1

Yuliana hurried down the central aisle of the Divine Lord’s chapel, past the sea of benches, towards the winged statue in the far back beneath the windows. Shortly behind her followed a mismatched task force consisting of Izumi, Carmelia, Waramoti, Millanueve, and the Prince of Luctretz.

Telling the others only that they were going to scout out a potential hideout, they set out to pursue the hazy lead the spirit of Light had given them—with only the minimum personnel, under the gruesome circumstances. Half the watch had been on duty and eluded the massacre, but having their numbers so dramatically reduced in one blow had the whole company reeling. There could be no question that the decisive hour was near. One way or the other, a breakthrough had to be found, or they wouldn’t survive another night.

“This way,” Yuliana beckoned to the others under the windows of colored glass. “Stand there, before the altar. The way down is a bit tricky.”

Once they gathered, her majesty went behind the statue’s round base. On the metal-banded pedestal were attached small, gilded discs that seemed mere decorations at a quick glance, but which could be moved by hand. Small, random syllables of the ancient language were engraved along the rim of each disc, forming no coherent sentences. One had to know where to put them. Starting from the circle furthest on the right, Yuliana began to rearrange the fragments into words.

“My grandfather showed this to me on my eighth birthday,” she told the others. “He said it’s a secret that’s been passed down in the royal family since the days of King Machilon. I memorized the order, but I never actually tried to open the way until that day in early spring.”

“That statue is so off-model,” Izumi remarked, looking up.

The marble image of Aiwesh was shaped like a regular woman quite a bit healthier and shapelier in figure than the original, with regular human ears and only one pair of wings. Yuliana saw it best not to comment, but continued to work.

“You align the wheels to form the key sentence on the bottom: Ansé...elvue...sans...e...bansém.”

“’Unity of all through understanding’…?” Carmelia translated with a puzzled look.

“Langoria’s kings were esteemed philosophers,” the Prince said. “They saw all of mortal life as transient, a mere phase before a much greater existence. Before earthly might, they sought the elevation of spirit and wrote many a hefty book on the topic.”

“Oh, you’ve read them?” Yuliana asked, poking her head past the pedestal. “Which one did you find most interesting?”

“Ah—” the Prince froze and began to stammer. “Well, I tried to read them...”

“This is like a gathering of bad students,” Waramoti remarked with a sarcastic grin.

“Eh? Who are the others?” Izumi asked, obliviously blinking.

“Please tell me you’re only pretending now and not genuinely demented?”

“Hey, even if I flunked a class or two back home, my level of knowledge still equals a university professor or better here!”

“Except in everything that actually matters to everyday living.”

“Well, my tutor always told me I was an exemplary student!” Millanueve declared. “I learned to read already at fifteen, only a year after my brother!”

“You didn’t even have kyoiku kanji…” Izumi murmured. “Wait, wasn’t the brother a year younger than you?”

“Humans start early,” Carmelia said. “I learned to read only at seventy-five.”

“Most people are dead by then!”

“—And there we go.” Yuliana finished adjusting the wheels.

A low clicking sound rang out in the chapel hall and everyone looked around, unsure of what was going to happen. The change they expected to see occurred right in front of their feet. Along the circling back wall around the statue, the floor began to collapse, one slim tile after another, forming stairs to underground.

“This way,” Yuliana said and began to descend.

“Wait!” the Prince called to her. “We don’t know what lies in wait for us down there. Perhaps it is better that I go first.”

“Eh, but I’ve been there before,” Yuliana said.

No one listened to her.

“Ahem!” Izumi stopped the Prince. “Ever heard this thing called, ‘ladies first’? Since we have no idea what’s down there, I should take the lead. Being the strongest person in the team, and all that.”

“I know what’s down there,” Yuliana repeated.

“And if the enemy takes you out, then it won’t bode well for the rest of us,” the Prince told Izumi. “I do think I ought to take the lead.”

“Whatever comes up, it won’t matter if I beat it first.”

“If you beat it.”

“I will definitely beat it.”

“With an attitude like that?”

“Nothing wrong with my attitude. It’s the winner’s attitude.”

“—I can sense any potential ambush before either of you,” Carmelia notified the two. “In terms of destructive power, I believe I also have the upper hand here, so it doesn’t matter in which order you go. But I would recommend letting the one who actually knows the way go first.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Izumi said.

“Sensible enough,” the Prince agreed.

With Yuliana at the front, they descended the steps of stone below the chapel floor. The winding stairway carried on for a surprising distance. There were no windows on the way, not the slightest hole through which daylight could sneak in. But Carmelia conjured illusory butterflies that burned with an orange glow and made them float above the explorers to show their path. The stairs drilled steadily downward and the deeper they passed, the uneasier the company grew.

“Not much further now,” Yuliana encouraged them.

“Is it the King’s treasury we’re headed for?” Waramoti asked. “Wish my money were this well hidden, before some unnamed person leeches off the last of it.”

“Oi.” Izumi made a disapproving sound.

“If you expect to see mountains of gold and such down here, I’m afraid you’re only in for a disappointment,” Yuliana said. “The royal fortune is properly in the bank these days. These are only old ruins, their value cultural for the most part.”

“A damned shame, isn’t it, your highness?” the bard told the Prince who came behind him.

“I was not that kind of pirate!” the man exclaimed with a grimace. “My family has a treasury of their own, just so you know. Although it may have seen its better days...”

“AH—!” Izumi suddenly cried out and stopped, startling everyone.

“What, what is it?” Yuliana stopped and turned back in alarm.

“Speaking of treasures, I just realized, what’s going to happen to the mountain of gold I have in the Bank of Dharva? I didn’t even write a will before coming here! Damn it, I just knew I forgot something...!”

“Izumi!” Millanueve yelled at the woman.

“What? It is a rather important question!”

Everyone restrained their urge to kick the woman down the stairs and the journey resumed. The steps abruptly turned to a level floor and the explorers came into a narrow corridor with walls of clean-polished, blue-gray marble.

“This is the old royal sepulcher,” Yuliana told them. “Mind your manners.”

They carried on in silence down the solemn passage. At first there was nothing to see, but after a short distance, the path began to branch. Into the walls on both sides were cut deep, rectangular cavities, into which were placed the remains of Langoria’s past rulers and their kin, encased in caskets of stone, with adornments of silver or gold. On some of the graves were placed marble figures in the likeness of the dead. The sculptures looked so real that the catacomb felt more like a guest house full of sleepers suspended for eternity, rather than a mere boneyard. More corridors split out left and right with more and more tombs in them, spanning numerous dynasties.

“Here rest the kings and queens from the thirty-second cycle, and early thirty-third,” Yuliana explained. “No one’s been buried here in almost four hundred years now, as far as I know. A more spacious sepulcher was built in the southern city by King Heistaug in 685, which is where all the modern rulers have their tombs, and...this doesn’t really interest anyone, does it?”

“Eh?” Izumi stirred. “Oh, no, no, it’s—it’s fairly fascinating, I think. Yes.”

“You didn’t hear a word. I saw it in your eyes.”

“I, uh—I’m sorry, I was looking at that guy’s beard. Was it really that long, or did the artist give it an extension? For added street credibility? It looks so real. The ancient crafters were downright wizards at working stone, huh?”

“….”

“—And that was a compliment. I was honestly impressed, not disrespectful. This is a cool place. Very, very nice. Yes. It’s awesome.”

“And this is the part where you give up and stop talking,” Yuliana told her.

“Ehehe,” Millanueve began to suddenly giggle behind them. “Silly Izumi, of course it’s cool down here! They wouldn’t have had heating in catacombs! Haha!”

“Aye,” the Prince concurred. “The corpses would rot and the smell would be unbearable.”

“Now...it burns.”

They kept going and after a while left the sepulcher behind. But the path didn’t end. The corridor widened instead and emerged in a cavern of unexpectedly generous dimensions, despite its pressured location far below the castle.

Carmelia’s butterflies fluttered ahead, displaying in full the anomalous space, where the centuried, stagnant air of forgetting hung dense as a fog. The cavern appeared largely natural, with arrays of rust-striped stalagmites poking down from the rough, curved ceiling, and their counterparts surging up from below. Stairs had been carved on the rock, leading downward and they went on.

At the bottom of the long descent, they came to an unexpected view, a building blended with bedrock, dressed in white marble and framed with hefty pillars of older and more simplistic style.

“What’s that…?” Izumi asked with a frown and stopped, weirded out by the uncanny similarities to ancient Hellenic constructs.

“This is the original temple of the Lord of Light,” Yuliana said. “It was here already before the city itself was built, or so my grandfather told me. It must’ve been built by our ancestors, who lived here.”

“No,” Carmelia unexpectedly said, and her expression could almost be called disturbed. “That’s...”

She sent her butterflies up to the gable of the temple’s facade, into which hands long gone had sculpted faint imagery—words, scriptures, and a great star, perhaps the sun itself, casting its rays down to earth in wide, powerful blades. The sorceress examined the imagery and letters for a time under a tense, perplexed silence, and then muttered,

“Human hands didn’t build this. This is...a shrine of Brann.”

“Brann?” Millanueve asked.

“The mythological Sun God,” Waramoti explained. “We had a whole tour about that in the north. The Divine Lord whose statue we saw above was once a servant of Brann, so I suppose it’s nothing too strange to see a spot for the main deity too.”

“No, isn’t that really weird?” Izumi interjected with unease. “He’s the guy who betrayed the other gods and almost destroyed the world, right? Why is there a temple for him down here, of all places?”

The others turned to her with confused faces.

“I mean, that’s what Doctor Who told me...”

“That is correct,” Carmelia said. “Ever since the War of the Gods, the name of Brann has been a curse upon the living. Information has been purposefully controlled, mentions of the Old God and his servant erased from records, in order to prevent what we are looking at now—that misguided people would come together and offer prayer to the Destroyer.”

In a more subdued voice, unable to fully hide the loathing in it, she whispered,

“Ah, I no longer wonder what lured the enemy here. This city is built on a temple of Death!”

Stunned by this revelation, the others kept quiet. The heaviest hit fell no doubt upon the native among them. The one whose very name had been given in the glory of the ancient adversary of the Pantheon. Brannan.

“That can’t be right,” Yuliana exclaimed, looking distraught. “It’s a lie, isn’t it? I was taught—Brann was the wisest of the Old Gods. Light gives life, light shows our path in the darkness...It is an element of absolute purity and…”

“In a sense, there is no falsehood,” Carmelia replied. “Brann was, without a question, the greatest among the Makers. But might does not change his sinister nature. Everything has its counter side. Light is a volatile element that takes life as well as it gives. The fact that the temple has been raised here, where sun has no access, leaves no question of which aspect of Brann the shrine was dedicated to. The ancient settlers of Langoria couldn’t have made a mistake in what manner of rituals they adopted.”

“That’s...”

“Hey,” Izumi told the Empress. “It was a long time ago. I’m sure your parents didn’t know about it. Information was manipulated and all that...”

Yuliana looked back at the woman. “They didn’t—Or did they?”

Izumi failed to reply.

Who could say for sure now? The dead told no tales.

“Yuliana,” Millanueve called her majesty’s name with a look of concern.

“I—I’m fine!” Yuliana forced a reply and stepped on. “This isn’t what we’re here for. There’s no time. We should keep moving.”

2

They passed between the pillars into the underground shrine. It resembled the classical Greek temple by layout too; a distinct pronaos, a combined portico and a vestibule, followed by a spacious cella, or the main hall. The floor and the walls were covered with slates of stone, upon which clung the remains of flaking, faded paint work. Lines of slimmer pillars held up the ceiling on the way towards the back end.

Arranged in curved rows for the full length of the hall, as above, were rudimentary stone benches for the followers. In its heyday, as many as two hundred people might have fit into that hall at once, not even packed too tight. To worship what? The end of living?

Facing the benches in the middle, towards the back end, stood a peculiar setup.

There were two blocks of stone, one two feet tall and narrow, facing another one a little higher and wider; slightly arched, as though meant for a person to lie on. Between the shapes and the seats opened a concave pit, like a pool, not particularly deep and deprived of any remains of moisture.

The explorers stepped along the central aisle under a somber silence and came to the set of blocks.

“That is where I found the Amygla,” Yuliana told the others. “Half buried in that smaller pedestal…” An insecure look on her face, she turned back to Izumi and Carmelia. “Did my Lord really mean for us to come down here? Why? Is that all she told you?”

“She said, ‘further below from here’ is the key to our salvation…” Izumi recalled.

“But...there is nothing beyond here? This is as far as it goes.”

The fellowship gazed around, surrounded by solid, clear walls from every direction.

“I don’t want to be that guy,” Waramoti forced himself to speak. “But it does look a lot like a...dead end.”

There was no obvious way out of the underground shrine, save by the main entrance. All the other walls of the sanctum were solid all the way without joined rooms, doors, passages, extensions, concavities, or anything of the like. Featureless and smooth.

Had the Divine tricked them?

“Well, no time to despair,” Izumi said. “Since we’re here now, let’s split up and have a look around. There might be another hidden path. Rather, I’d be shocked if there weren’t.”

“How did they get so good at hiding doors?” the bard pondered. “They fool me every time.”

The group split up and went to search different areas of the long hall, straining their wit and perception in the limited light to pick up anything even vaguely unusual.

Izumi spent a moment standing still, thinking, looking for a place where an ancient builder might have placed an opening. But it was virtually impossible to tell by only staring. She gave up and approached the stone formation in the middle, where Carmelia also remained. The sorceress held out her open palm and trails of faint, bluish light danced on her hand.

“What are you doing?” Izumi asked her.

“I am conducting a psychometric scan on the interior,” Carmelia answered. “There are traces of old information structures embedded into the walls. They may be there to camouflage other structures, or else leftovers of past rites. I cannot say for sure yet. It will take some time to analyze them.”

“Human magic?”

“I believe so. Far younger than the shrine itself. Magic was commonly employed to assist in architecture in the early ages, until human knowledge of the Art declined.”

“You think these blocks could be somehow related?” Izumi crouched to examine the shapes before the anomalous pit. “I don’t see any buttons. But is it just me, or do they look darker than the rest of the floor? I can’t see too well in this dim light…”

“I am keeping the lighting limited here for that very reason,” the magician quietly replied. “I believe we have disturbed her majesty enough by now.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“It is not an altarpiece you are looking at.”

Izumi stepped back and took another look. That bare stone table, just about large enough to hold a person, and the pool below it—their reminiscence to the old Mesoamerican ruins on Earth wasn’t lost on her. She had been the one to speak of Aztecs earlier. The darker color staining the flooring and the dried, dark soot at the bottom of the pit...

“Oh.” The realization hit her and she stepped back in loathing. “Oh!”

“This is a temple of Death,” Carmelia whispered.

Shuddering, Izumi left the arrangement in the middle and went to check up on the Empress, who studied the left side wall.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“I’m all right,” Yuliana assured, feeling along the dusty wall with her hand. The surface might have been very colorful once, long ago, but now only varying tones of murky brown and crumbling. But Yuliana hardly saw what was in front of her eyes.

“I’m just worried about the people above us,” she said. “Was it fine not to bring them with us?”

“We don’t know if it’s any safer down here either yet. I have faith in So-chan and Mr Sword Hero. Neither of those two will go down without a good fight. I’m sure the commander has a trick or two up her sleeve too. We should worry only about ourselves now.”

“Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry, I’ll keep looking. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything.”

“Take it easy.” Izumi told her. “And, uh, sorry about the thing in the morning. That came out of the left field, didn’t it?”

“I was shocked, no denying that,” Yuliana said with a faint, troubled smile. “But I understand why Master Carmelia did it. I’ve tried to call my Lord many times over the days, but she refuses to answer me. Even though we need all the help we can get. I know it’s not my place to question a Lord, but I really wish she told us more about her reasons...”

“Well, try not to take it personally. It’s because she’s a Lord, she has to keep up appearances. But because of that, I think there’s also a bit of real care mixed in.”

“Care…?” Yuliana repeated and raised a brow.

Izumi nodded. “Yes. Sure, she doesn’t tell us everything partly to keep all the bases covered, and so that we couldn’t easily turn against her. But I believe it’s also because she actually worries about our opinion of her.”

“Could that be the case…?” Yuliana muttered, before adding after a moment’s thought, “I can’t say I understand my Lord’s intentions too well. Up until very recently, I think I was more afraid of her than anything else. But, true enough, I never felt she was strictly evil, or hostile towards people.”

“Labeling such an outrageous being as ‘good’ or ‘evil’ by our standards is risky business,” Izumi said. “Thinking about the NPCs in the games I played, I got fond of some, even to the point of ‘love’, and did my best to level them up. Got angry if they died. But those feelings didn’t keep me from uninstalling the game without ever looking back either. From the Divines’ point of view, we people are probably no less one-dimensional.”

Her majesty’s smile turned forced. “I am not entirely sure if I see the meaning…”

“Well, the gist is that right now, Ai-chan needs us more than we need her, in many ways. So I think it’s safe to say she does care about what we think.”

Yuliana thought for a moment, before replying,

“You may have a point. I spoke with my Lord once in the summer, and she argued at an unusual length to have my support. We ended up disagreeing in the end, and she seemed almost...disappointed. I thought Divines were above such sentiments. I never would’ve imagined anything I do or say actually mattered for her. But what you said puts it into perspective. As small as we are in her eyes, she would rather have us by her side than against her. Knowing that is somewhat comforting. You know my Lord so well. I may be a little jealous.”

“Not really,” Izumi denied with a shrug. “I had my retirement days to think it over. Besides, that way of thinking is really familiar to me. Not really loving company, but not wanting to be alone either...”

“Maybe more than jealousy, I’m starting to veer towards pity…”

“Don’t need it! Anyway, keep your chin up.”

“I’ll be fine. I just wish there was something more I could do…”

Izumi moved on along the wall towards the entrance, to the spot where Millanueve was examining the pillars. Already before she could open her mouth, the girl quickly raised a hand to stop her.

“Don’t talk to me now!” she exclaimed.

“Eh?” Izumi stopped in her tracks, alarmed. “Why?”

“I don’t want to tip you off by accident!” Millanueve explained. “This time—this time I will find the key first!”

The champion relaxed her shoulders and shook her head with a sigh. “...You sure march to the beat of your own drum. Despite all the doom and gloom.”

“We’re going to get through this,” the girl told her. “I have no doubt of it.”

“And that’s because…?”

“Because we will?”

It seemed no deeper reasoning was forthcoming.

“Share me some of that baseless faith, dang it,” Izumi requested. “You’ve clearly got too much!”

Millanueve turned haughtily away. “You seem plenty free of care yourself, only idly messing with others, and not doing any searching. Well, all the better for me! You’ll regret holding back this time when I take all the glory.”

“Sure, sure. You can have this puzzle all to yourself. Meanwhile, I’ll go have a seat and wait.”

“No, look seriously! It won’t be a contest otherwise!”

“Is participation mandatory!? And? What do I get if I win?”

“Um…” Millanueve thought for a moment. “That...glory?”

“Don’t need it! Can’t even eat it!” Izumi retorted. “Would it at least improve my image in your eyes, just a little?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Eh? Why...?”

The girl looked away, the sides of her face turning redder and bashfully muttered,

“It’s already the best it can be.”

“Ha?”

“No, on a second thought, just forget it! I said nothing! Nothing!”

“I heard you the first time, though,” Izumi said and felt her burning cheek. “Every word.”

“Geez! Get back to searching already! You’re distracting me!”

“S-sure. I’ll, uh...I’ll go.”

Izumi turned to carry on. But after a step, she paused and glanced back.

“Hey. Nue.”

“Hm? What?”

“You know, that side of you...I kind of...How should I say this? I don’t think it’s bad at all. In fact, I get the feeling I may have been saved by it. More than once.”

Millanueve answered with only a wide smile. “Uh-hum.”

Izumi paced between the shady benches for a while, waiting to cool down, before moving on to the opposing side of the hall, where the men were conducting their search. The Prince of Luctretz had his ear against the wall and was clicking it with the handle of his lockpick.

“Echo-locationing, huh?” Izumi observed. “Clever.”

“Yet less than fruitful,” the man replied and detached from the wall. “Either I have the ears of a larva, or this side is completely solid. I don’t think we’ll find our hidden door here, granted there is one.”

“I’ll take the hobbyist’s opinion then,” she said. “But I’m still the specialist in the house, so don’t go putting on any airs when I’m within earshot, okay?”

“A specialist?” He raised a brow. “At what?”

“Puzzles! Puzzles!” she told him. “They didn’t tell you? I’m a certified adventurer, you know? Just don’t ask for the certificate, I left that with my secretary.”

The Prince made a grim smile at her words. She had meant the joke to ease the mood, and thought that look was rather odd. “What?”

“No, pardon me,” he said. “Somehow, this has reminded me of the less than sensible conversations I had with Jude and Laine in the past.”

“Oh? That so?” she awkwardly muttered. “Provided we do find a way out of the city, what are you going to do? Go back to warn your people?”

The Prince put away his lockpick and considered his answer.

“I fear it’s too late for that,” he then said, keeping his tone low enough so that the others wouldn’t hear it. “I don’t know what kind of miracle Yuliana thinks we’ll find in Amarno...but that thing is our sole hope now. Ours, and that of all life. So I will put my faith in that same wonder. See that she gets there.”

“Okay.”

“And maybe,” he continued in a forceful whisper and turned away, “maybe that wonder will wash away my own sins alongside...”

Izumi decided to move on without a comment.

It’s not like I don’t know where you’re coming from...

She carried on towards the back of the hall, where the bard conducted his lonely investigation.

“You find anything yet?” she asked him.

“Oh, I’m not actually even looking,” Waramoti answered outright. “I’ve seen too many of these puzzles by now for that. I’m just feeling the wall, pretending to be looking, while waiting for you to tell us the solution.”

“You really have no shame, do you? A rhetoric question, don’t say it.”

“Since you already spoke to everyone else, I’m guessing this is the part where you reveal the trick. Well, what is it? I’d rather you didn’t keep us in suspense any longer, because this place smells like death and makes me uneasy in ways I can’t describe.”

“Sorry to disappoint, kid,” Izumi blankly answered, “but I was actually only fake-looking too, hoping someone else would do the heavy lifting this once.”

“But that means we’re never getting anywhere!” he cried.

“Who’s fault is that!?”

“Yours! It’s entirely yours!”

“Come on! I may be the protagonist, but does nobody else here know how to open secret doors!?”

“Jokes aside,” Waramoti said, growing more serious, “I thought of something.”

“Well, spill it.”

“This is the room where her majesty found that sword, yes? But why was it here?”

“You read the books, right?” she replied with a shrug. “The old king offered it in tribute to Ai-chan. This is where her spirit was trapped, and it seems to be where they held their communions in the ancient times. Makes sense, right?”

“That may be true. But if the weapon had religious significance, on top of being the symbol of their fabulous victory against the elves, why didn’t they take it upstairs when the new chapel was built, for all of the castle to admire? Instead, they left it down here in the dark, where even the royal family nearly forgot about it. As if there was some technical reason why it had to be kept here. You said it yourself; one shouldn’t take keys too far from where they’re needed.”

“...Did you really come up with all that on your own?”

“Well, it’s been a long week. I’ve had time to hone my reasoning faculties.”

They turned to look at the stone altar again, and the smaller block next to it.

“To begin with,” Waramoti continued, “that sword may be of the hardest metal known to man, but a normal person wouldn’t be able to stab it into solid stone just like that. They surely had to craft the block specifically to hold it. The question then is, what else did they make while at it?”

“...You owe me ten silver, if you’re right about this,” Izumi said.

“Why do I have to pay you? It’s my theory!”

“I’m betting in favor of your theory, so you have to bet against. I’m sorry, that’s just how gambling works.”

“No, you should pay me ten silver right here for doing your brain work for you!”

“I would, but I’m all out right now.”

“AGAIN? Do you just hand out free silver to every good-looking lady you see?”

Izumi headed back to the spot where she had started her tour and approached the block where the sword had once been. She wiped the dust off it and found the thin incision where the blade had been inserted, tailored for the width and thickness of this singular weapon. Yuliana had once claimed the blessing of Aiwesh had allowed her to remove the sword, but this had likely been only a lie by the Divine to make her majesty establish the contract. As an immaterial spirit, she couldn’t have actually prevented anyone from taking the blade from its resting place.

Izumi glanced at Carmelia, who stood a short distance away. “You already found it, didn’t you?”

“I’m verifying the integrity of the mechanism,” the sorceress answered. “Please wait. The door is in the back, but it seems this is not the sealing device itself. Try it now.”

Izumi drew her blade. “My, my. Nue’s gonna be so mad.”

At Carmelia’s mark, she stabbed the sword into the holder. The blade slid down about a third of its length and hit the bottom with a metallic cling. Izumi let go and backed up a step, wondering what was going to happen. The sword in the stone lit up with circular glyphs of golden shine, and the floor faintly trembled.

Shortly after, two larger glyphs lit up on the side walls, one on the left, one on the right. The illusory walls behind the glyphs faded, revealing two metallic switches embedded into the stone.

“Ha!” Millanueve exclaimed, pointing at the left side switch with a triumphant smile. “I found it!”

“Slow!”

The crew gathered in the middle to admire the ancient wonder.

“I take it these are for the door then?” Izumi nodded at the switches and asked Carmelia.

“Yes. The machinery should be functional, but simultaneous activation is required.”

“Then I’ll have this one!” Millanueve made her claim and hurried back to take over the left side switch.

“I shall handle the one over here,” the Prince said and returned to the other side.

“Alright.” Izumi wait for the two to get in position and raised her voice. “On the count of three!”

What would happen? Would the ages-old mechanism work, or would it break to pieces before their eyes, their hope at the same time? How could they report such an outcome upstairs to the others? Worse yet, would a sudden, forceful motion make the ceiling cave in and bury them?

All they could do was take the risk.

Izumi lifted her hand.

“One—”

“—Wait! Wait, wait!” Millanueve suddenly cried, examining the handle. “Not so fast! How does this thing even work…?”

“…Could people who know how to operate switches operate the switches?”