With the threat bottled like an angry wasp, Ruyo peered up into the ancient rubble. "Nusina, what's this place?"

She and Pir floated to investigate, and Ruyo and Virid sent lights up higher for a brighter, better-colored view. They illuminated a badly damaged space with a few chairs, a table, scraps of paper, and a cabinet.

"Any of that salvageable?" asked Khulis.

Nusina said, "Probably. Milady, can you open these drawers?"

"Ferry me up?"

Nusina had some trouble but had a ball of water engulf Ruyo and lift her. Ruyo stood carefully on the shattered floor. "A room for people to sit and rest?" she said. She had trouble with the rusty cabinet but managed to pry it open. "Just packages."

She dropped three bundles of plastic-wrapped paper into the men's arms, and picked up some of the papers. Most were ruined, but one was a folded pamphlet with legible writing and a picture of a smiling family. It gave Ruyo chills to see how normal the ancients looked.

No usable doors up there, so she descended. Elly had sliced open one package and found dozens of identical pamphlets. This one's cover had a double-spiral design.

"What's it say?" asked Ruyo.

Elly said, "The paper's like new, but I can't read more than a word here and there like 'start'. We'll have to sit down and study these."

Lisette suggested, "Somewhere farther from the killer robots."

Everyone agreed. They moved on, and found a set of shattered glass doors leading to a dim room of dining tables. "The cafeteria?" asked Ruyo.

Nusina bobbed. "Looks like it. How about Pir and I go in and scout for those scorpion things?"

They did. Ruyo started making a low ice wall as a precaution. The spirits lit up the room, and Nusina thought at Ruyo: Yes, more of those horrid creatures. Ten or fifteen."

Ruyo went wide-eyed and reinforced the wall. "Ten or fifteen?" She shook her head. "I kind of feel sorry for them. Animals that've been trapped in the dark for ages, eating hospital food."

Tamur grunted. "I would rather not fight so many." The others mumbled agreement.

So Ruyo called Nusina back. "This one's your job."

Ruyo and company stayed put and let the spirits rampage. Nusina commanded a swarm of Quill elementals and great globs of water, coming back to the entrance for an endless resupply. The animals were too dumb to know the spirits couldn't really be hurt or where the real prey was. Flashes of blue light from rapid freezing, and of red from Pir's lesser attempts to burn things, lit up the room and showed a bizarre battle. Virid sent in his own critter to flail at the beasts too. It was an extermination run, one-sided. Furniture clattered and monsters screeched. Finally Nusina said, "Got them! We left one in case Tamur wants a try."

The big man smiled. "Yes, thank you!" He looked to Ruyo, who collapsed her barrier, and then he walked cautiously in. Ruyo watched from a distance as he snarled and dodged a charging scorpion, then brought his mace down on its spine. It only took a minute. He limped back and said, "It scratched my leg."

Ruyo said, "Sit." She touched his scarred, thick left leg and blushed as she worked on the little slash it bore. Pulling the venom out and cleansing the wound was easy. Tamur grunted and muscles shifted against her hand. She stood up quickly and said, "Well! That ought to do it. Everyone who goes in, stay on guard in case we missed one."

The room was better lit now. Virid kept a rock creature stomping along ahead of him. He said, "I'm curious about the food source. Does this mean there were machines to generate food like one of Miss Ruyo's spells?"

Lisette looked especially worried, jumping at shadows, but they found no more of the creatures. Instead there were bits of broken, scattered cookware on and around the tables, but no people. To one side stood a line of food counters and trays, and behind that the infested kitchen, washed and scoured relatively clean in the fighting just now.

Virid was the first to spot a spigot etched with runes. As they watched, it dropped a small glob of beige paste into a sink. The metal around it showed countless claw marks. He said, "I bet this is food. So for centuries these little monsters have been living on the stuff."

"That's horrible," Ruyo said. "Were the people here living on the same bare-minimum food goo?"

"Beats being out of food completely," Khulis said. "You're our poison removal expert, ma'am; want to give it a taste test?"

Ruyo scowled, but Nusina said, "You probably should."

"I'd rather eat the scorpions."

Tamur said, "The legs aren't bad, roasted."

"Eat the glop!" urged Elly. She started a chant.

Ruyo gave her a dirty look, then scooped up a bit of the gunk and licked her finger. She gagged but forced it down. "Better than I feared. Uh, starchy? Probably filling."

She studied the enchanted spigot and managed to detach it while the others raided the rest of the kitchen, even taking venom samples. "This gadget does seem related to my own spell, but mine started off with sort of a ship's biscuit and it's still basically magic bread. I hope they served more than this goo."

Virid was nearby, rummaging. "Some of this equipment was obviously for cutting, mixing and baking. Some of it's just electrical, and some seems to use electricity to power magic. So converting from one to the other was possible."

Ruyo nodded. "We saw signs of that already. So long-term enchantments on buildings and fixed equipment were practical, assuming they had an electric source. Which they did. Right now I think devices like this are running basically just on natural mana." She glanced toward the doorway. "Nusina, does that mean the robots are permanently powered down?"

"Depends on whether they had converters or some very long-term storage. Probably they're long dead. But that small one upstairs was active."

"It's a different design. Maybe that matters."

Ruyo called the others together. They'd scavenged a lot of silverware, pots, plates, more light metal chairs than they could carry, and several jars of honey that somehow looked fresh. There was some long-ruined food in sealed storage too. Ruyo said, "So what happened here? It looks to me like a lot of robots got commanded to herd people into that one room and then killed them."

Hastro said, "Commanded by who? You have some authority here, ma'am, so could it have been your own past self?"

Nusina sharpened like ice. "My old mistress would never have done that!"

Virid frowned. "And what was the point of killing them? Especially in one place?"

Ruyo said, "There's no way. The mural showed only happy things, not... not sacrificing people for power!"

Tamur shrugged. "The Lost World died. We're alive. I'll take what I can, not worry about their mistakes."

Virid looked up at him. "The knowledge is part of the treasure here. If we could understand what happened, we'd be safer against whatever ended them."

Nusina said, "It's possible that a god so inclined would be able to get energy from killing people. But that suggests it was a different god."

Ruyo answered by thought. "If it was Zovvah, a massacre like this would've been more blatant than anything we've heard of. Not its style. Or it was desperate."

"A war was on. If it needed power badly, tipping its hand might have made sense. Or maybe it'd already started killing people this way."

Ruyo asked, "Was it a war among the gods, then? Set off by arrogant, power-hungry beings making mortals fight for them?"

"I wish I knew. But it couldn't have been my mistress who caused all this!"

"Right," Ruyo said, with more confidence than she really felt. If she really wanted to know about the power she'd inherited, she needed to know how it went terribly wrong for everyone. Otherwise she was like a child playing with an ancient weapon, without even knowing which end was dangerous.

"All right. Gather our loot and let's move on."