Molting the Mortal Coil

After they finished marvelling over the sight in front of them, Nova finally slapped Cloud on the back, “Enough fooling around. The Divine Egg is out of our league. Start setting up the gear.”

Cloud had an aggravated look on his face, one which he didn’t dare to keep when he turned around. Instead he took off his shell and started opening the top plate to pull out some complicated looking gadgets. He looked around and then remembered Spark wasn’t with them. Then he turned his pleading look to Aurora. She rolled her eyes and then cleared her voice, “Once we’ve set up the gear, we can try for a few of the Divine Amethyst before we leave.”

Nova chuckled and didn’t object. The group didn’t have any official leader, but they did have a sort of chain of command, mainly based on who was the best at bullying the others. Or at least that’s how Cloud felt, since Nova was always bullying him. She was also friends with Aurora and Spring did anything that Aurora said. Not that he blamed her, Cloud turned his eyes wistfully over to the fair Aurora and tried not to sigh too loudly.

Like she could tell exactly what he was thinking, Nova threw a stone that hit the back of Cloud’s knee as he was walking and made him stumble onto the ground. He cursed, but didn’t say anything. Grumbling to himself as he pulled out the gear. The device looked like an overly busy tripod, and he handed two of them to each member of the group. Then they spread out around the room, hugging the walls. Even so, they were assaulted by varying waves of dizziness and vertigo. They heard phantom voices and saw vibrant illusory waves of color floating towards them.

With their hand on the wall, they had a guide and ignored the strangeness coming from their eyes and ears. At a certain point, the device in their other hand started to vibrate and they stopped their trek. Led by the vibration, they placed the device without needing to know where they were. Then they unfolded the tripod-like device into something more like the tines of an umbrella. At the base, instead of a handle, there was a spike. They placed the spike down against the ground, holding the device tightly while pressing a button. There was a loud hiss of air and the spike on the bottom drove itself into the stone floor. Once the device was placed, they pulled out the second one they were given and started moving again. They were guided to another position and repeated the process.

Aurora, Spring, and Nova placed two devices each, while Cloud put down three. When all nine of them were placed, the strange visions and hallucinations they were seeing disappeared. They could still hear some faint sounds, but their vision cleared up just like when they’d been standing outside of the room.

“Okay, all the Pylons are down. Now let’s hurry up with the defenses. We can’t stay down here forever.”

They put up a camouflage screen like they used when camping, as well as a few other devices that would block smells and sounds. They also added traps and even moved the rocks around to create an artificial end to the cave before it reached the chamber with the Divine Amethyst. Only when their preparations were complete did they finally return to start trying to collect the crystals.

Nova’s finger lit up like a firework and she hurled the marble sized ball of crackling light towards the Divine Egg. It flashed and crackled as it whizzed through the air, but after traveling a few feet over the pile of Divine Amethyst it disappeared. She let out a loud sigh, “If only our powers worked nearby the Divine Egg. You could collect all the Divine Amethyst in just a few minutes, Aurora. Hey, Cloud. Go crack that egg with your big sword. It can’t be as hard as your head.”

The normally quiet Spring chimed in, “There’s no way any of us could withstand the mental attacks of the Divine Egg long enough to get close to it.”

Of course, they all knew that already, but Nova felt like her joke had just turned into her being teased. She turned a glare onto the brown haired girl, but then Aurora laughed, “What if we just throw him over there, head first!”

Spring realized what she’d said and then laughed with Aurora, “Oh! If he’s moving fast enough before getting close that might just work!”

Cloud did not enjoy being the butt of the joke, so he just finished with the last device he was setting up and then walked towards the Divine Amethyst pile. At this point he would rather face the hallucinations and poltergeist-like mental attacks, “Being alone with a bunch of women is really not as great as they said.”

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

“Nothing!”

Cloud didn’t realize he spoke so loud and quickly ran into the mental attack area rather than face the three of them who somehow spoke in unison. He felt like he was being stabbed in the chest by a ghost holding a knife, while walking across a field of hot coals that had already destroyed his shoes and started burning his skin, but he felt it was a relief at the moment. Then he saw a viper made out of stone with burning magma dripping from its fangs. He reached down and plunged his hand into its mouth. He felt like his arm was being completely melted off, but then a moment later he pulled his hand out and felt the Divine Amethyst in his palm.

After teasing Cloud, the three women went around the room collecting a few of the Divine Amethyst that were on the wall, but still had some power in them. Then, they adjusted their mental states with careful breathing and a round of meditation. Then they did the same as Cloud, braving the terrible hallucinations, and simulated pain and torture to try and retrieve the Divine Amethyst. They had all been trained in the process and knew that wherever they saw and felt the most terrible and painful things, it would likely be where the Divine Amethyst’s actually were.

The Pylons that they placed earlier could restrict the area of influence, but they had a limit. They would only operate once they were a certain distance away from the center of the powerful field of energy. Only near the edges of the room was the energy weak enough to be neutralized. Unfortunately, that energy was what nourished the crystals into being Divine Amethysts. The crystals that were scattered against the walls were quite far away and only a few of them retained enough power to still be considered as Divine Amethyst.

A couple hours later, the group could only collect a few crystals each before they were starting to get fatigued and had to leave. They made it to the surface and rejoined Sage and Spark. Of course, Sage had been watching everything that had been going on with the Twin Soul, so he already knew how things had gone for them. Thankfully, they hadn’t spotted anyone else during this time.

Sage looked at the four who returned, “Were you successful?”

They nodded and he smiled, “Wonderful! Okay, so on our way out; should we kill a bunch of their guards and then escape after being ‘discovered’? If only this one squad goes missing, they’ll be suspicious and search this area, right?”

Cloud finally perked up, “Don’t worry, we’ve already got it all planned out!”