Around the map table, banter and murmured discussion died with a hiss like water poured over lambent embers. The officers of the expedition exchanged concerned glances, confusion and worry plastered across their faces.
To Talia’s empathy sense, the room was fragrant with the smell of anticipation and anxiety, with an aftertaste of worry. Only Calisto and Torval seemed free of it, both exuding a fatalistic determination.
“If what Chronicler Calisto and I have discovered is correct, our task has become more dangerous by a degree of magnitude,” Torval hedged.
The officers tensed further. Copperpike fidgeted in his seat, fiddling with his omnipresent clipboard. Darkclaw rubbed at his prosthetic eye with one clawed hand, the other fingering at the hilt of one of the many daggers that hung from his battle harness.
“Aye then, out wit it,” the quartermaster barked, his patois slipping into his speech, “yer not usually the type ter be makin sinkholes outta fractures.”
The delvemaster stared the surly dwarf down impassively, until the latter backed off, with a muttered “Apologies, Delvemaster Torval.”
Satisfied, Torval paused, clacking his fingers on the edge of the map table, as he generally did when he was thinking things over. The grinding of gears in his mind appeared to Talia as the flicker fast flashes of errant thoughts, rapidly summoned and then dismissed in quick succession.
The gathered officers, even Talia, knew that it was just the delvemaster’s way to consider carefully when faced with problems. However, if the sentiment she was picking up from her peers was anything to go by, it was a habit that presently went unappreciated.
Finally, as the anticipation had nearly risen to a fever pitch in Talia’s senses, Torval’s tapping fingers stopped.
“We have—Calisto and I that is—reason to believe that we are amid a Deep Migration,” he said.
The silence that coated the assembly was punctuated by a turbulent flood of emotions from Talia’s fellow officers. Fear, disbelief, confusion and frantic consideration all poured themselves piecemeal into the empathic net that Talia had spread around her. Overwhelmed, she scrambled to restrict her psionic senses even further, clamping down on her Core and slowing her mana such that it couldn’t slip through the locks in her channels.
Lazarus was the first to break the silence.
“Are the two of you certain? Such a thing has not occurred since I was a child. Last time… If you are correct, we had best turn back. I can not foresee any good end coming from braving the Ways during a Migration,” he said.
Before Torval or his second could reply, Copperpike interjected, his patois seemingly under control once more. Talia couldn’t help the errant thought questioning why he masked it but dismissed the non-sequitur as unimportant.
“That’s impossible, Delvemaster Erella used this same route to return from Karzurkul just last month and said it was as safe as she’d ever seen it. You all read the report,” Hanmul caught himself and glanced at Talia, “Well most of us read the report. It’s the whole reason we chose this path over the rest. If she’d noticed anything amiss—”
Calisto spoke up for the first time, her face just as inscrutable as always, though Talia couldn’t help but notice new wrinkles on her forehead and bags around her eyes. While the rest of the expedition had been celebrating the end of the first leg of their journey, it seemed the delvemaster and his second had been hard at work. Torval ceded the floor to her without a word.
“She wouldn’t have noticed anything. There was nothing to notice. The pattern was hard to find, given the fragmented nature of historical texts, but accounts that Torval and I found describe a sharp decrease in deep dweller activity in the months or even years leading up to a Migration,” the chronicler explained.
“Bah, that could mean anything, just because we met a few beasties on the way to first haven doesn’t mean a Migration. A coincidence, that’s all it is,” Hanmul scoffed.
Calisto frowned, a delicate, subtle thing that bent her face ever so slightly, to calamitous effect.
“There is no such thing as a coincidence. Goblins and garbog both inhabit the upper strata of the Deep, relatively speaking. However, they both occupy very different niches. The likelihood of us encountering both in the same tunnel is minute, bordering on impossible.”
The chronicler looked around the room and met the gathered officers’ gazes one by one, ending with the quartermaster.
“The only reason we would find the two in the same vicinity is if a larger territorial dispute or catastrophe was occurring in the depths of the Deep, pushing both from their hunting grounds. And if that hypothesis is true, then we can only expect greater upheaval of deep dweller populations. Which is the textbook definition of a Migration.”
Copperpike looked unconvinced, shaking his head vigorously in denial. Calisto appeared on the verge of continuing but came up short, instead turning to rifle at the shelves of books that were her domain, a frustrated snarl on her lips.
Talia, on the other hand, was growing ever more confused about the topic of discussion, but before she could speak up, Lazarus offered a counterpoint.
“It does seem somewhat of a tenuous link to make from only two data points, if you will permit,” the healer opined.
Torval took over for the agitated chronicler and answered the implied criticism. The delvemaster pulled up his stool and set his hands onto the control sphere of the map table, scrolling the illusory image out to display a dizzying array of tunnels and caves. With a few deft movements, the whole of the mapped Under lay before the group.
“Your point is the same one I made when Calisto came to me. However, if you look here, you’ll see why we are concerned,” he said.
With a few taps at the runes on the table’s controls, two very different areas of the Deep were highlighted. One, in blue, was a large flat ovoid, nearly a cross-section of the Deep below and to the left of their current position. The other, in red, was a much smaller sphere with offshoot branches that spread into mining tunnels directly below Karzgorad. Neither area intersected the other, and both had a radius measured in the range of hundreds of kilometres.
“If you are particularly astute,” Torval joked, “You’ll have noticed that neither of these areas is anywhere close to each other. The red is established goblin territory, while the blue is the estimated hunting range of garbog wyrms and their kin. What Chronicler Calisto so aptly noted, is that unless something was pushing the two populations towards the same place, it is impossible for us to have stumbled across both within a several hundred-kilometre range of each other.”
Lazarus tutted in understanding, leaning forward, elbows on the edge of the map table and hands clasped.
“Unless…something was pushing them both in the same direction, yes, I see it. In that case, how certain are you that the moving force is strong enough to cause a true Migration? From what I understand, the last two are thought to have been provoked by the clash between leviathans, and the third was caused by some kind of mushroom blight, if I remember correctly.”
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Torval nodded as Calisto rummaged through her bookshelves, flipping through pages and muttering to herself.
“They aren’t definitive proof, but they are precursors. Particularly striking ones if you consider how many stratums both creatures must have crossed to rise up to the level of the Ways. Migrations are finicky. They build up like gas in the Maw. The only clues before the eventual eruption are changes in the ebb and flow before they burst.”
Lazarus pressed his lips against his clasped hands, staring at the map with furrowed brow.
“And you believe that our encounters thus far suggest we are on the cusp of one such eruption? That the presence of goblins and garbog in close vicinity is enough to warrant such a claim?” he asked.
The delvemaster sighed softly before catching himself and firming his features.
“We do yes.”
The healer righted himself, chin in hand, and addressed Torval.
“Then my previous counsel remains the same. We should retreat. Nothing in Karzurkul is worth our lives and the lives of the crew. If a Migration is coming, then it is only a matter of months, maybe even weeks before the Ways are flooded with all manner of deadly creatures, driven into a killing frenzy,” Lazarus said.
Copperpike slapped his clipboard.
“The elf is right. We’d be asking for death just by continuing. I’d have thought we would’ve turned back immediately once you had even a suspicion,” the quartermaster griped.
Before Torval could answer, Talia’s curiosity got the better of her, and she finally spoke up.
“Not to showcase my ignorance here, but what exactly is a ‘Deep Migration’?” she hesitantly hazarded.
Torval and Lazarus both turned to look at her in consternation. Calisto paused her furious rifling through bookshelves. Copperpike, predictably, rolled his eyes derisively. Even Zaric looked surprised and offered her a raised brow. It was Darkclaw who offered up the first answer.
“Something powerful, deep. Fight, kill, attack. Disrupt food chain. Creatures flee up. Disease spread, kill many, kill prey and food. Creatures flee up. Magma flood tunnels, many die, territory disappear. Creatures flee up. Migrate,” the beastkin haltingly explained, in broken dwarvish.
“Er—right, I understood that part, but what does that have to do with us? Sure a few beasts end up on the Ways, but wouldn’t most just end up in different tunnels, warrens, caves or whatever? The Under is a big place after all,” Talia asked.
Calisto moved over to Torval’s seat and took it from him with a gentle push. She laid her hands on the controls of the map table, manipulating them deftly until they had highlighted nearly a dozen tunnels, twisted and turned almost haphazardly through the geography of the deep.
Talia leaned forward much like Lazarus had, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. After ensuring that the arcanist was paying attention, Calisto began her explanation.
“These are the Ways. Historical account has it that they were carved out of the Under by the Ancients in the time after Tidefall. To date, they are the longest, safest and most well-maintained passages through the Deep, not to mention the most consistent in size. To travel through the natural tunnels of the Under would otherwise be suicide. Once upon a time, they connected Karzgorad and her sister cities. With me so far?”
Talia nodded slowly; her gaze was riveted on the seemingly interminable length of the passages shown on the map. The sheer scale of the undertaking was…
Breathtaking. They must stretch for thousands of kilometres.
“The important thing to understand is that the Ways are continuous. When the Ancients encountered chasms, they built bridges. When they hit magma pockets or gas vents, they went above or below. We believe that they attempted to keep the Ways as straight as possible,” the chronicler continued, with a tone reminiscent of Talia’s school teachers.
The young woman frowned and raised an eyebrow at the twisted lines through the Under, that for all the world resembled a child’s crooked scribbles.
“Where do the twists come from then?” Talia asked.
Calisto granted the arcanist one of her rare smiles.
“A number of things. To start, the Ancients weren’t perfect. They made mistakes. For the most part, they come from disrepair and the test of time. Over millennia, even Shaper magic wasn’t enough to maintain a straight route through the Deep. Detours were made, tunnels merged and new accessways created; it left us with the mess you see before you. But that’s beside the point.”
With a flick of the chronicler’s fingers, a new set of tunnels was highlighted in soft green; a veritable warren of dead ends, subterranean lakes and narrow catacombs, speckled with the occasional large cavern or deepmount.
The contrast made the Ways appear straighter than a quarrel shaft by comparison.
“This is the Deep, untamed. Countless pockets of darkness that are home to both wonderful beast and terrifying monster alike. In this hive of chasms, lakes and chambers, lives a delicate ecosystem. Beneath our feet, there is a constant struggle for survival, fought daily by every deep dweller we know, from the smallest insect to the largest leviathan,” Calisto said, a curious spark of passion flashing deep in her eyes.
Talia bobbed her understanding, gesturing for the chronicler to continue. An inkling of comprehension had begun to splotch across the young mage’s thoughts.
“Deep Migrations are a symptom of an upheaval of the ecosystem. A disaster so severe that it pushes large swathes of the deep dweller population out of the Deep and into the upper reaches of the Under.”
Finally, it clicked.
“We’ve created a gathering point for them,” Talia breathed.
A flash of white teeth signalled the chronicler’s approval.
“Exactly. Once enough deep dwellers reach the upper reaches, it is inevitable that they find their way onto the Ways, if only in a transitive manner. In practice, it means that thousands upon thousands of wild beasts flood the only navigable passages through the Deep, sometimes for months or years. The last Migration was nearly two hundred years ago and lasted well over three years, with deep dweller numbers estimated in the range of a million.”
Talia sucked in a breath. The number was…incalculable. Fear began to bubble up in her stomach. She understood now the confused jumble of emotions she’d sensed from her fellow officers. Worriedly, Talia double-checked that the locks on her sense –what she had unimaginatively begun to refer to as ‘senselocks’— were still in place, and nearly heaved a sigh of relief when she found that they were. Finally, when she had just managed to marshall her calm, a disturbing realization planted an insidious seed in her mind.
“What about Karzgorad? If the Ways aren’t safe then—”
Torval cut her off before the seed of panic in Talia’s thoughts could bloom.
At least I don’t have that to worry about. I can’t imagine the horror of being bombarded with everyone’s emotions all the time. Now, I decide what I feel and when I feel it.
“The safety of Karzgorad is the duty of The Last Legion, not ours. I’m sure that the city will be fine. The gates haven’t fallen before, and we have no reason to believe that they ever will. No, right now, we have to focus on ourselves, and our own survival,” Torval pronounced.
Silence greeted his statement.
Suddenly, the room was divided between those who knew and those who didn’t.
The knowledge that the expedition’s now tenuous seeming survival and the city’s were intrinsically linked rose to the front and center of Talia’s thoughts like a funeral dirge.
If this Migration lasts even half as long as the last one…
From her conversation with the delvemaster, Talia knew that they were one of four expeditions sent out in search of a matrix core. One for each of the Dead Cities.
The next expedition to set off was due to leave in two months’ time. Would they even be able to leave? And if they did, would they even survive?
All at once, a lot was riding on the chance that Karzurkul held an intact matrix core for them to find. Even more rode on Torval and the other officers’ ability to get them to the dead city through the metaphorical rockfall that was coming—not to mention their ability to return.
And now, barely a quarter of the way there, at least two of the caravan’s seven officers wanted to turn back, unaware of the gravity of it all.
Talia saw the same considerations flick back and forth behind the delvemaster’s tired, hazel eyes.
In her heart of hearts, a gibbering fear festered, telling her that she should side with the healer and the quartermaster, that there must be some other solution—something that wouldn’t require them to knowingly head off into a flurry of frantic, deadly creatures.
While the delvemaster gathered his thoughts, she dismissed the whining voice with a deep, shuddering breath, and leaned forward onto the map table. What Torval would say, in the end, was a given. The expedition was not a democracy. The delvemaster took in counsel, yes, but in the end, he knew just like she did that their lives paled in comparison to the magnitude of their task. The journey would continue, Migration or no.
Pushing her mind for all it was worth, Talia worked the problem over, trying to find the angle where they didn’t all end up as beast food. Her gaze landed on a particular stretch of green-highlighted caverns. Slowly, like how salt dissolved in warm water bit by bit, an idea came to her.
It’s stupid. It might be slower than just cutting our way through the monsters. It might not even let us bypass them. But maybe, just maybe, it might work.