A large fragment of a stone wall jutted from the ceiling ahead, quite unlike the unworked rock all around us. Yet strangely the whole of it was covered in a fine pale dust, which didn’t seem to match with anything around it. Elmidath stopped in her tracks and looked back over her shoulder at Tagath and I. “What is that?”

I had no idea, so I stepped aside to let Tagath through. Holding his lantern high, he peered at the broken piece of stone. “I can’t say much beyond that obvious, it’s too worn to determine much else in regards to who may have built it or why. From the discolouration, I assume it’s quite old. Though it’s hard to say for sure given its present location.”

“Uh-huh. How old do you think it is? And how did it get down here?”

Tagath blew air through his closed teeth. “I’d say a hundred years at least. Maybe more. It could easily be from before the merging. It’d certainly explain how it got down here; nothing else springs to mind.”

Leaving the wall be, we moved on. The path curved up and to the right, and we left the incongruous wall behind. Or so I thought. Another section of wall, quite possibly part of the same buried whole, blocked much of the chamber ahead. Considerably longer than the previous section, it curved to form a jagged semi-circle.

Tagath walked forward and passed the lantern over the whole length of it. “Ah. It appears there might be an entire building of some kind down here.”

Peering through a gap where the tunnel didn’t quite meet the wall, he jerked his head back and cleared his throat. “Um, I’m afraid I’ve made somewhat of a troubling discovery. There’s a corpse behind here, or some portion of one.” He raised his hand to forestall Elmidath before she could speak. “No, it’s not your father.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, assuming he were dead, and I don’t believe he is, he wouldn’t be in such an advanced state of decay. I don’t mean any slight on you, of course. I appreciate just how eager you are to find him. Alive or otherwise.”

Seeing Elmidath relent, I picked up the conversation. She may not have been concerned about some random corpse down here but I was. “Do you have any idea who they could have been?”

“None whatsoever. The body is in quite a strange state. It’s difficult to explain, you’d best take a look yourself.”

I went to take a look. Through the narrow gap, I could make out a body lying against the wall. Though they were humanoid in appearance, there was a curious flatness to them. Like they were just an old, withered bag of flesh without any bones inside. To my relief there wasn’t much of a smell to speak of. In fact, I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary at all. Was there something wrong with my nose? It didn’t feel blocked but how could a rotting corpse not make a smell. I turned to Tagath. “Is it just me or does this thing not smell at all?”

He frowned. “Now that you mention it… I believe you’re right.” Gripping the strap of his satchel, his gaze roamed across the room. “I hope we find Orshen soon, this place is beginning to lose its charm.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. The sooner we got out of here, the sooner we wouldn’t have to worry about ending up a boneless husk like our friend here. I suppose the only way was to continue forward then. Though the actual blade wouldn’t be much use in the tight confines of the tunnel, I kept Shotensho in hand just in case. If something happened, I could at least use its magic to defend myself. Rounding the next corner, I found that Tagath had been mistaken.

This wasn’t an entire building that had been buried. There was an entire complex down here, at the very least. A veritable maze of stone spread out before us. The walls were in varying states of orientation and structural integrity, but one could vaguely make out how many of them had been connected to one another. From what I could see, they were all covered in the same white dust as the others we’d seen. Was this something that had been added to them in their original state or something they’d acquired after their arrival?

Now that I thought about how these buildings had been shunted from their original surroundings deep underground, I felt an odd sense of kinship with them. We’d both been torn from our homes and thrown somewhere completely unlike it. Compared to them I felt relatively lucky. At least I got to see the sun. Not that buildings actually had wants and desires, of course. It was all just an idle fantasy of mine as I took in the complex.

Elmidath walked up beside me, focused on her map. “I think he’s somewhere inside this mess.” She strode past me, leaving Tagath and I to hurry after her. I thought she might pause to talk about what we were seeing or formulate some sort of plan, but apparently she wasn’t interested in any further delay.

Jogging, I went ahead of her and took the lead. It’d be a real tragedy if she got herself, and by extension me, killed when she was so close to being reunited with her father. Hopefully he’d fared better than whatever unfortunate soul we encountered earlier. There was no way to tell what they’d died from, but my guess was that it had been horrific.

We weaved our way through the walls wherever Elmidath could find a gap that lead us roughly in the right direction. It was slow going, with a considerable amount of backtracking. When Elmidath finally decided to call for a rest, I didn’t feel like we’d made much forward progress. But we were a long way from where we’d entered. I was fairly sure of that much; it was hard to maintain my bearings down here. As I was sitting there, thinking about nothing in particular, Elmidath’s voice appeared in my head. “Do you think we should leave Tagath here for now and keep going?”

I glanced over at the Demon Lord but she had her back turned to me. “We can’t just leave him here, what if we can’t find him again? Or if something happens again?”

“He’ll be fine.” From the sound of her voice I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince me or herself.

“You can’t know that. Look, we’ll find your father soon enough. You can wait a little bit longer.”

“…I’m tired of waiting, I hate this.”

And I was tired of her complaining but I wasn’t going to bring that up. “Just try to rest for now, we’ll get going again soon.”

Tired from the walk here, I quickly drifted off. Waking up to someone shaking me, I rubbed my eyes and looked around. The paltry illumination of the nearest lantern left most of his face in shadow. Feeling even worse than I had when I went to sleep, I yawned. “What do you want?”

“Elmidath’s gone.”

“What?” It took me a moment to process what he was saying and then dread crept in. She must have gone off ahead by herself and… wait, I could still contact her, there was nothing to worry about. “Okay, just give me a second, I’ll talk to her.”

I called her name over the link and waited. But nothing came. Strange, she’d always responded quickly in the past. Was she ignoring me for some reason? I tried again to no avail. Well, if she wasn’t willing to talk; I could just go to her. I was about to do exactly that when it occurred to me that it would mean leaving Tagath on his own. It probably wasn’t the best decision, Elmidath could likely fend for herself a lot better than he could. Seeing his enquiring look, I explained the situation. “I tried to reach her, but she’s not responding. She must be ignoring me.”

“Ignoring you, really? This hardly seems the time or place for such nonsense. Are you sure it’s not something else?”

“Well, no. But what else could it be?” I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep but I doubted she was out of range, if the link’s range even had a limit.

“I’m not too familiar with that kind of magic, but perhaps some kind of interference. Likely caused by some aspect of these ruins around us.”

I scratched my head; I couldn’t fathom how any of that would actually work. “Is there anything you can do about this interference?”

“I don’t believe so.”

It didn’t seem like we had many options remaining to us. We could search for her through this labyrinth but that could take a very long time, there was no telling how far it stretched. “I can teleport over to her, but it would mean leaving you on your own. What do you think we should do?”

“That…” he swallowed and glanced around the dark tunnel “Should be fine. I don’t relish the prospect of being down here on my own, but I should be all right.”

“I figure it’s either that or we wander around here in search of her.”

He nodded, seemingly coming around to the idea. “No, you’re right. Go and meet up with her. If you can, have her retrace her steps back to her but if for some reason you can’t find your way back, then I’ll try to head back to the manor on my own. I’ll give you a day or so, that should be plenty of time to get back here.”

“Okay, well, good luck.” I extended my hand to him and we shook.

“Same to you. Take care of Elmidath for me, her father will be most disagreeable if something happens to her.”

Drawing my sword, I held it in my right hand and the lantern in my left. “Will do.” With a parting smile, I willed myself to appear beside Elmidath. Everything went black and… remained that way. I squinted and turned my head but there was only darkness to be seen. Tightening my grip on the lantern to reaffirm that I still had it, I brought it up to eye level. I could feel the warmth emanating from it so presumably it was still lit, but there was no light to speak of.

Had I gone blind? Panic rose within me, threatening to overtake my better judgement as I waved the lantern in front of my face while blinking furiously. None of it made any difference, I couldn’t see so much as a flicker of light. How could I be blind? That didn’t make any sense. Breathing heavily, I tried to think of what could have happened or even just what I was supposed to do now.

“Hello?” I shouted into the darkness, my voice coming out far louder and more panicked sounding than I’d intended. But at least it still worked. My call bounced off the walls and came back to me as something scarcely recognisable. I felt something touch my back and it was only be a supreme effort of will that I kept myself from crying out and flailing my sword in their direction. But then I heard a voice by my side, one which I’d become intensely familiar with as of late, and I relaxed. “Be quiet.”

Whatever had gone wrong; Elmidath would sort it out. It was a little galling to be so dependent on someone, especially someone so much younger, but what choice did I have? Without my sight I was practically helpless. And that was probably an optimistic assessment of things. “What’s happening? I can’t see anything.”

“I know, I know. I’ll explain everything soon, just shut up for a bit and follow me.” She led me by the arm and I stumbled along as best I could. Walking with my arms outspread, I managed to avoid running into the walls too badly. Progress was slow and painful, but eventually we reached… wherever it was we were going and Elmidath stopped. Letting go of my arm, she sighed with relief. “Okay, we can talk now. And don’t worry, you should be able to see again soon. Just give it a little while.”

Finally able to speak again, I tried to limit myself to just the most pertinent questions. “Where are we? And what’s happening? Why can’t I see?”

“I don’t know enough to explain why it happens, but there are sections down here where light just… stops. Not only that, the darkness sort of… clings to you when you enter. But I guess I don’t really need to explain that part, you’ve already experienced it.”

Even if she only understood slightly more than I did, I really wished she could explain things more than that. Being blind was bad enough, I’d feel a lot better if I had any idea what was happening. “I’m not sure I understand; can you see inside whatever these areas are then?”

“No.”

“Then how did you get us through there?”

“I’ve been through here before and I left a sort of trail so that I could find my way through again.”

“A trail? Of what?” I didn’t remember her having any string or anything.

“My blood.”

“Oh. Uh. Isn’t that kind of dangerous?’

“It’s fine, I only used a little.” She sounded a little defensive. Just how much had she used around the place? By the sounds of it this wasn’t the only area she’d marked.

“You still haven’t explained where we are.”

“I know, but I doubt you’ll be able to understand. Not without being able to see. I’ll show you what I mean once we’ve both recovered.”