Chapter 681: The Spire [3]

She settled back against the ice wall. "Our job right now is to not make things worse. The best thing we can do for them is stay hidden and be there when they get back."

Marek exhaled slowly and nodded, though the worry didn’t fully leave his face.

"...You’re right. I just don’t like sitting here while they’re out there."

"Nobody does," Vela said quietly, her own eyes drifting back toward the north. "But trusting your team means trusting them to survive without you hovering over them. Let them do their part. They’ll be back."

She didn’t add the other half of the thought, the part she kept to herself.

That if she was wrong, there was nothing the four of them could do about it now anyway.

***

Moon had finished placing the last of the explosive runes when he saw them.

At the far end of the chamber, past the throne, past the gallery of hides and mounted heads, stood a display he hadn’t noticed until now.

Seven human skeletons, arranged upright, propped and wired into standing positions like the beast skulls along the wall, cleaned of every scrap of flesh, bones pale against the glowing ice.

"This is..." Moon whispered grimly.

He crossed the chamber slowly, taking in the scene.

"There is only seven of them..."

The number was significant, it was the exact number of a gate exploration team.

Just a few meters away, their gear was stripped and displayed.

Moon’s eyes focused on the gear, and he could immediately tell these were made by the association

The seven skeletons were without a doubt the previous team that never managed to escape this landscape.

Moon walked towards the corpeses before storing them inside his storage ring. Returning these bodies back to earth was the least he could do, these people had families that deserved to get their corpses back, even if it was just a skeleton.

Moon hoped that this good deed would return to him eventually.

After storing the bodies and armours in his storage ring, Moon’s mind was focused on the way these corpses made it here.

Every trace of the previous team had pointed north, toward the black spire. Their equipment had been scattered along the northern route. Their last camp had been built facing north. Their final entry had described a black ice spire and the cold deepening as they approached it. Everything about their path said they had died fighting the northern commander.

Yet here they were. In the southern spire, displayed as the swordsman commander’s prizes.

Which meant something had happened that caused them to move south before they met their demise.

Either the previous team had escaped all the way south, only to die here. Or the two commanders were more connected than their rivalry suggested, and the bodies had been moved, traded, shared. Or something else was going on in this gate that Moon hadn’t pieced together yet.

He couldn’t leave without knowing more.

Moon activated Eye of Truth and swept the chamber, looking for discrepancies, hidden compartments, anything the commander might have concealed.

The skill pierced the surfaces around him, reading the ice and bone for what lay beneath, and something caught his eyes near the base of the throne.

Moon moved toward it, shoving aside a heavy carved chair, a bone rack, a stack of pelts, clearing the furniture the elf had arranged over the spot.

Beneath the last of it lay a carpet of a beast’s fur, and when Moon dragged it away, he found what it had been hiding.

A trapdoor set flush into the ice floor, its seams nearly invisible.

"Hid it well," Moon muttered, glancing at the pile of furniture he’d had to move to reach it. Whatever was down there, the commander hadn’t wanted it found. Which meant it was exactly what Moon needed to see.

He crouched and worked his fingers into the seam.

Outside the spire, Theo held his vantage point, and his unease was growing by the second.

Time was slipping away.

Moon had gone in and gone quiet, and every minute of silence stretched Theo’s nerves tighter. He kept his eyes fixed north, watching the horizon, waiting for the moment the white commander turned back.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for that moment to arrive.

A silhouette that didn’t match the white canvas was approaching rapidly, streaking south across the snow toward the spire.

The white swordsman commander, mounted on its beast, tearing home to defend what it had left undefended.

Theo’s stomach dropped.

He snatched up his communication device, pushing it close to his mouth.

"Moon! Moon, it’s moving. The white commander is near, it’s coming, it’s coming fast."

Theo waited a breath for a response but got nothing in return, "Moon. Do you hear me? You need to get out, now! You only have a minute at most before he reaches you!"

Silence was his only response.

Theo pressed the device again, harder, as if that would help.

"Moon. Answer me."

Despite his growing worry, Theo tried one final time.

When that didn’t work, Theo realized that Moon was likely not receiving anything.

Theo glanced at the spire, and cursed under his breath, his eyes snapping between the approaching commander and the shattered gate of the spire where Moon had vanished.

"Something inside that damn place must be affecting the channel...come on, come on...Theo."

The communication device they were using was one of the best, since even in the freezing cold of this wasteland, it had worked. And yet, now, it wasn’t.

Something special inside the spire had the power to affect the device.

The white commander closed the distance with terrifying speed, his horse trailing behind him and Moon was still inside, deaf to every warning.

"Do I go in and look for him... or do I wait here...?"

Theo ground his teeth, indecision gnawing at him.

Ten seconds. That was all it would take to reach the spire.

Finding Moon once he was inside, though? There was no telling how long that would take and most importantly put his life at the highest risk.