Raising the wooden mug to quench her parched throat, Sara took a moment to get back into telling the rest of their adventure and the story behind Crysta's disappearance.
"So…" She sighed with a slight satisfaction, feeling visibly better than just a moment before. She lowered her mug down to the side of the log she was sitting on. She fidgeted for an extra couple of seconds returning to a comfier, more comfortable position before she got back to the storyteller mode.
"Eventually, we found some clues." She began, darting her squinted eyes on the guilt-ridden girl. "After looking around we only grew more and more certain she was there. Anyway, as we checked the altar…"
She then began recounting the rest of the day, continuing from where she stopped a moment ago.
Following the petite assassin girl's footsteps, Sara and the rest of the group found it abruptly stopped and somehow vanish before the altar. This made them confused as to what could have happened, what could she have done to vanish without a trace from seemingly one second to the next.
They surrounded the large rectangular dark gray stone slab from all sides. Assured that she must have done something, they each began to cast their scrutinizing gazes upon the smoothly shaped, mysterious object.
Sara, as she gave a closer, more careful look at it, grew more and more shocked by each passing second. Firstly, the material the altar was made from was not something she could recognize. It was cold to the touch, and whilst it was more matte on the surface than to have any of that familiar metallic glints and shines reminding her more to clay than anything else, it was still as solid, seemingly as hard as any other regular metal they used nowadays.
Still, there was something different about it… As Sara kept on caressing its surface, a strange idea began to take its root in her mind… Which she tried casting away at first, but later on as they kept on inspecting the object and later on its immediate surroundings… she decided to give it a try.
With a light fake cough she garnered the attention of the rest of the party, and warning them to take a bit of a distance in case of anything unexpected happens, she gently placed both of her slender hands over the top of the altar.
Taking one extra moment to collect her thoughts and heave a sigh, she then activated her pool of mana and began to circulate it, inside her body.
Her eyes began to glow with their violet luster as her heritage was gradually activated, she began to circulate all of her energy, slowly guiding it towards both of her palms.
The veins in her arms lit up, shining through the thin short sleeves of her shirt, looking like brilliant, but oddly shaped gemstone snakes, racing towards the tip of her fingers. As her mana slowly began to pour into the stone slab from the connection she had made with it, at first there was no reaction at all.
Still, though initially, it seemed as her attempt was a failure, Sara did not give up. She could feel that something was slowly awakening inside this solid slab, hungrily engorging on the immaterial nectar that she was injecting into it.
Was it a mechanism? Was it a creature? Was it a conscious entity? Sara couldn't be sure, none of what seemed to happen in this world made any sense after all. She kept up with a steady, but the slow pace of continuously pooling, channeling her own mana into the dark altar, eager to see if anything would come out of it.
Their eager, tense waiting didn't last long. After a couple more seconds of the violet light show from the purple-haired leader of the group, the strange altar finally reacted. A light humming sound came from its depth, a gentle heavenly tune filled the area around them.
Strange lines appeared atop of it, settling into a strange, unknown formation. Like a giant labyrinth, an endless-looking violet-colored maze covered the previously seamless surface of the material.
Following that, a light clicking sound came from the sides. Two handles appeared -like ears- at both far sides of the altar.
After that, as if fulfilling its intended function, the altar soon lost its color, returning to its previous, colorless state.
Heaving a sigh due to the slight exasperation Sara felt of the loss of a great deal of her reserved energy, she stepped away from the altar and beckoned the group to get back.
Looking at the handles, the group first thought that they were supposed to lift and move the altar, which they then tried… only to fail to move it. Though it was not a question that they do need to somehow move the object, as after the strange event, they could now see a bit beneath the large slab, and see the seams of a hole, a tunnel leading underground.
Through a series of trial and error, eventually, they found the correct sequence they needed to complete in order to unlock the strange mechanism. The large slab was finally shifted, moved to the side, revealing a dark unlit staircase that led them in a steep decline to somewhere below.
Though the team was inclined to explore the unknown, they managed to control their adventurous urges and instead think with a bit more clarity. Could Crysta, a single petite girl, that wasn't known for her excessive physical might move what they had to utilize everyone to do so? Could she have even activated the mechanism by her lonesome? Whilst she wasn't completely 'Dry', as some would call the talentless, magicless people, that held no mana inside their bodies, she was a far cry from moving such an amount as Sara.
Then where could she have gone? Where was Sara?
"And? Where did she go in the end? Where did you find her?" Captain Don asked growing impatient through the suspense Sara kept up with her expertly recounted tale.
"Well… While she did explore the ruins, and it was also her actions that somehow brought the structure above the ground from being buried under the sand… She did not have any luck with the mechanism at the altar…" Sara sighed, casting her gaze on the girl once more. Squinting her eyes, she nodded at her, which the girl seemed to finally understand and with a defeated sigh returned with a similar nod.
Reaching for her inner breast pocket, she revealed a small marquise-shaped gemstone. Like the stone slab, this one was of similar material, however, this one had a pale reddish hue instead of the despairing dark gray the altar back at the ruins were wearing. There was a faint light, a little spark-like seedling flickering powerlessly inside it, like a faint remnant of a soul living on its last stretch…
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