By the third day of his meticulous surveillance of the old man, Tamet the Trickster apparently decided to grant young Denor a favorable opportunity. Marta was giving birth, not a rare occurrence but a fortunate one all the same. Denor wasn’t entirely sure why she felt the need to add another child to a household already overflowing with boys and girls of various ages because he didn’t understand the mechanics of it all, but Marta had decided, and it worked to his advantage. He knew from careful estimation if not personal experience that bringing a new person into the world was a long and tedious affair. Sometimes it took half a day, sometimes the whole day. This meant old Litarn would most certainly be holed up in Marta’s hut, ensuring that the horrible wrinkled baby made it safely into the world. He wouldn't leave until the newborn Andronian made their first irritating squawk.

With his trusty unused blaster hanging on his belt, Denor slipped out of the house, careful not to catch his father’s eye to avoid having to concoct a lie. The path was familiar, and a righteous anger, like a tailwind, propelled his steps. Soon enough, he passed the cemetery and stopped at the foot of the rock that resembled a crumpled old man.

After checking that his weapon was secure, Denor activated the console.

Out of cheese error.

The secret underground lair remained distinctly shut, and there was no ‘ok’ button to stab at. It looked like the security-conscious Litarn had locked the place up after himself this time.

Denor closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer to Tamet, knowing that it was fruitless to try and invoke his god’s name, but hoping that his luck would hold all the same.

Out of cheese error. The console stubbornly repeated, unmoved by his piety.

“I’ll never get in here to see Charan again!” the boy wailed, his frail and cracking voice bouncing off the hillside, which was also distinctly unmoved. Hillsides tended to remain distinctly unmoved by default, so this wasn’t overly surprising.

A light breeze stirred, carrying the scent of earth and wildflowers to Denor’s nostrils, as if nature itself mocked his predicament. He glared at the console, feeling a surge of frustration welling up inside him. Out of cheese error? What did that even mean? He had half a mind to kick the wretched machine, but past experience with kicking inanimate objects suggested that it rarely resulted in anything more than a sore toe. Denor’s appendages suffered enough by default, due to being attached to him, there was no need to inflict further damage upon them.

As he pondered his next move, a rustling sound drew his attention. From behind a nearby bush emerged Foggle, the village tinkerer and self-proclaimed expert on all things mechanical that weren’t guns.

Ledo despised the man, not because he was competition, but because he was exceptionally irritating and had a penchant for following people around at random.

His hair stood out in tufts as if in perpetual surprise, and his spectacles, thick as bottle bottoms, magnified his eyes to an alarming degree.

“Having trouble, young Denor?” Foggle asked, his voice a blend of curiosity and mild amusement.

Denor hesitated, then nodded. “It’s this blasted console. It says ‘Out of cheese error.’ Do you know what that means?”

Foggle’s eyes twinkled with a mischievous glint. “Ah, the infamous Out of Cheese Error. That’s an old one. Means it’s hungry, lad.”

“Hungry? For cheese?” Denor’s confusion deepened, mingling with his frustration.

“Not literally,” Foggle chuckled. “It's an old code phrase. It means the machine’s run out of a certain type of data. Like a book missing a few pages. It’s telling you it can’t do what you want because it’s lacking some essential information.”

Denor groaned. “So how do I fix it?”

Foggle scratched his head, sending a small cascade of dandruff like snowflakes falling in the breeze. “Well, you could try resetting it. Sometimes that helps. Or you could look for a backup system. Most of these old setups have one, tucked away somewhere. Failing that, you’ll need to find the missing data. Could be a key, could be a password, could be... well, anything really.”

“Great,” Denor muttered. “Just great. That’s really helpful. Why were you following me out here anyway?”

Foggle gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Cheer up, lad. Luck’s a funny thing. Sometimes it comes when you least expect it,” he said enigmatically, refusing to elaborate on why he had appeared just at this very moment, precisely when he was needed, and proceeded to impart what he thought was vital information.

Denor sighed, watching as the old tinkerer ambled off, whistling a tune that sounded suspiciously like a cat being trodden on. He turned back to the console, weighing his options. Resetting it sounded simple enough, but finding a backup system? That was a task akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Or worse, finding a needle in a haystack guarded by a particularly irritable rabbit.

He decided to try the reset first. Pressing the combination of buttons Foggle had shown him, he held his breath as the console flickered, went dark, and then slowly powered back on. The screen flashed, and for a heart-stopping moment, Denor feared it would display the same error.

But then, with a soft chime, the console came to life, displaying a menu of options. Denor exhaled in relief, a triumphant smile spreading across his face. Maybe, just maybe, luck was on his side today.

Out of cheese error.

“Stupid device!” Denor wailed, kicking it and hurting his foot, just as expected. He took a deep breath, reaching for his belt and adjusting his blaster, before finally pointing it at the terminal. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered, placing his finger on the trigger and preparing to shoot the infernal device outright.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

An opening sound heralded the opening of the underground lair.

Denor blinked in disbelief. No, it couldn’t be that easy, could it?

“Hey there, nice of you to join me again,” a friendly voice announced from the mouth of the entrance, as two large antenna poked their way out of the hole.

The passage to the lair had somehow opened up all by itself! Blessed be Tamet! Denor immediately fell to his knees and stared up at the sky in recognition of this stroke of luck, despite knowing it would do absolutely nothing.

“Are you okay over there? That’s a bit of a strange way of saying hello. Anyway, if you’d like to follow me down… oh, okay, you’re coming over now.”

The ant retreated down the ladder, and Denor followed. It seemed the insect had some sort of nest here. Just like the first time, Denor jumped down on his insect pal, and feeling the push and weight, the ant slowly crawled along the passage through the strange subterranean corridors. Denor made himself comfortable, and tried to stay focused on the light ahead. His slow, heavy conveyance no longer seemed frightening, but almost endearing. Perhaps this sympathy was because the ant had been with him—under him, to be precise—during the most intense moments of his last visit underground. Moreover, it was thanks to the ant’s broad back that Charan and his friends were forced to hesitate, allowing Denor to escape those treacherous tunnels. After some thought, Denor decided to spare and not kill the underground beast that had rescued him, provided it didn’t attack first.

“Well, I didn’t exactly permit you to ride me like a mule this second time, but I guess you’re decent people,” the ant observed, as he turned a corner, and orange, shaggy spots of light emerged from the darkness. There were the bodies of the dead warriors, naked to the waist, rhythmically wielding iron.

“Charan!” the boy called, peering into the intermittent flickering gloom. “It’s me, Denor! I’ve come again! I want to talk to you.”

Charan separated from the workers and approached him, but didn’t look like he was going to pull him down any time soon.

"Why did you come, Denor?" Charan asked, his face devoid of expression. "I told you not to return. You'll die. Litarn will destroy you. He’ll kill you as soon as he sees you."

“Not the cheeriest of greetings, is it?” the ant observed, and was promptly ignored.

"Litarn won’t see a thing!" Denor retorted, waving him off and almost falling off the ant in the process. "He’s too busy preparing for a delivery in Marta’s hut, who’s decided to give birth for the fifteenth time! I’m not brainless enough to run into the sorcerer here!"

Denor was, in fact, brainless enough to run into the sorcerer, but the ant chose not to comment on that. He knew better than to interrupt someone who had just used three exclamation marks in a row.

At this point, the ant made an important discovery. “Wait, the old man is a sorcerer? I’ve been making my nest in the wrong place!”

Denor tapped his fist on the ant's back, indicating that his head wasn’t quite as thick as the ant's.

“Hey, I felt that! I’m clearly not brainless down here! People in brainless houses shouldn’t be throwing stones!”

Remembering his perch, he slid down from the metallic shiny mound, giving it a pat as if it were a horse’s rump. The ant continued its slow crawl, now without a rider. Its six legs, each as thick as a calf’s, gleamed like copper in the torchlight, and its polished mandibles stood proudly and menacingly.

“Not that I don’t like being looked at or petted, pal, but maybe I’ll just make a break for freedom instead of slumming it in a damned sorcerers lair, okay?”

Charan stepped aside to let it pass, showing neither fear nor surprise, as if it were a common dog or goat.

"How many of these do you have down here?" Denor asked curiously, nodding at the ant.

"I have only seen the one. Don’t know about any others," Charan replied, then resumed with monotonous insistence, "Go away, Denor. Litarn can appear at any moment. He comes suddenly. Leave. Litarn will destroy you."

"Oh I’ll leave," the boy promised cheerfully, a malevolent look on his face. "I’ll leave… forever!”

Charan looked at him blankly.

“No, wait, not forever. As soon as I understand what’s going on here first. Why you and everyone else," he nodded at the sweaty figures chiseling away at the stone, "aren’t lying in your graves where you were buried six months ago, instead rummaging around underground. And I really want to know why you grabbed me then, Charan. Why you listened to that pathetic old man. Weren’t you my friend when you were alive?"

Any other young man might have flushed with shame or at least turned pale at such reproaches, but Charan’s face remained unchanged. It seemed he had lost his shame along with his life, and he also didn’t have either the heart or inclination to tell Denor the truth about their friendship.

"We aren’t lying in our graves because Litarn pulled us out," he answered. "We didn’t ask for this. He pulled us out almost immediately. Then he revived us. Now we work for him. We search the ground and polish precious stones."

"But why?!" Denor was astounded, which wasn’t hard for someone like Denor, in fairness. "Litarn revived you—that’s wonderful! Thank him, tell him to go and jump, and go home! Everyone will be overjoyed! Gella will go mad with happiness, Charan!"

"We can't," Charan said dimly. "He revived us. But not completely. He did something to us. Now we have to work for him all the time. Like slaves. We can't leave."

In the semi-darkness of the dungeon, it was hard to see Charan's eyes clearly, but Denor had the eerie sense that his friend's pupils were covered with a film of earthen dust. That can’t have been comfortable.

"What did he do to you?" Denor asked with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "Tie your legs? Cut the tendons under your knees? Hit you over the head with a frying pan? Why can’t you just leave?"

"I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know," Charan kept repeating, looking sorrowfully at the other men who continued their work as if Denor’s arrival was a mundane occurrence, which for most people in the village it was. "If you want, talk to my father. He'll explain better than I can."

"Your father?" Denor asked. "Is he here? I didn’t see him the last time."

"Last time he was deep underground, looking for new deposits of emeralds. He’s here now. Talk to him. If you’re not scared of him," Charan replied, foreboding tinging his words.

"Scared of Uncle Sulas?" the boy was taken aback. "You’ve gone completely mad down here. Call him quickly! I’ll be glad to see him. I hope he’s still a normal person and hasn’t turned into a morbid zombie like the rest of you have!"

Charan walked away and headed deeper into the underground passage, quietly calling out to his father. Denor shifted his weight impatiently. He was about to see Sulas, who wasn’t actually his uncle but had been a good friend of Ledo’s. He had a… distinct sense of humour, a joker and jester whose wild presence and laughing eyes had brightened Denor's entire childhood.

His abode, which could charitably be called ‘disordered’, because lazy, cheerful Sulas always had no time to repair it, had become Denor's second home. When Denor was hammering the frozen ground in the spring, he was tormented by the thought that Uncle Sulas would never grin at him again, never slap him affectionately (or so he thought) on the back of the head, never make him laugh with his terrible jokes.

Charan returned, shuffling like an old man again, moving his feet with the weariness of someone much older. Denor strained to see his uncle behind him, but saw nothing. Had Charan failed to find him in the dark? What a shame! Just three steps short of the boy, Charan stepped aside. From behind him, something very strange and very frightening crawled into the wavering light affixed to the wall.