Yuriko frowned as Lucian and his posse postured near the entrance gate.

“What are they doing here?” She asked Faeril.

The Sha’ledras boy nodded to her and said, “Lucian and his crew were the ones to trip the alarm and cause the increased Warforged aggression.” He held up his hands as Yuriko started to retort. “It was an accident. And they are the ones who know where that panel was.”

Yuriko shifted her stare to Lucian, who scowled at her and crossed his arms. He kept his wary distance though.

Yuriko sniffed. “So why are they…?” She trailed off, remembering the Hollow’s tenets that Vaeril mentioned. They would accept anyone who came here, as long as they followed the rules. And even then, only a few sanctions were given if they were broken.

When they arrived here, Lucian had attacked without provocation, but his punishment was only to be denied use of the hot spring pools and easy access to the Hollow’s food storage. From what she remembered of the Foreign Quarter and what Edmund Sevier said, fruiting trees could be harvested all year round. So the man’s punishment was a minor bit of inconvenience.

“Bear with it for now,” Marron scowled. “If they try anything we’ll deal with it.”

“We could just look for it ourselves,” Yuriko muttered but shook her head afterwards. Going for it alone would take more time, and honestly, she’d just rather get this over with.

Seeing her frown, Marron nodded in agreement. “Let’s just get back home.”

Since she didn’t continue her protest, Faeril gestured towards the gate. About a dozen groups of five or six had formed up. They were to defend against the Warforged Drones and keep their return path clear.

“Sky spirits, land gods, ancestors, and the Great Trees guide you on your task.” The elderly Vaeril said as they passed the gate. He gave each of them a firm handshake as they exited. Once the last warrior was through, the gate snapped close with a silent hiss.

Faeril led the way, followed by Yuriko and her team. The others trailed behind, at least a dozen paces away from each other. Their footsteps were light, and they kept noise discipline firm. The strange thing was that each of them were clad in antiquated armour. Not platemail or anything like that, but metal breastplates, leather skirts, and metal arm guards and greaves.

Faeril had put on a shirt but was otherwise clad similarly to how he usually was, except that he had a sword sheathed on his hip. It had a narrow blade and a basket hilt and looked far too flimsy to fight the Warforged. Well, he also had a recurve bow slung across his chest though he didn’t have a quiver.

Perhaps he used Animus constructs as projectiles?

The reflection of the Radiant Sun was just climbing up from the eastern cavern wall as they made their way along the Crafter’s District’s side roads and alleyways. Yuriko could hear a few of the Warforged Drones footsteps from a couple of blocks away. Faeril’s ears twitched to and fro, seemingly tracking the sounds. He would pause and signal for them to hold still and stay in the shadows cast by the buildings every now and then. They moved like that for about an hour, until they reached the southern border.

While they walked, Yuriko let her thoughts wander about. She was lithe and graceful enough that her footsteps were no louder than a whisper if she even made a halfhearted attempt. Gwendith and Desire actually made the most noise, but against everything else, it wasn’t that loud.

The underground city felt disquieting to Yuriko, and it had bothered her ever since they first entered. In the first place, the wind was far too regular. It blew from east to west at a steady clip, then switched directions from north to south after an hour. Then west to east, and finally south to north before reverting back to the original direction.

There were few sounds other than the Warforged in the city. No animals of any kind, and certainly no insects, rodents, or other pests. No cats or dogs too.

It only made sense though, since the city was completely enclosed, not to mention underground. But that fact was hard to internalize, considering Radiant energy continued to fill her reserves from basking in the morning sun.

While they had been planning this foray, Gwendith had asked the elder why he didn’t try to do something instead of just hunkering down in the Hollow.

“I’m not a young man anymore,” Vaeril muttered, “I haven’t the vigour to cast so many spells away from the strength granted to me by the Hollow.”

He was the strongest amongst the two hundred odd residents. Further, most of them didn’t really mind being trapped here. His grandson was one who wanted to leave, but considering how young he was, at seventeen or so, that was understandable. The others desperate to leave were those from the Federation.

There were two other Chaos Lords in residence, Worshiper of Fanciful Dreams and Delighted Sleeper of Sorrows, and she met both of them yesterday. They were…strange.

Not like Desire at all, or the Chaos Lords she’s fought and killed. Dreamer had a pipe and puffed out cloying smoke every time he spoke, and he spent most of his day sitting beneath a palm tree puffing away.

Sleeper, well, he slept. Practically all day and all night, on a hammock slung between a couple of trees. He had been clad in similar clothing to the others, a shirt, shorts, and thonged sandals. If not for the way ambient Chaos drifted around them, she wouldn’t have thought they were Chaos Lords at all. And on a more important note, she wanted to know how they lived without draining someone else of their Animus.

Well, it turned out that whatever Dreamer was smoking, it allowed him to replenish his Chaos Well, and Sleeper’s all-day naps did the same. It was an aspect of their titles.

As for what that meant about Desire, Yuriko didn’t know and her mind skirted around the idea that the woman was so fixated on her that it was what allowed her to live in the plane. All the while she thought that Chaos Lords simply drained Animus from humans. Or maybe her thoughts were just running wild. She couldn't quite summon the courage to ask directly. Not yet anyway.

As for the expedition, she would have thought that Professor Edmund Sevier would have joined them, but he was like the others in that he had no desire to go back to the surface.

At the edge of the Crafter’s District was a pit–no a chasm–that spanned across the rest of the cavern. She could see the city wall curve around the edge, as well as a high wall farther south that bisected the city. She couldn’t see past it but a few buildings tops were still visible.

“Beyond that wall is the Inner Court,” Faeril said, “but we can’t cross that wall, not easily anyway. The majority of the Warforged are concentrated there. There are paths below that lead inside.” He pointed towards the chasm.

The mining pit. Yuriko looked down into the darkness. The shadows from the chasm’s wall cast everything down there in darkness but she could just make out a winding trail along the side. And were those tunnels set into the sides? Movement along the path caught her eyes and when she activated Enhanced Sight, she saw Warforged moving in either direction. These were different from the ones she’d fought though. They had baskets on their back, filled with rocks, and their arms were tipped with fingers and a thumb rather than weapons.

“What about those?” She pointed out.

“That kind won’t attack as long as we don’t,” Faeril replied. “I’m not sure what we’ll encounter in the tunnels. Could be the more militaristic Drones or Chaos-twisted. No way to know until we get there.”

“But you know the path?” Marron pressed.

“Not me. They do.” Faeril pointed at Lucian. “Please lead the way,” he called out to them.

The big man smirked then nodded curtly.

“Come on, boys,” he growled. They stalked towards the lip of the chasm, glanced down and to either side, then to Yuriko’s surprise, they jumped down.

Yuriko rushed towards the edge and looked over. She found them standing on a ledge path not three paces below. The ledge curved up towards the right, and eventually rose up to the chasm’s lip fifty paces away.

Lucian glanced up at her and smirked, then nodded down the path and gave a mocking bow.

Yuriko stared back coldly, then with a snort, moved back. Swarm fodder.

About a minute later, she saw them moving down the ramp, suddenly all business. A few of the other teams had caught up by now, though they waited for Faeril’s signal.

Gwendith patted Yuriko’s back and said, “He’s a rotter, isn’t he? But he’s no match for you. Don’t give him the satisfaction of getting under your skin.”

“Right,” Yuriko muttered. She jumped down to the ledge, followed by the rest of her team and they trailed behind Lucian. The mining chasm was nearly a longstride across, but it was probably longer than a league. The ledge was more than five paces wide, though it narrowed to three or so at times. The Warforged Miner Drones weren’t on this level yet, but a glance down the lip showed her that they were just ten paces or so below. The ledge paths circled around the sides of the chasm, all the way down from what she could tell, though the darkness and something else cloaked the depths even from her Enhanced Sight.

They walked past several tunnel entrances, but seemingly at random, the group ahead finally went into one. One of the men waited at the entrance to make sure they could follow. He had a contrite look on his face, quite unlike the rest of his troop.

He stayed by the tunnel entrance to await the rest of the warriors while Yuriko went through. The glow of her Anima was more than enough to light their way, but there was also dim illumination coming from the ceiling. The mine shaft wasn’t dissimilar to the tunnels under Rumiga City, with the main difference being the dim light panels along the ceiling and either wall. The lights were differently coloured too, green to the right, blue to the left, and white above. Somehow, the lights blended into a warm yellow in the middle.

The upper tunnels were mostly bare. They followed this one until it came back out into the chasm, a couple of levels below the original ledge. Then they entered another tunnel half a longstride away. The tunnels here branched out, but it was easy to distinguish the main passages. The mining vein tunnels were a bit narrower and rougher looking and were often absent of lighting panels.

As they exited back towards the ledges, Yuriko recoiled when they came face to face with one of the miner drones. The automaton barely reacted to their presence save for stepping around her when she didn’t move out of the way. The basket on its back was filled with rocks and when it came under the light of her Anima, she could tell it mostly contained iron.

She stepped aside for the drones that came after the first one though, wary of drawing their wrath. They would be easy enough to dispatch but ultimately pointless. Where did they bring their loads though? Certainly not to the Crafter’s District.

The next tunnel they went through was the last one. They went down one of the mining branches, with the lead team holding orbs of Animus to light the way. They went deeper and deeper before the direction reversed and they started to go up. The path was long and twisting, and it took several hours.

It wasn’t more than a couple of hours that they ran into the first corpse. Afterwards, there was a veritable trail of them. Insectoid, bestial, reptilian, and a rotting mixture of all of them. Each one was beaten to death with blunt instruments, and a few even had fist imprints on their torsos. A rather blatant attempt at intimidation from Lucian and friends, Yuriko decided.

And, a couple of hours later, a small group of the twisted creatures rushed out of a side passage and barreled towards them, and knocked Gwendith and Desire off their feet. A burst of icy blue light came from the blonde girl and the insectoid, an ant man, turned into a block of ice. Meanwhile, the other one visibly desiccated as Desire drained all of its vital force from it.

The others were quickly dispatched by Saki and Marron, leaving Yuriko blinking in surprise.

“Can’t let you have all the fun,” Gwendith smirked as she got up and dusted off her bottom.

Yuriko grinned back. Some excitement, at last?