Poro Aetherwilde led three thousand refugees through the forest toward the passage Rubines Highfait had described. He felt the nearness of the Shadowdell as an almost physical weight, a pressure he knew was only his imagination. But the nearness of The Shadowcalled was the greatest argument for this passage's security.

Even dungeons feared The Shadowcalled.

It made perfect sense for the only secure and previously unknown passage to be hidden in the lee of Shadowdell. And it made Poro's skin crawl.

He found the entrance, marked as Rubines had indicated.

"Wait here," he told his escort. "I will return if the passage is safe."

They nodded and began organizing the first arrivals, many of whom would be grateful for a rest after their trek. Most carried their possessions on their backs or dragged simple carts. A few nobles had golems or thralls with them to carry more, but most had no such aid.

Poro advanced alone, following the single thread of gleaming silver that showed the way.

When he reached the passage, he knew at once that they'd been deceived.

This was no naturally occurring passage. Dragonfire and moonsilver glowed in intricate patterns, a swirling vortex of power shaped and guided by elven hands. Above, the stone had been rent asunder to provide clear access to the sky. The Dungeon Queen gleamed distantly as she passed across the sky like a crimson diamond, eclipsing the moon.

"What is this?" Poro asked, and his voice trembled.

Beyond the active passage a thousand tendrils of silver, thin as threads, stretched out from the passage and dove into the earth. Looking deeper, Poro saw that they reached out beyond the limits of his sight in all directions, but they also stretched down far beneath their feet, binding their way through the heart of the planet.

"Oh, Rubines, this is not your work." Poro whispered. “What have you done?”

It was not hard to put together the pieces. Now that he saw the construction, it could be no one else.

“Your plan was too limited in scope." The Shadowcalled stepped out from the shadow, tainted moonlight glinting from the spirals on his chest, blackness wrapped around him like a cloak. "There is no future for our people here. The Undercaverns? The dungeons love the darkness and the earth as much as they love to consume all in their path. You would be only leading your people into a trap.”

Poro trembled with dread that went beyond anything he’d felt before. “What have you done?” he asked again. “And where is Councilor Highfait?”

"Rubines is being transformed. He won't be coming until the end." The Shadowcalled raised a hand, dropping a single silver link into the swirling vortex, and the passage settled and snapped into place, a flat silver mirror that reflected nothing. "You have eight hours to evacuate as many as you can. That is the best I can do."

"Where will you send them?" Poro asked hoarsely. "If not the Undercaverns, where?"

“Someplace beyond the reach of even the Dungeon Queen.” The madman raised his head and shook his fist at the crimson orb in the sky as he raised his voice to a roar of challenge. “You hear that, your majesty? We will go where you cannot reach! Your children have consumed all they can, and you will watch as they are torn down to dust in our wake!”

Poro flinched as the world itself trembled. Stone shifted, rocks clattered, dust vibrated into the air. In the distance, trees cracked and crashed to the ground.

“What are you doing?” he hissed. “You mustn’t provoke her, she’ll destroy us all!”

“Yes!” The Shadowcalled cackled madly. “That is the point! Don’t you see? Up there, she’s immune. She watches us, content to leave our subjugation to her children. Content to let them bind and enslave and consume us until we are her thralls forever. But not I!”

He turned to Poro, his grin unsettling. "If you plan to evacuate, get going. If you're not coming, I don't care. I promised Rubines I'd save as many as I can. If that's just him and me, I won't be troubled by it."

Poro turned and sprinted back to where he'd left his people. He had a choice to make.

The Shadowcalled might be doing this all to trick them. But Rubines had been right in his arguments. Resistance would be no use against the dungeons.

He reached the entrance, and realized his choice had already been made. When it came right down to it, he trusted Rubines's judgment more than he trusted the Dungeon Queen to be merciful.

"The passage is clear," Poro announced, "but it won't hold stable for long. We need to start moving people through now."

Those resting nearby grabbed their possessions and began filing into the tunnel. Eight hours. It wouldn't be enough.

"Hurry!"

Rubines woke slowly, the past day a haze of uncertainty and frantic movement as he ran blindly across the unfamiliar terrain, cutting straight back to Delarin from wherever the dungeon had been, the dungeon's heart clutched to his chest.

It was still there, pulsing red with his heartbeat. He tried to shove it off, but it stuck, tugging at his chest. The pulse skipped, racing with his heart as he staggered to his feet. The crystal remained, fused to his chest, half embedded. A silver thread led from the dungeon heart and down a side tunnel.

Following the line of silver, Rubines made his way down the tunnel. Thousands of silver threads trailed away in every direction. Some dove into the ground, others ran along the walls toward the ceiling; all pulsed with moonlight glow tainted by streaks of bloodred light. Much like the pulses of light coming from the crystal that had somehow fused with him, racing away down the silver thread.

When he reached the passage, he saw it had activated fully, blocking the tunnel completely. He couldn't see past it, but heard the quiet murmur of voices and the hasty footsteps of the refugees.

Rubines sagged against the wall in relief. Delarin had kept his side of the agreement.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"I couldn't have done it without you."

Rubines jumped and spun, startled.

Delarin stood in the darkness, wearing an intricate black armor that blended almost seamlessly with the dark stone around them. He gestured beside him. "I have one for you."

"What is it?" Rubines approached.

"Protection. The new world isn't done, so it won't be like here. This will keep us safe so we can breathe the air, survive the temperatures, and all the rest."

"Do you have them for everyone?"

"No. I've built in some shields for the passage, but I bet only one in ten will survive the trip. It's the best I could do with the time and materials we had."

"One in ten." Rubines put a hand to his chest, then felt the foreign crystal embedded into it and remembered his other reason for coming. "What happened to me?"

Delarin frowned. "I don't know. We'll figure it out. But it worked." He gestured to the silver thread connecting Rubines to the passage, and the countless others spreading out from it in all directions.

“What does it do?”

“The same thing they are trying to do to us.” Delarin grinned and gestured to the silver lines running through the world. “These threads are bound with a greater casting of seeking. They are not simply drawing power from moonlight, or from the heart of the world. They draw it from the cores of our invaders." He tapped the dungeon heart on Rubines's chest. "This shows them what to search out. It took three days, but now each thread is connected to a dungeon’s heart, and draws on their power to fuel our escape. Every dungeon on the planet.”

The earth trembled and shook. Rubines looked up.

"Is the Dungeon Queen... coming closer?" The crimson crystal circling their sky ever since it consumed the sun had always been distant, nearer and smaller than the moons, but now it loomed vast and gleaming, filling the visible sky beyond the crevice.

Stones rumbled and dust fell. Rubin heard the sounds of evacuation turn to shouts of panic.

The red glow of the Dungeon Queen shone brighter and more concentrated, the unthinkably massive orb in the sky descending toward them like the glowing fist of an angry god.

“She’s coming for vengeance,” Delarin said gleefully. “She's not happy that I'm eating her children.”

"You've doomed us all?"

“No, I haven’t! That’s the beauty of it. You were all doomed already. The moment her first accursed seed touched our earth, this world was lost. But I!” Delarin laughed, mirthful and vengeful. “I have found a way out. The only way out. And I’m going to give her a parting gift like no one ever has dared to.”

"What are you planning?"

“To build a new world is not easy. The power required would drain a planet dry and burn it to ashes before the task was accomplished. Even I would not go so far without dire need. Your Council may think I have no conscience, that I’m lost to madness, but you know not the true brink from which I dragged myself back. If I sought vengeance, this world would have burned long ago. The only vengeance I seek now is against her.” Delarin held out a hand. "Come, I will show you what we have wrought."

They climbed up a staircase of silver light that built itself before Delarin's feet, the sheer mastery of the archaen humbling Rubines yet again at his old friend's genius. Then they stood above the ravine that had formed when the tunnel collapsed at some point in the hours before Rubines awoke.

Refugees hurried through the cleft toward the passage, a passage they didn't know would kill 90% of them. But to remain was an even more certain doom and so Rubines set his heart and said nothing.

Above, the Dungeon Queen loomed nearer still, blotting out half the sky, the gleam of her faceted form visible from where the two elves stood. The tremors in the earth grew ever more tumultuous. Refugees below screamed as chunks of stone fell among them, but still they ran for the passage that glowed open and inviting.

“If the new world isn't ready, where are you sending them?”

“To the new world. They will be changed, of necessity. We will no longer be children of the sun and the moons and the stars, but children of the void. Right now, they enter a small fragment of that new world. But soon...” Delarin raised his hands, and silver threads twisted upward from the ground like trees unfurling leaves in spring, extending straight up from every patch of earth within sight. Thousands, millions, the threads so thin they could barely be seen but for the moonlight gleam as they sucked in its light to fuel the passage still glowing below. “To create the new world, the old will be consumed. But even that is not enough. We need more.”

“The Dungeon Queen,” Rubines realized, putting the pieces together. “You’re planning to drain the Dungeon Queen herself.”

Delarin grinned. "And it's too late for her to stop herself from falling right into my trap."