The world flew past in a mess of colourful streaks.
Kael sat cross-legged on the snake's head, rolling a card between his fingers absently.
It was worse than he had imagined. So much worse. Not only did Jian talk constantly, but every word felt like it had something layered underneath it. It felt like he could ask about Kael's favourite book and somehow arrive at an understanding of why Kael had read it in the first place.
He was either extraordinarily talkative by nature, or his ability to wear a face was absurd even by Kael's standards.
But with the bad came the good. Comparing the Kael who had walked into the Depths to the one sitting here now was like comparing a candle to the sun. Jian had kept his promise. The knowledge he shared was second to none.
'Tens of tens.'
That was how many layers existed in the Depths.
Jian couldn't point to a single entrance to the second Depth, or perhaps he didn't want to, but he had been clear that they existed throughout the first.
It turned out Kael's theories hadn't been far off.
Ingredients existed down here that didn't on the surface, but not because they had gone extinct above. They had simply never adapted to live anywhere else from the beginning. From what Jian described, the deeper you went the more ancient everything became. Entrances to the lower layers were scarce enough that their ecosystems had developed in something close to isolation, reaching a kind of equilibrium that the surface world hadn't seen in a very long time.
This was one of the reasons the Royal Noble families protected the first Depth. Free access would break that equilibrium. Plants would inevitably adapt, change, or disappear entirely under the pressure of human presence. Protecting the Depths was a way of ensuring the rarest ingredients never went extinct.
Much like the soul pathway agreement, this was a second accord all the Royal Noble families had reached together. Unlike that one, this was kept entirely in the dark. A logical choice. The most reliable way to keep people out of something was to make sure they never knew it existed in the first place.
"Stop, Ina."
The snake responded instantly, halting so abruptly it nearly threw Kael off. It lowered itself slowly, stretching from the ceiling all the way to the ground.
Jian stepped off and drifted down. Kael followed, landing beside him.
"Come. I want to show you something."
They walked until they reached the same restless sea Kael had slept beside only days ago.
"What is this called?"
Kael asked casually.
"Ocean Yunara."
He must have caught the shift in Kael's expression because he continued without being asked.
"You're right to think of Lake Yunara. They're one and the same. The lake is simply a small portion of this ocean that reaches the surface. In fact I suspect there's an entrance to the Depths somewhere near its centre."
Jian jumped onto a rock jutting from the water and crouched, clicking his tongue a few times.
"Come on boy. Don't be shy."
For a while nothing changed. Then the dark water grew darker still. Something the size of a small celestial body moved beneath the surface. A low rumble reverberated through the ground and into Kael's bones, and the waves were swallowed by a ripple across the entire surface, like water brought suddenly to a boil.
"Eh? Grumpy today? Go back and rest then."
Jian stood and scratched the back of his head with mild embarrassment.
"This is my second project. I only recently managed to bond with Ina, but this one refuses to acknowledge me." He laughed quietly. "Hehe."
It was strange to think motes capable of taming something like this existed. Kael had held the Lure mote once, but that had only allowed brief influence over smaller beasts. Jian appeared to have something capable of full bonding, the way a person bonds with a dog. And he was completely open about it.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but once I have this one under control I'm planning on taking that massive pitch black bird that circles the sky up there."
Jian stayed at the water's edge as Kael wandered toward a cluster of bushes that had caught his attention earlier.
'This must be skull bells right?'
He lifted one of the branches gently.
It was a small bush with pointy leaves that reached his waist, small grey flowers dotting its stems.
He plucked one and pocketed it.
Traveling with Jian opened doors that wouldn't otherwise exist. But it closed others. Not being able to summon the Stone Coffin was the most significant of them.
Just as he was about to turn back, a faint high pitched laugh reached him again. So distant it could easily have been mistaken for wind moving through rock.
He decided to follow it.
Pushing past a pair of boulders the sound had sharpened into something closer to a cold clattering. He slowed his steps and continued into a clearing where a massive root had descended from the ceiling and actually found the ground, anchoring itself like a pillar.
That was when he froze.
A woman stood pale and unclothed, perched on the root with fingers long enough that Kael would have had to climb to reach her knuckles. They dug into the bark like talons. Her face had split open in layers, each one peeling back like the pages of a book forced open too wide, revealing rows of teeth that had no business existing where they did. Her eyes remained untouched above it all, calm and blue and completely indifferent to what her face had become.
Her jaw moved in rapid stuttering clicks, the way teeth do when the body is met with a cold it cannot escape.
'Echolocation?'
Her proportions carried an eerie human resemblance but were wrong in a way he couldn't fully articulate. Standing upright she would have towered over the trees.
Just as he took his first step back a hand clamped over his mouth.
"Quiet."
Kael felt a tension in Jian he had never shown before.
The woman clattered her teeth again, head twitching from side to side, searching.
Then she climbed down from the root and turned away from them, beginning a slow agonising walk in the opposite direction. She navigated the trees with ease, wrapping her impossibly long fingers around each trunk as guidance, feeling her way forward.
Her black hair caught in the crowns of the trees as she moved, tangling and then snapping them with loud cracks as she passed. She didn't seem to notice any of it.
Jian released a trembling hand and leaned forward, palms on his knees, steadying his breath.
"She's a Dreadborne." He started. "Known as Mona."
"Let's move."
Jian was already turning toward Ina.
When they had put a comfortable distance between themselves and the clearing, Jian finally laughed again. Forced relief in it.
"That was close."
He walked in silence for a moment before continuing.
"Mona. There are records of something living in the Depths since the first Paragon. More and more evidence points to that something being her."
His voice dropped slightly.
"A long time ago, a mote related to adaptivity found her. And for whatever reason it favours her completely. It acts entirely in her interest, shaping her body toward whatever form gives her the highest chance of survival." He paused. "Apparently that form is human. That's why she looks the way she does."
He shifted uncomfortably.
"If you ever hear that sound again, never walk toward it. Run from it the way everything else down here does."
Kael glanced over his shoulder.
So there were things in the Depths that even rank five feared.
The two settled back onto Ina's head. Jian was noticeably quieter, lost somewhere in his own head.
'We're continuing west...'
He had lost all sense of direction when he fell and only recovered it after asking Jian. With Sole sitting along the edge of the western continent, they had to be travelling beneath the ocean that separated it from the central continent by now.
"From what I know, we're moving away from the exit I originally wanted to get to."
Jian glanced back at him, his eyes a little colder than usual.
"That exit is heavily surveilled by the Royal Noble family. From your rank alone I'd assume you're not supposed to be here. They would have killed you, or at minimum interrogated you to the point where you'd never travel unsupervised again." He gave Ina a few slow pats. "Arthur may not have had bad intentions, but his ignorance nearly cost you more than he realised."
'So that's what it is.'
He had decided to trust Jian to some extent. The man didn't appear to be on good terms with the Royal Noble family or the western continent as a whole, and neither was Kael. The power that family held was frightening enough that avoiding their attention was worthwhile even if they had no particular reason to consider him a threat.