Oras sighed.

  After an uncomfortable night disrupted twice by enterprising carrion feeders, they had woken up and tried to find a seller for the corpse. No one had even bothered inspecting it. After getting a formal complaint by a local official that they should dump the body off the road once they left, the Dragonblood finally threw in the towel.

  Torm was visibly unenthused by the news. The veteran had spent the entire morning resting, getting his back to fully recover.

  “If you wish to chew me out now, I would accept it,” Oras broke the topic, after telling the mentor everything that had transpired.

  “I don’t think I need to. You should take this as a lesson…” the older man answered. His knees cracked once when he got up. His back made the same noise twice when he stretched. A gasp of pure relief filled his lungs. “Oh, nature, heaven and earth, thank you… ah, everything just snapped back into place.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I was getting at something.”

  “Please,” Oras gestured for the man to continue.

  “The reason why Quests are paid as well as they are isn’t that our patrons are that gracious, it’s that being an adventurer is risky business on several levels and we just won’t work for less. Everything about our income is subject to dozens of factors that we have virtually no control over.” Torm kicked the now stiff corpse of the tiger. “Sometimes, we get nothing at all.”

  “I will remember it,” Oras said.

  “Great… now, since we are here, let’s buy some good food before we have to get back to subsisting off the jungle.”

  Dreamday, 11th of Octavius, 11th year of the Stringless Era

  The rest of the journey down the Path of the Supernatural Elephant was eventless. It did wonders for Torm’s mood, who went from grumpy back to the quiet competence that Oras and Theria had come to expect from him. The two of them were a bit disappointed by the lack of further excitement. Not even Theria voiced it, however. The failure to sell the perfectly fine pelt of such a massive beast had spoiled their enthusiasm for distractions.

  ‘Perhaps this is why adventurers have a reputation for being narrow in their priorities,’ Oras contemplated. ‘Risks that don’t pay are demotivating. Should plights go ignored, because of that? What is the responsibility of an adventurer?’

  While he gnawed on those moral questions, they reached their destination.

  The construction site was clearly visible from a distance. Drainages had been dug into the forest, to let the ground dry out a bit before it was shovelled away and replaced with better bedding for the many stones that would be placed down for the god-machine to marvel at as it walked its eternal patrol.

  Some people sat around tents by the construction site. When the party approached, one of them stood up. “Careful, wanderers!” he shouted at them. “There’s danger here.”

  “We are not just wanderers,” Oras shouted back. He waited to explain further until they had bridged the gap. The group of five young men, all of them tanned and dark-haired, scanned them with a mild degree of distrust. It was just some healthy caution and faded quickly once they were talking. “We took on the mission to verify that a Precursor Ruin was unearthed here.”

  “Ah, wonderful… was startin’ to wonder if that was just going ignored.”

  Theria tilted to the side, looking at the excavation site. During the digging of the ditches, someone must have hit the first wall or pillar. Further digging had continued until an entryway had been found. It currently was crudely kept shut by a large wooden plank, its simplistic make contrasting displeasingly with the elegant, white-gold archway of the structure.

  The ruins before them were infinitely better preserved than the one they had been at during their last mission. Rain had washed much of the dirt out of the gorgeous carvings. Symmetry and mysterious materials fused into a structure that was, even half-submerged, gorgeous to behold. Even after all this time, the white walls were as smooth as polished glass.

  “Gotta ask, why are ya down here? Not like we need ya to take a peek at it.”

  “Our concern isn’t people looking at it, it's that somethin’ might come out,” the leader of the camp answered. “We heard somethin’ in the days after we sent out the mission. We think there’s a Ceramic in there.”

  Torm immediately took three steps away from the ruin. “We’ve hereby verified that you have indeed found a Precursor Ruin. We’ll give the Adventurer’s Guild word that they should send a seasoned expedition as soon as possible,” the veteran stated. “Our mission here is done.”

  “Just like that?” Theria asked, a tad disappointed. “We could take a closer look.”

  “If you want to go die that badly, you can do what you want,” Torm’s voice was firm. “I’m not setting a single foot even near a place that might contain the Precursor’s last mistakes.”

  Oras was quiet for a long second, his mind racing. This singular word, Ceramic, invoked in him a deep aversion. Yet, was he not an adventurer? What did he hope for, if not an opportunity like this?

  In Torm’s caution and eagerness to leave, Oras saw exactly how he did not want to end. An old adventurer simply fading away into office work, well-off but not rich. His advice held much value - and so did his aversions.

  “We will explore them,” Oras decreed.

  “You’re stepping into your grave,” Torm warned.

  “Death to my body or death to my soul, I prefer the former,” Oras said and beheld the ruin. “I have more ambition than you do, for better and for worse.”

  The veteran wasn’t even the slightest bit offended by those words. He just shook his head at the folly of youth. “I’ll tell the guild about your decision.”

  “Do that… until later, Torm.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “See ya,” Theria added, following her husband when he began to approach the ruin.

  “Farewell,” Torm said direly.

  The camp of men just watched the interaction with shrugged shoulders and confused gazes.

  Oras inspected the walls, marvelled one more time at the construction, then grabbed the edge of the wooden barricade. Soft dirt made it easy to reposition. For a tense moment, he wondered what would happen if the Ceramic was right there. A needless question, there was only a foyer, half-filled with dirt. An ancient spring still produced a sputter of clear water. The walls gleamed softly from light enchantments that had faded but not vanished.

  “We’ll be sneaking. No speaking,” Oras said.

  Theria just nodded, her gaze reflecting her focused mind. This was more than just a light thrill to chase. If even half the tales of Ceramics were true, then this very well could have turned into their grave.

  There was only one way to find out.

  They walked into the foyer and circled around the water fountain. Behind it was a descending staircase. Careful not to make any noise, they went down. The steps gradually transformed. The dirt that had been pressed into the foyer by shifting earth and rain had not gone further than halfway down the staircase.

  Oras’ skin tingled with excitement when they emerged into a large, horizontal chamber. The glow of magic was present here as well, basking everything in a twilight of faded gold.

  The hall was separated into an upper and a lower layer. They emerged on the upper one and very carefully approached the railing made of crystal glass and smooth white stone. They gazed down at an opulent corridor easily ten metres wide. The overhanging catwalk that they were on was held up by pillars, which extended further upwards until they joined fluidly with the curved ceiling. Under the roof, a network of jagged, golden lines formed as much of an artwork as it served to keep the place operating. Mana pulses visibly travelled through the network, forming travelling crests of blue and purple on the gold. Occasionally, two pulses would cross, causing sparks to dance in the air like fireflies.

  The place was broken. The lights were too dim for comfortable usage, the mana circuitry was malfunctioning, and nothing occupied the tall windows that bordered the corridor. The Precursors had apparently abandoned it before their myth-shrouded end.

  Oras was contemplating where to go first. There was the corridor ahead, but there were also various side-complexes behind doors, some closed, some open. The show windows gave an open view of vast spaces that still contained some items. If he did explore the rooms, he had to decide between upper or lower layer. If he wanted to advance deeper into the complex in the search of something obviously valuable, he needed to do the same.

  A cautioning factor was their lack of carrying capacity. In legend, adventurers often had small pouches that could store entire weapon racks. Oras and Theria were not legends, they only had their hands, feet, and a little bit of space in their bags. The backpacks, they decided to leave by the entrance. This was risky enough without them hauling their tents around.

  Doing a full sweep was unlikely to be worth it.

  Then again, who knew where the good stuff was hidden?

  Oras gestured towards the nearest door. The crystal clear glass swung inwards after only a simple push, allowing him and Theria to enter the room.

  The grandeur of the Precursors never ceased to amaze. They were inside a single continuous chamber, easily thirty metres from entrance to far wall, and yet there wasn’t a singular pillar in sight. Just in the field of engineering, every report that Oras had read about had proclaimed the unfathomable superiority of these distant forebearers. Materials, styles, mathematics, no current civilization could mimic what the Precursors had done. Only the most wealthy of rulers could afford to try and mimic it and even they relied on a copious amount of magic that would, without constant maintenance, be turned into rubble under its own weight.

  Not so the construction of the Precursors. Whatever kind of concrete they had poured, it retained itself even in the absence of magic. The magic circuitry that was, somehow, still operable was an addition to the structure, the source of light and other comforts.

  There was more art and technology in this singular chamber than in half of Kumse and what had the Precursors used it for?

  Selling baubles, apparently.

  The room was filled with shelves. They were made out of steel, which itself was ludicrous to consider. There was enough metal in these shelves to cover a whole platoon of men and their horses in plate armour. For the Precursors, one of the most foundational materials to current civilization was so disposable that they used it instead of wood just because it was more convenient.

  On the shelves were various kinds of armbands, earrings and pretty gemstones. The sizes varied wildly, making it difficult to consider what height or size the Precursors may have been. It was commonly agreed that they must have been close to the standard human in their dimensions, courtesy of the shape of the Stringless, but nobody knew. There was no surviving mural, statue or other representation of the Precursors that Oras had ever heard of.

  The Dragonblood took in all of the wealth around them. If they could have claimed a quarter of this room, they would have been set for years. Their pockets weren’t that deep and even if Kumsyurt had a right of first explorers, it would have gone to the villagers, not them.

  All of these riches would partly go into the pockets of whatever adventuring party actually cleared it out first, and majorly into that of the Harem Duke of Kumsyurt. When something this large was discovered, the state always took its cut.

  ‘Might be for the better in this case… the price for steel would crash if all of this was brought to the market immediately,’ Oras contemplated.

  Theria tugged on his sleeve. He turned to her. Without speaking, her lips formed the words, “Over there.” Her finger then pointed Oras towards a highly ornate niche in the back. If the Precursors had half the same aesthetics, that was where the good stuff had been kept.

  They made their way over and found a display case of crystals. The entire cabinet was fashioned from glass, kept together by white, gold-trimmed pieces of smooth stone. That mysterious material of the Precursors that they used so dominantly and that none appeared capable of reproducing. Porcelain was the closest to it and even it was lacking.

  The niche continued a bit deeper. The ceiling there was separated out, the edges of the half-room filled with decorated pillars. They did not touch the locked cases, for fear of making noise. The long, smooth crystals within appeared valuable, but they were not worth the risk.

  As luck would have it, one of them was placed outside its case. It laid on a cushion on a table. Had it been used to showcase the purpose of them, perhaps?

  Oras licked his lips. Curiosity and greed won out over caution in this instance. Surely he could pick something up, right?

  The crystal was about half the length of his forearm. Its surface was smooth, grooves etched into the surface giving it a spiralling form. The ends were blunt, capped off with silver disks, complimenting the opaque, milky whiteness of the main body of the crystal.

  ‘What is your purpose?’ Oras wondered.

  The thought had barely been made, that the crystal exploded into a flash of light. It was bright enough that he felt like he was staring into the midsummer sun at high noon. As soon as the shock of the light surfaced, the light disappeared again.

  Oras swallowed and looked around. He listened closely to anything that might have been moving. When there was nothing, he returned his attention to the crystal. ‘Shine light again?’ he requested in his thoughts.

  The remnant of the hallowed Precursors obliged. It shone brightly, then, at the behest of his thoughts, concentrated its radiance into a beam. Oras quickly found that the item responded to multiple instructions. Strength, direction and angle of the beam were all part of its functionality. The light was without temperature.

  To call it a better torch would have been an understatement. This allowed him to flash light in whatever way he wanted. Mages would have taken dozens of gold coins to create something similar.

  Oras put the light crystal into the pouch on his waist. It barely fit. Just that light alone made the trip commercially worth it, but it wasn’t a really exciting find. All it did was show that the Precursors had been so wealthy that their common items were treasures to the aristocracy of current civilizations. It was the idea of finding something that no one alive today could replicate that truly excited the Dragonblood.

  The duo scanned the rest of the room, then snuck over to the adjacent one, then the complex next to that. Each of them was a storage or shop dedicated to some other kind of good. The two that they entered after the bauble shop had been cleared out, however. Only the structure itself remained, with some steel shelves within. Nothing that they could even consider taking along.