Ochazuke returned Held's jest with a steadfast glower, hard eyes falling as if he could see through him.
"If it goes well, I may consider it celebration enough," he replied. "Where we're going, victory may only be a relative matter."
When they and Blizzar gathered within the aura Damask cast around himself, at the moment Jack gave the Golem the command the partition of ground they stood upon suddenly began to feel hollow beneath them. It was strange, a quality of weightlessness they'd all known well before when they took to flight. Still, there could be no mistaking this sensation, and though they were to move, it would not be ascension. The ground swelled, shifted, and enveloped them, and all of a sudden gravity seemed to lose its bearing as they were dragged along the leyline into a descent into the Earth.
It starting as a sinking feeling at first, in an instant the rush of falling pulled the group downward were drawn along the Golem's path. Through the hidden passages through the world, the magical wake wake pulled them into the slipstream of a subliminal ether, and the ebbing remnants of Creation Energy that animated Damask now brought them dangerously close to an altered state of being.
As they fell through the world, and in turn felt it pass through their bodies. It was in a word, disorientating. Without a bottom to ground their relative position to fall or any glimpse of the height from which they fell, the Golem's spell sent them hurtling until they stumbled into a stretch of long dark.
Then in a shifting instant they emerged at their destination.
The sky was dark with rolling thunderclouds above, the foaming sea spitting cold brine at their backs as it crashed into the jagged, sable crags. Jack stumbled to his feet as he crossed the beachhead, struggling to breathe in deep as sweat dripped over his pale brow. Given the circumstances of his late departure and sudden return, perhaps it was the only natural response to having effectively been buried alive.
"Where are we?"
Damask's aura parted, his shape shambling over the beach head. At first his humanoid shape appeared to kneel, his hollow-eyed face bowing forward as he said a single word.
"Home."
Though the distance between parcels of land was great, there yet remains a connection, even to this sequestered corner of the world. The warriors gathered here initiated to the mysteries of ki would know that well, for even the insubstantial bears weight where there is will to gather it. This ancient creature was not the artefact shell, he was begotten from the Earth, only he could tread upon these subliminal causeways and create for them a road.
It was then they would notice Damask's body seemed to dissolve from the waist down. Merged partway into their landing sight, the Golem was feeding upon it, absorbing stone and mineral into his latticwork frame, swelling to his original might.
Ochazuke in the meantime looked toward a lonely mountain in the distance, his hard gaze transfixed to that spot so near.
Hidden there, beneath a fallen hill of aged rock was the fallen
Kingdom of Vermilion, where the Red Raiders made their lair, codename
Charlie Base.