Chapter 13-355: A Legion Descends (2/2)

It looked like a volcanic crater below, but cold and dead, broken in places, and its true form obscured by collapses and time.

Something is wrong with that, they deduced, because that looked like something a submarine cruising by would read and ignore, so why would there be a Div Ward here?

They spiraled around and down, sinuous flows of water streaming past them, cloaking their passage as they headed for the bottom.

A lilitu’s True Sight kicked in when they were sixty feet away from the illusion, and an empty rocky sea bed covered with the cold dust and slime of millennia suddenly became something very different.

The top of a Dome of Force, encapsulating a land at the bottom of the sea.

It looked like a temperate forest of sorts, complete with bright sunlight (even brighter than the surface under the Haze). In the center of the forest, almost overgrown with flowering vines and creepers, was a stepped Pyramid in an ancient style, lofty and massive... and big enough to cap that shaft plunging into the depths entirely.

There was also a Black Sea Brine zombie standing on the Dome about every ten feet.

They quirked a small smile. If they were not invisible and wave-nulled, they would have been swarmed approaching this close to the Dome already. They surely could have escaped easily, but would have also raised an alarm. Traveler had said that Black Sea Brines were not mindless, if simple-minded. By their attire and hair styles, rotting yet enduring, they looked to mostly be taken from dead Slavs, although those standing over there looked like the remnants of a German submarine crew from the Second War...

Obviously, they couldn’t get through the Dome beneath them. They considered the problem from several angles, including that of the water and random sea life, pondering the dimensional construction involved, and the age of whatever was involved here.

The simplest solution... They pondered together, trading ideas among themselves with telepathic speed and the shadow of Cadence at work.

Still invisible and wrapped in a bubble of pressure modulation that swirled the water in front and around them behind them as they moved, they touched down on the Dome.

And passed right through.

With a swirl of water drawn about them, they passed through the field of dimensional force and into the sky above the sheltered forest below. The Brines standing guard, as they had for unknown years, barely twitched at the random current that swept past them.

The simplest solution was elitist, having the field require Class Levels at Ten. That way, a lich could pass through, but the Class-less, although powerful, Brine undead could not, nor could any natural creature relying on size and strength, including most of the marine races...

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The Stillflight Field welcoming them was not anticipated, but that was fine. That was what Angel Walk was for.

They flipped out their wings just to direct their glide down. A plummet became a drifting, and they easily took control of their path of descent.

There were birds here of species they didn’t recognize, but were happy to note for those watching with them. The advantage of seeing without eyes was that it was totally possible for them to focus on different things without any difficulty whatsoever, share and process it, and Master Fred would then simply mark what was tactically significant. The rest was sent off to those watching through the Marklink.

A certain Ghoul Sage named Gillcruks, wheedling a promise that at the very least he would be allowed to withdraw to Leng once the Shroud fell, had confirmed that there was known to be a Hollow Earth or something similar connected to the Earth, although its connections to Leng itself had been tenuous at best. Still, Old Gods were known to roam there...

Whether or not it had much magic in the interim seemed to be the question. Was the tunnel down there accessible before the Shroud? If so, that might mean the place existed while the rest of the world had no magic.

The Illuminati had definitely known about it, considering how old some of those Brines were. Secondary note, given how old the undead were: nothing had invaded and fought with them successfully to contest for control of it.

There was probably a walking access point along the perimeter, a submerged cave or cavern system, but equally likely it had been closed off by the Illuminati. The necromancers could all spellcast, and forcing someone to fall from the ‘sky’ was another nice way to control access. Getting through and plummeting to your death if you weren’t prepared with a Featherweight or something similar was a good thing for undead chuckles...

They came down in the trees, looking around for any sign of guards, noting statues that weren’t crumbling with age around the Pyramid, and closed doors leading inside. Did the Illuminati keep someone permanently on station here? The place wasn’t that large...

They sniffed, noting many scents typical of an intensely closed ecosystem. Bugs, birds, reptiles, some small mammals that were likely rodents; nothing was intense enough to be very large.

Ah, there it was. The necrotic stench of the undead, eternally rotting, never being consumed...

It was low but pervasive, so the undead didn’t go wandering about, and had just been here a long time. The constant sunlight was probably why. Was there even a night here? No reason for it to be...

Regardless, the Pyramid ahead was the goal, and likely a mixture of Constructs and Undead. Well enough. If those statues Animated, that would make for a fine Baneskull to start up for their collection. Carving them up was one of their downtime projects, although they usually worked on Cultivators, Undead, Fiends, or Axiomatics.

They had a Golembane Scarab on their Vest, so the last thing they were worried about was being able to harm these things, even if Idiot wasn’t made of Full-Tempered Adamantine and should be able to chew into anything a Construct was made of...

The Anathema Feat was a nice thing to have in such situations...