“Lady Rocastle, I don’t understand,” the surveyor said.

“It’s there. Under us.”

The look of the man showed how much doubt he had. The ramblings of a mad countess were something to be carefully listened to – and then ignored as much as possible.

She was not going to explain about Detect Metal.

“I know. According to Ancient geology, eastern Montana was not known for its mineral riches. Copper near New Benton, which is how it got its prosperity back. And silver and gold in the mountains further west.”

“But,” she added before the man could explain why her endeavor was therefore foolish.

“But the Fall and Changestorms did things to the world. What the Ancient knew is a guide, not gospel.”

She pointed down.

“And I tell you, this is the place where you get rich ores and the closest to the surface.”

This was certainly not what the master surveyor had expected when he finally arrived in White Meadows at the start of spring. He sighed internally, careful not to let his feelings show. Countess Catherine Rocastle might be ruling over a relatively minor part in the west of the Montana Marches, but she did have some wealth backing her. As long as she paid him to waste his time…

From what he’d heard, her husband might have been worse in terms of flights of fancy.

“Then we’re going to dig and take samples.”

“55, maybe 60 feet deep,” she said.

The surveyor’s eyebrows shot up.

“That’s deep, for an exploratory dig. Are you sure?”

“Completely. Have you found your crew?”

“There are a couple of lads that seem competent enough, although nobody is a miner around there.”

Obviously, he didn’t add.

Well, he would make sure he was paid in advance, and regularly. So that whenever Lady Rocastle realized her delusions wouldn’t pan out, she wouldn’t be able to weasel her way out of the contract.

The dig had been relatively non-problematic. Solid, but not too solid ground. The Countess had come every two days to check progress, but you did not dig 60 feet of rock and ground that fast.

The newest layer that had been uncovered wasn’t rock, though. Or even ore.

It was refined metal.

Catherine Rocastle lowered her head and headed down, following the surveyor, with the way dimly lit by the lanterns.

“See,” the master surveyor said as they reached the point where the floor turned into a curved expanse of polished metal.

“That wasn’t what I thought it would be… I assumed very rich ore… not all of this Alium.”

“Alium? How do you know?” he asked, genuinely interested.

Catherine, countess Rocastle, knelt in the half darkness, lit only by an oil lamp up, and the burning light below. Her Guardian, Anthony, kept watching the tunnel.

She had sent away the digger team while she worked. She definitively did not want anyone to see her doing… Talented work.

It was bad enough that she’d slipped and identified the nature of the metallic curved cover immediately, thanks to Detect Metal. Her hired surveyor had been keen to ask how she knew so much about metal she could identify it even in the darkness.

Right now, Fusion was at work. She pointed a finger – it was not entirely necessary, but it helped her focus – and the Alium melted, sparking and leaving a hole as she moved the melting area around, drawing a square opening in the metal. It was slow work, but she was already way over her Metal Skin time limit.

She’d been disappointed to see she could only hold on to the skin for fifty-three minutes at best. According to the Mages of America, that put her at the upper bound of tier four, merely a “very good” sorceress, despite having four Talents like an Archmage. But she was now over an hour of Fusion, and she did not feel that emptiness that came when the mana resources were exhausted.

This was good because while it was slow work, it was almost done. There was half a foot of metal still holding the square she was making, and her finger was tired of pointing. But if she curled it, her aim was slightly less precise.

Johanna told me not every spell is equally draining. Thanks whatever that this one is good enough.

This seemed suspicious to her. The combination of Detect Metal and Fusion seemed perfectly made for finding this Ancient whatever and getting in easily. Either Johanna’s Ancient Power had planned this all along, or she was fantasizing way too much.

The metal square groaned suddenly and fell, but barely a foot. She stopped trying to melt the metal and tried to peer down in the darkness.

“Bring me light, Anthony,” she asked.

With the lamp, she saw more. Part of the irregularities she’d felt in the melting was due to some trusses shoring up the curved metal, which she’d melted too even without seeing them. The cut metal square had fallen straight on an inner core, which was smoking from the residual heat of the last parts of the cut. Her nose wrinkled at the acrid smell.

Unlike the metal cover, this second cover didn’t register strongly on Detect Metal. She suspected, from the smell, that it was a different Ancient material, maybe one of their various “plastics” made from deep oils.

She tried to push on the square, but Anthony grabbed her.

“Let me do it,” he said.

He knelt over the opening, putting his right leg in, and stomped. She heard cracking sounds as he repeated the push until a groan followed by a loud noise announced that the Guardian had succeeded in breaking through the second cover.

He lowered the oil lamp slightly but did not dare put it down more. There were hints of things below, but neither could see what was down there.

“Looks like we’ll need real help to get down there,” Anthony commented.

The surveyor and one of his aides peered down in the darkness. Catherine could see his confusion at the melted-down metal square opening. In normal circumstances, they would have spent days cutting and sawing their way through. Her Shaper abilities had changed all that, but it was hard to explain. Thankfully, her position as the Countess of the Rocastle Demesnes made her relatively immune to inquiries.

The rope ladder was dropped into the darkness below, and the aide readied himself, as his boss cautiously lowered the lamp tied at the end of its separate rope.

The first thing Catherine saw was the reflection of the metal square, which had dropped and caught something. As the lamp went down, details emerged.

Chairs? It looks like rows of chairs.

Then she frowned because in between the chairs, there were brown shapes that looked like people.

“Dead. All dead. It’s a graveyard down there,” the aide called out suddenly as he stopped going down and started climbing back out.

Catherine and her bodyguard exchanged looks and sighed almost simultaneously.

“It’s elongated. Like a long tunnel. A lot of chairs, all facing the same way, with two rows to pass through. And… lots of dead people,” Anthony said from below, as he waved the oil lamp to see more.

“What happened?” Catherine called out.

“No idea whatsoever. But it’s old. The bodies seem to have been desiccated, not rot.”

“Mummified?” she asked.

“Mum-what?”

“Okay. I’m coming down.”

“You should…” Anthony started before stopping himself.

“You’re coming?” she asked the surveyor.

His aide made shuddering head shakes in denegation, but the surveying boss shrugged and started going down on the ladder.

She waited and joined him, lamps raised. The feeling was oppressive, and she wondered if the air was too stale. It was probably a bit too late for that, but since the lamps burned properly, it was probably breathable for some reason.

The scene was grisly. The long room with its rows of chairs. And dozens of brown, leathery corpses, mummified. Most of them were clustered, but some were alone on one of the chairs. They wore odd but well-preserved clothes.

“Ancients,” the surveyor said, expressing her own opinion before she voiced it.

For a moment, she thought about the distant Power, back west. The skeleton that gave Johanna and her team their power, and by proxy, hers. But if any of the Ancient corpses held some arcane power, nothing was visible there.

“How did you know…” he started to ask before she cut him short.

“As I said before, I didn’t. I have no idea who they are… they were.”

“They must have been stuck here after the Fall,” Anthony said.

“And I have no idea what they were doing here. This doesn’t look like a refuge for the Fall or something like that,” she replied.

She spotted a patch of color, fallen on one of the chairs. She reached and picked what looked like a two-color solid sphere. Firm and unyielding under her hand. She looked up and froze.

Because even if they were turned away from her, Anthony felt stronger, somehow, than the surveyor.

The three of them climbed up, much to the relief of the aide, who was staying a few feet away from the opening.

She looked briefly at him, then turned the sphere in her hand, putting the blue side on her palm instead of the yellow, and the sensation of strength was replaced by the almost blindingly bright streaks of light coming through the tunnel and falling down into the Ancient structure. And the swirls that attached themselves to the dual Artifact that she held in hand, as well as the golden bracelet at her wrist.

“We need to organize burials first. And start cataloging everything.”

She watched the pair of paperback books she had in hand. The lurid covers with the shirtless guys were still shiny as if the book had been printed last year, but even if she did not care for the content, the secondary trove of treasures was going to be precious too, even if not immediately useful.

Worst case, if I can find her place once she settles, I can send her the books to change.