[center][h2]How deep does the rabbit hole go?[/h2][/center]

Xavior stood in the central chamber of the temple surrounding his one and only personally owned node, examining the monolith with a fresh eye. The workshop form in which the seemingly endless innovation had sprung had been cleared away because that well, he knew, had finally run dry. Now there was only what he and mortal kind could make with their own hands and minds left to discover.

He had to wonder why that was. There were still so many nodes he could gain access too after all, and yet here was a cap. Was this simply the peak of what was possible? Was it a limit put in place deliberately by something or some one? A creator or a previous law maker? The document of the known history of the crucible, as told by Olipha anyway, sitting on one of the remaining bits of furniture in the room next to a steaming teacup did not give answers, but it did give hints that secrets could be found that he and not even considered might be available to them before Dzallitsunya had gotten her to spill the beans on the rest of her past.

Of course, most of them would have been wiped away with the resets, such as the obelisk the goddess had found when she had first come into being, so there was something of a limit of where to seek them. Best to start with the one constant: the nodes, which was why he was presently wiring together a large array of green glowing gemstones around the base of it, the cooling crystal wax mixture painting pulsating magic circles all over the room.

Some might question if he had time, energy and finances for such frivolous experiments. There were wars on, and an even greater one to train for, but sometimes, in the god’s opinion, you needed to sate your own desires, or in this case do something with the idea you had been buzzing around in your head since the last cup of inspirational honey sweetened tea you had had. That specific idea was a theory that the nodes must be connected somehow for the information they shared to be transferred, not to mention the ability to use them for long distance transportation. And if there was a network down there, then perhaps he could find something interesting from its layout.

Thus the large array of seismic gems and the actual main investment for this experiment, an amulet worn as a buckle on the belt of his nice new tailored suit. Once the array was all set up, he flicked it open, revealing a hyper-dense crimson gemstone of his own making, within which masses of magma churned with roiling power, which flooded out into the room and supercharged the gemstone array.

“Now then, let’s see just how deep this goes”

[hr]

“Xavior? Are you here? We have training soon!” Annie called out as she entered the central chamber of the temple, having been looking all over for her god. She raised an eyebrow at what seemed to be a trashed ritual array of some kind, lines of crystal wires having been meticulously laid out and then had the gems they were meant to link up torn out. 

She was wondering if all this would explain the rumbling that had occurred earlier. That, plus the empty teacup and equally empty honey pot next to it gave her a hint that she was on the right track, and caused her to give the room a proper once over in her search for her god. 

While doing so she quickly found something strange. A hole in the floor.

“What is this?” she asked the deep, dark hole as she leaned down  to peer into it and saw nothing but darkness within and then, on a hunch, shouted down it at the top of her lungs “Xavior! Are you down there!”

There was a pause as her words echoed down the hole for several seconds, before a call of “Yes!” came back up to her. The demoness sighed, running a hand over her face and then had to ask “Why?”

Down down, so deep down, deep enough that the stone was growing hot the god poured endless power into the haphazard energy drill he had been using to bore ever downwards after his first attempt to find the bottom of the node had failed, the crystals shoving the stone aside and compacting into denser materials to reinforce the absurd tunnel the god was digging. Yet despite all of this, the hours of digging, the ruined suit and exhaustion he was forced to shout back up “Because this just keeps going down forever!” 

[hider=summary]
Xavior, hopped up on inspiration honey, tries to use seismic detection to find out how deep nodes go, and fails. Then he makes a magitech drill to dry and dig deeper to get a better reading. And fails to find the bottom again, because it’s impossible.

But he does make an artifact to supercharge magitech he makes in the process, so it's not a complete waste of time/energy
[/hider]

[hider=mp]
2/8 mp

-2 mp for the Volcanic Heart: an hyper dense gemstone charged with endless amounts of magmatic power far beyond what a mortal made gem could output. It lets the owner supercharge chaos crystal based magitech, generally requiring special constructions to hold the vast amounts of power within. Normal magitech will overload if fed all the power, but the heart can also spread its charge out to keep mundane tools near the wielder permanently topped up and brimming with energy.
[/hider]