And indeed, upon her approach bearing that intention in mind, Zel found a door-shaped section of the wall flickering and growing increasingly uncertain, until its fake matter dissolved into Fog and faded away. On the other side was a short, narrow hallway, leading to a… Tiny, circular room? No, not quite.

As Ozmir led them to stand within the circular space, Zel noticed the distinct gap between where the hallway’s floor ended and the room’s space began, alongside a small, subtle control panel projecting from a glyph on the wall. An arrow down, an arrow up, and some other projected buttons. This was…

“An elevator? How far down is this well that an elevator is needed?” she questioned, much to Jorfr’s confusion. He grumbled something about disliking elevators and how those inside skymetal meteorites were unreliable, whatever that meant.

“Quite deep, indeed,” said the chef, pressing the downward arrow and several other, less easily read buttons. As the elevator began to descend, accelerating quickly, lightgems were seen flying by through the doorway, by her estimate denoting approximately ten-meter increments. One. Two. Three. Five. Ten. Fifteen.

“How deep is quite deep? Even a few thumb-lengths can be called quite deep if referring to how far I lodge my foot in your rear,” grumbled the norseman again.

With a sigh Ozmir conceded, “A little over one-thousand seven-hundred meters.”

“Why the lift, then?” said Zel the first thought that came to her mind. “It ounds like a Fog Gate would be easier to use.”

“It would be, and it is. However, certain sensitive materials used in rituals risk contamination in-transit, or are terribly dangerous to transport in such a manner - I presumed the former was the case for your spirit vessel,” he explained, looking to Jorfr near the end.

“I- yes,” the norseman agreed in bewilderment. “The nature spirits inhabiting it would be swept away by the Fog-sea’s currents. But how…”

“Druidism, animism, shamanism - though I am not a practitioner, my travels in pursuit of greater ingredients have led me to live in the midst of many tribal peoples, yours included,” smiled the elf.

The ride went on for a little while, the air somehow growing neither stale nor hot or cold - if anything, its quality improved in a familiar way, the atmosphere rich with aether just like that of the dungeon. It came to a stop long before Zelsys had anticipated, by her estimate only a few hundred meters down. It soon became clear why this was - they were now in a chamber deep underground, standing atop a floor of blackstone, with a much more familiar lift in sight across the small room - nearly identical to the lift she had ridden to access the Third King’s Oracle.

“This is why we need to go this deep in the first place,” he said. “We’re tapping into an existing leyline well, contained within Three Kings Era ruins underneath Willowdale. It’s true that our sect is built atop a leyline crossing, but its proximity to the surface means even slight overuse could - and has - caused crop failure, but don’t tell the governor that.”

A waist-height pillar stood in its centre, a control handle jutting from its top, which Ozmir grasped. Gentle white light flowed from the control handle, cascading through a spiderweb of angular lines across the platform before it came alive and began its descent.

From a standstill to a velocity well beyond freefall, and yet they remained solidly fixed to the platform, light pooling around their feet, Jorfr holding onto his backpack for dear life. Marker lightgems sped by faster than one could see, and before they knew it, the platform began to decelerate, soon coming to standstill.

Ozmir looked them over, grinning as he walked off the platform, “Always fun to watch first-timers ride the deathlift. The well is just past this door, come.”

The scale of the hallway, the design and positioning of the lightgems, the floor paneling, the gigantic door emblazoned with a glyph that slowly lit up at one’s approach… All just like the dungeon.

As they walked, a question came to mind, this being as good a time to ask as any.

Zel turned to Jorfr, asking: “Why this alternate method instead of breathing methods? In fact, why not just use both?”

After a few moments’ deliberation, he recited a surprisingly well-formulated answer: “Breathing techniques are taught and practiced in the more temperate regions of our lands, but when the air threatens to freeze your lungs, you must do all you can to hold onto warmth - this is why those of us who followed the Revenant King to the far north learned of ways to coerce earthly spirits into sharing the land’s warmth, and later honed such wisdom into modern druidic practice. Among our kin are those who feed their spirit animals with the strength they draw from the land in order to summon up the strength of the wild, beyond even the unfettered strength of a berserker. Contrary to common myth they are the most disciplined among us, precisely due to the risk of one’s inner animal running rampant should one lose control for but a moment.”

“How… Interesting. What of the pelt, then? What’s with it being a spirit vessel?” she kept prodding in earnest, enthralled by the different logic of another land’s arcane practice and how, despite these differences, it fit together with what she knew.

“Despite their lack of divinity, certain beasts possess their own natural colonies of these spirits, and through this connection we will help attract a new colony to you. I hunted a bear, knowing that you had already slayed such a beast. As for your spirit animal, there is no way to know whether it will run rampant, but I have made provisions on the dire possibility that I might have to subdue you.”

“Yeah, about that,” chuckled the Despot of Self. “That will not be an issue. I’ve already established a rapport with my primitive self.”

“Your what now?” the norseman turned to look at her. “Your… Spirit animal? What you’re implying is a feat reserved to those in perfect synchronicity with their instincts, and while you of all foreigners are one of the few I could believe doing it, such an achievement would contradict you knowing naught of our arts. The Ritual of Inner Communion is a druidic practice attainable only by the most accomplished.”