Erramir’s breath moved in sympathy with the rhythmic clatter of blockbot’s metal treads. A list of concerns and questions tugged around the periphery of his attention, and occasionally one would streak across the canvas of his mind like a shooting star.

He watched them flare and fade just the same, in his mental scape, Erramir was a man standing stoic on a naked hill at night.

His thinking had been moving along divergent paths since awakening Insight, the second Advanced attribute, and he could quickly lose himself amongst the connections and interplay of those thoughts. The increased ease of making sense out of random information held an allure that he knew well. It was useful, incredibly helpful in decision making, but still just a tool. Life didn’t occur in his thoughts.

Walking meditation was a replenishing way to cover distance, and having cleared the ancient battle-scarred section of tunnel, his attention rested about him with mellow comfort.

He smiled quietly to himself. Blockbot’s beat was sixteen times faster than his breathing. By combining every four tread clacks into one measure, he had found a shape to the phases of his breathing inside that rhythm.

One–start drawing air, its subtle sting on the roof of his nose. Two–slowing as his belly dropped and lungs filled. Three­–the end of the draw, breaking into the silence within. Four– resting in that silence and enjoying the richness of full lungs. Then the four-count rhythm, four clacks per beat, repeated on the exhale.

In this steady way, Erramir walked and meditated. His attention capturing the tunnel and his surroundings, unconcerned about being attacked without warning as his gut and Spidey-sense protected against that.

It was after their first turn down a connected tunnel, following Val’s map, that his instincts began to tickle. They grasped at faint wisps of something that wanted to be known, teasing him like an itch in the middle of his back, just out of reach.

The tingle grew urgent and crystalized–quicken your breathing, it whispered. Without hesitation, he cut in half the metallic tread clacks per breath, doubling the pace of his inhalations. Immediately, he was acutely aware of his belly and of warmth radiating into his body from it.

The details of the tunnel looked a bit crisper, and Erramir’s body began to hum with energy.

“Whatcha doing over there?” Val asked.

“Not sure– really,” Erramir spoke, fitting his words into the exhales.

“It was– just a bit– of walking– meditation. Now– it’s this.” He shot a crooked smile at Val through his panting. “Feels– good.”

Val was quiet for a moment, and then she chuckled, shaking her head. “Okay, I’ve got to try this.” And she did, within a few breaths, Val fell into rhythm with Erramir, both of them to the cadence of blockbot’s clattering treads.

It wasn’t more than a minute before Valerie’s eyes widened, and with some mild surprise, she spoke in the same chopped manner. “Holy shit– You’re right.– This is– great.”

“Right!– Everything’s– just kinda– more alive.– Almost– dancing.”

“Yeah– tons of– energy– everywhere.”

They kept on like that all the way to the next turn on their path, a T-intersection, where they both drew up short, eyes locked onto the ground. Blockbot’s clanking pattered to a stop, but Val and Err both kept up their rapid breathing.

“What is– that?” Erramir said.

“Looks like– another– tunnel.”

“Is it– on the– map?”

Val pulled up the map she’d downloaded from blockbot. “Nope– Nothing.”

Erramir moved forward to stand directly above the strip of warm orange that luminesced in his enhanced sight. He stomped a foot on the ground. It sounded solid. “Here– right?” he huffed.

“Yeah– I’m gonna– stop breathing– like this–now.”

Erramir nodded in agreement, choosing not to stop, figuring it would be good if one of them maintained the enhanced vision.

“Well, that makes it much easier to talk.”

“I’m gonna– keep it– up.– Can you– still see it?”

“I can.” Val went right, scanning the walls and floor. “But it’s definitely fading. Let’s look around, see what we can find.” Erramir nodded and turned left, inspecting those walls.

“Hey, over here,” Val called, less than a minute later. “I can just see a faint line on the wall, but it’s almost gone.”

Erramir joined her. The breathing pattern was less pleasant when his attention was split and not engaged with walking meditation. But he determinedly kept it up.

He could clearly see the line. It was actually two lines, one from the floor up to a foot or so above his head, and another that cut across from the top of the first, extending five feet and forming an upturned L. A small circle blazed bright orange right in the center, at belly level.

Erramir crouched before it. A hundred shades of orange and yellow swam lazily like living oils. His breath caught, breaking the breathing rhythm. “I’ll be damned.”

Embossed within their swirling, in fiery red was a hammer atop a trunk with an intricate tangle of roots. “There’s an Und Varden sigil here.”

Standing, he handed his helmet to Val, and got to unbuckling his bracer. It was only the second time Erramir had doffed the forearm piece to uncover his Und Varden tattoo. Still, he couldn’t help but feel it was a poor design for regular removal.

There were several buckles. They weren’t much trouble to draw free but re-equipping the bracer one-handed was frustrating.

Erramir suddenly understood the practical need for a squire. A young man with nimble fingers would greatly simplify the task of donning armor.

“This damn armor needs a quick access flap or something.” He worked the pin of the final buckle free and removed the buckler.

Val snorted. “Good idea. You can get right on that when we find a place to set up.”

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“You know I will.” He grined at her, then extended his forearm mark to the glowing circle. A tingle ran through his arm. Beneath the layer of stone, the emblem’s energy surged, turning intense yellow with the sigil lines standing out in black. A second later, the layer of rock slid away like grease before lye, and a detailed sigil in matte steel pressed out.

“Nooo... shit,” Val whispered. “Just like the door with the face.”

An instant later, the entire wall section glowed brightly. It wasn’t actually the stone, but something beneath that his lingering energetic sight could see. “Woah,” Erramir whispered as he stepped back.

The sheen of the stone covering the glowing section shifted from granite dull to the slight gloss of a beetle shell. Then it gathered and clumped into hundreds of thumb-sized rocks with tiny legs.

The section of tunnel wall suddenly writhed with life like a swarm of roaches. The stone bugs skittered to the right en-mass. Their legs clicked and snickered. His mind couldn’t help but imagine them crawling on his skin and over his body.

Erramir’s face pulled tight in disgust as he shivered. With effort, focusing on the details of the rock bugs, he shook the image away. Behind him, Val gagged loudly.

“Uuhh, uuhhh.” Her throaty dry heaving repeated several times. He stayed focused on the wall.

The stone beetles piled up in a thick vertical ridge outside of the L-border. They scrambled over each other, clicking, and settling together. Erramir had to repress a bit of nausea, turning his head to the side, and watching with only one eye.

“Just tell me when it’s over,” Val requested. Erramir nodded silently.

They calmed within moments, forming a ridge that stuck a foot into the passage, and melted together. All of the tiny gaps disappeared, leaving solid stone.

“It’s done.”

Beneath the stone was revealed a wide rectangle of the same metal as the sigil, which now stood out several inches like a thick, short rod, or a knob without a stem, in the center.

Erramir had a thought to try and turn the sigil knob. But he didn’t even get a chance as it became quite clear that this was not a usual kind of door.

A wave rippled out from the Und Varden crest, changing the dull sheen to a high gloss like that of wet paint. He took another step back, and his shoulder bumped into Val. She ignored his muttered apology, her attention entirely consumed by the spectacle of the wall.

Like butter under a heat lamp, the steel melted. It was at least a couple hand spans thick, but he only had a split second to notice this as its substance disappeared into a floor made of the same metal.

For a long bit, they both stared at the floor; the door was just gone. Erramir wasn’t sure if the floor had been metal before or if it had somehow absorbed the door's mass to look that way. The level from the stone to the metal was flush; there was no bump or any evidence suggesting a foot think, five-foot-wide, seven-foot-high door was hiding in the floor.

His befuddlement was extinguished upon realizing they were now standing in an entrance. The metal floor extended straight back twenty feet or so, where it ended abruptly at what looked like a curb. A pace inside, on the left, there was a set of steps.

Erramir laughed nervously. “Looks like we found… something.” Looking over his shoulder, Val met his eyes.

“Rigghht...” She drawled. “What the fuck was that creepy shit?”

Before he responded, she held out Virginwood and cocked her head, then she cast her eyes toward blockbot, which was waiting silently in the intersection supporting Carson’s prone form.

“Virg is telling me that Blockbot says this if for special…” Val furrowed her brow, then finished uncertainly, “Special shield people?” Then glancing at him with a half-smile, added, “He’s sending a picture of your shield, so I think he means people with special shields, not people who are special shields.”

Erramir chortled, then reached back and unsheathed Diviner. Its length came to life with wispy soul-powered energy. “How’s this? Not a shield, but I think it’s pretty damn special.” He grinned.

She looked back toward blockbot. “Umm. No. Apparently, that’s not the right kind of special.” She paused. “Yeah, I’m not getting much more here. Virg just keeps repeating, special people, shield people.”

She looked at the opening. “This is an Und Varden passage, maybe they had special shields. But we’ve got the tattoos, we’re technically Varden, right? We’re allowed access.”

“Right, proof’s in the pudding, baby. If you can open the door, then you’re part of the club.” He gestured to Blockbot. “It’s followed us this far. I don’t see why this matters–door’s open, let’s go.”

“Ahh...” Val sounded hesitant. “No, I don’t think so, Err. Hold on.” She took a minute while looking intently at blockbot in its stretcher form beneath Carson. “Yeah.” She grimaced. “Blockbot won’t follow us because we’re not shield people.”

“Humm.” Erramir began to walk back to stubborn little construct. “You think it just needs verification? To see the tattoo?”

“I don’t see why. You already opened the door, and it obviously knows that. Shouldn’t that have proved we’re authorized? This shield thing seems like it’s a separate issue.”

“Maybe...” He started then trailed off in thought. “Or, maybe the door and Blockbot need to independently verify that we’re Und Varden. It’s followed us this far, so we must have passed some level of security verification. But this little guy has never directly inspected one of our tattoos.

“If this door is akin to an inner vault, it would make sense that we need higher clearance, possibly granted by one of these shields. That’d definitely be more convenient than the tattoo. Still, that doesn’t make any sense. The tattoo opened the door. Even if these shields are a primary authentication key, it seems like the tattoo grants equal access authority.”

He paused, standing next to the mage-laden blockbot. “Given that, I don’t know why the bot wouldn’t recognize the same access.”

After another second of consideration, he shrugged. “Independent verification makes sense given that this whole place seems to be infected by corrupted essence. It’s what I’d do, and from the quest, it seems like the Und Varden knew their enemy. They would have been smart to keep systems and machines separate to guard against a cascading systemic failure.”

Valerie looked at him with complete disbelief. “What?”

“Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

Val’s head dropped forward, and her mouth hung open. “We’re in a thousand-year-old underground dungeon.” She said, speaking slow and deliberate. “So no, computer system security wasn’t really the first thing that popped to mind.”

“That’s a fair point,” He allowed. “But that glyph thing had to have some kind of programming in its memory to recognize my tattoo and open up. Carson was pretty adamant that everything here is ruled by natural laws–or elemental energy laws, is what I think he said. Maybe it’s some kind of elemental computer. I mean, look at this thing, Val.” He stood back, lowering a hand toward blockbot. You can’t tell me that doesn’t scream computer system to you.”

Val suddenly looked at blockbot through whole new eyes. Erramir was right, her mind had no way to conceive of blockbot existing without some kind of programming. “I can’t believe I didn’t consider that. I’ve just been thinking it was all magic. And maybe it still is, but the magic system here is pretty detailed.”

She nodded quietly for a moment. “Hell, it actually abandoned Carson in the Scalla fight when he left the magical tap running. That’s definitely a sort of innate intelligence.”

Erramir nodded, “Exactly, look at how Carson can’t experiment with magic unless he’s actually in a situation where he needs it to work. There are governing principles built into the fabric of this world. It’s not much of a leap to think that these Und Varden learned how to harness that and create intelligent systems. Systems that required security protocols.”

Erramir squatted before blockbot. Carson looked somewhat better; the color was coming back into his face and hands. On a whim, he flicked Carson’s ear to try and wake him. The slender mage didn’t respond.

“Car’s still out cold,” He said. Then considering the bot said, “You figure the front block is a good spot?”

Val just laughed, “Sure. It’s at least the right end. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t roll backward anyhow.”

“Right, so I’m not goosing it.” Erramir laughed. His buckler being set aside for the door, he lifted his tattooed arm and pressed the Und Varden sigil to the first block beyond Carson’s head.

Nothing happened. Erramir rotated on his toes toward Val, putting a knee down and a hand on Carson to steady himself. Her face was pensive and turned slightly aside. It was how she got when listening to Virg.

His suspicion was proved out when Val spoke. “Okay, so now blockbot is confused. It understands that we’re special shield people, but wants to know where our special shields are.” She paused to think then looked at Erramir. “Should I just say we lost them?”

Erramir didn’t like that idea. He stood and shook out the sleeve of his cotton under-layer. “No... I don’t think losing special shields would be a good thing. There’s no telling how it would react. Can you tell it that we’re new and we need to go get our shields?”

Val nodded. “Right, that’s better. Maybe it’ll know where we need to go. Anyplace with Und Varden weapons has to be better than here.”

A moment later, blockbot turned and clattered past them. “Okay. That did it.” Val smiled. “Let’s go.”