As we stepped through the earthen archway leading to Anne's map room, my eyes struggled to adjust. The walls were lined with glowstone that cast an ethereal light, illuminating not just the ground and walls, but dozens of objects that hung suspended from the ceiling, clods of dirt that each seemed to be covered with small ants. Upon closer inspection, I realized that some of them had segments that seemed to hang by some kind of thread.

Anne led the way to a dirt pillar in the corner of the room, and with a grand sweep of her front leg, willed the ants to disperse, revealing that what I had initially perceived as nothing more than a pillar of soil was covered in what appeared to be a network of threads interwoven with earth and stone.

"What's this?" I asked.

Octavia spoke before Anne could respond. "It's a loom of landscapes," she said. Octavia's tone sounded almost reverent. "One of many, I assume."

"Yes," said Anne, her antennae pointing at Octavia. "I'm delighted that you understand so quickly."

Octavia took a tentative step toward the pillar. "May I?"

"Of course," said Anne.

Octavia raised one of her eight legs, pointing at a rock cluster near the middle. "We're…here. Right?"

"Yes, yes!" said Anne.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"This big part here at the bottom is the Shimmergrove, right?" said Octavia. She pointed at the base, and a cavity that, through the translucent spread of thread covering, appeared to be decorated with twigs. "Those are trees. Notice the way they bend toward the walls, just like the trees in the Shimmergrove. And this…" Her spidery claw traced a path along the surface. "This is the path we took to get here. This is a recent addition to the map. So that would make this part at the end the place where we first met Anne, and this connected chamber where we are right now."

I looked at the map, trying to comprehend it. "That does look like the tunnel we followed, now that you mention it. I guess you have a better sense of the physical space than I do."

"I've spent a lot of time down here," said Octavia.

"As have I," said Anne. Her antennae canted forward, pointing at me. "You seem to be a neophyte, Drew."

"I–"

"Drew's young, but also a fast learner," said Octavia, interrupting me. "What I'm curious about is these threads you have running through the three-dimensional map. You don't…spin them, do you?"

Anne deep, throaty laugh filled the chamber as her antennae shook. "No, my dear. I simply use what I find in my environment. There are certain plants that are useful for this sort of thing. The hard part isn't the thread itself, but the resin coating that I use to prevent it from decaying, which is a tad harder to extract from trees than the fibers themselves."

Octavia's unblinking eyes seemed to light up at that. "Oh, I'd be curious to hear what you used. I find that underground, things can decay slower. I think it's mostly due to the lack of direct sunlight."

As my spider companion and the ant queen discussed the finer points of material selection and subterranean building, I allowed my attention (and eyes) to wander. Anne's map room seemed to be filled with 3D maps like the one she'd shown us, judging from the various sculpture-like shapes that filled the space, but every one of them seemed to be covered with unmoving ants, obscuring what lay underneath.

Was this how her map room usually looked – with everything covered up? Or was this what Anne had meant by 'preparing the map room for our arrival,' hiding what she was working on from prying eyes? I scanned several of the resting ants, hunting for some clue that might indicate whether or not this was their 'default' position. If their legs left indentations in the soil…

"What do you think, Drew?" said Octavia, suddenly snapping me out of introspection.

"Sorry," I said. "I got lost in my own thoughts for a moment there. What were you saying?"

Anne pointed to a specific point on her map. "This is the place I'm sending you to look for materials. Specifically, this area should contain embercores. On that note, I believe this will be helpful."

Quest: 'Locate an embercore'

Description: Touch an embercore

Reward: 1 exp

Accept / Reject?

I accepted.

"Wonderful. Now, I said, the embercores are in...this general area." Anne pointed to the same part of the map. "It should be safe, as long as you keep your eyes open."

"Any hostiles?" said Octavia.

"No hostiles," said Anne. "Merely some challenging terrain that poses some difficulty for my ants. I find it relatively straightforward to issue commands which they are able to execute as long as they remain within the confines of my tunnels. However, here..." She traced a line to a section of the map, a void in the shape of a bowl with a question mark etched onto its surface. "It leads into a vast cavern, and for reasons unknown, my ants seem to lose their way here. I lose communication with them, and the majority fail to return. I'm uncertain if it's due to some form of barrier, or perhaps a chasm that they are unable to traverse."

"Not to question your understanding of things," I said, "but you just confidently told us that there weren't any enemies down there. Yet this seems to be a place where your ants are getting lost and never returning. How can you be so sure that the thing that causes you to keep losing ants is an issue of terrain?"

"I instructed them to dispatch a signal should they come across any other creatures," said Anne.

"What if your ants were ambushed?" I asked skeptically. "Just because they didn't see a creature doesn't mean it wasn't there. In fact, I'd be even more paranoid about going down to a place where we don't know what the danger is."

"They don't all die simultaneously" said Anne. "If a single ant is killed in an ambush, presumably the others would see if a creature killed them and send a signal back."

"And," I asked, "how do you know the creature didn't devour all the ants before they could report back?"

"Because some of them did report back," said Anne, "and didn't report seeing any creatures. And some of them are capable of instantaneous communication."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Why don't I show you?" said Anne. "In fact – here, this will be useful. I think you two will want a way to alert me if you run into any trouble, yes?"

Quest: 'Cry for help'

Description: Say 'help'

Reward: 1 exp

Accept / Reject?

I accepted the quest.

"Wonderful," said Anne. "Now I can send you out to gather embercores for me. If either of you runs into any problems, you can say the magic word, and I'll know that something is wrong."

"That is a handy trick," I said to Octavia, recalling the time she'd tasked me with saying 'hello.' "Why haven't we been using something like this for instantaneous communication?"

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I'm not the best quest-giver," said Octavia. "My range doesn't extend very far."

"Fortunately, mine does," said Anne. "As I've told you before, quest-giving occupies nearly all of my time. And given that most of my day is taken up with giving quests to my little ant servants, I've invested quite a bit of effort into making myself the best quest-giver I can be, at least when it comes to using it as a communication method. Among other things, I can be alerted to the completion of quests even when they're a great distance away. I'm not omniscient, but my range certainly extends…at least this far," she said, tracing the distance on the map from her chamber to the point she had designated as the embercore excavation zone.

"I'm still not too sure about this," I said. "I do count myself smarter than an ant, but whatever it was that happened to them could happen to us."

"If that's your worry, then you need only observe," said Anne. She pointed to a precise point in the area she'd marked with a question mark. "My ants always get as far as here before getting lost. Up to that point, they seem to have no trouble making their way back safely. In fact, why don't I have a small group of my ants lead you there? You can observe their behavior and report back to let me know how exactly they are getting stuck."

"You don't mind?" I asked.

Anne gestured to the walls and the hundreds of ants that surrounded us. "Losing a tiny number of ants matters very little to me, especially if it gets me new information. So yes, my ants will lead you there."

"Thanks," I said. "That'll be a big help."

Quest complete: "A call for help." Reward: 1 exp.

I blinked before realizing. "Oh. I said the magic word, didn't I? Sorry about that."

"No need to apologize," said Anne. "That was poor quest design on my part. Here, let's try this instead."

Quest: 'A plea for help'

Description: Say 'help me, Anne'

Reward: 1 exp

Accept / Reject?

Before accepting the quest, I said the words aloud, rehearsing the line. After accepting the quest, I repeated the phrase in my head several times, trying to train it into me like a reflex.. Help me, Anne.

Anne turned to Octavia. "Perhaps we should do the same for you, my dear Octavia. Who knows what circumstance might cause you to say the word help without meaning to?"

"What's wrong with saying help?" Octavia said. A moment later, an expression of understanding blossomed on her face. "Okay, got it," Octavia said.. "I can call you by name if we have any problems. One other question. Can your ants carry messages back with them? It might be useful if we could make it out to the place where all of the ants got lost, and send one of them back with a message so that they could communicate the situation to you."

"Sadly, no," said Anne. "It's impossible for them to communicate much that isn't a binary yes-or-no that I instructed them about beforehand."

"That's unfortunate," said Octavia. Her words expressed disappointment, but there was something about the look in her eyes that I recognized as something closer to satisfaction, or perhaps anticipation. "I'll be sure to take detailed mental notes so we can expand your map when we get back."

"Wonderful, wonderful," said Anne. "This is precisely what I'd hoped for. Now, as I mentioned,: the area I'd expect you to find embercores is at this point." Anne tapped a more distant part of the map, a short distance beyond the question mark that she'd marked as the place where the ants got lost; this part of the map was just a solid clod of dirt. "Obviously, the map past that point lacks accuracy. However, now that you're both enlisted as my quest-bearers, I shall be notified should you succeed in making contact with an embercore. Once I receive that alert, I will begin making preparations for your return.

"Preparations?" I said.

"Indeed," said Anne. "I've already informed you, have I not? Embercore and glowstone can be very reactive if they come into contact. It is of the utmost importance that I establish safety measures for your return. The path will be illuminated, but…it will be dimmer on the way back. I presume that won't be a problem for you two."

"It won't," said Octavia, before I could respond.

I studied the map. "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to remember all that."

"That's okay," said Octavia. "I can remember it."

"Really?" I said. "Because if you're not confident, we could always –"

"I'll remember," said Octavia. "Trust me. I have a very good memory for things like this."

My mind went back to Octavia's complex network of tunnels – back before the elder dragon had smashed them – and the amount of mental capacity that must have been required to keep track of where she'd laid web traps.

"Alright," I said. "I'll trust your spatial memory."

"Excellent!" said Anne. "Let me prepare your escort, and you can be on your way."

"Hold on," I said. "Can I bring up one thing I've been meaning to mention?"

"Of course," said Anne. "What's on your mind, little dragon?"

"It's actually about that title, 'little dragon,'" I said. "I'm kind of on the precipice of ascension. I kind of have been for awhile, but then there was the incident with the storm and the tunnels collapsing after the –"

Octavia cut me off. "Yes, no need to bore Anne with the details, I think she was aware of the tunnel collapse, which led to fire ants breaching the barrier into the Shimmergrove."

"Right," I said. "Anyway, I'm going to ascend soon."

"And congratulations!" said Anne. "I wonder what new directions your ascension will take you in."

"Yes," I said. "Well, about that. See, I imagine that being a 'little dragon' is a temporary condition. And if I am to, er, 'grow up,' it might compromise my ability to navigate these tunnels of yours."

"Ah, I see," said Anne. "Well, then. Good that you are still small then, yes?"

"I suppose so," I said. "But what happens if I ascend while I'm down there?"

Anne considered that for a moment. "The only situation I could foresee you doing an unplanned ascension is if you ended up getting into fights down there, and as I said, there are no hostiles. Thus, no risk of you unexpectedly growing up." Anne rubbed her chin, as if a new idea were occurring to her. "How close are you to ascending? You said you were on the precipice?".

"I guess I may have overstated it a bit," I said. "But I might end up gaining enough experience for ascension if I fought a group of animals the size of hyenas."

As the word 'hyenas' left my mouth, Octavia shot me a panicked glance, then seemed to settle a bit. Yes, Octavia, I haven't forgotten that 'hyena' was one of our code words. That's why I referred to them specifically as animals.

"Well, I doubt very much you'll find creatures of that size so deep down. It's not as if there would be an ecosystem capable of sustaining them, no?"

"...I…I don't know," I said. "I've seen the Shimmergrove. You never know when an entire subterranean ecosystem might be sitting under your nose, waiting to be discovered."

"Well, if you do find an ecosystem of that size, then you can turn back and let me know, yes?" said Anne. "There's no problem."

"But what if…"

"You're not going to get stuck down there, my dear," said Anne. "If you do, I can always find a way for my ants to dig you out."

"Oh," I said. "That's a possibility?"

"If it will make you feel better," said Anne, "let me offer you this assurance."

Quest: 'Emergency excavation request'

Description: Say 'Dig me out, Anne"'

Reward: 1 exp

Accept / Reject?

"Okay," I said. "But how long would that digging take? Are we talking hours or days?"

"It would be a contingency," said Anne. "Not very fast. It would be a day or two. But presumably, you'd have all of your skills as a newly-ascended dragon to defend yourself in the meantime while I worked on constructing larger tunnels for you."

"And presumably," said Octavia, "I'd still be able to relay messages back-and-forth. I don't plan on changing size any time soon."

"Yes, yes," said Anne. "Very good. Have your concerns been sufficiently addressed?"

"I guess so," I said. "You are right; my ascension isn't that likely." I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about that.

"Wonderful," said Anne. "And since you do seem to be one to benefit from a marginal bit of experience, let me make you the following offer: if you can bring me back an embercore, I will ensure your ascension once you're safely returned, at a location of your choosing. I presume you'll want somewhere more spacious."

"Oh, right," I said. "You can give exp through quests."

"Well, yes," said the ant queen. "But I had something else in mind. Experience transfers as quest rewards are…lossy. It costs me more to give the quest than you get from completing it. And I don't wish to enfeeble myself too much. However, I have other ways of giving you experience."

"Such as?"

Several of the ants around me made a clicking sound in response.

"I have my ants, don't I?" said Anne. "Killing them is worth experience to you, isn't it? I can spare a hundred of them, or however many are needed. Choose a spot, and my ants will follow you there, ready to be slain. Devoured too, if you feel the inclination."

"I…uh…thanks," I said. "A hundred ants would definitely do the trick. That's a generous offer."

"Think nothing of it," said Anne. "Now, if your concerns have been sufficiently addressed…Octavia, you understand how to get where you're going, yes?"

"Yes," said Octavia.

"Good," said Anne, leading us to the map room's exit. "Now, bring me an embercore."

---

Active quests: 'Locate an embercore', 'A plea for help', 'Emergency excavation request'