Chapter 37: Destination Silver Cove

The next morning, Ki Jung gathers her belongings, eats her breakfast, and leaves Marshall city. Though her goal is Silver Cove, she heads towards the area she noticed the day before where large amounts of Qi was being drawn in.

With Sharpie flying high above, it isn’t long until she can see the cliff the Qi is being drawn to. In minutes, Ki Jung is covering the last couple of kilometers to her destination. As she gets closer, she can feel the energy in the air being pulled towards the anomaly.

When she reaches the entrance leading into the cliff-face, Ki Jung feels something tugging her forward. Sharpie stays outside and keeps watch as it doesn’t like the idea of entering a confined space and the absence of the sky.

Garbed in her recently acquired armor, Shinken sheathed at her waist, and Nagamaki in hand, Ki Jung steps into the cave. Unlike the cave with the worm, this one does not exude an aura of menace or hunger. It doesn’t give off any kind of feeling. It’s as if it is a dead zone. If that is the case, why is it drawing in Qi?

Pushing her senses into a 45° arc in front of her. This increases the range she can sense things from 25m out to 90m. The downside is that this reduces her awareness of anything outside of that 45° arc. To make up for this, she turns to the left and makes a clockwise sweep as she enters the cave proper. There is nothing to be found within her range of perception.

The cave extends further than she can sense by any means. Thus, Ki Jung cautiously moves into the cave while keeping the wall mostly to her left as she sweeps back and forth. Mentally, she is making a map of the cave. Half an hour after she first entered the cave, she is back at the entrance. She has not found anything, but her scans have not covered the entire cave area. By her calculations, there is an area of at least 50 meters in diameter in the center of the cave she has missed.

After searching the majority of the cave and having found no signs of life, and no tracks of any kind, Ki Jung reverts to the default 25m 360° pattern of PakChulBong. With that taken care of, she moves towards the center of the cave. Lighting her way is the tip of her Nagamaki, which is glowing thanks to her illumination enchantment. Its light illuminates a 30m radius. The brightness falls off with each meter. It does allow her to see the edge of the hole well in advance.

Walking a circuit around the hole, it seems to be oval in shape. On one side, it is about 30meters across, while on the other, it is close to 45 meters across. Taking a rock, Ki Jung causes it to become illuminated as bright as a plasma flame. Tossing it into the hole, she watches as it disappears from view.

It takes her a moment to realize that the light was extinguished. It did not have time to reach terminal velocity and fall so far that it wouldn’t be visible. Though she did not keep a tether to it, it would have stayed lit for about five minutes. This means that something actively suppressed the light by some means.

Now, Ki Jung is really curious. By her calculation, the light was quashed about 240-meters down. This is based on a six-second fall time and using Earth’s gravity to make the calculation. If the gravity is stronger, then the distance is shorter.

Ki Jung attaches her Nagamaki to her pack so that it is within reach and provides illumination. It is as she is doing this that she berates herself for not seeing about using Qi to allow her to see in the dark. Though, PCB does give her something close to that.

Having ensured that all her gear is adequately secured, Ki Jung casts her sticky digits spell and goes over the edge, head first. The wall is not quite smooth, but it is not rough, either. It’s more like a surface worn over a long time. Much like the granite boulders at Wichita Mountain in Lawson, Oklahoma.

She makes her way down the wall until she feels something odd. Before she has a chance to respond, the light from her Nagamaki is extinguished, and her spell fails. Suddenly, she is in freefall.

With a bone-jarring thud, Ki Jung hits the ground. She wonders if she hit her head because her vision seems off. Then, her awareness increases, and she discovers that she’s no longer in the cave. It is likely that she is no longer in the First Realm. Ki Jung has emerged from inside the cave into an open expanse. This new place is not familiar to her at all. Even the local Sun is different, which is part of her reasoning for believing she isn’t in the First Realm any longer.

Ki Jung quickly takes stock of herself and her equipment. She has no wounds, her gear is all there and undamaged. She even sees the rock she threw into the hole a little more than a meter from where she landed. The only thing she notices is that her connection to Sharpie has been nearly severed. Only the barest hint of it remains.

Not knowing how long it will last, Ki Jung uses the connection to get a message to Sharp Eyes. She can only hope that her feathered friend understands and will follow through. Her instructions are to attempt to intercept Phong Ahn as she travels from Dong Kyu to Silver Cove. When she does that, she is to make friends with this person. Ki Jung makes it clear that she doesn’t know when she will be able to return. With one final push, she sends an instruction to the bird to vocalize, “Ki Jung sent me,” when it finds Phong Ahn.

A few minutes later, the connection is terminated. It feels as if the bird is moving away when they lose their connection. Ki Jung is hopeful that Sharp Eyes is doing as she requested. She may never know the answer to the outcome.

The day before, Ki Jung had considered making a connection with the big cat she played with. Now, she wishes she had done so. The cat would have come with her into the cave, at least. Now, she was once again alone.

The time is closer to dusk than morning, by the movement of the Sun. This is another clue that she is somewhere else. The one thing she is sure of is that she is not in the inner or middle rings of the First Realm. She notices that there is no quick and easy way back to where she was. By all appearances, she fell out of thin air.

Picking a direction, she starts running. Her destination is a large hill in the distance. She is hoping to be able to see signs of civilization from it or find such signs as she traverses the land between here and there.

Within minutes, Ki Jung finds herself engaged in deadly combat with a horror that can only be described as a chimera made of the body of a Gila monster the size of a pony. The head looks like a starfish, and the rear end is that of an elephant seal. The starfish-like head has hundreds of eyes along each arm. At the center, there is a beak-like structure reminiscent of a squid’s beak.