Chapter 183

Mirri used her magic to slice through the chain-link fence blocking our way inward. None of us paid much attention to the rusted warning signs bolted to it. DANGER - UNSTABLE GROUND. NO TRESPASSING. ABANDONED MINE SHAFTS. TOXIC RUNOFF.

Naevira said we were close. And more importantly, she said this was the right direction.

We advanced in a loose formation behind one of the massive spoil piles. The place looked abandoned at first glance, but I wasn’t willing to bet anyone’s life on appearances.

Thae stayed grounded. Her bright red scales would stand out against the pale overcast sky and the lack of tree cover around the mine.

We moved carefully from cover to cover - spoil pile to concrete barricade to rusted trailer to pile - keeping as low and quiet as possible. From this angle we couldn’t see into the breaker building, and there were too many shadowed sections along the conveyor structures to confidently rule out lookouts or snipers.

Somewhere deeper in the site, a generator hummed steadily.

One of the maintenance sheds had a pickup truck parked outside. A man in a reflective vest emerged from the building with a rifle slung casually over one shoulder. He crossed the open ground and disappeared into a nearby trailer.

A few moments later the sound of an engine drifted through the site. Another pickup climbed out of the excavation pit and parked beside the first. Three men wearing hard hats climbed out looking more like a maintenance crew than armed guards.

The man in the reflective vest came back out to meet them. They exchanged a few words too far away to hear before he returned to the trailer and the others disappeared into the shed.

“So,” I murmured, “not actually an abandoned mine.”

“What’s the plan?” Ashlara asked quietly. “Take them out?”

I shook my head immediately.

“I’d be shocked if they didn’t have radios. First sign of trouble and everyone here gets alerted.” I glanced across the site again. “Better to try sneaking past them.”

I studied the mine for another moment. “Let’s circle closer to the pit.”

Once again we slipped from cover to cover, gradually working our way toward the edge of the excavation.

Then we finally looked down into it.

The mountain had been carved away in enormous descending terraces that dropped another three hundred feet below us before ending in a flooded basin of stagnant water and runoff. I’d expected the water to be blue-green from mineral contamination. Maybe orange with iron and rust.

Instead it was almost blood red.

Dark shapes protruded from the surface in several places far below, though at this distance I couldn’t tell exactly what they were.

Thick roots climbed upward from the crimson water, spreading across the stone walls in twisting organic lattices. Some reached nearly fifty feet above the surface before disappearing into cracks and terraces higher up the pit.

Sections of the mine rim had partially collapsed over the years, leaving jagged breaks in the terraces and huge slopes of shattered rock at the bottom. Rusted cranes jutted outward from the walls at odd angles while old conveyor frames dipped into the red water below, many twisted and collapsed by decades of corrosion.

Several of the zig-zagging access roads had been destroyed by landslides, but three still appeared maintained and actively used.

Across the pit, scattered tunnel entrances disappeared into the exposed rock face. Some might have been remnants of the old deep mining operations. Others looked newer.

From our vantage point we could also spot security positions scattered around the site. A few lookouts occupied towers and catwalks overlooking the excavation while small patrols wandered the surface near the buildings and roads. The main entrance gate appeared manned as well.

Still, none of it looked overtly military. Most of the people resembled maintenance workers or hired security guards more than soldiers. Relaxed. Bored. Not expecting an attack. Some carried shotguns or bolt-action rifles while others appeared completely unarmed.

Then I spotted the real target.

A few dozen feet above the crimson water sat a heavily fortified compound built into the side of the mine. Floodlights, lookout towers, guard shacks, fuel tanks, and over a dozen vehicles sat protected behind reinforced fencing and concrete barriers. Thick roots climbed portions of the outer defenses like some twisted form of nature was trying to claim the structures.

Even from this distance we could see movement below. People flowed in and out of openings in the stone wall with hurried purpose.

“Looks like that’s where we’re headed,” I said quietly.

Naevira nodded.

“How do we get in there?” Ashlara asked.

I stared down at the compound for another long moment.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

* * *

“What about there?” Naevira asked quietly, pointing a little to the right of the fortified compound.

I followed her finger.

A drainage culvert jutted from the pit wall several feet above the crimson waterline. Half the concrete around it had collapsed away, but the tunnel itself remained open. Thick roots had spread across the surrounding stone, twisting around the culvert like grasping fingers, yet strangely none of them entered the pipe itself or blocked the opening.

Two men lingered outside beneath a work light. They looked more like maintenance workers than guards.

“That’s a hell of a climb,” I muttered. “And it’s on the far side of the outpost.” I eyed the blood-red water uneasily. “Plus I’m not particularly interested in swimming through whatever that is.”

“We can climb,” Vel said simply.

“I can carry the others if necessary,” Iolite added calmly.

I looked between the two of them for a moment before nodding.

“Alright. We wait until dark, scale the wall, and go in through the pipe.”

We eventually settled into an old rusted trailer tucked between a spoil pile and one of the abandoned maintenance sheds. Inside were two battered desks, several metal chairs, a dead rotary phone, and enough mouse droppings to suggest we were intruding on an established civilization.

It wasn’t comfortable, but it was concealed. More importantly, it kept the rain off us once the weather turned around noon.

Cold droplets pattered steadily against the trailer roof - not violent, just relentless. The kind of gray autumn rain that seeped into your bones and made the whole world feel tired. Outside, the temperature dropped steadily, but thirteen bodies packed into a small metal trailer quickly turned the interior warm and muggy despite the damp air.

The ferals slipped out periodically one or two at a time, scouting the area, keeping watch, or maybe just stretching their legs somewhere that didn’t require sitting shoulder to shoulder with everyone else.

I sat against one wall on the floor. Mirri lounged between my legs using my chest as a backrest while Ashlara curled comfortably against one side of me and Serah pressed against the other. Elise cuddled with Serah, close enough that I could hold her hand. Nearby, Iolite sat with her legs draped casually across mine, quietly watching the rain trail down the dirty, broken trailer windows.

Naevira occupied one of the chairs off to the side, though she looked increasingly distracted. Every so often the vines beneath her skin shifted visibly, writhing beneath the surface like worms moving through soil. It almost looked like she was struggling to maintain her elven shape.

“How are you holding up?” I asked quietly.

Her eyes snapped toward mine immediately. “It’s becoming harder to concentrate,” she admitted. “That thing in the back of my mind…” She swallowed hard. “It keeps telling me I need to go down there. That there’s something important I’m supposed to do.”

Her brow furrowed in frustration. “I just can’t remember what.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her, putting far more confidence into my voice than I actually felt. “We’ll head down soon.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand gently.

“And we’ll figure out what the hell is going on.”

* * *

By sundown the rain had weakened into a miserable drizzle, the drops wavering between water and ice in that half-sleet common to late autumn.

Floodlights towered over portions of the mine, throwing the site into alternating pools of harsh white light and deep shadow. We were far enough from civilization that the clouds swallowed the night sky completely, hiding the moon and leaving only the faintest gray glow above the mountains.

Below us, the mine was still alive. If anything, it seemed busier than before.

Workers moved constantly through the compound while dump trucks crawled along the terraced access roads like giant insects. Engines rumbled through the darkness. Backup alarms echoed off the stripped stone walls. Nobody appeared especially alert, but this was clearly when the real work happened.

We circled the rim of the pit until we stood directly above the drainage culvert.

Vel went first.

She slipped over the edge and began descending the rain-slick wall face-first like gravity simply didn’t apply to her. Clo followed immediately after, then Tansy, Moss, and Nim.

I watched them move in silence. Not a single loose stone shifted beneath them. No scrambling. No hesitation. They flowed together instinctively - fluid, coordinated, and deeply unsettling.

A hunting pack.

Below, two men stood outside the culvert smoking beneath a work light, completely oblivious to the death climbing toward them through the dark.

Vel struck first.

One moment the man was smoking. The next he was unconscious and being lowered silently to the ground before he could make a sound.

Clo moved almost simultaneously. Her target vanished backward into the darkness of the drainage pipe so quickly he probably never realized he’d been attacked at all.

Beside me, Iolite quietly removed her sweater and jeans and handed them over before her body began to change.

Her olive skin roughened into stone. Her hair was swallowed back into her body. The soft lines of her human form thickened and expanded as she drew more earth into herself from the surrounding rock.

She grew broader. Heavier. Larger.

By the time she stood nearly twenty feet tall, her shape shifted again. Her back arched outward while her chest and stomach folded inward, forming a broad shelf large enough to carry several people.

She knelt silently and we climbed aboard.

Then she began descending the pit wall.

Despite her immense size, she moved with remarkable care, gripping the slick stone with massive hands while rainwater streamed around her and vanished into the crimson depths below.

Several minutes later we stood beside the culvert entrance with the others.

Iolite gradually shrank back down to her usual size and reclaimed her feminine form. She dressed again inside the tunnel while I gently ran my hand across the top of her head.

She responded with that strange rumbling purr.

The culvert itself was enormous - an old concrete drainage tunnel nearly eight feet tall and roughly ten wide. The floor remained mostly flat except for a shallow center trench carrying a sluggish stream of dark red liquid from somewhere deeper inside.

Maintenance vehicles had probably once driven through here.

Dim utility bulbs ran low along both walls, dividing the tunnel into alternating bands of murky light and shadow.

Moss crouched beside the stream and dipped two fingers into it. She sniffed them, then experimentally licked the liquid before immediately spitting it back out.

“Blood, sap, and oil,” she announced with visible disgust. “Do not recommend.”

Ashlara unzipped her duffle and pulled free her axe and shield. Mirri drew her wand. The rest of us prepared what weapons we had before moving deeper into the tunnel.

Small roots pushed through cracks and seams in the concrete walls, though none had yet grown forcefully enough to split the structure apart.

The silence was broken only by dripping water, buzzing lights, and a strange rhythmic sound farther ahead that reminded me uncomfortably of breathing.

After roughly two hundred feet, the culvert finally opened into a larger chamber.

We stood in a sunken rectangular basin roughly six feet below the surrounding floor. Smaller feeder pipes dotted the walls around us and dripped red liquid while a concrete ramp climbed upward into the larger room beyond.

Huge industrial machines surrounded the depression - ancient pumps covered in peeling green paint, rust, and years of neglect. An old service truck - its body rusted and its tires rotted - was parked near one wall.

The chamber was lit only by scattered emergency lights that bathed everything in dim, sickly illumination.

“It’s a pump room,” I whispered, my voice sounding far too loud in the stillness. “These machines used to drain water out of the mine.”

As we followed the ramp upward, the roots became thicker and more aggressive than they had been inside the culvert. They pushed from cracks in the concrete, wrapped around pipes, and formed raised ridges across portions of the floor like veins beneath skin.

This room had been abandoned long ago.

The strange breathing sound was louder here, though I couldn’t determine where it came from.

At the far end, an EXIT sign glowed faintly red above a doorway nearly swallowed by roots. The growths around the frame looked less like plants and more like something trying to force the opening wider from inside the walls themselves.

After a quick search of the room, I cautiously leaned through the doorway.

A concrete corridor stretched left and right beyond it. The roots around the doorway climbed to the ceiling, where they formed a woven blanket of thorned tendrils overhead heading off in both directions.

“Are those…?” Ashlara asked quietly, eyeing the ceiling suspiciously.

“Yes,” Naevira breathed.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Clo asked.

“They’re busy,” Naevira replied.

Her expression grew distant as she stared upward at the tangled roots. Vines pushed through the skin of her face as she neared them, writhing faintly like she was struggling not to reach back toward them.

“I don’t know what they’re doing,” she whispered. “But I’m meant to join them.”

She shook her head sharply and stepped backward.

“I don’t want to.” Her voice cracked. “Please don’t make me.”

I crossed the distance between us immediately and wrapped my arms around her.

“You don’t have to,” I told her firmly. “No one here expects that from you.” I held her tighter. “Stay with us.”

She clung to me desperately.

I gently rocked her back and forth while the others stood watch around us in silence. Eventually her breathing slowed and the trembling eased.

I brushed a strand of hair from Naevira’s face. “Ok?” I asked softly.

She gave a small nod.