A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

As soon as the medallion was placed on the altar, the entire platform began to tremble, like the stirring of an ancient giant, awakening from a deep slumber.

They all had different reactions to this phenomenon. Some, like Astrid, Emily, and Alice, quickly prepared themselves for anything as they gazed around with cautious frowns. Erik, Emma, and Elora, in contrast, were calm, and simply curious to witness this ancient mechanism at work.

Naturally, Emma's calm came mostly from her proximity to Erik, while Erik simply refused to believe that whatever his mother had left him would cause them harm.

Either way, however, anticipation hung heavy in the air.

After a few moments of shaking, a deep rumbling echoed from below, and the platform suddenly began to move.

Or, rather, it began to sink.

"Oh?" Elora immediately reacted as she looked thoughtfully at the rising walls, made from the same yellowish-gray stone as the rest of this place. "It's… a moving platform? To be honest, I had expected a teleportation sigil instead, or perhaps a portal, but this… why something so… for lack of a better term, low-tech?" she wondered aloud as she began chewing on her crimson hair in deep thought.

Meanwhile, they continued to sink and the surrounding woods were quickly being replaced by ancient stone walls.

Erik looked up, noticing the six pillars were also descending, almost as if they were being dissolved. At the same time, the hole their platform left was being filled by a new stone plate that seemed to be build piece by piece with stones from those pillars.

"You call this low-tech?" Astrid mumbled, her voice filled with awe as she looked up to witness stone moving as if it were alive.

"It is," Elora nodded as she continued to chew her hair in thought. "It may look impressive, but in sigil terms this is extremely easy, yet… marvelously efficient."

Suddenly, Erik had a thought and raised an eyebrow, "Meaning it has a low power requirement, right?."

Immediately, a conspiratorial grin appeared on Elora's face. "Exactly! The obfuscation sigil was already making me suspicious, but now I'm certain. All of this is designed to keep energy cost as low as possible! No surprise, perhaps, if they had to make this all work in an unawakened world."

It was at that moment that the last stone in the new cover was placed with a heavy thunk, and darkness fell over Erik and the others.

But the darkness didn't last long.

Almost at the same moment, two new sources of light began burning among them. One was an orb of pure white light floating above Emma's palm, and the other was Astrid herself, whose entire body had begun to shine like the sun.

"Thanks girls, I was just going to ask," Erik chuckled softly, causing the both of them to grin proudly.

Meanwhile, Elora kept muttering to herself. "There's no way this isn't related to one or more of those powerful figures from Erik's dream… But why do all this? And where did they get the aetherium to operate all of this in what was, essentially, a vacuum?"

While there were ways to store aetherium, including the currency used on Söl and other worlds, they wouldn't be able to keep their stored power for long in an unawakened world. Without at least some aetherium in the air, any storage method would simply have its power drain away over time.

"Calm down, Elora," Erik chuckled when he heard her ramblings. "We'll find out the truth sooner or later. I'd rather you focus on the here and now. We are descending into unknown depths after our way back just closed itself up, you know."

Hearing Erik's unmistakably logical argument caused Elora to pause her thoughts. She released the hair from her mouth and sighed, "Ugh, I hate it when you're right."

"Yeah… about those unknown depths and stuff, we are getting out of here again, right?" asked a suddenly slightly anxious Emily.

Before Erik could answer, Astrid chuckled teasingly and patted Emily's shoulder. "Come now, Emily. Aren't you supposed to be all goth and loving darkness?"

Emily rolled her black eyes that still had the ruby-red break lines criss-crossing their surface, and grumbled, "That doesn't mean I want to be locked up…"

But before Erik could comfort anyone, something changed.

The air around them became cooler, and charged with an ancient feeling. The platform's descent slowed and began to reveal not just walls, but a short hallway, created from the same ancient stone blocks as everything else had been so far.

From the elevator, it led up to a similar altar as stood on the platform, and behind that altar were some stairs that led up to… nothing. They simply led up to a seemingly empty wall.

Suddenly, the platform came to a rest with a final thunk and rumbling that echoed through their surroundings.

A normal human would have certainly fallen on their ass but in their case, even Emma and Emily were able to use aetherium to keep their balance.

Emma and Astrid remained the only sources of light, until several softly glowing orbs sprang to life and illuminated the short hallway in front of them.

"Where are we…" Emma mumbled as she dispelled her orb and was, surprisingly, the first to step off the platform and into their new surroundings.

Erik was about to follow her, but first grabbed the medallion back from the altar. Never knew when that might come in handy again. Plus, Elora also still wanted to study the mysterious metal it was made off.

The rest of their group stepped off the platform in an awed daze.

It wasn't that this hallway was all that impressive in and off itself. The stone it was made from seemed unremarkable, and their current surroundings weren't particularly grand, as the hallway was maybe twenty meters (~66 feet) long, and 10 meters (~33 feet) wide.

No, the really impressive part was that this entire construction was at least a hundred meters below the ground, and yet it was not only here, but also seemed none the worse for wear.

"Hard to believe this was all built such a long time ago," mumbled Emma, quickly gaining the approval from those around her.

Erik had, by now, informed them all of everything he knew regarding his mother, the dream, and the suspicions he and Elora had over what it all might mean. It seemed only fair, considering they were following him into the unknown.

Suddenly, his eyes fell on a small, rectangular white spot, placed on top of this new altar.

It was a sealed letter.