The squirrelkin breathed more easily than most, and though she was just as covered in wounds as the rest of them, none of them looked serious.

  Of course, there could have been a reason for that.

  The healer she’d captured had one black eye swollen to hideous proportions - courtesy of the beastkin’s persuasive nature. He was the only one of the enemy still living within sight, and even if he didn’t speak their language, he understood the prods and pokes and the condition of the injured that Chiritta led him to. No doubt he’d seen to the worst of her wounds.

  Or maybe she was fast enough to avoid any life-threatening injuries. She was a blur.

  Whatever the case, Marie watched as the [Itinerant Monk] hurt in other ways, eyes closed, a ripple of tension flowing through her fists as the others filled her in on the casualties they’d taken after she’d taken off in pursuit of her quarry.

  But there was little time for grief yet.

  “Did you take him down? If there’s anyone that could rally them it’s a [Tactician]-type. With their commander and the [Mage] dead he’s the biggest threat unaccounted for.”

  Chiritta stood and cracked her back, hands on her hips, in front of the tabaxi [Guildmaster] who loomed twice her height and at least four times her weight, and sighed.

  “Give me a minute. It’s probably easier if I show you.”

  —

  They left Embris cradling the fallen body of Aelind?. Silent tears of hot lava rolled down her cheeks, turning to stone as they fell and breaking apart in the breeze until under the night sky it looked as though she was weeping streams of dust.

  A mental message from Thror had called all the adventurers back. Many were injured and lying on the hillside waiting for the ministrations of the enemy’s [Healer] under the watchful eye of Braer, but a small group under Sirrochon had been been set to search for adventurers too injured to respond to the summons, though most were accounted for, and to aid the wounded in slowly gathering in the now-abandoned enemy camp.

  The [Verseblade] had protested. His anger and grief seemed undimmed by the death of the southern commander, and he had railed against letting the [Soldiers] escape, but Thror’s authority had stamped down on any idea of pursuit, given the condition of the survivors and the dangers of running off into the dark.

  Marie found herself without orders. A concession to her level perhaps.

  Am I too weak to help them?

  Would I be able to help them?

  Algar and the few living allagi were likewise left free from duties. Official ones at least. They were already gathering up their own dead.

  The thought of searching through the still-warm bodies, searching for a face she knew, was too much for her.

  Instead she found herself following Chiritta as the squirrelkin led Thror and a handful of others off to what she’d discovered - anything she could do to distract her from the pain of her wounds and the creeping awareness of the filth and sweat and grime that coated her.

  It was a short walk down into the valley where the southern army had made their camp. Tents lay abandoned alongside stockpiles of spare weapons and ammunition and crates of food and barrels of drink that a couple of the exhausted adventurers were cracking open to give to the wounded.

  Lady Kypria and Gil broke off towards what was quite clearly the command tent - a structure twice the size of the others and situated in the safety of the centre - but Chiritta led Thror and Omesia further in, to where the land narrowed into a gorge.

  In a hundred yards they passed the boundary of the camp. The incline slowly reversed direction, sloping up, but the surrounding terrain rose even faster, and even wrung out and spent by the night's events and doing her best to ignore a hundreds cuts and burns and bruises, Marie was confused as to why the enemy had placed defences here. It was too dark in the shadow of the cliffs as clouds passed overhead for [Gauge Distance] to get an accurate read, but the path was barely a dozen yards wide, and the walls were steep - the true ground level sixty feet or more above their heads.

  It looked like they were walking along a riverbed that had long-since dried up.

  What did the guides call them in Tunisia? A wadi?

  She stumbled as the memory of her life back home intruded into her thoughts - the first time in… days?

  It seems so long ago, but it cannot have been more than… a month?

  She winced as she reached out a hand to steady herself on a rock and felt the joints in her fingers and her lacerated hands cry out in pain.

  Am I ever going to return? How do I even try to?

  She massaged the much-abused digits with a ginger touch, blowing on them to bring a hint of coolness to the swollen flesh in the hot night air.

  Will I wake up one day and find this was all a dream? It all feels so real. How quickly will I start to forge-

  Her train of thought trailed off as they reached the end of the path.

  A depression in the rock and the shape of the land above gave her pause.

  [Glimpse of the Forgotten]

  She almost flinched as a torrent of water began to rush towards her, but it was all glowing light, and blasted past her without touching. There had been a river here, some long time ago, but there was more.

  Chritta was climbing up stone steps carved into the rock. No, her foot was going through them. She was climbing up where steps used to be - leading behind the spectre of a waterfall that fell from above - to a cavern.

  Marie followed the others, picking her way up a path that no longer existed, or, given the marks of digging, that someone had partially remade…

  Inside, the cavern walls glittered in what little light filtered through the narrow gap they’d entered by, but it was the darkness that drew everyone’s attention.

  At the very rear of the cave, in the wall opposite, loomed a black opening more than twice the size of the largest amongst them. Larger, Marie realised as Chiritta produced a light, and revealed not just an opening in the cavern wall, but the frame of a colossal door.

  One hundred and thirteen yards back, and thirty-two feet high exactly.

  It was bigger than the entrance to the cavern itself.

  What needs a door that large?

  She itched the back of her neck as she approached it.

  And why is it here?

  “They went in there?”

  The dark-furred [Guildmaster] looked at the door rather than Chiritta.

  Close up there were obvious designs carved into it, though they’d faded with age. There was a tunnel inside, lit at first from the light reflecting in the cavern, but rapidly receding into pitch blackness. The walls inside held more reliefs, and Marie edged in, past the older adventurers, wiggling a finger in her ear, trying to ignore the tinkling of the running water outside as she studied the faded stonework.

  “Yep. The [Tactician] and maybe thirty others. Could have been more. I didn’t follow too far; it branches out and they’ve clearly had some time to explore. I waited for a minute but I didn’t hear or see any sign of them turning back.”

  A section of the wall was in better condition and there was something on it that could almost have been writing.

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  A form of pictographic language? Not like heiroglyphics. Closer to Mayan glyphs or Sumerian Cuneiform? Perhaps Indus l-

  A hand clamped down on her shoulder and she nearly screamed.

  She looked up into the serious eyes of Omesia, and the retired adventurer shook her head and tapped her chest.

  “Listen to your instincts, rookie.”

  Marie blinked, and tried to work out what she was talking about as she saw Thror and Chiritta looking at her from where they’d stayed near the entrance. Without realising she’d gone a dozen paces into the tunnel.

  It took a few seconds longer to catch on.

  She shook her head to try and focus beyond the sound of the river ringing off the hard stone.

  But the river is not there. It has not been there for an age. So what is the…

  The illusion of the river's song faded, revealing the steady jangling of the [Dangersense] she’d been hearing all along.

  Tension that had almost faded from her body returned in an instant, but nothing stirred deeper down the tunnel.

  No one moved for long moments.

  If it is just a warning, perhaps…

  But Omesia’s hand didn’t let up, and a few seconds later she let the older woman lead her back to the rest of the group. No one spoke until she’d emerged back into the cavern. Then Thror’s voice echoed off the glittering walls.

  “They found a dungeon.”

  Marie glanced back at the black square of darkness.

  “A dungeon? Here? It cannot be used any more, surely. Or is this somewhere your government sends people it wishes to forget. Prisoners of war? Were they here to break people out? Maybe that is where they got their numbers from..”

  All three heads tilted to one side and examined her with quizzical expressions.

  Chiritta’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “No. Not that kind of dungeon. A dungeon to explore.”

  That only made Marie more confused, and seeing the puzzlement that passed across her face the squirrelkin elaborated.

  “A place from the past. It could be anything. The entrance to a long-lost city. An ancient dragon’s trove. A secret laboratory or the study of a [Mage].”

  “To be fair, Chiritta,” Omesia coughed, “it could have been an actual dungeon at one point. Some of them are where civilisations threw the dangerous and unwanted and left them to kill each other. You never know what you might find. There was this one time over in Nal-”

  Marie barely heard anything past the initial possibility.

  A long-lost city. A place to explore. To learn about the past.

  A path for an [Archaeologist] to take.

  …

  [Glimpse of the Forgotten].

  Enough time had passed, and the Skill began to weave lines of light. Structures and designs stood out, though none close enough to read, and when she began to pull back towards the tunnel Omesia left off her story and tightened her hand on Marie’s shoulder again.

  “Easy rookie. Let’s not be hasty. We’ve been through a lot this night. No one is up for anything like that. Not now.”

  Marie gritted her teeth as desire warred with common sense…just a few minutes… but in the end, the aching and burning and dull throbbing of her injuries were persuasive enough to tip the scales. This was not the time.

  She clenched one hand on the memory of a destroyed spade whilst the other brushed against the place where a toolbelt had so often hung. She was battered and bruised and exhausted, and danger was ahead, but in that moment one thing was for sure.

  At some point, I will return here, and I will find out more.

  The older adventurers led her out into the summer night once more, but one thought eclipsed the pain and exhaustion and trauma for a few precious moments.

  This is it. This is my path forward.

  —

  A couple of minutes later, following a discussion on what to do about the [Soldiers] that had disappeared inside - one that had come down to ‘leave them and hope they die facing whatever dangers lie inside’ - the adventurers returned to the enemy camp.

  Weariness dragged at her limbs, but despite the long hours awake and the exertion of battle, the pain of her injuries kept Marie awake.

  It also hardened her to the sight of the bodies of the enemy [Soldiers] as she looked back up the hill.

  You did this to us. You took them from us. You deserved this.

  Rage flared up once more, but she had no outlet for it.

  She sat on a camp bed, head in her hands, and just focused on breathing, and the conversation as Gilded Paw and Lady Kypria emerged from the command tent to fill in the rest as to what they’d found. Anything to distract her.

  “I’ll need to take it back and get some {Translation} spells,” the librarian said, holding up a sheaf of papers and tapping one “but from this section here I’m fairly certain that they were trying to uncover something nearby.”

  “They succeeded,” Chiritta said, “to some extent. They found a dungeon.”

  Ununcia’s heavy-lidded and bloodshot eyes widened.

  “...that could well be it, but from this text alone I can’t work out if they were expecting reinforcements, or what exactly they hoped to gain. There are places - well, words really - that make me think the bandit attacks were probably a way to gather supplies - I’m sure [Soldiers] are poor foragers - but perhaps it was also to deter people from the area?”

  “They made a mistake then.” Thror growled. “It only drew our attention.”

  “Did it?” Gil shot back. “How long did I have to pressure you and the council to step up your response to this? How long did it take to even start investigations? Weeks of lost trading and this was what was going on the whole time. I had to put my own m- you know what, it doesn’t matter now.”

  Marie hadn’t heard the bile the rotund tabaxi could put into his tone before - he’d always come across as jovial and polite - but after seeing him on the battlefield and hearing him now… she gave a small shudder as she sat and envisaged what he’d be like to face over a negotiating table. Even Thror didn’t press back, and in the uncomfortable silence that followed, Lady Kypria cleared her throat.

  “As I was saying, that’s just from these notes, which look more recent. There are a few letters in a script I recognise more of - Arenoscan - and from those my best read is that this was a mission of destabilisation. I’m not sure whether it was the whole area, or just the southern road, or perhaps even just to put pressure on the Langschloss but, and this is only a guess, it may have been in preparation for some assault, either here or to draw focus before they attack the other side of the mountains.”

  “We’ll need to send out warnings.”

  The [Chief Librarian] nodded.

  “To be on the safe side, yes, but it might not come to pass. There are more letters here. I think whatever they found - this dungeon you speak of - took over their focus. It may be they decided the potential for treasure was more important to Chama than their original goals - that’s where they were from by the way, Chama, unless they were hired by someone else... I’ll know more when I can get back and study everything in full.”

  “Very well. Let’s finish up here.” The [Guildmaster] turned and called over to the highest-level person besides Chiritta. “Braer, can you take charge of the camp here? When we finish taking stock of the casualties we’ll make sure all the wounded are brought inside the walls to rest. Ununcia, Gil, are you heading back to Wayfarrow? Can you take some back in the cart when you go? Omesia - I need you to put together a rotation to watch the entrance to the dungeon; if anything comes out we may need all the warning we can get to flee. Chiritta, I hate to ask, but can you…”

  “Yes. I’ll follow the [Soldiers]. Make sure they don’t regroup and return.”

  The squirrelkin cracked her knuckles and her neck.

  “How long…”

  “Until tomorrow at least.” She looked up at the still-dark sky. “Perhaps the day after. I’ll [Catnap] where I can.”

  The [Itinerant Monk] set off south with an easy lope and Marie felt sick. Just contemplating any form of exercise churned her stomach, let alone more bloodshed.

  With that, Thror began to direct the remainder of the adventurers - the ones that were still mobile. Some helped bring the last of the wounded into the camp and began to tend to them with the limited first-aid they knew as the captured medic saw to those in the worst condition. Others went with Omesia. More were sent to begin dragging the bodies of the dead [Soldiers] into one big pile. And a couple brought the bodies of Wayfarrow’s own fallen in to lay under blankets taken from the enemy supplies.

  An argument broke out when Sirrochon returned and the final count of the townsfolk was established. With all the adventurers accounted for and being seen to, the [Verseblade] was set on heading out to follow Chiritta in her pursuit, but the firm admonishment of the tabaxi guildleader shut him down: he was in no condition to do more.

  Marie watched her friend, face pale and drawn, eyes haunted with a spark of rage that wouldn’t die at their core. She could only imagine what he was going through; she’d only known the Spellswords and Evermore’s for a few weeks…

  Fodrin, Eldun and Leaping Mist were all sleeping, alive but passed out. Dappled Shadow’s body was laid out, covered by a cloth. Sirrochon had not looked in her direction once. He’s pointedly not been looking, though Marie caught his eyes drifting to the line of dead.

  Quartz and Chuffa - well, she knew they were dead. But Brunalda and Rina might yet make it…

  Marie was left to herself as the others - those that hadn’t collapsed - dragged leaden feet to see to the final tasks that needed to be done before they could rest.

  Few others - a bloodied and bowed Algar and his remaining hunters, were left to their own devices, and they remained on the hill. She watched the silhouettes they made against the star-filled summer night sky as they struggled against weariness and injury to collect their own dead, laying them to rest on the darkened slope with as much honour and care as they could with bodies that were often in pieces, or so badly damaged that it was hard to tell who they had been.

  It wasn’t right that such a beautiful night be so full of pain.

  A part of her wanted to offer to help, but everything was aching, and her arms still trembled with the withdrawal of the adrenaline that had kept her going through the race to save her friends and the intensity of the battle. And it felt to her like it was a moment for them alone, as a group of adventurers, as part of a community bonded in their struggle to survive in a town that showed them little love, to honour and remember their dead. She left them to their sorrowful ministrations with the respect they deserved.

  But she didn’t stay sitting on the camp bed.

  She couldn’t.

  She had her own task to see to…

  —

  As dawn’s light broke over the empty landscape, a strong pair of hands lifted Marie into the back of Gil’s cart alongside those that would be needed back in town but were too injured to walk or that had succumbed to exhaustion and entered a healing slumber. She mumbled a protestation but her eyes were too heavy to look up to see who it was that put her there, and as the cart gently rocked on the uneven terrain in the rising dawn heat, Marie was finally lulled to sleep, propped up against a snoring Eldun, her arms wrapped around a canvas sack full of small, canine bones.

  Almost a full skeleton's worth.

  [Secretary Level 20!]

  [Skill - Delay Outburst gained!]

  [Skill - Dispatcher’s Dividend gained!]

  [Scout Level 23!]

  [Skill - Basic Wound Care gained!]

  [Skill - Pathfinder’s Insight gained!]

  [Skill - Pinpoint Shot gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Proficiency -> Advanced Proficiency: Improvised Weapons gained!]

  [Dugeoneer Class Obtained!]

  [Dungeoneer Level 1!]

  [Skill – Bound Spell: Light gained!]

  [Class Consolidation – Secretary, Scout and Dungeoneer -> Dungeon Runner]

  [Dungeon Runner Class Obtained!]

  [Dungeon Runner Level 18!]

  [Skill – Logistical Foresight gained!]

  [Skill – Rapid Reorganisation gained!]

  [Skill Improvement – Evasive Roll -> Evasive Maneuvers gained!]

  …

  …

  …

  [Skill - Minor Necromantic Font gained!]

  [Skill Evolution - Bound Spell: Light -> Bound Spell: Ghost-Light obtained!]

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