Consciousness came suddenly, my body and mind reeling as the nightmare realm shattered.

For a terrible moment I thought I’d fallen again, anxiety seizing my chest, but around me a strange, musty room seemed to float, debris slowly tumbling about.

“First Researcher?”

Reality reasserted itself in my mind as I looked over at the echo, their crudely-portrayed features showing clear concern.

“First Researcher, are you well? You were speaking in your sleep.”

I was in a Dweomer flight cube with the echo of the First Researcher, heading for the strange anomaly that had… drawn me to it somehow.

Under my mushroom leather suit I felt a cold sweat, despite the warm air.

Releasing a heavy breath I couldn’t recall holding, I sighed. “I’m alright, I just… had a bad dream.”

“A dream, First Researcher?”

“Don’t worry about it. How far are we from the research station?”

“We should be there very soon, however there has been no response from the monitoring team there, and the rectilinear ward appears to be offline; it’s possible they have encountered a problem.”

The map the echo had created showed the research station was a short distance above the chamber containing the anomaly itself – the magical assistant had explained that the separation was a safety precaution, after the earlier experiments had proved hazardous. If my fears were correct that precaution had been woefully inadequate.

With no response to communications from the flight cube we could only guess at the situation. With no windows I couldn’t even look out and see what the place looked like from the outside.

As the vessel slowed gravity returned incrementally, floating objects curving downwards. Ready for the acceleration this time, I landed on my feet, feeling the strange sensation of weight returning as we came to a stop.

There was a thud, and then metallic grating sounds, as some sort of docking system seized us. The motion ceased and he office door opened, as though it were an elevator reaching its stop.

Outside was a walkway like a pier, with a series of arms that reached out for flight cubes to dock. There were four docking stations, each with machinery to receive and recharge vehicles.

Unlike a pier, the platform extended into a sheer abyss, hanging off the wall in midair. Behind the dock stood rectangular doors into what must be the research station, cut through the solid rock wall of the vast vertical tunnel in which we were suspended.

Stepping out I felt unexpected wind, rushing up from far below. As I looked up and down my head spun at the sheer enormity of the shaft the Dweomer had carved out.

The metal of the dock looked like it would be cold underfoot, but it was quite comfortable. The ominously hot air rising up kept it heated.

Nearing the door into the research station I looked back at the flight cube, making sure the echo couldn’t see me from their angle. I’d gotten away with this once, but even with memory errors the sentient spell wasn’t stupid.

Reassured I was out of sight, I greeted the combat golem stationed there, then said hello to the doors themselves. There was a rush of stale air as the sealed station was breached for the first time in eons. I smelt a metallic tang from inside.

Stepping over molten metal fragments, through the oozing hole in the metal barrier, I found myself in darkness, only the glow of the destruction I’d wrought lighting the room with a quavering red glow that faintly picked out shapes.

The light was enough for my eyes, but perhaps the uneven luminance was why I struggled to make sense of what I saw.

Walking forward uncertainly across the blotched floor, I felt a powdery material compacting underfoot. Something gooey squished under the surface where my toes sank in.

Reacting to my presence, essence moved in the walls. Lights throbbed slowly to long-forgotten life, bathing the room in dazzling white light.

As my eyes adjusted to the cool, even illumination I took another look around the room, starting at my feet.

I seemed to be treading in a spill of some powdery red substance, a thin layer lying around me by the ruined door. It gave way to a more gelatinous material where my foot had broken through the surface, clinging to my skin disagreeably as I stepped back.

My eyes followed the spill to its source.

For a moment I just stared, confused, trying to decipher the form of the object.

It certainly wasn’t Dweomer technology – the lumpy, bulbous shapes lacked a single straight line.

Broken pieces of porous grey stone jutted out at regular intervals around a rectangular trunk of desiccated red matter which clung to them. Two trailing sections emerged at the base. It seemed to have burst open, or else been torn apart by a powerful force, spilling out a mess of innards, from which the flood of drying red powder and slime had originated.

It was only as my eyes took in the protrusion at the top of the object, where parts of a lower jaw were still visible, that I realized I was looking at a dead person.

Nausea rose in my own chest as my gaze returned to the catastrophic evisceration that had hollowed out what should have been a chest and abdomen into a gaping nightmare.

The arms were missing entirely, and only part of the head remained, but by the proportions of the mostly-intact legs and… what was left of the torso… I could guess this was one of the Dweomer. With mineral bones as the body had, it certainly couldn’t be human.

The corpse also wasn’t alone.

Blood caked the walls, entrails and fragments of flesh spattered about, as if a bomb had detonated in the small square room.

I met the eye of a piece of what had once been a person’s face.

I left a trail of bloody footprints as I fled the room.

Outside I hung over the rail as I retched, clinging tight to the metal, my fingers sinking into the surface. Perhaps it was a mercy that my stomach was so empty.

When the gagging subsided I sank down and pushed myself away from the edge, and the distressingly frail handrail, pressing my back to the stone wall of the shaft.

The need to get the remains off my body was my first priority – I could still feel the sticky blood between my toes.

Misspeaking the words of my spell the magic dissipated, forcing me to stop for a moment.

I took deep breaths, feeling the warm stone at my back, trying not to think about what I’d seen, to forget what it was that adhered to my body.

Repeating my spell slowly, I conjured a jet of water and washed the blood from my skin. Maintaining the flow, I scrubbed my flesh until it was sore, to erase any trace.

The echo was calling me, so I returned to the flight cube. I was glad of a reason not to venture back into the tomb I’d discovered.

The blocky features of the simulated person were furrowed in very lifelike concern.

“First Researcher, are you hurt? I detected powerful impacts, then sounds of physical distress.”

I sank into an uncomfortable chair.

“I’m fine, I just…. I found a dead body in there. Probably several bodies... it was hard to tell.”

“There must have been an accident.” The echo spoke gravely, their look somber.

“We must return to the capital as soon as the flight cube is recharged. Until we are ready to depart I will seal the doors. I will also inform the research council and make arrangements for golems to recover the remains and secure the area.”

“We can’t leave right now?!”

The echo flinched at my frustration, the simulated image shrinking.

“I apologize, First Researcher. This flight cube is a short range model and the modifications add substantial weight, so ascent is energy intensive, as is my own operation; additional essence charging will be required for the flight cube to sustain both systems. If you wish to pilot the flight cube yourself I can be shut down-”

They stopped as I held up a hand. “No, I’m sorry. We’ll leave when the charging is finished. I’m not angry with you… I just… had an unpleasant experience in there. Seal the door and we’ll go as soon as you finish charging.”

There was silence after that, the echo fading away temporarily to minimize unnecessary power use, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Moving past the initial shock, my mind was still racing as the details came back to me over and over.

The ruined body… the horrible injuries… the scattered pieces of what used to be people….

With the clarity of the gruesome images playing in my mind it was hard to understand how I could have thought the body was anything else. I had so casually walked in the remains, observing the corpse like a curiosity, taking in little details and wondering what they could be.

A shudder ran down me as I remembered the sensation of the blood oozing between my toes.

But I hadn’t expected a body to have bones made of rock. Gruesomely familiar as the exposed innards had been, they certainly weren’t human either. Not that being human mattered; I’d seen enough of this world to know that people were people wherever you looked.

Whatever had happened to the people of the Dweomer Empire was a tragedy, even if they were led by fascists who murdered their citizens for liking the wrong art. Any society could lose its way – it had happened on Earth too, when dictators burnt books, then started burning people too – but that didn’t mean that the common folk deserved to be wiped out to the last person.

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The echo glowed to life, rousing me from my thoughts. It occurred to me that this magical simulation might well be the last Dweomer alive.

“First Researcher, my apologies for the delay. The flight cube is sufficiently charged to safely depart. Are you ready?”

“No.”

“First Researcher?”

“We can’t leave yet; I have to go back inside the research station. I don’t think we’re going to find survivors, but we need to know what happened. The people on the surface, uh… I mean the people in the capital; they may also be in danger. Everyone else living in the Underworld is at risk too. This is too important.”

“Investigation can be undertaken by others, First Researcher, your first duty as a citizen in this situation is to preserve your valuable expertise. We must leave at once.”

“There may not be anyone else coming. Not for a long time.”

The echo looked confused.

“Think about how long it’s been since you last saw me; since you last saw anyone at all. Something very bad happened here, and I think it happened to the capital too, to the whole empire.”

“Please do not go outside, First Researcher.”

I strode to the door. “Open this please. I’ll be back soon.”

“Please don’t leave.”

“I’m ordering you to open this door.”

It slid up to let me pass.

~~~

Lyanna hadn’t dared tell anyone about the strange responses her spells were turning up of late.

The mimic was still somewhere far to the south, deep in the mountains, yet despite the ascent still facing the expedition to reach the Cyclopean Bones, the creature was also somehow below her.

She could only guess the creature was in a cave somewhere under the peaks. Perhaps a Dweomer ruin – they were known to extend deep into the earth. The worse case would be if it had somehow made its way into the Underworld below.

Lyanna had never fought a formorian, but every adventurer hunting for Dweomer ruins knew of them. If mimics were the horror tale adventurers told each other of the surface perils, the Formorians were the dark things with lurked in the depths; powerful and alien beings that haunted the deepest levels of the fallen Dweomer empire.

Little was known of Formorians, save that the further below the earth one ventured the more they appeared. It was thought whole nests of the monsters could be found if one descended far enough beneath the surface.

But that was pure theory – adventurers knew better than to push deeper after encountering even one of the subterranean terrors.

If the mimic encountered formorians in numbers even it would be doomed.

Her magic confirmed it was alive and well however – that meant it couldn’t have descended too far. She just needed to focus on catching up to it.

The problem was that they didn’t seem to be catching up either. The expedition was supposed to have already been in the mountains by now.

Searching for a route out of the jungle and onto the clearer hilltops, Thunderbolt was faced with another dead end.

“Totally impassable.” Dolm proclaimed, scowling at the sheer rock face.

Holding back a curse, Lyanna allowed herself a moment to close her eyes and take a breath. When she opened them again she gave no sign of distress.

“Are you sure, Dolm? I thought we might be able to level it off with some spells. We don’t have time to take another detour.”

“No, look at the loose stone behind the cliff top. We start cutting into that and the whole lot’ll come down on us. Even if we can clear it, we’ll lose the light before we get the expedition through.”

She gave a reluctant nod.

“So, what, we go around? And waste another hour?” Marcus asked from the shade of a nearby tree, echoing the complaint Lyanna had left unspoken.

“No choice, kid.” Dolm replied. “Already wasted days, what’s another hour?”

There were other trails they could take up to the foothills. Some had been carved out by monsters, others by simple animals, but few of them could accommodate the hand-carts of the baggage train. Fewer still could accept the Baron’s litter.

The hope had been that the valley in which Thunderbolt stood would have proved the solution. A broad, relatively steady slope between two jungle-cloaked hills would have proven an easier ascent than the winding paths they would now be forced onto.

“At least we told the expedition to wait. The Baron will barely notice the delay; he’s having a late lunch,” Lyanna remarked.

She’d expected more argument, but Marcus gave no answer. Lyanna smiled under her helmet – her little brother was growing up.

Turning, she saw him, still sat in the shade of a large, broad-leafed tree, growing from the rocky ground just above a small pool of water. He was leaning back on his hands, but his posture seemed oddly rigid and his leg was submerged in the dirty water.

“Kid? Let’s go, time to get back to the others.” Dolm spoke casually, but Lyanna’s concern deepened when her brother gave no response.

Lyanna strode towards him.

“Marcus, what’s wrong? Can you hear me?”

The boy gave a choked sound, but remained immobile.

The instant her hand met his shoulder there was a crack, a jolt running through her arm where the metal of her gauntlet and his shoulder plate contacted.

Dolm couldn’t miss that. “Lyanna? What’s going on?!”

The taller human approached, but Lyanna held out a hand as he too tried to touch Marcus. Lyanna knew electricity when she felt it. Thunderbolt were no strangers to lightning magic.

Dolm was still speaking, but she ignored him as she drew her staff and incanted a spell. Marcus couldn’t wait.

When she touched her brother again, it was with her staff tip.

The magic dispelled the charge, allowing her to place her hands on her brother’s sides.

Demonstrating superhuman strength befitting an adventurer, she raised the young man off the ground and into the air overhead. An undulating pink mass came with him, emerging from the water with a splash, the upper half of the fleshy body somehow rolled onto his leg like a sheath, the tail coiling and thrashing angrily.

To his credit, Dolm understood the situation in a moment; his dagger drove into the writhing creature and tore it away from Marcus’ armor.

“Lyanna! I’m fine! Put me down already!” Marcus protested, squirming as his sister continued to hold him overhead, away from the creature squirming on the rock under the tree.

It was a relief to see that only his pride had been wounded.

With its electrical attack defeated the monster was surprisingly weak – a single arrow from Dolm put it down for good. If it hadn’t taken Marcus by surprise Lyanna doubted he’d have been beaten by it.

The body of the monster was a pink tube of flesh a few feet long, open at each end. There was no clearly defined mouth – as they’d seen, it could engulf prey by rolling itself onto it. The surface of its body was covered in sticky protrusions, like tongues with bulbous tips, and the whole thing seemed to be electrified.

Understandably shaken, even if he wouldn’t admit it, Marcus wanted to leave after the encounter. Dolm raised a good point however; none of them recognized whatever the creature was. That meant it might be valuable.

It was the same reason they were hunting the mimic after all.

Of course, as with the mimic, a living specimen was far more precious.

“Come on, Marcus, let’s dangle the other leg in and see what you catch!” Dolm laughed, but Marcus just glared at him.

In the end the task fell to Lyanna. Her magic could ward her against further shocks. She had no spells to deal with the unpleasant feeling of rooting around in the fetid water however.

The sensation as she found her prey was equally unwelcome, something soft and squishy catching her armor and trying to engulf her hand. Dragging the unusual monster from the water she let it expend its electrical charge, then wrestled the creature into a simple sack.

In the end she found two more, a total of three. They were smaller than the one that attacked Marcus, each only a foot long. Once they were bagged Dolm tied to a short length of rope to the sack, to prevent the carrier being shocked.

With that done, Thunderbolt trudged back down the valley, metal clinking together, trampling needlegrass under their boots.

“These things better be a new species, otherwise we just wasted even more time for nothing,” Marcus muttered darkly, still sulking after the humiliating attack.

“We had to check this valley either way,” Lyanna held up the squirming sack, “and these are definitely nothing I’ve ever heard of.”

“They’re not gonna give us much for those things, they’re disgusting and useless.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Lyanna said. “It’s no mimic, but we should still get some gold for finding it, if it’s really a new species.”

Dolm nodded. “Never know what alchemists’ll come up with, could be a bigger payout than you think. Even if it’s good for nothing, they can still announce it as a discovery – makes the Guild and the nobles look good. And whoever discovered it too.”

Marcus perked up at that idea – he even insisted on carrying ‘his’ discovery himself.

~~~

Returning to the now-cooling wound in the research station door, I peered in with trepidation.

Whatever had occurred there was thousands of years ago now, perhaps longer. Even so, I couldn’t shake the anxiety that gripped me. My body felt heavy as I stepped through the opening.

The interior was dark, but my movement conjured light once more.

The horrendous sight revealed made bile rise in my throat, despite being forewarned this time.

I kept my eyes on the ground rather than the… remains as I walked, skirting around the blood and… viscera…. I was doing my best not to think about just what the chunks I stepped over were, or had once been. Although gore was everywhere, there were enough clear patches of floor that I could avoid walking in anything too large. Stepping in dried patches of blood was inescapable however.

Reaching the far door I found that whatever machinery was meant to open it had failed. Brute force pulled it open, but the sliding metal panels looked unlikely to close again with the way my hands had warped them.

Beyond, things were even worse than in the entrance.

The room had once been a hub, multiple doors leading off to each side. Most of the floor space was taken up with metal rectangles standing in rows, each formed of clusters of angular branching pipes. Strange mechanisms were installed into the vertical sides, physical controls alongside glowing crystals and bismuth circuitry. Perhaps it was the magical equivalent of mission control rooms on Earth.

The room was a ruin. Walls and floor were covered in holes, some burst open, others gouged out, exposing destroyed magical circuitry within. Many of the devices on the rectangular workstations were shattered or crushed; pieces of metal torn like paper into jagged tatters and scattered everywhere.

Pieces of bodies were everywhere too, none bigger than a limb. I averted my eyes wherever I could from the awful sight, but I noticed they weren’t just torn apart; the mutilated flesh was slick with strange dark sludge, some parts dyed black by it.

The substance mingled with blood as it coated many surfaces, but where the blood had mostly dried over time, even in the sealed environment, the oily dark matter was still shiny and fluid, drawing in the light as if drinking it from the air.

If I had been unwilling to touch corpses, I was determined to have nothing to do with the ominous liquid – just looking at it made me uneasy.

But I needed to know more about what happened.

Ripping down the panels of the door, I laid them out as islands amid the atrocious sea of death, stepping from one to the other to traverse the room.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but any clues to the nature of the disaster would help.

It was strange that a catastrophe which struck the entire Dweomer Empire had left the capital directly above this place undamaged, while this place was a ruin. I realized why as I explored; there were no maintenance or cleaning golems here to clean up the debris and remains, or to keep the technology in good working order.

A device that could have been a miniature recreation of the echo’s machine caught my eye. Set into the side of one of the rectangular structures at a height to suit the Dweomer, it was just low enough to be uncomfortable for me to use. I didn’t mind; it was nice to feel tall for once in Arcadia.

Examining the mechanism I found that the bismuth layers within the ‘screen’ displayed information – perpendicular bars formed blocky text on the display. With no-one around to meddle with the device it seemed likely that it was in the same state it had been the day the empire was destroyed, presumably still showing the text from that time.

Scraping away a dried splatter of blood with a scrap of metal revealed the full text, line by line.

Most of the information was gibberish to me, numbers and phrases that I probably would have needed several more decades of college to parse.

The first parts I could understand somewhat read;

‘Essence grid reallocation complete: rectilinear ward isolation established.’

‘Subspace intrusion test beginning.’

‘Void reaction increase within safe parameters.’

After that meaningless measurements and feedback from the experiment followed for a while. I saw numbers going up, but they told me nothing.

A little later came:

‘Void reaction increase exceeding safe parameters.’

‘Adjacent subspace penetration accelerating: breach imminent.’

With growing dread I read the phrase a short distance below;

‘Void reaction critical.’

‘Emergency shutdown failed.’

‘Uncontrolled subspace breach detected.’

Then finally;

‘Subspace collapse in progress. Rectilinear ward failure detected.’

I was sure now; whatever happened to the Dweomer, the researchers here caused it.

I had to know more.

Beneath the display a series of metal bars emerged in a square grid, similar to a keyboard. The end of each was shaped into what I recognized as the Dweomer equivalents of letters. Not all of them where intact – something had sheared off a cluster of them with immense force, leaving only twisted and torn metal stumps behind for a quarter of the space.

Working with the limited characters that I still had, I tried typing an inquiry;

“status report”

The metal bars slid in with a grating sound as I pressed them.

The display groaned as long-seized metal tried to move.

After a moment it formed the word ‘error’.

Trying a few more phrases produced similar results, ‘error’, ‘not recognized’ and ‘system offline’.

It was hard to know if the problem was with the ancient, grime encrusted technology, the lack of characters limiting what I could attempt, or my ignorance of the system. I was reminded of text-based computer systems on Earth – without knowing the keywords and syntax it was impossible to get anywhere, even with a working keyboard.

I couldn’t find a way to get useful information about the experiment or what had happened, but the word ‘map’ produced an interesting result; ‘scanning’.

Soon after the display returned ‘ready’. ‘Proceed’ didn’t work, but ‘display map’ did the trick.

Rather than appearing on the small display of the device, the wall at the front of the room creaked to life. Crude metal rods marked out an image through layers of blood and oil. The same cavern that the echo had showed me, a side view of the region with the ‘anomaly’ inside it.

But while it was recognizable by the shaft descending into it and the overall shape, it wasn’t quite the same. Branches like roots extended out from the cavern like huge cracks, some disappearing off the edge of the display; likely damage from the experiment gone wrong.

Panning and moving the map with ‘up’ and ‘left’ commands I tracked where the cracks extended. Lacking the keys needed for ‘right’ was only a minor inconvenience once I discovered ‘rotate’. The map was extremely out of date of course, but I was looking for a landmark I knew should be on it; the Underworld sun and its scorching desert, both predating even the Dweomer.

The gargantuan chamber required several minutes of searching despite its sheer size, but I found it in the end. It was high above my present location, off to one edge of the region marked as the Dweomer Empire. The area was displayed as contested with the Formorians.

From there I was actually able to find what I thought was the Formorian hive, the very place where I’d awoken, days before. The internal structure of the hive wasn’t shown, but the entrance was roughly where thought it should be. It was easy to find thanks to the huge crack that extended up towards the chamber from the anomaly, ending what I guessed were a few kilometers below the giant space.

That wasn’t the only crack to approach the inhabited layers of the Underworld however – another, larger still, stretched out towards a blank region on the map termed ‘Pharyes territory’ – whatever they were.

Others reached up towards areas of the Dweomer Empire proper.

I examined a few other workstations after that, but those still in working order I couldn’t work, while others just gave error messages or were totally unresponsive.

Checking the side rooms came next.

The first few were devoid of anything new; one looked like an uncomfortably square break room, another housed equipment I had no idea how to work.

But through one room I found a further set of doors that were welded shut somehow, seemingly from the inside.

Breaking through, I saw circuitry coating blocks which emerged from the walls and floor like integrated shelving or Earth’s server racks. Most of it emitted a dull opalescent glow. Strange tools were on a shelf near the door, possibly welding gear.

In the far corner I found two bodies, huddled together behind a pillar. They were intact for a change, bloody and desiccated but recognizable. If they had been a little taller and lighter built I’d have thought they were humans. It looked like they had bled out from chest and leg wounds.

It was hard to understand how anyone could willingly seal themselves in the tiny space, knowing it would be their tomb. I didn’t want to imagine what had driven them to so desperate an act.

A sad thought occurred to me as I studied the preserved remains; I might well have introduced microbes that would start the process of decomposition for the two. Assuming decomposition on Arcadia worked as it did on Earth.

Around the corner from the pair I found a third figure, hunched over a small terminal. At a guess she had been young when she died. Blood encrusted her flank from a puncture wound that had pierced through the white fabric jumpsuit she wore. It had pooled under her as she worked.

She had patched together pieces of metal to connect a display and ‘keyboard’ to the equipment emerging from the wall. The designs were similar the ones I’d used outside.

The display still bore her final messages on its blood-smeared screen;

“hello?”

“is anyone reading this?”

“someone, please respond”

“the subspace intrusion test failed”

“we’re trapped, we can’t leave”

“Ohra and Uen are with me, they’re hurt bad”

“don’t know if anyone is receiving this”

“if you’re reading this please send help”

“send the golems”

“they told us the void reaction was safe”

“they lied to us”

“the subspace breach let something through”

“the other researchers”

“something happened to them”

“changed them”

“they started killing each other”

“I can still hear screaming outside but I don’t think anyone is alive out there”

“is anyone reading this?”

“please respond”

“is everything ok up there? was anyone hurt?”

“why is no-one answering?”

“Ohra and Uen aren’t moving”

“I’m so cold”

“is anyone there”

“hello?”

~~~

Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I left the side room.

Even if I persevered with the slow process of moving about on the metal sheets, exploring the rest of the research station could only reveal more death and suffering.

I returned to the flight cube.

At the dock I showered myself in conjured water, scrubbing my skin clean of any traces of the place.

I needed to see this anomaly for myself.