I really needed to stop going into dark places.

I did have a lamp with me this time, a candle burning at the center and providing some light. Not as much as I’d prefer. The darkness ahead shifted as I pushed forward, shadows dancing along the tunnel walls.

I walked along a rough stone path, maneuvering carefully in a tunnel not much larger than I was. I should be grateful the dwarves who’d carved out this rectangular passageway had bothered to make it big enough for folks my size. Not too much bigger as my horns scraped against the tunnel ceiling for a third time.

The problems of taking the smaller tunnels as opposed to the main thoroughfares. Originally the plans had been for all of these to be constantly patrolled, when the invasion had started. Plans changed very rapidly. Originally they’d envisioned an underground frontier and already built dwarven settlements ready to colonize.

Those were settled now, leftover dwarves and adventuring guilds and an assortment of others flooding in. The rest, including the mines? Less so. Colonization was going to be a ways off till the Imperial government was certain the yield from the mines would be consistent. Monsters made that difficult.

They’d been allies to the Shining Princess, back during the campaigns to depose Her Most Profane Majesty. They’d been firm allies for the decades after until she’d decided to declare them a protectorate and formally part of the empire. The economic issues ravaging the empire at the time most definitely were not part of the reasons to extend the empire’s protective shield to the dwarven kingdoms, as the newspapers had insisted so many years ago.

Everyone knew dwarves had money. It had been a fact you didn’t question, even after the idea had taken a few hits. When I’d been pickpocketing on the streets a decade ago, the assumption was that if you saw a dwarf, they had wealth.

If you ventured past that image of them, it turned out that after a drawn-out campaign that took a decade and ended up driving the entire race further underground didn’t tend to leave much wealth behind. Their surface raids hadn’t helped the economic situation; what land had been recovered had been left bare and without any wealth, and very few new citizens of the empire had been gained out of the deal. Whoever had decided to sell the idea to Her Majesty that a long drawn-out war would revitalize the economy was unknown, although Duchess Lindisfair’s horse riding accident soon after was a decent indicator.

The end of the campaign had led to the Understreet incident partially because Imperial officials had become curious about the stretch of the underground populated by Infernals instead of dwarves.

The mines were still here in the dwarven tunnels far below, but other issues were still lingering about. Speaking of those issues.

My lantern's light illuminated a slick green trail across the tunnel floor. I cautiously poked it with the tip of my hoof. Pulling back, my hoof seemed to have nothing wrong with it besides the new layer of gunk. The slime probably wasn’t acidic, at least to keratin.

I eyed the slime trail. It stank, and from its lime green color, it probably belonged to something I wanted no part of. So many creatures made trails like this, but the general rule was the stranger the creature, the more dangerous it would be.

Of course, it shouldn’t be here to begin with. The guilds were responsible for preventing any monsters from the deeper earth from making their way up here. Meaning this probably originated aboveground.

It had been bad enough when the only things down here were monsters spawning from the heart of the earth. Over time this place had also become a dumping ground for failed experiments. My fellow Biosculptors never stopped surprising me with how utterly insane their creations could be, as well as their own lack of self-preservation. No amount of regulations seemed to stop them either, you always had one growing some strange abomination in their cellar. There was always something new every month, whether it was some strange shapeshifting abomination that absorbed people into itself or mosquitos that drove into your brain through the nose and puppeteered you.

I suppose only its usefulness to the Empire kept it from being publicly banned like Diabolism. From personal experience, this was probably the right decision on their part.

Something gurgled up ahead, a wet, phlegmy sound.

My tail looped around the lantern's handle, leaving my hands free as I crept forward.

I drew my pistol and saber. After the first tangling with the Purebloods, I didn’t have any acid on me, and anything else might just scratch it. The gurgling noise grew, along with the sounds of something scraping across the stone.

A lizard rounded the corner, gasping as it wriggled around. Two forelimbs grasped at the stone, pulling it forward while its rear resembled a slug, undulating as it forced itself forward. It was about the size of a wolf, though nowhere near as fast.

“Not any closer. Back!” I said authoritatively, weapons raised. Some Biosculpting creations could understand commands. Even if it couldn’t, animals could pick up when something was threatening them.

The lizard hissed and surged forward. I pulled the trigger on the pistol, the roar of firing gunpowder filling the room. The sudden smoke couldn’t obscure the bullet hole sprouting in the lizard’s head. It didn’t halt, still charging.

I nearly bit my tongue as I tried to back up. There wasn’t room to maneuver here. I timed my slash with the saber, aiming for the scales along its neck. The blade bit deep through the scales. It didn’t care, jaws trying to close on my face. I screamed back, pushing with the saber. Blood poured out of the hole in its forehead. I moved my tail, the coal lantern slamming into its eyes.

The light flickered, shadows playing across the lizard’s face as its teeth closed only inches away from my face. I’d dropped the pistol, hand going for a dagger. It lunged again, jaws going for my head.

Suddenly it shrieked, falling into the floor and splashing in a sudden pool of liquified rock.

I didn’t give it a chance to do anything. My saber cut again at the neck, and then I lunged forward, dagger going straight into the beast’s eyes.

It wailed and shrieked, no longer focused on me. I fell back, leaving the weapon stuck in there as it rammed into the walls. It continued to sink, till only the top half of its body protruded from the ground. Its movements slowed, the screaming weakened, and eventually, it slumped over.

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I approached cautiously, prodding it with the tip of my saber. No reaction. I grabbed my dagger and pistol, stowing them back away, and examined the corpse. I briefly considered dragging the corpse with me but settled for cutting some scales loose and sealing some blood in a vial.

I didn’t want to be around if even more of these creatures were lurking in the tunnels. Although at least this was relatively minor in terms of the creatures these tunnels could spawn.

The stone… had frozen, like a roiling lake suddenly frozen in an instant. I prodded a wave of sediment with my saber, but it refused to budge. Damnations. I did not need this to become a thing again.

I chose to focus on the creature instead, taking a few more samples before continuing on my way. I’d been lucky, but it was a good indicator of why the Delver’s Guilds were back in the city.

One problem had become apparent as soon as the dwarves left the city. Without them guarding the Underground, the various creatures they regularly fended off had made a return. Originally army regiments had kept most of the new Dwarf Quarter clear, but the empire had new surface conflicts to fight instead. Leaving their newly gained territory filled with monsters.

Adventuring was in the middle of a minor renaissance as a result, which had to irritate Her Majesty. Despite her own adventuring days as an exile, in the last decades, she’d made it very clear that she considered monster hunting and ruin-delving a responsibility of the state. Especially as the number of ruins to delve into had dropped over the decades. Until the Dwarves had gone further underground, most adventurers headed to the colonies, and the Guilds went with them.

Now they were back, although for how long was an open question. Maybe the streams of creatures from the dark depths would keep them busy for years as they lived off the bounties put on these creatures' heads. Maybe they’d exhaust them and be finished in a few more years.

Until then, the underground was theirs.

It took another twenty minutes of tight tunnels before I reached one of the larger ones carved out of the rock. Smooth stone twenty feet high and three times that across forming the walls and roof, occasionally broken up by another tunnel’s entrance and rock statues of various dwarf figures carved out of the rock.

Most of those were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Edges and corners began to round as the rock was worn away. What dwarves had chosen to stay with the empire didn’t feel confident enough to maintain them, apparently. I couldn’t blame them, the general mood towards dwarves wasn’t very positive these days. Monsters bursting from the underground in the aftermath of the war hadn’t helped with that. Not their fault, but most didn’t care, and the Empress certainly didn’t want to intercede on their behalf.

Familiar ground being retread there.

The tunnel was empty. I was arriving after the morning rush of people who actually worked here. Guests were a common occurrence but typically took tunnels that didn’t lead from the Infernal District. Hells, people going to one of the Dwarf settlements from the same general direction would circle around, finding other tunnels to take here.

It did make for a nice quiet walk in the tunnels.

Part of the stone wall shifted, and I took a few steps away from it. The surface had gone from solid stone to the surface of a pond. A sidewise pond made out of rock.

I’d be more upset if I didn’t know what this was.

“Not interested,” I addressed whatever spirit had just decided to crawl through the walls. Probably damn powerful to leave a visible mark on the mortal world. “How about you just keep moving through, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you?”

There was no reason spirits should be following me around. I’d done my level best to make sure this body was as unable to perform magic as possible. Diabolism would only work because that had been half-clericism, half-magecraft, and me keeping the focus. The imp was still around, but I kept him quiet, and until the throat-biting incident, he’d stayed quiet.

There should be no reason any other spirits were interested in me. I couldn’t even see them anymore with how much I’d tried to Sculpt that ability out of myself.

Nothing else happened. If the spirit had chosen to stay around me, the best I could hope for is that it remained quiet. I continued my walk down the tunnel. It took only a few more minutes for the gate to come into sight.

The gate to the dwarven settlement was efficient for its goal, which was keeping people the hell out. Thick slabs of granite, split down the middle, only openable from inside and with the help of enchanted mechanisms. The amount of force to break this open would need to be massive, and it was hardly a surprise the few gates that had been shattered were still in their broken state.

A single human stood guard at a hastily constructed wooden booth in front of the gate, clad in half-plate and a halberd at his side, both glowing faintly with runes. Surprising. You’d think after three years, they’d have replaced the booth by now.

“Hello, Mr. Jebediah,” I greeted the gate guard. He was hard to miss with the half-plate on. You didn’t see that these days unless the owner had them loaded up on enchantments or was a paladin. “Been having a busy day?”

Joe Jebediah was in his late forties, grey just beginning to mix in with his hair as he leaned on his halberd. “No busier than usual. You here on business?”

I half-smiled. “Business, yes. Guild business, no, and not likely for a while.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Something for me to keep an eye on?”

“Oh, not really. Local gang issues. If they choose to start anything down here, my already low estimate of their intelligence will sink even lower. More pertinently, I did encounter a monster on my way here. A lizard monster of some kind, probably a rogue Biomancy experiment. Didn’t seem too harmful, but figured I should let you know.”

Joe stiffened. “Just some kind of lizard? Didn’t do anything weird, did it?”

“I couldn’t tell. I tried to drive it off, then killed it pretty quickly. Came up to about my waist, didn’t really do much besides charge me and try to chow down. Had tentacles, so probably some Biomancer’s pet they abandoned. Would have grabbed the corpse, but I’m in a bit of a rush. If anyone else wants to try and retrieve the body, best of luck to them.”

“Probably some new signees,” Joe said with an amused tone. “Lot of them feel real apprehensive about heading deep down, they make themselves useful running odd jobs. Anyway, just need to mark you in the book, and you can head inside.”

“Not a lot of traffic today?” I asked while he dragged out the logbook. Typically there was a line to get in through the gates.

Joe sighed. “You just missed the rush. Took forever to clear them, but it’s either that or have the Imperials shut us down. Have you seen some of those new security automatons they’ve been demonstrating at the Ironworks? Think they could get one of those to take over?”

“Hrrm,” I signed my name in the logbook and checked the time off the clock hanging from the cavern ceiling before adding that as well. “I’ve seen a few. Especially those new ogre-sized ones. Of course, those have their own issues. Were you there for the arm-wrestling demonstration?”

He nodded eagerly. “The one last week? Very impressive, managed to outwrestle that ogre in two seconds.”

I nervously chuckled as I wrote down the street I’d entered the tunnels from. “I was not at that one. I was at one a few months back and well, it outwrestled the ogre in a fraction of that time. And also nearly ripped their arm off.”

Joe winced. “Ah. Well, it didn’t do that this time, so I guess they’re improving the design.”

“Yeah, but they aren’t that skilled at anything they aren’t programmed to do, what they comprehend is still pretty limited, and on top of that, expensive as hell. I think you’re stuck on gate duty for a while longer Joe.” I handed him back the logbook. “I’m good to head inside?”

He took it back, quickly reading my entry. “Yeah. Usual warnings: be careful, and don’t provoke any fights or something similar like that. If you don’t start anything, you aren’t responsible for it, but restraint is appreciated by everyone. Got any idea how long you’ll be in here?”

“Should only be a few hours,” I said as he knocked on the gates with his halberd. From inside came the sound of moving gears. Granite slabs began to move, opening a gap.

“Well, welcome back to the Delver’s Guild.”