The room on the other side of the interspace conduit was larger than the corridor they'd entered from on the other side, with pillars set into each of the corners and roughly ten feet apart along each wall except for the one with the arch, which had the arch instead of a pair of pillars. That still didn't make it exactly large; the wall with the archway into the conduit was about fifteen feet wide, while the sides were a little longer, maybe twenty feet long. That was large enough that Sophia's magelight didn't do a good job at lighting the entire area, even with the help of the light from the portal.

Not that it was really light; it was actually mana and a little essence. It shed very little real light for Xin'ri, but it did help illuminate things for Sophia. Dav didn't need the help. He could see in the dark, which Sophia knew but somehow seemed to reliably forget.

Which meant he already knew there were no doors when he told Ci'an and Taika that they were probably going to explore. "So what's the plan? How are we getting out of here?"

"There has to be a hidden way out," Dav answered easily. "I'm guessing between the wall supports. I'm not sure which one; I thought you or Xin'ri could help me find the latch or whatever."

"I won't be much help until I get my mana perception back," Xin'ri warned them. "I keep seeing sparks that aren't there, so I'm hopeful it's recovering, but that's all I have right now."

Xin'ri paused for long enough to take a breath, then muttered to herself, "Ask the healer. You know better than that." She continued louder, "Dav? Would the resistance from the Feat make it easier to heal me?"

"Feat?" Dav sounded just as confused by the question as Sophia felt. "What feat?"

"The one for surviving an explosion that released the energy of the space between worlds," Xn'ri said as if it were obvious. She slowed down as she spoke, then added, "Neither of you got it?"

Sophia glanced at Dav, then looked back at Xin'ri. The explanation was easy, at least. "I think we already had it. You know we came from outside the Broken Lands, right?"

Xin'ri's eyes widened. "You mean that was true? I assumed the story was just that and you really came from a distant shard. How is that possible?"

Sophia shrugged. She still wasn't certain why the bandits' attempt on Cliff's instance core was enough to fling the entire group into the Origin. "Something went very wrong and we ended up in the Origin, the place the interspace goes through. It's not just between worlds, it's between universes. From there, we protected ourselves as much as we could and tried to get somewhere safe. We landed in a cave system under Old Kestii. We got a Grand Feat for that, but it wasn't what you're talking about; it was a communication ability."

Xin'ri frowned. "I guess that explains why you can talk to us; I've heard some distant shards can't, their language changed differently after Kestii fell. Still, that doesn't seem like it's worth as much as what I've been offered, and I only got a Feat, not a Grand Feat."

Sophia chuckled. "It was worth even less than that, since the language we speak is nearly the same as the one you speak. I have no idea why it worked that way, but the only time I've really used that ability is here, to read and speak ancient Kestii."

"It should have been worth a lot," Dav disagreed. "That's neither here nor there. You got a choice in abilities? What were you offered? I'll let you know if I think it'll help."

"Two options, both very simple. Chaos Resistance or Chaos Attunement. The resistance will be the same as for anyone with a resistance ability, it will strengthen my shield against that particular element. Sometimes they also help the body as well, but that usually only comes at higher levels and I don't have that many spare Wisps." Xin'ri paused and looked at both Sophia and Dav for a long moment. Sophia wasn't sure what she was looking for, but it was clear she was looking for something. Whatever it was, she seemed to find it before she continued, "Attunement is different; it's associated with my Sphere. I have a lot of different Attunements. They affect what I can create. I'm not sure if that's a good idea with something called Chaos."

Sophia exchanged a glance with Dav. Both of them knew what Chaos really was, since it appeared that way on Dav's Status.

"I doubt resistance to Chaos will help. It will probably make healing you harder," Dav admitted. "My Status mostly calls it Eldritch, but it's the same thing as what I'm using to heal you."

"It can heal?" Xin'ri sounded shocked. "But that's not how healing works! Only vital energies can heal, and they can't hurt people."

Stolen novel; please report.

Sophia sighed. Why did people say things like that? It simply wasn't true. Maybe they didn't know that here; healing magic seemed to be really rare, outside of alchemy. Dav was the only healer on the expedition. Sophia was pretty sure that on a trip this isolated, there would have been at least one and probably two healers of some sort included from the beginning. "Many affinities can be used to heal; it depends on what you're healing. The man who taught me healing magic used fire magic, through its association with renewal and rebirth. He's a phoenix, so of course that's how his fire magic works. Potential, what the Guide calls Chaos, is all about creation and change. That makes it perfect for both healing and explosions."

It was also perfect for a lot of other things; that was why it was called Potential, after all. Sophia brushed past that to the next most important thing, something Xin'ri definitely needed to know if she was going to work with it. It was something Dav already knew. "Potential, chaos, eldritch … whatever it's called, there's one thing you have to know when you use it. It's very sensitive to the person who uses it. You really have to control your intent or it will follow what you're thinking about instead of what you really want it to do. A proper spellform helps with that a lot, so I bet turning it into an item would too, but it's not something that can be produced without Intent."

Sophia paused. Should she mention it? Yes, she probably should. It wasn't exactly secret knowledge back home, even though it was mostly unknown. That was because it was old and forgotten, not because it was specifically hidden. "People have tried. It never works, at least not well. Items that harness Potential require either a skilled craftsman or a skilled user, preferably both, or things can go really wrong."

Xin'ri raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like there's a story behind it."

Sophia nodded. "Several. None of them mine, thankfully; they all happened to my father or my grandfather. He was, uh, I guess you'd call him a guardsman who specialized in finding and dealing with old magic. There was a lot of that back home, and most of it was more dangerous than it was helpful."

Xin'ri snorted as a wide grin crossed her face. "Of course they are. That's why I'm on this expedition; I can tell what's safe to use and what isn't. Most things are useful only for study. Some things can be repaired. A few things still work, like that door for the tunnel to the surface, and I bet that means it's been repaired at some point in the past. Having Othala there to tell me about the facility, even as damaged as it is, makes this the most valuable find in centuries. It's probably more valuable than getting the facility functional again, and that is enough to get an entire expedition sent here. It'll probably raise a new Clan, even."

Sophia shook her head. It wasn't that she couldn't see that Othala was useful or that the facility was valuable; she could. What she couldn't understand was why that would be as important as both Lan'ti and Xin'ri seemed to think it would be. She did, however, know better than to ask. Even Dav seemed to agree with them; he said that she wouldn't understand "because she grew up wealthy."

It was annoying to admit that he was probably right. What was even worse was that knowing that the problem wasn't her parents' wealth as much as the wealth of the society she grew up in. For all that Earth had dungeons, most places weren't truly dangerous, at least not the way they were here. That wasn't to say that there weren't problems; there were, and some of them were big. They simply weren't the same problems.

Starting a new business on Earth wasn't usually enough to raise a family from humble origins to power. It could happen, but it wasn't common. That was what Sophia thought Xin'ri was implying. The way Xin'ri spoke, it was nearly guaranteed and would be paid for by an existing powerful family.

Maybe it was transportation that was the real difference. On Earth, starting a new business unit in another city was a simple matter; you took a portal or an airplane or a car, depending on how far it was. Here, it was a weeks-long journey that couldn't even be completed at some times of year. Both winter and migration were bad times. Sophia knew that much, even if she hadn't yet seen migration season.

Sophia hopped to her feet. She was tired of thinking; she wanted to do something. The best thing she could do right now was check the walls and see if there was a way out. If there wasn't, they'd have to figure out what to do, but Sophia didn't really believe that. The air was relatively fresh; that, combined with the fact that the place seemed to be sealed, meant that there was some sort of functioning ventilation. No one would bother to install that if the place was expected to be permanently blocked off.

Sophia started with the wall to the left of the portal opening. She didn't expect to find anything notable there, which made it a good place to start. It would let her see what was normal before she ran into something odd. As it was, she had to hope that whatever opened the doors was magical; she wouldn't find anything that wasn't.

Sophia focused on where her aura met the wall. There was a higher than normal concentration of both mana and essence, but that was to be expected. Just as expected was the fact that there was less and less of both as she got farther from the portal. Less expected was the paths that had been carved through the rock, probably by the movement of mana and essence over centuries. They reminded Sophia of the natural essence and mana channels in her body, except that they were in the shape of a tree's roots.

Sophia turned the corner and found only limited evidence of crystalline pathways hidden in the ancient stone of the next wall. Once again, it seemed natural, so she moved on to the next panel.

As she touched the panel with her aura, before she had time to examine it in any detail, a small doorway appeared in the middle of the panel between the pillars. It was far smaller than the portal that led to the communications interspace, clearly designed for only one person at a time. "Guys? I think I found a way out, and I doubt it's the only one."

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