The conscious mind and the unconscious mind are two different entities. When I send a sorcerer to awaken, I send their conscious mind to rest control of desire and fear away from the unconscious. Whereas some people are impressed I have an innate ability to find sorcerers, it is not unique. It is merely called good judgement of character. For true Divines, who acknowledge themselves entirely, it is not a complicated task. Everyone has a monster a within them. Judging character is just a matter of making sure that their monster is similar to your own. - Excerpt from “Principals of Immaterial Arts”, one of the few ever texts co-written by Goddess Elassa, of Magic and Goddess Anassa, of Sorcery. Iniri looked at her breath mist in the cold air. It was always cold and unpleasant down here. Cold and unpleasant and just downright terrible. And the deeper she went, the worse it got. Down at the bottom of Klavdiv, in the so aptly-meant Core-Camp One, it was so cold that bottles had to be kept in heaters to make sure that their contents would not freeze. One of the labrats had gotten into an accident when some can of soda he had brought from the surface had exploded in his trouser pocket and sliced open his rear. In the White Pantheon, it would have been lucky that there were Clerics about, in the Empire, it was just paranoid preparation for every possibility known to man. A team of five of the healers had been assigned to protecting the civilians brought down here. Iniri looked around the camp. Or at least what she could make out of the camp. No amount of assistance from Divine eyesight would help with the utter and total lack of light here. The darkness was thin, weak and total. A man who had walked off with a torch was visible in the distance as he inspected the various statues that were scattered about here. He walked in a thick coat, thicker boots and his hands were covered by gloves that may as well have been armour they had so much insulative fabric. Up above, there was a thin strip of small lights which the men had laid out to show a path which could be used to traverse the many layers of Klavdiv. The vines and tree Iniri had grown to bring everything down here highlighted by darkness, each fold of the bark made another scab of lightlessness on the flora. Klavdiv proper, with the King’s palace, was somewhere up above them. Not even the faint shade of orange from its glowstone was visible, much less the actually habituated structures themselves. Iniri knew it was above them though. Down here, it was as if the world itself was trying to make up for every ray of light that was blocked by the countless bridges and pathways and other structures with twice the sound. Iniri could hear running engines from above, every now and then she heard cursing from the Imperial construction crews that were installing pulley systems or that were trying to find a way to power the old dwarven elevators with modern generators and electricity. A swear echoed from above, the walls repeated it a dozen times before it finally tired itself out. And Iniri turned back to the men down here. It was a small camp, a small series of containers that Allia had in storage, apparently they were from old research bases in Artica. If they could withstand those temperatures, then they should be able to withstand it here. Thick power cables had been dropped down through the centre of Klavdiv and supplied Core Camp One with power. Floodlights beamed in all directions and in the middle of the base was the Fireplace. Fireplace it was not, for there was not a single piece of wood in there, instead it was an array of heaters that one of the local lieutenants had managed to procure and get the high command to turn a blind eye towards. There, the engineers and maintenance sat in a circle, warmed themselves and leaned in to make sure that the cigarettes they were smoking would not go out from the sheer frostless cold of the underground. Towards Core Camp One’s front, or back, or side, was the main machine that Iniri had just brought down, as she had the containers they resided in and the cable and the heaters themselves. No good soul would stay down here willingly after all. She was waiting for the research teams from above to finish mounting it with sensors. It was some small prototype submarine, the thing did not even have a working again or a rotor, it was just a case of testing whether the actual hull and glass would be able to withstand the acidity of whatever countless combined substances the dwarves had left down when they flooded the World-Core. Beyond lay the Klavdiv Depths themselves. It was much as the Central Arikan Sea, the dwarves had flooded and forgotten about these waters. They had no name, names were starting to pop up, the Undersea, the Sea Under Klavdiv, Klavdiv Sea, Klavdiv Depths, the Core-Sea, everyday Iniri heard something to describe these poisoned waters that Iniri utterly refused to grace with the prestige of being a real sea. It was not. The bridge or platform or road Core Camp One was not the last one, but it was the last one that men could survive on. The long stretch of stone below them had a team of a dozen men in bright yellow suits, each one with a flashlight strapped to his shoulder and another on his head. They were there to record the test. Iniri looked at the men sitting around the fireplace. One of them took his gloves off and leaned in to warm his hands close to the glowing mass of heated metal. Another pulled a lighter from his pocket and put it close to the centre to warm it up. Iniri looked at the Clerics in their own camp huddling around a small version of their own fireplace. Unlike these men, the Holy Order had brought their own equipment and no smuggling had to be done. Iniri looked at the scientist in horrendously thick coats work on the ugly slab of cone of metal and glass that was the mini submarine. And Iniri waited. Two hours later, the scientists finished. One of the men returned to the Goddess of Nature and utterly failed at pulling a military salute. He didn’t even wait for Iniri to salute him back, instead just talking whilst holding that posture. Iniri let him be. “Goddess Iniri! We are finished with preparations on the Krill!” That ugly slab of steel should be called something like Irregular-cone-X-1, not the name of an animal. Iniri did not comment. “We can start with moving it into the waters now.” “Alright.” Iniri was glad this was going to be over with. She would submerge it in water for an hour or unless the sensors gave something and then bring it back up to the surface and be done with this for now. This year, she had gotten enough of the Underground to last her a century. “We please implore the Goddess to be delicate with the machinery. The sensors are not securely attached.” Iniri had nothing to say. What had they spent two hours on then? Fanning themselves? Iniri did not comment. “Alright I understand.” Iniri said quickly and shut the man up. This is why in her heart there was not even a shred of fondness for labrats and theorists and other cretins who were so conceited they thought they knew all there was in the world. Delicate machinery? Let them tend and grow a flower with its all precious overlapping petals first, then they would talk. “I’m going to lower it in slowly.” “And on the way, it has to be even slower we think. If the water-“ The man began again and Iniri’s glare shut him up. “We’ll tell you when to pull it out. Delicately though.” That though did not have to be added frankly. Iniri rolled her eyes and got to work. She cast her arms into the air, her energy channelled itself out of her body, she placed her palm onto the tree. And Iniri saw the camp from above, a fledgling little lake of light in a desert of darkness, standing proud and valiantly. Iniri saw herself from above and from the side. She saw the tree through her own eyes, she watched a vine that dropped with millions of tiny little strands of long grass slowly lower itself into the submarine. And she saw inside the submarine as her vine slowly expanded. Layer after layer expanded and grew and hooked and grabbed and hardened. Iniri moved her free hand up, the submarine slowly began to lift into the air as if it was begin held by a crane. For what it was, it was tremendously light. Iniri had expected something ten times the weight. Although she supposed it did make sense, this was just a tin can of a prototype at the end of the day. Iniri moved it and slowly lowered it to the water a whole layer below them. Men fully enclosed in bright yellow rubber suits stood near the surface of that black liquid and directed powerful flashlights to bring light to the machine. Another pair recorded the whole thing. Iniri felt the noxious air below them touch her vine and hardened it into bark, and then felt the bark start to die. The taste, somehow managing to be bitter and sour at the time, like biting into a lemon laced with cocoa, was disgusting but it was no monstrous concoction. It was just noxious. Iniri had tasted similar flavours near volcano basins or at the bottom of desolate ravines. The thin layers of bark peeled away as fresh wood so thick it could have been a century old overtook its place. It still faltered under the poison, but instead of cracking and retreating from the poisonous air, it just died and became as hard and jagged as cracked stone. And the machine Iniri held in her grip slowly travelled lower and lower and lower until one of the steel legs it used to sit on the ground touched the black water. And it went in further, the disruption on the surface utterly minimal even though it should have produced a wave. Iniri’s bark expanded to close off the porthole she was holding the submarine by and then felt the water touch her. That was another disgusting substance. The rock-hard bark grew thicker, it began to leak sap, the sap crystallized and hardened and cracked when it came in contact with the liquid. Iniri pulled more power out of her herself, this wasn’t exceptionally difficult, the sap leaked faster, where it cracked, it was replaced, where it flaked, it was refilled, the metal she was holding would break before she did. Immediately, one of the scientists from nearby shouted. “We’ve lost bottom camera.” Another replied. “Nothing was on it anyway.” “Do you know what happened?” Another asked, this one had a high-pitched voice. “Probably wasn’t airtight.” The man replied. “We’ll see when we take it out.” “Keep it in a for moment then. I don’t think we’ll manage the hour.” Their chief or captain or sergeant or boss or however scientists organised themselves declared and shut them up. Or tried to. A few moments later another man spoke up. “Temperatures rising in the sub.” The men looked at each other. “Do we have the outside thermometer?” “Connection was lost with the bottom camera, maybe it got through the rubber?” Iniri rolled her eyes. Trust scientists to make some ridiculous acid resistant armour and forget they had used rubber for the electronics. “It was fast though.” So the the mini-submarine sat in the water for a minute as the scientists watched it. Iniri didn’t know what exactly they were looking for, even with the spotlights, this black water that seemed to curl upwards and almost stick to the vehicle gave a minimal reaction. Its waves slowly moved towards the stone wall that rose out of it. It was not quiet custard or jam, but water did not move that way either. Iniri watched as the scientists talked amongst themselves. The labrat with the laptop shouted from his screen. “We’ve lost the underside sonar.” And with that, the excitement went out of the men. They stopped smiling. A few of them made wordless grumbles of exasperation, but they just sat and watched. Iniri merely stood there and waited for the next instruction. Their head-honcho turned to her. “Bring it out.” So Iniri did. She didn’t bother to keep her smug smile that her bark and sap had made it and the metal had cracked first. The submarine came out of the water. Everyone who saw it suddenly gasped. The Clerics turned their heads, the maintenance crews groaned when they realised it was more work. Even Iniri felt her eyebrows jump upwards. The bottom of the submarine was cracked and thin and chips were flaking away as if the metal was old paint. They fell onto the surface of the black water, settled for a moment without a splash, and then disappeared. Iniri had kept it in for one minute and it was already . She didn’t have to be some great genius to know that an hour was out of the question, Hell, even ten minutes were out of the question! She looked at the scientists, one of the men sat down, another tried to light a cigarette but the flame on his lighters would not work. Fınd the newest release on 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹✶𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲✶𝗻𝗲𝘁 It looked like the Dwarves would need to wait for the Suns under the Surface to be relit.