Once the sun was shining down on the Fluttershi, Sydra decided to check back on the group. Entering his Arbor Sanctum, he saw them all standing in awe around the large pile of Starlight Onyx. Once he had brought them all back into the vehicle he explained to them what had happened last night. They were all surprised to hear that Sydra had found a large gash in the ground filled with Starlight Onyx, but decided not to wake them up and have them help in the collection of it.
"I still don't understand your reasoning behind not waking us up. The four of us could have collected a lot more if we had worked together," Erich said for the third time. He was slightly upset that he had been asleep and missed out on getting rich quickly.
"I'm sorry. If you want I can give you a map with the spot marked out on it once we return to Emerald Pine Valley next year. Until then have to focus on reaching each of these ruins and exploring them as fast as we can," Sydra said with such vigor that Erich stopped talking about it.
"Fine, I guess that will work for me," Erich said, as he turned and went back to sit down. This allowed Sydra to get back to the map in his hands and continue to try and pinpoint their position.
"How close do you think we are to the first ruins?" Robert asked as he leaned over and took a look at the map.
"I believe we're about here, which means we have around half a day until we reach the ruins. Unless something unexpected happens of course," Sydra said, trying to figure out the symbol of the ruins. It looked like a long telescope surrounded by what appeared to be stars. All of this appeared to be inside what looked like the jaw of some large creature.
"Do you think it will be dangerous?" Cidre asked from the back while polishing his arrows.
"Yeah, I believe every set of ruins we are going to explore will have some type of danger inside them, I just don't know what some of them are. The ruins were headed to right now are one of them," Sydra said, turning to look back at Cidre, who was now working on the plasma bow Sydra had given him a while back.
...
Half a day later Robert was pulling the Fluttershi up beside a large dark grey, metal building with a huge red dome on the top of it. Getting out of the vehicle, everyone was hesitant to enter the building.
"Are we sure this is it? This doesn't look like some long-lost ruins to me..." Cidre asked, looking up and down the building. Although the building was large, there wasn't much that stood out about it except the red dome on top of it.
"I believe it is, we should start looking for a way inside it," Sydra said as he began walking around the building. Upon reaching the left side, Sydra found a single door but that was it. The door also didn't have a handle or anything else Sydra could use to get in.
"Guys I found a door, but there doesn't seem to be any way to open it," Sydra said, calling the others over to his position.
"We could always kick it down, should we try that method?" Robert asked, looking at the door. Seeing Sydra nod, Robert ran up to the door and gave it a large kick, only to have the door slightly dent.
"That method might work if we want to spend all day kicking the door, but it will take too long, and I have a better method," Sydra said, walking up to the door and releasing a few spiders to crawl underneath it. "Sorry, I just came up with this method," he said looking at Robert's red face.
'Click' The spiders managed to find a way to open the door from the inside, and it swung outwards to the group.
"So who is going in first?" Erich asked, looking inside the dark abyss on the other side of the door. Even though there was light on the outside, once that light hit the space between the outside and inside it seemed to hit a barrier and disappear.
"Can you see anything?" Sydra asked Cidre, who had the Void Eyes and also the best chance at seeing what laid beyond the dark barrier.
"No, my eyes can't pierce through whatever this barrier is made out of. Since I am a ranged weapon user it wouldn't be a good idea for me to go first either," Cidre said, stepping away from the door.
"That's fine, I'll go first and if everything seems fine I will come right back out. If I don't come back out it means something is wrong, so do not come in after me," Sydra said before stepping up to the door and passing beyond the dark barrier. A few seconds passed and Sydra came back out from the building with a smile on his face.
"Haha, everything seems fine inside, and it looks absolutely amazing. Follow me," Sydra said before going back inside. Everyone else shrugged and followed him in, only to be amazed by the sight before their eyes.
They were standing at the top of a set of stairs, and below them was a large expansion of space. Their were eighteen flights of stairs, and along the way down there were miniature planets floating about. Reaching his hand out, Erich tapped on one of the planets and sent it floating away, before it came back to its original position.
"This sort of looks like outer space, I mean isn't that our planet right there? It has the two moons floating around it like ours does," Cidre said pointing at a floating planet that was situated in the middle of the room.
"I think your right, lets head down and see what we can find. I think that is a control panel right there," Robert said, heading down the stairs first, with the rest following closely behind. When they reached the second to last flight of stairs, Sydra stopper as his attention was caught by something.
"Hold on a second, guys," Sydra said, as he hopped over the railing and landed on top of a large planet. Creating a few spiders and tying a rope to them, Sydra threw them over at another one of the planets and pulled it over to him. The planet was decorated to look like crystal, and on top of it was a small crystal key that blended in with the planet. Retrieving the key, Sydra tossed the spiders back over to the railing and climbed back over it.
"You couldn't have tossed the spiders from here?" Robert asked, wondering why Sydra went through so much trouble.
"I wonder what this key goes to, once we reach the bottom try to see if you can find anything that this key could open," Sydra said, ignoring Roberts question.
"How did you even see the key, even with my eyesight I completely missed it," Cidre said, looking back at tall the planets more closely this time.
"I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye when some light reflected off of it is all," Sydra said, looking at the crystal key in his hand closely.
At the bottom of the stairs the group decided to split up and look around for things. They would come back together in an hour or so to report what they had found. The building was incredibly spacious, and at the moment they were just in the room with planets floating about. Along the walls at the bottom were seventeen more doors that led to other rooms with the more interesting things.
Inside one of these rooms Sydra was looking at hundreds upon hundreds of large glass tubes filled with blue liquid. Inside each tube were creatures that resemble a mixture between scorpions and centipedes. Standing next to one of the tubes, Sydra saw that the creatures were a mixture between yellow and red, and had long needles coming out of their tail.
Walking past the tubes, Sydra comes across a new creature that was larger than the rest. It was light orange, with red spikes coming out of it's back. The creature didn't have any legs, instead it had purple ethereal fins that line its entire body. On top of its head were six closed eyes, with three on each side of its head.
Looking past the creature towards all the others, Sydra sees that there are a few more glass containers that held different species than the first one he had seen.
'What are all these creatures? They don't look like they are native to Phisloke, but I can't be sure. I'll have to ask the others what they think they are when we regroup,' Sydra thought to himself as he walked down the tubes and takes not of each creature he passes by. Back at the tube of the snake like creature three of its eyes open and follow Sydra's movements.
At the end of the room, Sydra sees a glass window with a dark room on the other side. In front of the glass window is a control panel with a few switches on it. Underneath each switch is a word that tells Sydra what each switch does.
'Hmm, seems I can read this language too. I am curious about why, but I'm more curious about what is inside that room. Lets see here, this switch is supposed to turn on the lights,' Sydra thinks as he looks at all the switches before finding the one to activate the lights. Flipping it up, Sydra stumbles back from the gruesome sight on the other side of the glass window.
"What... What the hell?!" Sydra screams as he falls over, cold sweat dripping down his back.