Chapter Forty Four: Sight Unseen

On the other side of the gate, Ronin fell to the ground, opening his eyes to see some kind of wood he'd never seen before, and fought the sickness that began growing in his gut. Panic raced through his every cell, so distressing that it was nearly all he could feel, something he could only think of as the fear when you're about to die, though he knew he wasn't in any immediate danger because Mira seemed to be ok.

She knelt near him and put her hand on his shoulder and said, "Are you ok, Ronin?"

 The feeling grew and grew until suddenly it was gone, like it had never existed within him at all.

Somehow, in the instant it took to walk through the gate and be on the other side of it, he knew that someone or something had seen him...and he wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Swallowing hard, he fought past the dryness in his mouth as he stood and said, "Yeah...yeah, I think so."

Looking back at the doorway they'd come through, he saw that it had closed...they'd need to find their own way out.

They were in what appeared to be a study lit by lights that seemed to have no power source, not even a way to absorb Aether in the air.

Clearly furnished to entertain, the study was full of comfortable looking couches and artwork the provenance of which escaped Ronin, limited as his understanding and interest in art was. There was, however one piece that bothered him for some reason.

A painting of a young, very handsome man stared out at the room, his expression smiling benevolently, though Ronin sensed only malice in the grin.

The man in the painting was holding a softly glowing silver sphere in one hand, though it was so well painted that it seemed to be emitting light of its own.

Ronin started to look at it closer when Mira said, "Ronin, there's so much stuff here...don't get distracted...we're here for the Cathols."

Understanding her itch to strike out at the people who'd manipulated her for so long, Ronin fought his need to investigate and walked toward the doorway on the far wall, though as he walked, he realized that even the floor seemed to be infused with some kind of energy or tech as it made his stride smoother and faster.

"You haven't seen anything yet," Meonin had said...he'd thought he believed her, but seeing really is believing.

He walked out of the room and was in a lab filled to the brim with tech so far advanced that it made even his best creations look like child's play.

Shaking his head, he said, "Give me a moment."

Tapping through his inventory, he pulled out a device designed to scan, analyze, and then send the data to one of Delta's servers for later research. It had been some time since he'd been suitably motivated to use the tool, but this was hardly what one would call a normal situation.

Leaving the device to it's work, and confident it would return to his inventory when finished, he and Mira walked through the lab until they found a stairway marked with several lines of text that he couldn't understand, They didn't even seem to have been written by humans.

Mira stared at the text for a few seconds and pointed at the row third from the top, saying, "This is where we want to go, it's an elevator."

 Looking at her incredulously, Ronin asked, "How do you know that?"

 She shrugged and said, "I...I'm not sure...I just kind of know what they say."

He nodded and motioned for her to lead the way and she smiled knowingly as she said, half jokingly, "Hmm, you never struck me as the kind of person to let someone else take the lead."

Rolling his eyes, Ronin followed her as she left, though he thought he saw a flash of glowing red lights in the lab just as the door closed.

The hall they entered seemed...alive...with some kind of energy that Ronin thought he remembered from somewhere, though he wasn't sure where he may have come across the sensation before. They passed multiple labs until they reached a wall that appeared to have a seam in it, though Ronin had to look hard to see it.

They looked for a few moments and the door opened on it's own, sliding open so quietly that Ronin may not have noticed it if not for the soft glow of the lighting.

As they went in and the door closed, Ronin looked out into the hallway once more and something that seemed almost transparent watched them, it's eyes glowing bright red.

Bringing a finger to its lips, the being smiled sinisterly and disappeared, seeming to evaporate from the hall without a trace.

A shudder ran through Ronin's entire body and a mournful tone played in the back of his mind, almost one of fear.

The elevator doors closed and Mira selected a button on the panel near the entrance and almost instantly the doors opened again, revealing a long rocky tunnel that appeared to have been mined out from the doorway, it's rough hewed stone a jarring difference from the smooth space around the door, almost as though the entrance had once opened somewhere else.

A man, gasping for air and bleeding heavily stumbled down the hallway, his blood flowing so freely that when he finally fell to the ground, he was immediately resting in a deep pool of it.

Ronin rushed to him, energized by the desire to help him, only to find his efforts wasted as the man looked to him and shook his head and said, his voice barely audible, "They...they took everyone...took everything...I don't want to live."

 Ronin nodded and, resolve strengthened, stood and without a word began stalking down the tunnel, following a blue light that faintly traced where the man had passed.

What kind of trackers were the Cathols using that could be visible to naked eye?, he wondered as Mira said, "We don't know what's down here Ronin, we need to be careful."

The sound of screaming and sword strikes against stone and metal echoed down the tunnel and Ronin said, "Death. Death is down there, Mira."

 She touched his shoulder, stopping him for a second and asked, "Can I have fun?"

Ronin nodded and with a dark expression on his face, said, "Leave at least one alive, we need to find out what's going on."

 They walked for several minutes only to find themselves in a massive room lit by sunlight from far above.

Massive crystals glittered in the light, the sight tainted by a warrior standing in the center of the room covered from head to toe in blood, its black armor periodically releasing gouts of Aether infused steam.

Unsure how he knew the steam was infused with Aether, Ronin pulled a sword from his inventory, one designed to gather potential energy from the things it struck and release it as kinetic energy at the press of a button, and said, "Did you do all of this?"

 The warrior stuck its blade into a person lying on the ground in front of it and Ronin saw flickers of bright blue light flashing into the sword it wielded, a massive two handed sword that stood almost as tall as it did.

It turned to Ronin, revealing a white circle on its chest, and without a word began moving.

Raising his sword to defend himself, the warrior flickered out of his vision and appeared behind him, hitting him with the flat of its blade, sending him flying into the wall almost as fast as Jet had back in the church.

As he flew, he managed to say only a single word before Mira erupted into flame and action, "Fast."

A tone in the back of his mind began to play, like an alarm and he shook out of his stupor and focused, flipping himself, mid-flight, so he could hit the wall with his feet and grimaced as he felt the wall stop his movement suddenly.

Back on the ground, Mira and the warrior maneuvered rapidly, with Mira throwing blasts of fire in attempts to hit it, all of which missed as the steam-bound warrior began moving even faster.

Kicking off the wall, Ronin dragged his sword along the wall in an arc as he threw himself as fast and hard as he could at the warrior, swinging as he did, trying to hit where he thought it'd be.

His sword beeped once, its energy reserve at 25%, and Ronin's blade hit the ground as the warrior moved out of the way as though he were barely moving at all.

He mumbled, "Activate: Speed," and felt the dormant Aether race throughout his body, speeding him up far past the limits of most people until his blade was nothing more than a flicker in the smoke and fire.

Moving similarly fast, Mira began slicing with her hands, throwing blades of fire from her palms while Ronin attempted to strike the warrior in any way, but neither of them were fast or clever enough to catch it.

Every strike caught ground or wall as Ronin looked for openings or flaws in his opponent's defense, but couldn't find even a single sliver of weakness there.

The warrior spun, it's massive sword in one hand, and struck both Ronin and Mira, sending them careening in opposite directions as it laughed, its voice a deep and sadistic gurgle.

Throwing its blade at Mira, the warrior touched the ground and pulled a similar sword from the stone below, fully formed and leapt at Ronin, clearly intending to end this exercise in futility.

It swung and Ronin was barely able to get his sword, beeping with full energy, up to defend.

In the moment that the warrior's weapon struck Ronin's, he hit the button, releasing all of the stored power and sending him abruptly backwards, down, to the ground.

The warrior however, maintained its initial trajectory and Ronin thought in a panic, how strong was that attack he blocked?

Hitting the wall and stopping, the warrior paused and seemed to be listening to something.

Without acknowledging Ronin or Mira, who was climbing her way out of the hole she'd created upon landing, the warrior flickered and appeared near the largest crystal in the room.

It placed its hand upon the crystal and it began to hum and the room shook violently as Ronin said, "There's no way...that's way too big for one person to carry in their inventory."

The warrior flickered blue in Ronin's vision and amidst a renewed cloud of Aether steam, the crystal disappeared, the impossible made real in front of his very eyes.

The warrior began jumping up the tunnel, visible only when it stopped to gather energy for its next jump as Mira, free now, offered her hand to Ronin and said, "We left one alive."

Her tail twitched erratically as Ronin took her hand and responded, "Well we know what the Cathols were looking for…"

The rest of the crystals in the room slowly began to dim and lose their light as the warrior got farther and farther away and Mira said, "Well that can't be good."

As the room grew darker, it began to seem as though the light from above was disappearing, but looking up Ronin saw that the sun seemed to still be shining.

In the center of the room, where the warrior had been standing when they first entered, he saw that there was a raised dais, something he'd missed in the fight with the person who'd gotten away.

In the center of the dais, a woman who seemed to be made of almost totally transparent blue light flickered in and out of existence while the sound of screams and moans filled Ronin's head.

Beside him, Mira grabbed her head as though she was afraid it was going to tear itself open and the woman opened her mouth and Ronin heard a voice that resonated through his very soul, "Inu...Inu, my love, I know you're here...I feel you, I see you...my children would never lie to me. COULD never lie to me…"

Ronin felt blood pouring from his ears and nose and the woman said, looking around as tentacles and clawed hands began to crawl their way from under the skirt she wore, "I'm so sorry."

She flickered again and disappeared, leaving only her declaration of apology resonating through Ronin and Mira's minds.

Starting to recover, Ronin wiped the blood from his face and said, "What are the Cathols DOING?"