Chapter 1294 (1/2)

Randidly was strangely calm after getting a read on the situation. Calmer than he had expected from himself after seeing the Creature wearing a version of Lyra’s face that was clearly aged. And with that face being part of a body that was very clearly deceased. So calm that Randidly smoothly looked away from the central object on the platform, the casket, and noticed that it was surrounded by three smaller pillars that stopped about waist height and had things on top of them.

The first was something like a wooden podium sitting atop a pillar, on which Randidly could see the gently curling corners of a piece of paper. Before he moved his eyes away, he could even see tightly sloped handwriting on the page.

The second sitting on top of a pillar was an ivory bowl. The bowl, to Randidly’s very calm surprise, was completely empty and without residue. It was probably the pillar that he was the most curious about immediately. And the third object propped up looked like an elaborate rack used to dry clothes. A weathered piece of canvas hung from the top of the rack, fluttering lightly from the violence of Randidly’s sudden arrival.

Other than those three things and the casket, there wasn’t even dust here. The whole cavern was ominously clean and empty.

Due to their sudden dash to get here, Randidly had been breathing rather heavily when he arrived. But as he stood for a minute and looked between the three outer edifices around the casket, his breathing rapidly stabilized. Leaving Randidly frowning and trying to judge what the Creature’s play was here.

It seemed that Neveah sensed something in Randidly’s silence, because she nudged him mentally. Randidly, Yystrix seems to be…

“I know, she looks damn dead,” Randidly said quietly. Then he sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He could already feel a headache brewing in the delicate nervous of his face. “I know what it looks like. But… We know she has multiple incarnations. I’ve been completely tricked and blindsided before by similar tricks. Never hurts to be careful.”

Would you prefer she was alive? Neveah asked exasperatedly.

“Be easier to believe if I could have seen whatever apparently killed her,” Randidly admitted.

That silenced Neveah for the moment, so Randidly steadily backed away from the central platform and down onto the topmost stair. Then he focused his Aether Perception and Grim Intuition and began to heavily scan the surrounding area. After the first scan, Randidly paused, took a breath, and then checked everything one more time.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 193!

The result of the scan didn’t change. It appeared that he hadn’t missed anything, but the lack of anything… that wasn’t how the Creature operated. It was clear that she meant to bring him here, and now that he was here…

Shaking his head, Randidly raised a hand and pressed it against his chest. He took about a minute break as he waited for his heart rate to fall back to normal. Then, for good measure, Randidly scanned one more time.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 194!

Only after three scans did Randidly speak out loud to Neveah. “Are you sensing anything that I’m missing?”

For a second Neveah didn’t reply. Then, with awkwardness radiating through their mental bond, Neveah replied, Nothing like you are expecting, but even I would have difficulty picking out harmful constructs in her thick Aether that fills this place. But… it seems like… There is something. Yystrix’s Aether is beginning to transform now that you… are here.

That grabbed Randidly’s attention. “Transforming? Is there a shape around us-”

It is not a formation, but a fundamental shift in the energy. It’s aligning itself with our Aether, Randidly. Neveah thought back. Coming here definitely caused it, but it seems like the Aether around us had been sustained by this inner core above the coffin, and you’ve now broken that balance with that Aether you are throwing off passively. Probably within a few hours, a day at most… all of the scent of the Creature’s Aether will be gone from Earth.

It’s becoming your Aether. It’s mimicking your images.

Randidly’s expression turned grim. Considering the ban on his images being part of the passage of the Second Calamity, this was exactly the sort of attack that might trip the Earth up. A roundabout attack, but one that might be time-consuming to address-

To his surprise, rather than Neveah sharing his indignation, she seemed even more exasperated than she had been previously.

Handling this Aether problem is easy. If you… well, for now, I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you… continue exploring this area.

Then Neveah’s presence was gone, leaving Randidly alone with his thoughts and what he had found in his exhaustive earlier attempts to scrutinize the surrounding area. While frowning, Randidly walked back up onto the top of the platform.

The first thing he noticed was how this whole area had become a pressure cooker for the Creature’s Aether. Every bit of ground here was suffused with it. From the distant walls to the scratched roof, everything was the Creature. The effect of the Creature slowly claiming this area as ‘territory’ was much stronger here than outside.

An unnoticed effect of the architecture seemed to have been to slow the diffusion of the Creature’s Aether from this central room into the outside world. It still eventually escaped, but there was a sharp difference in the density of the signature within the vast cavern.

But within the cavern, the Aether was entirely uniform. Which forced Randidly to admit that no new Aether was being created, or had been created in quite some time. He would need to attempt some time-consuming experiments to get a truly accurate picture of the diffusion speed of Aether, but his instincts told him that the Creature hadn’t been active here in at least a month.