"It's coming along nicely," Spesavia said.
She was talking about the barrier around the beast's pearl. Getting that pearl had been a lesson that took all of what was left of yesterday.
Aureum found herself still trying to rub away the blood off her hands. They looked clean, but they felt grimy.
I must just be sweaty.
"Finally," Aureum said.
It hadn't been a clean or a quick task. The naturally formed pearl was a lumpy thing, which meant it had to be reformed for Spesavia's barrier to work.
Aureum would never have dreamed of attempting such a thing, but Spesavia did it in a morning. Now, it was nearly over.
Then they would get to descend into that pit.
Aureum got up and looked at the pearl. It looked a little occluded in its shine. That might be the barrier.
Aureum still felt sick looking at it. Spesavia took notice of it. This time, the crone decided to address it.
"Yes," she said. "Look at what being old can do to you. So much mana, and the little sorceress who hesitated can still do you in. Heh. Be afraid, Aureum."
Spesavia wagged the pearl at Aureum. Aureum frowned in response.
"Even though you're old, you seem to be doing fine compared to… that beast."
"I'm old, but I'm ascended. I feel the pain, but I can push through and not die. No beast I ever met was ascended. So this beast could not push through. It was half dead already. Good choice."
Aureum couldn't bring herself to say thanks.
"If the barrier's done, are we ready?"
"Hold your horse. Or your cloak. I still need to get that scarf."
It was a moment while she pulled one out of a ring. It was not a thick winter scarf. Closer to a fashionable thing, but the green fabric had some weight. Very long. She took the wide scarf and folded it around the pearl. A few pins kept it in place, and it was twisted at the edges. It would be secure enough.
I'm going to look real stupid in a moment.
It was easier to focus on minor details like that. The dead cougar was dead.
It wasn't something she could mourn.
Easier to distract.
Aureum was correct about looking stupid, at least. Spesavia gestured for Aureum to turn around as she tied it to Aureum's forehead like a headband. She pulled the tails of the scarf across Aureum's forehead again, a little underneath the beast's pearl, to give it support before tying them in the back.
It was secure. Her dignity? Not so much.
"Stop making a big deal out of nothing," Spesavia said. "Who will see you in some cursed darkened depths with only the dead anyways?"
Aureum's face was twisting in her expression. It was worse that Spesavia commented on it.
Is it so bad even Spesavia thinks it looks stupid?
The crone wasn't known for her fashion sense.
Clothing crimes aside, they needed to pack everything up. The weight of the extra pearl rested uneasily on her head as she worked. At least it was a test for the scarf before anything serious happened.
Nothing did, but she hoped it wouldn't give her a headache later.
With their camping site cleared, it was finally time.
The hole was deep, and the bottom dark. The sun overhead managed to light a ring at the bottom. Both of them stood before it as Aureum waited for what Spesavia would do.
"Jump," Spesavia said.
"Huh?"
Spesavia sighed and then shoved Aureum down.
"AH!"
"It's not as deep as it looks."
Aureum heard these words as she fell. A reaction built by habit, she spread her arms. The barely cloak had enough light to slow her landing. It truly wasn't that far.
"Ouch!"
Her landing still wasn't soft.
Aureum stumbled forward. Maybe half an inch of dirt, feeling more like sand, did nothing to cushion the stone floor beneath it.
She could feel no mana. The wind was dead to her.
"What if my headband had gotten moved?!" Aureum shouted up.
It was a yard, at most. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the stone ceiling broken by the midday sky. Spesavia's figure was framed by it.
"Then I suggest you move quicker next time."
Spesavia jumped after her. She landed without as much trouble, but put her hands on her back as she straightened. The stone hanging from her necklace glowed green again.
"Too old for this?" Aureum asked, jokingly.
Spesavia looked her in the eye.
"I've been old longer than I've been young. Nothing about it is surprising anymore."
"Sorry—
"Don't waste time on it," Spesavia said. "I'm only too old when I'm dead. Right now, we have these depths to go through."
They walked forward for only a moment when a body began to form in the dim lighting. A few more steps, and they could see the thin, mummified corpse of a man. His hair was intact, as was his garb, but the skin wrinkled like dried grapes.
"Who do you think that was?" Aureum asked.
"Hopefully, the corpse of the fool who dug the hole in the first place," Spesavia said. "But I have no real way of knowing."
Her mentor walked on as Aureum followed behind. The stone corridor was eerie, not at all eased by the small corpses of animals they occasionally came across.
One was a mole. Aureum didn't recognize the other bundles of fur and didn't stop to look too closely.
They didn't even smell. Aureum tried not to think about that too much.
"Why do you think anyone else hasn't come in here?" Aureum asked.
Anything to cut the tension.
"Besides the curse killing the creatures at our feet?" Spesavia questioned back.
"You don't even need a decoy," Aureum countered. "The other ascended sorcerers wouldn't need to worry about it either, right?"
"Ah. Well, us Ascended didn't disturb this place for one reason. Respect."
"Really?" Aureum asked.
Of all the things that came to mind when she thought of the immortal sorcerers, 'respect for others' warnings' didn't really fit in.
"The people who inscribed the warnings are legends to you, Aureum. To most of us, they are our grandparents. Would you do something your grandparents told you not to?"
"I didn't meet my grandparents that much," Aureum said. "But I don't listen to my parents that well. I think somebody would have tried it by now. Hasn't it been about eight hundred years?"
"Greed needs to be mitigated by reason," Spesavia said. "What do dank holes already robbed by our forebears hold that a curse can outweigh?"
"Maybe something to make forming pearls easier?" Aureum asked. "A lot of bloodlines would benefit from the knowledge of the ancients. Are you telling me no ascended sorcerers thought to try it?"
"Hmm. Maybe a few thought about it," Spesavia said. "But we didn't know what was in here until that team of the future went down here for the mana the sigil must have protected. The curse is to protect us. Who knows what the sorcerer king could have left down here that they were trying to prevent. Anything that we unleashed would also be our responsibility to protect the children from. Which one of us would risk that? There are many more cautious ways to disrupt the balance of power."
"I'll buy that, I think," Aureum said.
Then, she was out of topics.
Aureum didn't really want to ask too many questions about Spesavia's task here. Aureum didn't want to know about creating a monster. It sounded like something completely out of her abilities to deal with.
The hope was that Spesavia would leave Aureum out of it. As much as she could be left out by standing in the corner of some ancient ruins.
"Hmm? Did we go the wrong way?" Spesavia said.
Aureum reached out to check the direction of the wind, but she couldn't. It felt still as a grave without mana to feel those minor changes.
"No?" Spesavia continued her murmurings. "It looks like there is another door here. Ah, now I remember how this goes."
Aureum followed Spesavia.
"This was probably connected to some form of escape tunnel below the palace. I do know it connects to where all the mana is being sucked into."
"I can't feel mana anywhere," Aureum said.
The lack of it was suffocating.
"Well, you aren't me, little Aureum," Spesavia said. "We'll make it where we need to go. Don't worry."
I wasn't worried until you mentioned it.
Yet, Aureum had enough hope in Spesavia, alongside growing unease, not to speak of it. She followed after Spesavia's light.
They went from dirt-covered floors to clean stone. The floors were made of fine black stone that Aureum didn't recognize. The walls had dimly lit mosaics. Aureum couldn't bring herself to look at them too closely. The mottled forms of legendary beasts seemed to glance in her direction as she passed.
Another room. This one had a crumbled statue in the center of it. It looked to be a dragon.
Doesn't look like Bonum or Malum, though.
"That explains it," Spesavia murmured as soon as they stepped in.
"What? Explains what?" Aureum said.
She always felt a step behind in these conversations with her teacher.
"The bowels of the sorcerer's king's palace should have some security? Right?"
Aureum let her silence be her quiet rebellion of confusion.
"But I sensed and found none, even when traipsing through it in my own body. Now, the ruins of one of the golems that must have been his security stand before us. The answer is easy."
"Is it… because of our forefathers' curse?"
"Exactly. The Sorcerer King must have been true to his name and relied on magical means of defense. The curse that drains mana must have destroyed all that."
"So we can wander without concern?" Aureum said.
"We should never drop our guard," Spesavia said. "There might be a few physical traps still. But seemingly so."
They left the room.
It was hours of walking. Tense steps were boring drudgery at the same time. Aureum constantly itched to touch her headband that sweated as the hours wore her down, but also feared to. It might loosen and fall off. Still, it itched.
Surprisingly, the depths of the ruins were as dead as the entrance betrayed them to be. Nothing came to jump at Aureum from the shadows.
Spesavia correctly led them to the center of the curse, only stopping here or there for some note or historical comment. None of Spesavia's ease lessened Aureum's unease.
What had started as a feeling of foreboding grew into a feeling of weighed dread that followed every step. Even Spesavia's demeanor quieted down as they saw their goal.
Aureum let out a soft gasp as she saw it.
Mana had physically condensed into a pool of water. But she couldn't sense it, and that was the most off-putting. Like seeing a hand touch without feeling it.
The pool of glowing water was at the center of a scrawl of red sigils that curled out from it. Aureum couldn't recognize the language, but it wasn't the same as any runes she'd seen in modern mana artifices.
It looked like something deranged had clawed it with red ink into the black stone. The mana pool in the center also cut into the stone, but in the glowing white pool, the red sigils still burned through it.
"Immaculate," Spesavia said in wonder.
Aureum shivered.
"Get the egg," she said. "There's no reason to wait."
"We've been walking for hours," Aureum said.
She didn't mean for this to come out like the whining of a child, and her tone of voice wasn't one. But it didn't stop her from feeling like it.
"And?" Spesavia said.
"Before we do any ritual that could go terribly wrong, shouldn't we eat first? At least a short break?"
The crone grinned but shook her head.
"No," she said. "It'll take a long time, and it's not as scary as you're thinking, Aureum. Sit down and pull out the dragon egg. Let's just rip it off and get it started."
Aureum did sit. The black egg was much the same as it had been two weeks ago. Despite her initial concern, she'd forgotten to keep checking on it on her way here.
"Put your hand in the pool," Spesavia said.
Aureum hesitated before only reaching a finger to touch it.
It… doesn't hurt?
It felt cool and burning at the same time, but didn't peel skin. Finally, she could sense the massive amount of mana before her. The mana inside her tugged towards the pool.
It was so much. So much mana in one place.
The same way a large vessel sinking pulled things towards it, so did this pool grip her. Yet, it lacked the intent of a curse. With a bit of concentration, Aureum could resist it.
Spesavia let Aureum experiment with it at her own pace in silence.
Aureum placed her hand fully in the pool.
"Now put your hand on the dragon egg," Spesavia said.
Aureum did so.
Nothing happened.