The teleportation was loud.
Lucius landed on his feet, boots crunching against frost-encumbered stone.
The temperature dropped immediately, the wind dragging through the narrow corridor of trees.
A second later, Cedric appeared beside him, dropping low, scanning their perimeter. Avaia followed, silent. Liora hit the ground last, boots skating slightly before she caught herself and exhaled.
She looked up. "This isn't the gate site we were briefed on."
Cedric's eyes narrowed. "No. It's not."
The area they had been teleported to was just a stone platform and a wall, almost like it could be used for teleporting out, too.
The subplane was too dark; they hadn't known it'd get so dark so quickly. It was still morning when they left their realm; had they known it'd get dark so quickly, they'd have come prepared.
The stone around them gave off a faint warmth, a false comfort that made Lucius shift on his heels. He hated places like this. Not because they were dangerous. Because they didn't try to hide it.
"No resonance beacons," Avaia said quietly, her hand hovering near her side. Her tone held no panic. Just fact.
Liora tilted her head. "So we're blind."
"Maybe not." Lucius stepped forward and pressed his palm against the wall. Runes flickered faintly under his glove. "There's a current running beneath. Faint. Could be ambient energy. Could be something else."
Cedric pulled out the mission paper again. "The Winter Expanse. Ruin retrieval. Site Gamma. We're supposed to meet a forward team, then proceed into the ruin. This isn't Gamma."
"No shit," Liora muttered, brushing ice from her shoulders.
Cedric ignored her. He looked down the corridor again, then stepped forward. "Formation. Quiet. Weapons out."
Avaia turned, swearing in her head that she had heard a voice in the wind, but when she turned, there was nothing and no lingering voice. Too.
They obeyed without question.
Lucius took the rear, glaive strapped to his back, footsteps measured.
They walked for half an hour in near-silence.
The winter expanse stretched beyond anything the briefing implied. They passed murals carved into the trees, depicting what looked like constellations, but distorted stars replaced by jagged glyphs, names scratched out and overwritten. Liora stopped at one
"These weren't made recently. The language is—" she frowned, "close to Veilanic."
Avaia moved beside her, touching one of the glyphs. "It's older."
"Not pre-Sundering," Lucius said. "But not modern."
"Either way, we're not the first ones to step here," Cedric muttered.
"Then where's the team?" Avaia asked.
Lucius spoke, "Don't think too hard," pointing to a small stairway going down into what looked like a ruin. This had to be what the mission was talking about.
They jogged toward the stairwell in formation, Cedric leading with one hand on his longsword. He reached the steps first, paused, then glanced back."Anything?"
Lucius shook his head. "Nothing."Cedric nodded once, gripped the hilt tighter. "Stay close."
Cedric reached the bottom of the steps, scoffing, saying, "Great..no light." Liora whistled, "Wow..nothing gets past you, huh?" Lucius and Avaia giggled, Cedric turned annoyed, then he snapped his fingers and a floating flame ball appeared. He granted one to each of his siblings, then created another and pushed it forward slowly to light the dark.
After another hour, they followed a drop-down and found a room.
A door accompanied the room. Looking as if it was jammed in, but no matter, Cedric kicked the door in dashing forward ahead before anything could have or would have struck him, but nothing was here besides dead men and women. They all let their guard down, taking the chance to look at the sight. Snow drifted from above through a hole in the ceiling. Cracks ran along the walls. And near the center lay a telescope accompanied by dead bodies. It was as if it were poetic.
Cedric raised a closed fist, and they all got into formation. Cedric bent down, touching some of the corpses, and noticed their bodies were undead that had been killed reporting to his siblings, "Undead... they were undead that had been killed again."
They said nothing as Cedric rose, looking around, then turning his head backwards to the entrance to notice it hadn't been kicked in. The entrance had just become an exit.
Cedric looked confused, "Didn't I kick that door down?" Avaia turned first eyes narrowing, "Yeah..? Wait.." she used Aegis not as a barrier but as a force, blowing the door off.
Lucius and Liora spoke up at the same time, "Should we move forward?" Avaia had wondered the same thing. The room had been a real oddity, but they wouldn't want to leave anything behind. Cedric sighed, "Go forward out the door and guard, I'll look around here another minute just in case."
They moved out, Cedric turning back fast to the corpse's eyes narrowing as the wind from his turning knocked snow off the corpses, realizing the outfits.
Cedric sighed, "Well, shit.." Liora came back in, "What is it?". Hand twitching with spatiality and uncertainty.
Cedric yanked the guild coat off, walking to Liora backwards, "Guild issued," he said, "Standard B rank issue winter coat."
Liora sighed, "I hate this fucking place." Cedric nodded, using his flame to absorb the coat's essence into his flame for debriefing later.
"Move out," Cedric yelled as he walked out, snapping his fingers, illuminating the room in a blaze, burning everything.
As they moved out and Cedric in the back calmly thinking, "I know it's you, Cassius...the only person other than father and me to master his swordsmanship..it has to be you, Cassius..but why..Why didn't you just come to the academy?"
The group continued all in their own thoughts, but one thought above all stood out. That was Cedric's. Cedric smirked, "You're a real enigma until the end, huh, Cass..?"
Cedric's flames started to kindle his body, making him remember Cassius remembering his brother's sad chance of life, mother's messed-up way to help him obtain a resonance.
Cedric couldn't help but sigh, "We still love you, Cass."