Beyond?

“Many think that the mutations which are caused by high exposure to mana are random and don't make any sense. But if you take all of the known mutations and look at them together, you can make certain guesses at the probable end result.”

-The Tome of Power.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital, Palace***

***Azir***

“They've breached another barrier!” One of the guards calls out to us while retreating from somewhere further down the corridor.

We've defended the first floor of the palace for half an hour and there seems to be no end to the enemy troops. I growl and continue to search through the bodies of the invaders which I and my friends just took down.

We are defending a rather unimportant looking mirror which is, according to Helen, the hidden entrance to the catacombs. It has been less than forty minutes since an enemy ship broke the palace's defensive barrier. Since then we are trying our best to hold this position against our foes who are popping up one after the other.

Then I sense a spark of life in one of the downed soldiers who is apparently playing dead possum. I grab his forehead and send out a mind probe to search through his memories. He is just a normal warrior and can't resist me. After a few moments I end my exploration of his mind and frown. “They only got orders to keep us occupied for as long as possible.”

“Uwah... that's creepy. Are you sure that what you are using isn't black magic?” Louise takes a pitiful look over my shoulder.

I return my attention to the guy who is sprawled out in front of me. He has foam in front of his mouth and his last meal is spreading in a puddle around his head.

I let go of the soldier and clean my hand on his uniform. “It's pure mind magic. There is not a bit of soul magic involved.” Well, that's not entirely true, but nobody in this room has the qualification to prove the opposite.

I stand up and point at the twitching soldier to my feet. “But their instructions sound a little strange to me. It sounded like they only have to distract us for long enough. They didn't get the orders to actually take this position. Could it be that there is a second entrance to the catacombs?”

Helen slowly shakes her head. “Not to my knowledge. The mirror is the only entrance.” Her eyes wander to Jeremiah who shrugs his shoulders.

“I closed all other entrances when I left Nict. This should be the only one which is still accessible.”

“And what if they simply dug a new one? From what I understood the catacombs have to be huge. As long as you dig straight down, you find them?” Stella looks around, making eye contact with each of us. “If you have the right spell to dig fast it should be easier than taking a heavily defended position like this one. Right?”

I call upon the mana net to display where the enemy forces are concentrating their efforts. “Where else are the catacombs close to the surface.”

Jeremiah purses his lips. “The mausoleum should be the closest to the surface. It should be under the palace's servant quarters for guests.”

A gesture of my hand makes the map in front of me vanish. “And that's exactly where their remaining troops are concentrated!”

Gesturing at the mirror I look at Helen. “Open it. We have to go down there and stop them.”

“No. What if they attack while we leave this position unguarded?” Jeremiah calls out. “We have to stop them from digging down into the catacombs.”

“They've been holding their position for more than twenty minutes. Given that they have a decent spell for digging tunnels, they should be already down there. Let the reinforcements from outside the palace handle them. I have no interest in attacking a heavily defended position while we have our own entrance!”

Helen nods and approaches the mirror. Upon touching it the whole surface floats apart like a liquid and reveals a long tunnel. “I'll stay here and guard the entrance with Lucas.”

“We'll stay too and tend to the wounded soldiers.” Sola and Xander inform me.

“That's okay. Having too many people in crowded places isn't beneficial anyway. Actually most of the soldiers should stay behind to defend the entrance.” I explain, gesturing for a few of the better guards to follow me.

Then I summon a light globe and send it down the tunnel. Our group consists of me, Stella, Ivy, Jeremiah, Louise, Karsen, Tanja and a handful of soldiers.

I advance quickly while plucking five of the marbles from the cartridge on my belt, releasing them into the air.

They automatically connect to the mana net and start hovering in front of me, then three of them automatically decide that the surroundings need to be explored and shoot down the tunnel at neck breaking speed.

Remembering the mentioned traps I activate my mana sight and start gathering mana to shield myself. “How far until it gets dangerous?”

“The first level should be completely safe, then we have to be more and more careful. There will be physical traps and spells further down the path. At the end are also a few summoned creatures which are contracted as guardians.” Jeremiah explains while Ivy pulls at his leash to hasten him onwards.

“Summoned creatures? What by the heavens do we have to expect?” Tanja complains while hovering safely inside her rotating mana bubble, using it like a gigantic wheel to keep up with us.

Jeremiah starts breathing heavily in his armour. “Nothing out of the ordinary. There should be animated skeletons and ghouls. Those are normally enough to shoo away random thieves. A few stronger golems are on the lower levels and there is a big demon for every level.”

“Huff... great... couldn't you... huff... make it a little... huff... creepier?” Louise's voice echoes from further behind. “Too... heavy...” When I look over my shoulder to check out what her problem is, I see her casting a spell and in the next moment she starts floating, following us with ease. “That's not something a normal soldier can do, Louise!” I complain, calling out to her.

“Shut up!” Louise starts ranting. “The problem doesn't lie with the equipment! It's just the setup, but as an engineer that's not my problem. I just design the stuff for the military, what they take and don't take and how they use it isn't my problem!”

The tunnel widens to a long corridor with several intersecting ones which lead downwards and Jeremiah takes the lead. “We have to take this one.” Without hesitation he walks down one of the worse looking paths and we follow him. The walls of this tunnel are covered with green slime and there is debris from the ceiling on the ground.

While following Jeremiah I pay special attention to the ceiling, just in case that it decides to come down on our heads.

At least most of the magical lights at the tunnel's walls are still working.

The hasty descent is interrupted when we encounter the first traps. After having to pull Jeremiah out of a pitfall which was designed against non magicians I decide to take the lead once more. My mana sight enables me to see magical traps while the purely physical ones don't pose any threat to me.

Upon turning around the corner of yet another stairway I face a sickly looking white face with long ears. The eyes are white and deep in their sockets. I can't help it and call out in shock while bitch slapping the thing. “Kyaaaa!”

The head of the monster disconnects from its body and disappears in the darkness down the stairs. A moment later the body crumbles like a boneless heap.

“What the heck is going on?” Karsen calls from further behind. The long, narrow stairway didn't allow him to see what happened.

“No... Nothing important!” Yes, I just forgot to turn off my strength enhancing buffs. I turn around and glare at the people who saw what happened. Namely Stella, Jeremiah and Ivy. “This stays a family secret!”

Jeremiah nods. “It's a ghoul. It's understandable to freak out upon seeing them the first time.”

I walk past the body and summon a light globe. The tattoos and scars on the thing give me a bad feeling. The appearance of this so called ghoul isn't what made me freak out. It's encountering this thing here of all places. Seems like this world and my old one are somehow linked through the Emperor's meddling with my world's sun, which makes it much more likely for rituals to summon something from my old world.

When we encountered the first animated skeleton it turned out that we were quite lucky to have Louise with us. The one who created those walking monstrosities thought that it would be a good idea to make the damn things immune to magic. Whatever fireballs or other spells we hurled at them, they simply dissolved without doing any harm.

So we had to rely on Louise's generous backpack, which was stuffed with grenades and explosives to the brim.

But all those situations were mastered with relative ease until we finally entered a big room with another stairway at the other side. “Is that one of the chambers with a special guardian?” I ask Jeremiah nervously. If the guardians are high class monsters from my old world, then I don't want to face them.

Jeremiah nods with a grave expression. “Yes, though I don't understand why it's empty! Did the damn thing take a day off? I am sorry, my memory isn't perfect, but there should be one here.”

I carefully start walking forward with the others following me. “Maybe we are lucky and are on the same path as our foes? Did they already kill the guardian?”

Tanja's voice shatters my hopes. “That would be too much of a coincidence if we take the size of this place into account. And shouldn't there be traces of a fight and some sort of remains?”

Halfway through the chamber it happens. A scream from further behind breaks the silence and a torrent of flames almost burns me to a crisp. I evade by rolling instinctively to the side and get up again. One of our guards is down, cleanly cut in two, and something is trying to do the same to Karsen.

“Shade!” I call out and send a ball of compressed mana at the thing which consists out of tentacles and claws, hitting it dead centre and digging into it. The monster is catapulted away from Karsen.

Stella suddenly appears next to the thing and pulls her new dagger across it, creating a huge wound. A bone shattering kick sends it flying and it impacts the wall at the opposite side of the room. I trigger my sphere of mana to explode, bursting the thing open. Several other people join with their own spells. After some moments the dust settles, but the thing isn't down.

It looks a little battered, but as it stands up it reforms into the shape of a human and I recognize my aunt Jade. The tentacles retreat into it and the claws disappear under newly formed clothes.

“Azir, isn't that thing... from that cave?” Stella asks horrified, pointing at the creature.

“I don't care where it is from! The fucker is trying to mess with my mind!” Raising both hands I approach the creature and cast a spell which draws all energy out of its vicinity. As the room temperature drops my aunt raises a hand, smiling at me.

From my time on my old world I already know that it doesn't make much sense to battle these things with offensive magic. They are sturdy as hell and have high regenerative powers. The only thing that works is freezing them.

The other mages in the group start assisting my spell and the water in the air around the creature starts forming ice crystals. Finally it stops moving, frozen in place.

I wait for a few more moments until I am sure that the spell worked, then I drop my hands and approach the thing carefully. Being close enough I place my foot on the shape-shifter and tilt it backwards, shattering it to a thousand pieces.

Turning around I find Tanja and Stella treating Karsen, who got cut up pretty badly. The damn thing tried to cut him into strips. But at least he is alive, unlike the guard who got hit first.

“I am sorry. Almost burned you too, but I simply reacted when it dropped from the ceiling.” Karsen tries to apologize. “Didn't seem to hurt the damn thing...”

“It's no problem, I just have to think about getting a new haircut.” I try to joke.

One of the guards steps closer and places his hand on Karsen's shoulder. His robe identifies him as an Eddin and soon enough Karsen's wounds start closing. I sigh in relief and look up at the ceiling where the Shade hid inside a dark cavity. It must have carved its hiding place out of the stone and pretended to be a part of the ceiling.

“I hope there is really only one of those things here?” My eyes wander over the walls. It's disturbing me that the thing evaded my detection. Maybe I am relying a little too much on my mana sight. On the other hand I never had the chance to use it on them. Maybe they aren't using any mana?

Jeremiah shakes his head. “The guardians should be bound to the room and enchanted to be fed by lingering mana. There was only one per room, that I am sure of.”

After some time the healer managed to piece Karsen back together and we continue on our path down into the catacombs, this time twice as careful.

Hours later we finally find the first signs of our enemies as I enter a big room and stop. There are dozens of bodies inside it.

Stella presses herself past me, since I am blocking entrance, and gapes at the carnage. “Seems like we are catching up.”

“Not good. Catching up means that we are behind! Who knows how far ahead they are!” There is a huge humanoid in heavy armour resting right next to the entrance from where we came. It's eyes are still looking at the crushed remains of an enemy soldier, who was too slow to evade the monster's huge paw. Luckily for us it seems like the creature already breathed its last breath.

The rest of the room is filled with dead bodies which were crushed or mangled in other ways.

Jeremiah steps forward and points at one of the many stairways which are leading out of the room. “But it also means that we can move faster. It doesn't seem like my brother moves with any kind of secrecy or care for his troops.”

I nod and hurry down the stairs, moving as fast as possible while still trying to pay attention to our surroundings. We advance much faster now, but that's only thanks to our predecessors. They sprung every trap which they encountered. Though I have to admit that Jeremiah, while having forgotten many things, still remembers most of the traps and saved us a lot of trouble.

Finally we reach the end of the last stairway and step into a big cave with a fissure in the ground. A long, thin bridge leads over the dark rift, and on the other side of the dimly lit cave I find a group of thirty people in front of a big door.

One of them is in the process of pressing an amulet onto it, releasing the seals and magical barriers on it. The grinning person turns around and calls out to us while the seals illuminate the room in a bright light. “Seems like you are a little too late!”

Serenzar steps through the huge door and his soldiers follow him.

I leave my friends behind and make a short teleport directly in front of the door. Serenzar and his remaining lackeys are still on the other side, but they don't interest me at all. Neither does the huge open cavern behind the door impress me. Nor do the six mana streams which are converging in the centre of the huge open space.

They are forming a massive spiral, turning into a sphere in the middle of the room. From there they twist around themselves and funnel straight down into a gaping hole in the cavern's centre.

What's requiring all my attention is the body in the centre of the energy sphere.

And then a colourful eye as large as I am tall flicks open and the pupil contracts into a slit as it focuses on us. The cavern vibrates as the owner of the eye starts moving. “~Vissitorrrs!~”

.