Kahli looked and the scroll, specifically at the back of the scroll. What she saw there made her realize that, beyond a shadow of a sliver of a quark string of a doubt, the scroll was genuine. Absolute. The real thing.

There was imagery of the sky cracking in half to reveal another sky, which itself cracked open to reveal another ground, which itself melted in an anathema full of strange slug-birds.

"The seal of the upper echelon!" Kahli cried, running her open palm across it. "Wow. This truly is amazeballs. You can feel every inch of the authenticity."

She looked at the date. This seal was placed by the Upper Echelon some five centuries ago. But of course! How bizarre.

She rolled the scroll up as she heard a noise.

Voices! But who?

Then, she realized two things. Either some more undead soldiers had reanimated in a bid to tear whomever remained in the tomb limb from limb, or, what was all the more likely, that the government entities tasked with watching over and protecting this tomb had finally noticed the not-too-subtle break in. Which meant that soon enough they would find Kahli standing here in the center of the room, holding a scroll, surrounded by the dead bodies of the Trash E Scapaders.

That wouldn't look very good, would it?

And what was Kahli to do with the scroll, exactly? Take it with her?

She had to, didn't she? If it was authentic... what did that mean?

Did that mean that, for five centuries, some terrible beast had been brewing and dwelling at the dark, murky bottom of the Pit of Despair?

Then, her mind flashed immediately to her apprenticeship. Sure, it was for class credit, but Omar was a legitimate curator. Would he be able to help her with her dreaded problem?

She heard the footsteps growing closer! Kahli couldn't wait to act. She stuck the scroll in her bag and took a deep breath as a large torchlight blared over her face.

"Hey, what the hell's going on in here?"

Kahli swallowed air. "Um, hi there."

"You better have a good explanation for what's going on here, miss."

Kahli swallowed air as she looked at all the dead bodies surrounding her and then at the tall, hunched figure wearing a thick, puffy jacket.

"Oh, yes, of course," said Kahli matter-of-factly. "You see I was just walking in the cave-"

"Walking? In the cave? Do you really expect me to believe that?"

Kahli focused her eyes and noticed an emblem on the figure's jacket. It was a seal of Old Snow Mountain.

"Yes, of course, officer. Absolutely. Because it's what happened to me!"

"Okay then, miss. Whatever you say..." they turned away for a second, only to quick turn back around. "But then again - if that's the case, what's the deal with all these dead bodies strewn about the place like they just got murdered by a stampede of wildenbeasten?"

Wildenbeasten were large, burly animals wrapped entirely in living wood. They were hard to approach, because they always stayed in large packs. Getting too close to them resulted in the whole pack rushing towards you at a deathly pace.

"Well, I was going to tell you, but you interrupted me." She stared at the officer, noticing her angry expression. "But that's okay, of course, because I can still tell you now! See, um, well, it's funny really. So I was walking in this cave, I'm a bit of a spelunker you see-"

"A bit of a spelunker?"

"Yes, yes, a bit of a spelunker." Kahli forced a pained smile. "A total spelunkety doo, as we spelunkites like to say."

"Wow, that was pretty heavy on the jargon. I'm glad that none of it was relevant to my question, or else I'd need to understand what you were saying just now," said the officer.

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Kahli sighed and took a deep breath, a breath so deep that some of the dust that was apparently still kicking around somewhere in her esophagus got sucked into her windpipe, immediately triggering a hacking response that made the officer's facial expression completely change. She rushed over to greet Kahli, apparently prepared to perform some sort of backward thrusting maneuver.

Kahli held up a finger and hacked again, then cleared her throat. "I'm f - ugh - I'm fine."

The officer cautiously backed away. "Great Theseosus, what was that about? I was concerned you were choking there!"

"No, no, just, um, I think I might've accidentally swallowed some saliva or something. I do it sometimes when I'm nervous."

"Okay," said the officer, still obviously on a bit of an edge. "Please, uh, please let me know if you are in danger."

Kahli laughed inwardly at this. What an absurd request! Regardless, she continued to tell the officer an abridged version of what exactly happened. See, she was just simply walking around in the cave as a spelunker, ready to see the sites and maybe take a few cool rocks for a souvenir.

"There are some cool rocks down here," added the officer.

Kahli went on to explain that, while she was looking at an exceptionally cool stalactite, she heard a terrible shriek. So, she walked forward towards the noise.

"The logical thing to do in that situation," replied the officer that was all too used to finding opportunities to intervene in high stress situations.

Kahli explained that when she did, she saw that someone was blowing open this tomb! She was terrified and called for help and for the authorities, but then the evil thieves caught wind of her presence and attacked! They swung at her, they grasped her, they beat her in an attempt to silence her about the cruel, awful thing they'd done, that thing being breaking into an abandoned tomb without permission.

"As thieves often behave."

And so Kahli then broke free of their terrible grasp and, as she only knew one way forward, rushed into the tomb and hid near a big pile of gold.

"Ah, that explains why you're standing by all that gold."

And then Kahli went on to say that after she hid by the big pile of gold, all the thieves started rejoicing, for in their search for her they noticed all the gold in the tomb, and immediately forgot all about her.

"That sounds like thieves to me."

But then, they saw the nicest thing of all, said Kahli. They saw the huge, porcelain elephant in the middle of the room, and they were immediately drawn in by its beautiful gravitas and unbridled elephantocity. And so it was that they all walked towards it, like moths to a flame, and in that dreadful moment-

"Ah, yes, I see what you mean!" The officer smiled and regarded the elephant, pointing her torch at the sculpted pachyderm. "This thing really is a beaut, I've got to say. To think, it was right here, totally conspicuous and humongous. I didn't even notice it!"

Before Kahli could say another word, the officer stepped over to the elephant and rested a sweaty palm on it. Predictably, she immediately convulsed, burst into flames, and fell over dead on the spot.

"Fuck's sake," Kahli said with a sigh. "I was just about to tell her what happened when they touched the elephant, too!"

She felt for the scroll in her bag, pulled it out, and looked it over again. Yes, there it was. It was indeed real, too - she unfolded it a little to feel the seal again. All too real. And now Kahli had, what, eight very real deaths on her plate here?

She decided it was time to get out of that tomb, and fast. Well, fast enough, at least, to leave before any other officers showed up and made her tell her story again, but not so fast that she couldn't grab a couple of gemstones and a substantial amount of gold. Just for fun, of course.

Kahli ran out of the tomb and scurried down the ever-darkening tunnels. It was a lot harder now that she was the only one, and it felt a lot longer and lonelier too - even though she did, thankfully, have the dead officer's torch now to light her way.

Soon enough Kahli emerged into a late evening sky and sighed in relief and shock. Had she really been there in the caves so long? She must've been. And, of course, there was that strange, unaccounted for period time wherein she seemed to have a vision, though in truth as more time passed the memory became fuzzier and fuzzier for Kahli until she was wholly unsure whether it had even really happened.

It had happened, hadn't it?

Hadn't it?

And if it had...

What was it, again?

Everything was fuzzy, blurry, and vague in Kahli's mind. She also noticed that she was absolutely famished, and immediately decided that she needed to go over to that famous buffet place.

----------------------------------------

"Well, regardless of why you saved us," said Kahli to Unit 5a23 with a sigh and a sideways glance, "I'm glad that you decided to take action instead of just, well, instead of just meditating."

"I'm glad too," said Unit 5a23. "After all, it wasn't like I wanted to die or something."

Kahli argued a bit with Unit 5a23 about whether or not it was sensible for him to have such a rigid policy regarding intervening in fights, especially considering he was so powerful. Kahli felt that Unit 5a23 was under an obligation to put his power to use for the greater good. Unit 5a23 posited that, as a mechanical man, he truly could only differentiate greater than zero, or greater than or equal to zero, and he could not rightly determine what the greater good was. So, he postied, how could he decide how to fight based on something he couldn't define?

Kahli was baffled by this. She wondered if she needed to instead focus on something else entirely in order to get through to Unit 5a23. There had to be a way of breaking this robot's policy, didn't there?

"I hate to interrupt us in this great debate, but can't you see that in your system?" asked Unit 5a23, pointing to an indeterminate point in space.

Kahli stopped focusing on arguing and instead focused on her system for a moment. She did see the message.

[Lloyd will respawn in 00:01:25]