Chapter 211: Chapter 211

By the time they reached the site, the valley felt . . . narrower. The noise of the wider operation fell away behind the curve of the land, swallowed by a rise of stone and scrub that cut the area off from the rest of the magi. From here, Liene could no longer see the perimeter lines or the ward pylons—only the immediate ground, the dungeoneers’ backs, and the stretch of air ahead that felt wrong in a way her skin could not quite articulate.

Aldith had spent this time talking to her dungeoneer team about things that were obviously dungeon-related. Having interned as a healer in the Dungeoneering Department, she caught enough to follow the general drift. She could understand the implications for injuries, the dangers certain readings might signal, and the way a sudden spike in resonance could spell trouble for anyone caught too close. But that was as far as it went.

Nolan, one of the dungeoneers she recognized from previous assignments, glanced at her with a hint of a smile, as if inviting her to step in and help with the discussion.

Liene shook her head and forced a wry smile. “It’s fine! I’m happy just listening.”

Nolan chuckled under his breath. “Nahhhh, you never just listen. I remember the time you patched me up after that nasty gash on my arm. You were jabbering away about bandage tension and pulse checks while I was nearly passing out from the pain.”

Aldith, hearing this, raised an eyebrow and leaned slightly forward. “Oh? Miss Lugano. What made you want to tag along today? Curiosity, bravery, or just trouble magnetism?”

Liene forced her lips into a bright smile. “Curiosity, I suppose.” She tried to find more words to say, but couldn’t come up with any. She had dragged Fabrisse into this, asked him to tend to the Aetherfawn with her, and now he had been caught in the chaos of a dungeon he never would have entered otherwise. She swallowed, forcing the sting down and letting the smile stay in place. “I won’t get in the way,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “I promise.”

They had crossed into a pocket of silence.

Liene’s eyes were drawn immediately to the tangle of thin tether lines snaking across the darkened stone. She hadn’t seen a tethering operation up close before, and only had a vague idea of what it was supposed to do. From what she’d gathered, the lines were meant to ‘listen’ to the aether, to stabilize and measure currents that no ordinary observation could detect. Beyond that, the mechanics were abstract enough to require her having to read a textbook to understand it. Reading a textbook would be the last thing Liene would voluntarily subject herself to.

I didn’t realize the process was so . . . layered, she thought. She remembered Antoniadou mentioning a detachment accompanying them—but where were they now?

“They’re stabilizing the tether line on the far side,” Exemplar Antoniadou answered, as if reading her thoughts. “We’re short on manpower here, so we need reinforcement from this side. I heard your team has some skilled Ice and Crystal users for conducting and modulating flows. Could you send two of your team to stabilize and check the eastern tether junctions? We don’t want it spreading while we focus on the portal.”

Aldith looked at Antoniadou for another moment, then glanced at her team. “Right. Nolan, Sira, you two take the northern nodes. Mind the echo; mark anything unusual.”

With packs slung and tools in hand, the two dungeoneers moved immediately, leaving only Aldith, the remaining two dungeoneers, and Liene near the basin.

That makes sense enough. But . . . all of Antoniadou’s team are on the far side?

Then she heard Aldith commanding her team. “Alright, darlings, keep it steady. Mark anything that twitches, watch the echoes, and don’t let the lines get sloppy. No need to fuss, just keep your heads.”

Liene glanced at the Dungeoneering detachment Aldith was guiding. There were four of them, a compact but efficient group, moving with disciplined coordination.

The earth sloped into a shallow basin where the stone darkened with each step she took. Tether lines were already being laid, and hovering a few spans above the ground laid an . . .

“Aetherrealm portal,” Liene muttered to herself. She had seen diagrams. In books, the portals were tidy things, rendered as ovals or spirals, something the eye could accept.

The portal hung above the basin like a slice of fractured sky. Its edges were jagged and rotated like the grooves of a massive, slowly turning gear.

Aldith lifted one hand, and the detachment halted immediately. “No closer. This isn’t a dungeon mouth. Don’t treat it like one.”

One of the dungeoneers murmured, “Then what is it?”

Antoniadou’s voice rang out the slope where she lingered near the tether lines, “That there isn’t like a standard dungeon mouth. These—” she made a vague slicing motion through the air “—open under extreme conditions. Either naturally, over centuries of strain, or through sustained effort at Archmage level. When a dungeon appears suddenly , leylines tear, and these portals open. This sort of gateway is one of the few things that tells you where the dungeon has moved to.”

Before Liene could fully take in Antoniadou’s words, a sudden shiver ran through the air,and a strange current coursed through her bones, carrying with it the unmistakable rhythm of aether. Her hair lifted, the temperature around her dropping a few degrees, and for the first time she felt the raw energy of the leylines.

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Antoniadou said, “That’s not coming from the tether lines. The disturbance originates from deep below, somewhere the dungeon has shifted. We can trace its aetheric signature from here, but it’s unstable. I want you—” she glanced at Liene and the remaining two dungeoneers “—to move carefully and map the directional bleed. Follow my instructions precisely; this is where we can see exactly where the dungeon has gone.”

“Uh . . .” Liene said.

Aldith’s hand fell on Liene’s shoulder. “Come along, Miss Lugano.” Her voice was gentle, almost coaxing. “Follow them, but keep your distance. You’re not part of this detachment, and the portal is . . . unforgiving.”

Something about the ease in Aldith’s tone didn’t sit right. She wants me to leave. She’s trying to keep me out of trouble. But the unease prickling at her spine told her Antonidou did not want witnesses. Liene’s curiosity and gut told her that staying close—even if Aldith disapproved—was necessary. Maybe Antoniadou wouldn’t dare do anything with her here.

Sensing the hesitation, Aldith’s fingers thinned, curling at the edges into misting wisps of smoke. A subtle, silent warning: Leave.

“I’ll be fine,” Liene said quickly, forcing a shaky confidence. “I’ll be just out of your way, but close enough to observe!”

She sighed, retracting the smoke-like tendrils of her fingers. “Very well,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Stay behind me. Watch carefully, and don’t do anything reckless. Understand?”

Liene could hear her templed thumping as she nodded.

For a moment, no one returned from the far side. Liene shifted uneasily, feeling the hairs on her arms stand on end. Something about the lull felt wrong. Maybe it was just because she knew neither of these women.

Then Antonidou said, “Get closer to the portal. We need precise readings from within the immediate aetheric field. There’s no time to rely on peripheral measurements.”

Aldith’s hand tightened on the side of the robe. “Exemplar, that’s—”

“Grischin has approved,” Antoniadou interrupted smoothly, her tone leaving no room for argument. “We’re in an unconventional situation. We need unconventional measures. Close proximity is essential.”

Liene felt the weight of Aldith’s gaze on her for a moment too long. Something in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, told her that Aldith already suspected something was off. The one moment Antoniadou looked away, Aldith’s lips moved just enough for Liene to catch the silent instruction: Inform someone. And don’t turn your back to Antoniadou. Where it rested on her shoulder, the fingers seemed to stretch and thin, the edges misting into curling wisps of smoke, claw-like and tense, as if Aldith was ready to strike or defend in some vaporous, elemental mode.

But there was no time to think. Liene fumbled for her wristglyph. Her thoughts raced ahead of her hands as she tapped out a message to her brother, Lorvan Lugano. She’d told Kovrin and Lorvan where she’d be. Lorvan had answered immediately with a text:

“I will be there in five minutes,” was the content.

Her finger shook as she typed: Pls come. I’m at—

Glass sprang up around the portal, curving toward them. The pressure was immediate, pressing against their chests and legs like the weight of the valley itself.

Liene yelped and shot a lightbeam at it, but the beam just ricocheted almost immediately, slamming back against her with a jolt that sent her staggering and nearly blinded her.

What’s this? I’ve never seen this before.

Aldith muttered something, and for a heartbeat, her form seemed to waver into . . . smoke and vapor.

The glass immediately reinforced itself against the change, constricting around her form. Her form stiffened, trapped between solidity and smoke, as the barrier’s pressure bore down like a tide.

A wave of kinetic energy shot out of the glass and slammed into both her and Liene.

The valley, the tether lines, even the portal’s jagged edges blurred into streaks of color as they were hurled into the portal.

They landed, rolling across uneven stone, and then the world seemed to stretch around them. The ceiling arched so high it vanished into shadow. The wind roared in her ears, buffeting her from every direction. Light came from nowhere and everywhere, casting the cavern in a muted pink glow—the kind of hue your eyes see when you press your hands over them and stare too long.

Liene sprang up instinctively, gripping Aldith’s arm and pushing her toward her feet. Aldith solidified, her smoke fingers retracting back into form. Thɪs chapter is updated by novel★fire.net

"W-what was that?" Liene’s voice trembled, panic lacing every word. Her stomach twisted as she looked around.

Aldith gritted her teeth. “Glass Thaumaturgy. So uncle was right. Iveta Monasterie is behind this. Her followers are the only Glass Thaumaturgy practitioners in the Synod.”

“Monasterie? You mean the Archmagus?”

Aldith scanned Liene up and down before letting out a long, weary sigh. “You shouldn’t have been here. And I shouldn’t have been here either. I didn’t know Antoniadou was . . . one of Monasterie’s followers. So that was right, too. She recruits people from the shadows.” The strange pink light making Aldith’s face look older, harder, as if the years had caught up all at once.

“And your uncle . . .”

“Headmaster Draeth is my uncle.”

“I don’t understand,” Liene said weakly.

Aldith’s sigh somehow got even longer. “It doesn’t matter now. You just need to know they wanted me to die here and wanted to make it look like an accident. An Exemplar is too powerful for us to deal with. If the other dungeoneers had stayed, they would’ve become casualties. You should have left.”

Then came a sucking sound from above. A shape hovered in the ceiling’s darkness, vast and impossible to measure. Wings—or something like wings—stirred the stagnant air in undulating waves. It was not insect, not fully materialized, not fully shadow, and the distortions around it twisted the tar-black hues into gaping voids where a head or torso should have been. Liene could not at all tell what she was looking at.

Aldith inhaled so sharply it sounded like a snake hissing. “Ah, fuck. She led us straight to Noctyn.”

Aldith didn’t answer, but instead asked, “Lugano. What’s your specialty?”

“Light,” Liene said instinctively.

Aldith nodded at her. “Good. Give me your best lightshow.” Smoke peeled from Aldith’s wrist, wrapping around her fingers like living rings. The vapor thickened, dark and luminous at once, shaping itself to the tension in her grip as if her hand were no longer entirely solid. “We’re gonna die, but we’re gonna die fighting.”

Then the creature swooped down from above.