“I think it’ll be easier if I just wear this thing instead of carrying it piecemeal!” Amiri protested while Virgil and the others divided the articulated plate mail pieces and secured them on their backpacks.

“It’s not safe,” Virgil said firmly. “Not all artefacts are benign. Have you forgotten what happened to Marten Branwell when he tried to force a bond with an artefact back when we were in Vagaris?”

“He lost his arm,” Amiri sighed.

“Not just his arm, even his Anima had been altered so that he didn’t have an arm there anymore. He couldn’t even use Animatech prosthetics let alone try to regrow it.” Virgil shook his head. “You want to risk losing a limb or something worse?”

“Alright, alright!” Amiri grumbled. “We’re not heading back to camp, are we?”

“Day’s still young,” Sarra smirked.

“Good,” Amiri grunted.

Virgil observed her while she pouted and flounced. Whatever the artefact told her must have been quite tempting. Chuckling to himself, he tied the vambraces along the sides of his backpack. The metal was warm to the touch like a banked campfire. He had the sabatons and greaves as well, while Sarra carried the helm, Balliol had the breastplate and pauldrons. Craig had the tassets and faulds. Amiri carried the gauntlets, actually, she put them on and was waving her hands gleefully.

“Aren’t those heavy?” Virgil asked.

“Not particularly,” Amiri giggled. “What do you think they’re made of?”

“You tell me, you ran your Animus inside them.”

“Steel, definitely, alloyed with…er jade, probably, from how smooth my Animus felt going through it. Not sure what made it glow.”

“Curious.”

Adding powdered imperial jade into iron and steel made it easier to channel Animus into them, the applications of which was still being researched by a joint research division of Sharom and Lunette. Not in Rumiga, of course, but the head campus in Realmheart.

“Well, let’s continue,” Sarra urged.

The five of them continued down the hallway, though they stopped combing every inch of the rooms they checked. A simple visual inspection would suffice for now. Virgil felt it: the need to find out what was beyond that giant door. They cleared the hallway and went through an intersecting hall.

“If we head west from here, we’ll enter that area,” Craig said after he studied the map.

“Then let’s not delay,” Sarra nodded.

At some point, the hallways had changed. They were no longer made of smooth stone instead, it now appeared to be some form of grey metal. Virgil rapped on a wall with his knuckles and the grainy material gave off a dull sound.

Perhaps it was the long days where nothing happened or that the greatest threat they faced had been the giant hornets but it took them completely by surprise when Balliol stumbled as the part of the floor he stepped on suddenly sank under his foot.

Hssst! Ptang!

“Ahh!” Amiri screamed.

“Back!” Virgil yelled, Plasma Caster raised and charged with his Animus. There was nothing to attack though.

“Amiri!” Balliol shouted.

The red-haired woman was on her knees, a gauntleted hand slick with bright red blood. There was a shard of metal stuck in her arm. It had pierced right through her forceweave jacket.

“Don’t move!” Virgil yelled at Balliol who immediately froze, keeping his foot on the depressed plate. Virgil quickly scanned the walls and found the aperture where the blade came from. Sarra pulled Amiri away, while Craig and Virgil pressed themselves against the wall. “Go.”

With a nod, Balliol gingerly lifted his foot. The plate didn’t rise back up and the aperture didn’t reset and close. They backed away at least a dozen paces before Virgil looked at the women. Amiri’s gauntlets were on the floor. She had removed her jacket, revealing the freckled skin of her upper arms. The blade had already been removed and Amiri’s Animus covered the stab wound. The blood clotted even as Virgil watched and her Field gathered the spilt blood into a puddle that boiled and ignited until there was nothing but ashes. The stench reminded Virgil unpleasantly of grilling meat.

Sarra rubbed an antiseptic ointment on the wound once the bleeding stopped, binding it with a strip of cloth taken from her pack. Virgil examined the metal shard. It was a narrow wedge of steel. It wasn’t until he examined it closely that he realised how it managed to puncture the forceweave. He gasped.

“The edge is thin.” So narrow, in fact, that it only registered as a line. He grasped the tip and the base and flexed it. The metal bent out of shape but returned to its original form when he removed the pressure.

“It hit the bone,” Amiri hissed. “This will take weeks to heal.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t use your arms to fight,” Balliol said consolingly.

Amiri gazed at him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “I can’t tell if you’re being concerned or sarcastic.”

“Concerned, of course!”

“Right. If only I could believe you.”

“Amiri, now isn’t the time to pick fights,” Virgil interrupted.

“Right, we should continue on. I can still move. Only, why don’t you let me wear the armour so I don’t get stabbed again?”

“...No.”

“Aw!”

“Balliol, can you put up enough shields to cover every angle?” Sarra asked.

“Yes, hold on.”

His eyes crossed in concentration and one by one, hexagons of hardened air materialized in front of him. He kept conjuring them until there were enough to cover a box three paces to a side.

They squeezed together then proceeded. Amiri’s face was a bit pale but she soldiered on. They carefully traversed the hallway beyond the trap, now wary of tripping another one. But there was nothing. Why in Chaos was there a single pressure plate trap in the middle of a hallway where there weren’t any other defensive structures?

From the look of the ceiling, there may be murder holes that can open there. Virgil cast his eyes on the ceiling now and then and that was what saved him from getting impaled when a fist-sized hole opened and a metal shard dropped out of it.

“Ow!” Sarra yelped when Virgil pushed her out of the way. She careened off Balliol and Craig before bracing herself against the shield.

“What? Ow!” Balliol jumped when the shard went right through the shield and the hexagonal piece shattered like glass.

Failing to dodge, a line of fire crossed Virgil’s shin.

“I’m starting to think that we’re not supposed to go there!” he grumbled.

The blade cut into his forceweave trousers but it only scratched his skin. It was easy enough to suppress the bleeding with a quick application of Recovery. They continued afterwards, wary of tripping more traps. A couple more murder holes dropped shards but they were spotted in time and avoided. At one point, Balliol stepped on another pressure plate.

“Prone!” he quickly shouted and everyone managed to drop to their bellies when the shard flew out of the aperture.

Virgil collected all of the shards and they had an even dozen by the time they finally arrived at what he hoped was their destination.

This time, the door was clearly visible, and so was the panel on its right. Virgil marched up to, though he kept a wary eye on the ceiling and kept his wait on his back foot in case he stepped on any triggers. Nothing happened though, so with a deep breath, Virgil pressed his palm on the panel. No reaction.

“Well, Chao-ow!” He jerked his hand away and revealed five needles positioned where the tips of his fingers were. A droplet of his blood was on each one and, as they looked, the needles retracted into the wall.

Virgil glared at the panel and back at his hand. That was his trigger finger! Now, he’d feel a pinch of pain every time he shot at something.

The door slid open with a whoosh.

“Think it’ll have to read each of us?” Amiri asked.

“Why don’t you try entering and if you bonk your nose, we’ll know?” Balliol sniggered.

“Oh, haha. Why don’t you go first?”

“But who’ll protect the rest of you if I get trapped inside?”

“Wuss.”

“Settle down, kids,” Craig sighed. “I’ll give it a try.”

Sure enough, the door slid shut before he could enter. When Virgil walked up to the door, and whatever was watching them determined that he was the one who would enter, the door reopened.

“Well, here goes nothing.”

The door slid shut after he walked through and the light turned on to reveal a small antechamber. He stepped out of the way. A few moments later, the door slid open to reveal Amiri entering after him. She let out a low whistle when came in, and Virgil couldn’t help but agree.

The chamber was small, compared to the rest of the fortress. It was ten paces to a side and perfectly square. The walls on either side were metal, and on them were…pictures. Mindful of the trap-laden passage, he slowly paced around the room, checking for traps. When he found none, he joined the rest of the team in observing the walls.

One picture drew his immediate attention, being twice the size of the rest. It was of a person in a seated meditation pose. His eye was moved quite naturally to the picture below it, only afterwards realizing that there were no visual indicators on which one he was supposed to look at next. Shaking his ruefully, Virgil focused on what he was looking at.

Each figure had a core, a circle representing the Animus reserve. The second picture showed the person drawing out several strands of Animus, and the subsequent pictures showed its movements. The pictures were flat, but as Virgil continued to look, it was as if he was looking through the wall, and it suddenly showed depth. He could see where each strand should go, what kind of movements each should make, and at the last figure, he realized the Intent.

Strengthen Physique. So similar, but completely different. Virgil subconsciously envisioned his Anima and saw the lines he inlaid more than a few decades ago. He was one of the few who dared inlay all three of Strengthen Physiques techniques, which made him tougher and stronger than any of his peers but he could not inlay the basic Empowered Strike and all of its derivatives. Since his Facet was basically a ranged variant of it, he figured he could make do.

Despite himself, he sat in the meditative pose and started following the pattern. He glanced at the others and found all of them already in a meditative pose, eyes closed and Animus glowing from beneath their skin. He started the patterns, fumbling a bit as he wasn’t used to dividing control seven ways. He managed to get it to go in the pattern indicated, though it took him two tries before he got it right.

As soon as it completed that first circulation, Virgil lost control of his Animus. He couldn’t even move his body or make any sound. The strands continued on the circulation pattern, eating up his reserves as it did so. Then it did something that would have made him scream if not for his locked jaw.

His Animus drilled into the trio of inlaid techniques and methodically scrubbed them out. He could feel the inlay dissipating and a searing pain lanced through his Anima. Only a few grunts of pain made it past his lips. The more circulations it made, the more pain he was in.

Why won’t he black out? Anything was better than this!

By the seventh circulation, the scrubbing was complete and he felt as weak as a day old kitten. He collapsed bonelessly on the floor, Animus reserves nearly dry. The last thing he heard was Sarra screaming in pain and someone shaking his shoulder.

After who knew how long, he clawed his way to consciousness, fully expecting to scream in pain. With a groan, more out of habit that anything else, he rolled over and pushed his way into a kneeling position.

“Strange,” he muttered.

Not only was he pain-free but he felt as if he’d just taken a really long nap after a two-hour deep tissue massage and sauna. There was some soreness but overall, he felt more relaxed than anything else.

“Sarra, Amiri?” The two women were sprawled on the floor. Balliol and Craig were, too. “What?”

Memories rushed into his head and he gasped. He quickly envisioned his Anima and his heart sank when he saw that the inlay for Recovery, Boost, and Strengthen Physique were gone. He couldn’t re-inlay them either because when he did it the first time, all of his knowledge on the techniques had been invested into the inlay. With the inlay gone, the only thing that remained in his mind were the names and what they were supposed to do.

“But…?” Why did it feel as if his overall strength and condition didn’t change? He got to his feet. The backpack he wore felt lighter by a good fraction. And when he looked down at his shin, his wound had closed.

It wasn’t long before the others started waking up.

“Ow, Fallen Sun, what was that?” Amiri groaned. “Huh?”

She tried to stand up but ended up overbalancing and wound up on her bottom. She staggered to her feet but kept overcompensating and winding up on the floor. The other three had the same troubles.

“Sit down, you lot,” Virgil said. “Focus, feel your body and find out what changed.”

“How come you’re fine?” Balliol groused.

“That thing gave us all a version of Strengthen Physique: a permanent version that isn’t inlaid,” Virgil replied grimly, “I already had it inlaid and that...thing...erased it. Anyway, I’m quite used to it so not much change for me. None of you had that set inlaid, right?”

“Of course not,” Balliol snorted. “Why would I lock out other techniques for that one?”

“This is an Ancient Art,” Sarra interrupted. “It’s impossible to learn without personal tutelage from a master. How? How did a wall and some carvings impart it to us? Wait, wait, this also means that this place is much older than we thought!”

Virgil shook his head.

“Does it matter right now? I’ve lost my inlay and all the knowledge associated with it! I can’t even use Recovery now!”

“Calm down, Davar.” Balliol pointed at the other wall. “Look. If I’m not mistaken, those are the patterns for Recovery and Boost. The ancient version anyway.”

His eyes wandered across the figures. Each one displayed a different set of circulation pattern.

Hope rekindled in Virgil’s heart. But he knew that their troubles were far from over. The knowledge represented by these walls weren’t something that should be spread, especially not to their enemies.