Getting back to the bridge wasn't going to be simple. They first had to find a way out of this room they had found themselves in.
Ran, with his three kinhood friends by his side, walked through the chamber as they searched for an exit that was not the one they came through.
His eyes flickered to the far side of the chamber as he continued his search. There was a distortion there. One his gaze could only just barely pierce through.
He focused his sight on it, coming to a half, making his friends pause too and look to him inquisitively.
He paid them no mind for now and increased his focus on that spot. When what was being hidden was revealed to him after his superior Fey senses overrode its protection, he was no surprise that it had eluded him and his friends.
This was clearly demon kin, quite archaic and thus arcane. His excuse, he'd been distracted well enough and could not be blamed to have failed to notice it. Regardless, once they had started searching for a way out, he noticed it.
As for his friends, neither of them possessed the type of superior nature needed to resist such an illusion.
And as for what the illusion had been hiding, it was an arched passage, yawning over there as the other hollow Chambers they had come across. But unlike the rest this was a structure that descended.
A funny smell wafted over from the place. It was an air that was dry and ancient, the smell of dust and sulfur.
"I think I smell rot," Erisa whispered. "Down there."
Ran nodded. "Let's hope it's nothing alive."
The last thing he wanted to fight right now was an undead demon, or an undead anything.
They needed to make their way outside then he'd see if his cores were active once more and then any threat bold enough to challenge a therianthrope Lagarakei was welcome to.
They moved quickly and silently, quickly heading for the passageway and descending into the bowels of Dragonhearth. This deep into the tower the marble turned bone-colored stone, the sulfur-stones' light faxed into darkness, and the starlight was nowhere to be found.
The last one was more a mercy than a bother.
The darkness around them was only out by the glow of Haru's hand as he maintained a minor kin warmth around them to drive away the cold from this place and provide them with some light. Two birds, one stone, it was a shoe of efficiency Ran approved of.
Heading even deeper down the passageway they came upon carvings among the walls. They were of dragons, thousands of dragons. And they were depicted as worshiped, not hunted. Some bore galant, angelic riders. Some had the weight of great crowns upon their great heads.
Regardless of all they saw, the quad spoke not a word and by the time they reached the base, even their footsteps were so silent they echoed like whispers.
They found something none of them had been expecting there. Yes, they had smelled the air of death, but they had been expecting some abomination to be lurking here.
Instead there was a crypt.
The crypt that lay before was vast, easily the size of a small town. And it was completely filled with circles of stone platforms in spirals, huge tombs he realized, that carried massive fossilized remains.
They were the remains of dragons. Dragons turned to pale stones, curled, forever locked in a slumber of which there was no waking up from. Ribcages soared like arches, some tiny skulls reached the size of wagons, wings the size of dozens of aircraft carriers were petrified mid-stretch.
They stood and stared. Ran looked around, lips parted. "This is…"
"…a graveyard," Kigana whispered.
"No." Haru swallowed. "It's a cathedral. One that could easily make you the richest man in the universe."
Ran understood what he meant. There was a great value to a dragon, dead or alive. If a demon of greed stumbles upon this place and manages to escape with even just a third of the corpses here then every gold, Eirasen, kingdom, and even whole realms of Naraku itself would be theirs.
It was a good thing then that none of them were a demon, much less a demon of greed.
Still, Ran felt an urge and let it move his hand until he reached out and touched one of the great ribs. Kigana joined him, her hand trembling.
"Why would the tower build a place like this?" She questioned.
"Because it needs to be remembered," Erisa said. "Even liars build monuments to the things they fear."
Ran would say coward, but liars also fit the faction of the celestial rebels. He was not fooled to believe this monument was in honor of the dragons that died in the rebellion, no, it was as Erisa said. This was a reminder, a memory forged and sculpted into reality to remind the rebels and the fallens of the price of defeat. Fear was their greatest reminder, their anchor to continuously strive for victory.
And seeing something like this, Ran could not help doubting. How exactly would it be possible to overcome someone who had built this to remind himself of his failures?
Was it all a fool's hope? Would they be escaping this place today?
As it to answer him, above them, a screech tore through the silence.
The knights had reached the upper chamber above the crypt. Should they delay here much longer then they will find them in the crypt.
That might be good and bad. They might be hesitant to attack them here in fear of damaging the resting place and corpses of their brethren. That would be good.
The bad would be if they got so angered by the presence of Ran and his friends here, the resting place of their brethren, and didn't care much about damages in their anger.
What would even be worse would be if anything done by the quad damaged the place or one of the corpses.
Erisa turned. "They'll find us. We can't outrun them again."
"Then we hide," Haru said, pointing to the cavities inside the platforms in which the dragons' backs and the majority of their bulk rested. "Inside."
The four of them stepped forward into the shadows of fossilized living flames.
As they passed beneath the outstretched claw of a great crowned dragon, something in the crypt breathed.
It was not the sigh of air, nor the flow of sound. It was something old, something Ran knew from just its aura alone was hungry.
It was watching, and it called to him.