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Rune Weaver

written by Aelius

Incoming storms were a viable reason to postpone a research expedition in the Spirit Wilds, where help was often a week away at best if something went awry.

Something_always_ went awry.

However, this time the storm was the sole reason Maple's expedition was going out there in the first place. The potential discoveries were worth the danger.

A thick, leafy canopy shrouded the sky as a lone figure walked through the forest--humanoid, deer-like, following a set of coordinates from a holographic readout on her wrist cuff. Hooved feet trod the soft ground amidst thick foliage. Tall ears swiveled and panned to catalog the sounds of wildlife, catching distant thunder beyond the leaves above. Bright, hopeful eyes peered through dense greenery to detect any hints of the expedition team she would be joining soon. According to her coordinates on the flickering holographic display, base camp was close.

In good time, too. Rain had gradually begun to fall.

A slight flutter of drops breached the thick leaves overhead, enough for Maple to feel against her ruddy-brown fur. The doe did not really mind rain. Even with minimal clothing and a slender body, her fur provided enough comfort against nature's elements. The intricate patterns painted on her also offered protection. Where scarce garments left her fur exposed, the runes softly glowed, ensuring that even in the wilds, Maple could confidently and safely explore.

The path opened into a clearing to reveal taller, bare trees. Unusual as this was the middle of summer. As the rain strengthened, Maple noticed stone formations further on.

The deer glanced around. There was no sign that anybody had been here recently. Her ears panned about but only caught the sound of rain. No scents lingered beyond the disappearing familiarity of the wilderness behind her. Even the grass seemed to have stopped growing up ahead.

The expedition crew was supposed to be here already.

She looked down at her wrist cuff, but the hologram flickered before going out completely. She tapped the panel, but nothing happened. She pulled a small datapad from the holster on her bicep, but aside from a brief flashing, nothing appeared on its screen.

Thunder rumbled overhead.

Maple stowed her datapad and continued onward, reaching out with her presence as she approached the bare tree trunks. The runes pulsed in steady glows, unphased by the downpour soaking her fur.

There was a peculiar emptiness about this place. No greenery present, no sounds nor signs of wildlife, only the steady patter of rain on the withered branches overhead. It was as if life had disappeared behind her.

Lightning flashed, startling her briefly, and thunder came soon after. Maple stepped up her pace through the dense rain. "Maybe they set up camp near the stone formations as a shield from the storm..." she muttered. A sudden gust nearly yanked her drenched cloak off her neck, throwing her off balance.

She finally reached the stone structures and paused to catch her breath under a rocky overhang. With a hand on the solid stonework, a painted rune suddenly lit up on the back of her hand. Maple watched as faint lines on the stone wall lit up under her palm, spreading outward in rigid, angled patterns before fading from view.

Maple's ears flicked at the sight of the spectacle. She moved her hand along the stonework as she walked. The rune on her hand continued to glow, but nothing else appeared on the stone. She paused and tapped the stone with a finger. The black hoof-like material on its tip elicited no response on the damp, rocky surface. She pulled her data pad back out and tried to activate its scanner, but the screen remained blank and inactive.

Maple snorted in frustration. Of all the times for her equipment to stop working, it had to be at the research site itself.

Or was something interfering with it?

Luckily, she had other natural talents. The deer lifted her nose and tried to catch any familiar scents, hopefully those of her companions setting up camp, but once again detected nothing.

She rounded a corner. The next area was vacant, save for numerous stone columns. She expected to see grasses and weeds growing in the cracks of the stonework at her feet. But even in the heavy downpour she saw no evidence that any sort of life had been here in quite some time, whether plant or animal.

More than that, the pervasive emptiness and lack of scents or sounds amidst the rain confirmed her suspicions.

She was alone.

Maple glanced up at the rocky overhang above, then peered out to see what appeared to be crumbled walls further on, gradually shrouded by dense rain.

Lightning briefly lit up the landscape, followed by rumbling thunder. The storm was upon her already. Strange, however, that she saw no other light sources amidst the ruins.

The scouting reports mentioned unexplained glows in the presence of storms, which was why she had been summoned to investigate this place.

She recalled that ten years ago, an expedition team had gone into this specific region only to disappear within days. The next group that went in to investigate the disappearance also never returned. The area had since been deemed off-limits to further exploration until a few months ago, when many strange glows had been reported lighting up the forest. However, the glows only appeared during rainstorms. Recent scout teams claimed the glows had been appearing closer and closer to areas deemed safe, though nobody had investigated further for safety concerns.

And now, years since the first disappearances, there was neither evidence of light nor any sign that the expedition team she was to meet had ever reached the site.

Another lightning flash, another rumble of thunder.

Maple took a breath to center herself. She still had a mission here. She was a Rune Weaver, a combination of cryptographer, historian, and artist all in one. Her unique skills had been called upon by the research councils to hopefully figure out what was so special about this place. Mysterious glowing was but one element to investigate.

She reached out and placed her hand back on the stone wall. She breathed out and closed her eyes to focus. She did not need to open them to know the runes on her body were glowing. She felt them as they outwardly channeled her presence, her essence of self, into her surroundings.

This skill was unique to her generation of wilderness researchers, allowing others like her to feel, intimately, the world around them unlike any who had come before. A skill vital to those exploring regions where their predecessors had once disappeared without a trace.

Maple opened her eyes, seeing faint lines lighting up in the rough textures of the stone, appearing almost as if they were glowing from beneath the otherwise-opaque surface. The lines seemed to make a pattern, though of what Maple could not figure out just yet, before flickering out and disappearing completely.

Undoubtedly, this region had been touched by the long-forgotten knowledge of the Old World. Yet, the purpose still remained to be seen.

The doe smiled as she took her hand off the stone and looked back into the ruins. The possibility of answers beckoned her further, and her insatiable curiosity about the Old World begged that she continue.

Thunder rumbled again, echoing throughout the ruins.

Maple adjusted her cloak, tightened the belts holding collection vials around her waist, and clutched the satchel at her hip. She quickly glanced down at her body to confirm her runes still had not washed away in the rain, then carefully strode out into the downpour.

Her runes lit up once again as she extended her presence.

Faint lines flickered in the wet stonework at her hooves but faded just as quickly without offering any guidance.

Maple continued onward as the sky darkened, a process interrupted by flashes of lightning. Her keen eyes noted glimmers in the distance. With every flash of lightning, something far off in the ruins reflected the light.

Was it metallic? Amidst all this crumbling stonework?

She then noticed faint light in the rain's haze near the glimmers. Glowing.

Maple trotted onward, keeping close to the overhangs near the walls. As she walked, her ears flicked and panned at what seemed like crumbling sounds all around her, though as she looked around, the walls and columns appeared to be steady. However, that still did not put her at ease. The ruins were still here after thousands of years, but what of the last scout teams?

Thunder rumbled overhead.

Maple turned her attention to the stonework itself. So much of it was cracked and featureless. Every so often she caught a flash of faded color, barely visible even through her natural ability to see ultraviolet light.

She stopped, head tilting as she focused on a much clearer patch. There was evidence of markings in the stonework here.

A pattern.

Maple lifted a hand and brushed her fingers along the etchings. Though nothing lit up, the designs seemed similar to the portions that lit up earlier. Were they a continuation?

Maple unholstered her datapad, but it remained unresponsive. Was something here interfering with its electronics?

As thunder rumbled again, an ear splayed out. Maple's sensitive hearing caught the slightest drone of barely audible noise, disrupted by the storm's reverberations in the air.

Lacking any means of analyzing the noise or scanning the patterns, Maple stowed her datapad and reached into her satchel, pulling out a weatherproof logbook and stylus.

Out of the rain under the overhang, she hastily sketched out the patterns etched into stone, then tried to recall some of those she had seen earlier when the ruins lit up.

Lightning flashed above, and as thunder followed, she listened for the droning noise again. This time, however, she noticed it being accompanied by slight vibrations under her hooves. It wasn't just thunder shaking the ruins. Something else was moving with every lightning strike.

Maple kneeled and placed a hand on the wall, focusing her presence again.

As her runes glowed, faint lines flickered outward from her hand across the stones before disappearing again.

A tiny smile crept onto Maple's face. The storm may somehow be influencing a substructure of sorts...

Prior scouting reports hypothesized that some Old World ruins had potentially been built on top of structures believed to be even more ancient. Evidence was sketchy at best, however, as the very few approved excavation attempts yielded nothing beyond age-old circuitry lined into stone and little else.

As Maple sketched out the patterns, she realized they, in fact, appeared to be shaped like circuits. These matched theories that the Old World had fused its mysterious technology with the environment. That did not explain why this region seemed inactive outside of storms, however. Nor did they hint as to why nothing alive seemed to have been here all this time.

Maple paused to study the patterns on her logbook. She was one of the best cryptographers in New Atlantis, but even she could not figure out what all of this meant. The patterns she recalled from the outer edges of the ruins did not match up with the ones she saw here, despite tiny similarities in the circuit lines.

Her tail flicked behind her as she attempted to puzzle out the differences, but she could only sigh and stow the logbook. She needed more to go on.

Looking out at the downpour, she pulled her cloak tight around her once again and continued onward.

Glancing all around, it appeared that the entire area was becoming more dilapidated the further inward she went. Mounds of rubble sat where walls and columns had once been. Despite the open crevices and cracks, there was still no sign of vegetation that would otherwise have taken root in the thousands of years since the place had been abandoned.

She jolted as lightning flashed and thunder roared, feeling brief resonations throughout the surrounding air. Then, at her feet, more patterns flickered to life before fading a second later.

Maple tried to commit it to memory as the rain pounded against her.

She kneeled and placed a hand against the rocky ground, trying to focus as she tugged her cloak over her head. Though the patterns appeared when lightning flashed, they only appeared where she stood.

What was the connection?

The runes along her body lit up as her presence spread outward, but the patterns on the stonework merely flickered once again.

Maple huffed in frustration. Spirit magic, as the scouts called it, could apparently only do so much when used in a place so old and worn down. She whipped out her logbook and, using her body to shield it from the rain, scribbled out what patterns she could remember before stowing it again and hurrying on.

Maple shuddered at the thought that this place may be falling apart. She still heard faint crumbling sounds everywhere, and felt the strange reverberations beneath her after another rumble of thunder.

Circuit lines briefly lit up again under her hooves, but they were disjointed. The further she went, even the site's internal circuitry seemed to be coming apart.

Rounding a half-broken corner, her suspicions seemed confirmed. Spanning out from pieces of cracked stone, bare metal jutted into the open air. It was not rusted, though even with rain trailing down it, she could make out a dull surface as if it had been exposed to the air for a long while.

Maple approached. She noticed faint patterns etched into the metal. At first glance, they seemed to be the same type of circuitry she had encountered before, but her keen eyes noticed something was off. The pattern was slightly different.

Maple neared what remained of a wall and hunched over her logbook as she scribbled out the lines. These were not circuits. They were too fragmented.

Her ears flicked as her eyes widened.

It was a language.

This opened up new possibilities. What if the Old World's language was based upon the circuits they infused into their environment? If so, the entirety of the Spirit Wilds could be speaking full messages, stories, through every living being in its Fused wilderness.

But this was yet again another hypothesis. Maple needed more to go on.

Lightning flashed.

Thunder rumbled.

More reverberations below as circuit-like patterns flickered into view on the nearby stones. The designs on the metal remained dormant.

The stonework was in shattered pieces all around the metal, which looked more like a support strut than something decorative as she neared.

She followed the strut to where it reached over a nearby crumbled wall. Making her way around the wall, she felt the reverberations more intensely, resonating through her hooves and up her body like a small quake. She even heard them now, shifting from a grumble to a roar the further she went. With it came a strange nausea, but it did not hinder her. She moved past the wall and then froze. Her eyes widened, and her ears folded as she took in the sight in front of her.

The floor before her had collapsed entirely away. Beyond it was nothing but open air. Maple carefully approached the broken ledge and beheld a massive pit. It was large enough to enclose a small village, and she could not even see across to its other side in the rain's haze. The reverberations had now become a shrill, agonizing shriek tearing at her skull.

Maple swayed, trying to maintain balance as she dared to look far below. She saw the site's ruins had become only dust and mud, as if corrosion had devoured everything and left nothing behind. The pit's deep center glowed in violent, yellow-green pulses as sludge churned in the rain, leaving caustic steam hovering just above it.

The very sight of the glow felt like it was burning her eyes, forcing her to look away before she could figure out what exactly the oozy sludge at the bottom was composed of.

She glanced up to the support strut she had followed and noticed it connected to an enormous, ring-like structure held aloft far above the pit.

The pit's sickening, wavering glow reflected off the ring before the structure disappeared into the rain-thick haze further on.

Maple tilted her head, noticing the metalwork was a completely different design motif than that prevalent throughout the rest of the ruins.

The stones suddenly gave way under her and the deer plummeted, shrieking as she fell.

The world spun all around the hapless deer, striking Maple from all directions as she collided with fragile ledges while tumbling and taking pieces with her. Everything she fell onto caved on impact and sent her deeper into the cavity.

Finally, she hit a soft incline and rolled until skidding to a halt, covered in mud as the rain continued pounding her. Her runes remained lit, albeit partially covered with grime.

Maple felt sick. More than that, a reverberating drone had become an unbearable, ethereal scream. No matter which way her ears panned, it was just as deafening. It was as if the sound pierced into her mind, made all the more horrible as sickening vertigo worsened with every passing moment.

The deer coughed, trying to gain her bearings despite her excruciating nausea. Even her vision suffered as intense light swelled nearby in the throbbing of her head.

Clutching the muddy slope and trying to push herself up, she braved a glance toward the light as thunder crashed overhead.

Mere meters down the slope, eerie yellowish-green glows surged in the downpour, pulsating with light as they swelled randomly like an oozy sludge.

It hurt to even look at the glowing sludge. Maple swayed uneasily but caught herself from tumbling further in the sickening diffusion all around. She slumped down on the slope and crawled upward, away from the pit as it tore at her very essence. She noticed the runes painted on her body glowing so bright they almost blinded her. Yet, she pressed on, dragging herself ever-so-slowly in hopes of escaping the harsh effects of whatever was churning below.

This had to be the source of the reported glows in the rain. Knowing how much it hurt to be anywhere near it, Maple could only imagine what happened to the other expeditions that never returned from this place.

More stones crumbled and fell all around her as if the pit had been steadily corroding the entire site outward from its core.

She coughed again, gasping for breath as she crawled. She had to leave.

Her skull vibrated in sharp pain as she went, teeth gritted. The pit's maddening resonations clawed at her brain.

She reached a cracked wall and leaned against it, panting. Circuit lines at its surface flickered briefly under her touch. She could not bear to look down and relegated herself to hugging the wall as she searched desperately for a way upward.

Stone pieces chipped away as the rain beat down on her. She reached a metal strut-like beam past more crumbled walls, but it was too slick from rainwater to scale. Maple could barely glance upward without the rain getting in her eyes, but could make out enough of a ledge above to try climbing. Mustering what strength she had left, she jabbed her hoof-tipped fingers into the brittle stone, cracking enough to make a rudimentary handhold. There was no time to test its stability. Her body ached and her head throbbed from the sickening resonations below. She grunted and shoved upward, summoning the strength to jab again with her other hand. The stone held though she heard cracking. She had to hurry.

She steadily made her way up, tearing off portions of stone as she went, but mercifully only lost hold twice from the crumbling surface. Then, finally, she reached the ledge and shoved herself onto it, crying out in pain.

Maple rolled on the flattened surface and settled on her stomach, still gasping for air as the downpour continued drenching her. Her cloak felt like lead, and her muscles twitched, reeling from the shock of... whatever was down there.

She pressed her hands to the ground and closed her eyes, focusing her presence once again. But, just as before, she felt nothing in response. The entire area was desolate and empty. No life of any kind reached back.

Resolving to stand, she pushed up on wobbling arms, then slowly staggered upright and limped further away.

Lightning flashed.

Thunder roared.

A nearby stone ridge cracked and collapsed.

Maple agonizingly sped her pace, trying to determine what purpose this place could ever serve. She searched for another way to the higher ground she had entered from.

Distant lightning reflected off nearby metalwork.

She instinctively glanced over and noticed it was part of the same structure she had seen above. It appeared to be a series of solid support beams, all engraved in undeciphered runes. Her gaze followed the beams and their support struts all the way past the ledges and beyond. Finally, she saw where they had been arranged above the pit she nearly fell in--a massive ring-like structure encircling the pit high above.

Maple pulled her cloak up and checked her logbook, sketching out more of the symbols on the metal ring held above the pit. The symbols were similar, but still different, from those found throughout the ruins and repeated frequently.

There was no doubt in her mind now. Whatever this structure was, it was constructed after the ruins were already considered a ruin. The question of _why_still remained.

Lightning flashed above, and as thunder blasted in its wake, Maple noticed a break in the structure far off in the haze. She braved a cautious walk to the ledge and saw it was a literal break--part of the ring had snapped and parted. Below it, a gash in the stonework had seemingly been dissolved by the pit's corrosion, having torn a portion of the metal supports away until the ring apparently broke in the process. The ring's gap did not seem far, but as Maple stepped back, she pieced together another hypothesis.

All around the pit, stone and dirt had become nothing but dust, with no life existing anywhere nearby. The ruins were more barren than any other place she had visited. As rain appeared to be aggravating whatever was down there, it seemed that the pit itself was devouring everything around it and spreading as the decay worsened. It was as if the very concept of desolation had been localized, and nothing had been spared from deterioration.

She remembered the historical records cobbled together by New Atlantis' loremasters, though most of what they had to go by were theories provided by scout reports in the Wilds. Still, a common belief was that the Old World that came before had destroyed itself by unknown means. Those same means unwittingly gave birth to the New World as it existed now, albeit with remnants of the past era still lingering in the expansive, dangerous Spirit Wilds. Maple could think of no other explanation than the assumption the pit was one of those remnants, awakened and rampantly devouring everything it touched. So then, what caused it to awaken after thousands of years?

Maple focused on the broken ring structure.

The shift in technological design between it and the stone ruins, the repeating runes... The ring must have been some sort of containment device, but when the decay reached the site's foundation, it compromised the ring's integrity. Then, when the supports anchored to the ruins gave way, the ring snapped and the circuit powering it broke with it.

Lightning flashed again, causing the circuit glyphs in the stones to flicker under her hooves once more.

Whatever powered the site's glyphs also must have powered the device until the decay spread too far across its foundation.

A crash came from below, followed by more crumbling noises nearby.

Maple's eyes widened as she backed away. The pit had been devouring the entire site for years, and with the storm aggravating the pit's effects, the process was apparently speeding up. It wouldn't be long before the ruins were a distant memory, and if another piece of the support structure was compromised...

She gasped at the realization that New Atlantis, despite its scientific prowess, had no way of repairing this kind of technology, let alone figuring out how to replicate it, especially if the decay destroyed it first. If it was indeed a containment device, there had to be a way to at least perform a temporary repair until it could be studied. If it was lost, then there was no way her people could stop the corrosion's spread.

The ring's rune designs implied they could interact with those spread throughout the site. There should theoretically be a way to restart the containment device if she could somehow reconnect the ring's breakpoint.

More crashes echoed, then muffled as if pieces had collapsed into the pit's muddy, corrosive slope.

Maple turned and ran through the ruins, clutching her satchel. She still had raw materials to paint runes with. All she needed was something to paint them on and then bridge the ring's gap. Her mind raced, trying to remember as many details of the ring's rune symbols as possible in hopes of crafting a makeshift connector piece. The question of how to complete its circuit would have to be answered after finding an object to use first.

Her hooves skidded on slick stones as she rounded a corner, struggling to find traction, but she maintained balance and continued past broken stone columns and remnants of decorated walls, all while the storm raged above.

She ran through an empty plaza, eyes darting about until lightning highlighted something jagged nearby.

Maple approached and blinked in amazement. It was a tree! Growing from a spot where stones had broken away long ago, the tree had no leaves and was horrendously gnarled, but it could serve her needs. She came up and placed a hand on the trunk, then frowned. The bark felt like stone.

As thunder rumbled and another crash echoed behind her, she figured it would have to do. She grabbed a branch and tugged, but there was no give. It had been petrified solid.

Maple clutched the branch and swiftly kicked. Her tough hooves jabbed through the branch and it snapped away, but a sharp resonation struck her ears as the same sickening yellow-green fluid spilled out from the resulting hole in the trunk.

Maple gasped and backed away, dropping the petrified branch and clutching her ears against her head.

The sludge spilled out from the trunk like a fountain. It had penetrated the groundwater.

The disturbing emptiness all around the site now had context. Whatever Old World substance left behind in that pit was infecting the region, explaining how the glows that prompted the expedition had been spreading closer to safe areas. If it was not contained soon, there was no telling how quickly it could spread.

Maple glanced back to where she had run from. There was no time to keep looking. She then noticed lit reflections of her runes in a nearby puddle. Her heart sank as a solution appeared in her mind.

_She_was the solution.

She could replicate runes, and her presence already had a unique way of interacting with the world. If the ring drew its power from the deep circuitry of the ruins, then it could also theoretically draw power from her.

But just how much would it take from her?

Another crash echoed across the ruins, then quickly muffled.

"No time..." Maple muttered to herself.

She hurried back through the decaying ruins, stopping under the first overhang she found. Shielded from the rain, she unfastened her drenched cloak and cast her garments away, then kneeled at her satchel and pulled out a trio of vials. She opened them and poured the contents into her palm, mixing them together and creating a unique golden glow from them in the process. She checked her field notes to confirm the rune designs copied from the ring, then stood and took a breath.

She pressed a hoof-tipped finger into the glowing solution and carefully painted new, untested runes onto her unclad body.

The process was unnerving. No one in their right mind would ever apply runes without knowing how they reacted to one's presence, let alone how they would affect the area of the body they would be painted on. Maple was knowledgeable enough to understand how to arrange rune designs on the right focus points on her body and activate them with her presence to replicate their intended effect. In theory, at least. For these glyphs, however, she only had educated guesswork to go by, and there was still no guarantee that this would reactivate the assumed containment field in the ring. Also was the real possibility that reactivation would do precisely what she hoped it would... and drain her completely.

As more reverberations pulsed underfoot, Maple tried to steady her hands with long, drawn-out breaths. Something had to be done to stop the spread, even if it meant risking her life. She dreaded the idea that she, too, would never return from an expedition to this horrid place. Still, at the very least, she found a modicum of comfort knowing it would be after an effort to save her home.

The process complete, Maple glanced over to a nearby puddle to check her work in her reflection. Everything seemed right. Foci were marked in the right places on her body, and the runes appeared to be drawn correctly.

The deer closed her eyes and focused her presence once more as thunder rumbled above.

The new runes lit up, covering her body in mesmerizing golden patterns based on those she had studied moments earlier. She let out a breath and nodded, resolving herself to whatever might happen, and stepped back into the downpour.

The runes continued to glow as the deer made her way through the rain, now clothed in nothing but her own soaked fur. Tiny wisps of energy curled upward from the designs as the rain cascaded down her body, but the runes did not wash away.

Lightning flashed, and thunder roared again. Below Maple's hooves, circuit lines flickered brighter than before but faded moments later as she walked.

Cracks spread on the stonework. Maple's ears panned forward as crumbling noises continued closer to the pit.

She sped her pace. The ruins were coming down faster than expected.

Down a barren corridor and past decaying columns, the pit's familiar and still nauseating reverberations intensified. With rain pounding against her, Maple vaguely recalled the closest point where she could climb a support beam to reach the ring's break.

As thunder rolled above, Maple ran past a mound of rubble and saw the ring's support structure ahead.

A crack split the stones ahead of her and she leaped over the break, but as the other side shook, she botched her landing and her hooves slipped on the wet surface. She cried out as she tumbled. She rolled to a halt with her ankle in excruciating pain. She winced and tried to stand, but then fell back to the ground clutching her foot, unable to put weight on it.

The site rumbled again, and reverberations intensified.

Through rain-soaked tears, she saw the broken ring past a ledge ahead. She shoved forward on her hands and elbows, crawling as fast as she could. Finally, she reached the cracked ridge and carefully stood, putting all her weight on her uninjured leg. The pit's sickening vertigo returned. Then, teeth gritted, she leaped off. The ledge collapsed in the process, but she had enough distance to reach an angled support beam.

She landed hard on the slippery metal and wrapped her arms around the beam, keeping herself from falling off.

As the storm raged above and the pit's resonations screamed below, she slowly climbed the beam.

The familiar horrendous noise throbbed in her head as her stomach churned, but she carried on. She finally reached the ring, climbed on, and got to her knees. The break was less than a meter away.

She carefully crawled along to the edge, then stood, wobbling on her uninjured leg. Finally, she reached out across the break and let herself fall forward to place both hands on the other side of the broken ring, connecting it with just her own body.

"If anyone could see what I'm about to do..." she muttered, then closed her eyes and focused her presence. It was oddly different, opening herself up not to an environment abundant with life, but instead now forcibly projecting her deepest sense of self into a soulless device that, in every perception of reality, should never even be able to connect to another being. Yet it was still meant to activate from the same energy.

Lightning flashed above.

The device's runes flickered briefly.

Maple felt the reverberations again, but they were resonating through the device this time, intensifying until finally...

Maple shrieked as her runes blazed. They felt like fire! The pain shot through her entire body, forcing her to arch her back as the device lit up the same way. Bright light flared across the entire structure, encircling the pit.

Maple kept screaming, unable to stop even after her voice gave out. The power coursed through her in excruciating waves until lightning burst overhead and interrupted the force. Maple was thrown backward and landed on her back, still on the ring as its symbols continued glowing.

She coughed as the rain continued to drench her body. She was too numb to feel it. All she could think of was getting away from the pit. Whether or not it was contained, its effects still reached her high above. She carefully rolled to her side, trying her best not to fall off despite her vertigo.

Her entire body ached. She could barely focus her eyes, and the resonations in her head worsened.

Even so, the ring stayed lit.

Maple panted for air as she moved to her stomach and paused to catch her breath, difficult as it was to breathe above the corrosive haze.

She weakly pushed up to move but collapsed back onto her stomach, wheezing. She let out a sickly whimper as she tried again, but could not muster the strength. Vertigo worsening, she did not dare move. Everything was getting dark.

Maple lay there motionless, save for her gasps. The last thing she could comprehend before blacking out was that the broken ring was still lit.

"She's moving! She's waking up!"

Bright light shined in Maple's eyes. She winced, consciousness gradually returning.

The light dimmed and shapes came into view as she groggily blinked awake. She heard rainfall and distant thunder, but no reverberations nor crumbling of rocks.

"What happened?" she asked weakly.

A familiar, feminine voice responded, "We were hoping you'd tell us!"

Maple turned to the voice, seeing a lop-eared female rabbit wearing an immensely relieved smile. A makeshift canvas tarp wavered above them. Maple's ears flicked, realizing that the expedition team had finally arrived. "Orchid..." said the deer. "You made it, after all."

The rabbit gently embraced her. "We were routed by the storm," Orchid replied. "We noticed a huge glow and came running, and that's when we caught your scent and followed right to you. You'd passed out on... something huge."

Maple tried to lean up but grimaced in pain.

"Hey-hey, don't try and move yet," said Orchid, cradling the deer's head. "You look like you've been through something intense."

Maple held up a wobbly arm, noticing the runes still painted on her fur, but unlit. She smiled. "Yes... I did. That structure you found me on... is it still glowing?"

"Yep," said Orchid. "It seemed to have a series of repeating runes and... Wait, did you have something to do with that?"

"And the pit..." Maple continued, "None of you went closer to it, did you?"

Orchid's eyes widened. "We could barely get within a few meters of it. Zephyr almost couldn't reach you to pull you to safety. We still haven't figured out what's down there."

Maple closed her eyes and chuckled. "Good... Keep your distance from it because after I recover, I've got a lot to tell you all..."