An Owl's Rise

Feeling the familiar tugging sensation in her chest from the Aethersphere, Evelyn was completely caught off guard.

Last time she felt this it led her to a colossal flower that was being guarded by a serpent the size of a freight train.

During that time, she had thought she was going to die because she followed its directions, and only survived due to the serpent's indifference.

Of course, the serpent had later saved her from the human pursers, but things could have just as easily ended up with her dying.

Yet this time it was quite obvious that it was not pointing the direction of that flower. She had put a good amount of distance between it and herself, and this time the Aethersphere was pointing down.

'What the hell is going on? Why did it suddenly start doing this again?'

For a moment she thought maybe the thing was so badly damaged that it might just be sending out some sort of false signal.

But as she backed off from the spot she was standing on it disappeared, and when she walked back, it came back.

In only this one spot right in front of the last bottle of alcohol was she within range of the Aethersphere's detection ability.

Though she had no idea exactly what it was detecting, or what met the criteria to be picked up by it.

'Last time it led me to that flower which I am pretty sure had some powerful magical properties. My instincts told me to do whatever I could to claim it, so there is no doubt it was very valuable. Maybe this thing can point me towards things that have a lot of magic? Still, if I follow it this time, I could end up dead.'

Thinking about what to do Evelyn was truly at a loss.

Certainly, she could speculate that she was being pointed in the direction of something that might make her stronger and help her survive in this harsh world. But it could just as easily lead her to her death.

Still, unlike last time where the flower was above the ground, this time she was being pointed downward.

That meant maybe there was some abandoned ruin similar to the one up here, except this one might be full of treasure.

'But how the hell would I begin making my way down if I wanted to look for it.'

Curiosity and desire welling up inside her, Evelyn started thinking more and more about how to get to whatever item the Aethersphere might be leading her to.

Any advantage she could get in this world that she knew little about was welcome, and it was hard to fight the temptation.

'Nothing ventured nothing gained as they say. I have been racked with so much bad luck that something has to go my way eventually, right?'

Making up her mind, Evelyn decided to try and find whatever it was she was being led to.

Unfortunately, it was not like she could just burrow underground to it, so she went around the cellar looking for some sort of access that would lead further down.

Nevertheless, nothing obvious presented itself like a lever or hidden button, and she quickly resorted to digging around.

First, she tired right under the place where she was getting the signal, but after around two feet of digging through the dirt she gave up there.

She then went to the center of the room and tired there, but nothing came about it.

Trying random spots for around the next two hour she had no luck and all she got for it was to make herself dirty again.

'I should have known it would not be that easy. Whatever it is has probably been buried even longer than this place has existed. I might have to dig a thousand feet or more before I come across a path that leads down.'

Giving up on what she figured was a fool's errand, Evelyn made her way over to the exit of the cellar, when she noticed something with her keen eyes.

One of the areas where she had shattered a glass container full of alcohol was already dry unlike all of the others.

Normally it would have seemed an inconspicuous spot, pretty far from the place where she was getting the Aethersphere's direction.

Heading over to this area, she began digging, and after around eleven inches in the dirt gave way to another hatch.

However, unlike everything else she had found in this ruin, this hatch still seemed in pristine condition and to be made of far high quality materials.

'Did the people who built here originally put their town right over some sort of ancient ruin or something, and not even know about it. But this hatch honestly looks newer than everything else here, though that could just be because of its higher quality.'

Wondering about this hatch Evelyn really could not understand why it was here.

She thought maybe it was some place that the original owner of this building stored stuff he did not want anyone else to find. Or maybe someone else found this place in ruins and decided to hide their treasures here and put this hatch in at a later time.

'Now the question is if I can even open it?'

Reaching her claw down towards the hatch she pulled up on it, and to her surprise it opened with ease.

Looking down she saw a ladder that descended for a long way down and was lit up by what looked to be slightly glowing stones.

The light was so dim that a human probably would have only been able to see a couple of feet in front of them, but for Evelyn it was more than enough to see normally.

'Well, time to see where this leads.'

Slowly lowering herself down the hatch, she grabbed her claws around the first wrung of the ladder and carefully began making her way down.

Certainly, this was far from easy for her as an owl, but she took it slowly and carefully, and whenever she lost balance and nearly fell, she would lower the gravity around herself and send out a gust of wind to right herself.

Time quickly went by, and soon after having traveled around a thousand feet underground, she finally hit the bottom of ladder.

When she touched down, she felt a slight wetness on the stone and realized that it was some of the alcohol that had seeped through the ground.

Looking around, all she saw was a rocky tunnel leading further down into the depths of the world.

Of course, it was obviously man made since at periodic positions small stone that glowed faintly were placed into the walls.

Feeling anticipation and fear welling up inside her, Evelyn was not certain if she wanted to continue. But now that she had gone this deep, the Aethersphere was reacting again and pointing her along the path.

Steeling herself she had already made up her mind to see this through, and hope that whatever was at the end might be of use to her.

'At least now I can fly again.' She thought as she spread her wings and began flying down the tunnel.

It slowly became steeper and steeper to around the limits of what a person could walk down, though this did not matter to Evelyn who could fly.

Eventually she found that the path was going in a winding pattern as it descended very far into the ground.

'What the hell is this place. It just goes down, and down, and down. There is simply no way that this could be practical.'

Thinking that this tunnel that went deep underground was completely absurd, Evelyn could not fathom that any sort of civilization used it as means to travel to the surface from deep underground or vice versa.

At this point all she could figure was that someone had left something they did not want anyone else to find down here.

Continuing on, after what felt like an eternity, she finally made it to the end of the path and a door stood in front of her.

From what she could see there was some scrawling on the door she could not read, but beyond it was definitely where the Aethersphere was pointing.

'Great, now what? I have no idea what this says, and for all I know this door could be trapped.'

Yet as she approached the door tentatively, it just opened up and revealed the room beyond it.

Having already come this far, she figured that she would see what was here, and walked into the room.

As she did, a pedestal in the middle of the room lit up, and on it was some type of amulet.

But before she could move over to it, the pedestal began growing brighter and a projection showed above it.

A man she did not recognize then began saying something in a langue she did not understand.

Luckily it only lasted for around two minutes before it ended.

Shrugging her shoulders, she simply went up to the amulet and grabbed it.

She figured that it was the item she had come down here for, and it was worth the risk take it even when she had no idea what had just been said.

Thankfully nothing bad happened when she grabbed it and the room stayed exactly the same as it had been.

However, she quickly realized that this pendant was not what had led her down here.

The Aethersphere was continuing to point forward even as she grabbed it. Pulling her in the direction of the wall on the other side of the room.

Finding this strange, she flew over to this wall and noticed that it had more writing on it, along with all of the other walls in this room.

But unlike the rest of the writing she had seen in here, there were three words written larger than all of the others that she could read.

Seeing this her eyes went wide, as in front of her. written on the wall and with a space below it. were the words 'What is your name?'.

'What the hell is going on in here!? Why are there words from my old world written in between all of these others!?'

Being put in front of this unbelievable situation, Evelyn could not understand what this place was.

Certainly, it had not been super easy to find, but once she had found it there were no obstacles to stop her from reaching this point.

It had almost been too easy, and now there were words from Earth scrawled onto a wall thousands of feet below ground on another world.

Still, whatever the Aethersphere had been leading her to was beyond this wall, and she decided to see what might happen if she wrote her name.

'Maybe someone else from Earth built this place to help out anyone else from their home planet that found it? And writing your name is a sort of identifier.' Evelyn thought, trying to come up with a rational solution to what this was.

Placing one of her claws on the space under the question, she found that it began glowing.

Moving her claw the glow followed along with it and stuck around for about a minute before disappearing.

After discovering this she wrote her name in the space, hoping that maybe something might happen.

As she did, her name disappeared from the rock, before repapering again much brighter, and the entire room began to rumble.

At first, she thought she might have triggered some type of trap, but instead the wall in front of her began to part and lead into a much larger room than the one she was currently in.

Heading inside she saw that this place was full of shelves and cabinets with all manner of items stored on and within them.

Yet before she could explore this room, from the center of it on a raised platform, the image of the man she had seen in the previous room appeared again.

But this time he did not speak some alien langue she did not understand, but instead a langue she knew well from her first life.

"It appears that you found this place as I foresaw you would. I have left everything here for you, Evie."

Chapter 26 A Brother's Gift