Day 77, 12:30 PM

  I hop off the smoking remains of the eighty-foot-long abomination. As advertised, Edna’s landmine ended it in an instant. The monster’s impenetrable shell worked against it, concentrating the blast and the heat on its body.

  “That looks like a major design flaw.”

  “What? Having all its organs, flesh, and mouth exposed to the ground from which nothing can attack it? Bashers are notoriously difficult to kill, they don’t walk into mines on their own unless you conceal them perfectly. They dig under and trigger them with their shells. Besides, while they are slow, their tentacles pack quite a punch. Just one of these can decimate regular human infantry and leave the battlefield unscathed.”

  Edna frowns as light goes out.

  “That’s really annoying. It doesn’t affect me at all, but you were right, this is like a death trap for delvers. Especially when the light is low, but there are still monsters roaming around.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t like this the last time I visited.”

  I wait for her to say something else, but apparently that’s it.

  “Do you know what could have changed the dungeons? Did someone cast a new spell, is the old one running out of energy and this is just the sign of it failing?”

  Edna shakes her head once more. “No. This isn’t magic failing. If the lights were off constantly, if the monsters stopped spawning, those could be the signs of magic failing or better yet, of a wormlord’s death. Slippery terrain, wind, distracting noise, those are intentional artifacts. Someone has engineered this, modified all the dungeons, but I don’t understand why.”

  “Who could have done it?”

  “Well, we know of only one organization which controls the dungeon entrances and is trained to resist magic. The who is not the mystery. The question is how the inquisition has achieved this and why.”

  I consider the facts, and the only thing I can come up with is that the inquisition wishes to eliminate delvers. But if they do that, then situations like Deephorn would repeat all over the world.

  “Edna, you mentioned that the area under human control has shrunk?”

  She nods. “Based on this location, and the fact that some castles have already fallen, I’m guessing the human domain is around one half of what it was the last time I cared to check.”

  I don’t like where that guess is going. “What are the odds of the Church of Holiness working together or directly under the wormlords? They rose when all the mages united and left to fight against a wormlord, using the power vacuum. It’s not impossible that the whole thing was staged.”

  Edna gives me a flat stare. “If a wormlord wanted to destroy humanity, it could have done so already. There’s no need for fancy plots. You don’t understand something, we, I mean us the mages, weren’t winning against the wormlord. We were holding its forces back, that is all.”

  “But you never saw the wormlord, right?”

  Edna hesitates and nods.

  “What if there was no wormlord? What if the inquisition had found a dungeon outside your area of control and somehow changed or abused it? What if they got the monsters out of it or learned how to bait—”

  “Stop.” Edna’s eyebrow twitches with frustration. “You are searching for plots where there are none. The monsters were already in the corrupted lands, remnants of what was left behind the war against the wormlords of old. Our ancestors couldn’t exterminate them without the power of archmages, and the best they could do was make a killing ground to eliminate approaching monsters and steadily expand it as our population recovered and centuries passed.”

  I wait until she stops talking before raising the critical questions.

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  “But why did the dungeons change after the inquisition took over?” I ask in a calm voice, realizing the hints of conspiracy had gotten me overly excited. “Was there any maintenance your ancestors did? Anything the inquisition is now failing to do?”

  “No, not as far as I know. I have taken part in several large expeditions. We did little other than clearing the first seventy-five floors, gathering valuables, and camping.”

  “So, someone definitely tempered with the dungeons on a large scale, or visited them all to do it individually? You’re positive it’s not a maintenance failure or magic going awry?”

  Edna considers my questions and nods.

  “Then that would mean intentionally, or by accident, someone had changed the nature of the dungeons and made them more lethal. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, there was a saying back where I come from - never to attribute to malice what can be explained with incompetence. But nasty circumstances keep compounding. What are the odds the inquisition was formed by disgruntled or marginalized mages? Failed apprentices and such.”

  Edna shrugs.

  “I have never investigated the origin of the inquisition. They didn’t exist in the church I knew, but we were away on the front line for many years and lost many comrades before the monsters’ attacks ceased.”

  The topic is obviously Edna’s sore point with how she bodily retreats and shrinks whenever she talks about it. She’s telling me more than she did before, but I don’t press the subject. The information is almost certainly useless at the moment, since there’s nothing I can do about it.

  There will be time later.

  “We should look into that once we return to Deephorn. For now, we should head deeper and clean up as much of the dungeon as we can, but before we do, could you teach me how to enchant my staff?”

  Edna hesitates. I can tell she just wants to perform the ritual and be done with it.

  “You don’t have the mana capacity for it,” she finds an inoffensive way of saying I’m incompetent, “and you would waste resources if you start and don’t complete the transfer. If you stop, you will change the material from which we’re transfusing the properties, and even if I pick up where you left off, we would waste around thirty percent of the carapace’s properties. Maybe more.”

  “All right.” I nod. “I’ll practice on easier materials.”

  “You’re not offended?” Edna asks, shocked because she probably would’ve been mortally offended had I told her there was something she couldn’t do.

  “Not at all. I’m new to this. You explained in simple terms why I shouldn’t perform the spell, made a good argument, and I agree with you. I can practice on irrelevant items, not on those of value.” I consider the next line too patronizing, but for some reason, I think Edna needs it. “Thank you for taking the time to teach me.”

  All our interactions should make my gratitude obvious, and this arrangement is one of mutual benefit, but still, it doesn’t hurt to say it. Especially if it helps her.

  She nods, touches my staff and the carapace, and starts her song.

  Swallows take flight as leaves turn red and yellow. They cross a vast blue expanse and an endless desert before flying by jungle-covered mountains and finding a new home. Running in parallel with the migration, a walnut’s shell cracks and it germinates, feeding on manure and decayed remains of plants and animals. The sapling grows, spreading its roots deeper and wider, maturing into a towering tree, its greedy root always searching for more nutrients.

  Visible motes of black mana migrate like swallows from the carapace to my staff, which turns heavier and smoother in my hands as the giant shell cracks and splits. Minutes pass, and with one last crunch, the carapace collapses into a pile of dust and ashes.

  I heft the staff. It weighs at least fifty-five pounds, possibly more than sixty.

  “A sturdy stick is not enough to fight abominations and wormlords, you need magic.” I don’t understand why Edna needs to ruin my happy moments. I’m a man, and strong, solid sticks make me happy, they have ever since I was a boy.

  “It’s useful against inquisitors, and any monsters I can pummel, I will.”

  Edna shakes her head. “No, you need to rely on magic as a weapon. The more you exhaust yourself and refill it, the greater your mana capacity becomes, the more you use it the better your sense with it becomes. You are already a prodigious warrior, tell me how much room for improvement you have left?”

  She—makes a fine point. I’m already as good with the staff as I can ever hope to be, any further practice is meaningless, fighting with magic, however, is an area in which I’m a complete novice.

  “You are right, but I will have to do it in a regular dungeon, not in an abomination hive we’re currently in.”

  “I’m not saying you start now.” She smiles. “This dungeon will reform into a regular one in ten days or so. Remember, if you really want to exterminate the wormlords, a big stick won’t help. You can’t kill them by hitting them. You will need a power greater than the one the archmages of old wielded. Collectively.”

  I’m not sure I agree with her, a big enough stick can even move the world, but she seems happy with me agreeing, and other than ruining her mood there’s really no benefit to arguing.

  “A big—” Blunt starts, but I clamp my mouth shut.