Arcturus slammed into solid ground with a grunt and roll, his abused body yelling at him for rest. Notifications continued to ping in his HUD, and his travel through the portal only seemed to have added more digits to the ‘Notification Pending’ exclamation mark. A mental command kept the notifications minimized for the moment, and Arcturus instead focused on getting his bearings.

His minimap showed him that he was in some sort of chamber, though the interior was only barely lit. The faint glow of depreciated aether sconces shedding muted white light into the area granted the entire chamber a haunting aspect, and only worked to further increase the ominousness of the interior as the light created deepening shadows within pillared recesses.

Arcturus turned back to where he’d emerged from, and found a silent blackstone gateway with its runes already fading. Whatever magic had empowered it, it was already going dormant — and for all his aetheric talent with Aetherforging and its requisite subsets; navigating the complicated spellforms of the magnitude of a Gateway was still far beyond him. Without Adam, or perhaps someone like Luthaire, Arcturus was both stuck and unsure of what to do about it.

He could wait and see if his friends popped through, but…

Passivity has never been our way. Besides, reconnaissance is crucial.

That was true. His father had always said so, as well: Intelligence won wars.

The notifications blinked again, and he grimaced. He wanted to clear them, but he knew the combat reports and potentially even unexpected Main Quest or Side Quest updates could appear, and he’d learned that the System only rewarded him experience if and when he viewed those panels. If he kept them minimized, at least, he could handle the passive build of the notifications he had ‘banked’ presently. If he didn’t… Well, passing out in a creepy ancient gateway chamber was not conducive to one’s health.

What he could do was rest until his Health and Mana restored to full, and use [Lightfire] to mend what wounds and impediments remained in the duration. That, in fact, was precisely what he did: Parking his armoured rear at the top of the short stairwell to the blackstone gateway’s dais, and letting himself try to relax as he allowed his magic to work on his wounds, alternating between that and letting his Mana restore at its rate of 10MPM.

Instead of wandering about his surroundings, he set down his aetherblade and simply stared ahead of him, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness while he recuperated and mended himself. The faint itch of renewed skin, the quiet aches and bruises he’d ignored turning to mild twinges, which in turn faded away… the process was not quick, and even with the recovery he’d had time for while fleeing to the portal, he was still desperately low on Mana — his HUD showing him at 1,233 / 2,307 — though his Health, thanks to his [Lightfire], had skyrocketed quickly.

Arcturus could have meditated to increase his regeneration rate, but that was not a smart idea in an unknown environment.

One hour passed in peace, and nothing sinister crept out of the darkness. No life, no sign of occupancy… nothingness. A sense of abandonment, which itself felt unnatural. This place, this chamber, had been crafted with love. He could see it in the nature of its construction… so why was it abandoned, and in such a pristine state?

Something about that fact made his shoulders itch, and he finally grew impatient.

He’d never been good at inactivity, no matter how necessary.

You are sure?

“We’ll be alright. I had far less than this when I first arrived on Terra.”

We don’t know what’s out there. Be careful.

Arcturus nodded in agreement with the voice and snatched up Perdition with his right hand, standing and looking towards where the silhouette of the doors to the chamber lurked in shadow. With a flick of a mental switch he reignited his aetherblade, throwing white light across the area within about eight metres. His vision adjusted to the momentary flare of radiance quickly, and he found that even with its vacillating nature, his dual-force aetherblade served the purpose of a makeshift torch well.

Plus it would help with killing anyone that attacked him, which was a nice bonus.

“Alright, Arcturus, let’s see where you are…” He muttered.

Isolated, alone, and once again bereft of allies. Business as usual, at this point.

“It’s only happened twice.” He said in repudiation.

Two times too many.

“I’ll agree with that.”

You’re once again talking to the voice in your head.

“Better than being alone.”

You really are going insane.

“Enjoy the show, I guess.”

I will.

“Good.” Arcturus muttered, walking forward cautiously with Perdition raised in front of him. The silhouette of the doors grew larger and more imposing as he closed with it, crimson eyes lifting to scan the contours and shapes of the doors to discover something he’d missed in the other chamber: They were reminiscent of gigantic wings in how they were shaped. Ridged wings, with a majestic manner to their design. Reptilian, even.

Arcturus raised Perdition as he walked through, eyes scanning over the murals he’d ignored, once again, on the other side. They depicted something oddly mythological to Arcturus, even for Terra: Figures in brutalist armour, dueling with unknown masses in eclectic compositions of attire. Furs, plate, chainmail, leather… The depictions were as detailed as they were perplexing, and Arcturus found himself wondering if he’d stumbled into some ancient imperial site — or perhaps something even older.

Puzzled but intrigued, Arcturus turned and stepped past the doors into the darkness of the colossal arched hallway beyond, stepping to the right side cautiously and raising Perdition. He jumped back and cursed when a snarling maw came into view, only to realise it was simply a hyper-realistic granite carving. Growling and muttering about melodramatic architecture, he stepped forwards again and willed him to ignore the subtle menace rolling off of the carving, lifting his blade higher to illuminate more of the massive statue.

Unfortunately, no matter how much he shifted his blade, he couldn’t quite gain a proper angle by which to view the construct due to its elevation and his comparative shortness. Annoyed but undeterred, Arcturus moved on — only to meet the same result at each statue. For some inexplicable reason, no matter what he tried, they remained half-obscured in shadow and he could only make out rough details. It was vexing in the extreme, but not unexpected: The statues were huge compared to him, and he had no means of upwards momentum other than jumping. Even with his System-enhanced strength, that carried risks — and he couldn’t afford to be too noisy in an unknown area.

Caution had to take precedence.

Arcturus continued his transit through the corridor carefully, alert for any sounds or sights of other lifeforms, though he found none. His passage took him out of the hallway and into a massive chamber only slightly smaller than that of the gateway room. That was a difference, then: The Rubastra portal chamber had connected its hallway to a spiralling stairwell.

Perdition was raised as he approached a plinth directly ahead of him with an attached plaque, the washes of light from the sword highlighting its base as he closed distance and came to a halt a metre or so away. The plinth, he realised, was far bigger than he’d first thought. When he let his curiosity drive him and lifted his sword, he realised it was the base for an even bigger statue; one that made those in the corridor look normal-sized by comparison. Arcturus realised, in frustration, that he could only see the obsidian stone comprising the statue’s reinforced, regal-looking sabatons — and nothing more. Another mystery he could not resolve due to limitations.

He briefly considered conjuring a ball of [Lightfire] and throwing it, then thought better of it. Literally every horror and adventure movie he’d seen in his life warned him that was a terrible idea. Instead, he bent to read the inscription carved into the plaque at the base of the statue, blinking at the calligraphic style of its written wording. If he was correct, it seemed like the same language as the Empire, just… more formal. More elegant.

Arcturus blinked at the dates, and then looked up at the colossus’ legs again as he processed the information. “That would make you, what, eleven hundred years old?” He muttered to the statue, looking back to the plaque. There was no other information, no details, nothing. Just what Arcturus assumed to be the title ‘Royarch’, the name ‘Lucian Invictus Tollarias’, and presumably his birth and death date. What ‘VC’ stood for, he had no idea. He’d never seen that manner of dating system in his studies at the Rubastra Estate; the Empire used ‘AFD’, or ‘Aquilan Founding Date’ as their suffix.

This is…

The voice in his head sounded almost hesitant. As if something were troubling it. Arcturus waited for more, but it had fallen silent, and he discovered the most disturbing sense of dissonance. The voice, it seemed, was feeling something distinct from his own state of self. Arcturus didn’t even want to consider what sort of psychosis that implied, and only hoped it was something a long and poignant talk with Tylariel could correct. An impulsive glance over his shoulder told him, once again, that he was very much alone… and Arcturus sighed.

To be absolutely certain, he reached out and tested the Tethers, finding all of them still active — and infinitely far away. Wherever he was, he was well and truly alone. He couldn’t even give an exact cardinal direction. Instead, it was more of a cardinal arc covering the entire area between West and South on his HUD’s compass. That was supremely unhelpful, and mildly concerning. What if something had gone wrong, and they’d portalled somewhere else? It seemed unlikely, but anything was plausible.

Keep moving.

Arcturus agreed with the prompt, he’d spent enough time in front of the Royarch’s statue, relatively brief though the examination might have been. Keeping his wariness at the forefront of his mind, Arcturus did as he was bade and advanced to the right of the statue by arbitrary choice. It was his dominant side, after all, and instinct led him towards it. The wash of pale light from Perdition illuminated a granite stair ahead of him, several metres in length and relatively thin by comparison. As he moved closer, the stair resolved into a staircase, and one that wound up and towards the left — with elegant banisters on either side. The width of the staircase was uniform, and would have easily been able to permit ten men abreast to travel its length.

A glance around the chamber, again, showed him no other obvious points of entry or exit… and so Arcturus climbed. Step by step, one foot before the other, he ascended the stairs as they curved inexorably towards a landing perhaps ten metres up; positioned behind the granite cloak of the Royarch’s statue. When he reached the landing he paused, glancing back to the towering statue of the Royarch, and then towards the ‘back’ of the landing he stood upon. WIth footsteps that echoed of steel on stone, Arcturus approached the back of the landing and found himself faced with a large pair of double doors; twice as tall as him, and thrice as wide. Not an issue for his strength, normally.

Except that these were barred with steel, hastily slapped across the double doors in the shape of an X. “This was done to seal the Chamber from the inside…” He murmured to himself, stepping closer to see where magic had been used to fuse the steel bars to the doors. “Does that mean this is the only entrance...?”

That seems likely, given the way it is barred.

Arcturus’ instincts also screamed yes, but he had to be certain. Spinning on his heel, he marched with more confidence down the other side of the landing, where a mirroring set of stairs curved down towards the left of the Royarch’s statue, as one were looking at it. Wasting no more time, he hurried across the chamber he found himself in and searched swiftly and efficiently for more exits or entrances. He found none, not even the hint of one. Just solid, immutable stone.

The Gateway chamber might have had another entrance, but the one under the Rubastra Estate had been built with only one.

The Rubastras didn’t have a giant statue, though.

Conceding the point, Arcturus turned and jogged back through the hallway of snarling heads, through the mosaic-carved doors, and into the gateway chamber. Twenty minutes was spent circling its length and checking for more entrances before he was satisfied, and turned back to the double doors leading to the hallway. This time he moved at speed, confident of his isolation and with nervous energy running through his body. Even if there was no upwards stairwell, the Rubastra Estate’s gateway stairwell had an entrance not entirely dissimilar to the one boarded up.

If the builders of the Gateway had been forced to flee, it must have been an aeon in the past or more. The structures he saw were archaic, compared to imperial buildings. Beautiful, elegant, and incredibly austere — but archaic. Arcturus returned quickly, past the snarling statues and towering Royarch, to the barred doors in the far chamber. He leaned forwards carefully via Perdition’s light, and touched his left gauntlet to the metal. Despite being firm to the touch, he could see the age in the work by the faintest traces of metal oxide along their surface.

Rust. If there was rust, that meant there was time.

“I might regret this.” He admitted.

You could use your notifications to Level.

Arcturus hesitated, and then Vivienne’s blue eyes flashed through his vision.

“No.” He said, feeling the complicated web of emotions stirring in him immediately. “It can wait a little longer. I’m… Not ready yet. Not just yet.”

Focus on the task at hand, then. We didn’t make it this far to die to your distraction.

Arcturus grunted and stepped back, raising Perdition in both hands. A moment of hesitation followed, of doubt… and then he growled and buried it behind determination as he swung down in one practised motion, the aetherblade severing the metal bands like a knife through better. There was no heat to the slice, no flare of sparking metal: Just a clean, smooth cut from Perdition’s edge.

Destruction does not need heat to do its work.

Arcturus glanced at his unique sword, again, and was extremely grateful for its existence as he reached out and pushed on the left-most of the pair of doors, stepping in with it and leading with his aetherblade. He stepped past the door and into what appeared to be some sort of corridor, stretching into the distance over one hundred metres. Arcturus frowned and opened the door fully, looking around him in assessment. The corridor was perhaps ten metres high from the floor to its vaulted ceilings, and about twenty metres wide from wall to wall; with ornate pillars built from dark marble running parallel to the wall at about ten metres apart. A rotted carpet was under his feet, and upon turning to his right to inspect the doorframe, Arcturus felt himself freeze for a second.

An armoured skeleton lay next to the doors, its lifeless skull staring up at him in silence.

Cursing under his breath, Arcturus glanced back down the corridor and then advanced on the skeleton, lowering himself to a knee to bring Perdition closer to examine it.

The dead individual had a bipedal frame, with skeletal structure Arcturus had done well enough in biology to know was more or less human. Its body was encased in thick, obsidian armour not dissimilar to his own, though only a single gem rested upon the deceased warrior’s armoured breastplate — and it was lifeless and cracked. A long-ago rusted blade lay beside its hand, corroded by uncleaned substances — blood, most likely — coating its surface for untold decades, centuries, or perhaps longer.

Something about the skeleton’s face bothered him, for some reason, and Arcturus extended an armoured hand to touch its jaw — which promptly fell open with a crack.

“Fucking shitfuck!” Arcturus snarled, snatching back his hand as his heart pounded in his chest, and his voice echoed into the distance within both the chamber he’d left and the hallway he’d entered.

Great job. Very stealth.

Arcturus ignored the voice and glanced down the Hallway, waiting for several minutes to ensure nothing was coming before he turned back to the skeleton. His eyes raked its jaw for what had subtly bothered him, and he saw it immediately. Its mouth had been closed at a just-slightly odd angle. He instantly knew why.

The ‘canine’ teeth in its mouth, notable even on Earth for their notable sharpness, were extended. Almost an extra inch for each tooth, resolving into razor tips. He’d seen enough movies and television, and read enough novels to know precisely what he was looking at.

“Vampires?” He muttered in disbelief. “Of all things, it had to be fucking Vampires?”

We’re committed now. We have no way of sealing that door again, and if you try to Level Up now, you’ll be a sitting duck if any of them are left.

Arcturus didn’t need the voice to tell him that. He’d already worked it out. More than that, he wanted to kick himself for not realising it earlier. Snarling gargoyle-like statues, greco-roman gothic architecture, seemingly vast underground building methods, and the way the script had been written! How the hell had he not guessed Vampires?!

Because you know them to be myths, and that is a hard thing to break after just under two months.

That made him feel a bit better, and Arcturus rose to his feet and turned to look down the corridor. If there were Vampires, they’d not find him an easy meal. He reaffirmed his grip on Perdition and started walking, striding down the hallway with a wary gait and holding his [Telekinesis] just on the edge of catalyzation. He’d trained with it enough to use it instinctively, and he was willing to bet that being able to project a box of force around himself would come in handy if he were attacked by a bloodsucking not-so-mythological assailant.

Arcturus kept his senses strained to their limits as he relied on his aetherial perception to assist with warning him of danger, his gaze darting left and right as if every shadow might be hiding a foe. For all he knew, they could be. Skeletons littered the floor in various states of decay as he walked, some attired in the same black armour as the first — others garbed in torn tunics or frayed dresses, lost to the ravages of time. His progress took him further down the corridor, until he came to another set of double doors, these ones cracked and broken long ago. More armoured skeletons sat in their final rest before the shattered door, and Arcturus grimaced to himself.

“My apologies.” He muttered to the dead as he stepped past and pushed through the ruined entrance, to find himself standing within some sort of ancient, victorian-gothic vestibule. Arcturus’ eyes widened in stunned appreciation of what he was seeing, gaze going from the decayed velvet drapes to the cracked cream-painted walls and the black stone that seemed to be part of all of it. Beautiful vaulted ceilings lurked high above, just-barely visible through Perdition’s light. Arcturus was momentarily awed by the grandness of it all; like the entrance chamber to a draculian ball from one of the old movies he used to watch on Earth.

Arcturus turned to regard another detail of the room when his senses screamed at him and he reflexively threw himself aside, catching something fly through the air where he’d been a moment earlier. Spinning on his heel, Arcturus turned — and found himself face-to-face with a pale, red-eyed, snarling woman. Her clothes had long ago rotted to scraps, leaving them barely-clinging to blood-and-filth-crusted, unwashed flesh. Her nudity made her fall from grace all the more prevalent, with muck and substances whose origin Arcturus wanted no knowledge of coating hanging, withered breasts; and time-ravaged skin.

Even her face, constricted into a rictus snarl of insanity and hunger, held an echo of bygone beauty to it that made him piteous in the corner of his mind. When she rose to face him, he saw her body was covered in scars and old wounds, and each finger and toe carried upon it a cracked, black talon of menacing length and sharpness. The Vampire stared at him as he stared at her, and as the silence lengthened he finally spoke.

“I don’t suppose we can talk about this?”

Her answer was a sudden, keening shriek of hunger and rage that dispelled that notion from him — and made him realise he was in trouble.

Especially when he heard a chorus of answering cries, drawing closer as they echoed across the walls and out of the various corridors branching off from the once-beautiful vestibule.

Arcturus responded when the female launched herself at him and snapped a binding of telekinetic force around her leaping form, freezing her in the air. What happened immediately as he did, however, baffled him: She started screaming, wailing, as if she were in terrible agony — and he noticed smoke wafting from her flesh. Bewildered but having no time to experiment, Arcturus acted instead to silence her. He stepped forwards, murmured a quiet “Sorry” and promptly rammed Perdition into her sternum where she hung mid-leap in the air before him.

What he saw next was bewildering enough to compel his interest, even as he wasted precious seconds. From the point of penetration, her flesh rapidly turned from the unnaturally almost marble-white paleness of what he assumed was her Vampirism to a more natural, creamy shade of dirtied by normal human skin. Her body firmed, her talons fell away into dust, and her expression of hunger, insanity, and agony transformed into one of shock, horror, and then relief. Even as blackened, sludge-like blood bled from her chest and mouth: She started to smile.

“Thank you, Royarch…” She whisper-croaked, before falling dead within the bonds of telekinesis that held her. Arcturus tore Perdition free and stepped back as he dropped her body, heart hammering in his chest from confusion. Had she… Had killing her reverted her to human? And why had she called him Royarch? Was that not a title for whatever species lurked within the unknown construction he had arrived within?

More screeches made themselves known, and Arcturus cursed as he realised how much time he’d wasted. He had bare seconds to make a choice, spinning as he looked between seven different access routes — including the one he’d come from.

As he was thinking, the route directly ahead of him abruptly lit up — flames the colour of freshly spilled blood igniting within wall-mounted torches that marched down a winding corridor. A moment of hesitation gripped him, then he swore and sprinted down the hallway, glancing behind as screeches of rage followed his passage, and the sound of cracking bones made themselves known a few seconds later.

They’d found the dead Vampire’s body, by the sound of it.

Clenching his stomach against the urge to throw up at the thought of cannibalism occuring behind him, Arcturus put all of his considerable System-enhanced vitality, agility, and strength into racing down the hallway. When he came to a once-lavish foyer, the torches continued their lit guidance, sending him racing up a stairwell winding towards a second level.

“Watch out!”

Instinct and an unknown voice saved him from a crimson smile as black talons raked the air he’d almost occupied, saved only by his reflexive back-pull of his head at the moment of the warning. A decrepit male Vampire shrieked in his face, and Arcturus responded by smashing him back against the wall behind him, watching the creature wail and writhe as the telekinesis took hold of it. Without hesitation this time, Arcturus drove his blade into the creature’s body, and once again witnessed the ‘devampirification’ of its form. Scholarly interest warred with combat instinct, and with a growl of frustration he set off again as the Vampire-cum-Human behind him released a gurgling death rattle.

The torches along the second level led him to an ornate doorway, and Arcturus tried the handle, only to find it was locked. A screech behind him made him turn, and he rolled to avoid the sudden dive of another female Vampire, this one gnashing her rotted teeth as she stared at him. Snarling in aggravation, Arcturus conjured a telekinetic lance and stepped aside as she leaped at him again, spearing her mid-flight and slamming her pierced body into the door that defied him.

It smashed apart in an echoing hail of splinters, and Arcturus ran through; carving Perdition through the throat of the female vampire for good measure as he went. Part of him hated knowing he was restoring these people just for them to die, but a logical and pragmatic part of his brain told him that they were dead anyway. The black sludge they bled would not sustain any kind of life he knew of.

He emerged into a narrow passageway that led towards some sort of brightly lit chamber ahead, but before he could progress, another whisper came.

“To your right.”

Arcturus turned as bidden and spotted a support pillar hidden in the shadows of the entrance. A glance up showed it connecting to a large obsidian-steel portcullis above, and he didn’t hesitate. With a wordless snarl, he sliced Perdition through it cleanly, kicked it apart as he raced past and heard it clang into the stone with a crack of penetration behind him. Enraged shrieks and screams of rage followed him, and Arcturus burst out of the passageway into what appeared to be some sort of hub or ritual chamber of some kind. Light flickered from a terminal in the three o’clock direction, connected to some kind of circular pad that shimmered with crimson runes.

Arcturus looked between the pad and the terminal, and found the latter was blank: A flat, smooth obsidian surface with no discernible means of activating. Snarling in frustration, he turned at the sound of thumping feet and saw three Vampires land from above. A glance up showed him a long-smashed window, and Arcturus threw a filthy glance ‘up’, silently cursing Order. His eyes lowered, and he took in his opponents.

One was an almost-attractive female, the other a similarly-featured male. Between them was a brute of a male that Arcturus was glad he got to kill: For the smell of him, if nothing else. His flesh was the same marble pallour as the other pair, but ridged with muscle and power: His talons were long, his limbs thick, and malevolent intellect lurked within his crimson eyes.

If that wasn't enough to highlight its 'Alpha' status, the swinging monstrosity between the brute's legs certainly did.

A roar from the near-seven foot brute sent the male and female at Arcturus and he wasted no time. The woman he threw aside with a telekinetic sweep, sending her skidding along the hub’s metal surface while the male came in like a viper to his guard. Arcturus twisted his head out of the way of a claw-swipe, but received a trio of lacerations to his left cheek regardless. Snarling, he responded by conjuring [Voidfire] and unleashing it on the male.

The Vampire launched itself away with a shriek, thrashing and flailing as it attempted to stop the corrosive fire from eating away at its too-white, marble-like flesh, while veins of black destruction spread across its surface inexorably. It drained nearly ten mana per second to sustain, but Arcturus hardly cared: His Mana still showed 82%, and that was enough.

Arcturus watched the brute look between him and the screaming male, before it snarled something guttural to the female. She, about to attack again, frozen and looked back. A low, dementedly feminine combination of a clicking and growling noise came from her, and the brute snarled something again. Mewling in supplication, the female skittered over and — much to Arcturus’ near-vomiting disgust — pushed her face against his flesh between the legs in some sort of submission, before skittering away.

“What the fuck did I just witness?” He asked, while the brute turned back to him. Another glance was given to the still-dying male Vampire, and then the brute turned and launched itself upwards — grabbing the windowsill and catching the female’s hand in its own as she launched herself, shrieking, after it. Arcturus saw the brute give him one more too-intelligent look, before vanishing into the window-gap, followed by the chittering female.

“Swipe your blood on your palm and press it to the terminal. Quickly, Reclaimer.”

Arcturus started at the whispered voice, and then turned to the terminal. He reached up and pressed his left hand against his bleeding face, wincing in pain as he did, and then pressed it against the pad. Veins of red light immediately erupted across its surface, and the runes on the metal circle it was connected to turned white. Energy hummed and crackled, and Arcturus hesitantly did the obvious thing, and stepped onto the pad.

A moment later, heat suffused his body and, as sudden unconsciousness raced in to claim him, the chamber vanished in a flash of light.