“So, where exactly is this catacomb?” Lilian called over the howl of the wind, ducking her head slightly so the snow wouldn’t fill her mouth. They’d been traveling for around an hour now, moving far slower than normal due to how heavily obscured their vision was.

“We should be getting close,” Angel replied. He pointed up, towards a looming shadow in the distance. “Those are the Rigewind mountains. The catacomb is at their base, we just have to make sure not to fly straight into a rock or something.”

Lilian nodded, then verbally voiced her understanding a moment later. That was for the best, as Angel couldn’t make out much more than her shadow in the storm.

They continued forwards, pushing through the surging snow and wind towards the mountains. As they grew closer, the wind seemed to double in intensity. It got to the point where Angel couldn’t even hear himself yelling.

Then, when they were nearly upon the base of the mountain, it halved in intensity. The snowfall dropped to a powdery haze and the wind all but dropped off. Angel shivered within his coat, pulling his arm closer to himself as he and Lilian slowly picked up the speed now that they could see.

“It should be along the base of the mountain,” Angel said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a sharp little mound of rock right above the entrance. It looked completely out of place, but the actual entrance was quite hidden.”

Lilian shook off the mounds of snow that had plastered themselves to her. “Well, catacombs aren’t on this map, so you’ll have to find it yourself.”

“No problem there,” Angel said, slowing his board as they grew closer to the mountain’s base. “We can just travel alongside the mountain until we run into it. That’s how we got to it last time. I’ll be scanning for it with my artifact anyways.”

Lilian shrugged, falling in behind Angel as they traced a path along the base of the mountain. Time flew by them much like the wind at their backs, and Angel nearly missed the outcropping as they flew by it.

He leaned back hard, forcing Lilian to spin around and zip back over to him.

“What?”

“It’s here,” Angel said, tapping his eyepiece. “Just picked it up. The magical energy here is ridiculously low. If I wasn’t looking, I never would have found it. I find it hard to believe that this place is the key to Old World Magic.”

“Only one way to find out,” Lilian said, looking around. “But are you sure this is the place? It’s just snow and rock.”

She wasn’t wrong. The jagged mound Angel had spoken of was buried deep beneath a thick layer of powdery snow, with only the tips of its peak poking out. There was no visible entrance.

“It’s here,” Angel confirmed, rooting through his pack and pulling out a bronze canister. He paused and glanced back inside it before letting out a sigh. “Damn. Last one. I’ll have to buy more of these.”

“Can’t you make them?”

“This is a specialized canister,” Angel replied, twisting the tab at the top. “I could learn, but it’s not really worth the effort. It’s generally just easier to buy them.”

He placed the tube on the ground and stepped back. There was a muffled whoomph as a pillar of snow was launched into the sky, nearly blasting him in the face. The canister expanded outwards, compressing the snow and forming a hole as it burrowed into the ground.

Angel squinted down into it. A plain metal trapdoor rested deep beneath the earth before him. “Ah, there it is. See?”

Lilian peered down, then grunted. “Guess I shouldn’t have doubted you. Seekers first.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Angel said, hopping down into the hole. It was at a slight angle, which allowed him to slide down instead of falling the entire distance. He bounced on the ridged metal a few times before reaching the bottom.

He leaned forward, wrapping his hand around the trapdoor handle. With a grunt, he pulled back with all his strength. The door swung open with a creak and a wave of musty air washed out over Angel.

After a glance back at Lilian, he slipped down into its depths. He landed on hard stone, his eyepiece scanning his surroundings before he was even standing again. Angel stepped out of the way and Lilian slipped in after him.

The room was small, with no signs of traps or Old World Magic. It was made of stone with a few metal plates scattered throughout it, almost as an afterthought. There were four doorways, one on each wall. The one directly in front of them had faint white markings along it.

Angel walked up to it, a small laugh slipping out of his mouth. “Well, if anyone came here after me, they didn’t mess up my markings.”

“What about the traps? Are they all deactivated as well, then?” Lilian asked.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Angel said, shaking his head as he started into the doorway to the right of the one that he’d marked. “A lot of Old World Magic traps have their own power sources independent of the main core. Assume that everything is just as dangerous as normal.”

“Alright,” Lilian said, following after him. “But aren’t we going down the wrong path? You marked the other one.”

“No,” Angel replied. “That path leads straight into a pit.”

“Ah,” Lilian said intelligently. “I see.”

Angel led her through the dark tunnels, holding his right arm aloft. With the light coming off the glass tubes along it and atop his shoulder, it was more than enough to see a short distance around them.

“I don’t know why I haven’t done this before,” Angel muttered as they reached a fork. The left wall was marked with chalk, so he headed down the right. “It’s so much easier than holding up a spark of magic.”

The metal on the ground grew more frequent the further they descended, and their surroundings soon went from drab gray to the shimmer of bronze. Angel shivered. It was slightly warmer than it had been in the storm, but not by much.

“Where’s all the Magitech?” Lilian asked as they stepped out into yet another room full of doorways. “This feels more like a maze than a catacomb.”

“Deeper,” Angel said. “My memories aren’t perfect, but I remember this being one of the deepest catacombs I ever went into. We’ve got a good bit of walking ahead of us before we even reach the real deal. You can imagine how long it took to figure out how to get there, though.”

Angel’s words proved true. Even with the chalk markings to tell them exactly where to go, it took nearly two hours before they caught their first glance of Magitech. Angel stopped them right before they stepped into a small room from the seemingly endless hallways. A jagged gear hung at an angle from the wall, the floor beneath it stained with oil.

Broken glass littered the ground from where a tube had fallen, and gray lines of Old World Magic ran along the ground.

“Doesn’t look like it’s got power,” Lilian said.

“No,” Angel agreed, a frown on his face. “It doesn’t look like it does. Someone smashed the power source, but it wasn’t me. My mas – ah – Soul, was always fond of avoiding the traps instead of breaking them. As am I. This was someone or something else.”

He walked up to it and knelt beside the stain. Angel pressed his fingers to it, then rubbed them together. “It’s still wet. There are cracks in the metal, so it should have drained if this was long enough ago. This happened recently.”

“Great. In that case, we might want to assume that someone else is in here with us,” Lilian said, cracking her neck. “I hope you’ve got that super blast of yours charged up again.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. There was only one doorway at the far side of this room, but they continued far more cautiously than they had before. The deeper they went, the more goosebumps rose on Angel’s neck and arms. He’d known his past would be waiting for him at the bottom of the catacomb, but it seemed as if something else might be as well.