Chapter 113: Unidentified Artifact
The group regrouped near the sealed cavern’s mouth, patched up and considerably heavier in spirit than they’d been an hour earlier, and pressed on before anyone had time to dwell on what they’d just survived.
The next passage dropped them somewhere that didn’t obey the rules the rest of the Tomb had followed.
A spire rose ahead of them, except it rose downward, its base vanishing into a ceiling far overhead while its jagged tip pointed toward a floor that felt entirely too close.
Gravity itself ran sideways along its outer walls, pulling toward the structure rather than the ground beneath their boots. Dust and loose pebbles drifted slowly upward into the distant ceiling, caught in whatever field the spire generated around itself.
"That’s new," Solenne said, tilting her head at an angle that made her look faintly seasick.
"Inverted architecture," Elowen offered, studying the spire with open fascination. "Whatever built this wanted height without needing sky."
Aidan grinned and stepped straight off the ground, Gravity answering his aspect the moment he willed it, redirecting his own weight to match the spire’s sideways pull.
He landed on the structure’s outer wall like it was perfectly level ground, boots settling against carved stone that should have sent him tumbling by every normal law of physics.
"Come on. It’s easier once you stop fighting it."
One by one, the group followed. Isolde swore under her breath the entire climb, Beatrix grinned the whole way like it was the best ride she’d been on in years, and Anrita simply recalculated her own sense of balance in real time, adjusting without a single wasted motion.
...
The spire’s interior unfolded into a spiral of chambers, each one rotated at a slightly different angle from the last, and the deeper they climbed, the more the structure seemed to notice them.
The first guardians rose out of the walls themselves, humanoid shapes carved from the same dark stone as the spire, expressionless and silent.
They moved with the jerky, deliberate patience of things that had been standing still for centuries and resented being interrupted.
"Constructs," Ordun said, already moving. "Let’s not make friends."
The fight sprawled across three separate gravity planes at once, Veshan grappling one construct along a sideways wall while Sella dueled another upside down entirely, her blades finding purchase in a fight where up and down had stopped meaning anything useful.
Anrita made short work of her share, lightning arcing between three constructs at once and locking their joints solid before they finished raising their stone fists. Finn simply rained aurora light down an entire corridor, and the constructs caught in it stopped being constructs at all.
Aidan and Jovan cleared the last cluster together, scythe and shadow weaving through stone limbs with the easy coordination of two people who’d fought side by side more times than either bothered counting anymore.
By the time the guardians stopped coming, the group stood scattered across four different walls and one ceiling, breathing hard but intact.
"Well," Kyrsa said, upside down and entirely unbothered by it, "that’s a new way to fight."
...
Past the guardians, the spire narrowed into a single spiraling stair that ignored gravity entirely, curling around the structure’s inverted core toward whatever waited at its heart.
Halfway up, the stair itself turned against them.
Steps that had held solid a moment earlier liquefied without warning, sending Torvald’s replacement position in the formation, now filled by Isolde, sliding toward a drop that led nowhere good. Elowen’s roots shot out on instinct, catching her ankle and hauling her back before the liquid stone finished swallowing her boot.
"Thanks," Isolde managed, breathless.
"Watch your footing," Elowen said, already scanning the next dozen steps for the same trick.
They lost several minutes to it, testing each step before committing weight, and twice more the stone tried the same trick on someone else, caught each time by whoever stood closest. It was slow, tedious work, and nobody complained about slow when the alternative was falling into an inverted spire with no visible bottom.
They reached the top with nerves frayed and patience thin, and found the reason the spire had guarded its climb so jealously.
...
The chamber at the spire’s heart wasn’t inverted at all. Gravity behaved normally the moment they crossed its threshold, and the sudden return to ordinary footing sent half the group stumbling before they caught themselves.
The room held more wealth than most cities.
Spirit Stones filled entire alcoves along every wall, stacked in loose, glittering drifts that ranged from dull Epic-rank motes to Divine-rank cores pulsing slow and heavy.
Weapon racks stood in orderly rows through the chamber’s center, blades and spears and axes spanning every rank the group had names for. Armor stood mounted on stone pedestals in matching sets, some plain and functional, others etched with runework that hummed faintly even at rest.
Artifacts occupied a raised dais at the room’s far end, a dozen small objects that radiated the specific quiet weight of things that did more than they appeared to.
"By the Tree," Elowen breathed, turning a slow circle. "This is a full treasury. Untouched."
"Whoever built that gauntlet outside wanted to keep it that way," Ordun said, already moving toward the nearest weapon rack.
Solenne lifted a curved Divine-rank blade off its stand, testing its weight with visible delight.
Beatrix found a set of Legendary-rank gauntlets that hummed faintly in sympathy with her own Maelstrom Anchor, like the two were built to be worn together. Sella and Veshan split a pile of Epic-rank Spirit Stones evenly between them without needing to discuss it, the easy division of people who’d shared spoils before.
Isolde ran her hands along a rack of Divine-rank armor, unable to decide between two sets equally suited to her fighting style, and finally settled on the one that hummed warmer against her palm.
Aidan wandered the dais last, running his eyes over the artifacts one at a time, curious rather than greedy.
"Anything calling to you?" Isolde asked, catching up.
"Everything’s calling to me." Aidan grinned, picking up a small, dark stone that pulsed faint and slow like a heartbeat. "That’s kind of the problem with being me."
[Unidentified artifact. Divine-rank | ???]
’Huh? This is first.’
[Player Aidan. You may buy one identifying stone for this artifact. It is an artifact with a will, just like your current armor, except that this artifact’s will is far stronger, whole, and deliberately sealed. Buy the stone for 1000 Transcendent Points to unseal the artifact.]
’Interesting. Alright, noted.’
Aidan put it away. He had the side quest of entering the Origin Tomb and exiting it successfully. So once he exited, he would get 1000 Transcendent Points and a Mystery Weapon Box.
"Load up," he called to the rest of the group, already sorting through a rack of Spirit Stones with the efficient speed of someone who’d learned not to waste good fortune when it presented itself. "We take what we can carry, and we keep moving."
Nobody argued. Nobody wanted to.
The treasury emptied steadily around them, Spirit Stones and weapons and armor and artifacts disappearing into storage rings and Inventories alike, and by the time the last alcove had been picked clean, the group stood loaded down and exhausted in the best possible way.
"Onward?" Elowen asked, already glancing toward the chamber’s far exit.
Aidan rolled his shoulders, feeling the day’s accumulated aches settle into something manageable rather than crippling.
"Onward."
Behind them, the emptied spire settled into stillness, its inverted stone finally at rest after guarding its treasury for longer than anyone in the group could begin to guess.