The entryway leading to the Ocean Klykia began with a long corridor, sloping downward and curving ever so slightly to the side. Damon stood to his feet, aided by Malon and Ria. They’d brought lanterns and several torches with them, but they weren’t immediately necessary.
The walls were made of a different stone than the porous lava-rock outside. It was glowing faintly, and it gave off a strange light that pulsed inward and outward, giving the interior a sense of breath as the illumination ebbed and flowed.
Subtle wisps of a ghostly-blue mist-like substance swirled through the air, slowly coming to pool along the ground to form a dense layer that swirled in response to the motions of their feet. It was surreal, especially in combination with the walls, and for a moment, Damon and the others simply peered at their surroundings, including the lava door which now sealed them in.
“What is this stuff?” muttered Vel. She crouched down, tracing a finger through it. The path her fingertip took left emptiness in its wake, and she smirked as she wrote her name, the V fading from legibility by the time she reached the r .
“Are you sure it is safe to touch?” asked Ria.
Vel made a peep and drew her hand back.
“It should be,” said Malon. “I have not encountered it myself before, but given what solas has told me about the Ocean Klykia, and the sensation of it, I would assume it to be condensed essence.”
“She’s right,” whispered Myr.
“Myr just confirmed it,” said Damon.
“So… what?” asked Vel. “It’s like magic mist, or something?”
“In layman’s terms, yes,” said Malon. “It’s perfectly safe to touch, but try to avoid breathing in too much of it. I’ve no reason to think it dangerous, but it would still be good to take some general precautions.”
“Does the existence of this mist imply that we will be facing abominations of magic?” asked Ria.
Malon frowned, shaking her head a little. “I cannot say for sure. It certainly doesn’t make it any less likely.”
“Weapons out,” said Damon. “Stay close. Keep your eyes open. We’ll be fine as long as we move as a group.”
He drew his sword and took position at the front of the party. Ria was next to him, with Vel in the middle, and Lilian and Malon in the back. Slowly, they started down the tunnel.
It curved in the same direction, sloping downward at just enough of an angle to descend approximately one level each complete circle it turned. They were descending into the mountain. Damon tried to picture where they were in relation to what he’d seen from outside, but he could only determine with certainty that it was somewhere lower than where they’d started.
The mist grew thicker as they made their way deeper in. Small tufts began to rise from where it pooled along the floor more frequently, reminding him of the way smoke curled through some of the heartlift weed dens back in Avaricia before its fall. He was careful to brush them away from his face each time they came too close.
After what seemed like a good hour of following the same curving tunnel, they reached an intersection. Three paths lay ahead of them, one straightforward, and two identical offshoots to the left and right.
“Which way?” muttered Damon.
Nobody answered. He guessed one direction was as good as another, given how little they had to go off. He turned to tell them as much only to discover that he was suddenly standing alone within the tunnel.
He stared back at the path from which he’d come, shaking his head. It was possible that the others had stopped for some reason without saying anything and he’d continued forward, lost in his own thoughts. He hadn’t exactly been checking every second to make sure the others were still with him. When was the last time he’d heard someone speak up?
“Hey,” he shouted. “Up here. There’s an intersection.”
No reply came, which was incredibly worrying. Damon hurried back down the tunnel he’d came from, still holding his Remenai sword at the ready, moving at an even jog.
He stared, in disbelief as the tunnel opened up into another intersection, identical to the first, impossible to have missed on his way by previously. He looked over his shoulder, back in the direction he considered to be forward, and then back down the tunnel which should have led him along the winding path leading to the exit. He was sure that he hadn’t taken any turns.
“Aesta!” he shouted. “Ria! Vel… Lilian!”
Nobody shouted back. Damon swore under his breath. They should have been holding hands, or something, but how could they have expected that such cumbersome precautions would have been necessary?
“True Divine,” he muttered. “Did you see what happened, Myr?”
There was a pause, and he felt a flutter of fear as he briefly anticipated no response from her, either.
“I saw what you saw,” whispered Myr, apologetically.
Damon kicked a foot through the mist. He walked toward the wall, setting a hand against the stones, impossibly uniform, identical to one another, cemented together with a substance too smooth and perfect to understand.
He slid his hand to the nearest corner and ran his thumb over it. It was rounded, with no sharp edges. He briefly wondered if perhaps there’d been hidden doors in place earlier he’d passed that had since slid open to reveal the intersection he’d “missed,” but that was such a convoluted explanation. Did he have a better one?
“Alright,” he muttered. “I’ll find them. But I can’t get lost myself, and this… maze seems like it wants me to. I have to be smart.”
He took the tip of his sword and began scratching an arrow marking his way into the stone. He was at it for a good minute before realizing he hadn’t even made the slightest line in the wall. It was harder than the steel of his blade, which was ridiculous.
He took a deep breath and opened his pack. He had food with him, a small bag of rice that might work. He tossed one onto the floor, abandoning the idea as it was immediately swallowed by the mist and impossible to see at a glance.
“This is so much fun,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” whispered Myr.
“Don’t be,” he sighed. “It’s not your fault.”
Damon decided that if he had to explore the maze blind, he was going to at least do to it in a methodical way. He took the right path relative to his original forward heading, following it for about a minute before reaching another identical intersection. This time he went straight, and then straight again, after that, hoping to eventually find the maze’s outer wall.
He walked in a straight line for perhaps an hour without finding the outer wall. When he finally came to a stop in the middle of an intersection with no discernable differences from the one he’d begun at, he was frustrated beyond all reason.
It shouldn’t have been possible to walk that far in a single direction without bumping into the mountain’s natural inner boundary. It hadn’t been that large, after all. The idea that the original descent had taken them down deep enough to be underwater, within the ocean’s theoretical bedrock, was simply ridiculous. The tunnel’s slope had been far too mild, less steep and less direct of a means of traveling downward than the switchbacks they’d taken up.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “How is this possible?”
“Do you… truly want me to answer that?” asked Myr.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose I do. Give me your best guess, Myr.”
“It might not be what you want to hear, Damon.”
“When do you ever disappoint me?” He grinned and leaned his head back as though talking to an invisible spirit above him. “At least you’re still here.”
“That’s exactly it,” she whispered. “I’m right here, Damon. I’ve always been right here, with you.”
“Right,” he said. “So what do you think is going on? Where are the others?”
Myr let out a tired, patient sigh. “They are in the same place they’ve been this entire time.”
He frowned, perplexed by her phrasing. “What do you mean? What’s happened?”
“The same thing that’s been happening. Nothing at all.”
Damon shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
There was a flash of movement to his right. He stumbled back a step as a figure approached from the misty hallway. Blue and naked and beautiful, Myr stood before him in her embodied form. Damon blinked, his mouth forming a surprised little circle.
“You’ve never been able to appear to me like this in the real world,” he said.
She smiled sadly at him. “That’s true, Damon. I’ve chosen not to because it made it so much better for you. More believable.”
“Made… what more believable?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s my fault, really. I saw your suffering and I knew… I knew I was the only one who could do anything about it.”
He stared at her. The corridor seemed to blur in the periphery of his vision.
“I know you,” she whispered. “Perhaps better than any other thinking being left alive. I knew what would make you happy, and making you happy made this entombment bearable for us both.”
“…Entombment?”
“Didn’t you find it a little too convenient?” She reached an arm across her body, gripping the elbow of her other arm and looking away. “How quickly you were able to find them all? Vel, and then Ria, even Malon. The tower, so perfectly rebuilt. The way you all came back to your old home and even seemed to fall back into how you were with one another.
“I knew it wasn’t enough to simply leave you there to live day after day. You’re a hero, Damon. You’re my hero! I ran with every idea that came to me. The ship, exploring the Endless Ocean, reconnecting with your old best friend, who of course found his own happiness in life.”
“Myr…” he muttered. “Stop it.”
“You don’t want me to stop,” she said. “You really don’t.”
“Enough!” he shouted.
She shrugged. “So be it.”
In an instant, he was somewhere else. Somewhere he remembered… and feared, from the deepest depths of his soul. He couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t need to breathe. He couldn’t move, but within the ice, there was nowhere to move to.
Entombment was the word that Myr had used. Five years he’d spent here.
He rebelled, his heart pounding even as his mind struggled to shake off that familiar fogginess. It was as though he was… waking up from a dream.