The final, reverberating slam of the Weaver bulkhead sealing shut behind them plunged Rhys and Boulder into a darkness that felt fundamentally different. The faint, residual hum of ancient technology vanished, replaced by the close, oppressive silence of deep earth, broken only by the rhythmic drip of unseen water and the distant scuttling of things best left undisturbed. The air was heavy, damp, thick with the smell of wet rock, ancient mortar, and pervasive fungal decay. They had escaped the Weaver's Creche, but had fallen into an even older layer of Meridian's fractured history.
The architecture here was a chaotic blend of natural caverns crudely expanded and ancient, cyclopean brickwork held together by crumbling mortar. Water pooled on the uneven floor, reflecting the weak beam of Rhys's nearly depleted glow-stick like scattered, dark eyes. Without the Weaver map, navigation reverted to instinct, caution, and Rhys's recovering Echo Sense.
He extended his senses, probing the unfamiliar environment. The energy signatures here were older, more chaotic, less structured than the Weaver ruins. He felt the slow, deep pulse of the earth itself, overlaid with the faint, lingering psychic residue of countless generations who had lived, worked, or hidden in these deep foundations long before the Sundering, perhaps even before the Weavers themselves.
Their progress was slow and treacherous. The tunnels twisted without apparent logic, sometimes opening into vast, dripping caverns filled with pale, eyeless stalactites, other times narrowing into claustrophobic fissures that scraped against Boulder's broad shoulders. They crossed rickety wooden bridges spanning black chasms that swallowed the glow-stick's light, the timbers groaning ominously under Boulder's weight. They waded through sections flooded with knee-deep, stagnant water that stank of primordial ooze.
Rhys constantly scanned ahead, his Echo Sense proving vital. He detected pockets of heavy, suffocating swamp gas clinging to low-lying areas, guiding them along higher ledges. He sensed sections of ceiling riddled with cracks, heavy with moisture, warning Boulder away from potentially unstable zones just moments before minor collapses sent showers of rock and dirt tumbling down. The skills honed in the Undercity sewers were essential here, but the scale felt different – older, deeper, more fundamentally dangerous.
This ancient environment harbored its own denizens, different from the corrupted constructs of the Weaver ruin but no less deadly. Rounding a corner, they stumbled directly into the hunting ground of a nest of Cave Spiders – large, fist-sized horrors with multiple glistening black eyes and hairy legs that skittered unnervingly fast across the damp rock. Their energy signatures felt primal, venomous, radiating predatory hunger.
Direct combat was out of the question. Rhys's Aether Pool was still recovering, maybe halfway full at best, and needed to be conserved. Boulder was strong, but facing multiple venomous attackers in the dark was foolish. Thinking quickly, Rhys focused his will, drawing a small amount of Aether. He didn't attempt an attack, but instead wove two subtle effects. First, he projected a field of muffling energy around their feet, deadening the sound of their cautious retreat. Second, spotting a pile of loose scree down a branching side tunnel, he sent a sharp kinetic pulse – the rock-trick again – knocking several stones loose. The clatter echoed invitingly down the side passage. The spiders, alerted by the noise, momentarily paused their advance towards Rhys and Boulder, their multiple eyes swiveling towards the distraction. Seizing the opening, Rhys and Boulder slipped silently past the nest entrance and continued down the main tunnel, hearts pounding.
Later, their path was blocked by a swarm of oversized, aggressive rats with reddish eyes and teeth capable of gnawing through soft rock. These weren't the usual sewer rats; they were larger, fiercer, likely mutated by proximity to strange minerals or lingering energies in these deep foundations. Evasion wasn't possible in the narrow passage. This time, there was no clever trick. Boulder met them head-on, pry bar swinging in deadly arcs, while Rhys used his smaller knife and Kaelen's training to handle the ones that slipped past. He took a nasty bite to the leg, gritting his teeth against the pain, but his hardened body resisted the worst of it. Boulder crushed skulls and scattered the swarm with brutal efficiency. They dispatched the creatures quickly, but the brief, vicious scuffle left them breathing heavily and smeared with rat gore, a stark reminder of the mundane brutality of survival.
Compounding the danger was their dwindling resource situation. The last drops of water from the Weaver ruin were gone. The foul-tasting fungi from the maintenance tunnels were a fading memory. Hunger gnawed constantly, weakening their focus, making Rhys's head swim. The damp chill seeped into their bones. Dehydration began its insidious work, making throats raw and thoughts sluggish. Rhys knew they couldn't last much longer without finding sustenance. The Weaver datapad, Kaelen's training, even the Aether Pool felt secondary to the basic, primal need for water.
Just as true desperation began to claw at Rhys's resolve, his Echo Sense detected it – faint, but clear and pure – the unmistakable signature of flowing, clean water ahead. Hope surged, lending strength to their faltering steps. Following the signature through a narrow fissure, they emerged into a small, hidden grotto.
It was a pocket of unexpected peace in the hostile depths. Water, filtered through layers of rock, seeped down one moss-covered wall, collecting in a shallow, crystal-clear pool. The air felt cleaner here. And growing in damp patches around the pool were clusters of pale, phosphorescent mushrooms, different from the surface varieties but emitting a gentle glow and, according to Rhys's careful Echo scan, pulsing with a safe, edible life signature.
Relief washed over them, profound and intoxicating. They drank deeply from the pool, the cool, clean water soothing their parched throats like a blessing. They gathered the fungi, finding it bland, slimy, and possessing a slightly bitter aftertaste, but undeniably nourishing. It was survival, offered by the depths themselves.
They took the opportunity for a longer rest, the first real respite since entering the Weaver ruin. Rhys carefully cleaned and bandaged the rat bite on his leg, applying Kaelen's salve. Boulder tended his own acid burns, which were slowly healing but still painful. As they rested, Rhys took out the Weaver slate again, turning it over in his hands. Still locked, still silent. He thought about their journey – the decaying surface city built on layers of forgotten history, the dangerous Undercity warrens, the impossibly advanced Weaver's Creche sealed away for millennia, and now these even older, deeper foundations. Meridian wasn't just a city; it was a wound in time, a stack of broken civilizations, each layer holding secrets, dangers, and perhaps, keys to understanding his own strange path. Aetherium Weaving felt less like a new invention, more like rediscovering something ancient, something intrinsic to the world itself, lost beneath the rubble of catastrophes.
As he sat meditating, trying to draw strength from the relative safety of the grotto and slowly absorb the faint ambient Echoes present even here, his Echo Sense suddenly sharpened. He detected a new signature, faint and distant, bleeding through the rock from somewhere vaguely ahead and upwards. It was weak, distorted by distance and intervening geology, but unmistakably familiar. The clear, stable, Water/Earth resonance of the dripping stones and silvery algae at his sewer junction practice spot.
Confusion warred with a surge of hope. How could that be possible? Were these ancient foundations somehow interconnected with the relatively newer sewer systems far above? Was this a true path back to familiar territory, a way out of these crushing depths? Or was it merely a geological anomaly, a false echo leading them back into the heart of the Undercity's dangers, perhaps even closer to the Crimson Hand or Corbin's gang? The path ahead remained uncertain, but for the first time in what felt like an eternity, it offered a familiar landmark, a potential route back towards the known world.