Yvette tapped the wall with her knuckles. "The moss dampens almost all the echo." She murmured to herself.
They stood in the cave Rosalie had mentioned. Fortunately it had been less than a thousand steps away, barely a detour.
"Right." Kael glanced at her.
A thin stream of water wound between their feet, filling the silence with the sound of running water. Memories of Hollow Mountain surfaced briefly in Kael's mind.
"Can you see in the dark?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
Noted. Yvette had motes for that at least.
Thick wooden beams lined the walls, giving the space a more oppressive quality than the darkness alone would have.
"We're going down, I assume?"
"Yes. Though, thankfully tungsten tends to form closer to the surface than most metals."
"Rosalie said the Smolten used this place, right? I thought they didn't have any real infrastructure."
"They didn't, until toward the end. My guess is it started as something else entirely and was converted to a mine later, by humans."
"I see."
The two made their way down through complete darkness without much difficulty. Now and then something winged flapped past them in the dark.
When they reached roughly three hundred steps down they stopped.
"Well. I'm fairly certain neither the Smolten nor any human made this."
A void opened in front of them. A hole wider than either of their sensory motes could reach across. Kael kicked a stone over the edge and waited. No sound came back.
"I'll walk the edge and look for the metal. Wait here." Kael said, stepping over the edge.
It was a long tunnel-like structure. Something close to what Ina would leave behind if she slithered through solid ground. The walls had been completely melted and resolidified, leaving them smooth and black with impurities caught in the rock like frozen bubbles.
The air was thick with a smell he couldn't quite describe. Dense enough that one might almost believe it possible to walk on without the Datum mote.
It wasn't all bad. Tungsten has a considerably higher melting point than the surrounding rock, which meant finding it required no particular effort. It simply hadn't melted with everything else.
Kael let his fingers follow the wall, sending pieces of metal to the Stone Coffin as he went.
When he had gathered enough he made his way back to Yvette.
She was crouched at the edge, looking intently into the darkness below.
"There's something down there." She said without looking up.
Kael followed her gaze. "I don't see anything."
She pointed to her eye. "My field of vision is narrow in the dark, but I can see considerably further than most."
"What do you see?"
"That's the strange part." She paused. "Trees. Not just trees either. Flowers, grass, a river. And something moving down there."
'Another entrance to the Depths?' Kael's eyes moved to the melted wall. 'Has actually something similar to Ina passed through here recently and melted a path as it went?'
"Valerian." Yvette straightened. "Carry me down. We have to look."
It was a small predicament. He wasn't supposed to know about the Depths. Neither was she. He could always come back alone later, but it would be a lie to say he wasn't curious. And there was another consideration. He wanted to get closer to the Whitlock family. Much like with Sielle, sharing a secret that could ruin someone's life was one of the more reliable ways to build trust quickly.
"Come." Kael stretched his arms out.
She jumped into his arms and he walked them down.
The closer they came to the ground the clearer it became why the stone had made no sound when it fell.
Kael set her down among the lilies.
The flowers stretched in every direction like a sea rather than a field. Left, right, forward, they simply kept going, with the occasional oak that had somehow managed to push through among them.
"What is this place?... It's beautiful."
None of the beauty registered in Kael's mind.
'Another entrance to the Depths. But why? Why has something moved this close to the surface?'
He had never fully understood it, even after the time spent with Jian. Why didn't Depths creatures go to the surface? The only real exceptions had been Mona, who had tried, and the pitch black bird Jian had been attempting to bond. But everything else stayed below. Why?
It wasn't as though all of them lacked the capability. Jian had mentioned that the Royal Noble families were already struggling to keep beasts and Dreadbornes away from the surrounding continents of the central continent. And as far as Kael could tell, the creatures of the Depths weren't fundamentally different from surface creatures, with the same basic drives. Hunting, breeding, sleeping. Different environment, sure, but similar if not exactly the same in nature.
So why didn't they come up?
'Have they developed some form of intelligence? A new instinct? Something that tells them to seek light?'
He looked at the melted tunnel wall above them.
Whatever had decided the answer to that question was different enough to act on it.
"We shouldn't be here."
Yvette looked at him, mildly confused. "Why not? I mean look at it. It seems to continue endlessly." She gestured around her.
"We're not supposed to know about this place."
"I'm not following."
Kael held out a hand. "Grab on. I'll tell you on the way up."
She took it without fully understanding.
"It's called the Depths…"
Kael continued to cover the Depths in vague detail on the way up. He talked about falling into it accidentally back in Sole, about the rank five Luminaires he had encountered there. He made sure to mention the Royal Noble family's connection to emphasise the weight of it. He even mentioned Ina.
By the time they reached the entrance again Yvette understood the gravity of what they had stumbled into. She was equally horrified and excited.
"Does my dad or mum know about it?"
"Probably not. From what I can tell the Royal Nobles want to keep it secret even from noble families. I even asked my own parents about it once, back when they were still alive. They just looked at me confused." Kael said softly.
Kael was a noble in Yvette's eyes too. At the mention of his parents she seemed to fully accept that her own might be just as unaware.
She fiddled with her coat sleeve absently. "We mustn't talk to anyone about this then?"
"Ideally, no. As I said, we're not supposed to know about this. They might give us some slack given our status, but nothing good would come of anyone finding out. Let's promise we won't talk about it with anyone but each other." Kael said, holding out a pinky finger.
She found it a little silly. But she wrapped hers around his with a soft smile.
"Sure. I, Yvette Ester Whitlock, do solemnly swear upon my honour, my bloodline, and the good name of House Whitlock, that I shall not speak of the Depths to any soul, be they friend, foe, or kin. I shall neither reveal what we have seen, nor what we have learned, nor what we have agreed to keep buried. May my word be held sacred, my silence remain unbroken, and my little finger serve as a witness to this most solemn pact." She squeezed his finger a little tighter with a giggle.
Kael raised an eyebrow, amused, and began.
"Valerian Solian Eireindaile, of House Eireindaile, gives his word and binds his name to the silence agreed upon. What has been entrusted to me shall remain unspoken, what has been witnessed shall remain undisclosed. Let neither gold nor threat, neither crown nor kin, compel my tongue to betray what my honour has sworn to keep.
An Eireindaile's word is not given twice, nor is it taken lightly. So long as my name endures, so shall my silence." He returned the squeeze.
"Consider it sealed."
Kael grabbed one of the support beams.
"Step back a little."
He tore it free with a loud crack. The roof came down in stages, then all at once, sealing the entrance completely.
"Was that really necessary?" Yvette tilted her head.
"Not really. But the second, or perhaps third, or fourth reason the Royal Nobles want to keep the Depths secret is that it contains ancient materials that no longer exist on the surface. If they found this entrance we would lose unsupervised access. We might be good samaritans now, but who knows what the future requires. There may come a time we need something from down there."
Yvette rolled her eyes, fully convinced he was joking.