House of Amarin

"I never heard about something like this," Lia said, looking around, waiting for the Headmaster to explain where they were.

"This is an artificial space made by me. I was always sensitive towards No-Space, and I became a master artificer at an early age." He started, saying it so proudly that he looked more like a peacock than a fox, "In ancient times, it was called the Void. It was believed that all souls, after death, would drift into the city, waiting for a chance to be reborn one day. Of course, this is just as true as believing it to be an infinite expanse of unknown energies. Or a space of nothing. Some say the Undead came from here! Nobody knows for sure. You need a certain strength to create a stable point that is inside No-Space and can come here in person. Or even attempt to traverse it!"

"Traversed? I thought anything alive thrown in here is to die instantly!"

"Under a certain strength, yes. In the Three Ri stage, it does not happen so quickly. I am strong enough to go into No-Space and survive for around… 10 minutes. 15 if I prepare well enough. It took me two years to build this antechamber! The principle behind it is the same as your holding bag. The difference is that artificers use formations to pinpoint and… well, draw up a magical border inside No-Space that works as your holding cell! They do not come here physically but through mana!"

"..." Lia was listening carefully as what he was saying was completely new information for her. Her silence clearly surprised Lucian.

"Lady Reyra never taught you about it?"

"No." She answered honestly.

"Weird. Erias Amarin was greatly interested in No-Space before his death. Well… that is good. At least I can start from square one, and you won't have weird preconceptions stuck in your tiny brain!"

"Your brain is tiny!"

"Oh, no! My brain is at least twice the size of yours!"

"That is why your head is so big; even No-Space couldn't swallow it!"

"Oh my!" Lucian laughed, "I am starting to like you!"

"Hmph!"

"Let me start from the beginning!" He continued as if nothing had happened, clapping, and the white walls went transparent instantly. It was as if they were suddenly standing in an endless soup of clouds, ranging from orange to deep violet, mixing and swirling continuously. Lia could only see the two doors, one behind them and one a few meters away, leading into No-Space directly.

"Woah…" She gasped, forgetting to be angry or annoyed.

"I agree." Lucian nodded with the same amazement in his eyes, "I never fail to marvel at this place. It is simply gorgeous. But it is also chaotic!"

"I can see that!"

"No, you don't." He replied, shaking his head, answering her before she could ask. "Time and space here are… relative. This room is stable. The amount of time passing here is the same as outside. But if you would go out, walk around for five seconds, then come back, you may have been gone for only a blink of an eye. Or for a year. It is unpredictable!"

"I wouldn't go out! I would die!" Lia protested, shaking her head, letting her twin tails flap behind her back.

"That is also true. Stepping into No-Space is a weird feeling. It is like being swept away by a raging, flooding river! You have to combat it with all of your might to stay afloat! That is why any living thing dies in here. Their soul simply gets washed out of their bodies!"

"Brr… I don't want to experience that!"

"You won't, not with me here. Not that I would let you out with your current strength! Reach Magi Adepti; Then I can bring you out for a few seconds!"

"..." Lia gulped loudly, a bit frightened, but then she was getting really excited about the prospect.

"Do you know about sub-realms?" Lucian asked.

"I do!" Lia nodded, "Most of them are ancient wonders, left here by a bygone civilization! It is said that in ancient times, many powerful sects had their own homes established in them!"

"Glad to see there are still old books preserved by the Houses." Lucian nodded at her brief explanation, "True, what we know is that going back five, six, or seven thousand years, we had powerful families. Entities. They called themselves Sects. Some of these sub-realms were indeed made by them and their powerful leaders! The concept was the same as this room!" He said, opening his arms wide, "Only they were capable of doing this on a much larger scale. Sadly, we lost those techniques!"

"Mom said they once traveled into a sub-realm that was as big as our whole flying island!"

"Yes, I know." Lucian nodded, "At Mount Haleghern. Undead poured out of it, and your mother lost a few good friends that day…."

"Um. She never liked to talk about it." Lia nodded, a somber expression hanging on her young face.

"I know how she felt. I had a similar experience back in 4E92. These sub-realms are dangerous! Many, when discovered, are first sealed before anything. After that, a House MUST be notified of the discovery! The act of keeping secret about such a place warrants the death penalty."

"Because of Undead?" She asked, her voice stern and serious.

"Because of Undead. Have you ever heard or read about what their biggest weapon is?"

"Being Undead?" She asked, unsure, "I know that beheading one is usually insufficient."

"No. That can be dealt with. Dismembering them puts them in a position where they no longer mean true danger! Then you just have to gather the pieces and burn them. Their nastiest weapon is the ability to traverse No-Space! That is why we say they have no souls in them! They are unaffected by it! They can retreat to No-Space and disappear, just to reappear somewhere else! Back in the Dark Ages… We traveled to Windswept Fields because all the sub-realms there were marked and explored. We could seal them and protect ourselves. We could defend that place to the last living being!"

"Sub-Realms…" She murmured, putting it together. "As all sub-realms are connected like this one, into No-Space! Then they get infected by Undead who can travel it!"

"Yes." Lucian nodded heavily. "There were no sub-realms, ever to be discovered, that were empty. There were Undead dwelling in them, many times, Intelligent variants leading them!"

"Why aren't we destroying them?"

"The smaller ones can be destroyed. I worked with your mother and with Lord Lakhmu many times because of my expertise, doing just that! But…”

"But?"

"The truly stable, big realms are out of our league! They could be damaged by only someone who is an Ascendri. Even then… one Ascendri may not be enough. So we can only seal those realms with our best efforts!"

"And we don't know how many such hidden realms exist!" She added, crossing her hands, scratching her chin, thinking hard, and furrowing her golden brows.

"Yes. The study of No-Space includes not just what we now see around us! It also includes sub-realms and how holding bags and other spatial artifacts work! It is a complex and greatly unexplored field of study, where nothing is set in stone, and everything can be right or wrong. It is confusing, and many give up quickly when studying it!"

"I don't like giving up!"

"Good! Because I'll test that!" He pointed between her brows. "The walls here are not just transparent to your eyes but to your mana too. First lesson; Sit, meditate, and try releasing it right out to No-Space!"

"..." Lia wanted to say something, but watching the Headmaster's red eyes, she gulped back every word that came to mind. Sitting down, she quickly fell into a meditative trance, and when she released a wisp of mana, she gasped.

The moment it appeared, she felt an invisible hand grab onto it, violently yanking it, trying to tear it out of her body. It was horrible, painful, and scary. Lia's eyes quickly snapped open, and she screamed out, falling backward with sweat drenching her body, gasping for air. She was terrified momentarily and felt that her body was almost dragged into No-Space, to be swept away like a powerless leaf stuck in a violent storm.

"Relax. This space is stable!" Lucian said, crouching beside her, helping her shaking body sit up while Lia grabbed his arms, afraid to let go.

"What was that?!" She cried, her mismatched eyes filled with tears.

"The feeling of No-Space. This is what it is to walk outside in those clouds. The only difference, the feeling you just experienced is hundreds of times stronger! Before anything, I need to make you get used to it. You have to learn how to resist it, not get panicky and be swept away! Here…” He flicked his wrist, producing a chocolate bar in front of her. "Eat it~! It will do good! After you are back in spirit, let's try again!"

…
….
……

It was a surreal, foreign world. The sky was dark, reddish, and unnatural. It was filled with cracks instead of clouds. They sometimes glowed in a greenish, sickly hue before going back to their dead, black color. The ground was also black and charred, like an old battlefield where nothing could grow ever again. As if the winners not just burnt it to the ground but soaked it in salt afterward. Everywhere the eye looked, there were ruined buildings, remnants of trees turned into nothing but stone, and thousands of ancient weapons and armor lying there, untouched for who knows how long. In a towering, 60-70 meters high ziggurat, a tall, muscular man was standing still, his arms crossed before his heavily armored chest. He had blonde hair, now kept in braids, held up behind his back. His deep, blue eyes were scanning the desolate landscape, releasing a soft sigh at the end.

"It was not your fault, Captain!" A woman walked beside him, wearing leather armor and a bow strapped to her back. She gently tucked her reddish, messy hair behind her ears, looking up at her leader, who was two heads taller than her. "Isuzu gave her life for us to escape."

"It was still my decision to follow the Undead down here." He replied, his voice calm, but she could feel her captain blaming himself.

"Captain, we are the Vanquishers! We knew what that meant when we signed up following you!" Her voice was full of resolution while her light-green eyes looked at him zealously.

"Thanks, Pochy." He replied, placing his hand on the top of her head, patting it.

"Raz!" another shout came, and a young boy was hurrying up the ziggurat's steps. He was quick, wearing leather armor and a cloak that was flapping behind him at that moment.

"It's Captain Razael Amarin, you dingus!" His cape replied, and when he stopped at the top to catch his breath, his cloak jumped off, turning into a small, skinny girl, only reaching up to their ankles with wings behind her back. Her jet-black hair twinkled like her blue eyes as she flew up.

"Only you call him that Yuyi…" the boy grumbled.

"It's protocol, Kerta!"

"So?" Razael asked, tilting his head and watching the two of his subordinates.

"We found passage out from this forsaken death world!" They said simultaneously.

"But we don't know if it is safe! Or if it leads to… wherever!" Yuyi finished.

"Good enough!" Razael said after only a moment of thinking. "Since walking into that trap… I don't want to think how much time has passed on the surface while we are being made to wander between sub-realms!"

"Ugh…" Yuyi's face twitched, "We have been down here for a year… it shouldn't be that long for them too!"

"Time is… a weird thing here!" Razael shook his head, flexing his muscles, and an aura swept out, alerting all of his men, numbering around fifty in total, to come back and gather in front of him. Feeling it, everyone flashed a smile as their leader stepped into the Realm of Three Ri after being stuck in these desolate, destroyed worlds, wandering from one to the other. A feat that was similar to his mother's with how quickly he managed to do so. "Let's gather up everybody, and we will go! I brought you all down here; I will make sure we all resurface!"

"We are right behind you, Raz!" Kerta flashed a thumbs up toward him.

"It is Captain Razael Amarin!" Yuyi protested immediately, which seemed to be a regular occurrence because Razael ignored the two.

"Let's form up and see where it leads! We spent enough time in this dead place…." He said, looking around with a sigh.

They had been stuck here for a month after fumbling through another weak, unstable 'tunnel' connecting two sub-realms. While trying to find a way out of here, Razael explored the ziggurat and found some ancient jade coins that contained wisps of mana. While meditating, he once managed to tap into them and realized they were a kind of storage device. They were not bound by language, spoken or written, and his mind was directly fed the information recorded in them.

"Our Head Disciple came back battered and beaten by another force. He was traveling the Outside World when he stumbled upon an uncharted territory." Razael's eyes twitched as he 'remembered' a meeting between strong, leading figures of the past as if this fragment of memory was of his own, "When regaining his consciousness, he said he was beaten by a new force that appeared in the last few hundred years, calling themselves the Immortals' Dominion. I called this meeting together to determine our future actions and official response. They refused to acknowledge his rank and power and even had the audacity to send him back, broken!"

"He was always brazen. Are we sure what he told us is what truly happened?" Another voice asked, but Razael couldn't put a face or gender behind its ancient, faded owner.

"That doesn't matter. We have three realms under our control! We are a Unique Realm! A newcomer force has the gall to humiliate us? Next to our home region, nonetheless?"

"I agree." A third, even more distant voice chimed in. "That Thunder Immortal, or whatever she calls herself, was audacious beyond belief when we went to ask for answers, seeing our disciple being delivered to us with only a breath left in him!"

"We have to show them our strength, then-"

But it was there where this 'memory' stopped and faded away. Razael tried to do the same with the other old jades, but nothing came back, at least nothing related to this event. He was curious about how the old Sects lived and what happened when they went to war. There were no mentions of Undead in any of the memories he managed to acquire, which further piqued his curiosity. A find like this was wonderful; the only problem was… they were cut off from the outside world and had to find their way back.

"Captain Razael Amarin!" The little fairy flew up to him, returning his thoughts to the present. "The squads reported back! They will arrive in a minute! Is… is there a problem, Sir?"

"No." He smiled, patting her cheeks, drawing a flushed smile on her face. "I was just musing about the ancient memory I got a hold of! The old sects are simply too interesting! I wonder what the world was like before the Dark Ages!"

"Wasn’t Saviour Erias Amarin born in that world?"

"At the end of it. These ruins predate him!" Razael said, looking at the stone remains, "By at least a few thousand years earlier than my ancestor! Or more, going by the fragments I managed to gather! I would be excited to explore more if not for our plight! Haahh… Let's focus on getting out first! This is no place for us; we belong to the surface!" He laughed, back in good, healthy spirits that always gave courage to the Vanquashers who were ready to die for their leader.