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301. Meeting Them
🕑 Added 2025-02-11 15:00:03 +0000 UTCThey reached the bottom of the crevasse in no time. All of them except Palio, that is, who couldn’t climb down a wall or descend on a rope. Her arms were strong enough to hold her weight alone, but from the expressions she made, it was highly painful to let her immensely heavy lower body dangle. From the bottom, Ike waved.
“Just stay there. We’ll be back!”
“Or will we,” Wisp muttered to herself.
Ike nudged her. “We should be kind to her.”
“Why? She’s following us so the herd can kill us on the way out,” Wisp pointed out.
“Yeah, but there’s no need to antagonize her between now and the inevitable death battle with her entire people,” Ike said.
Mag stared at both of them, then shook his head. “You two are crazy.”
“So… what are we going to go visit? You still haven’t told me what ‘they’ are,” Ike reminded Wisp.
She shook her head at him, disappointed. “We’re almost there. Patience!”
Ike sighed aloud. “Why not just tell me?”
“Becaaaaause. Aw, come on, Ike! It’ll be funny. Trust me!”
“I’m afraid I do trust that you’ll find it funny, whatever it is,” Ike grumbled.
Wisp giggled. She scurried ahead without another word, with no intention to explain a thing to him.
Ike followed after her, crossing his arms, but didn’t say anything. If she wouldn’t tell him, she wouldn’t tell him no matter how much he pestered her. She’d just enjoy taunting him more for him pestering her.
The crevasse widened, though it never grew as wide as the Abyss. He could always see both walls, and even if he’d been walking at a mortal rate, he could have easily walked from one wall to another within a few hours. Unlike the Abyss, too, there were places where ordinary mana swooped in, like patches of warm wind mixed in with the cold. An ordinary mage would be able to survive and escape down here, it might just be a little difficult to bounce from patch of mana to patch of mana. For Ike and his team of beasts, it didn’t matter at all, but it was an interesting difference to note between this crevasse and the Abyss.
The stream that rushed along in the center of the crevasse was inundated with mana as well. He knelt and cupped some water in his hands, then gave it an experimental sip. His core warmed as the mana flowed smoothly into him. “Huh.”
“It’s like the mountain spring, but not warm and less stinky,” Wisp said.
Ike sniffed. Now that she mentioned it, the crevasse did smell nice and fresh, like fresh water and sun-warmed greenery, not like the sulfur stench of the mountain resort’s hot springs. But the mana-infused water was the same. “Be way less fun to hang out in this stuff. It’s cold.”
“Some people like that. It’s a bonus that it’s cold. Helps them concentrate and refine their mana, or something.” Wisp shrugged. “It’s mostly a fish thing, but some people also do it. I don’t really get it.”
“A fish thing?” Ike asked.
“Yeah. You never caught a fish and interrogated it for a while out of boredom before eating it?” she replied.
“No, actually, no. I haven’t,” Ike said.
“Huh. You should try it, sometime. They’ve got some weird ideas about life. Hard to understand, though. And you have to keep ducking them in the water so they can keep talking, or else they run out of water and can’t say anything.”
He squinted. That didn’t sound right. None of that sounded right. “Are you bullshitting me?”
Wisp spread her hands. “Who’s to say?”
Ike sighed.
“Oh, we’re almost there!” Wisp said, perking up.
Ike looked up as well.
This whole time, they’d walked along in bright sunlight. A few small scraggly plants and long grasses had grown near the shore, a few medium-sized trees clinging in the middle between the water and the walls, where they could find enough sun to grow. Up ahead, though, the ground fell off abruptly and the crevasse became choked with trees. A dark, dense forest sprung up, denser than the forests on the surface, even. A waterfall roared. Mist sprayed from the waterfall and hung thick around the trees, cloaking them in a low layer of clouds.
“In there?” he asked.
“In there,” she confirmed.
They reached the forest in no time. Ike hopped down the waterfall and landed in the forest below. He glanced back as Wisp crawled down. “Deeper in?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” she replied.
“Oh, it’s an it now, not a they?” Ike asked.
Wisp rolled her eyes, but refused to rise to his provocation and give him any more information about whatever they were going to see. Ike pursed his lips and kept walking, deeper into the woods.
Deeper and deeper. Down here, the trees were so dense that he walked in perpetual twilight. The thick clouds hung around even down at ground level, forming a mist that wrapped distant trees in a soft gray. Ike walked on and on, keeping his head on a swivel and his aether extended, searching for any sort of mana signature in the woods.
To his surprise, there was nothing. Nothing but the natural mana of the trees and the water. He sensed no living beings. No birds or deer, no animals at all. Ike frowned. What? Why is there nothing? There should be something…
“STOP, INTRUDERS!”
Ike froze. He extended his aether in all directions, but still sensed nothing. Slowly, he looked around, but even then, he saw nothing. His frown deepened.
Beside him, Wisp struggled not to laugh, hiding her mouth with a hand.
“TAKE ONE MORE STEP AND DIE.”
“I’m not moving, I’m not moving,” Ike assured the voice. He turned his head one last time, then cleared his throat. “Er, but where are you?”
