Chapter 480 - Following the red string

Sofia, Pareth and Bookie advanced carefully through the cavernous formations of the weird place they had found themselves in, encountering nothing but more of the colorful snails crawling along the walls. Yet, every so often, they would hear strange noises that stopped them in their tracks. The atmosphere was tense, until Bookie’s intrusive thoughts won.

He stopped in front of one of the big snails.

“Say, Sofia. Do you think they taste good?”

“Wha- Bookie… Can you even taste anything?”

“Oh! Right… Well, I can taste bones. And souls, I think. Bones taste good! Maybe these things have bones?”

Pareth shook his head, and Sofia sided with him. “I don’t think they do. Unless you have developed an appetite for shells. But even then, these things might be related to the Ormoncleth parasi-” Sofia realized her potential mistake, too late. Her vision expanded and her consciousness swirled.

From far above, through an infinity of layers, she watched herself pass out and get caught by Pareth. Her vision extended again, for an instant, she felt like she could see everything. The entire universe, gigantic, infinite, all things in their perfect place, a tapestry of countless stars weaving the threads of reality as she knew it.

A slap pulled her out of the overwhelming sight.

“Sofia!” a distorted voice cried out.

Touch, colors, smells and sounds all melded together, as Sofia was starting to regain control of her body. Somehow, she felt restricted, constricted. This mortal envelope was holding her back, it was all she could think about.

Another slap realigned her senses.

“Sofia, stoooop!” a panicked voice pleaded.

Her thoughts finally cleared up, and she could see what she was doing. Bookie and Pareth were pinning her down against the ground, holding her arm still with all the strength they could muster. Said arm was digging into her chest, it had torn through her flesh and bones to grab ahold of her mana heart, and was trying to pull it out.

Even now, she had to gather all her willpower to force her own hand open. The mana heart snapped back to its rightful place, and her flesh started to reform.

“It’s… I- I got it. You can let me go. S- Sorry about that. I think I… I lost my mind for a second.”

“Are you sure?” Bookie asked worriedly, unwilling to let her arm go.

“Yes, look, I can move my fingers just fine now. Thanks for slapping me out of it, Bookie. Thank you too, Pareth. This was actually really dangerous…”

“What happened? Did you become crazy, Sofia?” Bookie asked again, still not letting go.

“I… Saying the Uncles’ names here is a bit more dangerous than usual is all.”

“Did they attack you?!”

“No… I think it’s more… I think it’s like Death. Do you remember Leverle’s explanation, Bookie?”

“They’re too strong?”

“Something like that. I blurted out the name without thinking and it just… Well you saw what happened. But this Uncle has always been good to us until now,” Sofia pointed out, glancing at the bell on her scepter which was floating right next to her, ”so I don’t think what just happened to me was something they wanted. It’s probably also why Orator warned me not to use the other Uncle’s name. Let’s all be careful not to say the names, and this should not happen again. Alright?”

Bookie nodded, and his fingers let go of Sofia’s arm, but Pareth was still holding, the flames in his eye sockets burning brightly. Sofia smiled at him, and he slowly let go.

“I’m fine, really. Sorry for the scare.”

She stood up and fixed her hair, mumbling to herself, “No wonder everyone is scared. Between this and what happened to Alith last time…”

The group advanced through the sinuous paths, encountering nothing worth of mention, until the tether they had been following started pointing straight down.

“That’s a strange hole,” Bookie commented, looking at the narrow opening in the ground the tether was pointing at.

“I can’t even see the end, it’s too sinuous,” Sofia observed.

“Do we still go down, Sofia? This is a bit scary…”

“You both should hide in the storage, I’ll put on an unlife rune or two and go down slowly. Everything should be fine.”

The shifting shapes of the [False immortality] runes were strange as ever, Sofia had thought that she might stand a better chance at understanding them now that she knew Aphenoreth’s rune, which was arguably much weirder, but that did not actually help. It still took the usual fifteen minutes to channel the three runes, and despite the noises Sofia could hear constantly in the distance being quite disturbing, she still had to see any creature other than the colorful snails.

Due to [Infinity Engine], her mana regeneration wasn’t affected, proving the efficacy of the effect.

It was really the right choice. I should probably keep at least one rune up all the time now. No reason no to. In fact I should have cast them while we were walking…

Anyway…

Using bone dominus, Sofia created thin insect-like bone legs all around her armor, copying the Kidjikkiks and she used them to crawl down the weird hole in the ground. It was not the easiest thing to maneuver, but she had gotten a ton of bone-controlling experience from staying in a mostly-bone body for the better part of a year in the trial. She was going down feet first, but a vision token on the sole of her right boot let her see below.

As she crawled down for tens of hundreds of meters, the hole was becoming narrower, until there was no longer enough space for the Kidjikkik-style legs to push her down, and she had to turn off her armor to be slim enough to fit. 

Eventually even that turned out to not be enough.

“I’m stuck… How deep does this still go… Yvraveteth!”

Still going straight down… Seriously Orator, where are you leading me?

Digging through the weird reddish stone that made up the walls was not really an option, this stone had strange properties, cold and hard to the touch, yet bending under pressure, deforming like a pile of gravel or coarse sand. Trying to cut through it felt a bit like trying to cut through several layers of thick wet cloth, and worse of all, it had self healing properties almost like it was alive. Trying to cut off a piece and storing it also led to nowhere, as this strange red substance seemed completely immune to spatial magic.

I don’t like this but…

Sofia had her doubts, but she let the graveyard skeletons pull her down. She wanted to trust the Orator. 

The spiritual plane that was normally very bright a white, like a realm of clouds, was still pitch black. The only thing Sofia could still see was her own mana, and how it bounced against the now invisible walls of the long hole. The conduit kept becoming smaller and smaller as she fell, eventually becoming as thin as a finger.

Then nothing.

Shit!

Sofia had the graveyard skeletons bring her back to ‘the physical plane’, she was falling. The first thing she saw was the red ceiling she was coming out of, it was riddled with tiny holes, and below her, something she couldn’t see was attracting her down. 

Until now she just felt that it was strong gravity, now it felt more clearly like something pulling on her an uneven force trying to bring her down toward whatever the impenetrable reddish abyss below hosted.

From one hell to the next…

Her wings did not work without ambient mana, and she was already falling too fast for [Dodge - Me] to allow her to walk on the air, so she could only either burn all of her mana to activate the third phase of [Runeforged Overlord] and fly back to the ceiling, or accept to let herself fall.

I’ve already come this far…

Sofia could not tell how long the fall was, she was still worried at first, but as time went by, she became almost serene, the calm of the constant fall and the relative silence was not all that bad. Bookie even came out eventually, latching onto Sofia’s neck, and they had a casual conversation as they fell, checking every so often that, yes, the tether was still pointing straight down.

Finally, out of all the things that could happen, the next event was most unexpected: they started slowing down. The infinite fall slowed down to a crawl, and something massive started appearing, piercing through the dark red void far below. 

It left Sofia and Bookie voiceless as it revealed itself. The thing pulling them down, the Deep’s ‘gravity’ was a gargantuan distorted city of black spires and curved bridges, built all around a giant sphere floating in the void.

It was silent and still, yet an eerie purple glow shone through the spires’ many windows.

As their slow descent brought them closer, Sofia and Bookie were beholden to one more truth, the city was gigantic not only in size, but in proportions. A city of giants.