Erramir walked by Val, taking several paces in the direction she indicated. He nodded silently, peering into the dark, then offered, “So, we can either go this way or explore the canyon looking for some other way up to the surface.”

When Valerie didn’t respond right away, Erramir turned back to see why. She hadn’t moved other than to prop an arm under her head, getting a better view of him. She’d also stowed the gear away somewhere.

Val thumbed over her head at Carson. “We need our mage to wake up. I thought blockbot could just carry him like it did you, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea. He’s kind of our big gun.”

Erramir’s mouth tightened. “Humm, right.” Both he and Val had gained a couple levels, which was good, but they would probably still be out-leveled moving forward in these caves. Having discovered the Insight attribute, he’d also unlocked his free attribute points. After their allocation, his comparative level would be closer to twenty.

All that said, Carson was, once again, becoming their main damage dealer. Erramir was loath to push forward while he was unconscious.

He considered the silent stack of burnished bricks that was Blockbot. It had set itself into a neat pile beside where Virg was leaning against the tunnel wall. The two seemingly inanimate objects almost looked like buddies. “Hey Val, what about blockbot?”

She turned to look. “He’s good. Well, I’m not sure if it’s a he or a she actually. But it’s good. Seems to get along well with Virg; they’re kind of like playmates. It’s fantastic, actually. Virg spends most of his time talking with Blockbot now instead of filling my head with how bored he is.”

“Not what I meant, although that’s great. I’m glad to hear it.” He paused, squinted at Blockbot, then a smile spread over his face. “I think we picked up a stray.”

“Yeah. I think so,” said Val as she also smiled. “A bit different from normal pets. They’re not big and fluffy, so no good for keeping warm or sleeping in the woods or anything. But on the upside, they’re both tough as nails. So I’m less worried about them.”

She sat up, crossed her legs, and considered the pair. “Seems like a decent trade-off, especially since we don’t have any healing abilities.” Val tilted her head to look at Erramir. “That wasn’t your question, though. What were you getting at?”

“I was wondering about a map. Blockbot has been here for at least a thousand years, seems a pretty decent chance it knows how to navigate these tunnels.”

Valerie’s expression lit up. “Ohh hell yeah, Err! Good call.”

For a minute or more, she was silent, presumably communicating via Virginwood with Blockbot. Her face went through a series of emotional shifts varying from thoughtful to mild annoyance. Then she raised a hand, as if calling for quiet. “Ohhh, lookie here.” Val closed her eyes.

Erramir began to feel hopeful. Maybe we’re not lost. Absently, he wondered how deep they were and started to estimate distances, slopes, rates of travel–then stopped. I don’t have to do this. He checked his map information for depth and almost choked.

Elevation: -5413 feet (RGL)

He focused, confirming his instinct. RGL was short for Relative to Ground Level.

Erramir’s thoughts filled with concerns about nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness. He had noticed his ears popping on the way down. Yeah, decompression is almost definitely still a thing.

Even so, the -5413 number wasn’t what mattered. All that mattered was depth relative to sea level and even if the cave entrance was right at sea level, humans could safely delve a couple miles down. Knowing that, and given that these tunnels had once been inhabited, their depth below ground level probably wasn’t dangerous, at least by Earth standards.

I don’t feel loopy, and my body is so enhanced, it may be irrelevant. Erramir thought, dismissing the concern. I’ll just keep an eye on it.

Val opened her eyes. “It worked.” She smiled.

“Great! So, what are we looking at?”

Val turned her attention back to her map with a wince. “It’s not a straight line to anywhere, that’s for sure. To call this place, swiss cheese wouldn’t even touch it. More like a swimming pool full of spaghetti.” She made a resigned noise. “This may take a bit.”

Erramir waited patiently until Val had a handle on the map, then they discussed options. Val explained that this canyon city was between two others, one to either side, each about 60 miles distant. All three were oriented like spokes on a wheel, pointed toward a central area where the density of tunnels grew overwhelming. She posited that was below the obelisk.

The other two cities appeared to have access to the surface, and their bags held rations for eight days, twelve if they were careful, so exiting via one of those was an option. Neither of them wanted to though, it was a long way to go and didn’t get them any closer to the sky-scraping obsidian tower.

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Down the tunnel, they could get to a mid-sized grotto. Something more akin to an outpost than a city. There were several intersections, and it wasn’t a straight path, but Val guessed the trek to the grotto was about thirty-five miles. More importantly, it progressed them closer to the tower.

Unfortunately, the surface access at the outpost was marked with red glyphs that looked unmistakably like a warning.

There were a couple other options. One was closer to the center in the wedge between the canyon cities where several vertical shafts with mechanical lifts traveled to the surface. That seemed like a good option until they remembered the condition of all the metal. There was a good chance the corrupted essence had eaten away all the metal in those locations centuries ago.

So, they settled on heading forward, deciding to risk whatever the ominous red glyphs represented.

Resolved, they tried to wake up Carson. But the mage was dead to the world. Whatever he’d done to himself channeling the essence needed to launch a couple dozen flaming minivans had laid him up good. Without any idea of when he’d wake and knowing that time was at least somewhat pressing, they loaded him onto blockbot.

The metallic clacking of blockbot’s treads was far from ideal, but it was unavoidable. The only other option was to take turns carrying Carson and leave the little construct behind.

Neither of them wanted to do that. The strange little robot was just too fantastic, and Carson would definitely heal faster laid out flat than draped over a shoulder.

To best defend him from any surprise attack, they took positions on either side of the low-riding stretcher.

They would have to return to the canyon, but Erramir wasn’t banking on making the ten-day time limit. Odds were they’d have to fight the Settlement 9 Champion again. After Carson woke up, the mage might be able to work on some type of essence cleansing spell, or he might not.

Carson had been able to roughly work out some kind of bug vacuum weave when Virginwood’s rambling was all they had to go on. But he hadn’t tried it and cleansing a city seemed like a properly steep ask, even for their prodigy Elementalist.

Either way, returning to fight the Champion without a cleansing method sorted was an exercise akin to a hacking thistle without pulling up the root. Basically pointless. And in this case, one that also held a high probability of death, so pointless and deadly.

They also needed to find the Und Varden commander, and not just for indoctrination; he wanted to understand what had happened here. Why was the essential energy corrupted? Why did it consume metal and wood? Why were the city and several others like it buried a mile underground? And, how was it that the Und Varden had failed so completely in what appeared to be their one sacred mission?

Erramir considered his Und Varden sigil mark. The image had depth, shifting slightly as he rotated his arm, almost as if he was viewing it through glass inside a shadow box. The effect was entrancing. In particular, the roots seemed to live. They weren’t moving, more like radiating a vibrant density.

As he stared, Erramir found himself remembering the strange half-buried pipe. They built a whole damn city around it. That’s got to mean something. Maybe whatever ran through it was related to essence; perhaps it was all essence? Nah, that would be a ton of essence, probably not.

Whatever other purpose the pipe served, from the quest dialog, he was almost sure it was the connection to Qar’Darkar. The strike teams sent on the original quest undoubtedly knew all this, so it wasn’t in the description. He chalked that question up as another for the Und Varden Commander.

They walked on, Blockbot clacking in the middle as he and Val stayed sharp, senses probing the darkness for threats. For a long while, the tunnel seemed endless, unchanging, and abandoned, until it changed.

They came to a section scored by gouges and marred with black and brown burn discolorations. He and Val exchanged a tense look.

Val knelt and ran her hand into a gash that cut through a faded black burn. “Damn. This was an intense fight.”

“Yeah,” Erramir replied somberly, casting his eyes over the scene. “Creepy. Old though. Let’s not linger.”

Val stood. “Agreed.”

Although Erramir couldn’t rationalize why, as the scars from the fight were almost certainly eons old, they proceeded cautiously. He couldn’t shake the feeling this section was a graveyard. A cemetery scrubbed clean of the vacant armor that served as battlefield headstones by decay and corrupted essence. And they were blasphemous intruders tiptoeing through so as not to rouse the ire of the dead.

Blockbot’s clatter resounded like a baby crying in church. It made him cringe and want to shush it. But there was no quieting the clack of metal on stone. The scarred section stretched on, and Erramir began to feel irrationally anxious.

To cope, he fell into a walking meditation, breathing and letting the last several days wash over him without an agenda. The clacking became a kind of metronome backdrop for his intentional inhale...exhale. His irritation faded–then vanished–it was just a noise.

The battle scarring became a curiosity–violent evidence untouched for millennia, indifferent and silent since the last felling blow.

As his tension bled away, Erramir felt himself drop into a profoundly inquisitive quiet.

His brain started to pull on random data bits: his bloodline quest, the incredible power of advanced attributes, the mysterious time-locked ruin of Qar’Dakar, the dragon statues that were more than statues, the shattered Elven Ascendency council, Carson’s explanation of how essence could only be channeled for a purpose, the room of skeletons and the smashed security door, the enormous pipe they’d built a whole city around, how corrupted essence consumed all metal and wood–except the mining pick, Blockbot, and the one reinforced door.

Then there was the mysterious fall of the Und Varden–with a figurehead who apparently still lived. And the two incredibly long-running NPC programs they’d found in the data. Two NPCs that had probably been alive since before the Void War.

His mind connected it all like a string of knobby pieces pulled from the center of a puzzle, hinting at the bigger picture, giving its flavor without revealing it.

And, as with the puzzle, just that bit was enough for him to get a start on imagining the full picture.

The metal, the corruption, and the Varden commander; they’re in the center of this. He knew it as sure as his own hands. Those three sat at the very heart of a conspiracy that killed a Queen, caused dragons to flee the civilized world, and toppled an Empire.

We need to find the Varden leader. He let the data roll about a bit more, then nodded to himself. Cause he’s either the traitor, or he knows who is.