Rory wasn’t the only one shocked into silence at the news. The others who had joined in on the call had petrified as well, the implications of the elf’s statement driving home their deepest fears straight to their soul.

Their home was in mortal peril.

“How?” Rory asked. His voice had gone breathy, his words refusing to come out properly and face the cruel world. “How is it… making its way over here?”

“Tunnels,” Arelland said. “The dungeon you saw merely scratched the surface of the sheer complexity of catacombs spanning underneath the area. They are new, so far as we have been able to see. Artificially created, likely by the Imps and other creatures.”

Dez growled. “The Imps, of course. Those bastards had to have a hand in this.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Viv said. She was clearly trying to keep a grip on herself, holding her fear far down below the surface of her expression so that none could see it. Rory knew where to look, though. It was there in the tightened corner of her eyes, in the way her shoulders were tensed up. “What we need to figure out is how we can stop it.”

“You cannot. Not on your own, and likely, not even with our help. The Corebeast is too powerful.”

“But there is a solution, right?”

“We must find a way to divert its path. I have already set the others to marking out the farthest point it is likely to go before its course can no longer be shifted. It is from there we must excavate a new tunnel for it to take.”

“Where is it?” Rory asked.

“It is at the edge of the hill your palace stands on, I believe.”

“Too close,” April muttered.

She was right. That was far too close. If the monster emerged there, it would still be beyond the Safe Zone’s boundary, and despite the improvements it had gone through, Rory had a hard time feeling confident about the Safe Zone’s ability to protect.

But it didn’t matter. According to the elf, the monster would go beyond that and emerge right underneath the palace itself. The hill’s edge was as far as they could let it come.

“Then we’ll have to start digging there and create a new path for it to take,” Rory said. “Somewhere away from the palace. How does the Corebeast know what exact path to follow?”

“Its size prevents it from taking other paths unless absolutely necessary.”

“Ah, so the path of least resistance. I’m starting to see how this works now.”

The others were harbouring the same plans in their heads. They looked at Rory with clear understanding. It seemed they had all come to the conclusion that they needed to dig their own, gigantic tunnel to lead the Corebeast away from their home, while at the same time, sealing up the tunnel that led underneath the palace itself.

Arelland agreed that it was the best course of action on short notice. Fighting the Corebeast was a possibility, but taking it on underneath the surface where it currently resided was only going to be an invitation to get buried under far too much rubble. That was why the Otherworlders hadn’t taken it on yet.

However, they would have to put an end to it at some point. Arelland promised that he and the rest of the Otherworlders would decide on the best way to execute it in time. Meanwhile, they would help Rory’s group diver its path for now.

They got started without wasting another second. Rory ignored what the consequences of revealing the entire truth to everyone would have. Sure, some were scared to the point of being too petrified to help with anything, while others counselled leaving Belcourt Palace entirely. But ultimately, Rory trusted them to agree with his vision and do what was needed to protect their home.

Everyone busied themselves with tasks. The first part of the operation relied on using Sigils of Earth to excavate the ground in front of the hill to their west. Miles was the only one who had real practice, but Rory was able to Weave some more and get new Sigils of Earth to several of the newcomers, tasking them to help him create a big enough hole.

Finding the tunnel that supposedly already existed was another matter entirely. Ned tried to use his Navigation without much success, while Samson also tried to target and locate it with his Sigil of Gathering.

Neither worked. The underground wasn’t compatible with Ned’s Sigil of Navigation, as it appeared, and the tunnel was too broad a concept for the Sigil of Gathering to locate.

It didn’t matter. Their Sigils of Earth made digging a trivial task, which helped to find the tunnel in question. All they had to do was keep going deeper and deeper until they broke through the tunnel’s surface.

Of course, that didn’t make it completely simple. Fast as they needed to be, they still had to take care not to make any mistakes in their haste.

As they needed to be close enough to the earth to use the Sigil of Earth, Miles and the others had to climb down in the holes they made. They made sure to include ropes attached to anchoring points on the surface in case anyone slipped and fell. Footholds were hard to come by, but they made sure to create some steps and ledges with the Sigils of Earth for that purpose.

They had no protective gear, but Trish forged some steel helmets and the like with her Sigils of Steel and Permanence. They forged onwards into the gloom. Eventually, they found the top of the tunnel. One of the people rescued at the library, Lucy, found an enormous hollow space under a layer of rocks she had dug through.

A hollow space that was trembling worse than anywhere else in the entire locale.

“We’ve found it!” Dez yelled to draw everyone’s attention to the spot. “Over here! We found it.”

Rory hurried along with the rest of them. As much as he wanted to rush into the tunnel and check it out, he also had no intention of falling to his death, so he made sure to be careful as he climbed down the rough steps. He had to use a rope to lower himself from the last ledge to the tunnel’s dark bottom, which was easily fifty feet under the ledge. All told, they had climbed roughly ninety feet below the surface.

It really was huge and hollow within the tunnel’s confines. Rory took a deep breath, feeling the musty air drag itself into his nostrils.

“This place is enormous,” Trish said.

Her voice echoed, bouncing off tunnel walls. It was too dark to tell how wide the tunnel was.

“We need more light,” Rory said.

They all got on it in seconds. Viv user her crimson lightning to send flickering scarlet light flashing everywhere, Mile summoned his Stormfire to light up the area around him in blue, and the various Sigils of Light Rory had granted to others flared even brighter than before.

Even all that didn’t light up the entire space of the tunnel. Its expanse was enormous, as Trish had said. Gargantuan.

The Corebeast had to be at least as big.

A tremor reminded them that it was a big possibility they might meet said monster soon enough.

Viv turned around. “Which way do we go? What did Arelland say? Southeast, right?”

Rory nodded. Arelland had said that was the direction the Imps’ base lay. It didn’t matter which direction they went from there, as long as it wasn’t east and was away from the palace. But he realized the gloom would make any physical motions difficult to notice, so he raised his voice and said, “Yes. We’re going southeast.”

“Southeast is that way,” Ned said, pointing to Rory’s three o’clock direction.

“I thought your Navigation didn’t work underground?” Trish asked.

“It can’t locate a specific spot underground, but it can still tell basic directions.”

“Whatever you say, compass-man.”

April had taken several steps forward in the tunnel. “So, this way leads to the palace, huh? Feels a bit surreal to come at it from underground.”

“We may want to figure out some secondary exits, at some point,” Viv said.

“Like a secret exit?” Miles asked, staring at them.

“Let’s get started,” Rory said. They could have spent a while exploring the novelty of the enormous tunnel around them, but they had no time to waste. The tremors had grown even heavier, so much so that Rory was shaking more often than not. “We don’t have much time.”

They got started on excavating an opening in the tunnel face to the southeast. Of course, it was Miles leading the team of people who had Sigils of Earth.

Meanwhile, the others got busy sealing up the end of the tunnel that led to Belcourt. Trish’s Sigil of Concrete was the biggest help there, though some of the others piled on with some Sigils of Earth. Sue helped with her Sigil of Barricade. She seemed glad to be finally out and bout, moving as she had done before her serious injury, even if it was with the help of the mech suit.

Unfortunately, the tunnel opening was proving to be far too large to pile up with anything. Even when Rory Wove more Sigils of Concrete into being and gave them to some of the others who had free slots, it was starting to become apparent that the tunnel was too large to seal up that away. Not even the Sigil of Permanence would help to create enough concrete in time.

Unless… Rory looked up, noting how the ceiling disappeared into darkness.

“Miles,” he called out. “Can you bring down the ceiling?”

Miles stopped digging away the earth. “What?”

“Bring down the ceiling. See if your Sigil of Earth can reach that high, and if it can’t, then Ned can take you there. We don’t have time to block up the tunnel with just concrete.”

Miles frowned up into the relentless gloom. “I see what you mean. And yeah, that’s too far for me. But even if I can reach that high, bringing the whole ceiling might make the entire tunnel collapse. Then we’ll all be trapped.”

“Not if I Ward some Sigils of Support into it.” Rory was about to say more, but then another tremor coursed through the area, throwing down dust from far above and making him sway on his feet. “We don’t have time. While Miles takes care of the ceiling, the rest of you continue digging out the second tunnel. Hurry.”

“On it,” Miles said, then started hailing down Ned, who had flown farther into the tunnel.

There wasn’t much time. The whole area was still shaking as more tremors coursed through, carrying with them the continuous threat of the approaching Corebeast.

They continued to work. Ned carried Miles high into the air. Soon enough, rocks started flying down to splash into the hardening concrete Trish’s gang was summoning. They changed the angle of their concrete streams so that instead of filling up the whole area, they were only stuffing the cracks between the falling rocks and making sure they stuck together.

For his part, Rory was Weaving away Sigils of Support from the tunnel walls. It only cost him about three or four square feet of rocks, about five or six inches deep, to get the Sigils at Teal II. Warding them back into the tunnel ought to make the entire area even sturdier than before.

Of course, there wasn’t any point in strengthening the support near the bottom. Rory waited until Miles had a decent pile of rocks built up before calling them both down so that Ned could fly up with Rory this time.

He did his best to check his fear as Ned ascended at the speed of a rocket. Air whooshed past Rory’s ears, tugging away sounds from below before he could hear them. He focused on the gigantic pile of rocks Miles had thrown down, and how the others were stringing them together with concrete to make it into an impassable barrier. The entire mess had to be thirty feet high and about as wide as a house.

“Close enough?” Ned asked when they cleared it.

“I think so.”

Rory and Ned had risen more than the tunnel’s fifty feet of height. Miles had gouged up another fifteen feet of rocks out of the ceiling. There was no light here, but using his Weaving gave some light. That allowed him to Ward in the Sigils of Support.

A tremor made everyone far below shout out. Rory had just finished with his Warding, and he looked down to see several Miles, Trish, and everyone else still busy with making the barrier had fallen to their feet. Only Sue was still standing, likely thanks to her mech suit.

“We better go down,” Rory said.

Ned’s controlled descent was no less thrilling than their climb had been. Rory was glad when his feet finally touched down on the ground. He gasped when he did so. The shaking wasn’t stopping anymore. The tremors didn’t pause. It went on and on, an unending quake going through crests and troughs of intensity. Before long, Rory lost his footing too.

The Corebeast was almost here.

Rory stared past them at the diverting tunnel they had created. He grimaced. They’d made good progress, but it hadn’t been far enough. He could still see its end, after all.

As if to hammer home the fact that they hadn’t done enough, several Otherworlder elves dashed in on their mech suit rollers. Everyone’s hackles rose, as much as seeing Otherworlders pop in unannounced as at the alarm on their faces.

Esrahir was in the lead. The rollers under his metal feet screeched as he pulled himself to a halt before Rory. He looked around quickly to take in their circumstance. “It seems you weren’t fast enough.”

Rory swallowed. “We did what we could. We’re just going to have to hope we did enough.”

Esrahir turned towards their newly-excavated side-tunnel. “Is that the diversion? I am unsure if it is big enough.”

“It’ll have to do.”

“Then so be it. We will attempt to lure it in there, though I am unsure what will happen when there is no further space to go to. Regardless, you and your companions need to leave the tunnel immediately. You cannot face such a creature directly.”

Trish cursed. “I was sure we were going to get some more time.”

Another tremor, worse than all the rest, proved that they really didn’t. It was strong enough that it shook loose more some of the rocks from the ceiling and their barrier as well. As if that wasn’t enough, a new sound accompanied—a heavy roar that thrummed through the ground and vibrated out of the walls, like a distant volcanic eruption.

The Corebeast was almost upon them.

“Everyone,” Rory said. “Get out of here. Now. We’ve done what we could, and now we’ll let the Otherworlders handle this. Let’s go.”

They began departing upwards. As they gathered together for Viv to use on gigantic teleportation with her crimson bolt, Rory used his Frozen Lightning on the barrier at several points. The hope was that it would help prevent the monster from pursuing its original course towards the palace.

No sooner had they exited the tunnel far beneath them, sprawling on the ground open to the sky, one more devastating tremor rocked the land. This time, the accompanying roar splintered Rory’s eardrums, leaving a nasty ringing in his ears and a terrible throbbing headache. Worse, the ground under them began to crack and tear up.

The Corebeast, it seemed, had finally arrived.