Dario finally forced himself to get up and go explore, his eyes easily piercing the perfect darkness that covered this place. Before he could come up with another crazy plan to escape this hole, he’d need to bring Nika back to the living first. That would mean getting some food and water as their supplies were nearly finished.

  Even before he found the first set of rooms, he felt that this place would be more than just a bunker. There was something about the worn stone and rotten tapestries against the walls that gave it a more homely feel. When he kicked a rotten door off its rusted hinges and strode into what could only be an old mess hall of sorts, it became clear that people had lived here.

  Tables sat crooked under layers of dust, some still set with cracked plates and rusted forks. The smell of old mold hung thick in the air. Broken mugs lay scattered on the floor. He stepped around them carefully, eyes sharp for movement, but the only things scuttling here were tiny silverfish fleeing his boots.

  Past the mess hall he found sleeping quarters: many rows of low cots, most mattresses rotted to black rags. He ran a finger over a small wooden goat left on one cot, its paint chipped and face worn smooth by little hands. A chill ran down his spine at the thought of children living underground like moles.

  His occasional pained grunts bounced off the walls as he limped through the corridors, finding a library next. Shelves lined the walls, many crumbling under the weight of rotted books, but his eyes lit up as he noticed that several rows of scrolls stood intact in tall racks, their wax seals still glinting faintly. In a side room, he found a large storage cabinet with dozens of crystals packed neatly in straw-lined boxes. They reminded him of the ones they used in the exam, cool and dull to the touch, but full of potential that could only be brought out by cultivators. These would need a closer look.

  Next was what looked like a training hall, its floor scuffed and gouged. Weapons stood in cracked racks: staves, blades and spears with rusted edges. The remnants of straw dummies were still recognizable, slumped in corners as if they’d lost a mighty battle. He imagined people sweating here, trading blows, laughing or shouting, working to be stronger.

  He followed the hallway deeper, the air turning cooler and mustier. He stepped into rooms filled with strange tables covered in old vials. Symbols he didn’t understand covered charts showing body shapes, flows of Ki, and drawings of monsters not unlike the one that had chased them above. There were more scrolls and a few crystals here too, scattered to the side as if discarded by angry scholars.

  Finally, he reached a large chamber where his boots sank into a layer of dry soil. One half of the floor was entirely covered with soil, while rows of raised beds stretched across the other, each holding the husks of dead plants. In one corner of the room was what looked like a cistern, yet when he peeked over the stone edge he saw that the large container now only carried a thin layer of tepid water far below.

  Behind the cistern there was an elongated hole just above the floor, which led to some kind of shallow tunnel that seemed to curve to below the layers of dirt. He had no idea what to make of it, but it stank faintly of rot and was just barely large enough to hold him, so he wasn’t about to go crawling down there.

  Above the raised beds hung odd metal rings that seemed to him like emptied artefacts, devices that once must have provided light. He touched one of the rings and it swung gently, squeaking on its rusted chain.

  He knelt with a grunt of pain, sifting the dry dirt through his fingers, thinking of how many plants must have been grown here once, and how empty and dead it all felt now. A sense of sadness overcame him then as a picture formed in his mind of what this place must have been.

  He stood slowly, brushing dirt from his hands. “They must have fled from the parasites,” he whispered into the dead room. “Hidden down here for Tenjin knows how many years.”

  There was something about this place and the people that must have lived here that spoke to him, felt like it was close to home. People that had no choice but to hide from oppression, banding together, fighting through poverty to make ends meet. Making a living next to a giant belt of garbage was not the same as being forced into hiding by literal monsters, but nevertheless, he could imagine all too well how they must have lived here. Just… surviving, really. Not much more than that.

  Yet it also filled him with curiosity, wondering what had happened to these people. Where were the remains? Had they all chosen to leave their hidden basement and gone up to try and flee, or to go out fighting? There had to be some answers here, hidden in the many scrolls and crystals.

  But piercing through his sadness and wonder was a deeply uncomfortable feeling, one of burning urgency, like a blaring alarm that only he could hear. They seemed to be in a safe place - for now, at least - but to him, it felt more like a prison. What he needed was to get out of here and hurry back home. His mother might still be patient for a day or two, but after that, the panic and tears would begin to flow.

  He pushed it down again. Step by step, first things first. He had things to do now, a goal to focus on. After that, he could still worry about all his other problems. So he turned to the cistern.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It sat like a gaping hole in the large chamber full of dried dirt, the water a black, unmoving pool far below. Dario crouched at the edge, his knees singing with pain all the while as he tied one of the water skins to a length of rope and began to lower it down. It took longer than expected to get it at the right angle to take in some of the shallow layer of water, but finally, he felt the rope going taut as the skin dipped under.

  After hooking the filter shell to the stale and dark fluid, water trickled out steady and clear on the other side. It took some time to fill all three water skins, but he let out a satisfied sigh when he finished. That was one thing done.

  Nika was letting out soft moans and shifting slightly as she slept. Her forehead was hot to the touch. Dario poured her small mouthfuls of water, careful not to force it down her lungs by mistake. Then he found a clean rag, wetting it with the cool water before putting it on her forehead.

  After carefully lifting a bandage to see that the wounds hadn’t fully healed yet, he took the last healing pill and gave it a look of deep longing before feeding it to her. However much his body hurt, it was clear that she needed it more.

  Next was food.

  He dug up a few root vegetables and some dried trogmeat before heading for the mess hall. There were some old pots and a rusted knife that he quickly cleaned off, but then his eyes lit up as a better idea came to him.

  He made his way back to the room with the dried dirt, walking up to one of the raised beds. After tossing some of the long dried up husks of plants, he emptied half a water skin which the dirt greedily drank up. Then he dug a little hole and placed the tuber in so that only its green leaves stood out, before packing it closed with wet dirt again.

  Next, he began to feed a stream of plant Ki into the dirt while also generating an orb of light above it. It was a drain on his light Ki though, which he couldn’t refresh in this place. After a few moments, he frowned up at the dead rings hanging on rusty chains above the raised beds.

  “I wonder if…” he muttered, feeding a line of light Ki straight into the old artefact.

  With a flicker and a soft hum, it came back to life, radiating bright light down onto the bed.

  Dario grinned as he watched the leaves grow at a rapid pace, until they finally grew flowers. To his surprise, a few other tiny sprouts were rising from the bed of dirt right next to where he’d put the tuber. Where were those suddenly coming from? Could seeds survive that long? He’d have to ask Hana about that.

  He ignored them for now, replanting the seeds from the flower, before heaving a thick root vegetable out of the dirt. It had easily tripled in size. He re-filled his water skin, then took the tuber to the kitchen and got to work.

  A while later, he returned to Nika’s side with a steaming bowl of soup, gently feeding tiny spoonfuls to her. Despite being unconscious, she still seemed to be taking it in quite well, so he kept going until the entire bowl was gone, before having one of his own.

  With water and food taken care of, he was forced to consider new priorities. Letting those heavy thoughts in was daunting, but a belly full of warm food had given him some fresh courage.

  So. He was always telling folks how running away was his specialty. How was he going to run away from this forsaken hole? Opening the door would be as easy as sending some sweet and lovely thoughts into the crystal. If he could leave within a day, he had one more day to make it home. That would be a two and a half day journey on foot, perhaps two if he ran until he puked, but maybe he could figure something out. A mount, maybe? Capture some wild beast and run it ragged?

  “An ox,” he muttered to himself, lips moving up in a tired smile. “Throw it a nice flower or two, teach it how to trot. Nice and easy.”

  But before he’d be free to tame any beasts, Uso and his minions would be waiting. Even if they could fight their way past that, the next obstacle would still be there.

  He would need both information and weapons. Information was probably more important, since it might help them fight the damn parasite as well. That meant hitting the library before investigating that training chamber.

  So he trudged back over to the library, trying to ignore his aching joints.

  “Alright. What have we got here?” he sighed as his eyes landed on a line of scrolls.

  He spent some time opening crates and browsing the contents. Many of the scrolls were chewed up by time, but a good number still sat neatly in rows. He ran a hand over their sides, careful not to disturb the older ones, picking a few that had interesting looking names or patterns, including a scroll marked with a pattern of seeds and leaves, which he carefully took out and tucked under his arm.

  Further in, he found a large storage bin, a beautiful thing made of sculpted metal and stone. Racks of old crystals were stacked in neat rows. They looked just like the memory crystals from the exam, but what would be the point of storing them here? To train their young?

  He glanced back toward the hallway, where Nika lay resting.

  "She’ll tear through those scrolls ten times faster than I ever could," he muttered.

  With effort, he sat down cross-legged in the dust, selecting one of the more intact memory crystals. He forced himself to think of happy memories, times spent laughing and frolicking in the Belt’s trash fields, until a small swirl of golden smoke rose in front of his chest. He fed it into the crystal, just like during the tests, but it didn’t respond.

  Scratching his head, he rummaged through the metal and stone container again, looking for any better crystals, though nothing looked off with the one he just tried to use. When his fingers brushed a rougher surface than the smooth minerals, he looked down to see another scroll that had rolled to the bottom. It seemed to still be intact, so he took it out of its container and unfurled it.

  Reading had never been his strong suit, so it took him a while to make sense of the old writing and many mysterious images, frowning at the scroll as if it had insulted his mother. There was one particular diagram that looked vaguely familiar. He traced the crude drawing with a finger as he tried to make sense of it, but his eyelids were growing heavy. The shape was familiar, something like a pedestal, and if those darker shapes were supposed to represent holes…

  Dario dozed off, and then the nightmares came.