spellpower for her. She then cast air from water to replenish the oxygen in her bubble. Then, she prepared force drill and lift object, this time both enhanced to better pulverize the objects they were used on, then began to cast.

The ruins trembled, and Mirian’s spellbook glowed. The sounds of stone tearing and shattering were distorted by the water. Great gouts of dust and debris were kicked up as her two spells descended on the stone and steel tower. Mirian strained as her spells lifted colossal chunks, a ton at a time, up into the waters and cast them aside. Deep thuds echoed as the stones smashed into the ground. The earth trembled.

Mirian strained with the effort. She wasn’t just casting the force spells, she was also pulling whatever dancing fragments of souls were nearby to burn.

Fragments that still had long lost memories. There had been a city here once—