The hollowed dormitory cells stood vacant. At night, the kobolds marched in force on the surface. But in the late afternoon, they should be underground, sleeping. Had they been so provoked that they still rampaged outside all day? It didn’t seem right.

  I gave the sides of the silo room another look. A tunnel wide enough to drive a truck through gaped midway up the walls. The tunnel’s tall and oval shape made no sense. If the kobolds had gone through the trouble of digging a sizable tunnel, why wouldn’t they make it wide enough to handle crowds? Instead, it barely allowed a few kobolds to walk side-by-side. Stranger still, I saw no footprints on the tunnel’s floor, so apparently, it served no traffic.

  Fabulosa leaned over my shoulder to look.

  I turned to her. “Does something about this seem a little odd?”

  “No. Not really. Why?”

  “It seems a little too organized. I mean, kobolds are rats. Their weapons and clothing are slipshod and in poor condition. This—” I gestured to the room. “If this is where they live, it looks industrial and regimented.”

  Fabulosa shared none of Charitybelle’s enthusiasm for architecture, so the observation elicited no comment. Fabulosa huffed and rocked back on her heels, apparently determined to remain in a foul mood. “All I know is we’ve gone from crouching to crawling.”

  “Well, you don’t need to crawl anywhere—just me a little overwatch. I want to check out that tower below. If anything happens, I’ll climb back up.” When I return, I’ll use Dig to destabilize the entrance, and we can collapse it behind us with Compression Spheres.”

  Fabulosa nodded and shrugged.

  “Then we can go home. You can cover me that Returning Arrow you love so much.”

  “It doesn’t work so well when I miss.”

  “Then don’t miss!” My attempt to cheer her up fell flat.

  Fabulosa only grunted, but I didn’t let it ruin my fun.

  After looking for handholds, I doubted my plan. Climbing down, then Slipstreaming up, looked like a far-fetched idea. The ceiling roots had irregular widths, especially near the windows at the silo’s apex. Without consistent grips, I couldn’t monkey-bar across the ceiling. The walls, however, looked as simple as a ladder.

  Slipstreaming down looked like the safer bet. The only drawback involved its five-minute cooldown. A lot could happen in five minutes.

  I threw down a glow stone as a test. If the room erupted in creepy crawlies, ghosts, or explosive runes, losing it would be a meager price for a warning.

  The luminous rock hit the tower, bounced, and clamored onto the chamber’s floor, making far more noise than expected. Still, nothing stirred in the following moments.

  Fabulosa had the gnoll’s strength bow and Returning Arrow ready. If she used my Divine Bow, the +1 intelligence gave her a little extra mana to nuke the place with Fireballs if the occasion called for it. These were only kobolds, so I felt confident this would be a relatively safe reconnaissance.

  Jumping through the window and falling gave me a better vantage into the cubbyholes. I opened and closed my interface to stop time and scrutinize them. I spied nothing extraordinary, just ragged bedding and junky gear.

  Before reaching the bottom, I Slipstreamed to the central tower at the bottom of the silo. The kobolds had shaped the building from packed clay and stones. Rain would have reduced it to a lump of mud, but it sufficed for underground.

  I landed between a crude desk and a spiral staircase winding into the tower. A worn parchment listing hundreds of glyphs drew my attention. A series of vertical strokes with crosshatched slashes comprised each word, a language I’d not seen before—likely kobold. The chicken scratches looked like the hash marks for counting, but without a sequence in pattern to the strokes, they likely stood for names and not numbers.

  I gave Fabulosa a quick thumbs-up gesture and ducked down the stairs. Calling them stairs was generous—the formation more resembled a spiral ramp. It led to stinky living quarters of what looked to be jailors or commanders. The kobold-sized sleeping areas and crude weapons betrayed the tenants’ species. A covered catwalk from the tower connected to a hallway beyond the silo space. The architecture separated the upper watchtower from the room’s inhabitants. If it served as a jail, where were the bars?

  With time left on my Slipstream cooldown, I followed the walkway out of the silo. Unfortunately, the centralized tower blocked my view of Fabulosa, preventing me from waving or signaling that I was all right. The catwalk connected to a hallway whose spacious ceilings looked high enough to accommodate gnolls, and I lamented Mineral Communion wasn’t among my available powers.

  Winding hallways of hard-packed earth looked well-traveled. Candles lit the corridors in alcoves at irregular intervals, providing enough light that I didn’t need Creeper or Presence to see. The passage branched many times and changed direction at odd angles. I scraped my spear along the floor, leaving a faint trail wherever I went.

  I passed empty sleeping cubbies without bedding. Some branches led to rooms devoid of furniture or artifacts. They weren’t merely vacant—they looked abandoned. What was going on down here?

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  My internal clock told me that five minutes had passed, and if I doubled back, I could climb the walls high enough to Slipstream back to the window.

  As I backtracked, a rustling from ahead alerted me to the movement of many creatures. I ducked into an abandoned room to avoid detection, poked my spear around the corner, and watched a long procession of kobolds file past. So many marched that I could hear their tiny footfalls long before they reached my spearhead’s visual range.

  A few of their heads jerked up when they passed by—their whiskers twitched as they sniffed the air. They had picked up my scent, but none sounded an alarm. I withdrew further from the procession.

  While waiting for the kobolds to pass, I rifled through Winterbyte’s belongings, hoping to find a map of the labyrinth. I’d been so hasty in investigating the fissure I hadn’t yet checked out the gear our former opponent had bequeathed to us.

  I pawed through many low-level items, things she wasn’t wearing when we’d fought.

  One object of interest looked like a pair of spiked gloves.

  The strength upgrade impressed me. I couldn’t wear it without removing my +1 intelligence rings, but I could switch things up for combat or if I needed strength to force open a door.

  I found a shaman’s beaded necklace with large white beads painted like eyeballs. The necklace gave its wearer infravision—which would have been great for Fabulosa during our overnight march to the relic. The infravision from the necklace disoriented me less than Creeper’s jarring movement. Wearing it would mean I’d have to remove the gargoyle’s amulet that gave +2 stamina and armor. While underground, clear vision meant more to me than 20 health. I put on the necklace, planning to switch back when I rejoined Fabulosa or reached the surface.

  Winterbyte had many collection boxes. Each had odds and ends, like fishing lures, pressed flowers, and bugs. She’d carried a tooth collection. The bits weren’t magic but might be ingredients or parts of unfinished quests.

  I took her battleground staff—the item she used to open up a dialog during our first battle. I found two earrings that gave 20 extra armor, but the studs looked so big that I wasn’t sure if they’d fit human earlobes, and I wasn’t eager to pierce myself in these dingy conditions. Because of my unfamiliarity with earrings, I’d probably end up losing them down here.

  This alchemical grenade would have been perfect for freeing Fabulosa from the albino crustacean. The damage wasn’t remarkable, but it promised potency against spellcasters—possibly buying precious seconds against enemy players. I’d carry this potion close to me.

  I spotted a Ring of Endurance that reduced Exhaustion effects by 33 percent and slipped it on, and my debuff count reduced from 3 to 2. I would take it. Having 10 more health and mana might be crucial.

  I found nothing that could summon chimeras, so the beasties must have come from a high-level nature spell.

  The candle offered a highly situational utility during robberies and might help in these kobold warrens. It wasn’t enough for a swarm of kobolds, but it might help me bypass guards.

  I found a loose folio of runes, something I cursed myself for not finding earlier. Shelly, a programmer, had discovered ways to use the game’s runic system. Her book contained pages of complex mechanics, but I wasn’t in the right place to experiment. This folder would be my next pastime in Hawkhurst when I returned.

  I found other notes. Most used gnoll script, so I couldn’t read them, but one English word stood out multiple times in her notes—Femmeny. English wasn’t a native tongue to Miros, and the contest’s interface confirmed Femmeny’s name among the active participants.

  What relationship did Femmeny have with Winterbyte? Had they been partners or adversaries? I pawed through her bundle of belongings for more clues but found nothing but leather armor and weapons less exciting than what I carried.

  Aside from the candle, I possessed no stealth items or ways to mask my scent.

  After the rodents passed, all grew quiet again. I crept out of my hiding space and backtracked my route—or at least I thought I had. The parade of rats obscured the trail I’d made with my spear. My map interface wasn’t helpful. It revealed and recorded nothing underground.

  I looked for a passage going up, hoping it might lead me toward Fabulosa. I took a corridor whose alcoves lacked candles. An infrequently traveled road might reduce my chances of running into another regiment of kobolds.

  I found another upward branch and followed it through a maze of abandoned rooms. One corridor bridged over an exceptionally tall tunnel with the same strange oval shape connecting to the silo. Recognizing its strange dimensions, I jumped into it.

  Aside from compass headings, the only navigational aids underground involved area labels. As the game dubbed the silo a Panopticon, the twisted hallways bore names like The Clay Burrows or Wet Warrens. The interface labeled the oval tunnel to be a Communications Conduit. Sometimes, the locations gave little clues about what to expect, but in all the library books I’d read, none of them used the term conduit. I thought it related to construction and wondered how the oval surface pertained to communications. Perhaps its walls reverberated sound and allowed one chamber to echo sounds to others.

  I could see further ahead in the tall, oval passage because it didn’t zigzag like the thinner passages. I made the only footprints, and the lack of intersections made me nervous, for it provided no hiding places or escape routes. It seemed too big and horizontal for a ventilation shaft, making me wonder why the kobolds hollowed it out.

  Another concern made me wonder if another giant worm had hollowed it out, but small gouges in the walls dispelled that fear. Kobolds had most assuredly dug it out.

  As I’d hoped, the strange oval tunnel reached the opening of the silo. Though hundreds of kobolds occupied it, I breathed a sigh of relief, for I could see Fabulosa peering out of her window into the panopticon like a bird poking out of a birdhouse.