Elevation of Mana Chapter 44 Across the Darkened Sea

The cave we were traveling down was normal enough at first, other than the few bubbles of magic floating up and popping every now and then there really wasn't much to it.  Caves after all, were beautiful, but only if properly lit and displayed, and this one wasn't.  It was pretty, but nothing of huge note yet.

“So it's a cave, with light coming from it?” Isha's friend asked as we continued downwards.

“Yes,” the girl explained.  “I know you can't see it, but it's really quite pretty, bubbles every now and then, almost like Elian's own light.”

She was of course right, the magic was floating upwards in bubbles.  It was a bit unexpected, something different from what I'd seen.  Normally each person had their own sort of aura around them when they had or did magic, mine happened to look like bubbles which floated around me.  Most of the time I sort of tuned it out.

“It's odd though right?  I can see them, and they look glowing, but they don't light anything,” I observed.

“Huh, I never noticed that before,” Isha said, tapping her chin.  “Suppose not.”

While she chewed that over we came to a crevice.  I stopped to take some careful looks at the rock and how stable it was.  I knew little about cave delving, but I did know that people got stuck and died a lot back on Earth, and I didn't want to add to that statistic.

“What are you doing?” asked Rindal.

“Making sure it is stable and I won't get stuck,”

He scoffed and began to work his way into it, turning sideways as he slipped in.  It didn't take long until he was out of sight of us.

“This is wonderful!  Guys, you need to see this place!” he yelled from inside, voice echoing weirdly off the stones.

With a shrug we began to follow.  The girls went first, then I followed, bringing up the rear.  It was a squeeze, but other than one moment where my chest rubbed against the rock roughly it went cleanly.  The crack twisted and turned, and my bobbing light was barely enough at points to see where I was going, but I managed it.

When I arrived through the other side I saw the rest of the group in stunned silence.

“It's huge,” Cala muttered, looking up at the massive room in awe.

“And beautiful,” her boyfriend agreed.

It was both of those things.  The chamber was huge, easily a hundred foot tall with dripping stalactites all hanging over a massive underground lake.  There was a bit of light from both Isha and myself, but we could have dropped them, as the massive amount of luminous growths from the walls gave the room an eerie twilight feeling.

While they were all looking up, I was looking down.  I couldn't place what it was, but I was trying to sort through my memories as I looked at the hidden body of water.

“Very pretty, but it's so cold,” Isha complained, still staring upwards.

“Because we're underground,” with a flex of will the air heated around us by a solid ten degrees.

“What's that?” Rindal said, pointing at the water.

“Where?”

“There, something moved, fast.”

I flicked and sent a ball of light forward and down into the depths.  If there was something down there, we needed to know what it was.  Magical beasts were a danger not even someone like me could ignore.  It took a few seconds for my heart to stop pounding as what I could see resolved.

“Fish?” Cala asked.

“They look sick,” Isha added.

“They aren't fleeing the light at all,” Rindal said, pointing out the weirdest thing most of us could see about them.

“Blind, look at the eyes.  Pale white, and no color to them, probably not enough light for them to see anything down here.  Wonder if they eat the mushrooms or something else.”  I'd seen photos and documentaries on them before, but never seen such things in the flesh.

“I'm more worried about what eats them,” Isha said, looking a bit spooked.

“Maybe something, maybe nothing, hard to tell.”  On Earth it would have been easy, there was nowhere near enough room down here for a large predator, but I knew magic liked to point and laugh at logic well enough by this point, particularly when it came to animals.

“You think this is where the weirdness is coming from?” Rindal asked.

“No,” Isha and I answered in stereo.  “There's definitely a flow coming from over that way,” I pointed to the far side of the lake.

“Should we what, go in and swim?” Cala asked.

“No, look, there's a ledge.”  Both myself and Rindal pointed, used to having to find ways around obstructions in the woods.

Slowly we crept along the small cliff, always staying back from the shore, eyes on the sightless fish and whatever else might be creeping along in the deep, dark waters.  Here and there were spots where the ledge was too short, or fell away completely, but magic solved such obstructions with ease, glowing planes of force forming bridges.

“That what you're looking for?” Rindal asked, one hand reaching out and pointing towards a far off point of light.

I followed his hand, and it had to be.  There was another shore, not too far off now.  Everyone could see it, as the many magically active flora shone around it, the hole poured out magic, waves of it flowing away.  It shown in the aura-sight, like a geyser spurting its presence to all.

“Are you sure we should be going there?” Isha asked, her concerned voice alerting the others to the sheer quantity of power coming form the next tunnel.

“No, but I'm going anyway.  I need to know Isha, I need to know what's down here.”  I left out the part I was thinking, that surely this had to have something to do with why I was here.  This much power, and this close to my birthplace, it had to mean something, I couldn't just walk away now, not when I was right here.

There was a snort before Rindal spoke.  “At least you're telling the truth about it, let's go.”

It only took a few more moments to arrive at the tunnel, and we began to head down, down, the path sloping sharply towards whatever the source was, whatever deep secret lay here beneath the stones.