The Spirit Stone Wall
The lower Floors of the Pit are as still and silent as a tomb… In a sense, this place really is a tomb, for only the dead dwell here now.
Even when nothing seems to happen after several minutes, Warden Prella doesn't dare think this is over. With all the spiritual detection enchantments smashed to pieces down there, she has no idea if those creepy black hands are still lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to send more men to their deaths.
Feeling that her golems were the correct choice, she orders their broken pieces to be rebuilt, then equipped with more dexterous hands. She then orders them all to go down and pick up every piece of rubble, weapon, clothing, and corpse.
All the hallways need to be completely barren; she doesn't want those Wills to have anything to work with.
It takes several hours of hard work, but she finally has the lower floors clear. Then, she retakes the teleportation gates and updates their encryption, in case the demon tries to hijack them again.
---------------------
Several more hour pass for the warden, and it's all spent trying to find ways to prevent any more mishaps with her number one headache - Haalfrin.
One of her sub-wardens has to shake her out of her stupor and tell her sternly, "Ma'am! There's nothing more we can do to prepare! We need to finish sealing off Floor B33. We have to send more mages down there to finish the wall."
Rubbing her temples, she looks down and worries about it some more. What if it's a trap? What if the enemy has a new trick, and they're just waiting for more souls to come down to their deaths?
Prella is a manager, not a general! This situation feels a lot like a war to her, and she doesn't feel mentally equipped to wage a war! Sending her men to almost certain death doesn't feel right to her.
Despite being so old, the woman actually wants to break down and cry right now. However, she can't bring herself to do it.
Slowly, her eyes narrow, and her voice grows firmer. "Do it. Send a platoon of mages down. I want that Monster sealed up tight. I don't want to hear from that thing ever again!"
The moment she gives the order, she feels something change inside her soul, and one of her Name Runes lights up. "Oh," she mutters, "What a pleasant surprise..." 'I'm about to become a 4th gate mage.'
---------------------
Very carefully, a troupe of 10 mages emerges from the teleport gate on Floor B32.
During the demon's rampage earlier that day, all the enchantments were smashed apart, including the ambient lighting.
So, when the 10 mages step out, they all gulp in fear, looking at the black hallways and the bloodstains on the floor that are barely visible from the conjured mage lights above their heads.
What makes them even more nervous is that they were strictly warned to not use their Spiritual Sight at all! After all, there's been several alarming reports by now of the Pit's Spirit mages killing themselves by looking at the Death Aura too closely.
All 10 of these men were chosen by Prella because they are all spirit mages… More importantly than that, they were all soldiers in the Threshold who were renowned for their bravery - meaning that their spirits are especially strong compared to the average mage.
With their stout hearts, the warden hopes they can resist the spiritual pressure the Death Aura puts on people…
…Despite these mages' qualifications, the eeriness of the place has already spooked them.
Not wanting to waste any mana, a few of them pull out torches and extinguish their mage lights. They then move together to find the remaining spatial building circles.
Looking around nervously, they all start to rebuild the smashed equipment, and they start teleporting pieces of the Spirit stone they brought with them down underground – slowly constructing the Spirit Stone wall that would seal the demon away.
Despite the oppressive heat coming from the uninsulated walls, the mages all feel a chill in their spines at the same time. "It's here," one of the older members says as he starts preparing a spell.
In a single moment, 100 black hands burst out of the ground in a massive wave.
(They may not have any weapons, but the Wills do remember Commander Haalfrin using hugely concentrated Aura to kill a person before. So, despite having no weapons to possess, they still have a chance at winning, right?)
"Remember our formation!" the mage's captain calls out. The 10 spirit mages bunch together, and they form a single shield with a bubble of bright white spiritual energy cloaking them.
The black hands bounce off the shield and shriek in pain, as if they're being burned by some holy light.
Even still, the Wills can't let these mages succeed in their mission. They know they have to keep up the assault!
And so, the 9 mages engage in fierce battle while the 10th is faithfully continuing with the construction.
Several more hours pass as the 10 mages push through the floor, laying the groundwork for the demon's sealing. As the Spirit Stone wall is getting closer to being finished, the black hands get even more frantic in their attacks. It looks like the mages are going to succeed!
Feeling victory is near, the mages feel their morale surge up again. Spirit magic is dependent on how you're feeling anyway. Using a lot of it can make you feel emotionally drained, but morale boosts like this gives the mages their edge back, despite being on the verge of collapsing earlier.
…Just as the last brick is about to be laid, the spirit mages hear a loud screech of fury. All the black hands condense into a single tendril, and it spends several moments condensing as much Aura into the smallest space possible.
One of the mages watches in horror as a long, black, needle-like spear is forming… right in front of them.
Indeed, none of these spirit mages have their spiritual sight on..., yet what they're seeing... is visible to the naked eye.
The beings of the mortal world would never understand what is happening here. Even in the Divine Realm, the phenomena of spiritual matter being physically visible is only seldom documented.
Still, the few existing records explain that all material is One. Because everything is, at its core, made of the same thing, then there are certain circumstances where, let's say, a spiritual thing can take on physical properties, like reflecting light and creating an image.
The amount of Aura required to make a spiritual entity physically manifest is so extreme that a human trying to stop it is equivalent to dropping a mountain on a man and expecting him to catch it.
In short, things don't go well for the spirit mages.
…
One of the spirit mages runs forward towards the installing enchantment with the last brick in his hand. He's about to make it… but at the last moment, he trips on his companion's corpse and falls to the ground. Before he can get back up, he's run through by a spear of pure black spiritual Malice, and he breathes his last.
"Captain Talna! Captain Talna!?" comes Warden Prella's frantic voice from a far-speak medallion hung around the eldest mage's neck. "Answer me! Did you all succeed!? Is the demon sealed?"
...
There is no answer.
---------------------
Slowly, the figure of a small child creeps along the pitch-black hallway. Despite everything that's happened, the little slave girl on Floor B32 is still alive.
With her innate ability to hide her spiritual aura, the creepy black monsters never found her. The warden's golems couldn't see her either. While the golems were sweeping the floor for any debris, she had to abandon her barrel and run about the hallways, dodging patrols.
She had no idea what those golems would do to her if they found her, so she desperately stayed out of sight.
After the golems leave, she realizes that she's all alone on this floor. Where's she going to go? Is she going to be left down here to starve to death?
Hours pass, and she starts to notice that it's getting really hot down here. She doesn't think it'll be that bad at first… but she soon learns how wrong she is.
Panting on the floor, she feels all her body fluids leave her body through sweating. 'Am I going to die like this?'
After several hours more, she finally notices a chance; more mages came down here. She thinks it's some servants at first to refurnish the floor, but she's wrong about that; it's a group of 10 mages with Spirit stone carts behind them.
Cautiously, the little girl follows behind them. With the pitch-black hallways and her nonexistent spiritual aura, she's but a creeping shadow that no one notices.
She watches the spirit mages lay the spirit stones down and teleport them into the ground below. She hears them talking about how this is supposed to seal the demon away.
'Hmm…,' the girl thinks, 'I know they need to succeed… but the mysterious demon down below will be watching them… and it'll want to kill them, to be sure. If I follow too close, I'll be caught up in the battle and die…'
So, the slave girl follows behind and watches as hundreds of black hands bombard the prison mages with relentless determination.
…Just watching the black hands, she can feel intense feelings of death contained inside them. The feelings are so pure that the little girl can't help but marvel… at how beautiful it looks.
'No!' she shakes her head, 'I can't get distracted. I have to at least watch and make sure the demon is sealed away properly.'
"Captain!" one of the mage's echoing voice shrieks from down the hallway, "keep the black hands off me! It's the last spirit stone brick!"
"AAAAaah!" comes more gurgling screams. The girl peeks her head from around the corner and watches the last of the mages trip over a corpse and fall to the ground with a black spear in his heart.
The little girl gulps at the sight… yet deep down, she knows what she has to do.
'Well,' the child thinks resolutely, 'I don't care much for this life of mine anyway. Here goes nothing.'
Maybe shouting her defiance will make the demon notice her faster, but she does it anyway. With her heart full of unexpected courage, she screams out unintelligibly as she charges down the hallway toward the fallen mages.
As she runs up, the black Aura of death turns to her, then reaches out with a twisted hand. It shoots toward her heart, and the child feels an intense desire to Kill touch her spirit.
"AAAH! I DON'T CARE! DO YOUR WORST, STUPID MONSTER!" she screeches out in her high-pitched voice.
She certainly doesn't SOUND threatening, but screaming at least makes her feel braver.
As the child slave's spirit bursts forth in anger – but more importantly, apathy for her own life, the black hand… passes right through her heart without harming her.
The black arms sense this anomaly, and the Wills behind them zone in on her. Despite being a powerless child, something about her feels dangerous to them.
Feeling thousands of Wills wishing her dead, the child almost recoils… but her heart is made up again once she looks over and sees the final brick the fallen mage failed to place on the short-range teleportation device.
Since the girl had seen the mages put the bricks in many times before, she knows what she has to do.
Running forward, she completely ignores the tendrils of angry spirits as they bombard her soul without success. In fact, she even feels herself growing stronger the more they try to kill her… though she doesn't realize it; she chalks it up to adrenaline or excitement instead.
As she picks up the spirit stone brick, the black hands form together in a spear so thick in killing intent that it's physically dripping a black substance that hits the ground and sizzles.
…But despite this, the moment it pierces her heart, the child feels something in her soul growing instead of dying.
She makes it to the portable spatial circle, and she puts the brick in its place just in time for her to feel… something happening in her soul.
The last thing she sees before she falls unconscious is the malevolent black hands' screech in rage before disappearing completely. "It's… done then…," she laughs out loud in triumph.
She knows that nobody's probably going to come down here just to rescue her, and that she's probably going to die unheralded in the belly of the earth.
... However, she just doesn't care. She's spent a lifetime failing, losing people, and being unable to help herself… and for the first time, she's actually won at something!
…That's got to count for something, right?
Smiling weakly, the girl's vision goes black, and her body starts to regress in age as she lies limp on the floor.