Music for today:
Reach
https://youtu.be/5WgBszkUG2w
Chapter 494: Voices
Late Morning - Late Summer : Year 39 : Poseidon, Draconic Continent
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*Crrrr-RACKLE* Watching the half-metallic bedrock surrounding a submerged opening, just a few meters wide, open as if an invisible drill was boring through it, Reon just drifted within the collapsing currents with a look beyond awe. "W..Wha..."
A pure, unbridled, palpable disbelief.
He could barely get out a mutter. "U..Uh.. be care..ful..." Watching the water collapse into the void—the water sublimating into the sudden vacuum before collapsing on it—he just existed.
"Shall we?" Swimming forward with a ripple down her tail, Hera tried to give him a much needed nudge.
Though, he could only respond with a nod for the time being.
Eventually continuing on, a long stretch of our journey was quiet—Reon seemingly taking the time to process everything—before very slowly attempting to regain his professional air.
Even if that was something that would take time.
Following his bioluminescent glow through the pitch black maze of natural and artificial caves for hours, we passed countless intersections, forks, and turns without so much as glancing at a map until eventually stopping at a fork of two wide, carved passages that truthfully needed a moment of pause to take in. -Woah...- "Are these passages from the old city?"
To describe them simply.. they were massive.
With a height of over two hundred meters, they were big enough for me to walk through at full size, comfortably, and were lined with torch-like artifacts for light, runes across the ceiling for airflow, and paved bricks and sand along the ground for a firm, flat footing.
It was a truly impressive sight. "These are indeed." Reon was extremely familiar, though. Sitting and reaching into his bag to check his maps, he continued swiftly. "These were old transport tunnels," Something akin to highways, "used to transport materials from the mines we passed through earlier, and to travel between aquifers."
-Right...- Earlier in the trip, we had passed through a number of areas, some appearing as lush, mossy caves, and others looking like deliberately mined tunnels. -So my theories were right...-
In those specific areas, it looked like they were deliberately mining for precious gems, gold, and even iron. "They seem really sophisticated for the time..." -Some of these artifacts date back to the era Typon was alive...- And the artifacts were simply preserved. -If this city lasted until Hera had ancestors in it, it had to be hundreds of thousands of years old...-
And before Bahamut meant their breeding capabilities hadn't been killed.
Or at least.. shouldn't have... "What was the population here like?"
Pausing to flip through his maps, he slid them back into his pack before turning back to me. "Small, but absolutely ancient." He spoke bluntly. "And I mean that quite literally. For some reason the dragons here appeared to wait until they were at least ancients to have young, I'm not sure why. There are remnants of dragons here bigger than even Bahamut was told to be."
Hera and I both choked instantly. "W-What?"
But he did seem a little nervous to share it. "I know, it's hard to believe, but if you'd like, we can go look at one of the skeletons.. or at least part of one... It's a little out of the way, but-"
"No, lets go see it." I didn't let him even suggest taking a different route. -As big as Bahamut...- That was deep into the demigod stage. -And for him to say 'skeletons'.- He was implying there was more than one. "Where is it?"
"A place I call the burial aquifer." Returning everything he pulled out of his bag, he finally turned at the fork before motioning us along. "It's one of the biggest water reserves in the entire mountain, and is one of the closest to the city, but was used for more spiritual purposes that for drinking or bathing from what I can tell... The glyphs they used back then are.. complicated though..."
-Interesting...- Pushing my aura ahead of us, a familiar, web-like system of caves was drawn in my head before, out of the blue, an absolutely colossal cavern opened up. -Holy...-
But.. my aura could barely even enter it despite it being well within range. -What the...- "Are you seeing that?" Whispering to Hera, I wanted to see if I was just crazy.
But she was quick to nod. "I can't even push my aura in there... How far did yours get?"
"Into the cavern, but not far..." -The mana is just.. too dense...- It was like a pressurized chamber, but there weren't any barriers from what I could tell. -What in the world...-
But, while I was hoping for answers, as we neared, and the walls of the carved highway were coated with moss, ivy-like vines, and even some wooden roots dangling glowing fruit, my confusion only grew. -Just what is this place...-
The biodiversity was simply insane.. and plucking one of the grape-like fruits off a vine, they held almost no resemblance to modern agriculture on the surface. -The sugars are totally different...- And thanks to the mana, were as tough as steel.
However, down there, insects, rodents, small predators, and even bird-like creatures unlike any I had seen on the surface ate them like they were nothing—though scattering and hiding as we continued forth.. and stepped into the cavern.
*Wooooooom* The air was so humid it felt like we had practically submerged ourselves—the mana within it rippling with waves no different from the edge of an ocean on a still morning.
But somehow, that was the least insane thing there. "W..woah..." Letting out an awestruck mumble, Hera slowed her pace to a halt.
The cave wasn't just an ecosystem.. it was alive—breathing...
In that huge cavern, an oceanic aquifer that rippled and shifted with the mana, glowed a stunning, bright blue bioluminescence from its crystal-clear depths—with the walls draped by plants of every color, and the ceiling hanging fruits that almost appeared to sparkle like stars in the night sky.
"Holy..." It was truly no wonder it was considered a spiritual place. It was like a center of life that had been isolated from fresh air for eons—yet was more than thriving.
And the mana only made it more insane. "Hoof..." Letting out a controlled breath with a shiver and a shake of his head, Reon looked like he was struggling to even breathe. "This.. is the burial chamber—or as it seems to be referred to by those who lived here, The Cradle. The place gods came to die."
The breath simply left my lungs hearing it like that. -The Cradle...-
Delphi...
-This.. is the origin of her name...- The place where it all began. -Unbelievable...-
Walking forward, carefully stepping across the grassy cavern floor to stop at the edge of the water, I looked into the aquifer not knowing what to expect, only to find it lined with coral, crystal, and mythril...
Mythril that.. wasn't made of metal or stone. -Are those...- "Bones..?"
Reluctantly nodding, being careful with each of his breaths, Reon walked up beside me. "The aquifer is filled with them..." Looking over the mana-petrified ribcage sticking up from the submerged edge of the aquifer, he paused. "I'm afraid entering the water is deadly, but from what I could tell..." Pulling something out of his bag, he extended a tube akin to a periscope before handing it to me. "The farther into the aquifer you look, the bigger the skeletons get."
Taking the periscope from him, I leaned down to submerge the lens before moving my eye up to it.
"I.. only really can guess at why... The dragons that entered likely entered alive, and swam deeper on their own..."
Finally getting a better look, peering through the distortion of the surface, dozens.. no, hundreds.. maybe thousands of different skeletons revealed themselves—littering the ground like an exposed grave yard where ancients and demigods alike had laid their bodies to rest for eternity. -What in the world...-
It was exactly as Reon had described as well. While disappearing into the darkness of distance, the farther you looked, the bigger the skeletons became, with the farthest I could see being.. bigger than me...
Eventually pausing.. lifting my head without drawing a breath, I handed the periscope to Hera, but as she lowered her head to look, Reon was the only who could speak.
"As you can likely tell, the aquifer is just gargantuan... Looking at entrances from other parts of the cave systems, measuring the water level, and attempting to measure things like the metal content in the water, my guess is this aquifer 'is' the water table of the mountain."
Meaning every other hulking source of water in the entire mountain was being maintained and filled by this one aquifer.
A literal ocean locked in rock. "For it to have the pressures to create a water table in this kind of rock, it has to be something like a hundred kilometers deep.. but we'll likely never know."
I could only nod in agreement.
Despite wanting to challenge whatever Reon considered impossible.. this time, I had to agree...
"I only brought a sample for my family to test, so understand that I don't know the details, but.. exposure to the metals in the water will kill you faster than any poison on the surface, and that's not even considering the wealth of unknown bacterial life in it. There's no knowing what will or won't kill you even if the metals weren't a problem..."
Lowering myself and dipping the tip of my claw into the rippling water, my space-mana-reinforced bone instantly shifted to a bright white before beginning to dissolve and spread up through my claw. -Shit...- *Snap* I had to just cut the nail off then and there. "That is.. not to be fucked with..."
The metals in the water were so dense with mana that even the iron and copper, metals non-toxic to dragons even in huge volumes, would kill like mercury.
Hera.. wasn't so avert though.
Standing, and handing the mythril periscope back to Reon, she couldn't take her eyes off the water.
She was.. seeing, or.. hearing something that I couldn't...
"Hera," To the point she couldn't hear me. "Hera?" *Tap* "Hera!" It took a firm nudge for her to finally snap out of it.
"H-Huh?! W-What is it?" She seemed almost.. lost.
"You weren't responding. Did you just zone out?"
Shaking her head, she gave the water a series of glances. "I-I.. don't know."
-What..?- "Did you hear what Reon said about the water?"
She reluctantly shook her head as her wings sank into her side, and her tail faintly tucked.
"The water will kill us. I don't know what caught you like that, but do not, under any circumstance, touch that water..."
Reon was quick to add with a serious tone, "The metals in the water alone are toxic unlike anything on the surface. It doesn't matter how poison resistant your body is, it WILL kill you."
Truthfully, it was more surprising that the owners of skeletons you could see deeper down could even get that far... Especially once you realized the metal content in the water would only compound with every meter you travelled down.
But even still, Hera was.. staring... "I.. understand that, but.. do you two not feel that?"
My expression washed with confusion before Reon jumped forward. "DON'T LISTEN TO IT!"
Jolting as he jumped past me, he forced himself between Hera and the water.
"Whatever it is you think you're feeling, you need to ignore it!"
"B..But..."
Seeing her not wanting to listen, my divinity churned, and mana thickened. "Hera..." My voice fell like an anvil.
Yet even still, her wings lifted.
And it wasn't until I shifted to my full size with an abrupt flash, and stuck my snout, now the size of her body, in front of her, that the look in her eyes returned to familiarity.
"H..Huh..?" She, herself, didn't even know what was happening. "W..what are you doing?"
My eyes, sharp as needles, weren't budging off her as I used my space mana to force the mana of the cavern off of us. "Waking you up. What the hell are you doing?"
She.. didn't seem to remember at all though. "I..." Clamping her wings to her side again, she finally stepped back. "...don't know... I.. can't remember..."
-What..?- Looking toward Reon, frozen next to my snout like a deer in headlights, I cleared the mana off him as well.
But even he was lost. "I-I don't know either! In some texts and carvings I've found, there have just been mentions of a 'call' from the water. I didn't know it was literal!"
-What the hell..?- "Hera, sit down." Moving space mana over her, I started looking through her body—thinking perhaps the metals or bacteria in the air were doing something, but.. to no avail.
She was hallucinating, even now with the mana off her.. but no matter where I looked.. I saw nothing...
She was among the strongest living beings on the surface, yet.. it was like something that paid Reon and I no mind was toying with her... Something.. even my divinity couldn't detect...
"Keep backing up, Hera... We're going to call it there." Spinning up my divinity like a coiling turbine, I coiled my head back to look into the water, searching for the tiniest echo.. but.. there was nothing...
Not even a whisper...
-What the fuck is this place...-
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