Behind their heels the almost suspiciously plain stone doors swung mostly closed, leaving the rimed room and even its vaguest promises of safety behind.

Erika had paid very close attention to it, just in case she was the only survivor… and now Bjorn was staring.

“You’re talking out loud Erika.”

Erika blushed. “Ah… didn’t realise…”

“…You think you’ll be the survivor thought?”

“Look I'm not planning on it, just… planning FOR it right?”

“…how are you gonna plan around how tiny you are?”

“Oh, come on! I can empower myself!”

“Yeah, but doesn’t that work on how much you already have? Or how little in your case.”

Erika reply was a number of very rude hand gestures, several of which she didn’t even understand having copied them off sailors, which caused Bjorn to burst out into a rumbling laugh like a bear snoring. Around them the rest of the semi-expedition visibly relaxed, the only exception being Solvor and the other Silvermane agents who all had some sort of company issued fur masks they’d put on before setting off, something about air quality? Erika didn’t know miner terms so she just nodded and focused on learning the knock code instead. Regardless the levity made the group move a little easier which was all for the best considering they were armed to the teeth.

Erika had assembled the best of the best for their scavenger run, it was practically the same line up as the Warg hunt but this time they didn’t know what they might run into, every one of the veteran delvers that followed in Erika’s wake were armed with a thunderarm, axe and dagger each. They didn’t have enough of the longer and more powerful Thunderers for the whole group so a few people had some of Alvis’ smaller hand held Rumblers, Erika was one of them, the huge bowless crossbow design of the Thunderers was much too heavy for her, besides she had her galdr.

The corridor they stood in was just as cold and huge as the rimed room almost like it was sized for jotun, the ceiling was a streets length above Erika’s head, the walls were loomed slabs of black stone only seen in the corner of her eyes and it stretched away into infinity before them swallowed by distance and darkness.

Half the expedition carried lit lanterns, and the other half unlit ones, just in case they got scattered again. But even that blaze of light was barely enough to outline the shadows of this vast and trackless passageway.

Scouts ranged ahead looking like shooting stars in the darkness, discarding stealth and relying instead on the army at their heels. Behind them Erika knew two separate delvers were on mapping duty, one was an amateur cartography with plenty of paper and ink and the other had a long piece of chalk, both might be overkill but Erika didn’t agree and didn’t care, she wasn't dying here.

The walk along the corridor took a full thirty minutes, during which every little creek or groan from the warming stone filled Erika with burning panic, by the end of a single corridor she was already mentally exhausted but that washed away when she saw their destination.

The best way to describe it? A shell. If you have ever taken a shell from the beach and turned it over you would see the smooth white underside so shiny and clean dappled with grey and off-white like a living thing, and shells were of course but this… this place should be.

The walls were bone white and smooth as glass, shining in the faintest light, the ceiling was organically curved away above them so far it could barely be seen. Every inch of the white stone was covered in thousands of tiny dots, tiny tiny runes which made up pictures that were also stories, dragons roaring and giants raging each as large as a house and seeming even larger in the reflected gleam of the torches.

And that was just the walls, the room itself was as grand again. It was very strangely shaped, Erika thought it looked like an octagon but smooth, with others rooms where their would have been points, the expedition had arrived in one of these sub rooms which was still the size of a city street, beyond it thought Erika could see a strange winding column, as thick as a mountain which vanished into the haze above, it looked like it was made from thousands, millions, of individual threads of metal? Or bone? Erika could make it out but its presence dwarfed them even so far away.

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The smaller room they were in would still take a good five minutes to cross at a brisk pace and that was if you ignored the defences.

No galdr luckily and no traps Erika could see, although she knew she was no expert, but walls. Low walls that still towered above her and taller barricades bigger than houses, bastions rose in chokepoints and pillars lined every terraced lip. This room was built on at least three separate levels, each lower than the last and leading down to the open mouth of the tunnel the expedition had just exited. Above and before them the walls and domes made a clear sight, even to Erika.

“Is this a guard post?” Erika asked aloud, looking up at the strange box next to some sort of barrier arm. The terraced layers gave a view down onto the next one and the walls blocked the view in return which all screamed military to Erika.

“Something like it,” replied Bjorn, both were whispering and neither had intended to, the sheer size of the room seemed to demand a type of quiet solemnity, the same sort of stifling air felt in hospitals and libraries. “More like a check point…”

Erika looked up, then down, then back behind them. “… this is supposed to happen.”

After a moment of dramatic tension Bjorn grinned and, pointedly, refused to ask the follow up question until Erika pouted and stamped on his foot.

“Ah… fine fine…. What do you mean oh most intelligent vitki… I asked it stop stamping!” Erika eased off and grinned like a cat that had gotten the cream, the deed to the cream factory and held the canary’s family hostage until it walked into her mouth itself.

“Ah my dear friend you only had to ask!... the only way out of the rimed room was this way which leads to a check point, thing therefore we can easily deduce that caravans or other things flying through the air and appearing in that room is normal, with this check point being placed here specifically to deal with those that got… sucked? Yes, let’s go with that, sucked in through the air. Whatever sucked us in wasn't a means of entrance or a random phenomenon, it was a trap.”

Ranald nodded, Bjorn’s smile dimmed and Solvor uttered a string of unintelligible but somehow still utterly filthy curses.

“Is it still one?” Ranald demanded gripping his axe handle so tightly that his knuckles whitened. Erika rocked her hand back and forth in the air and scrunched up her face. “eeeeeeh… kinda… like linguistically its always going to be…” Apparently nobody else was interested in the linguistic complication of the word trap so Erika chose to be gracious and move on. “But is it dangerous? No, the dust we’ve walked over, the warg infestation, the broken rune lights? All of those things point to this place having been for a full age at least, maybe even before Ragnarök, any guards are long dead.”

“What about magic?” Asked Bjorn as he sized up the ramp ahead of them.

“Well, the only kind of magic that can make permanent magical effects is rune magic, and runes need to be shaped like a rune, we saw the rune lights in the rimed room, right? This place is so old that the stone the runes were carved in has eroded and warped… something must be keeping this place safe from the Fimbulwinter outside but that’s probably something much stronger, maybe steel runes? Or godsbone.”

“Can’t be godsbone, none of them died before Ragnarok…” Ranald started to say.

“Oh, they did, some of Aesir and Vanir both, but mortals weren’t able to tear apart their corpses back then I’ll give you that.” Said Erika as he tested the bottom of the rough stone ramp with her toe.

“History lesson aside,” said Bjorn with strained patience. “Is it safe?”

“Should be,” said Erika with a shrug. “Anything dangerous should have died, traps should have seized up and runes should have failed, obviously some might still be left so just keep your eyes open.”

“Was gonna anyway girl.” Ranald muttered; Erika stuck her tongue at him. Bjorn ignored the byplay and, levelling his thunderarm carefully, began stalking up the wide shallow ramp.

Despite the fear and the flickering torchlight the ascent was entirely mundane and utterly boring, no traps or monsters or anything, just cold stone and jotun sized booths and barricades all of which were open and empty.

A few minutes later the expedition cleared the guard post without another word spoken and found themselves in the previously distant central… place. Erika wasn't sure if it was technically a chamber or not but it was still impressive, perfectly circular except for the doors and murals carved into the walls and the enormous hole that carved through the ceiling and the floor, directly above each other like a great spear had once drilled through this strange abandoned tower, the two apertures were filled with… strings? Chains? Bars? All of the above? Thousands and thousands of crisscrossing black lines that Erika could barely make out in the sparsely illuminated darkness, they seemed to be thick enough that

“Now that’s not something you see every day.” Remarked Bjorn as he stared up at the barely illuminated darkness.

“I smell smoke.” Said Solvor suddenly, her rough accent edged with worry.

“So can I,” Bjorn added leaning over the strand filled pit and sniffing deeply. “Its faint but it’s definitely wood smoke… and meat as well, maybe some spices? Good catch Solvor.”

Solvor just nodded at his complement, her eyes still as hard as diamonds. Erika meanwhile had wandered back way from the huge chain-hole thing and was instead looking at the doors. There were nine of them positioned around the room, three groups of three, auspicious. They all seemed to have been made from huge sheets of copper or that’s what Erika guessed since all that she could see now was the almost fungal bloom of grey and green from corrosion, layers, and layers of it seeming like it was growing over the door and out into the walls around the buckled and warped hinges.

Of course, it was that moment, stood staring up at the corroded portal, that Erika heard the screams.