Vol 3 Chapter 12: Crystals

Aier was walking down a staircase in her castle. Beside her walked her youngest and shortest daughter, Alnyer. The young girl was much shorter than her mother; if she stood on tiptoes, she was roughly as tall as Aier's shoulders.

The girl had short, very dark blue hair, which slightly covered a portion of her eyes on the front side and touched her shoulders on the side. Her eyes had a similar colour to her hair but were a slightly darker shade of blue.

Another aspect of her character that was quite noticeable was that she wore heavy metal armour despite her tiny figure. She had a small blade attached to the back of her armour, almost as if it were a larger dagger, and she also had a larger but similar sword on her left side.

Despite the heavy armour weighing her down, she moved quietly and easily down the stairs. As the two of them went lower and lower, the light level stayed the same despite the fact that there were no torches or any light sources.

They walked for a few long minutes until they finally noticed that the stairs had stopped, and they had reached a much larger chamber underground. The room itself was much brighter than the staircase they walked down on; one might even say that the chamber was blinding.

In the massive underground chamber, there was a large and lengthy shaft that was slowly turning. At the bottom right on the ground, there was a large gear. It was quite old, cracked and was made of stone. Its diameter was roughly as big as Alnyer's. Its thickness was also considerable.

There were four other much smaller gears which were connected to four sides of the larger gear. The smaller ones were in worse condition as some teeth were already missing on them, or a large portion of the teeth were missing. And the five cogs seemed to be moving in sync. 

Each smaller gear had some sort of container on its top in which a larger-sized white crystal was placed; these were the sources of the blinding light. Each crystal was slightly thinner than a fist but was quite long. As they sat in the container, they themselves were floating and spinning at the same slow speed as the cogs under them.

Next to each smaller gear, there were two crates. Both were used to store crystals, but there were two types: the ones that still had a whiteish glow and the ones that had lost their glow or had been destroyed. In the unusable boxes, there were more broken pieces. 

Under the cogs, drawn onto the ground, there was a massive circle drawn with many different symbols. The circle consisted of many sub-spheres with their own symbols and characters. The lines of the circles all glow with a silverish glow, while the characters have a slight purple glow.

Other than this strange mechanism, there was another staircase at the back of the room which led further down. This room was one of the most important locations in the entire castle, as it was the core of the protective barrier which prevented the cold weather from fully impacting the town.

The mechanism in the centre was used to power the immense formation around the town. As a result, there were many soldiers standing guard around the room. Each soldier was equipped with black armour from top to their legs; not even their eyes were visible. They each had a greatsword which they had in front of them and were slightly leaning onto it.

They seemed almost as if they were only statues. They stood so still, but as soon as Aier arrived in the room, they all bowed simultaneously. She only waved her hand, and the soldiers instantly stood back up properly and fixated their gazes on the five large gears.

Aier and Alnyer walked over to the crystals. They hadn't spoken a single word for many long minutes, and Alnyer was acting more like a personal bodyguard than a daughter. She didn't say anything, only followed Aier, and even in this well-secured room, she couldn't help but look around and observe the knights.

"Alnyer... Soon we will have an important guest in the town! I want you and your well-trained unit to secure the roads as best as possible! It is essential to make a good impression and prevent anything bad from happening to this important guest!"

Aier declared. Unlike before, her tone was cold as ice, and she spoke slowly and articulated well. As she spoke, she looked at her daughter with only her eyes without moving her head to the side.

"Yes! I understand! I will do my best!"

The daughter replied almost instantly without any emotion. Just as she had finished her reply, the two of them arrived by the furthest crystal from the stairs from which they came. Aier opened the container with a sigh and grabbed a new crystal from the crate next to it. There were barely a dozen left in that crate. 

With a swift motion, she pulled the crystal out as it started slightly staggering, inserted the new one as fast as she could, and then closed the container. Then, the removed crystal was dropped into the almost full crate of used crystals. As soon as it landed, it cracked and then shattered.

"If this keeps up, the formation will soon run out of power as we run out of crystals... Alnyer, what do you know about the new slaves who had been captured a few weeks before the great cold?"

"They have been instantly put to work, though it seems the male specimens would rather do more work than let their female specimens work! Also, due to the lack of food, their physical conditions had greatly deteriorated, and since they are new, they still lack the ability to properly mine or carve a crystal suitable for the formation!"

"I see; I permit the usage of more drastic measures to increase the crystal production, though do not kill them!"