This story is part of the Wanderer series.
“Why, I feel like the dead are clutching to me with every step,” Lev remarked.
Blinking, Chiyoko’s eyes lit up. She abruptly stopped her pace and turned around, staring with an enunciated expression of her newfound realization. Lev returned with a pure, innocent gaze of confusion.
“Did I say something funny?”
Drawing in her gaze, Chiyoko measured her feelings again. “That’s what it is…”
Lev’s intrigue shifted.
“The strength of a thousand warriors… a thousand mages… that are no longer there.”
Chiyoko refocused her eyes on her companion.
“This is strength magic. But… I can’t figure out from where.”
Lev considered her proposition for a moment. “The pillar holding up the ravaging gale, I reckon?”
“No, that was below. This feeling… It’s not a stream, but it’s…”
Her eyes became distant again as her lips fumbled for the right words.
“Everywhere. It’s… as if they are standing all around me, resonating their life force.”
Gazing out to the empty square again, Lev stroked his chin and thought some more. “Residual from the stream, I reckon?”
Chiyoko thought a bit longer. “Perhaps…”
Despite acknowledging the possibility, she seemed unsatisfied with the answer.
“But then, why is it stronger up here?”
Brows raising, Lev concisely swivelled his head towards her. “Is it, my dear?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lev dropped his arms and looked out onto the courtyard with new urgency. Chiyoko recognized she sparked a realization in him, becoming eager. “What did you figure out?”
He began to furiously scan the courtyard, eyes flicking from spot to spot. “A stronger presence in an unexpected location usually leads to a door,” he explained.
Chiyoko’s eyes became wide. “A seal?”
“Precisely,” he passionately punctuated. “Perhaps these colored markings are meaningless. Much like the storm, the seal lies deeper below. Or perhaps…”
He glanced past Chiyoko, out towards the blue horizon.
“Much like the storm, the entire castle is a seal.”
Reflecting inwards, Chiyoko nodded without following Lev’s gaze. She did not appear too surprised. “Then why does this node not feel like a stream, like the one down below?”
“Unnecessary function,” Lev enunciated with a bit of professorial pep. “Not all nodes are equal, my dear. Some serve as incoming and outgoing channels, others serve as a junction. Conversely, this could be an interior node, where the function is to channel or conduct life force to where it is needed.”
Raising her eyes, Chiyoko stared at the center of the courtyard. “Then this must be one of the interior ones.”
Without haste, yet without hesitation, she started stepping towards the center. Lev followed behind. “A possibility, yes,” he agreed. “Though, we cannot know for certain without knowing the layout of the seal.”
They approached the approximate center and stopped again. Chiyoko scanned the colored patterns all about, brows furrowing as they still made no sense to her. “It doesn’t feel any different here,” she muttered to herself.
Lev did not appear to hear her, his head still on an idle swivel as he crossed his arms. “There’s still the matter of these puzzling grounds. You would think such a layout would be better for projecting out rather than keeping your life force contained. Terrible insulation.”
Blinking, Chiyoko shone him a blank stare as he casually criticized the ancient structure. However, her gaze did not hold for long. The next moment, her eyes relit as she became alert. Uttering a closed-mouth gasp, she glanced to her left, then over her shoulders. Widening her stance, she gazed forward again as her expression quickly warped into alarm. Her arms drew up to her sides to maintain her balance.
The air suddenly grew heavier, enough for even Lev to notice something different. He uncrossed his arms and widened his stance as well, as if to resist against an invisible force that was trying to pull him down to the ground.
“Blimey! What—?”
The ground began to rumble, gradually intensifying. Taking a stumbling step forward, Chiyoko brought her waving arms together to grip her hands, hastily resonating her energy. Her silhouette grew bright teal and her posture straightened. Shortly after regaining control, she reached up to envelop Lev as well, and just in time. In an instant, the vibrating ground buckled and dropped down, becoming a sea of broken ice. Glancing down at her feet, Chiyoko commanded her force to pull them up into the air a few stone’s length, intensifying her resonance now that not only was the ground not holding their weight, but also trying to pull them in.
The sound of a thousand ceramic tiles shattering apart echoed throughout the clearing, kicking up dust and flinging sharp shards everywhere. The two intruders instinctively shielded their faces with their arms, though the shards bounced harmlessly off their bright teal shells. Still, unsettled by the violence, Chiyoko drew them even higher into the air, levitating away at a crawl’s pace. She uttered another gasp as she realized the invisible force was still there, tugging against their ascent, and brought her hands back together to resonate her energy more intensely.
Peeking out from underneath, Lev discovered their successful escape and lowered his arms to get a better observation of the event. The courtyard was crumbling away from the center, revealing a pitch black hole underneath. The collapsing earth slowly rippled out towards the edge in a jagged, circular shape, pulling in the debris like rough grains of sand funneling into a hole.
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