“They say all fear is the fear of the unknown. But what shall we say, then, of the people for whom the unknown represents the greatest thrill, the only challenge?”

  From what would have made a perfect hunting blind, Hexa viewed the guttering flames of countless lights in a vast tiered cave, each pair marked by a large stone against the wall. She burned with curiosity as to the purpose of the heavy boulders, assuredly too heavy to be front doors. Perhaps, as in Spirithome and Barbery, they were the seals on burial crypts. It would make sense, in the face of the ever present risk of reanimation. She wondered how far below the surface of the mountain the effect ran, for she had been several days through the bowels of Mount Barber and the Orth itself.

  The cave ran off into the distance and bent like a kidney bean, and the lights were not bright enough to illuminate the entire expanse, so it was disorientingly like looking at the night sky to view the vast necropolis—if indeed that was its purpose. They must have been down here a long time to have filled such a massive space with the dead; or else they must have a population in excess of the greatest of Sevens’ metropolises. They had been down here a long time, to predate the current Age.

  The vast open expanse, dotted here and there with gently glowing bridges, brought to mind other sights that Hexa would treasure in her memory forever. Many of them involved such dizzying heights as her little vantage point, and she wondered if it wasn’t some ancestral memory from her angelic parent of the ability to fly. In Dominion, where the mountains looked out over a lush green forest giving way to idyllic beaches and bright blue lagoons. The summit of the Barbery Range from which one could look down upon the Claw of Fire until it was lost to the horizon, the baked brown of the Fireplains giving way to verdant green at the very edge of sight. The endless expanse of stormy sea from the pinnacle of the Spirithome cliffs. Hexa had not expected to find such an experience here, buried beneath claustrophobic tons of rock, and the unexpected grandeur of it took her breath away. She wondered what lit the lanterns, what gave the bridges their gentle glow. Though she would never roll away a sealing stone without permission, her muscles tensed at the thought of discovering what had been found valuable enough to bury, but not so valuable as to be beyond leaving.

  The edge of the blind was sharp, and so Hexadecimal set about breaking off part of the edge with her piton hammer, and then hammering a piton into the ground from which to anchor a rope. It wasn’t the quietest business, but given her previously stated lack of intention to rob any graves, she wasn’t worried about attracting attention. Hopefully those who lived in the seventh kingdom spoke a common tongue, Loon or Draconic. Her Draconic was rough, spoken, but she had learned a bit of it to decipher the map. Parchment and ink she had, provided the denizens of the Deeps were literate and her grasp of the tongue too poor. Prepare for failure, plan for success. Wasn’t that how the saying went?

  Having clambered down, she walked slowly past the stones. Her aura light made it clear that they were, in fact, crypts, and renewed her hope that the people of the seventh kingdom would be literate speakers of Draconic. She saw a figure approaching, and while she left her right hand on her chest she put the other by her side in a non-threatening posture. She didn’t know what to expect of the people she met in the Deeps, commonly animals were pale like those of the frozen reaches, but her first encounter defied those expectations. But she was getting ahead of herself.

  Inwardly, she sighed. Perhaps all she would find down here were the dead, for the figure approaching her was inhumanly gaunt, and looked to be dripping pieces of itself. It drew back, a curious gesture for undead, for it had not yet met with the abjuring light of her aura. Then, however, it reached out for the light, and its hand entered without apparent resistance. Unwilling to suppose the One God’s gifts had abandoned her, Hexadecimal was forced to conclude that whatever it was she faced, it was not undead. Looking more closely, she saw that while the figure was terribly gaunt, it was not decaying but coated in a black, tarry substance which dripped from its body. She heard a whisper of breath, and cocked her head curiously. At her motion, the figure startled, and then said in what was barely a whisper, “Who… are you?” A simple enough sentence, in a dialect of Draconic that put less emphasis on the hard c’s and x’s, but intelligible.

  “I am Hexa, von Spirithome, of Melancholy. Who are you?” She used the Loon word for Spirithome, not knowing the Draconic equivalent.

  Hexa remembered conversations well, often verbatim. Memorizing log tables to appease your geometer mother gave one a strong working memory. The figure put a hand to its temple, as though the question were difficult. Ultimately, it replied, “The Oozeken, Dread of Hope.” Hexa didn’t know where this conversation would lead, but the curious nature of the figure before her alone was enough to hold her attention. Perhaps it—she? To judge by her voice? It was a promising start to hear Oozeken, she didn’t know the second compound, but ooze… the One God was the Word over the primordial ooze. She asked what the second compound meant and got another strange look. “Gnosis.” She kept a blank expression. “Knowing?” Ah, yes. So Dread was the Knower of the Ooze. Hexa considered italicizing the figure’s words to illustrate their whispered softness, before deciding that would be egregiously stylistic and that she would italicize any word she ever spoke at full volume, given what would clearly be their emphasis.

  “No placename? Everyone in the Sevens uses placenames. Where do you come from?” Hexa struggled to keep her voice even and flat, nonetheless, the first syllable of “everyone” and the word “you” acquired inflection and—urg—squeak. Dread looked around again, and after hesitation and internal consultation, pointed down. “Down? You mean you come from deeper in the Orth?”

  “Come from… Gargold. The Cavern of Dread.” Hexa struggled to maintain her composure. Either the figure she was speaking to was important enough to hold a placename, or she was close enough to a major urban center that people were named for it. “And… below that. The ooze.”

  “You come from the ooze itself? Are you a…” Hexa cast about for the Draconic word she wanted. She didn’t know “nephilim,” but perhaps… “A spirit child?”

  Once again Dread seemed confused by the direct address. Hexa heard footsteps approaching, booted feet on the stone of the necropolis, and was distracted enough to nearly miss Dread’s whispered, “No.” When she looked back to Dread, she saw that she was sinking slowly into the floor, and by the time the others—guards, from the look of them—arrived, all that remained was an evaporating pool of black ooze. They carried lanterns, and Hexadecimal dropped her arm to her side. Curiously, they were both predictably pale, and stout, rather than the appearance of Dread. Dread would occupy Hexdecimal’s thoughts for some time, she suspected; at least until the puzzle was unwound.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The guards were dressed in some kind of fibrous material, wound strategically around plates of metal to provide protection without excessive weight. Across their chests were bronze spirals, some kind of insignia no doubt. Both of them carried metal boar spears, or something similar, and looked ready for a fight. They leveled their spears at Hexadecimal and demanded, “Come with us, grave robber!”

  “I am no grave robber! I am…” of all the times to come up against a gap in her vocabulary. “I travel. And write down what I find. Just writing, no robbing!”

  The guards exchanged dubious glances. “Open your pack,” one of them gestured unmistakably while the other lowered his spear and moved over to examine what Hexadecimal was carrying. She was unsurprised at the reaction, but wished she had been better-prepared for it. However, her pack would carry nothing to incriminate her. A hammer, pitons, rope, rations, a bedroll, map in its case, and a thick journal. She hesitated to let them examine only one thing—her rune-branded quill, which required no ink and in fact scorched its letters into the prepared pages of her journal. Even her knife she was ready to part with, but the quill had come dearly. Much to her surprise, however, they let her keep her knife.

  “What is your name?”

  “Hexa von Spirithome of Melancholy.”

  “Von? Von Spirithome? We do not know the lineage of Melancholy. How did you get up here?”

  “I came from the surface.”

  “Nobody comes from the surface. What are you talking about?”

  By way of answer, Hexadecimal indicated the rope behind her.

  The guards conversed for a few moments, before turning back to Hexadecimal. “We will take you to—” where they would take her would remain a mystery to her until they got there, as she didn’t know the word they used. However, they turned their backs and walked on, which she took as an encouraging sign. One of them turned back as they walked and asked, “Why the costume?” The other guard elbowed and shushed him. “What? I’m just asking!” They bickered in the manner of bored soldiery, and clearly did not view her as a threat.

  Her fingers itched to take notes on the burial inscriptions on the walls and stones, but doubted she had the vocabulary to explain her interest in a way that did not speak to grave robbing. They looked in places to be glyphs of warding, after all. As they progressed down the levels, the graves got less elaborate, to judge by the outside decorations, speaking of declining wealth of the tomb builders. Hexadecimal nodded to herself; it was rare to find a truly self-sufficient civilization—even Fief, a continental empire which she had avoided, traded with Dragold, Icehold, and Unlantis. If its efforts at trade were a little avaricious, well, that was why she had avoided it.

  They were abruptly confronted by a blocked walkway, a zombie having successfully shoved aside the boulder keeping its tomb closed. Abruptly, the purpose of the crossbar she had identified as the hallmark of a boar spear became clear to Hexadecimal. The first guard pierced the zombie’s torso, then shoved it into the crypt it had vacated as the other guard shoved the boulder back in place. The two of them had a muttered conversation before one of them ultimately stayed behind to brace the boulder while the other continued escorting Hexadecimal.

  Finally, they arrived at—the word must have been “barracks”—the barracks of the tomb guards. It was expansive, but largely empty. Once again, a sign of an empire in decline. Hexadecimal was glad to not be a treasure hunter, for she suspected she would be sorely disappointed. Still, they might have secrets lost to the Age—she sighed inwardly—of Loss. But maybe she was looking at it wrong. Maybe it was not the failure of historians to name eras inventively—they had to be clear, after all—but hers as a chronicler. Secrets… hmm. She tried out a few words in her rusty Draconic, not certain of the exact pronunciation. Hidden? No. Eaten? Better, but lacking emphasis for the total devastation of centers of knowledge. Devoured. They might have secrets devoured by the Age of Loss. She liked that. It crackled. Or that was her journal as she pressed too hard with her pen. She snapped it shut with a squeak as a ranking guard, to judge by the red piping on her uniform, addressed her.

  “My guards tell me an unlikely story. You were found by the oldest crypts, evidently having climbed down to them from above. You claim to be a… traveler.”

  Hexadecimal nodded apologetically. “I do not know the word for what I do, in your tongue. I write down what I see as I travel, and then profit by those who wish to read of my…” She spread her hands helplessly.

  “Your accent is almost strange enough to make your tale believable. It sounds like the Draconic spoken by the rare brown lizard come to wreak havoc and try to take what isn’t its own. Perhaps the word you want is ‘explorer,’ or possibly ‘chronicler.’”

  “You are educated, by the standards of a guard on the surface.”

  “Ha! That says much about your surface world. We Amonites take pride in our education. Our greatest leaders are our Teachers.” As they talked, someone came by with a body wrapped in linen. The guard spoke briefly with them, and then pointed them in a direction and turned back to Hexadecimal. “So tell me, Hexa—I’m sorry, the mystery you pose got the better of my manners. I am Angler, of Lophius. What brings a chronicler to Gargold?”

  “Truth be told, I was growing bored of traveling. I had visited the empires of my home… land, I had seen the free lands nearby. I took to, and I know this sounds bad but it’s a different culture, exploring crypts in the land of Repose. In doing so, I found a map through Mount Barber. Then my…” Angler supplied the word, “patron agreed to pay for an expedition into the Orth in search of the legendary seventh kingdom, said to hold the secrets of… speaking to Creation? It is the wrong word. My Draconic is poor. What. What did I say?” Angler was sneering.

  “You are here for the Oozekennen then. They bathe in the waters of nothingness and claim enlightenment. You know that word? Oozekennen? That is a curious one to have picked up on the surface.”

  “I heard it from Dread.”

  Angler laughed. “Dread? Up here? She never ventures so far from the waters. That might be your least believable story yet! And yet I am—” they worked through words until Hexadecimal caught the original meaning, “—inclined to believe you. You would not be raiding Amonite tombs and expressing a desire to see the Oozekennen, who keep no tombs. It would be too simple to keep you away from our dead.”

  “I am glad my story is believable.” Although she was perplexed. Had she confused two words for Dread?

  “I have a few burials to see to, and then you can follow our shift to the nearest village. Making it down to the Oozekennen will be a bit of a journey just yet, but we can get you started. You will not find welcome everywhere you go.”

  “Why is that, Angler?”

  “To those who know what to look for, you are clearly a nephilim—” Hexadecimal mentally cached the word to use in inquiring as to Dread’s nature. “—and such spirit magic is forbidden among Amonites. It will mark you out as Oozekennen, or as you say, a person from the surface.”

  Hexadecimal thanked Angler for the advice, and sat down to wait out the guard’s shift taking notes on her experiences thus far.