Lorelei examined the pedestal in these tunnels beneath Grimoire’s public library. There was the quote from the Lunar Architects’ Leader, Grimwold Garcia, about walking in both light and darkness. And beneath that, the pair of round depressions, one with a pearl, the other with a sphere of obsidian.
“There’s an ominous air to this place,” Gwen said, looking around the rest of the domed chamber. “The tunnels themselves are old, but the lingering sensation of the darkness… that feels just as old, if not older.”
“This line about walking in both darkness and light,” Will said. “Do you think the Lunar Architects might have taken it that literally?”
“You think they might have intentionally housed the darkness?” Lorelei asked.
“Or accepted its existence and didn’t try to force it out,” Will said. “The darkness that Delilah destroyed slipped past the Moon’s Light Catcher. But even when she destroyed darkness in Grimoire, there’s still so much here.”
“Perhaps the darkness was here even before the Lunar Architects arrived,” Gwen said. “If it was here all that time, here when they found it, and they still founded this city atop it… the darkness could have colored their entire philosophy. ‘One must walk in both darkness and light,’ indeed.”
“How far down do these tunnels go?” Lorelei asked. “And how far out? Where else do they connect in Grimoire? If there are other entrances and exits, maybe we can explore this from multiple angles. I’m not sure being in this specific place, after the darkness directly attacked us here, is the best approach.”
“Let me see,” Gwen said, placing her hand against the wall and closing her eyes. Her hand pulsed gently with white light, three times. She opened her eyes. “These tunnels are vast, tunneling deep beneath us, but also outward… largely, they go that way.” She pointed towards the far wall, opposite from the chamber’s entrance.
Will pulled out a compass. “Northeast,” he said. “More north than east.” He had a knowing look in his eyes when he put the compass away.
“Grimson Bay…” Lorelei said softly. “The Bay’s full of ruins, ruins older than the city itself. But we’ve been to The Gate, and down into The Cove.”
“Perhaps our mistake was believing we’d seen all there was to see,” Gwen said. “I’d have to get close to the Bay, preferably through these tunnels, to know for certain — I can only sense so far through the earth. Before, I was just looking to map out the Underground, find out where the Shadows were hiding. But there are so many tunnels I never mapped. I noticed many passages going deeper, but I ignored them, because they weren’t relevant to our purpose then.”
“Is there a path going towards the Bay nearby?” Lorelei asked.
“Not far from here,” Gwen said.
“Think we’ve seen all there is to see here?” Will asked, looking around the chamber.
“For now,” Lorelei said. “I think this could just be a shrine, some kind of…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But if there’s some secret to it, it’ll probably be connected to more of these ruins and tunnels. We need to see more.”
Gwen led the way, and they were only among the many Hunters outside the chamber for a few paces before they reached an entrance to a different tunnel, one guarded by a pair of Hunters.
“We haven’t checked out beyond here,” said the burly, bearded man on the right. “No telling what you’ll find if you go that way.”
“We’ll be careful,” Lorelei said. “And we’ll send back word if there’s anything interesting.”
“If you listen closely,” said the dignified, grey-haired woman on the left, “there’s a sound like rushing water. Very faint, but it might not remain so if you search deeper down there.”
“Like rushing water…” Lorelei said, nodding thoughtfully.
The trio went on past the pair of guards, bringing forth magical globes of light to hover above and ahead of them, lighting the way. Like the tunnels that led to the strange shrine-like chamber, these passages were old but well-maintained, and carefully carven with strange patterns. Along the left side were spiraling, curving lines, looking to Lorelei rather like waves and rushing water. Along the right wall were four-pointed, X-shaped stars, crescent moons, and spiraling flames.
“Darkness came at us like a flood,” Gwen said. “Darkness to the left, light to the right.”
“I don’t understand it, though,” Lorelei said. “Were they really so convinced they could walk in both darkness and light? Did they not understand what they were dealing with at all?”
“The darkness is… seductive,” Gwen said, her gaze downcast. “It plays on our desires, on our fears, on what we want and what we’re weak to. There are far too many who give into its thrall. They kept these ruins a secret, it seems, these tunnels and ideals. You don’t find that quote about darkness and light so clearly shown in the city above. It’s all about the moon, about the Lunar Festival and things like that.”
“We focus on the light,” Will said. “Probably by design, to blind us to the darkness the Architects decided to keep a secret.”
“Like they realized it was wrong, but couldn’t purge themselves of it,” Lorelei said.
“Or public opinion forced their hand,” Gwen said. “From what Delilah learned while saving Solla and Lunos, the Lunar Architects weren’t all in agreement. It could have been that the ones who embraced the darkness — including their leader — eventually were in the minority, and were forced to hide all of this… because they couldn’t relinquish the darkness. It’s a sickness, and one their secrecy has allowed to fester beneath Grimoire all these centuries later.” She paused, placing her hand against the wall, pulsing with magic to feel out the tunnels around them. “We’ll have to turn right, soon. The path continuing straight ahead leads to a dead-end. A cave-in, it seems, but the damage is extensive, continuing forward farther than I can sense.”
“So better to just go around it,” Lorelei said. It wasn’t much longer before a tunnel branched off to the right, and they followed it. It soon curved to the left, angling them towards their original course.
Another pause and pulse from Gwen, followed by new directions. “There are four paths up ahead — a junction. One loops back the way we came by a different route, but the other three are stairs — two leading down, one leading up. The two leading down… they both lead to the same chamber, it’s vast, nothing at all like these tunnels. The stairs leading up go to a three-way intersection of more tunnels.”
“We should check out that chamber,” Lorelei said. “Something that large probably has some clues about this place.”
“Shouldn’t we have heard it by now?” Will asked.
“Heard what?” Lorelei asked.
“Rushing water,” Will said.
“Oh, that’s right,” Lorelei said. She listened closely, but she heard nothing in these stone halls.
“We couldn’t have taken a wrong turn yet,” Gwen said. “There hasn’t been a chance to.”
Up ahead, they arrived at the junction with stairs leading up and down. Lorelei went to each of the staircases in turn, and nodded to the ones descending. “I can hear it, just a little,” she said. “Down below.”
“That lady has remarkable hearing,” Gwen said.
As they descended, the sound of rushing water became more audible, though still quite faint. Dulled, as if it were coming from the other side of a great barrier. There was a dim light far below that came into view the further they descended, and at the bottom of the stairs they stepped out into a vast, marvelous chamber. A domed ceiling rose up six stories overhead, supported by a dozen pillars, six to the left and six to the right. The chamber went on several hundred feet forward, where a tall, arching doorway led into a new passage.
The light came from the ceiling, the stone itself aglow with rippling, aquamarine light. Here in the vast chamber, the sound of rushing water was clear, taking on an echoing quality thanks to the wide spaces and stone surfaces. Coupled with the glowing ceiling, the chamber felt like it was full of water, even though it was completely dry.
“There’s just the one passage over there,” Gwen said, pressing her hand against a pillar and pulsing with magic to check. “But there are echoes here… there used to be furniture, in a regular, perpetual set-up. I think this chamber used to be a sort of party hall.”
“Parties underground,” Lorelei said, walking slowly across the chamber. “Or meetings for the Architects who helped keep the darkness secret, disguised as parties? I doubt we’ll ever know this long after they’re all gone.”
Through the far arching doorway they went, and there was evidence of there once having been an actual door in the open archway, with ruined hinges, dangling from the edges. This next passage continued with the glowing ceilings, though the ceiling was now only three stories above. The passage continued straight for quite a ways, but there was a lot to take in. There were long tables down the center, each with models of some sort of city. Lorelei, Will, and Gwen all stopped at the very first table, because they immediately knew what the model was of.
“The Grimson Bay ruins,” Lorelei said softly, staring. There was The Gate at one end, in this model whole, not broken at the top. And while the Bay was still a bay, with plenty of water, the buildings rose up out of the water — great spiraling towers, wide domed buildings, and walled-off gardens, with bridges spanning between each structure. The model represented the water level with a thin, translucent cloth, with the buildings continuing underwater for many more stories than they bore above.
“An underwater city,” Gwen said. “There’s something similar in Topside Cove, but I’ve never heard of such a thing outside of the Enchanted Dominion.”
“And it was here before the Lunar Architects arrived,” Will said, dusting off an inscription. “It was whole — not in ruins at all — but was empty. They speculated it had been recently abandoned, but they don’t seem to have discovered why.”
“It’s a huge city,” Lorelei said. Following the model, it was clear that the city continued underneath the cliffs that rimmed the Bay, through an underwater cavern that went as far back as the center of the Crater District. Taking into account the sheer verticality of the city, Lorelei guessed it could have housed just as many people as Grimoire currently did. “For it to be abandoned, without any signs of why? That’s so strange.”
“Look here,” Gwen said, touching the farthest southern edge of the model city, where a tiny red flag was planted. “We’re in the ruins of that same city right now. This was an entrance, or exit.”
“So that’s why we hear the water,” Lorelei said, staring at the ceiling.
“Here’s a clue,” Will said. He was kneeling, looking at the bottom of the table from below. “Someone hid an inscription here — it’s not polished like the rest, but it’s dated just a few years after the others. ‘When we found this great city, the far door here was sealed shut. There were warnings, markings on the door to never open it, and powerful Guardian Magic sealing it — not to keep people from leaving the city, but to keep some great evil from entering. There was great debate among us whether to unseal the door. I count myself one of the few who dissented, but we were overruled. The door has been opened — and we can never shut it again.’ It’s signed ‘Rebecca Alister’.”
“That’s why they left,” Gwen said. “The people of this city, whoever they were, discovered the darkness. They sealed it off, but perhaps they feared that wasn’t enough, or perhaps…” Understanding dawned in her eyes, and she nodded slowly. “They knew the seductive, tempting nature of the darkness. As long as they remained here, some would be drawn to it. Their seal would never be safe unless they abandoned the city completely.”
“And then the Lunar Architects came along,” Lorelei said. “Brave explorers, they did what explorers do — they went as far as they could, pursued answers above all else, drawn by curiosity and excitement. I can’t say I blame them, because they probably didn’t know what the darkness was like, not then. They would have seen warnings from a previous generation, from a previous civilization, and thought ‘We’re newer, more advanced, more knowledgeable. Whatever’s through there doesn’t need to scare us.’ If only they’d understood what they unsealed.”
“What’s through there was once part of the city, too,” Will said, still under the table. “There’s another from Rebecca Alister, stating that the model doesn’t show the entire city as it was when they found it, in order to disguise the truth. They tried to make it look like where we came from was something new or different.”
“Evil thrives on secrecy and lies,” Gwen said softly, shaking her head.
They moved on down the passage, where each new table brought a variation on the model of the city, marked with new discoveries about the function of different buildings, and with a flag steadily moving northwards to mark the journey of the trio. But one thing became swiftly apparent — the ancient city was falling into ruin at a shocking rate. Each model covered just a single year’s passage of time, and yet each showed brand new devastation, new buildings collapsed, new sections flooded. The ancient city the Lunar Architects had found and been so excited to explore was crumbling around them.
“ ‘Whatever the others may say’,” Will said, reading from another hidden inscription by Rebecca Alister under the third table, “ ‘Our arrival here has, for reasons we have yet to discover, accelerated the decline and ruin of this once magnificent city. We sought to establish our home here, in these great towers and mystical undersea gardens, but now we must turn our attention to the land beyond. The unspeakable shadow that we unsealed… perhaps its power is to blame. Somehow it has not harmed us, but I fear that is far more of a worry than if it actively opposed us. In fact, the shadow seems to delight in our presence here. We have accelerated our investigations, but parts of this city are already lost to us. And yet we will not leave — once again, the vote has chosen the more reckless path. Though we begin to establish a city on the surface, our beloved Grimoire, I worry for future generations. This nameless shadow will not stay confined so far below forever.’ ”
“ ‘Our beloved Grimoire’…” Lorelei said, nodding as she thought on other inscriptions they’d read so far. “They should probably have called it New Grimoire.”
“Refugees from a city fallen into ruin,” Gwen said. “Though that only raises more mysteries. What destroyed the original Grimoire?”
“The Lunar Architects weren’t the only group to set out from the original, either,” Will said, standing and surveying the model on the table, one that already showed the collapse of the central arch of The Gate, just three years after the Lunar Architects had arrived. “It makes you wonder what became of the others, if they had dreams of grandeur and establishing a new Grimoire or if they just wanted to find safety somewhere.”
“They fled ruin only to bring ruin upon a whole new place,” Gwen said. “Perhaps Grimoire is cursed.”
“No,” Lorelei said, moving on to the fourth table. “We understand the darkness, the way the Lunar Architects didn’t. We know it can be defeated. We know it can be purged. The Lunar Architects embraced it, cultivated it, and then kept it secret and hidden. But now that we know the truth, we can make right what they made wrong. We can heal the sickness, instead of being overcome by it.”
“The battle for Grimoire isn’t over, then,” Gwen said. “Defeating the Radiant King and the Shadows was only the beginning.”
“And it led us here,” Lorelei said. “We wouldn’t have even come down here and discovered all of this if not for Blaise’s subterfuge and Kaohlad’s scheming. This is just what comes next. We’ve found the real evil that threatens Grimoire. So we keep digging, keep learning, make sure we fully understand what we’re up against, and then fight back properly.”
“We should see the rest of this, for starters,” Will said, pointing down the passage.
Lorelei chuckled, her serious expression dissolving. “Right, right,” she said. “I’m already getting ahead of myself. Come on. Let’s see all there is to see.”
Onward they went, down this walk through history. There were more secrets beneath Grimoire than Lorelei had ever guessed. But now those secrets were being pulled into the light. An ancient evil was exposed. And soon, Lorelei vowed — soon, it would be defeated.