Lilith claps her hands together and smiles widely.

“Ok! Next topic!”

“Woah, wait! Is that it! You’re suppose to tell me how to get out.”

She purses her lips together, contemplating before returning to her usual smile.

“Ok, but you have to make me a promise first!”

I really don’t like where this is going.

“Sure, what is it?”

Hearing this, she giggles lightly and takes a large step forward, bringing her face close to mine.

“We have to talk to each other more. We’re friends after all!”

I intended to get more information from her anyway, so this is an easy decision.

“I promise.”

She looks even happier than before, any more and she might explode.

“Yay… So you do love me!”

Wait. Why would she even make a connection like that?

She’s much scarier than Finnian.

While I’m frozen in horror, she begins speaking on how to escape.

I guess I should pay attention.

“So, since your very stuck, I could just teleport you to my self if you write this symbol on the floor in blood.”

“Rejected, I won’t be able to bring my comrades.”

Though I only really care about Torben, it would be inconvenient to get put in another squadron.

“OK! So, then you can just use the repair team to clear the tunnel blockage.”

“Wait, so the people in the ruins aren’t long extinct?”

“No, they died ages ago. But the magical constructs should still be working! So, you wait here and I’ll go and activate them!”

“No, wai-”

Lilith and her island vanish, leaving me here with way too many questions.

It is very suspicious that she knows so much about this place. Though I guess she is living here. And isn’t everything about her suspicious?

Ten minutes later, I wake up with my face plastered to the workbench.

20 minutes in the dream world is around 8 hours in the physical one.

So it should be around morning now on the surface.

Everyone is sleeping, scattered around the room with Torben closest to me. This’ll be the best time to inform him of all of the Lilith stuff, and so I wake him quietly and go to the storeroom with him. I tell him about everything except how unstable she seems, in case he then starts objecting to it.

So, now we wait for these ‘magical constructs’ that are here. Though she left before explaining exactly what a ‘magical construct’ is and how she knows so much about it.

In the mean time, I read some of the ‘Metals and Alloys’ book, looking for the metals mentioned in the diary.

After 10 minutes, I come across Damascus steel, which is supposedly still in stock in a forge the native worked in.

Book excerpt-

farixas steel-

This metal is tougher than regular steel and far more resistant to shattering. Making it good for weapons and high stress ******** to decrease the amount of maintenance required, though it isn’t as good as the high-end ****** parts.

The resilience of this blade is due to the presence of ********* throughout its structure, strengthening it.

Additionally when used as a blade, its sharpness only loses to *******, with it being able to cut through poorly made sword blades with ease, with the blades resilience also applying to the blades edge, keeping it sharper for longer and whilst not being chipped or cracked.

Farixas steel has a unique appearance amongst metals---------------- grey-------------lin--------

The rest of this page is unreadable due to damage.

Though it is disappointing that some of the information is damaged, most of the important pieces for this metal is here, and now I really want one of these blades.

Something I find strange is that the word Damascus is translated, since other metals in the book are not. A few other metals are the same, so does this mean our civilisation has access to these metals, or at least had at one point before losing how to make it.

Some time later, after everyone is awake is awake, we begin to hear loud banging noises echo through the tunnel. Of course I knew what they would be… mostly. But the others didn’t and cycled through the emotions of excitement and caution. We are out of food anyway, so it’s not like we have anything to lose.

We are all now stood in front of the blockage, weapons in hand listening to the loud banging and the sound of debris falling.

Some time later-

We are sat around, still gripping our weapons, but I’m sure the sounds are getting closer. Probably.

Even later-

Me and Grigori are awake, staring at the blockage whilst the others sleep. I have the biggest headache and I’m pretty sure the others who should be sleeping aren’t due to anxiety and the noise.

A seemingly infinite time later-

I’m now trying to sleep with the rhythmic banging in the background. After a while it becomes almost soothing, like a---- ZZZ.

“Hey Raegan, get up!”

I open my eyes to Torben shaking me, while looking to his right.

I do the same, seeing chunks of the rock wall being broke through by a pickaxe.

For a while we watched five of these ‘magical constructs’ clear the rock and put it into a large metal box, which then glows before they continue putting in more rock.

I’m not sure what I expected to them to be, but it certainly wasn’t metallic children holding pickaxes.

These things are 3ft tall, made entirely out of some metal and have a faintly glowing chest that emits a light whirring sound.

We all stood there watching them for some time, making multiple attempts to communicate or otherwise interact with them, but they just worked around us. Like they knew we were there, but didn’t really care. I’d really like to dismantle one, however I’m not going to take the risk of provoking an army of these things. Even if they are midgets.

I also want to examine the box, in which they’ve put an infinite amount of rock. Since, it glows when the rock is put in, it is definitely a magical artefact.

It’s is a 2ft cube in all dimensions and looks like steel but it has a slightly blue tint.

Another of these foreign metals I presume.

It might be too heavy for me to lift comfortably, and so I call over Torben to help.

Hopefully the metal people don’t attack me, but I really want to study this, so…

“Ok. Torben, on the count of three lift this with me.”

He nods to show his understanding. Unfortunately the others are less understanding and begin to panic.

“No don’t touch that!” -Argus

“1.” -Me

“I’m too young to die!” -Pack mule

“2.” -Me

“Tell my husband I love him!” -Grigori

“1?” -Me

We both lift the box that turns out to be unexpectedly light, and so I hold it on my own.

I look down to see five metal children holding out chunks of rocks to me, like a begging child in a city slum. Not that I’ve ever been to a city though.

I stood there for a few minutes with them stood there in the same position. If they were capable of expression, like would likely be crunching up their face, attempting to will the rock into the box. Soon they looked at each other before running in the direction they originally came and so I put down the box and open it.

It is empty as expected, but has some interesting design on the bottom of the box and an identical one on the box lid.

Damn, I have nothing to write with and if I do, the others will be certainly asking questions.

Crap, I’ve just been staring at an empty box for 10 minutes and everyone is staring at me.

Argus casually walks over, and looks in.

“I guess these magic runes are responsible for the endless rock storage. Interesting, this top runes is slightly different than the other, probably works on a delayed magic timer to allow the bottom rune to activate first.”

“Wait… How do you know all this?”

Is it possible for him to be a warlock? Does that mean he already knows about me? Since he has more magical knowledge than me, wouldn’t he know about using magic to translate text?

Now that it was pointed out, there is a slight difference between the runes. How did I not see that initially?

Argus grins at me, clearly reading the obvious expression left on my face.

“My sister was a witch and so I know some stuff of her, though I can’t use magic myself. Our situation was probably similar to yours, with myself being led around by my gifted sister. Unless Torben also knows magic, but I doubt it.

Though the only magic my sister knew was involving runes, so she wasn’t going around inflicting curses or raining down hellfire from the heavens.”

“Does your whole squadron know about this?” I ask, noticing the others didn’t seem overly surprised in hearing the story, perhaps only in hearing I knew magic.

“Yep, most of them were travelling with me and my sister, all new people are carefully chosen before learning about it. But if they react badly, we could’ve arranged an… accident in the Forgotten Lands. It is a dangerous place after all, just being cut by the wrong thorn could mean death.”

Scary.

Whilst I was planning their death in the case they hate magic, he was doing the same.

Then that means I’ve hit the jackpot! With this I have a safe area to practice magic and research these runes, it’s ideal.

But before I can research them, I have to carefully draw these runes to be as accurate as possible.

“Does anyone have something to write with?”

Argus grins again, and starts rooting though the pack mules backpack until he takes out a quill.

“On the tip if this is a rune my sister made, perhaps its whole existence was leading up to this point.”

“Isn’t that a little over dramatic, as cool as it may be.” I respond to his cheesy line.

“Seriously though, I don’t ever use this in case I accidentally break it, this this will be the most useful it has ever been.”

Before I can start writing though, I hear the sound of small running feet in the distance.

Looking down the tunnel, I see four of the constructs and another running slightly behind carrying a familiar metal box.

So I guess they had spares.

After getting here, they simply carried on with their work as before.

Deciding to continue with what I was doing, I began to draw the bottom rune on spare pages of the diary, meant for future entries that never came.

I’m surprised everyone is waiting instead of running ahead to their potential freedom, but instead they wait for me to finish.

After I have finished that rune, I copy the small section on the other rune that has a slight difference.

Once that is done, we leave the box and complacent cleaners behind. I’m hungry and want to get out of this dusty ruin… Unless I find more interesting things, in which case I can stick around.