At the end of the Grand Archives, they came upon a massive stone wall blackened with flame. Ven'thur touched his skeletal hand to the charred rock, and as he did so, the indentations in the wall became highly visible, lined as they were with glowing purple energy.
The indentations formed into a circular pattern, and within that circle, there were further inscriptions that read out labels such as 'Main Hall', 'Residential Quarters', 'Alchemical Laboratory', 'Crystallography Center', 'Wandmaker', 'Scrollbearer', and so on, indicating a plethora of areas present all throughout the citadel.
"Hm, let me see here," said Ven'thur as he rotated his hand. With that movement, certain labels glowed brighter than others, indicating they were being selected.
As he scrolled through them, he remarked, "Ah, I would have wished so dearly to show you the entirety of the citadel when it was yet standing and unburnt. We had everything under the stars all in this hallowed mountainside study.
Can you believe we held even a menagerie full of live specimen spanning all known continents? Headed by a dracolich curator, no less."
"Dracolich? Those are extremely powerful undead," said Li, knowing that unlike lesser Bone Drakes that were just animated dragon skeletons, dracoliches were dragons that had fully embraced high undeath, using their massive latent magical potential to become extraordinarily potent undead that were at minimum level 80.
"The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to question how mortal forces ever razed this citadel. It must have been one of the most powerful areas in this entire planet, guarded by high undead and all their centuries of knowledge."
"Oh, you compliment the citadel too highly. It is no Torr Valeris, that is to be sure, filled with bloodthirsty battle maniacs. It had no true defenses. We were all scholars wrapped up in the pursuit and maintenance of knowledge, and perhaps, we did grow idle, believing as you believed that our power alone would ward away any threat.
But of course, we did not consider the idea that the mortal races would tap into the Source, draining the world of its life force for their gain."
"Something not of this world ended Kel'thor, then," said Li.
"That is so. An Elven hero arose like a shining star, wielding a contraption that could fire the light of the sun against her enemies. With that weapon, she along with the mortal races pushed back the third demonic invasion, and emboldened by that victory, sought to eradicate Kel'thor as well."
Li glanced at the blackened stone around him. "And they did."
"At the cost of all their lives, though I should say the tradeoff between knowledge lost and mortal lives lost skews rather heavily towards knowledge.
An army comprised of beastmen, club tribes, fairies, humans, elves, the few and dwarves that yet remained in the world at that time all came together under that heroine's banner – amazing how a common enemy can unite the petty wills of mortals - and we let them into the citadel," said Ven'thur.
"You let them in?" said Li.
"Oh, yes, we did. Initially, as a gesture of goodwill and to ask them to leave if they valued their lives," said Ven'thur. "And when they began to fight, the citadel and its walls became an inescapable slaughter pen with which we could eliminate them more efficiently.
We did not want any of them escaping us, after all. And slaughter them, we did, wishing to leave the heroine for last so as to study her contraption and prevent any more abuse of the Source.
But, oh, how petty she was, even when we promised her life. She broke apart her weapon, not even knowing that it would erupt into a blast never before seen upon the world.
A blast that thoroughly encompassed the whole of the citadel. Likely would have reduced it to ash, too, were it not for Kel'thor himself giving his life to reinforce the structure in hopes that the knowledge could be retained."
Ven'thur pressed his hand into the wall, and a click resonated throughout the empty library. A portal opened up behind him.
"And I," said Ven'thur. "Was far too slow. At any moment, I could have taken that elven waste of matter and sent her into another dimension, teleported her far, far away, but two hundred years ago, I was far less wieldy with my magics.
But enough of the past, good seer, for are you not a being that looks to the future? A future that you intend to shape?"
Ven'thur bowed and motioned to the portal. "And the keys to the future you envision lie in wait for you there."
===========
Past the portal, Li, Tia, and Ven'thur found themselves within what seemed like a cavern.
There was no ornately carved ceiling of stone above as there was in the grand archives. Instead, rough, natural formations of spiked rock jutted out from every which way, and the occasional drip and drop of water seeping through the stone could be heard.
"Mind the puddles, they do get so very dirty," said Ven'thur as he floated forwards over rocky, cracked ground littered with pools of water. "Kel'thor may be hewn into the face of a mountain, but the rains in the centerlands pour down strong, and the rock is surprisingly permeable, despite how deep in the mountain we are."
Li followed Ven'thur. At his shoulder, branches started to grow, twisting and forming a light canopy of broad leaves above Tia to stop water from falling on her. "
"This is the heart of Kel'thor?" asked Li. He felt a powerful hum of power here. A pulsating, beating power. It reminded him of his own heart in the Winterwoods. "I sense power here. A living, ancient power."
"A World Vein," said Ven'thur. He snaked past a sharp angle through a corridor of jagged rock, and when Li followed, he saw what Ven'thur meant.
Sprawled out in front of Li was a massive cavern, and all around its ground were drawn fissures in the rock that criss-crossed over a single point at the center. That center point formed a sort of altar upon which a huge, purple crystal had been inlaid, and it glowed incredibly bright with warm, purple energy.
Tia immediately woke up, her little body tensing up as she sensed threats.
And threats, there were. Around the crystal, dotting most of the cavern, was a huge host of undead.
Regular skeletons, many of them, but some were far higher leveled Skeleton Brutes, Bone Wraiths, and even a Bone Dragon whose huge, serpentine form lay curled around the crystal.
"Bone things," said Tia. "Dangerous."
"I apologize for this rather inconveniencing display," said Ven'thur. He clapped his hands, and his will as a higher undead manifested over all the lesser ones, rendering them tame.
"The Grand Archives, I occasionally come back to and sweep lesser undead from cluttering. But Kel'thor is so vast I cannot do the same elsewhere, especially here in the heart where the magic crystal draws them like desperate moths to a dancing flame.
But, in a way, I am thankful that these undead still spawn here. It prevents mortals from being foolish enough to try and desecrate the citadel and is proof that at least here, the undead still find natural birth."
Tia relaxed and pouted, "I wanted to fight. New prey. Like bone man. Bone, but living. Strange."
"Oh, if the majestic dragon so wishes it, I can have some of these lesser ones spar with her," said Ven'thur. He nodded to Li. "I can assure it will be all safe and controlled."
Li knew that Tia had not hunted for a while, and she was going to get antsy, her energy getting more and more pent up. He put her down from his shoulder and said, "You may fight, Tia. It will keep you entertained while I do work."
Tia smiled and pranced around, her tail swishing, her claws extending, and her fangs baring. "Yay!" she said. "Hunt, hunt, hunt!"
She pranced around, inspecting one undead here, and another one there, seeing which one she wanted to fight.
Until finally, she noticed Li and Ven'thur had gone to the crystal, and there she walked in front of the bone drake.
"Dear Trynvilliga," said Ven'thur to the enormous skeletal dragon. "Oh, to see you, once among our wisest, our finest curator, reduced into a lesser undead. It does sadden me so."
"Ven…Thur," whispered the bone drake, and Li was surprised.
"It can speak? Despite being a lesser undead?"
"There are still some vestiges of Trynvilliga remaining within," said Ven'thur. "But I have thoroughly experimented in attempting to restore her to how she was before the blast reduced her into this lesser state, and I have determined that those vestiges are mere empty pieces of memory, little shards that float around inside her being but are not enough to be pieced together to form a whole again."
"Looks like me," said Tia as she looked wonderingly at the bone drake. "Me, but dead."
"Do not say that, little one," said Li. "You should never worry for your life when I am here."
"No worry, just curious," said Tia. She reached out and put a hand to the bone drake's hollow snout. The drake's skull was already several times larger than Tia, utterly dwarfing her, but it did not move as she touched it.
"You…?" whispered the bone drake before it lurched its skull backwards and stood up, its colossal frame accidentally crushing dozens of smaller undead as it headed away to the corner of the cavern, curling up there in a dormant, still state.
"Me?" said Tia wonderingly. "It know me?"
"Trynvilliga has been gone for two hundred years, good dragon, long, long before you were born," said Ven'thur as he approached the crystal. "No reason to see meaning in her words now. Many of them are random, bereft of reason, uttered simply for the sake of utterance.
Now then, time to see if this crystal still functions."
"I thought you were certain that it worked," said Li.
"Oh, I am, but one can never be one hundred percent certain of anything. To believe so is the hallmark of irrationality," said Ven'thur. He tapped the crystal a few times, arcs of purple energy floating from his hand to the construct. "Hm. It is fueled by the World Vein it sits atop, so a few sparks of my energy should be all it takes to start it up. Likely, it has been dormant for too long."
"There is an enormous amount of power coming from this crystal. No, from what you call the world vein underneath it," said Li as his skull looked at the massive crystal, then down to the fissure it lay atop. "I assume this is what supplied the majority of Kel'thor's magical energy needs."
"Indeed, it is so," said Ven'thur as he stepped back, adjusting his monocle and leaning his forward so he could get a better reading of the crystal. "World veins are truly an impressive source of mana, and we were able to tap into it far, far better than the likes of Riviera who can only draw enough from theirs to fuel their walls."
Li realized now why there was so much magical energy packed into the cavern beneath the lake in Riviera. He had always known about the presence of the environmental mana there, but he had not been able to give it a name or a reason for its existence.
"And," continued Ven'thur. "It should be more than enough to fuel your expedition. It allowed myself to inspect the surface of the moon, to devise my little experiment in linking portal from world to celestial body, and it even allowed one of the more visionary liches among our kind too tired of living upon this world to throw himself into the deep of the cosmos."
Ven'thur paused in reminiscence. "Oh, Shen'sai, what an enormously ambitious yet odd one he was. I do wonder if he has found another world with life that he could sink his intellect into, but besides that, you can see why I am confident that this can serve your needs."
Tia immediately tugged at Li's wooden hands. "Papa leaving again?"
"Not exactly," said Li to Tia. "Father will look like he is gone, but he will be near. He is not going anywhere far away. And one of the reasons Ven'thur is here is to pull me out if I am gone too long."
"Still want to go with papa," said Tia. "Don't care about hunting anymore."
Li shook his head. He was adamant about this one, because he could not guarantee Tia's safety.
He knew that his knowledge of eldritch power and the memories he had experienced in that realm of darkness were still locked in there.
They bled out to him little by little now that he had finally reached it, and that let him know that there was a distinct connection between himself and that realm.
Eventually, he knew that those pieces of memory would flow into him, but he did not want to waste time. He had to access his powers now and counter the eldritch demon rot.
He knew there could be a risk to it, that if he forced this, he might lose some sense of himself, but he was willing to face that for the good of the lives that relied on him. His followers. Old Thane. And especially Tia.
That was why Li had brought Ven'thur and enlisted his help. The lich already had proven that though he could not easily create portals between areas he was unfamiliar with, if he had a connection he could work with that tied a being to a place, then his limitations became far less burdensome.
And there was connection plenty to work with. Ven'thur had absorbed energies directly from Li's heart. In a way, he knew Li better than almost anyone, leaving him the most capable being on this entire world for this specific job.
But even so, Li was still going into unknown territory.
A place far more alien than anything he had ever experienced before. He could bring Tia even to battlefields, because he was absolutely confident he could protect her, but in this case, he did not have the same level of certainty.
"No, Tia. This time, father has to go alone. But do not worry, Ven'thur will keep track of me, and will call to me if even the slightest thing goes wrong," said Li. She recognized his tone was not yielding, and she hugged Li's leg.
"Get back soon and safe, papa," she said simply, tightening her grip around his leg. He put a branched hand to her little head, tousling her hair.
"I will, little one, I will."
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