Around the station exterior, doorways sided next to broad window-like openings presented the impression of storefronts. Spaced sporadically between them, arch top passages led out of the central area, presumably to other tram platforms.

In complete silence they moved slowly into the space, eyes roaming in awe. The clattering of blockbot’s treads echoed eerily as it followed.

Erramir moved to the closest hut and leaned in. Other than a half-dozen narrow, waist-high pillars of rock clustered in the center, it was empty.

Carson and Val went separate directions to the two closest shop doorways, doing the same. Their inspections took the same handful of seconds his had, and they turned back with shrugs. Everything in the station was stripped bare leaving nothing but rock.

Erramir’s chest tightened. He looked up at the hut’s façade and saw what he feared. Extending an arm and raising up on his toes, his fingers found small round empty holes. Holes that had at one time, no doubt held metal pins to support signage.

Carson and Val both saw him do it. The tension in the group ratcheted up several levels instantly.

Erramir backed away from the hut toward the alcove with the steps up. “We need to get out of here. This is the canyon all over again.” He tried to whisper, but his voice still carried with disturbing clarity through the enormous space.

In his mind Erramir repeated the words from their new quest. Defeat any and all Challengers to establish your dominance and secure the territory.

The three of them backed into the alcove and Erramir looked at Val who was now holding VirginWood in a combat stance. “Val, your map. It shows hostiles, right?”

“Only out to fifty feet or so, it doesn’t even cover to the other side of the station, but I don’t have anything on it now.”

Erramir looked around, considering. Carson nudged him. “The essential energy flows are stable and I’m not picking up any of that evil essence.”

“Virg isn’t freaking out about bugs either,” Val added. “But that could be a bad thing I suppose, if they’ve already been sucked into some machine of death.”

“Right,” Erramir agreed. “That only makes me feel slightly better. I suppose there’s no pipe here either and that’s what got them riled up last time.”

“Damn. I spoke too soon,” Val said. “Virg just told me that there are bugs here, just not very many, so he wasn’t complaining about it.”

“Ok, so we’ve got two options here as I see it.” Erramir said, then laid out his thoughts. Essentially, that they could circle around to the corpse of the Baltaris, for the loot and because they were at least somewhat likely to run into the Varden.

Or, they could skip the loot and head straight for the Varden Base that was somewhere above them. The Varden team would return there soon enough and the three of them could hopefully complete their induction into the order of guardians.

Erramir and Val discussed the options as Carson seemed to consider. The lure of level 22 loot was strong, and they worked to come up with a safe strategy to get it.

“I think we should head up to the Base.” Carson interrupted Erramir and Val’s discussion. His having been quiet up to that point had them both fell silent.

“That Baltaris probably would have torn us apart and there may be more of those down here. Even if they’re slightly weaker, that quest clearly says all challengers, and it’s a party quest. You guys ever hear of balanced three-person party? Cause I haven’t. If we’re gonna survive, we need those other Varden.”

He met their eyes. “We’re badass, but not that badass. It’s not worth the risk. We’re too far from the Whitewood and we still don’t understand respawn points. There are two sealed passages between here and there. I doubt we could even get back here if we restarted at our original spawn points. Forget the loot for now, we need to not die.”

The finality in his words clarified the correctness of that choice and the issue was settled.

Val used the map data she’d gained from the transport to plan their path. There was a mechanical lift, designed specifically for the Varden, about an hour’s walk away. She took the lead and they went up the stairs, leaving the station behind, unexplored until another day.

“Carson!” Erramir yelled as he slashed through two of the dog sized, barrel chested creatures with miniature elephant tusks. The grip of his right hand released as his Spidey-sense triggered and it flashed to intercept another lunging from his right. The thing clamped down on his forearm, its curving tusks sweeping up half a foot from his face.

The teeth cut through his armor like paper but were unable to get through his DrakkenWood Skin. Which was good, because the crushing force that the small creature exerted on his arm hurt like hell. He stabbed Diviner into the stone, freeing his left hand and tore into the back of its neck with his black claws.

The creature yowled, releasing his arm and he ripped out its throat then hurled it toward the knee-high hole from which many, many more of its kin were still pouring. To his left, Val’s staff whirled into a loud crack. Then it whirled again and thumped into another beast.

“Just shoot some ice spikes into the damn hole!” She cried out. “We’re going to be overwhelmed!”

They’d killed at least two dozen of the eyeless, tusked, short-legged beasts, but their numbers were endless and several times that number were already in the moderately sized chamber. With every passing second another emerged. The situation was on the brink of untenable.

The room was twenty feet wide, but for twice that width the space in front of them rolled with dark dirt-slicked fur in an undulating surface of bodies punctuated regularly by points of bone white tusk.

“There’s not enough water essence for Frozen Volt down here!” Carson yelled back. “I just need another minute.”

Diviner back in hand, Erramir struck out to his right cleaving through another beast that was trying to flank him. His return swing caught one following right behind and then another that jumped for the ripped-up midsection of his armor, taking it clean through the skull.

Each cut splattered blood and black ooze in equal measure. The ooze smelled like death and the stench in the room was getting thick. Breathing turned his stomach and he fought to ignore the impulse to wretch.

They were steadily moving backway under pressure from the creatures and to stay clear of the slick ooze coating the floor scattered with corpses.

The Varden elevator was only one turn and a hundred feet away, but it was also right past the damn burrow hole. Erramir silently cursed not bolting past the hole when they’d had the chance. There were too many for furred hellish creatures to try that now.

“Ok, I got something!” Carson finally called. “Just scooch right Err!”

That would leave Val’s right flank vulnerable, but he moved anyhow. She’d have to deal with it. If they didn’t close that hole, they were all dead.

Val cursed and he caught movement that looked like a leg fly through his peripheral vision. A moment later a javelin of flaming rock shot past. It caught an emerging beast in the head and slammed it back into the hole. A second javelin pierced a beast leaping toward Val, careening in back into others and temporarily clearing some space.

Three more dark brown stone projectiles, rippling with blue-black flames followed in rapid succession, all disappearing into the small tunnel.

“Ok, that should stop them! Make room on your right Err.”

He did and Carson came up on that side staying a couple steps back. The mage started picking off the beasts in the middle of the pack while Erramir cut down the ones close-at-hand. Val had a hard time killing the things, but each turn of her staff found a skull, knocking them senseless.

When she had a dozen unconscious on the ground she called, “Switch!” And Erramir moved left to cut through their prone bodies with his follow through swings, while she came right behind him and started cracking skulls again and creating another pile of dazed forms.

This continued for long minutes and they fell into a rhythm cutting, whacking, and slinging flaming spears. Eventually, their backs nearly against the rear wall and just in front of the entry passage, Erramir split the last beast with a diagonal upward slash.

The halves spun out to either side. And they stood there, three abreast, breathing heavy, bodies not ready to release the battle for fear of another surprise.

Before them, the remains of what had to be nearly a hundred of the fetid creatures littered the room from one end to the other with body parts, blood, and vile black ooze.

Carson had sent two more flaming spikes into the Burrow during the course of the fight when he’d detected some movement there. Still, there continued to be yipping from the opening, and he sent another couple, just to be sure. The noises grew more distant.

Erramir checked on the mage. He knew that the essential energy system allowed Carson to cast far more spells than would be typical for a level eight mage, but that had been a ton of projectiles. Carson grinned back. “That was fun.”

“You’re not burned out? Not going to pass out?”

“Nah. The essence hates these things. I could do that all day.”

Erramir nodded slowly, feeling slightly awed by his statement, but also, maybe, understanding a bit more. “Ok, good to know.”

Val was supporting herself using Virg as a staff that she clutched tightly. She hobbled over and leaned on his shoulder. The armor on both her arms was cut ran in a dozen spots where tusks had slipped through her defense. Blood trickled out the sleeve of her limp left arm and dripped off her right elbow from where it was pooling inside the leather.

Her right lower right leg had a wide gash across her shin and inside calve. Erramir winched slightly, that cut looked painful.

She was in the worst shape by far.

“Let’s go,” Val rasped. “There may be another tunnel and I won’t last in another fight.”

Erramir knew she was right, despite Val’s incredible speed and capacity to manipulate Virg at a distance, she was vulnerable in close in a way he wasn’t. Given ten minutes her accelerated healing should get her back into fighting shape, but they might not have ten minutes.

Erramir didn’t like the discrepancy in injuries. Val was fighting in a front-line role that she wasn’t equipped for. Beyond that, she desperately needed Virg to have more teeth, just knocking foes unconscious was inefficient.

He slipped an arm around her back and looked at the pool of carnage before them, black ooze was everywhere. Erramir knew there was a ton of loot out in the field of bisected animals, but they couldn’t spare the time to collect it. As he made to cross the room, Val resisted.

“Wait.” She said urgently. Blockbot zipped around them and began pushing right through the center with a four-block wide snowplow wedge. It pushed corpses aside in a wide swath, creating lined up banks of them. The ooze retreated from the burnished brass metal is if magnetically repulsed leaving behind a walkway of clean cavern floor.

Erramir and Val stared. Then he noticed that the ooze was slowly sliding back like cold molasses.

“Walking.” He said, waking Val from her daze and they scurried ahead, catching up with blockbot. That’s where they remained until blockbot pushed clear of the last body part. Then they headed directly to the passage exit in the right corner of the back wall.

From the burrow exit on the left side of the back-wall, faint yips and howls echoed and lent urgency to their flight.

“Err!” Carson called from back in the chamber of bodies, halting their progress. He turned and Val hopped to turn with him. “I need your pack. These things are packed full of funky essential energy.”

Carson stood in blockbot’s cleared path, left arm cradling a tangle of tusks and right gripping a two-foot-long blade of blue ice. Erramir had to smirk. “Not a great time for loot, Car.”

Val was smiling, and she released his shoulder and hopped to lean on the wall for support. “I guess we’re getting loot after all.”

“Damn you two,” Erramir grunted, but ran to Car, pulling his pack off and holding it open. Carson dumped the tusks through the opening in a clatter of bone and started working his ice sword with short, fast hacks that cut through flesh and tusk alike.

“I thought there was no water essence down here.” Erramir said with a hint of suspicion.

“There was some, I never said none. But now there’s a lot more.” He swept a hand to indicate the widely strewn viscera and fluids.

“Oh. Right.”

They moved fast as the ooze slowly forced them further and further from the long pile of bodies. Each couple slashes Carson dumped tusks into the pack. In no time they threatened to spill out.

“That’s all.” Erramir said. “Packs full, let’s go.” He cinched the drawcord tight around the top, flipped the leather flap closed, and slung the pack onto his back.

Carson grunted, cut a handful more, barely managing to gather them without stepping in the ooze.

Then they heard it.

A cacophony of yowls spilled from the entrance. Apparently, the animals did have another passage. From the volume, it sounded like they might have eight or ten more. “Fuckin hell,” Erramir growled. “Time to go!”