“Are you alright?” I asked her. “I’m sorry if the pain bled through to you, and that you...had to see that.”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered, shaking her head. “I had no idea how much agony it caused you; I hope I was able to take some of it away.” I felt a quick pulse of golden mana circle my body. “How are you feeling? You look...okay.”
“I feel okay,” I admitted, rolling my shoulders. “I hate to say it, but I think I’m getting used to that, somewhat.” The thought put a frown on my face, but I buried it in her hair as I kissed the top of her head. “It’s over. That’s all that matters now.”
“Yes,” Val agreed. I looked up to find her standing a cautious six feet away, watching our quick reunion. “I am unsure what transpired, but I believe this may have permanently stopped the Serathid invasion. I am in your debt, yet again.”
I held her gaze for a long moment and was happy to find that she didn’t look away. All traces of the fear I had seen before were gone, replaced once again by the inscrutable steel mask.
“I’m sure you have questions.”
“For another time,” she said, raising a hand. “We are still in unknown territory. We should continue to explore this facility and stay on guard for more Serathids. While we may have halted their ingress, many have already come through.”
A tight knot in my stomach released all at once as I realized my inevitable conversation with Val had been pushed further down the road. “Right. Thanks.” I gave Lia a final hug before breaking away from the embrace and turning towards the door behind the podium. “I’m guessing we’ll find more answers that way.”
An automatic pulse of mana ran down my legs, and I was surprised to find the energy unhindered as it spread onto the floor and raced away beneath the black door. Lia noticed the freedom from the beast’s aura along with me and joined in with her own scan, checking back in the direction we had come and out through the tunneled hole in the chamber wall. While our immediate surroundings were clear, various pockets of static indicated that multiple Serathids still lurked somewhere within the mines, though the aimlessness of their movements showed they were unaware of our presence.
My forward sweep of Detection revealed a series of smaller chambers furnished like a small home: a bathroom, kitchen, living space, bedroom, and office. Beyond those, a final, larger room held multiple rows of pedestal display cases similar to the one beside us, though the objects held within showed no signs of any latent energy, malicious or otherwise. A small counterweight elevator stood open and empty on the far wall, the shaft for which traveled straight up to ground level. It opened into a small chamber built into the side of one of the twin mountains that covered Shadowmine, with a well-concealed stone door leading out onto the opposite side of the mountain from which we had entered.
“We should be safe, for the time being,” I said, pointing towards the door. “Someone has been living here, though. Complete with their own museum room and personal entrance to the mine.” I looked at Val and raised an eyebrow.
Her jaw clenched slightly as she shook her head. “I am unaware of any operations taking place beneath Shadowmine other than mining.” Her answer came just as calmly as before, but it seemed to bother her more severely as we stood within the proof that such a place existed. “This construction is old military, from when Kaldan was first formed as a nation, but I have never heard or read of its existence.”
“That’s likely by design,” I muttered. Motioning to the door, I waited for Val to make the first move. “Well? Shall we find out what Virram wanted to keep hidden?” After a brief pause, she nodded and made for the door. Lia and I fell in behind her and followed into the living space, closing the door behind us.
The construction of the room was the same seamless marble as the large chamber from which we entered, but where the latter had been entirely empty, our current surroundings were lavishly decorated with massive paintings, tapestries, and overstuffed bookshelves. Most of the iconography in the artwork was foreign to me, but the repeated symbol and color palette of the Unity Church was apparent in most of the pieces.
“This is so...weird,” Lia said under her breath as she ran a finger along a low table. “How is all of this space so perfect after everything that’s happened? You’d think the monsters would have come through here first.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say that whoever was living here knows a lot more about those things than we do,” I said, browsing the titles of a row of books on a nearby shelf. “They were clearly brought here with some sort of purpose. Anybody who could do that probably knew a way to survive down here with them, and that would definitely involve keeping them out of the living quarters.”
“We need to make a coordinated sweep of this entire structure,” Val said, interrupting our theorycrafting. “There must be an explanation down here somewhere.”
“Let’s start with the study,” I suggested, having already found a pile of handwritten notes and open journals through my Detection. “Through that door, over there.” Val accepted the information without question and proceeded through the indicated door with Lia and me close behind. The study was mostly barren compared to the entry; the marble walls were empty of decoration, and the bookshelves were filled only with simple leatherbound notebooks titled with seemingly random strings of letters and numbers. Two and a half cases were filled with these identical tomes, while another three stood empty beside them. A single desk sat against
