So It Begins

So It Begins
Aldric arrived in Vuldra the next morning, dressed in clean traveling clothes and armor, like he was returning to post rather than newly resurrected. Isorai smiled, watching him glide in, his gaze drifting over the golden walls with awe.
He was a handsome man. His bearing steady and certain in a way that bore no resemblance to the disoriented, hollow creature who had lived in that cave feeding off the Wretched Choir. 
Isorai watched him walk through the courtyard, breathing deep breaths of the muggy hair. 
"Strange thing, breathing again," Aldric said sd Xaruh approached him.
"Strange indeed," Xaruh agreed. "I kept counting my own heartbeat the first day."
"I caught myself doing the same on the flight here." Aldric shook his head. "Years of nothing, and now my lungs won't stop reminding me they're working."
"It passes," Xaruh said. "Eventually you stop noticing the miracle and it just becomes Tuesday."
Aldric laughed, low and genuine, and the two of them walked inside together.
The office Ruhkaal had claimed for the morning's planning was crowded by the time everyone arrived. Draevir sat sprawled in a chair, still half asleep and grass-stained, but there were flowers in his hair. Isorai made plans to put him back in the garden while he slept.
“Did you get bigger again?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Celari sat near her father, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Kaal and High Matron Frythgrove stood near the window, and Xaruh took the chair beside Ruhkaal's desk.
Isorai laid the map of the southern continent across the table.
"The Hall beneath Vuldra is gone. The deep ones in the ocean are still active, and Vuldra's own corruption has been cleared. That leaves the Southern Council as the biggest threat right now. We need a way in."
Aldric leaned forward, frowning at the map of the capital. 
"There's an altar beneath the city. In the lower corridors."
Celari shivered. “I… That place?”
Aldric nodded.
“How could a rift be there?”
Aldric smiled. “A rift can open anywhere. I think it was purposefully opened there to try and destroy it. It's a Moongrove altar, not Irongrave." He looked at Isorai. "I never understood why it had to be there, but I imagine it will give you the answers you’re looking for. Moongrove altars were known to be more like gateways.”
Isorai nodded. “Then, I’ll head there. I need those who need rest to rest and eat. Others to start planning for the push. I get the sense that it will happen fast when it happens, so we should be prepared.”
With that, she headed out to the nearest window and took off on the currents of the wind, heading to the entrance to the lower corridors. They were different now that all the stone of the city had been restored.
She had walked through old Irongrave passages and root systems, but this was different from that. The stone had been resurfaced, showing carved lines made by skilled hands. The corridors had shifted around into a maze. 
She remembered the image of a maze from an old book and figured a Moongrove had built it, meaning it would let her through. The maze unfolded around her in turns designed to confuse anyone without the bloodline to read them properly. The directions were etched there, leading her on. 
The path opened to her easily. She reached the antechamber where Celari been pushed through. She knew it immediately by the particular wrongness still lingering in the air, the residue of a rift that had torn through this space and dragged someone other than Celari into the underworld through violence rather than ritual. But the rift itself was gone, sealed clean, and in its place stood a door.
The stone was ancient and carved with the Moongrove crest at its center. The branches lit up and the magic flickered, beckoning, questioning, and guiding. 
It was a portal, to another altar space somewhere far from here. She reached toward it, but stopped short when her senses picked up the group materializing from the shadows. 
They came from the corridor behind her, a dozen figures moving in coordinated silence. She spun to meet them. They weren’t Blighted. No corruption threaded through their scents, but they were witches. 
Fallen probably.
“How can you fight for shifters who killed hundreds of our ancestors?” Isorai asked. 
“They were too weak to survive. The world has changed, and we must change with it.”
They had changed with it, and they’d die for it. 
The first one came at her with a spell already half-formed, a binding spell meant to lock her in place. She shattered it with a flick of her spear before it had finished taking shape. The corridor was narrow enough to work against her, limiting her range, but it worked against them too, forcing them into a line rather than giving them a chance to attack her all at once.
She moved through them with the brutal efficiency, ignoring the scent of their untainted blood and their cries of pain.
A second witch fell to a strike that drove the spear's haft into her throat. A third tried to flee back down the corridor. Isorai was faster and closed the distance before the woman had taken three steps. She fought with her hands as much as her spear in the tight space, breaking holds, redirecting strikes, letting the maze's narrow walls funnel her enemies into range one at a time even as more pressed in from behind.
They were skilled and they outnumbered her by multiples, but they were weak from their betrayal, maybe only standing because of potions.
It wasn’t enough to stand against her. 
She felt the cost of it building in her shoulders, burning and aching, making it harder to get clean strikes, but she didn't stop, working her way back through the maze's turns with bodies falling behind her.
The last one met her at the maze's final turn, just before the corridor opened upward toward the ground level exit He was older than the rest with them and arrogantly aiming his sword at her with a poor grip.
He lasted four seconds longer than the others.
She drove her spear through him at the threshold, his body falling half across the boundary between the underground and the light spilling down from the open street access above. She stood over him for a moment, breathing hard, before stepping past him and climbing the last set of stairs into the air of the capital's main street.
The street was ordinary around her, vendors opening their stalls for the days, citizens coming out with no idea what had just happened a dozen feet beneath their boots.
She stood there for a moment, letting the city's golden stone fill her vision while she banished the blood clinging to her. 
If they knew the altar was here, then it wasn’t safe to use. She’d need another way in. The shriek cut through the street's settling quiet before she'd gone more than a dozen paces.
"Murderer!” The woman shrieked. "Murderer!"