When nothing but the earthy scents of soil and rock greeted his nostrils, he decided that the coast was clear. He walked deeper into the chamber and stuck his head into the closest opening in the bedrock, immensely glad that he was able to see, thanks to the blue glow shining from the stone surfaces.

He wouldn’t have to waste time crafting a makeshift torch, and he wouldn’t have to worry about the light giving his position away. Nick had enough on his plate already.

Instead of running relatively straight like the track-covered tunnels he had seen thus far, the warren of cylindrical shafts was chaotically crooked. The bore holes wove from side-to-side seemingly at random. Meandering, merging, and splitting with no rhyme or reason that Nick could discern until it finally clicked, and he realized what he was looking at.

These openings were dug out by some manner of mining machinery. The pattern was formed by the miners following the seam of ore, or whatever mineral or metal they were digging for down here.

Given the sheer scale and winding nature of the burrows, Nick quickly decided that he wasn’t going to explore the endless network of shafts without a compelling reason. It would take days to poke through them all, and it would be easy to get lost once he was inside. Besides, there wasn’t any indication that they went anywhere of note to begin with.

Instead of wasting time that he didn’t have, he started walking toward the far end of the oblong enclosure, the ambient light shining from the walls casting the world in turquoise radiance. The color made him feel like he was walking along the bottom of a tropical lagoon.

Once he had traveled far enough to inspect the far end of the chamber, he decided to move on as quickly as he could. Being here made him nervous. The cavern had far too many points of entry to watch them all at once. Far too many places where something nasty could be waiting in ambush.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

On making this realization, his heart began to race, as Nick’s imagination was unleashed in full force.

He was unable to stop himself from picturing hordes of horrors spilling out from the honeycombed bedrock and drowning him in a tide of bladed limbs, each more terrible than the last. He knew that it was just his brain processing the presence of the unknown beasts that had made the mine their lair, rather than any indication of a tangible threat. But it still left him jumping at every shifting shadow or unknown noise.

He tried to summon his arctic clarity, but the strange state of focus refused to materialize. He had noticed that it came to him most reliably when his life was on the line and was far more mercurial under other circumstances. No worries. I’ll just have to deal with my fear the old-fashioned way.

He crept forward on his tiptoes, barely daring to breathe, deciding that while he generally enjoyed the effects of his enhanced creativity, a powerful imagination had a few downsides as well.

Thanks to his turbocharged anticipation, Nick nearly gave himself a heart attack after passing by a bulky protrusion jutting out from the stone wall on his right. When the wall opened after passing by the other side, he found himself staring at a massive shadow that was coiled along the side of the cavern.

While his body entered fight or flight mode, ready to kill or run, adrenaline singing in his blood, the clinical part of his brain was busy analyzing what he had uncovered. Which was why he stopped dead in his tracks, halfway through turning around to sprint to safety.

Dagger and wand held before him, Nick let out a silent chuckle at his own antics, then turned to take a closer look at what he had found.

Instead of a massive shadow belonging to monster, man, or beast, he found himself staring up at some manner of machine. By itself, this was no reason to lower his guard. While he had yet to meet a mechanical device that wanted to kill him since starting his new life in the System, he had a hunch that it was only a matter of time.

The reason that Nick felt a visceral surge of relief regardless was because this machine was ancient, inert, and so worn down that even if it suddenly sprang to life, it would fall to pieces within a matter of moments.