Dim magical light illuminated their path as Edwin and Salissa followed their guide down yet another magestone corridor, the ceiling just high enough that Edwin didn’t need to duck. While the mage was looking around at the new environment with curiosity and wonder, Edwin, if anything, felt more at home than he had in the past several months spent under the open sky. The straight corridors, made up of perfectly smooth walls and sharp right angles, were deceptively similar to those of Walter’s laboratory, the most obvious exception being the lighting. The magelights built into the ceiling every few meters shone a warm yellow, where Walter had left his the standard blue for reasons of simplicity and conservation of energy.

At the end of the tunnel, their guide, a soldier from the garrison with a bandage wrapped around his head, stopped in front of a closed wooden door and fiddled with a ring of keys to find the right one. A few seconds later the door opened with the piercing creak of thirsty hinges yearning for a drop of oil, revealing yet another corridor just like the one they stood in, except pitch black. The soldier stepped through the door and blindly felt around at the wall, finally finding what he was looking for. A silver rod as long as Edwin’s forearm was hanging off a hook by the half-circular stone grip attached to it. Lifting it with a slight grunt, the man slotted the breaker into a recess in the wall, turning the handle down to lock it in.

As the magesilver rod connected the previously separated channels inlaid into the stone and mana flooded into the newly opened area, the lights in the tunnel behind them dimmed ever so slightly. In the same moment, the ones in front of them came to life, illuminating the way ahead. Not even a second later, the brightness of all lights returned to their original level as the central ritual that controlled the lights in the fortress drew more power from its mana crystal to restore the designated equilibrium.

“Here we are,” the soldier grunted, wiping his dusty hands on his shirt. “The storerooms down here should be plenty safe to keep your guests, even the robed ones.”

The corridor behind them was chock full with people, Harvand soldiers escorting the prisoners of war to their holding cells. Salissa and Edwin had come along, Salissa because she was the most capable combat mage they had, and Edwin because his curious nature made him stick his nose into anything even remotely interesting.

“You’re going to keep them down here?” Salissa asked doubtfully. “With no windows?”

“Ain’t many windows in the Head,” the guide grunted. “Just the shooting floor. Kitchen and smithy have ones too, but they’re even farther up. Everything else only has these.” He raised a hand, running it along the ceiling where the magelights were barely sticking out. “Ya get used to it. Not that they should be here for long anyway, we aren’t set up to keep prisoners. Usually we would’ve stuck ’em closer to the entrance, but with mages ya never know. They might try to tunnel out the back or summin’. Won’t do ‘em much good here, it’s just rock all the way to the coast.”

Edwin raised his eyebrows, then he realized that the soldier had no way of knowing that Salissa was a mage herself. In her adventurer’s garb there really was no way to tell.

Their charges didn’t relish the idea of being locked in an underground stone box without sunlight, but they went along without incident. The guide promised that they would get some furniture soon, blankets and chairs to begin with, but that was not just boring but also the garrison’s problem, so Edwin turned to leave. On the way back up he pulled off his glove, running his bare fingers along the smooth magestone wall. There were more differences to the laboratory’s halls, of course. While the two structures had been largely built using the same techniques, Walter wasn’t a materialist by any stretch of the imagination, let alone a true mage architect. Those had access to a wide range of useful spells, among them one that changed the usual, polished surface texture of magestone floors into a rougher one to provide better grip. The floors under Edwin’s feet provided good traction in any circumstance. In the laboratory, a single glass of water could turn twenty meters of corridor into a neck-breaking slide.

Still, while Edwin could appreciate the usefulness of the floor beneath his feet, Walter dismissed it with a spiritual snort. He could’ve learned that spell easily enough, he’d simply chosen not to. In fifty years living in his lab he’d never slipped once. Turning his beautiful floors from their shining perfection into a dull grey would’ve not only been a waste of time, but an aesthetic travesty. As he wound his way through the narrow barricades that blocked the entrance, daylight already greeting him from up ahead, Edwin idly wondered when Walter had started to care about aesthetics over usefulness.

Once they were past the entrance, built intentionally cramped to keep the larger species of Volarki from gaining entrance, Edwin stepped out into the courtyard and stretched, taking a deep breath of fresh air. Living underground was fine for skeletons, he decided, and while the tunnels beneath the mountain felt safe, being back under the open sky was a relief. Like plants, people needed sunlight. Salissa stopped next to him, the much shorter woman having had no trouble to navigate the confined space.

“You alright?” she asked with a grin. “Everything fold back out like it was supposed to?”

“The cheek!” Edwin said with mock outrage, starting to walk towards the ruined gatehouse. “I’ll fold you up and stick you into my backpack for an hour, we’ll see how you feel afterwards.”

Salissa fell in step beside him, her laughter echoing from the walls around them. Outside of the courtyard, the division was preparing to move out once more. In the loading dock a short distance from the personnel entrance, a crane was lowering down pallets of supplies from storage locations further up. It was an ingenious design, Edwin mused. The large area allowed for easy loading and unloading of carts through the opening in the ceiling, but the thick stone doors that could be closed from inside were almost impossible to breach from below. Even if someone managed to get in, the storage area had only a single, easily defensible connection to the garrison quarters and the rest of the fortress.

He watched the crane work until they passed through the wall, turning toward ninth battalion’s encampment. Even if they only stayed for a few short hours, a force this size had to keep discipline and order when stopping, otherwise it would take forever for the two thousand soldiers and adventurers to get going again. They walked until they saw more brown than blue, then looked for their unit flag to find Bordan.

“Everyone squared away?” the former soldier asked as they approached.

“They stuck them in some empty storerooms, just like the captain said,” Edwin acknowledged.

“Good,” Bordan said, then turned back to where he’d been looking before they’d arrived. Edwin followed his eyes and groaned. There was Leodin, who had probably ditched the healers to talk to his friends and comrades before they left him sitting in Giant’s Head with the rest of the injured, and next to him was another familiar figure wearing blue. His brother, Gedrin.

“Not that guy again!” Edwin groused, stepping forward. “This time I’ll really—”

“Wait,” Bordan said, raising a hand to stop him. “I think we can let this one play out.”

Edwin gave him a curious look, waiting for an explanation, but Bordan didn’t provide one. Huffing, Edwin settled down to watch. As expected, Leodin looked angry, though not quite as much as the other times. Gedrin was also much more subdued than before.

“Look,” Leodin’s older brother said, “you’re my little brother. When you told me that you hated me, that you felt like I’d mistreated you all that time… That really hurt. I love you, Leodin, and all I want is for you to be happy. If I was making you miserable, I wish you’d said something.”

“Like you would’ve listened,” Leodin grumbled. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t even notice, you were always so busy being everyone’s favorite.”

“It wasn’t easy for me either, okay?” Gedrin snapped, taking a deep breath to steady himself as Leodin laughed in disbelief.

“Yeah, you had it so hard!”

“It’s not like anyone actually asked me if I wanted to inherit the business!” Gedrin said sharply. “Mom and Dad had decided that before I was even born. You were jealous of Dad showing me his tricks? Well I could’ve done just fine without having to get up in the middle of the night four times a week to hike through the forest, just so he could show me another stupid animal crossing or make me practice building traps! I would’ve happily traded all that with you and hung out with my friends instead!”

“Yeah, your friends!” Leodin said. “Because they were all your friends! I was always just ‘Gedrin’s little brother’!”

“How is that my fault?” Gedrin snapped again, pausing to collect himself once more. “Look, talking about the past won’t change anything. Even if I never did it intentionally, I accept that I did wrong by you. All I ask is that you give me a chance to make up for it instead of hating me forever.”

A mixture of emotions played out on Leodin’s face, deeply held grudges warring with other, more nuanced feelings as both Gedrin and the massive crowd of adventurers who pretended not to listen waited for his answer.

“I’ll think about it,” Leodin said, turning to walk toward the other injured people that were gathering to head into the mountain.

“Thank you,” Gedrin said to his brother’s back, a relieved smile on his face.

Bordan turned to Edwin, nodding. “I think that went pretty well.”

“Maybe not quite as much of an ass as I initially thought,” Edwin agreed. “Good for them.”

“Well,” Bordan sighed, “back to business.” He cleared his throat, then stomped forward, raising his voice. “Show’s over, people, get your asses in gear! If you haven’t replenished your supplies, head to the loading dock now! We’re leaving in half an hour, and if you haven’t restocked your rations by then, you get to fight hungry!”