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✅ The Day The Magic Died - Indefinite

There are no significant content warnings for this thread.
Timestamp
Era XXVI
Location
Aeylria Prime - Academy of Magic
Content Warnings
Violence, Necromancy, Gore
It'd be rather slow progress, given there was a pretty big difference between a single person (Vireylda) making the journey as opposed to a team of people carrying equipment. A lot more time was needed to make sure that descents could be made in a secure fashion, and that the items they were carrying could also make it down. A lot of the areas that Vireylda had gone through were tested to make sure that they could actually handle the weight - the Esh'lahier was a lot more petite than most of the others, of course.

With the Academy building in the state that it was in, caution and prudence were the preferred approaches. At the very least, Vireylda had scouted the way ahead, so there shouldn't be anything more unexpected than a bit of ground potentially being more unstable than expected. No hostile beasts or magical time bombs ticking away - at least, not in the portion of the Academy above ground.

Eventually they'd manage to make their way to the ground level and survey the situation that Vireylda had in front of her. But, well...

"The debris is blocking the way down," Thorek noted. "The whole stairwell looks like it's collapsed. Maybe if you managed to clear it out, you could descend - but you'd likely have a mess on your hands even if you did. No telling what the damage to the surrounding walls is like, the earth might just cave in the moment you touch anything." The very foundations of the building seemed to be in a rather bad way, and that was admittedly just a little dangerous when the rest of the building still needed to be dealt with.
 
In for a penny, in for a pound!

But considering the last few times she tried this, Vree made sure to be careful in her controlled disintegration of the rubble. Small pieces, strategic removal, avoiding what looked load bearing.

Did not need the foundations of the building collapsing on her or Thorek's team.

She would of course, warn the team of her plan before she tried.
 
Oh, Vireylda could just... disintegrate the debris? Well, admittedly, that made things a lot simpler.

But potentially more dangerous at the same time.

"Can you wait a moment before you do that?" the dwarf would suggest. "Let me see if I can't gather some information, ask around a bit. We don't have anything on what the underground space beneath the Academy is like, we were just focusing on the building itself."

At least with that knowledge, they could put some safety precautions in place before the shadow elf proceeded. You know, map out spaces that might be in danger of collapsing, avoid those areas, all that sort of thing.
 
These inquiries could have easily taken quite some time, depending on how long it took to track down somebody with the information they were looking for. The worst-case scenario would have been Vireylda needing to come back another day. Thankfully, though, it wouldn't be anything quite so egregious. There were some consultants on-site who were helping with the dismantling, after all - this was a sanctioned demolition. So before long Thorek would get back to Vireylda on the matter.

"It's basically just one long corridor with some rooms in it, before it opens out into the sewers that run under the Academy," the dwarf would explain to Vireylda. "Most of it's all probably wreckage at this point, but from the sound of it, there's probably not too much down there worth worrying about. Bit of storage for cleaning supplies, office supplies... maintenance folks mostly worked down there."

The real danger, though? "We put out the fires up here, but there's no telling what might still be smoldering down there, didn't get that far down. So do be careful, yeah?"
 
Probably wreckage, for sure. Was there any reason to go down there, in all reality? Did Vireylda feel particularly inspired to sift through more rubble - and flaming rubble at that? The esh'lahier took a few cautious steps toward the now open corridor. She glanced back to Thorek. "I see. Thank you. I'm sure I won't be much longer."

She descended into the depths.
 
Disintegration of the debris would be needed for Vireylda to manage to make her way down, and she'd note that it would cause a partial collapse of the tunnel - the integrity of the surrounding walls would cause the surrounding earth to cave-in, resulting in some damage to the ground level of the Academy floor. It would eventually settle and the Esh'lahier was free to proceed, although it spoke to the instability of the subterranean levels.

Given the fact that she was committed, though, Thorek and team would set up the ladders needed for her to descend. The air down here was thick with a charred, greasy, oil smell. It was heavy and pervasive, clinging to her nostrils and she wandered about. It didn't seem like whatever was in the air had flammable fumes, though, no telltale crackling from her source of light that suggested there was any airborne threat to her.

The corridor, then. It stretched out before her, black and sooty from the fires. But the smell was quite strong, almost debilitating. It was making Vireylda just a little nauseous.
 
It would help ever so slightly in dulling the intensity of the smell, although Vireylda continued to get the impression that it was best not to linger for too long down here.

Forward, then. For better or for worse, there didn't seem to be much of interest. Pretty much everything down here seemed to be charred - soot and ash, greasy black stains. There didn't seem to be any open flames, but it was entirely possible that there were a few smoldering piles lurking about. The smell of cinder and flame remained heavy in the air.

Vireylda would see a few things, though. Just based on the markings on the wall, it seemed like there had been some sort of initial blast that had occurred, originating from the direction of the sewers. The damage to the surrounding masonry was definitely much heavier the closer she got towards the sewer exit, to the point where Vireylda might feel like venturing further was perhaps a bit dangerous - who knew when the rest might collapse?

But from the look of it, the 'hallway' had been blown wide open that way. Presumably there had been some sort of door or other exit - now there was just a gaping hole.
 
She did her best not to gag. Her senses were inured to the stench of dead bodies, rotting carcasses, and otherwise unpleasant smells. However, this was thick, it almost felt sticky, and heavy. She kept forward, noting the devastation as she remained on the path toward the giant hole. Cautiously, she peered into it. Could she see anything?
 
Vireylda found herself greeted by the stench of, well, sewer. Somewhat mollified by the presence of that greasy burning smell in the air, of course, but there it was, not exactly pleasant. On its own it would already have been bad enough - not debilitating, granted - but rolled up in the rest of it really made things quite nauseating. Vireylda really might have been the first person down here since the incident.

There didn't really seem to be anything worth seeing down here. Scorch marks, blast marks, everything to suggest that there had been a detonation of some kind. But given the amount of time since the incident itself had occurred, there didn't seem to be any live flames remaining, things seemed to have burned themselves out by now. If she wanted to pick around in the muck for anything further Vireylda was free to, but at a glance? Nothing obvious really stood out to her.

There had been much destruction wrought in the mayhem of the aftermath, that much was clear.
 
Ultimately, there wasn't all that much to see. As far as Vireylda could guess, the bomb had been placed somewhere in the area and detonated. It seemed to have mostly been an incendiary device - there wasn't a huge amount of blast damage, far more evidence of scorching and burning and so on.

But it seemed like most anything else that might be useful had been reduced to cinder in the ensuing inferno. And it wasn't possible for Vireylda herself to tell the difference between what might have been part of the bomb at some point, and general debris. It was far too chaotic a scene.
 
All Vireylda could see beyond was a route into the rest of the sewers. That, in and of itself, didn't seem to be too interesting. Here and there were footsteps in the muck but they were far too chaotic and fleeting - there was no easy way to tell which of them were recent, which might be from days or weeks or even further ago. Boots, pawprints, all sorts of feet had come and gone through these sewers.

Whoever had presumably come through here to deposit the device responsible for the conflagration had simply used the sewer system - at least, to get close to the Academy. It was possible that deeper into the sewers somewhere, there had been some sort of tunneling or digging. However, Vireylda wouldn't know unless she decided she wanted to explore further.
 
The nearest tunnel, then.

The sewers were rife with the stink of human waste, although it could have been worse, there wasn't an active flow of sewage at the moment. What with the Academy being blown up and all. One imagined that people didn't really come down here all too often if they could avoid it, definitely an "out of sight, out of mind" sort of situation. That made it useful for anybody who wanted to travel about the place on the downlow, as the sewers really weren't the sort of place that decent people tried to venture.

Another part of the problem? The sewers were quite labyrinthine, and it was quite easy to get lost. The tunnel Vireylda was following eventually led to something of a 'main' tunnel where flowage from all over the city seemed to be directed to, no doubt leading to the sea or some other location where it could be disposed of. But from here there were probably a dozen more tunnels that Vireylda could potentially go down - and those were just the ones she could see - with a torrid river of liquid waste flowing through the center.

Was it possible those responsible for the Academy's destruction had come through here? Maybe. But Vireylda really couldn't see any indication of such.
 
Oh, lovely.

At this point the venture seemed a tad less practical. She glanced back where she'd come. Should she go back at this point?

Probably, but Vree was nothing if not persistent.

With her gloved finger she conjured a globule of acid, and with careful manipulation drug it against the wall of a nearby tunnel she picked at random. The intent was to mark a line that she could follow back if necessary.
 
At this point the issue was that there wasn't really anything that Vireylda was following save the natural route of the sewers themselves. A person could easily spend days down here - they serviced the entirety of Aelyria Prime, after all, the largest city within the Imperium. The weight of the loot that Vireylda had absconded with from the Academy was also weighing heavily, and one had to wonder how well the dank air of the sewers would seep into some of the books that she had found.

Pick a tunnel at random, go down the tunnel. But all Vireylda would find was... more sewer tunnels, more filth, more waste.

The attack had been days ago now. The necromancer just wasn't coming up with anything.
 
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