***The Crystal City***

***Seria***

“This is such a stupid idea, Seria. I don't even know where to begin,” Nazareth complains while wringing his hands. “And you too, Brother. How could you join her so willingly on such a dangerous endeavour?”

The large half-orc looks down at his brother, seemingly considering the question in earnest.

“Hmm,” Marigold grumbles in a deep baritone. “I won't argue the point that we are taking a huge risk, but if Seria says that she needs backup, then I'll help her. Sneaking into the centre of the Council's power isn't something that should be done alone. If anything goes wrong, then our increased numbers make it at least possible to call for help. Or to be a witness for each other. It’s much harder to make us disappear when others know of our actions. At least the Council would no longer be able to pretend that they know nothing about the disappearances. Finally, this isn’t something that concerns only Seria, but all of us.”

“I think that going with more people only makes it more likely for us to get caught!” Nazareth replies, unwilling to let the matter rest. Then he looks up and down the alley as if expecting one of the Council's hunters to jump around the corner at any moment.

Little does he know that I myself am forced to walk in the Council's shadow. I am not proud of it, but it gives me the possibility to help those who deserve it.

After checking out the godforsaken alley myself, I return my attention to the brothers. “Listen, I will do this alone if you don't want to risk it. I just asked you two for help because I am relatively sure that you aren't in cahoots with the Council. It's certainly not as if I can make any promises regarding your safety. In fact, should we get caught, I think it's very likely that our friends will count us among the missing people.”

“Do you hear that?” Nazareth looks up to Marigold, then at me. “What guarantee do we have that you aren't working with the Council to pin something on us? It's not like you aren't known for dealing with them. In fact, everyone knows that you are on Tjenemit's payroll.”

Slowly, I raise an eyebrow. “I won't deny that I am working for the Council. It’s unfortunate that they have their sights on me for various reasons, but that doesn't mean that I like it. Believe me, if I saw a sensible way to weasel my way out of my circumstances, I would do it. But the Council has too many eyes and ears. Their propaganda machine is quite effective, and most who aren’t directly involved with the Council members would never suspect a thing. And the ones who are, are too afraid to talk. I want to know what's going on, just like you two and anyone else. It's as much about my own safety as yours.”

Tilting my hips slightly, I cross my arms in front of my chest and look down on the little gnome. “And may I remind you that I helped you to find your brother? And now that I am asking for help you deny me?”

“Aaah...” Nazareth looks away, clearly embarrassed. “This situation is different. My brother wasn't in real danger and I just needed you to speak to Ascathon. It's not like he takes me seriously. And stop doing that! Seriously, what's with that black catsuit. You look ridiculous!”

“What!?” I look down at myself, uncrossing my arms to inspect the dark leathers. “This is the closest I could find to burglar equipment. My usual gowns are quite unfit for this task. I told you two to dress appropiatly.”

As far as appropriate goes. Nazareth chose some kind of grey robe which looks like a sack on his gnome-body. Marigold is in his usual brown leather armour. I swear, it's as if some people never change their clothes. Either that or they have twenty identical sets at home.

Marigold clears his throat. “Please do that again.”

“What?”

He looks at the floor. “Pushing up your chest and then lett... ing... go... judging by your expression, I can see that you are opposed to the idea. So I'll just shut my mouth and help you.”

“Perv!” Nazareth shakes his head. “One would think that you had enough after a week in that succubus brothel.”

“Can we return to the matter at hand, please?” I ask, exasperated. “And don’t worry, Marigold. I know that I am pretty, so you are allowed to look. Sadly, you just aren’t my type, no offense.”

If I had known that it would involve this much arguing, then I would have crawled down into the tunnel system on my own. “I don't even need you two to fight. I just want someone with me who is able to stand guard, should we find something that's worth investigating.”

“Count me in,” Marigold announces helpfully, while his brother whines, “We are all going to die. The Council will do us in. How do you even intend to enter the restricted area?”

That's right. The restricted area includes pretty much the whole Crystal City beneath street-level. There is a whole network of underground tunnels which may have functioned as a resource-allocation system in the past. Whoever created the Crystal City intended for it to last forever. In fact, aside from some recent additions to the city's landscape, I am not aware that any of the original facilities need maintenance at all.

“The Crystal City is old. So old, that I am relatively sure that the Council didn't build it. It may even pre-date the time of war which was brought to an end by the Council,” I explain patiently.

“So?” Nazareth asks, his forehead furrowed. “I think pretty much everyone already came up with that theory on his or her own. There is no way that the Council wouldn’t widen their influence if they knew how to handle mana crystals.”

“It also means that there are nooks and crannies all over the city which even the Council doesn't know about. Abandoned sewers, hidden passageways, and old maintenance shafts.” I kneel down on the street, digging my fingers into a crevice between the cobblestones which pave the street. “Someone must have thought in the past that cobblestones look nicer than the flat, crystal surfaces which cover most of the city. But in his eagerness, he also closed up the entrance to an old maintenance shaft which leads directly into one of the Council's main-facilities.”

Activating the ancient mechanism, I lift the cover. Whoever did the paving decided to leave the maintenance shaft accessible, while doing his hardest to hide its existence.

Marigold lets out a sound of surprise. “Gosh! How did you even find this?”

“I was around for a long time.” I wave my hand, holding the cover open. “Let's just say that I had incredible luck stumbling upon it.”

And it was luck indeed. One night, I let myself go inside the inn around the corner. And with 'let go' I mean that I was so drunk that I couldn't walk anymore, let alone cast a spell to clean my blood from the alcohol. It was then when I was at my lowest, crawling through this street in an attempt to get anywhere where I could sleep out my hangover when I literally stumbled upon this.

I still count myself lucky that I had the wits left to close up the shaft and tell nobody until I had the chance to explore it.

“Get in before someone sees us.”

Marigold and Nazareth follow my order and once they are inside, I follow and close the shaft above me. Then we slowly descend down an old ladder in total darkness. The shaft itself is no more than a meter in width, but it soon widens when we enter a small room with a crystal core in the ceiling.

“By the gods! What is that?” Nazareth whispers. “I feel the mana radiating off of it.”

“It's something like a mana core, just that the creators made it out of mana crystal. That's why the Council doesn't want anyone down here. There are power-nodes like this one at regular intervals throughout the whole city. I think they are responsible for the power distribution for the outlets in the houses above.”

Marigold shakes his head. “I will never understand how the gods of the past could have built something like this and just vanished.”

I shrug and point at a narrow tunnel to our left. It's large enough to stand, but forces anyone who enters it to walk sideways. “Who knows? Maybe the owners were defeated by another party and were dealt with in a permanent manner. That's what we are here for. For all we know, the Council is using some ancient mechanism to imprison the people they dislike, and we can end all of their schemes by destroying their toy.”

“You are grasping at straws,” Nazareth intones helpfully. “And I must say that right now I am quite happy to be a gnome. These tunnels are just the right size for me. Are you sure that they are meant to be traversed by humans?”

“Who knows.” I tap at a pipe or power-line which follows the tunnel at the ceiling. “I don’t think that someone who has access to Crystal-Tech would have problems with sending some kind of drones, should something fail.”

“I have only one question,” Marigold says while making himself small by drawing-in his belly. Out of the three of us he has the most problems with the tunnel’s size. “Why did you choose this exact moment for this adventure? From what I understand, you knew about this entrance for a long time and you never used it.”

That’s actually a hard question. If I had to lay out the exact details, it would take days to share the entire story. So going with a half-truth might be the best course. “I was very afraid of getting caught. And I have absolutely no idea if this facility holds the answers we seek.”

“So what changed?” Nazareth urges on.

“Eris vanished. You might have noticed that she was strangely absent from any public events in recent time. That’s simply not her style as a goddess of discord. Someone like her needs to have an active involvement with the public in order to cause mischief.” Now several dozen metres down the tunnel, I duck into an intersection and move on. “Finally, there is the point that I have a reliable source which told me that Eris entered this part of the underground network. In fact, many Council members do so on a regular basis. It’s just that according to my source, Eris never emerged.”

“So we are still acting on a hunch,” Marigold mumbles. “Well, I suppose it’s better than to randomly search the restricted area. That would get us caught sooner or later for sure.”

“Silent now,” I warn them. “We are approaching the active part of the facility and from there on out, we have to be watchful for surveillance systems.”

“I am good with counter-intelligence, so let me cast the spells,” Nazareth provides helpfully.

It actually still takes us a few more minutes to arrive at the hatch which allows access to a deeper level. From there onwards, the tunnels widen and become easier to traverse. We proceed with the greatest care, halting often to check for any sign that we were found. Surprisingly, Nazareth turns out to be quite the competent counter-intelligence device. After a round of highly effective invisibility enchantments, which I couldn’t have done any better, and privacy spells which are supposed to stop any sound, we proceed deeper into the facility.

Soon, we encounter our first guard, but thankfully Nazareth’s spells hold and the guard walks past us none the wiser while we press ourselves to the wall.

A few steps further, we arrive at an intersection which helpfully provides a sign and a map with our current location.

Nazareth points to the left. “It says that the offices are that way.”

“Yes,” I reply and point in the other direction. “And it says that the restricted area is that way.”

“A restricted area within something that’s already a restricted area is never a good thing,” Marigold observes coldly.

“Yes, but we are on a time limit. Searching an office complex which surely includes staff isn’t an easy thing to do at the best of times. How long will we be able to hide behind our magic? A restricted area sounds like it would be relatively easy to find something that the Council wants to hide.” Taking the tunnel to the right, I start walking.

It doesn’t take long to reach a security door.

“Somehow I expected that,” Marigold mumbles. “Why should they leave something that’s important completely unprotected?”

“Well, there is the strange thing that we can’t use the pathways down here,” Nazareth mentions.

“We can’t?” Marigold’s face turns strained for a moment as he tries to reach out with his mind. “We can’t,” he confirms.

“I suppose releasing our aura and punching through the door would cause an immediate alarm,” Nazareth voices his thoughts. For a god, anything other than Mana Crystal may as well be a sheet of paper. Unfortunately, the gnome is right in assuming that ripping that sheet of paper would bring down security on us.

“No problem, guys.” Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve an automated decryption device. “You notice that this door is made out of metal? It isn’t original Crystal-Tech, so it should be possible to open it.” I plug the device which I got from a trusted specialist into the control panel next to the door.

One curious thing about the Crystal City is that it is in some kind of lock-down mode. Nobody can open or close the original doors throughout the city, of which most were left open for some reason when the owners left.

My trust in my source is confirmed moments later when the door slides open, revealing some kind of research area with offices, partitioned off by walls of glass.

“Whoa, who made that thing?” Nazareth ogles my decryption device with respect. “I bet the Council doesn’t play cheap on the security in here.”

“A trusted specialist, don’t worry.” I pack the device away. “He drives a hard bargain when giving away his work, but I have yet to encounter something that’s beyond him when it comes to technology. We are lucky that he isn’t on the Council’s side.”

With the way cleared, we enter the area and take a look around. The offices give off the impression of belonging to some kind of intelligence service, some charts on the walls linking various names and locations with each other.

Ignoring the paperwork, I head straight ahead towards something like an observation window that allows a look into a larger room.

Beyond the window is something like a hall, and in its centre is a floating crystal sphere. “That looks interesting.”

The two brothers join me and Nazareth points at a spot beneath the floating sphere. “Ooh, that’s not good. That golden skin, I know of only one god with that style.”

Marigold nods. “El Shaddai, leader of the Council. We should get out of here before he sees us.”

“But we still have nothing on them,” Nazareth whispers. “What is he doing? Just staring at the sphere with raised hands? Looks almost as if he is worshipping it.”

That’s when I notice two black shapes moving towards the window. “Watch out!” I pull Nazareth away from the window, just as the first shape breaks through.

Marigold steps forward, a blade of lightning appearing in his hand. He strikes at the gaunt, vaguely humanoid thing, partly releasing his aura. A strike which should have cleaved his enemy in two.

But the creature strikes out with a clawed hand, dispelling the half-orc’s lightning blade and cutting through his aura as if it were nothing. Its claws rake across Marigold’s chest as he kicks out in reflex, sending the thing flying back through the observation window in a high arc.

Turning, he shoves us towards the exit. “Run, those things aren’t normal!”

“Haste!” Nazareth incants a spell, its effect surrounding all of us. Then he is gone, his feet sounding like the staccato of machinegun fire on the crystal floor.

I follow, finding my movements much faster than normal, even without myself using internal magic to increase my abilities.

“Hungeerr...”

“Jooin usss...”

A cold shudder runs down my spine as we flee back the way we came, hot pursuit right behind us and the facility’s alarms going off. But no matter our speed, the second thing is right on our heels and catching up.

“What are those!?” Marigold asks as we run. “Guardians?”

“They aren’t normal!” Nazareth gasps. “Just an indistinct mass of inky black and claws. I’ve never seen something like it!”

“The other is right behind us and it’s quick! We will never make it back through the service tunnels without releasing our auras completely!” Marigold observes after taking a look behind him.

“That thing didn’t care about your aura earlier!” Nazareth throws back.

“Then we have to kill the one which is directly on our tails as quickly as possible and then escape before the second one or El Shaddai regain their wits. I got the one I kicked really good, so I doubt that it will be right behind the other one.”

Marigold summons two lightning swords as he stops at the earlier junction with the signs.

Cursing, I join him, summoning life and death magic into each palm. As much as I would like to keep running, he is right. These guardians don’t seem to be very intelligent, because hunting down three gods must be beyond a single pursuer.

In the next moment, the creature is on us and I release my own aura.

Marigold slides to the side, evading the guardian’s claws and slicing a lightning blade across its left thigh.

The creature doesn’t react to the successful blow and follows up with a kick, sending the half-orc flying against the wall and to the floor, ignoring his aura completely.

Jumping in, I shoot the orb of death-magic at the creature and the orb of life-magic at Marigold.

Totally unaffected, the guardian tanks my spell as if I just threw popcorn at it. Howling, it jumps at me and takes me down, passing through my aura like it wasn’t there. As it raises its claws, I ask myself if I misjudged the thing’s intelligence.

Maybe it can take down three gods?

That’s when someone grabs the thing’s arm, pulling it off of me like it was a toddler.

Swinging the creature around in an arc, Ascathon slams it into the wall with a ‘crunch’. Not hesitating, he steps onto its shoulder-joint and pulls, ripping out the arm and spraying an inky substance all over the floor. Yet again, the thing proves its resistance to pain and skitters out from beneath his boot by twisting its joints around in an unnatural manner. Doing so, it propels itself off the floor and spinning in mid-air, the creature brings a clawed hand to bear on its enemy. Ascathon raises an arm, expecting to block the attack with ease.

But like with us, the creature strikes through his released aura and digs inky, black claws into his forearm.

“It’s immune to magic!” I call out, getting back to my feet.

Furrowing his forehead, Ascathon twists his arm out of the creature’s grasp, shredding his own flesh in the process. He takes a hold of the thing’s remaining arm and pushes it against the wall, the palm of his other hand against its chest.

“There is no such thing as immune to magic,” he grumbles as a brilliant red light appears from beneath his palm, painting the entire corridor in a red hue, combined with the sizzling of rending flesh.

Screeching, the creature twists and writhes in an attempt to get away, even as its chest is shredded to pieces by an orb of chaotic, red energies. Moments later it’s over and the thing’s inky head falls to the ground together with its remaining arm. The lower torso slides to the floor and tilts to the side, spilling out a mass that could count for intestines.

Even as the thing’s remains start evaporating, the second guardian reaches us but stops at the corridor’s corner upon seeing its companion’s fate. It's as if the spell in Ascathon's hand gives it cause to pause, where nothing else we tried even fazed it.

“Ascended One!”

Hissing, it blurs and retreats, leaving us none the wiser, except for this mysterious phrase.

Unsummoning the malicious red orb, Ascathon turns to face us while casting healing magic on his shredded arm, observing its regeneration. “And to think that I just repaired this body. So, care to explain what you three are doing down here?”

“We could ask you the same!” Nazareth replies.

But the noise of running footsteps forces me to make this short. “No time!” I rush over to Marigold and pull the groaning half-orc to his feet. “Tell nobody that you encountered us down here, Ascathon! As much for us as for your own sake. Buy us some time.”

Thankfully, the God of Chaos only furrows his forehead as I and my companions retreat while he remains standing at the junction.