“…curious that it restrains fey spirits, as well as of course demons, but has no impact upon axioms nor elementals.”

  Hexadecimal von Spirithome of Melancholy was not your typical explorer. She reflected on this as she splayed her fingers in the God-Star over her left breast, in homage to the angel that had quickened her mother’s womb. As she did so, a lambent light radiated from her skin, immersing her in a glowing bubble as wide as she was tall. That she could do that did not make her unique among explorers, though being able to do so without spirit magic might. And while not every explorer had a patron who encouraged them to report on the tropical rainforests of Dominion (the only nation to reject shelter under Wholism’s wings—and not a single nation at all, but that was another journal) she was assuredly not alone in having visited it. She wasn’t even alone in having adopted their charismatic faith as her own. No, what made Hexadecimal von Spirithome of Melancholy unique was undoubtedly her gray skin, three red eyes, and six vestigial wings. See the aforementioned angelic parent, introduced to her mother through a spirit midwife.

  You might be wondering why this is relevant. You see, Hexa—as she was known socially—was currently deep within the bowels of Mount Barber, the nexus of regular pulses of necromantic spirit energy. And by virtue of her angelic parentage, invoking the One God allowed her an aura which repulsed impure spirits and those things inhabited by them. She could not crush them against stone, but neither could they approach. Undead were decidedly inhabited by impure spirits; though the precise mechanism of their animation would be an investigation worthy of an entire chronicle in itself. So it was that Hexadecimal could traverse the bowels of Mount Barber unmolested by the numerous undead which roamed its halls.

  Hexadecimal was not given to speaking of herself in third person in her interactions, but third person limited—herself being limited—was more pleasing to the eye than first for her chronicles. And it was her chronicles which brought her into the depths of Orth beneath Barbery. Hexa, you see, was searching out the seventh kingdom of the Sevens. It was a matter of no small confusion—or derision—by foreigners that the Sevens had only six apparent kingdoms. The western coast of Spirithome, the southern Claw of Ice populated by Mind and Repose, the northern Claw of Fire comprised of Barbery and the Fireplains, and dividing the two claws the forests of Peaceshield.

  But Gargold, known only in legend as a realm led by those who communed with the Essence of Creation itself, was lost to the Age of… well, Age of Loss. Really, if historians were more inventive it would make for much better prose. Finding this lost kingdom, and perhaps uncovering the secret of their communion with Creation itself—that was her purpose in roaming the depths of Mount Barber. She had, in addition to her birthright, one other advantage over those others who had sought out the fabled seventh kingdom. She had a map. Hard-won, the map had lain in one of the many crypts which dotted Repose’s cold marshes, guarded by axiom spirits of guardianship inhabiting great stone statues.

  But to business. Hexadecimal was currently still in the carved sections of Mount Barber, passing by undead—they really were such fascinating and mysterious workings of spirit magic. She wondered if they were similar in spellcraft to the process of creating a nephilim, like herself—but if her map was to be believed, she would happen upon a cavern any minute now. Or hour. Could be an hour. The map was old, and looked to be written in the tradition of the native inhabitants of Mind; that is to say, distances were more about difficulty, not physical space. The tunnel she’d been traveling down was a relatively short stretch on the map, but she’d already been walking longer than the maze of turns that had gotten her to it.

  But at last, she came upon the long, jagged break in the floor of the hall—which did continue on past it, one more curiosity that would have to await its own time—into a cavern of living rock. It was still gabbro, and so by the curious properties of material resonance she could likely anticipate more undead. Mount Barber had been crafted from massive quantities of harvested gabbro. As she turned sideways and slung her pack down her arm to fit through a particularly narrow stretch of cavern, she wondered if that might not prove unfortunate. At least, between her aura and her trusty knife, she should be in a good position to disable any shambling corpses.

  Caving was not Hexadecimal’s favorite activity. For the sake of her wings, she wore leather armor fashioned after a halter top, and between them and her generally chubby build, she had difficulty with narrow passes. More than once she’d dealt with bent or broken feathers in penance for her inveterate curiosity. At least, at barely five feet tall, she rarely dealt with tunnels being too short for her. And her hair, coiled in a braid atop her head, rarely caught on anything. That had been more relevant in Dominion—properly called Godswood, but nobody would know where she was speaking of—where the plants were often prickly and occasionally hungry. And speaking of hungry, here was a mass of corpses which would not be able to be moved aside.

  She drew her knife, her aura invoked for light, and set about disabling the zombies. One cut to either side of the jaw, so they couldn’t bite, the carpals to keep them from grabbing, and then a hefty shove to overbalance them and step over. She supposed it wasn’t sporting to the near-mindless zombies that she kept them restricted with her aura, but all was fair in spelunking and war. She was actually walking on the zombies for a stretch, so densely packed were the terrible—terribly fascinating—undead. Hexa would have to ask a spirit midwife if she knew of the mechanisms by which the things were animated. It was a stretch, but every chronicle started somewhere.

  Finally, the narrow section widened, and Hexadecimal was able to simply avoid the undead. She fumbled about in the dark for a few moments, needing both hands to wipe necromantic dust from her knife before sheathing it. She was in truly uncharted territory at this point, if the undead were any indicator. If they hadn’t been in Barbery, she suspected they would have been so much dust by now. But the energies of Mount Barber renewed all things undead approximately every three days. An electric shiver went down her spine at the thought of being lost and forgotten in the caverns, some wandering explorer happening upon her own reanimated corpse. It was at once stimulating and terrifying. She drew a piece of chalk from a side pocket of her pack and made a mark on the wall of the cavern. Maps were an excellent resource, but there was never any harm in being careful. She did appear to be proceeding apace, if the map was accurate—it was. The tunnel widened into a proper cave, exactly where the winding tunnel on the map indicated it would. The cave was an expansive thing, and Hexadecimal felt a frisson of unease at the thought of all the unsupported stone over her head.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It was the little details that made a compelling chronicle. Any cave can be vast, but for a cave to be vast beneath an artificial mountain in such a way as to be open and yet oppressively heavy was an entirely different—and more thrilling—prospect. The map indicated she should follow the right wall of the cave, and to skip what looked to be three offshoot tunnels. Then there was a little skull on the map, and she was not quite certain what it indicated. Peril, naturally, but what kind?

  Her question was shortly answered as the floor gave way beneath her with a click. As her arms shot out to catch herself on the edges of the pit trap, she was plunged into darkness; necessarily, grabbing the ledge had ended her invocation of the One God. Between the fall and the dark, Hexa was on the verge of panic; only her experience as an explorer saved her. She could hear undead stirring beneath her, confirming her suspicions. The trap would reset, she wouldn't have been the first to wander over it, and when the platform raised she could kick off it to give her the leverage she needed to lift herself out of the pit.

  Hexadecimal let out a deep breath as she stood on the edge of the pit trap, patting herself down and—the map. Where was the map? Had it fallen into the pit when Hexadecimal herself had? She invoked her aura and cast about for it. Then she knelt by the trap door and leaned on the platform, and sure enough, she saw it in the gentle glow alongside two undead. With a sigh, she pulled rope from her pack and tied a noose, looping it over a stalagmite, harnessing the other end to herself, and rappelled down into the pit. Hanging from the rope, she groped around for the map, her aura of light keeping the zombies at bay. Then the trap reset, and closed above her, but for a small gap caused by her trusty—and sturdy—rope. Her copy of the map—the original being far too fragile to take exploring—she rolled up and stashed in a case, and then clambered back up in the dark, needing both hands to make her way up the rope. At least she did not hit her head too hard when she made the top of the pit. She slipped her fingers into the gap where the trap couldn’t close and heaved, ducking low and then scrambling out of the pit.

  Trials such as that merited a break. Hexadecimal supposed it was her own fault for not memorizing the map, but the unusual spacial relationships of the landmarks made doing so difficult and fraught to boot. She took an old wineskin full of blittero and had a drink, then sat back against the wall of the cavern with one hand making the God-Star for its comforting glow. Which, she supposed, would be a fine time to thank He who favors the prepared. And fools. One might say an explorer was a professional fool, because the job description entailed going to places others considered too dangerous or remote to visit themselves.

  “One God, thank you for blessing me with the reflexes to catch myself and the upper body strength to haul myself loose with only a little boost. I suppose I could have worked my way up even without, but the boost was very much appreciated.” Hexadecimal spoke in an affected monotone as she prayed; as she did any time she spoke. It was just one of those habits acquired in girlhood and never lost. “Thank you for my heavenly parentage, and the boons it grants me, and thank you for my patron, who bought me a rope that did not break. That said, please let me be quicker on the uptake at the next little skull icon on the map. Amen.”

  Was she a fool, or just prepared? The seventh kingdom was shrouded in legend, and finding it would be a great win. If they held even a fraction of the magical secrets they were purported to, it would make a mint in taxes on trade. She would have to find out what they even wanted from the surface, but that would hopefully be a trifling task. But that, truth be told, was not the reason she was seeking it out. She was a prepared fool. The reason she set out on this quest was for the pure and simple drive to discover the unknown. She had visited the kingdoms of the Sevens, she had visited Dominion, she had even sailed the coast of Unlantis. But all of these things, ultimately, were already explored. So she had turned to the crypts of Repose, a dangerous but occasionally profitable pastime, and found the map she carried a copy of in a case.

  Enough resting to let the adrenaline work its way out of her system, it was high time to continue on her way. The next skull looked to be a matter of past-tense danger, at approximately the right location she found a pile of rubble, almost entirely blocking the tunnel. More squeezing through tight passages. In the dark, it looked like, as she would be climbing up an unsteady pile of rocks. Hopefully its collapsing days were long past. She set about feeling her way up the pile of rubble, freezing and breaking out in a cold sweat when she heard the clatter of shifting stone. However, when the sound ceased echoing and the ceiling had not fallen down upon her head, she let out a sigh and continued on her way.

  In a way, she had preferred the crypts of Repose to this. They had been underground, but not deep underground. Many of them were, at most, twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Enough space to kill you, certainly, but a collapse would at least leave you somewhere to be found eventually. The guardians had been more of a problem, at least those animated by elemental and axiom spirits, and the traps had clearly been a passion for many of the builders, but… it wasn’t deep underground. That was really all she could say.

  It was heart-stopping to catch a ton of animated stone on the bubble of her aura, but at least she could. If only the guardians of this particular map hadn’t been axioms. She had been forced to retreat more than once and reconsider her tactics if she didn’t want to become so much nephilim jelly. Ultimately, she had coiled thick chains around each of them individually, a task which had required dexterity, time, and effort, to say nothing of the cost. Whether they could break iron chains had been a petrifying question she didn’t trust the answer to for nearly three sandglasses, by her estimate.

  She was, it appeared, nearing the end of her map. There was a long stretch of vaguely zig-zagging tunnel, and then a large red circle on the paper of the map. Hexa was thankful to have made it past the various traps and pitfalls which had stood between her and her objective, but she was finally—finally!—going to see something nobody on the surface had seen since before the Age of Loss and—ooh! She squeaked and giggled, a habit she hated but had failed to break despite her best efforts. Whenever she got excited, it seemed, her affect became entirely more animated than she thought dignified. She was an adventurer, an explorer, a nephilim, a geometer by training if not inclination, she needed a certain gravity, she needed—she rounded a bend and looked upon what she took to be her objective.