The Lesser One Arc 2 Chapter 5: Aether Sea

Aether Sea

Orion and I walk through the hallway, heading towards the general direction of the scream from before. We are careful not to open any doors, only following the layout of the floor plan. The place is like a maze, and much larger than the actual Esmex building.

I feel a dark presence behind me. Before I can turn around, it disappears. When I come around the next corner, I see blood first, and then Blaire Gumshoe, one of the conjurers, with a wound on her chest. She is holding it with her hand, breathing heavily. When she notices me, she tries her best to smile.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t do it in the end.”

I kneel down beside her. “We’ll get you out of here. Can you stand?”

Blaire tries her best to get up but collapses to the floor before she can gain her balance. We try a second time, with her leaning on my shoulder.

“I’m just dead weight,” says Blaire. “Leave me.”

“I won’t let you get eaten by the wraith,” I say.

Blaire coughs, and cringes. “Is that what you call the thing that attacked me?” she says.

“I think so,” I say. “They follow you, and the moment you let your guard down they strike.” I check behind myself in a moment of unease. There is nothing there.

We have to keep moving. If we stay in one place for too long, the wraith may strike.

I decide that it’s the best time to enter another room and gather another clue. I take the first clue, the one from the doll room, out of my pocket. All that’s on it are two colored rectangles, one blue and one orange, each with a number inside. I fold it back up and place it in my pocket.

We push through the nearest door. This time, the room is filled with bottles and glassware. The doors close behind us and the rods descend. A timer with seven minutes on the clock lowers from the ceiling.

I don’t even know how to start looking for the answer to this puzzle. Will I have to synthesize some sort of chemical?

I take a bottle and examine it. For all intents and purposes, it is the regular kind of bottle you would find in a high school classroom.

At the bottle’s bottom is a small symbol. I turn it around, trying to see if I can make heads or tails of it.

“Look at this,” says Orion, holding two bottles together. He shows the arrangement to me.

The symbols have coalesced into a letter and a number: A3.

Blaire points to a bench in the corner. There’s a strange machine that reminds me of a mass spectrometer. I walk over to it and see a keyboard attached to it. I press two keys—and then a shock goes through me. I jerk my hand back. A green mist begins to fill the room.

“Hastiness makes a corpse,” says the voice on the intercom. “As does cyanide.”

I grab a cloth and put it over my mouth. “This is bad,” I say. “We need to find the code before we die from poison gas.”

Orion holds two more bottles together. “The second letter is F!” he says.

Blaire holds together to test tubes. “I think the fifth is G!” Somehow, she is managing even with her wound.

Something, F, A, something, G. We need to find the rest of the letters. But the more we try to match bottles, the harder it gets.

The clock ticks town. Soon, there is one minute left, and I can barely breathe.

“I have the code!” says Orion. “B,F,A,K,G,P!”

I type it into the console and the iron bars in front of the doors rescind. Orion bursts through, and I follow a second later, dragging Blaire.

Blaire opens her fist to reveal the second paper clue. The door slams shut behind us, disappearing into the wall.

We’re back into the hallway with the wraith. I look both ways, and then point in a random direction. “We’ll go that way,” I say.

“As good as any,” says Orion.

“I think each door opens into a sub instance of this dungeon,” I say, as the three of us go down the hallway. “And each sub instance will give us a clue of some sort.”

“Why would someone who wants to kill us go through this much trouble?” says Blaire. She coughs, still holding the wound on her side.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Only that the perpetrator is probably—” I pause. I don’t think I should mention the Silverbones to them. “Probably someone who wants the Rearden Metal formula.”

“You look like you know more,” says Orion.

“It would be dangerous to tell you,” I say.

Orion frowns. “I’ll trust you, then,” he says.

We turn a corner and find another conjurer curled up in a ball against the wall. When she notices us, she looks up.

It’s the conjurer April Seek. She looks up at us. “They took him,” she says.

“Who?” I say.

“Lincoln,” says April. “They took him. Black hands grabbed him and pulled him into a doorway.”

“Have you been attacked by the wraith yet?” says Orion, as he helps April to her feet.

April shivers. “I don’t know. I do feel like something is following me.”

“That’s the wraith, then,” I say. “We have to keep moving, or else it will attack. It’s an A-class monster.”

I get a signal from Sebstian.

Sebastian: We finally got through, master.

Me: What’s the status of the outside world?

Sebastian: Nothing is amiss. Just the fact that the entire Esmex building just disappeared into thin air.

Me: Can you find a way to me?

Sebastian: We have hundreds of our smartest operatives on the case. Sadly, we cannot seem to do more than get your general location in the aether sea.

Me: Do you know of a Dark Silverbones with this kind of power?

Sebastian: Perhaps. We do not know the powers of most of the members of that group, though.

Me: Keep trying to find a way.

Sebastian: You should be able to call up the devils who stayed in your personal dimension during the transfer to the aether sea.

I check my personal dimension, which I have been too preoccupied to remember. There are fifteen devils and at least a dozen monsters from the S-class portal, including the aircraft carrier sized mammoth.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the mammoth, but the rest of the minions should be able to help me clear this instant dungeon.

I summon every minion who I think could help us out.

About twenty monsters of varying taxonomy appear out of a cloud of dust.

Orion, April, and Blaire are about as shocked as I would have expected them to be. Blaire faints, and one of my devils catches her.

“I can heal her, master,” he says.

“Do it,” I say. “And try and bring the rest of these people to a safe location.” I turn to the rest of the minions. “Find everyone. Dispatch as many monsters as you can, but make sure that my lab assistants are safe, as well as anyone else who has been trapped in this instant dungeon.”

Orion shakes his head. “I’m going with you,” he says. “You’re going to need more than one head to solve all these puzzles.”

I think for a moment. “Okay,” I say. “As long as you’re willing to accept the risk.”

“If you are, I am,” says Orion. He pauses. “Also, where did these, um, people come from?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “It’s best if you don’t know.”

Orion shrugs. “No weirder than what’s currently happening, I suppose.” He looks at one of my devils with a curious gaze. “Are you a demon?” he asks.

“I’m no demon,” says the devil. “I’m a proud devil.”

I turn to Orion. “Demons and devils have had a long and complicated relationship,” I say.

The devil bows, and the group splits up. I, Orion, and two other devils are standing in an empty hallway.

“I trust my comrades,” I say. “They’ll make sure that everyone gets out safe.” I turn to the two devils who stayed with us. “I’d like to know your names,” I say.

“Rezolan,” says a bulky-looking devil with a big neck.

“Sangror,” says the second devil. She’s a rather skinny devil with long white hair and fangs. “I am a summoner, while Rezolan is a knight.” She holds out her hand and a wolf appears from between two layers of shining air. “This is Ropo,” she says.

Ropo scratches his ear with his paw.

Orion looks between the two devils. “I think we can make it with you on our side.”

I turn to the nearest door. “We should continue collecting clues,” I say. I push through the door.

The four of us, plus a wolf, enter the room. It is pitch black.

A single spotlight snaps on, illuminating a mechanical clown. The clown tilts its shining head. “Ah, a guest,” it says. “What did the chicken say to the elephant?”

“I don’t know,” says Orion.

“Why are you bigger than me!” says the clown. It then cackles with laughter.

None of us laugh. The clown’s eyes go red. “Laugh,” it says. Its voice deepens, and becomes distorted. “Laugh,” it says.

Spikes appear on the walls and begin closing in.

“Laugh,” says the clown, with a deep, metallic voice.

Rezolan leaps onto the stage and rips the clown’s head off with his bare hands. Sparks fly from the exposed neck.

Sangror throws a force field towards the approaching spikes.

Two more spotlights turn on to reveal a freakish monster of an animatronic mouse and a gigantic metal purple blob with a guitar. They begin to strum their instruments.

“Laugh!” say the animatronic monsters. “Laugh!”

Orion runs to a panel in the wall and opens it. He flips a switch, and then everything stops. The room is pitch black again.

“What did you do?” I say.

“I recognized this room as a maintenance closet,” says Orion. “Those always have fuse boxes.”

A feeling of dread fills my bones. I see a shadow, darker than the other shadows, flit past me.

Orion screams, and I can hear clothes tearing.

“Where are you?” I say, as I ram into a black wall. My nose must be broken, and blood begins to trickle out.

“Help!” says Orion.

A blazingly bright ball of light appears, and it illuminates the whole room. Sangror is holding the ball in her palm.

Orion is laying on the ground, dead, blood pooling underneath him.

“The wraith,” I say. “It’s still here.”

“Wraiths enjoy darkness more than anything,” says Rezolan. He kneels beside Orion’s body. “This one is especially strong.”

I look at the stage where the animatronics are. On the ground, beneath the now headless clown, there is a piece of paper. The third clue.

I take out the other two clues and try and match them together. But, it still makes no sense. I shove them all in my pocket and kneel beside Orion.

“I didn’t know you for long,” I say, “But I know you were a brave and good guy.” I close his open eyes and straighten his posture. I turn to Sangror. “What should I do with the body?”

Sangror sighs. “I can store it in my personal dimension until we can give him a proper burial,” she says. She holds her hand over the corpse and it is sucked into a hole in her palm. She is wearing an expression that makes it clear she finds the process distasteful.

I stand back up. “We have no time to mourn,” I say. “We need to find a way out, end this instant dungeon, and fight whoever created it.”

“We’re with you,” says Sangror.

I turn to the door. “Then let’s get going.”