They entered into the main area of the underground facility, and found themselves in pure darkness, the only source of light they had came from Stan and Varriks summoned weapons which let off a soft ethereal glow around them. Varriks adjusted his grip on his axe to free up one of his hands, he then summoned a small ball of light that hovered just above his palm, growing in size and brightness.

"Cover your eyes."

Seemingly used to his abrupt commands Stan had immediately responded to him, Sonia however took a short while to respond barely getting her arm up before the ball exploded in a brilliant cascade of light covering the whole room completely illuminating everything. Once it has settled Stan uncovered his eyes and looked around, the previously clean painted wooden walls were gone, replaced with dirt, moss and random tree roots poking out here and there. The room was also empty with no sign of any staff members or residents.

"You sure this is the right place?"

Stan scanned the area, trying to compare what he saw now with what was there before, the layout and scale seemed pretty much the same minus one thing. He pointed towards an area of the wall covered in thick tangled vines.

"There was a door there, I remember seeing one of the staff members walk through it."

"How do you remember that?"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Stan was about to respond to Sonia's question but was immediately cut off by Varrik who answered instead.

"He has been trained to remember."

Without saying any more he walked towards the collection of vines and started running his hands along them. Sonia turned to look at Stan who simply shrugged in response. A short while later Varrik stepped back from the vines.

"Come here boy, tell me what you see."

Stan nodded and moved to the vines Sonia following closely behind him. He looked at it before running his hands along the vines tracing what appeared to be the same sequence Varrik had followed.

"The weave is tangled in an unusual way.....could be the work of a shadow druid, but I am not entirely sure."

"Good, now, do you think you can untangle it?"

Stan gave the twisting vines another look before responding.

"Not quickly, the weave is more complicated than anything I have handled before."

"Time for a lesson then, watch closely and listen well."

This was the point in the conversation where Sonia got completely lost, not sure what was going on with what looked to her to be a normal tangled set of roots she could only sit and watch as Varrik moved his hands around stopping to explain various "weave links" and how they interacted to form a "matrix" that led to a secure vine barrier. After some time Varrik stepped back from the roots and simply watched while Stans hand started to glow, he touched a series of seemingly random points causing the roots to also glow, then just like that they started to unravel themselves revealing a dark corridor.

"Good job."

Varrik lightly slapped Stans shoulder as he moved past him into the darkness, Stan gestured for Sonia to follow.

"I can't see in there."

"It's ok, just put your hand on my shoulder and follow my lead."

She did as instructed not bothering to ask how he was able to see and they made their way into the darkness.