Joanne carefully returned her form back to its regular prim and proper self, assiduously ignoring the wheezing, unconscious Bertha at her feet. She took a deep, calming breath, and began to analyse her surroundings.

The caverns lying under the Witz were clearly of no natural formation. They had been carved with meticulous geometrical precision - the great vaulted ceiling composed of three equal arches, the sides absolutely flat, each crafted pillar done with the same dimensions and style. The only thing dividing any one section of the endless tunnel network from another were the reliefs carved onto every surface, which depicted all manner of fantastical and sometimes loathsome beasts.

There was a strange pressure underground, one which seemed to cling to her skin, creating an awkward and clammy sensation that made her want to rub her arms. It was no normal pressure, nor was it moisture, for when Joanne gave in to the desire she found her skin was bone dry. She pulled a flashlight out of her purse, hoping to offset the darkness, but all it did was shine a brief beam for but a moment before flickering out.

This prompted a round of grumbling, then a chant, and then her fingers slowly flickered with light. She hadn’t wanted to use this particular spell - which she’d learnt two years ago, while studying not-particularly-ancient manuscripts on the operation of light as it reflected off paint - but it seemed the best spell for the job.

In the meantime, all was not well in the restaurant up above. Proper security and management had at last arrived. They gazed in shock at the devastation in their restaurant and the hole in their floor, dropping a ladder into the darkness so as to go down and check.

“Oh no,” Hank gagged, as he peered down into the hole. “This is the ancient ruins beneath a restaurant or fight ring subplot!”

Nonetheless, he joined them in descending into the cavern, determined at the least to rescue the unconscious body of his girlfriend. The managers and he reached the ground, staring around at the vaunted cavern and its benighted depths. Their eyes stopped, gazing with awe and horror at the now literally glowing Joanne.

“What do you want?” Snapped Joanne, who had no patience for encounters like these and wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. “You clearly weren’t present in the hotel at the time, but I was responding to provocation, and consider that a clear cut case of self-defence.”

(‘That’ being the still unconscious Bertha lying on the ground, unseeing eyes staring blankly at the cavern ceiling.)

The lead manager of the Witz coughed awkwardly. He had been planning to capture the woman who had so rudely barged in and either throw her out or throw her in prison, but the naked display of magical power made him realise this was no regular person - some kind of bigshot had come to visit, or perhaps the disciple of a hidden master, in which case it was the opportunity for his the Witz hotel to score big. “Of course, of course. You’ll have to excuse us; we weren’t aware someone as illustrious as you was coming.”

Joanne’s brows drew together. She wasn’t an illustrious personage, so either he was greatly mistaken as to her identity or he was lying through his teeth. In either case it was advantageous to her to play along. “There was no need for me to announce my coming; my business was none of your concern.”

“Of course, of course,” the obsequious manager said, eyeing her to see if she was acknowledging his sincerity. “I do hope you won’t blame our the Witz hotel for any of the problems you’ve encountered since your arrival. In the interim, I do hope you’ll excuse us; we’ll be clearing your path just at the moment, but you are more than welcome to use our hotel any time.”

And he presented her with a gold card before scurrying off, Bertha in tow. Hank followed, face pale as a sheet, saying nothing. (Internally, he was thinking words to the effect of, “oh, I knew this plot would happen - and now she’ll slowly drain us of money and support,” which was really rather silly because now that Joanne had delivered her punishment she had put Hank and Bertha entirely out of her mind, preferring to focus on more important matters. But we will leave him to the phantasies of his imagination.)

The unpleasantries dealt with, Joanne proceeded on her way, scanning the walls and ceiling for any familiar glyphs. Every now and then she would stop to perform a divination, checking several of the symbols on the walls against those in her memory as she consulted the VTubing bagua she’d designed.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Grumble grumble,” she grumbled audibly. Many of the symbols she recognised, having come across them in her research; others she could guess the meaning of; but the mess as a whole was entirely outside of her comprehension. She hadn’t the foggiest what all the symbols could mean together, though she had inklings, none of them good.

“How old is this tunnel?” She mused to herself. “And did the hotel staff know about it? They couldn’t have; there was no familiarity in the eyes of the management. And yet, how could they have built this hotel on top of these ruins otherwise?”

Still, what she saw before her was no lie. There was no mould on any of the surfaces, no signs of life in the caverns, nothing that might indicate any habitation, not only of human or animal, but of the lowest of low life forms. These caverns had clearly been untouched for many aeons.

Midway through her journey the glyphs on the walls suddenly flickered to life, blue ethereal flames dancing over the characters and images. A quick pass of her fingers confirmed they weren’t harmful, and other than being vaguely eerie and mysterious they did no more than trouble Joanne with their sheer presence.

She did a quick divination to see if they were dangerous, but the I Ching returned the symbol for Ancient Horror - a cosy, happy sign indicative of good things to come and much peace - so she stopped worrying and continued on her journey.

At last, she came to a great door set into the wall, the first she’d seen. Its handles were thrice as broad as a human hand and ten times as long, the clasps set into them entirely distinct from what was considered normal for human beings. The size of the doors was also notable - they towered some thirty feet overhead, and were made of pure stone. Joanne would be able to open them, with some difficulty, but she couldn’t imagine any normal human could do so unaided.

She had decided early on that this must not be a human habitation. None of the glyphs or carvings or images on the walls were of human beings, and the animals they did show had been extinct for millions of years prior to the first human walking on the face of the earth. The beings depicted as cultivating or doing magic or theurgy or whatever it was had too many limbs and features to be human beings; consequently, she had decided that this complex had been built by an ancient and possibly extinct race of pre-human sapient life.

The shape of this door only confirmed this hypothesis, although its presence didn’t make Joanne feel any better. She had no objections to the idea of non-human intelligent life - she’d met plenty of spirits over the years, same as her brother - but that didn’t mean she was in the mood to deal with them just at the moment… Or with their corpses, if only remnants of them remained.

She stopped in front of the door and steeled herself, drawing a deep breath. Then, heart filled with trepidation, she knocked on the door.

Nothing happened.

After waiting a suitably long time, she knocked again, just in case they hadn’t heard her.

Nothing happened.

She waited a little while longer yet, then knocked on the door for a third and final time, to make absolutely clear to any living beings on the other side that she was here and would like entry.

Nothing happened.

So, corpses it would be. Joanne sighed, and rolled up her sleeves. She muttered a brief incantation. “Well, we can’t expect ancient sapient monstrosities to do all the work.”

She grabbed the door and with a great heave - assisted by the energy of the Leviathan coursing through her veins - dragged on the door handle.

The door held firm for a moment, refusing to budge under pressure, before the force she was exerting proved too much for it and it slowly clicked open.

Immediately thereafter an immense boom sounded, a rumble that reverberated under her feet. She nearly tumbled over, only barely holding herself upright as the earthquake rocked the entire cavern complex. (It would be unladylike, she held, to fall over as the result of a little seismic activity.)

The magic lock of the door having given out, the rest opened with ease, allowing Joanne access to the hall beyond. Before her a great room opened up, with multiple tunnel entrances visible on the far side. Unlike the caverns she’d been passing through, it was furnished, with generous carpeting on the floor, lovely soft warm lighting, and bean bag chairs aplenty. A crackling fire burned in an ornate fireplace at the back of what must have been some sort of common room, a sitting table and three chairs arrayed around it.

Nor were these chairs altogether uninhabited. In each of them sat a being such as has not been seen on the surface of the earth (purportedly) for millions of years, since long before the dinosaurs walked. Small, squat, plated in armour, the three beings were hard at work drinking and playing a round of some die game.

The three trilobites looked at Joanne. Joanne looked back at the three trilobites.

At last, one of the trilobites could be heard to remark - in perfect English - “what the heck, Gerald? I thought I told you to lock the door.”