Whoever designed these tunnels must have had no common sense; that is what Arc concluded after two or three weeks of living in them.

For starters, they were all far too large. Sure, the original miners need room to swing their tools, but even two surface giants could have easily passed each other without touching the walls in the majority. In fact, if they were closer to the surface they could have just buried pipes instead of digging tunnels in the first place.

And the paths... Why was so much valuable floorspace devoted to empty paths? Any water channel more than two minions wide had a walkway on at least one side, sometimes on both sides. Why?? The channel itself should have been dry during construction, and a repair crew would need to get wet anyways. Dry tunnels connecting wet ones made more sense, but there were far more of them than necessary too; some even dead-ended at deserted rooms.

Rooms... Some of the rooms were just absurd. What was the point of such huge cisterns? How long of a dry spell did the builders plan for? Their distribution seemed rather lopsided as well.

Where did all the tailings go? The minions had only been making minor additions so far, and they were already having difficulties figuring out where to dump all the earth they'd moved (it'd mostly been spread out in pots throughout the dungeon, but there were already too many pots). Arc could only assume they used a magical disposal method. He hoped he could figure out what it was soon...

The tunnels moved in three dimensions, but usually tended to stay in the same horizontal plane, and water tunnels running parallel to each other were often of the same depth. If the tunnels were to be divided into horizontal layers by depth, Kat's shrine would probably be on the third such layer. Most of the other rooms were on the third or fourth layers.

At the moment, Arc was on the second layer trying to make a map in preparation for his expedition. This was extremely difficult without proper tools, not to mention paper. But it had to be done: Kat's influence got weaker the higher they went, and she wouldn't be able to guide them if they got lost.

Arc did his best. One type of fungus had silky gills that could be used for string; Arc made one very long with knots at regular intervals. The distance in-between knots was set at as far as Arc's arms could spread apart, which was a bit more than his height. For plack of imagination, this unit was called a "length".

Unfortunately, fungus and minion mucus couldn't solve the paper problem. Arc had tried, but the result had been too brittle: it crumbled instead of bent. This time it was minion urine that came to the rescue, as Arc opted to make ratskin parchment.

That's not to say those two most useful materials were totally useless. One tiny, midnight-blue mushroom could be crushed for liquid spore-based dye. Adding mucus thickened it enough to make decent ink.

Figuring out what to write was even more difficult. While he had knowledge of writing from god-knows-where, (Kat sure didn't) the specifics were missing. He'd probably have to invent a new character set from scratch; preferably one which at least the smarter minions could understand.

So far he'd only bothered with numbers. "Five and two-eight Lengths to new tunnel... Number three and four-eight." That was to say, the distance between the last measured point and tunnel #35 was 21L. Minions had four fingers on each hand, so base eight was natural, even if Arc's memories seemed to be in decimal.

The character shapes were simple: Arc just drew the sides of a box in one at a time to count to four, then added another box above to count to eight. Even most of the minions could understand it; although since few really 'got' a written zero, large numbers would need to be written with strings of '8' in hypothetical written instructions. (For himself, Arc used an 'S'-like curve to represent a zero digit.)

"Brush." Arc took the tool proffered by the minion currently serving as his gopher and marked the new tunnel. They'd come back to it later, after this tunnel was done. "Pointnext, moveup." The other two minions currently in Arc's employ began stretching the measuring rope down the tunnel they were in.

This was quite the team he'd managed to assemble, and arc was proud of it. The laborers doubled as bodyguards. The gopher was much less stupid than average. There was even a tamed giant rat to help carry their stuff. (A pack-rat, if you will.)

Arc's count was at seven and one-eight lengths when Kat called. {Arc, something... About to happen.} Her voice was faint this far out, and distorted like someone shouting down a very long pipe, but she definitely sounded concerned. "Kat? What is it?"

{Kat can't sense clearly, too far... Come back, Arc.} Arc felt a strange compulsion behind that order. It was too weak to force him to obey, but if Kat was even trying then that meant this was serious.

He  interrupted his minions. "Stop. We're going back. Now." Arc noticed light coming from the tunnel they just passed. And sounds. Voices. Even accounting for distortions from the tunnel, they reverberated too deep to belong to minions.

---------

"See, I told you ya should have brought something. There's plenty of room, and we missed that rat because we didn't have range." "And I told you that moisture does terrible things to bows. It soaks into the wood, weakens the resin, and ruins them. Anyways, the rat wouldn't have jumped into the water if it couldn't hear your blabbering a mile away."

Of the three men, only one seemed to be taking things seriously. He was on point, with a long sword and a wooden shield. Behind him was a man with a war hammer and a lantern, and another with a pair of daggers. But while the shield may be borrowed and the sword meant for use in larger spaces, at least he understood the basics: keep noise to a minimum, and don't look directly at the light source.

The lantern man ignored both that common sense and the other's return jab. "I'll bet one of those crossbows with the fancy dwarfish spring steel would be just fine..." "Oh yeah? Then you pay for it. Besides, you don't want to be walking in front of one of those when loaded, neither of you can shoot, and I don't feel like taking point."

The actual pointman couldn't contain his frustration any longer. "Well, Steve, maybe if you would take point we might be able to find what we're looking for. And Mark, you're one to talk about weapon choice. Expect to find much armor to crack with that pick of yours down here, hmm?"

The admonished pair said nothing. It wouldn't help to point out that Steven couldn't track something he'd never seen in an environment he was unfamiliar with, or that Markus was too pressed for funds to even rent a sword at the guild for this trip.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Neither of them had expected much trouble from the start, anyways. The locals kept their sewers fairly clean (metaphorically speaking, of course). They'd be lucky to collect enough rat-tail bounties to pay for lunch. A few more weeks of unemployment, and the rats might even be lunch.

After a while, it was Mark again who broke the silence. "Speaking of dwarves... I heard they were the ones that made most of these tunnels." "You don't say?" More awkward silence, until Steve finally relented. "*sigh* Well, I guess them dwarfs never make anything laconically, heh." (Yes, that was a 'short' joke. A well-known one amongst adventurers who would otherwise probably go their entire lives without even once hearing the word 'laconic'.)

"I know, right? Supposedly the city above started as a trading post for the dwarves living in the hill. Eventually the dwarves moved away, but the city kept growing, and the mines were converted to carry water." "Did them dwarfs handle that too? I'll bet they could've made the river dry up while the town flooded, and in the middle of winter at that!"

Their leader went back to ignoring them. Mark was a rarity among adventurers in that he had a basic education, but he just loved to show it off, even if half of his 'facts' were made up on the spot. It was best just to -

*thwump*

What was that?! A sound from up ahead. A light, too! The shapes were weren't moving like rats, but they were too small to be human. The enemy! He'd found them!

No time to waste, he knew how fast the little buggers could be. But this time, he would be faster. He charged.

"RrraaaAAAAAA!" "Wha-" The sudden cry startled the two idiots behind him, but no matter. He sure wasn't going to stop his rush forward now.

Two enemies tried and one was blown back by the shield for its trouble. The other was smacked away by his sword. If he had been able to swing it properly, the victim probably would have been bisected instead.

A third enemy got trampled, but then fourth jumped on its back. Something sharp sank deep into his shoulder, but that wasn't going to stop him either. He crushed the assailant against the wall until it let go.

By the time that he pair of sluggards had finally caught up, it was already over. Markus played his across the bodies. "Kobolds... There really are kobolds down here..." His voice was but a shocked whisper, while the leader was casually wiping his sword as if nothing extraordinary had just happened.

"So then, Markus, would you kindly tell me what kind of kobold they are? What are their habits and weaknesses?" Mark was still 

dumbstruck. "I- I don't know." Of course, that was a given: monsters were widely varied, often unique, so knowledge about any given species was not distributed far beyond its specific habitat. This was a new monster in the area, which meant there was probably no knowledge of it anywhere.

"I guess... For a bounty we should bring back the ears?" "No, Steven; we'll be taking whole corpses this time. Well, as close to whole as they are now, anyways. Even that rat, we'll want to show off its harness. Now, I think they came from the right, so lets head upstream and look for a nest."

Neither gave any lip about the heavy loads they were given. Much to their amazement, Peter Frederick Kostov had just landed them a paying job.

---------

Arc pulled himself out of the water, but what he coughed up was partially blood, his blood. Gopher had tripped and spilled his load, and Arc had been trying to help him back up, when suddenly - something had kicked him into the water. He'd tumbled in the water for what had felt like a very long time after that.

Arc lay on the bank now, pain overwhelming his frail body. It felt like he had broken several ribs, perhaps even ruptured an organ. This was bad... Maybe he should have given his plans to introduce the concept of healthcare to the other minions a higher priority?

What was that thing? It was as big as a surface giant, but that was impossible. He'd personally debriefed several of the surface raiders, and every account suggested that such acceleration was impossible.

Impossible, unless... They cheated. Somehow, the giant had tricked inertia into looking the other way for a second. Come to think of it, he might have caught a glimpse of a faint orange glow...

Pain flashed through him again. But thus time, the wound acting up was a much older one, and less physical. Memories were coming back to him.

More giants, not glowing softly but shining brilliantly like stars; with them were thousands of lesser lights.

Some of the lesser lights went ahead, and were slaughtered. The greater lights moved foreword, but were outflanked. Wherever they weren't, lights were snuffed out, and even where they were the collateral damage was too great for their charges to survive.

This continued until only the brightest stars remained. And then... Supernova.

The worst part of it wasn't the violence, or the blood. It was the fact that the blood was on Arc's hands.

Arc still couldn't remember everything, but he felt that he probably deserved this.

---------

Eventually, a rat found Arc. Fortunately, it wasn't there to eat him.

There was a minion on its back. Soon, more arrived. In charge was Rocky, wearing a grim expression. He was also wearing his finest ratskins, and staff that was once an elderly giant's cane. He held it over Arc's still form.

On top of the cane was a rat skull, decorated with pilfered gold. It had been hastily converted into a reliquary, and now bore the most precious and sacred object known to minionkind.

Kat, and the staff around her, began to sine with golden hue. The minions feared and hated that light, it was too much like the sun. Many hissed or shied away, but Rocky continued his duty, and began chanting prayers.

The shine fell upon Arc's body. Within minutes, it faded, and darkness returned.

But enough light remained that Arc could be clearly seen to breathe again.

He was still unconscious, so the minions had to carry him back to the dungeon.