Basysus 30, 1278: Upper Deeplands. Some victories leave bruises; others leave you dead. Then there was where I wound up…

No one was more surprised than me when I coughed myself awake. Other than my headache, of course, which I think had been lying in wait. A cramp in my right foot kept it company. My ears rang like a cracked bell. The last thing I remembered was fire, stone, and something yanking me into the dark.

The taste of limestone grit and burnt rock lay heavy in the air, mingled with what smelled like the memory of old incense. I knew where I was—the Deeplands. Incense and the Deeplands didn’t really go together. Then I heard the trickle of water and opened my eyes to see a soft, blue haze of lights twinkling across the dark stone ceiling.

Sure, I was in the Deeplands, just not a part of that living nightmare I expected to see again.

“By the Lady Deep, it’s a Deepland Hollow.”

Most people think the Deeplands want to murder anyone who enters. That’s not entirely wrong. The Deeplands are riddled with tunnels and caverns. Dark, looming places with creatures that’ll eat a person as sure as they’d burp at them. That’s before you include the underground forests, moss vines, and walking mushrooms. A lot of things that really ought not to thrive underground, but do just fine.

That’s just the Upper Deeplands. Lower? It gets odder, slithery, slimy, and a lot more violent.

But Hollows are a kind of oasis, nestled in a storm of near-death experiences. Uncommon places like this one, where predators—for reasons I never understood—just didn’t attack. Nothing did.

“I thought these were only in the Lower Deeplands,” I murmured, my words a soft echo. “Lady Deep? You’ve got one hell of a sense of humor.”

For a moment, I glanced at the gentle glow from moss-covered rocks near the ceiling. The tangled yellow-green hair-like fronds shifted with a hushed whisper, playing shadows around the narrow rock-gap that cradled me. I reached for my canvas shoulder bag and found it. Then, gently, I tapped the back of my head against the cobalt blue-streaked rock behind me, letting out a soft snort.

“If there’s a Hollow, there’s water. Maybe a tinderbox.” I blinked at a rush of confused memories. “Who grabbed me? What grabbed me?” My thoughts turned darker, worried. “Garrik better have told the others.”

I recovered my whip and knives because without them, I felt a little naked. After that, I got to my feet. Instantly, I grabbed the wall as the edges of my vision frayed like old cloth, then reknit back together. I rubbed the side of my head, then the bandage that somehow had stayed on my arm.

“Oh, dizzy. All right, that’s not a good sign.” After a deep breath, I added, “Just keep moving. One foot in front of the other.”

After another deep breath, I stepped into the cavern with its flowing blue lights. When I did, my breath hitched at what I saw.

Tiny, blue-glowing motes flitted around me like puffs of miniature fireflies. A wide pool, glowing with a soft inner light from submerged moss, filled half the small cavern. Deeplands water was always suspicious and rank. But here? It smelled of lemongrass. Far as I knew, it had something to do with the rocks in the Hollow that acted like natural filters

More of that hair-like, feathery moss dangled overhead. That, with the motes and water, was where most of the soft light came from. A modest herd of almost twenty thumb-sized, mushroom-shaped hornwort climbers scurried along a wall to my left. They changed direction as I walked closer, then hurried to the shadows that filled the far side of the cavern in a flurry of little bat-wings. The herd settled onto what was either a battered shrine or a really interesting stack of rocks. A pair of pale-pink, six-legged geckos studied me warily from their perch on a nearby flat stone.

“How did I get here instead of being dead?” Then I saw the answer to my question.

Along the water’s edge, next to an ancient tinderbox, crouched a familiar water elemental. Azure didn’t look the least bit injured, and she now wore an outfit not too different from mine. I figured she’d pulled some magic threads off the water nearby and summoned them. Elementals can do that. Azure had made a shallow fire pit, then used old rags that probably came from the traveler’s tinderbox.

I watched while she furiously slapped together two blue rocks smeared with yellow streaks. There was a promising spark, but it just wouldn’t catch on the rags. She growled under her breath as I knelt down next to her.

“Azure?”

She didn’t reply. It was as if she didn’t hear me. True, elementals can learn mortal languages. Most don’t bother. But now I wondered if Azure had trouble hearing, which told me she might have been reading lips back in the Sunfate temple.

“That would explain the intense stares,” I murmured, then gently touched her arm. Her skin was damp, like someone who’d just walked through a light rain.

Azure jumped with a start, then scowled. But I didn’t see any real anger there, just frustration.

“Wait,” I signed quickly, pointing at the stones. “Those? They’re water-flare stones. You have to soak them first.” Picking up the stones, I set them in the shallow edge of the nearby glowing water, then turned back to Azure. “Why start a fire? Fire hurts you, doesn’t it?”

Azure shrugged, glanced at the rags and water-flare stones, then blew out a misty breath.

“Yes, fire hurts,” Azure signed, fingers forming the words slowly to make sure I kept up. “Hurts worse the hotter it gets. All of us Merehaffru are like that. But you people need the heat and light. Especially to see.”

I shifted to a sitting position as I tapped the side of my head, then shaped the words.

“Most do, but I don’t. Well, not entirely. My eyes were changed against my will. This?” I waved a hand around me. “It’s fine. Not that warm, but I can see well enough. Especially that beat-up altar over there.”

Azure nodded, and we lapsed into an odd silence. It turned awkward just before the flare-stones shimmered with a dull, brassy-yellow aura. I gave Azure a thin smile.

“You saved my hide. Thank you,” I signed.

She shrugged again with a half-smile of her own.

“You are welcome. But it’s a debt paid. You saved me first from the Bargain. I’m tired of being treated like a tool.”

Sign language or not, I caught the capital letter in the word ‘Bargain’. That hit me like a dead weight. There was a lot to unpack with that, but I didn’t know where to start.

I fished the flare stones out of the water. One I set on the rags, the other I used like a hammer to crack the first one open. Azure helped me crack the second with an ordinary rock. Greenish flames ate the rags and merrily burned.

“The rock burns?” Azure signed with a scowl.

“Yes,” I replied with a quick gesture. “The insides are like ancient wood and peat rather than real rock.”

The fire was mildly warm, but what made me really pause was how the light brought the Hollow to vibrant life. I gasped softly.

Smooth rock walls of the natural cavern twinkled like a fog-shrouded evening sky. Green light danced over countless flecks of gypsum, which added to the ethereal atmosphere. That light was everywhere at once, but never bright. Just a soft, warm light that wrapped around to give everything a caring embrace. Even the moss tendrils on the ceiling reacted, moving on their own as if in a gentle breeze.

More important? It illuminated the battered altar I saw earlier. Only I had been wrong; there wasn’t just one.

There were several.

I slowly realized this wasn’t just a waystation in the Deeplands. It was what remained of an ancient outpost. One wasn’t just old; it was impossibly old. Something far older than the Jata kingdom, the ancient viprin tribes, maybe even the Ancient Order, reused over the centuries. There was even a Traveler’s Wall where visitors were expected to etch their names in a particular rock wall.

There were hundreds of thousands of names, some in languages I’d never seen before.

To me? This wasn’t just a Deepland Hollow, or even an outpost ruin.

It was literal history.

“By the Lady Deep,” I murmured, taking a slow step toward the edge of the pool and those altars. “Azure? I take back everything I said about the fire.”

Azure tapped me on the arm to get my attention, shook her head and shrugged. I glanced around the cavern, waved at it, then repeated what I said with sign language. She nodded back, then also looked around with an expression of wonder.

I tried to take it all in. There were carvings, small shrines to deities of all kinds. Some for the Raven Mother, or Sha’ree, the Lady Deep herself, even one to the Mending Brother. Then there were some ancient ones dedicated to… I had no idea what.

In the middle of that miniature model city of beliefs, I saw a familiar trio of viprin statues around a small bowl. It held a portion of the Hollow’s water that shone like pure pale moonlight reflected off glass. Next to it was a tiny nook in the wall with a worktable, half-carved stone blocks, a chisel, and a stack of scrolls. I excitedly tapped Azure on the arm, my hands already a blur forming the words.

“The viprin stonemasons. They were here!”

I ran around the edge of the water toward the altars with Azure on my heels. Reverently, I sorted through lotus-shaped incense holders made of shells, mosaic stone with the remains of strange powders, jade prayer beads, and more. Azure helped as carefully as she could.

“There are so many,” Azure signed before she moved aside an incense holder that still held a pair of forgotten incense sticks. “Is this what the undead thing was after? This place?”

I pulled out a small metal chest, partly encrusted with lime, from a hole in the wall. The lock had suffered over the long years and was so fragile that it snapped loose in my hands. I scrunched my nose at the cavern, then shook my head as I signed back.

“Almost. She wants into an ancient temple supposedly nearby.”

Azure made a sour expression.

“Very lich of her.”

I chuckled as I pushed open the lime-encrusted lid. Inside were several wrapped bundles of writing charcoal, brushes, and folding measuring rods still marked in Ancient Order centimeters. Along with that were bags of chalk, and several journals with odd, waxy, canvas-like covers. It felt like the waterproofing resin the Ancient Order used.

Gingerly, I pulled out the books, then wrapped a pencil from my bag in rags from the tinderbox to ease them open in case they were fragile.

They weren’t, which really caught my attention. These things were centuries old, but felt almost as durable as my journal. Even their fragile sewn binding was sturdy and intact. The first three were blank, but not the fourth. I yanked the journal out of my bag and quickly set to copying what I could read. There were stonemason’s notes and more. A lot more.

“Maps, diagrams,” I murmured, then frowned over a passage in ancient Tashkiran. “Taru vekesh besha nashkas dovu? That’s odd.”

Azure, who had stopped to look over my shoulder, tapped my arm with another frown. I translated as best I could in sign.

“It’s written in an ancient viprin language. It reads, ‘The Temple dreams, or dream-speaks, while the Sisters sleep’. Maybe something happens at midnight at the old temple?” I pointed at a faded map on the green book’s next page with a grin. “Now this? This changes everything. These are diagrams of what looks like a buried groundwater lift and two routes into the viprin temple. Two. One through the groundwater lift structure.”

I scribbled fast, copying everything I could into my journal. Notes in the margin—if I’d translated it right—told me I was on the right path to Toshirom Ifoon. But it wasn’t the fastest route by any means. Those notes said the second route was faster, but risked being near the Lower Deeplands. Not my idea of a good time, but I’d take what I could get. I paused for a moment as my thoughts wandered to Kiyosi, Mikasi, and everyone else on this misadventure.

A knot of remorse bunched inside me over dragging them into this. I owed Liru for saving Kiyosi’s life. But I wondered, would paying back that debt get someone else or myself killed in the process? Guilt needled my heart alongside worry.

I twitched when Azure quickly tapped me on the shoulder. This wasn’t another excited look over some squid-shaped incense holder—though she had found one of those. Azure’s eyes were hard, expression stiff, as she tapped my whip, then touched a finger to her lips. I immediately realized what got her attention.

Hoofbeats. Down here that meant centaurs. The slow, steady hoofbeats echoed outside the Hollow along with a bitter, clipped voice.

“That lunatic lady said to find the Windtracer, then lose her body. Deeplands are good for hiding the dead.”

I knew that voice.

“Elkerton? Auditor Elkerton?” I hissed in a low voice. “What in the drowning hells is that bastard doing here?”

I carefully shoved the books into my satchel as I shot Azure a warning look. My hands quickly shaped a single word.

“Run!”