Vivi woke up in the land where the sky was made of stone.
Her head pounded with the grogginess of a poorly slept night. The air slled off. She sniffed again. What was that fetid sll? It was as if soone had died underneath her bed. Had she forgotten to clean the rat traps? She rose up to sit, only to hit her head on a solid, white bone.
She let out a yelp. The grogginess was gone in an instant. She was trapped inside a large rib cage, as if encased inside a coffin of bones. Solid stone lay underneath her. Beyond the ribs awaited a dark vine forest. Water droplets dripped from cracks in the sparkling stone ceiling high above.
“Lucius?” Vivi asked in a near-panic. She felt the spirit’s presence sowhere. Her mind was connected to his. Though, she couldn’t tell where the spirit actually was.
She didn’t appear to be at risk of imdiate death, but sothing about waking up trapped between the bones of a dead animal far larger than her made her uncomfortable. She pushed at the bones with her hands and feet. With so strength, the rib cage lifted out of the ground, letting her free.
Vivi rose to her feet, nervously studying the dark forest. The trees didn’t have leaves, giving the forest a brown and gray appearance. Vegetation grew stubbornly from a solid rock surface, no dirt or soil needed. There was no sun nor moons in the sky. Instead, what little light Vivi had ca from star-like gemstones stuck to the stone above. The ceiling was almost high enough—perhaps five hundred feet from the ground—to mimic the atmosphere of the sky.
This was no simple cave or a crevice on the surface. The truth was unmistakable. Vivi had teleported into the underground. Into the land of ether storms and monsters.
Below the surface, the earth was divided into multiple levels, as if the world itself was a storied mansion. Each level was said to be huge, spanning the width of the planet. Nobody knew how deep the levels went. So suspected the earth had dozens upon dozens of levels, while most old folk refused to believe the levels descended beyond the fourth. Last Vivi had heard, the existence of a fifth level was confird, though no human had co back up from the fifth level alive.
Most of the food Vivi and other surface dwellers ate was grown on the first level beneath. The first level was well inhabited by humanity—mostly by farrs. An ard man could live on the first level with relative security. Monsters were sparse, and ether surges weak. The deeper one descended, the more rampant the dangers beca. By level two, towns required constant protection from ether hunters. Level three was inhabited by fortified castles only. The best of ether hunters commonly hunted monsters on the third level.
Level four, Vivi had heard, was a different beast entirely. A majority of the level was too dangerous for even the best ether hunters to raid, and any inhabitable grounds were demon territory. Any humans caught on demon grounds were either killed or captured as slaves.
Vivi heard a yawn. The sound ca from beneath her raincoat. Sothing tickled at her chest. She paused, then opened her raincoat to find a red spirit cat clinging to her chest and purring.
Lucius stretched his paws. His claws ca uncomfortably close to Vivi’s neck. After a few more grumpy cat noises, he took flight. His paws drooped limply from his body, annoyed to have been woken up.
“What is it, five in the morning?” Lucius asked with a yawn. “Why are we awake?”
Vivi stared at him. Lucius was cute, she had to admit. But not nearly cute enough to make Vivi forget what happened yesterday. “You chose …” she said.
“I did,” Lucius said. “You’re lucky. Few humans get to work with the mighty Lucius.”
“You kidnapped
from my village,” Vivi said. “I’m hunted by ether hunters. Grandpa is in trouble because of you… I was perfectly happy as a runesmith, you know!”
Lucius blinked, confused. “You were at the examinations. That ant you wanted to be chosen, no? That Grandpa guy will keep your smithy alive. So he said. There is no reason for you to worry.”
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Vivi took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Grandpa had indeed claid he would keep the business up. More realistically, he would be chained down and imprisoned amongst the worst of criminals for helping Vivi escape. There was no way Serena would let him go free. Their smithy, for the better or worse, was gone. Vivi would never see her old life again.
There wasn’t much she could do for Grandpa now. She could only hope he didn’t receive a death sentence.
“How do you know it’s five in the morning?” Vivi asked.
Lucius glanced up. “The gems in the sky. Can you not read them? It’s clearly early morning.”
It seed he referred to the star-like gems on the stone ceiling. “And where are we?” Vivi asked. “Did you teleport us to the first level?”
“We went slightly astray, I admit,” Lucius said. Vivi watched nervously as he floated around, studying scenery. “Leafless vines growing directly from stone, no soil necessary… A tall sky with a decent amount of gems. Nature is healthy here. And that’s a surge hazard if I’ve ever seen one.”
Lucius turned to the rib cage next to Vivi. From the shape, Vivi guessed the bones had belonged to so sort of large deer. Its antlered skull lay motionless a few paces from the rib cage along with the rest of its cluttered bones.
“Looks like a twilight elk to ,” Lucius said. “We’ll be dead if a surge hits that thing. Trust , you don’t want to fight anything with twilight in their na.”
“A twilight elk?” Vivi asked. She rembered the na vaguely. Like everyone, she had received a rough education on the biology and geographical locations of ether monsters. Most details had quickly escaped her head, replaced with runesmithing lessons and Grandpa’s tallurgy concepts. Her head only had so much room to fit information about ether hunting.
Still, she knew twilight monsters never made it to level one. They were rare even on level three. Vivi had a really bad feeling about this. The teleportation couldn’t have brought them all the way to level three, right?
Lucius sighed. “This is disappointing. I had hoped to reach Ingfried’s land at the very least. Doesn’t look like we traveled deep enough. We’re only on level four.”
Vivi paused. “Sorry? Level four? Stop joking.”
“Can’t be anything else,” Lucius said. “Vines don’t grow from stone on the first and second levels. Stone vegetation requires more ether than the upper levels provide. The third level is far more cavern-like with a low sky. And by the fifth level we’d start seeing embers beneath our feet. We are on the fourth level, Miss Runesmith.”
“But…” Vivi said in disbelief. “The fourth level is demon territory! The humans have fought wars for those grounds, and all were lost! Just a week ago, Fellwater got news of more ether hunters being enslaved. A mining company set-up a hidden operation to collect rare tals and minerals from the level. Demonic beings wiped out the operation within two weeks! Everyone was sent to a torture prison of Zand!”
“That did happen, yeah,” Lucius said. “The Greenwitch hunting company organized that. I’d say that was their own fault. They set up a mining rig right under the demons’ noses, thinking they could collect their hands full of locium and get out. Of course they were caught. And those corrupt idiots certainly deserved it. We don’t have to follow their example. Most humans just don’t know how to walk the fourth level.”
And you do? Vivi wished to ask. Why do you act like you’re better than everyone else?
“I know a lot more than you think,” Lucius said. “There’s a reason why I don’t want to work with your usual hunting associations. Most humans are arrogant and stupid, from spirit wielders to city leaders. We’ll never see enough ether if we play by their rules. To truly earn ether and grow, we must hunt real monsters.”
Vivi had no response. This was insanity! The world’s best ether hunters feared the fourth level. How was Vivi, a total beginner a hundred thousand ether in debt, supposed to survive where the experts died?
“Speaking of ether,” Lucius said. “I sense so approaching from right over there.”
The vines rustled ahead, accompanied by a slight ethereal sizzle. A white light shone from between vines. Vivi watched in horror and considered running, while Lucius flew in circles, laughing. “Breakfast!” he called.
The monster pushed the vines aside. It was a humanoid figure with empty, stretched out eye-holes. A white mist-like aura, ford by wisps of ether, radiated from its body. It limped towards Vivi with one foot, the other dragging behind. Its pitch black mouth was wide open, revealing sharp and serrated teeth. The screwed-up face was the most nightmare-inducing thing Vivi had seen in a long ti.
Lucius, still laughing, flew through Vivi’s chest, into her core. Vivi felt his powers in her limbs. Lucius’s presence—the connection that Vivi felt within her consciousness—beca even clearer, as if the spirit was a true part of her.
“Show , my wielder,” Lucius said. “How do you fight?”
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