Chương 220: Lost and Broken Worlds

"Why did the bloody Zelyrians trap this room?" asked Felix, frowning. I scanned the area around us as best I could with my spatial eyesight to see if I could figure out the answer. The room was massive - it seemed large for the sake of being large. There were four pillars near the center of the room, and the rest of the room was empty save for traps. There were at least six tripwires in the room, and twelve pressure plates.

This room did not contain a control panel for the rest of the pocket dimension, the way I had been hoping it would. <Sallia, do you have any idea why the Zelyrians would booby trap the first room in the pyramid? > asked Anise. <Maybe it's some kind of burial ground? > said Sallia. <I know in my first life, kings buried themselves in large trap-filled tombs so that they could reincarnate in peace. I have no idea what the Zelyrian religious beliefs were, but that's the only guess I have. > She paused.

<Is there anything else in the room? Like a coffin or something? > <There are some pillars in the center of the room, > said Felix. <I think I can also see some splotches of color near the edge of the room. Miria? > I focused my dimensional eyesight a little more, and confirmed Felix's words. There were several pictures painted onto the walls of the room. <There are a lot of paintings on the walls, > I said. <Are they magical in nature? > asked Felix.

<I don't think so, unless they're somehow hiding their magical nature, > I said. We both paused as I realized that Anise's parents and Old Mo were giving us a look. One that said that they knew we were communicating with each other mentally, and wished we would include them in the conversation. Felix repeated his words out loud, and a moment later, Anise also repeated Sallia's speculation that this pyramid might be some kind of ancient tomb.

The fact that Sallia was participating in the conversation made it harder to manage. One of us also needed to relay Sallia's words to the group, and we needed to talk both verbally and mentally. It was the only way to include everyone in the conversation. Once Anise relayed Sallia's suspicions to the group about this being a crypt, Old Mo shook his head.

"The Old Zelyrians didn't have a habit of burying their dead in pyramids. Zelyrian burial custom was to launch the corpse into the sky and then immolate it in midair. Supposedly, it was to give them a way to return to their home beyond the stars. The Zelyrians always claimed to be divine beings descended from beyond the stars… much like every other king and emperor of the era." I could see Old Mo's lips twitch as he realized that, the Zelyrian claim actually held some weight to it.

The Zelyrians were from another dimension, after all. While they weren't divine beings, they were from beyond the stars… I sighed, and shook off my idle thoughts. We didn't have time to waste. The worldstriders might break through the force field and attack us if we delayed too long. We needed to leave now if we wanted to survive this mess.

"If it's not a crypt, we need to figure out what this room is," I said after a few moments. I tried not to rasp as my battered ribs creaked in pain. They still complained when I tried to speak, just like they complained when I took too deep of a breath.

"We need to get out of here before the worldstriders catch up." With that, we made our way into the room. As we strode into the room, Sallia kept offering suggestions. <If this isn't a burial ground, maybe it's some kind of treasure vault? > said Sallia. <Or a power source? Or some space or object that the Zelyrians might not have needed to enter this building to operate. I don't think it makes sense to put a lot of traps into a room if people need to enter it frequently.

The Zelyrians might have thought differently, but I think my reasoning makes sense, > said Sallia. <If you have a lot of people entering and exiting often, someday someone will trip and blow themselves up. So the room you found shouldn't need frequent entry. > Anise acted as Sallia's mouthpiece again, and the group paused. The idea that this room might be some kind of treasure vault or power source was interesting. It also renewed my hope that we might find a way to leave this dimension here.

I didn't fancy our odds if we had to go back through the wall of worldstriders. With Sallia's idea in mind, we started to search the room. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. As Anise and Felix led the search, I decided to look at the murals. I was curious to know what the Zelyrians had left behind. It might give me a clue what this room was for, if I was lucky. The first picture was of a city, located somewhere… else.

The way shapes in the picture seemed to bleed into each other, in a way that didn't match geometry in this dimension. The architecture was also very different. Some of the buildings defied gravity in a way that was impossible here. I suspected the first picture was of the Zelyrian home dimension. The second picture was an image of the worldstriders. They appeared in the middle of the city. The Zelyrians, didn't seem to have the same problems that I did in targeting or harming them.

I wondered if Zelyrian spellcasting circumvented the dimensional properties of worldstriders somehow. If so, Anise would make handling these creatures less of a pain in the neck once she grew up. The Zelyrians did not take kindly to these new, dimensional invaders. The Zelyrians killed or captured the newcomers to their dimension shortly after they appeared. Furthermore, it didn't look like the worldstriders were particularly prepared for an invasion. They seemed more like desperate refugees than armed invaders.

They appeared sporadically, and when they appeared they seemed to low on essence. The Zelyrian murals didn't depict very much resistance from the worldstriders. I frowned. The idea of the worldstriders being refugees was… odd. And concerning. The third picture was of something. It reminded me of the living galaxy we had seen in our second world - it was a picture of an overwhelming force. Something that required an incredible mage or an advanced civilization to fight off.

It was a picture of a giant with dozens of flaming eyes, gazing at the city from the sky. The city of impossible architecture was collapsing as the giant face scowled at it. The flaming giant didn't seem quite as powerful as the living galaxy. The living galaxy would have wiped out the city in moments, without any hope of escape. But it was still too hard for the Zelyrians to fight off. If the pictures were anything to go by, the Zelyrians tried and failed to kill it several times before giving up.

I realized what the worldstriders had been running from. The Zelyrians realized the same. In the next picture, the Zelyrians made a deal with the captured worldstriders. The Zelyrians would release the worldstriders, in exchange for helping the Zelyrians escape. The next picture was of the Zelyrians and worldstriders fleeing to a new dimension. The Zelyrians provided essence, and the worldstriders opened tears in reality. They fled across the ocean of souls, and arrived… here.

They had arrived right in the middle of the bronze age for this world. The Zelyrians had arrived with archmages, worldstrider allies, and developed steel weapons. They were few in number, but had a massive advantage in combat prowess. Furthermore, the local empires of this world were frequently at war with each other. This left them weakened, and gave the Zelyrian invaders room to grow. The fifth mural was a picture of the Zelyrians building their empire.

They played the local powers off of each other, grew in strength, and then conquered this entire continent. That's where things started to become different. The next picture showed the construction of this very pyramid. I couldn't quite wrap my head around what I was seeing, but I suspected I was looking at the plans for this pocket dimension. It was a picture of a hidden world in the mountains. One that had the same impossible architecture as the Zelyrian homeworld.

It was also far beyond the abilities of the Zelyrians. They couldn't amek it on their own. To make this plan a reality, the Zelyrians had turned their eyes towards their allies. The new pocket dimension would feature two layers of reality: one for Zelyrians, and one for the worldstriders. The details for the worldstrider's layer of reality looked odd to me. There was something wrong with the image that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

As I stared at the picture, I couldn't help but feel like the worldstrider layer of reality was more like... the jaws of a beast. I frowned. Was there some kind of foul play involved in the worldstrider's layer of reality? I could see how the worldstriders would be able to help with the creation of the pocket dimension. They seemed to have an innate ability to move between one dimension and another freely. But considering how much hatred the worldstriders had for Zelyrians now, something must have gone wrong.

I thought of how the mural reminded me of the jaws of the beast, and resisted the urge to snort. Clearly, there had been something wrong with the worldstrider's layer of reality. I didn't know how the Zelyrians had done it, but I suspected the worldstrider's layer of the pocket dimension was a trap. Something that hurt them, or used them, or... something. I turned towards the next wall, to see how the story continued. All I saw wasa blank patch of wall staring back at me.

After the picture depicting the creation of this pocket dimension, there was nothing. I had no idea how things had turned out past that point. The worldstriders had ended up in the pocket dimension. The Zelyrian empire had also somehow collapsed. The worldstriders also hated the Zelyrians. This pocket dimension was also completely empty. There were no Zelyrian cities inside, and only endless darkness. This half-built pocket dimension was the last act of the Zelyrian empire at its peak.

After building this, it had gone into irreversible decline. Had the worldstriders realized something was wrong with the pocket dimension? Was I thinking too much about the picture I had seen? It was hard to judge what had happened after the last mural. I sighed, before shaking my head. While the murals were interesting, I still wasn't quite sure what this pyramid was for. Was it a control room for the pocket dimension? Was it linked to the worldstrider's layer of reality? Did it do something else?

As I ran over these questions in my head, Anise brightened up. <I found something! > she said, staring at one of the four pillars in the room.