As we sank into the carved-out tunnel, I spotted the signs of human activity everywhere. Boarded up mineshafts were common, as were a few bricked up mineshafts. Lanterns, never lit, held regular spots on the tunnel wall. And If I paid enough attention to nearly any spot, I’d be able to pick out the distinctive markings of a pickaxe against stone.

  As we got deeper, the signs of humans got fewer and fewer. By the time we passed the last abandoned mine shaft, the ragged natural look of actual caves replaced the marks of pickaxes. In that transition space were hundreds of small holes, some empty, but others filled with large nests and a kind of bird I’d never seen before.

  One of the guys I’d grown up with was a huge fan of birds. He made it a point to show me any of the rare birds he spotted during our campaigns together. Carm’s fascination with birds and the time we spent together growing up led me to consider myself at least somewhat knowledgeable about birds.

  I’d never seen anything like this before, however. Built like tipis, sticks arranged in the shape of an hourglass, the nest had various soft things gathered in the bowl the sticks formed at the top. I spent the rest of our time in that tunnel raking my brain for the name of the species and admiring the beauty of the creatures.

  The transition from tunnel to cavern stole my attention, however.

  Half a mile wide and only a hundred feet from floor to ceiling, those dimensions were unimportant to what really stole my breath. The cavern was so long that I couldn’t see the far wall. The sides just continued on into eternity until they crested the horizon and merged with the ceiling to block the view. Which was suddenly completely unobstructed by the lack of light.

  Stalactites dozens of feet long hung from the ceiling, covered in some kind of bioluminescent moss. It’s light, a faint blue-green. The same color as the ink used on Dustreach’s walls. I would have bet every coin I owned that the ever-present moss was what they used to make the runic paint.

  The moss was not the only source of illumination in the cave, however, and like in the sky above, the blue-green glow had to out compete the firelight coming from the orphanage campus here. The effect was one very similar to the city walls at sunset.

  Made up of thirteen buildings, they built the orphanage in the mix-matched style of the city above and connected it with a series of random-looking paths in the interior courtyard. When the lift finally touched down against the orange stone of the cavern floor and my party mates allowed me the take a full breath by leaving the platform, I noticed what powered our descent down here.

  Hitched to a large spinning cog were three animals I’d never seen or read about before. Whatever they were, they had the same body shape as a cow but covered in a mesh of pale, overlapping chitin plates that flowed like waves along their muscles as they walked.

  The creatures were eyeless, and where the eyes normally would be on a cow, large nostrils burrowed into the head. Jutting from the crown of each animal’s head was a massive five-foot-long horn similar to a Hercules beetle, except they curved up at the end instead of down.

  Hanging off the end of each horn was a small bag, which, even from fifty feet away, I could taste the pungent floral smell of it. When we landed, one beast reared up on its hind legs and a pair of limbs hidden underneath revealed themselves, flashing out from the underbelly to desperately try and claw the bag off its horn.

  “Do you think they hate the smell or love it?” Nora asked. When I looked over, she had her eyes locked on the wheel and the animals tasked to it, a wide smile on her face.

  “They have to hate it.” I said. “Look at that thing. If it were me or you in front of it, we’d be ribbons.”

  “Alright kids.” Maggie teased. “Leave the beishoul alone. We have to check in with the admin desk if we’re going to get you signed up for the auction.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ~~~***~~~

  Idly, I rolled a small pebble I’d kicked in from outside underfoot. The line in front of us moved at a snail’s pace and, after two hours, it was finally down to one last group ahead of us.

  The party I front of us was almost a cliché in their equipment. Six of the seven members wore a chaotic mix of armor and equipment, all of which came from different design philosophies. The most eye catching of which was a man who wore a helmet painted with the face of an elemental dangling from his belt, alongside a sword so rusted I assumed someone left it outside in constant rain for twenty years. The sword had to have some value, however, even with how damaged it was because the man carried no other visible weapon.

  The only member of the group who did not follow the chaotic armor scheme was a man with black hair whose equipment was obviously designed to be worn as a set. The intricate wave patterns flowed freely from one piece of armor to the next. Interestingly, the wave design also flowed from his clothing onto the small harp case he had strapped onto his back. Which clued me into the fact that rather than a full-time member of the party, he was likely their [Bard].

  They spoke with the [Administrator] for a short while before the man waved them forward and they vanished through a door behind the seated man.

  “Good luck rooks.” The man with the rusted sword called over his shoulder as he followed his party out of the building.

  We stepped up to the desk, and I kicked the pebble off to the side of the room. Nora introduced us to the bony man behind the desk, who dutifully recorded our names and the purpose of our arrival.

  “Contract length desired, and tier of auction?” Was all he said in reply to Nora’s finished introduction.

  “Tier two and three weeks.”

  The admin failed to respond and instead waved us through the door behind me, just as he’d done for all the others who came before. Even with his curt behavior, the dismissal seemed efficient rather than rude. I could only imagine how boring it must be to sit in the same room all day asking the same three questions over and over.

  Stepping past the door, we entered the orphanage’s interior courtyard. There was no labeled path for us to follow, so we followed the fading silhouettes of the party who exited before us. We only spent a few minutes within the bounds of the orphanage’s campus before the signs of human habitation faded. Worked stone slowly fell away to be replaced by the jagged natural rocks I’d seen on the trip down.

  We followed the party of seven for two hours and still I couldn’t see the back wall of this tunnel. As we got further from the orphanage, the green glow of the moss reasserted itself and its azure glow became the dominant color of our world. That lasted for another forty-five minutes when the orange glow of fires started to out-compete the azure lights again.

  It took another ten minutes of walking to reach what cast the fire light. Stretched across the cavern was a massive wall fifty feet high and designed in the same myriad fashion as Dustreach’s walls. Like the walls on the surface, I could tell this one had an immense number of runes. Unlike the walls of the surface, these were allowed to time to integrate and change the stone they existed on. Moss crept up the wall from the bottom and illuminated the slight indent in the grey stones where the builders placed the runes.

  At the top of the wall, three spires rose to connect with the roof of the cavern, a circular balcony enclosing them ten feet from the ceiling. From as far away as I was, it was hard to make out, but I could see a guard on each of the balcony slowly making circles. Spanning between each of the spires was a mesh made from steel, each space about a square foot.

  “I wonder what they’re trying to keep out?”

  Nora’s question forced my eyes back onto the steel mesh. I knew some of the fauna that lived in the Under Tunnels thanks to my time with Nora in the library. But I knew enough to realize that just looking at the mesh wouldn’t tell me all that I needed to know.

  As we approached, I noticed that there were only two guards on this side of the wall, both of whom had the relaxed air of people who hadn’t had to work very hard recently. Rather than speak to us, one guard pointed to an already open portcullis beside him.

  The portcullis took us through a tunnel ten feet long that was full of murder holes, arrow slits, and another open portcullis on the other side. When we came out of the tunnel, we entered the fort properly. Before we took a step deeper, a [Guard] called out to us.

  “State your names and business, please.”

  Unconsciously, we all turned to Maggie to answer for us, but she didn’t speak and instead raised an eyebrow at Nora, who flushed and tuned to answer. Only for the [Guard] to speak first.

  “First time in the Under Tunnels eh?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?” Nora asked.

  The [Guard] tossed a look at Maggie before he chuckled to himself.

  “What can I say? It’s a talent. Once I get your names and business, I’m going to need you to follow the wooden path to your right out of the fort. Non-military personnel aren’t allowed within our walls longer than required. Clear?”

  Nora agreed and gave the [Guard] the exact information she’d given the man at the admin desk. The [Guard] thanked us for cooperating before he reminded us to leave as soon as possible.

  As we walked, I noticed just how busy it was in the fort. Men, women, and children all moved about at a brisk pace and everywhere I looked in the small enclosed space, I spotted at least two barracks and a smithy. Just over the roofs of all the buildings, I could see the top of a smaller wall. It was barely two-thirds the height of the wall we’d just passed. But this too was made of grey stone with moss grown up the wall.

  The moss refused to grow within spaces where integrated runes existed, and the result was a clearly visible runic series outlined by luminescent azure moss.

  It took ten minutes before we were outside of fort and had the silhouettes of the party of seven guiding us forth again.

  Over the course of the march, the seven extended the gap between us and were now reduced to a speck on the dim horizon. We lost them past the horizon after another twenty minutes, but with nowhere to go but forward, it was not a great loss.

  The lights behind us faded as we walked and slowly the gentle light of the moss ate away and consumed the light of fire, once more casting the world in blue light. It took hours, but slowly the light grew brighter and brighter until the cave around us shone enough to be comparable to sunlight.

  A city skyline unlike any I had ever seen or imagined appearing on the horizon as the light grew.