“What? By itself?” Grace’s eyes grew wide. “No modifications?”

  “What does that mean?” Clayton asked.

  “It means it makes her magic about 20% better with no changes. And yes, Grace, it does. It’s a good material. But we can do better because if you top it with a crystal, it…”

  “A staff.” Grace sat down heavily on the rock. “An honest to god staff.”

  “That’s a big deal?”

  “In the normal world, I was going to have to wait another four years or so to save up enough to get a half-plus staff, so yes. Alvin, what will it do with the crystal?”

  “No idea. It’ll be better than just the pole, just because the crystal’s got a lot of light affinity, like Clayton noticed. No idea how much more,” Alvin said.

  “That’s great.”

  “Yup. The other pole makes the most sense as a new handle for Clayton’s spear. Sorry, Tom.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I barely use the club in the first place. I’ll live.”

  Clayton looked at his spear. It was the best one he had touched so far, and he had only been using it about a day.

  “It’s that big of a difference?”

  “Maybe. It will be more durable and the whole spear will be a higher quality level, which means it will hit a little harder regardless of any other changes. After that, who knows? I’ve never heard of this material before. It could be good or bad.”

  “How long will this take?” Grace looked around the chamber, which was about the safest place they were going to find. “Not days.”

  “Oh, no. Simplest of the simple modifications, luckily. Probably four hours.”

  “Can we spare that?” Grace asked. Clayton could tell the Cinna was being responsible at a great cost to her gear-lust in even asking. “The cliff won’t shift?”

  “Probably not. Maybe.” Clayton put his hand on her shoulder. “But if we never stop to make new equipment, we’ll eventually get eaten alive out here anyway. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

  “I second that. I’ll get to work.”

  Alvin started one of his small fires again, using some arcane blacksmith skill for the burn to be relatively smokeless so it wouldn’t kill the lot of them. After it was to heat, he put the ends of both poles into the glowing coal and let them sit.

  “This won’t take long. For yours, Clayton, the main issue is length. Do you have any idea how long you want it to be?” Alvin asked.

  The original spear Clayton had used had been a good bit longer than the one he was using now. That had been nice in some ways, but with a reactive fighting style it was both more length than he needed to have a viable defense and a lot slower than he needed it to be to make flurries of quick attacks.

  “About a half foot to a foot shorter.” Clayton held his arms apart to indicate the length he wanted. “Something like this.”

  “That’s pretty short. You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Got it.” Alvin held his hand out. “Spear, please.”

  Once he had the spear, it was the work of two minutes with hammers, punches, and a chisel to get the spearhead off of it and onto the other pole. Alvin banged the spearhead against the floor, hard, but it held just fine. Then, taking the end of the spear, he pulled out some kind of double-handed bladed tool and went to work.

  “It’s called a spokeshave. I’m going to make the other end of the spear a blunt point. That won’t be useful all the time, but if you need to prop it in the ground or to hit something behind you, it’s better than nothing.”

  Five or ten minutes later, it was done. He handed the weapon to Clayton, smiling.

  “It turned out pretty well. Tell me what you think.”

  “That’s great. Thank you, Alvin.”

  “Shh.” Alvin was already working on the other pole. “Just quiet now, please. This is harder.”

  Alvin extracted one of the crystals from the storage, then another. The larger of the two he threw at Grace.

  “Charge it. With light. Keep it full.”

  Grace nodded wordlessly and lit up the crystal. Alvin, in the meantime, began crushing the other crystal to powder.

  “This might not work. But if it does, oh boy.”

  He took the powder and dumped it into a small metal crucible, the last of the blacksmith tools he had yet to use in his repairs and building process. Holding it over the coals, he sprinkled some of the remaining powder fragments over the fire, causing it to take on a more white-blue coloration under the cooking crystal fragments.

  “It’s melting. Good. This might work.” Alvin picked up the last pole with his free hand, dipping the end of it into the crucible and holding it upright, balanced over the heat as he turned the dowel over and over to coat it with the melted powder. “The crystal, Grace. Now.”

  Grace tossed it. Grabbing the crystal out of the air, Alvin withdrew the rod from the melted powder and jammed the two objects together, barehanded. Clayton heard his flesh sizzle as he did.

  “Wait, we can…”

  “Shh.” Alvin winced. “Has to be this way. It will heal soon enough.”

  He held the two cooling objects together, knitting his brow and clenching his jaw for the better part of a minute before they cooled.

  “There. I’m not going to bang this one. But I think you’ll be satisfied.”

  Grace took the rod, then gasped.

  “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to. We are in the far places.” Alvin was carefully wrapping his burnt hand, wincing with every turn. “Now read everyone the description. It’s important they know what it does, too.”

  Grace did. Word for word. It turned out when someone did that, the description of the item transferred into one’s system-knowledge like they had inspected it themselves.

  “Not much on the duration. That’s a shame.”

  “Don’t be foolish.” Grace cradled the staff to her chest affectionately. “It means a fifth more damage for light spells that damage things and a fifth long distraction when I set off my flares. Even for threats smart enough to close their eyes to the light, they have to do so that much longer.”

  “So it’s good.”

  “Real good.” Alvin’s chest puffed out. “Your spear is too, for that matter. You gained speed-of-use and didn’t give up power. That never happens.”

  “Plus any durability it got,” Clayton added.

  “Yes. When I can make a better spearhead for it, or when we find one, it’s going to be that much better.”

  “Well, good.” Clayton looked over at his shielder, who was now wide awake. “Is there any use in trying to get rest of our sleep?”

  “Not now.” Tom smiled. “I can’t go to sleep three times in four hours. A bird has limits.”

  Alvin removed the quarried blocks that had sealed the room and they moved on. The tunnels were even brighter now, courtesy of both Grace’s improved stats and the fact that her staff seemed to absolutely love being lit up. They walked for two more hours, encountering nothing but more and more branching tunnels. It was boring, until it wasn’t.

  “Stop.” Clayton held out his hand in a be-quiet gesture and paid the closest attention he could to a tunnel they would have otherwise passed. “There’s something about this tunnel.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “That’s the thing, Alvin. I don’t know. It’s a very faint signal. It’s more like this tunnel is important in some way. I don’t know how.”

  “But it’s something.” Tom faced his shield in the direction of the tunnel. “That seems good.”

  “Unless it kills us.”

  “Even the rocks here are trying to kill us,” Grace said. “I don’t think we have a choice. We need to figure out what it is.”

  “I guess. Tom, do you want to go first?”

  “I’d better.”

  The new tunnel stretched on for miles without any places to turn. To the others, it was more of the same. To Clayton, it was an opportunity to feel the signal from a distant source of fate get slowly stronger without fundamentally giving him much more information. They were getting closer and closer to whatever it was, but all his sense would tell him was that it was there.

  “No more information?”

  “No. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know why.” Clayton checked his sense to confirm there were no more changes. “Usually, the skill tells me if something is good or bad. This is more like it’s just… big. Big and important, but not necessarily great or dangerous.”

  “I don’t see how that could be.”

  “Neither do I.” Clayton jerked to a sudden stop as the strength of the signal kicked up all at once. “Whoa. There it is, I guess.”

  In front of them was a hole. A deep one, by the looks of it, and one that wasn’t going to be easy to pass. It stretched a good fifteen or twenty feet into the distance, which would have been vaultable for most of them if it wasn’t for the low stone ceiling ruining any chance of jumping high enough to get far enough to clear it.

  “Grace, could I have a stone? Just a normal stone. Charged,” Clayton asked.

  “Sure.”

  Grace grabbed a rock from the ground and lit it up, then handed it over to Clayton, who dropped it in the hole at his feet. It fell straight down unimpeded for about twenty feet, then winked out in an instant like it had been swallowed by a fish.

  “That tells us two things. One, the hole doesn’t slope in at all on this side. Two, it’s weird.”

  “Highly weird, yes.” Grace nodded her head. “I suppose I understand why the skill wasn’t giving you much information on this, really. It’s just mysterious.”

  “Well, I don’t see any reason we’d go down it.” Clayton shook his head and turned around. “Although we should probably remember where it is. If we start to run out of food in here, it could be a last resort. An alternative to the worst that could happen.”

  They turned around and walked a few miles back when the worst that could happen did happen. Like a lot things, it happened suddenly when Clayton would have rather it happened in a slow way he could react to. In this case, they didn’t get that luxury. He said the only thing he could, considering.

  “Turn around. To the hole.”