Chapter 77: The Rift

"I am not keeping it." She set it down and moved to the next one. "This one is decorative. The crossguard is decorative, anyway. The blade might be functional but nobody sharpened it expecting to use it." She picked up a spear. "This one has a mana infusion in the shaft. Low grade, but present. Where does a goblin get a mana-infused spear."

"The dungeon generates it," I said.

"The dungeon generated a mana-infused spear for a goblin chief." She looked at it. "That seems excessive for a D-tier classification."

"The dungeon was not D-tier by the time we got to floor four," I said.

"Fair point." She set the spear down and looked at the potions. "These are healing compounds. Amateur synthesis. The bloodmoss extraction is under by about fifteen percent." She picked one up, examined it, set it back. "Seren would be unhappy."

"Please stop auditing the boss room," I said.

"I am assessing resources," she said. "Standard dungeon protocol is to evaluate any viable materials before—"

"Where did you read that."

She paused.

"It seemed like something that should be standard protocol," she said.

Anastasia, from the floor, had not moved.

I went to stand beside her.

"The anchor," I said, keeping my voice low enough that Tessira, who had moved on to the chest, would not immediately involve herself.

"Two layers," Anastasia said. "The first was the summoning anchor. Tied to the Chief’s survival. It is gone."

"And the second."

She pressed her palms harder against the stone.

"A containment lattice," she said. "Below the dungeon. Below the island’s foundation. It predates the dungeon’s construction significantly." She looked at the floor. "The Stars were not feeding mana into a prison. They were feeding mana into a lock. The dungeon was the container they built around the lock to hide what they were doing."

"A lock for what," I said.

She was quiet.

"Something old," she said. "Something that has been on the other side of it for a very long time."

"Can you name it."

She looked at the floor.

"Not yet," she said. "I need to think about what I am feeling through the stone."

The walls were getting brighter.

"The mana has nowhere to go," she said. "The lattice drew the accumulated field when the summoning anchor released. The lattice is running on it now. When it has enough—"

"We need the corridor," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Tessira," I said, louder.

"This chest has three gold coins and what I think is someone’s sandwich," Tessira said. "The sandwich is not recent."

"We need to move."

A pause.

"Right," she said, and put the chest lid down and came away from the corner with the expression of someone exercising restraint at personal cost.

***

The corridor was brighter than it had been when we came through it. Every surface lit.

We moved back toward the gate while Anastasia explained what she had felt through the stone, the information arriving while we walked because the walls were giving us neither the time nor the ambient quality for standing still.

The gate was still sealed when we reached it.

The mana readings the interface was registering were not readings the interface had been designed to monitor.

"Two days," Anastasia said. "Possibly three. Then whatever is on the other side of the lattice will have enough to work with."

Hiratsuka appeared from the floor three transition corridor with the other students behind her.

She looked at the gate. At the mana readings. At the three of us.

"Chief," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Heart."

"Dark. Gate is still sealed."

She looked at the readings for a long moment.

"The other floors are clearing," she said. "The population is losing cohesion. The gate will unseal for them within the hour." She looked at me. "What is below the boss chamber."

"Ask her," I said.

Hiratsuka looked at Anastasia.

"Two days," Anastasia said. "Possibly three."

Hiratsuka held on her.

"And then," Hiratsuka said.

"And then you will see it yourself," Anastasia said.

Hiratsuka looked at the gate one more time.

"Debriefing tomorrow," she said. "All three of you."

She turned toward the monitoring station.

The first day passed.

The second day passed.

On the third morning I was at the desk reviewing notes when Tessira came in with her annotated map and Anastasia was in the chair by the window and the morning had the quality of mornings that have not decided what they are.

Tessira set the map on the desk and opened it.

"The Vice Dean’s team found the channel entry point," she said. "Below the island, attached to the maintenance structure seven years ago. They have closed it from the outside."

"Good," I said.

"The dungeon is still running on the accumulated field," she said. "The readings have not changed."

"No," I said. "They would not have."

She looked at the map.

"What is below the boss chamber," she said.

Anastasia was looking at the window.

"Something that has been waiting," she said. "For a very long time." She paused. "I have been thinking about what I felt through the stone. The mana signature below the lattice is not daemon. It is not human. It is—" She stopped. "It is familiar."

"Familiar how," Tessira said.

"The way old things are familiar to other old things," Anastasia said. "The way I recognized the anchor pattern on the boss room door. Not because I had seen it before. Because I knew the framework it came from." She looked at the window. "Whatever is below the lattice comes from the same framework I come from."

The room was quiet.

Tessira looked at me.

The panel opened.

[Sin System: Emergency Protocol Engaged.] [Warning: Containment failure imminent.]

I stood up.

Anastasia closed her book.

The floor moved.

A vibration that started below and came up through the walls, through the window glass, the entire room resonating at the same frequency simultaneously.

[Containment failure: active.] [Time to surface breach: 8 seconds.]

Tessira was on her feet.

The floor cracked. One line, three centimeters wide, running from the corner near the desk to the center of the room in half a second. The line was mana, rising through the floor the way water broke ice.

[Time to surface breach: 3 seconds.]

Then the air in the center of the room opened.

A vertical split approximately two meters tall, the edges dark, the interior showing light that was not the room’s. Warm, gold at the edges, a sun that was not the island’s sun.

It looked like a door someone had forgotten to put a frame around.

[New World Quest Received.]

[Countdown: 00:00:00]

[ERROR: No Quest Found.]

[Emergency Quest Generated.]

Save the Two Sisters Beyond the Horizon.

[Difficulty: Unknown.]

[Reward: ???]

[Failure: ???]

Two sisters.