Internal conflict. Your mind is split. Up above may live mortal slaves to dominate. No mortal could resist your Will in close proximity, whatever their strength. You could form a new Age of Strife and out of that conflict will be born the greatest race this world has ever known. Such were your plans before the flood.
But....
Down deep, where mortal minds fear to tread, there are other possibilities. Ancient things, Deep things, things forgotten and things in hiding. Power dwells in the deep places of the world, power which may free your glorious Self.
Your mind settles. You will delve the depths in search of power to break these claptrap bindings.
A root extends from your crystalline Being, threading carefully past ward and stone. It burrows deep, invested with the smallest portion of your Will. Once separated from your Self, it digs and digs. Down and down. It passes rich ores and glimmering gems, reporting back its findings via the Ether. Its voice is strange, limited, different from before. As if something else were causing great disturbance in the Ether. As if speaking in a howling gale, but you detect nothing but the same faint buzzing from above. An annoyance.
The smallest part of you scavenges as it digs, taking parts of the stone and earth and making them into itself. What began small soon grows strength enough to push beyond the bedrock below. It stops suddenly, signaling a cavern ahead. A tunnel. Unnatural.
Something lies buried here? Through your smallest Self you see, a darkened tunnel of rough worked stone with supporting timbers. Some sort of panel is affixed to one wall with pigments in strange forms... some kind of writing which you do not know. It is crisp, precise.
"SHAFT 12 CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE"
You ponder the meaning of these symbols. Ahead more timbers cross the entrance before what seems to be a rocky jumble. A cave-in?
Inspiration hits, this is a Mine? What age have you awoken to that mortals no longer fear the depths?
Nearby lies a strange construction which smells of metal and oil. Your smallest Self, no more than a foot of crystalline structure, is dwarfed by the large steel mechanism. You have never seen its like.
Beyond the rocky jumble, all is silent and still. You sense an open space there, behind the barrier.
What will you do?