The Gate Opens (2/3)
The soldiers all split off in groups of three, and they fan out separately, as to cover more ground efficiently.
They only part ways for a few minutes before Captain Lena hears through her Far-speak enchantments, "Captain! We found something!"
"Is it dangerous? What's going on?" she asks a little anxiously.
"It's nothing dangerous," they reply, "but I think we found a mass grave of sorts. It's hard to tell, though."
'A mass grave?' Lena thinks. 'So people DO live here… or… DID live here. Well, better go check it out.'
"Where're you at?" she asks. "You got your trackers on?"
"We never took them off, captain!"
The captain nods gratefully. "Good. I'd hate to have to dock your pay again."
Each of the soldiers have trackers built into the enchantments in their uniforms. The only reason they're able to take these trackers off is in the case that they're hiding from an enemy force. It would really suck if the enemy was able to pry their way into the enchantments and find all of your comrades.
With the knowledge that the tracker is on, Captain Lena slips on a pair of glasses over her eyes. These spectacles are enchanted with Spirit sight. After all, their tracking enchantments are simple Spirit Threads tied between their suits.
Well, the tracking enchantment also is sure to tie their Spirit Threads up into unique knots. That way, Captain Lena will be able to tell who's who when she has her Spirit Sight spectacles on.
After a moment of studying the Spirit Threads in the air, Captain Lena immediately follows the correct thread. She finds 3 of her soldiers a few moments later…
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Just over the hill, sprawled far and wide across the flat plain there, is a huge field of what looks like archaic farming equipment.
Hoes, rakes, shovels... All are stuck vertically in the ground, and with little boxes at the foot of each grave.
Frankly, the only reason they know that this is a mass grave is because of the unique mark that Death Aura leaves. Evidently, many dead bodies were once stored here.
Captain Lena bends down and inspects one of the boxes. Surprisingly, all of them are enchanted with simple, but powerful sealing spells. Due to the simple nature of the glyphs, she can tell that these boxes are meant to preserve whatever's inside them.
Feeling a little curious, Lena opens up the first box and sees that it contains articles of clothing and random nick-nacks. "These probably belonged to the deceased," Lena mumbles.
She then notices the small signs hanging on all of the rakes and hoes. "What language is that…? Nevermind. Of course I don't know how to read it."
She takes out a tablet and uses the spell on there to capture several images. 'Best to take these back for the old generals to see. I'm sure they'd like proof of there being life on this side of the Gate.
"All right. Anything else?" Lena asks.
The 3 soldiers solute her and say, "No, ma'am."
"All right. Keep looking."
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Over the next several hours, the troupe of Lareen soldiers scour the hills and plains. Due to how carefully they're coordinating their movements and keeping tabs on each other, their search is taking much longer than usual.
Frankly, Captain Lena is starting to think that they won't find anything, and that they'll have to return empty handed.
However… as the hours slip by, the weather starts to clear and the fog starts to thin out.
The first one to notice IT is Mage Yesee. "Captain!" she calls over the Far-Speak spell, "Look up! There's something up there! There's a really huge shadow!"
Everyone on the team heard Yesee's alarmed call over their shared channel, so they all look up at the same time.
Captain Lena looks up and gasps. There appears… to be a huge chunk of land… floating high in the air?
Yesee, Captain Lena, and the others don't have to wonder about this shadow for very long. As the fog clears, it becomes evident that it's a giant fortress suspended in the sky – without a foundation.
'H-how?' they all think in unison, though they're all too shocked to voice their thoughts.
Yesee, being the only mage on this team, immediately wonders, 'How could they keep a castle floating? The mana cost would be… way too astronomical. Who'd waist precious mana on something like that!?'
'Wait…,' she finishes her thought, 'Maybe the people of this world are less careful with their mana because it's easier to harvest. The mana here IS 11x thicker, so that could very well be the case!'
Just the prospects of there being so much abundant mana on this world is truly exciting for Yesee.
… All of her comrades aren't mages, so they won't be able to truly appreciate this…
'Sigh…,' Yesee wonders sullenly, 'Why do I have to be stuck on a team, working for a bunch of youngsters half my age? These people don't even have any magic…'
Of course, she doesn't have to wonder for long; she already knows the answer.
Ever since the people of Lareen learned that EVERYONE has mana, and that they can use specially enchanted equipment just as well as any mage, the demand for mages went way down.
Nowadays, mages are seen as just "more adaptable magic users", seeing as how they don't have to rely on static enchantments to wield magic.
Frankly, mages are usually kept in safe environments, where they can make enchanted equipment for the rest of the world. The fact that the government sent a mage out here is testament to how important this mission is.
'Ugh… I guess I'll put up with it…," she thinks glumly.
"Yesee!" Captain Lena calls her over the Far-speak network. "What does the castle up there look like? What kind of enchantments? Are there people living there? Do you see any destruction magic powering up there?"
Yesee immediately replies, "No destruction magic. That place feels dead…"
She pauses to think, then continues, "All I can tell you is that they're not using classic levitation magic to keep it afloat. It's using more Yiir magic than Dra magic, so I think they might be manipulating space. I'd have to get ON the fortress to give you a better answer."
"Got it. Thanks," the captain answers. "You heard that, men?" she suddenly addresses everyone else. "Follow Yesee's tracker and gather near her. We need to see if we can do something about that castle up there."
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Once everyone comes back together, Captain Lena points up at the fortress and announces their plans.
"Now, Miss Yesee said that the fortress up there doesn't have any mana moving around in it. We don't have to worry about them firing any spells at us or dropping any bombs."
Everyone sighs with relief.
"However, we still need to check it out," Lena reminds them all. She points to some of the soldiers in the back. "You. Take out the flying golems from your space back. I want them up there now."
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Soon enough, several small pieces of enchanted equipment are pulled out of the soldier's space bag. The soldier spends a few minutes putting the pieces together, until a neatly built construct is fully assembled.
This golem is fairly simple in design. It only has an enchantment to capture images and send what it sees to Captain Lena's tablet.
As for how it flies… it doesn't use levitation magic. Those kinds of spells are incredibly inefficient on mana, and a construct that small can't afford to carry around a heavy mana stone.
So, the engineers instead put a set of 4 spinning blades on top of the construct that manually fly upwards by cutting through the air.
Flight powered this way is so efficient that the construct can fly for days at a time, rather than hours.
(Of course, the golems are still equipped with conventional levitation magic, though those spells are only programmed to activate if the flying blades break. They'd hate for the whole thing to plummet down and dash itself to pieces on the stones below.)
Once the golems are assembled, they're tossed up, and their blades start whirring and spinning – lifting higher and higher into the air, until they all but disappear from view.