Dusty, moldy, and filled with insects. The great wound of the world near Pulalia's outskirts always brought many scavengers, explorers, and adventurers - one has yet to return.
But even that doesn't frighten the bold and the stupid alike. A group of four high-end mercenaries and two adventurers who knew the region were hired, rations and equipment were brought, blood was spilled and monsters were cleansed without hindrance, all thanks to the leader of this operation's foresight and deep pocket.
Lulu Calamitas, nicknamed Pampkin. A gnoll whose fur even put shadows to shame, her orange teeth and eyes glowed even brighter than the torches the group was carrying - a leader that displayed unmatched scheming when outnumbered by monsters, great use of their limited yet expensive resources, and a leader who always fought alongside its troops even with light armor and a rusty great sword broken in half. A leader that would've amounted to a humongous amount of respect if she hadn't walked around on the streets with a pumpkin on its head and spoke with the voice of a little girl. "Are we there yet?" Her head garment had five holes, for snout, eye and ears.
"For the hundreth time, no!" The poor adventurer slammed his torcher at the chest of the mercenary leader and opened the map wide open for the gnoll, "We're literally five hours away so please-"
Lulu perked up, "We're here!"
"Whuh?" At the adventurer's unspoken request, Lulu flipped the map and gave it back. "Huh."
A mirthful chuckle ran through Lulu's throat, "Don't worry, Estelaria's maps are hard to read anyway." While the adventurer kept staring at the map, Kocia, the leader mercenary assigned by Lulu herself slammed the torch back with a face full of discontent.
At first, the other mercenaries had problems with Kocia being assigned as a leader due to her being mute and overall lack of equipment - bringing only a zweihander, a sleeveless red shirt, and some thick brown trousers that came with a combined set of brown boots didn't make her very reliable to the eye, but they quick got around that as what the grey feline lacked in voice and equipment, Kocia had in sheer strength and agility.
The light of the torches soon fell in comparison to the sun shining through the great wound of the world, the cave they were in was a spiral path to the bottom where a metal structure larger than a house and foreign to all but two of them resided - four rusty iron wings, two smaller at the front and two bigger at the back, three horizontal burnt wells placed in triangular shape at the very back, the rocks behind those wells were equally black. The front of the thing was spear-shaped but it slowly adopted a more rectangular shape as it went, the last notable thing of the metal giant was some sort of vein with deep blue liquid moving through.
"What is that..?" One of the mercenaries said - a tad bit small compared to the previous human adventurer. Pulalia was a city ruled mainly by cat siths, therefore besides Kocia which was a parvum hybrid of a cat sith and a human, Lulu had to crouch down to meet and speak eye to eye with each of them.
And that she did, Lulu crouched down to see what the little feline saw. "That's an ancient artifact. Doesn't seem to be workin' for a while though. Kocia?" The chief mercenary seemed stuck in her diary but her ear flicked, "Daystone is yours but the dislocator belongs to Pampkin!"
Kocia closed her diary, sliding it back to her small cat-themed dimensional bag on her hip and taking the front, the ancient artifact was at the very bottom of the world's wound, and as no other scavenger ever got so far in, there was no path downwards - Kocia didn't need that, she leaped forward and skied through the ground until reaching the artifact, not once flinching or losing balance.
The other mercenaries looked at each other then looked down the path their leader took then at the adventurers taking various climbing tools out of their bags ready to distribute, they would've happily taken it if it wasn't for the one orchestrating this expedition jumping down and doing the exact same path as Kocia and even enjoying herself while at it. "Screw it!" One of the mercenaries said.
And so they jumped, and the result was two boxes of bandages wasted and four whimpering cat licking their wounds, the adventurers would have scoffed but what was in front of them was more interesting at the moment.
Lulu was fidgeting with the artifact and managed to peel off a layer of removable metal under the front of the artifact, some centipede seemed to have taken a liking to her fluffy ear but she didn't bother with it, actually, she enjoyed the critter messing around her ear while she worked.
"Careful!" Lulu said and in the next moment, the metal slid open with a metallic stair coming out that nearly hit Kocia, a weird sizzling came out of the ship like a liquid metal being poured into water, what was stranger was the soft blue light coming from inside which was similar to lapis lazuli posts that illuminated Pulalia at night.
Kocia pointed at two adventurers and then at a mercenary before making a fist gesture and then walking inside. The adventurers looked at each other while the mercenary nodded and stood still, the other two mercenaries went inside, Lulu soon grabbed the centipede and put it on her forehead before rushing inside.
The mercenaries didn't go far, they were entranced by the absurdity of magic in front of them, the entire thing was filled with runes from top to bottom. Could they see them? No. But the sheer amount of magila in the room affected the very scent the air carried, it left a sour aftertaste on the sky of their mouths and a vague sense of higher awareness. What's more, is how there is only a single seat with a cavity in the format of a human with multiple pointy spikes and thick magic strings spreading out on the ground, was that a torture chamber?
"Let's not stay here for too long, this gas is addicting." Lulu said, turning around and rushing to the door where a black panel resided, Kocia followed behind staring at everything.
Lulu's paw tapped on the screen and a crossed red laser came out, the gnoll kneeled and the instance the laser went through one of her pumpkin eyeholes it turned green and for a second everything turned still, then the sound of more sizzling came from the magic circuits of the door as it opened. Kocia raised an eyebrow but was still the first to go in followed by Lulu and the mercenaries.
All of them came to a room where the veins filled with blue liquid nearly overlayed the metal floor, coming from the walls going to the very center of the room where they entered into a half-cone copper pedestal with two sets of spinning golden tweezer a bigger one at the middle of the pedestal and a smaller one at the very top, however, most interesting was the pentagonal white stone floating in between the tweezers encased by a transparent unstable green bubble projected by the pedestal.
Kocia began to walk but was immediately stopped by a mercenary pointing at the ceiling where there were two rectangle outlines. "Might be a trap," the mercenary said, "Ruins always have those."
"You were an adventurer?" Lulu said looking up as well.
The mercenary nodded, "Been there, but realized I was better at killing than taking things slow," his paw clenched into a tight fist, "Those things killed plenty of good cats."
Lulu crouched down and grabbed one of the veins, "Ancient ruins are always so preserved," then poked one with her claw and the viscous blue liquid slowly flowed out, "At least on ruins there are chance of the traps malfunctioning." The mercenary nodded, Kocia glanced around at the other two who were standing still mesmerizing the room, and sighed, dropping her zweihander to the ground before she sat down.
"Actually, Kocia. Start cutting these cables." Lulu said provocating the grey cat to raise an eyebrow, "You know, these vein-lookin' things." Kocia didn't need to be told more, she grabbed her weapon and got up, winding up for a huge strike and smiting it down!
The whole ship trembled and red lights began to replace the previous blue light. "Alarm, kritischer Schaden im Kern." A monotone voice spoke in every room in a foreign language.
Lulu sparred no time to slap Kocia in her neck, "Cut them, not smash them into bits silly!" Kocia recoiled and massaged her neck with a small smile, the other mercenaries were equally displeased. Again, Kocia winded up her sword but this time didn't put any magic behind it and cut the cables until there weren't any that she could cut without getting closer.
With a smile, Lulu clapped her paws and began walking forward and in no less than a few steps the rectangles opened up revealing two long metallic cylinders attached to a bigger metal box.
All the mercenaries grabbed their weapons but Lulu simply kept walking forward until she was in front of the pedestal, "Don't worry, it's safe as a garden!" And thrusted her paw forward piercing through the unstable bubble and snatching out the pentagonal stone, the tweezer stopped spinning.
"Alarm, Stromausfall in fünf Minuten" The monotone voice alarmed once more.
The gnoll didn't care and simply chucked the stone at Kocia, "Here's the daystone." The leader took it and almost immediately the daystone turned into a light and shot towards the lock close to the hilt of her zweihander. But work wasn't over for Lulu, she ripped open a lid the pedestal had and began messing around with the complex metallic formats that were inside until she found a copper ring filled with runes that perfectly fit around a ruby diamond shaped with a big symbol on it's head that looked like a headless snake. Lulu reached and ripped off the dislocator while breaking whatever it was attached to then got up and turned around, "Time to dip." The mercenaries stood still until Lulu walked out of the room, and by then they understood what she meant.
"I can't wait to go back, my wife should go through labor in two weeks." One mercenary began.
The other mercenary caught up and asked, "What oracle did'ya visit?"
"One of the church of light-" The conversation stopped at the sight of two corpses on the outside, all of the mercenaries drew their weapons at the sight of their previous companion holding a bomb and a torch threatening to light the fuse.