"Maybe we should've thought this over. Fighting our way through a stairwell sounds much better than jumping down there." Siegfried said, looking down into the abyss that surrounded the catwalk. Their destination was more than a hundred metres down. In short, Rei's proposed shortcut was going to require much more effort than they'd initially thought.
"There should be a service ladder somewhere here," Ilise mused. "I've been inside Helheim before."
"You have?" Roza asked. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?"
Ilise flushed. "I was only in the lobby. I came down here with Bianca once, but it was really different from where we are now. But shouldn't a service ladder be standard around here? How else are they going to get down there if the lift breaks down?"
"Guys! I've got a better alternative!" Toby called out. An entire system of pipes ran from where they were all the way down to the deepest parts of Helheim. Ilise touched them. They were cold and wet. Sliding down them was a much safer option than simply taking the plunge, but it still had its fair share of risks.
Noting her hesitance, Toby clapped Ilise on the back.
"It'll be fun! I'll go down first. Just to show you it's perfectly safe."
"Toby! Wait-"
He was already gone. He hugged the pipe close to himself and slid down. Ilise could only imagine the sheer amount of grime that had accumulated on those pipes. Toby's whoops of excitement slowly faded as he descended into the depths of Helheim. Everyone stood by with their breath held.
There was a 'thunk' sound. It was followed by a fireball Toby sent up, cutting through the darkness.
Rei sighed and shrugged off his peacoat. "I guess we know what we have to do."
He was the next to jump, followed by Roza and Siegfried. Ilise took one last look at the relative safety and cleanliness of the catwalk and slipped out of her peacoat. She fashioned it into a scarf around her neck.
"Here goes nothing," She said to herself.
--
Whoever had said that 'the descent into hell is easy' was right. Ilise thought it was unfair to call Helheim hell, but it did have the world 'hel' in it. All in all, her trip down the pipe had been much less eventful than she thought. There wasn't actually any grime on the pipes. It was damp and smelled of rust, but otherwise it was perfectly clean.
She disembarked and joined her teammates on sub-level C3's catwalk. It was definitely colder down here. Icicles had formed on the catwalk's railings, and Ilise had encountered a slight sheen of frost on the surface of the pipes. Without her coat, Ilise suspected that she would've been shivering. Her tolerance for cold weather wasn't exactly the best, for someone who was born in Jotunheim. She couldn't help but repress a chatter as they pushed forward, deeper into the unknown.
"Yo, Ilise. You look cold. D'you need to warm up?" Toby asked. He lighted a flame and brought it over to her. "Here. You can hold it safely, I should think. It won't explode or anything."
Ilise accepted the ball of flame gratefully. She kept it close to herself, letting the warmth spread through her and thaw out her frozen limbs. Ahead, the rest of her team was having the same problem. Toby, as a Promethean, was the only one who was entirely unaffected by the cold.
"H-h-how're w-we g-g-gonna f-f-fight down here?" Siegfried asked, his teeth chattering horribly as he spoke. "I-I-I'm having enough t-t-trouble s-s-speaking as it is. Thanks, Toby." Siegfried's speech slowly stabilised, with Toby's fireball to warm him up.
"I'll wager they've got some hazmat suits lying around. They can't expect researchers to work in this environment, can they?" Rei said. HIs hands were trembling, but his voice remained cool and collected. He did, however, release a noticeable sigh of relief as Toby passed him a fireball.
"It'll hinder our ability to fight, though. Especially mine," Siegfried looked down at his twitching arms and jittering legs.
"T-t-then you don't have to fight." Roza said. She tucked her fireball underneath her peacoat. "We should all do this for the time being. Keeps us warm underneath. It makes me look like I'm pregnant with, like, a glowing baby or something. Toby? You got any way to make these things smaller?"
"No can do, Roza. Those are as small as I can go. Any smaller and you're better off finding a lighter and some kerosene."
Rei followed suit. "Good idea, sister. It appears that I didn't inherit all of father's smarts."
"Oh, shut up."
By some stroke of luck, the same thick door that guarded the catwalk had been frozen open by the subzero conditions of sub-level C3. Pointy-looking icicles protruded from it, but a wave of heat from Toby turned them into harmless puddles. They advanced, huddled around Toby as if he was some mobile space heater.
"The vault should be just around this corridor."
They turned the corridor, only to find...
A nondescript door.
"Is...this it?" Ilise asked. She tapped on it. It felt the same as the regular three-layered door. There was nothing to set it apart from, say, the backroom they'd entered a while ago.
Rei paled.
"T-this can't be! My deductions are never wrong!"
"Step aside, wontcha? We've come this far and we're gonna give up just because it doesn't look like a vault door? We call this hiding in plain sight, bro-bro. It's why you could never beat me and hide and seek."
Roza held her palm up to the keypad. A arc of lightning danced from it, and the door whooshed open.
The room within was completely empty with the exception of an obelisk, not unlike the ones littered across Alpheim, towering all the way up to the ceiling. The word 'MONOLITH' was carved into it. A small, blinking terminal protruded from its base. Rei approached it.
"Please input Yggdrasil credentials." The terminal beeped.
The others looked at Ilise expectantly.
"What?"
"You have Yggdrasil credentials, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah? And you don't?" Ilise asked, puzzled.
Siegfried guffawed.
"Gosh, Ilise, you really are a Rossweisse. Regular students don't get Yggdrasil credentials. Only high-ranked employees and Rossweisses get them. Not even the student councillors have them."
Ilise flushed again. She wrung her hands and began to type.
"You're sure this thing won't explode and kill us all the moment Ilise finishes typing?" Toby asked.
"It's very unlikely. This appears to be a raw hard-light construct. If it did explode, we'd find ourselves with some cuts at worst."
"Credentials denied. You have -- 2 -- chances remaining."
"Maybe Bianca's then," Ilise said to herself. She keyed in Bianca's code. She'd given it to Ilise in case she ever needed to enter the Rossweisse estate without her. The terminal beeped again.
"Credentials denied. You have -- 1 -- chance remaining."
Ilise threw her hands up in frustration.
"None of my credentials are working!"
"Maybe," Rei thought back to Marten's briefing. "You've been inputting the wrong credentials this whole time! Think about it: This is the newest thing we've seen so far. Look at it. It's running on an operating system that has to be at least two decades younger than this facility. This monolith thing was put here by Mistilteinn. It wasn't part of Helheim. And that means..."
"The codes we were given!" Ilise concluded. She hurriedly typed in her own. This was their last chance. If it didn't work, they'd be locked out. Or the monolith would explode. Neither was an appealing option.
"Credentials accepted. Congratulations, Ilise Rossweisse and company. You have completed the first half of your examination. In five seconds, this monolith will release a signal that will notify every student, Einherjar and Valkyrja of your location. You must successfully exfiltrate from Helheim in order to finish this examination. Good luck."
With that, the terminal shut down, returning to its blank 'Input Credentials' screen. The monolith powered up, light welling from its base and surging up to its tip. Their phones dinged.
Ilise read the message. "The vault has been located. Students, please report to sub-level C3, Corridor A4. Expect heavy resistance."
Toby grimaced.
"We are sooooo dead."
--