The tunnel branched several times, but they followed trails of Rittian activity mostly straight for a long time before it veered off into a tunnel going deeper at a steep angle. Discarded bits of bone that they didn’t even try and identify, scraps of ruined clothing, and broken stone clubs littered the path. From the looks of it, the crazed rat people discarded rubbish onto the floor immediately, with no care for hygiene or tripping hazards.

“This is nasty,” Leya complained as she sidestepped some dung.

“Yeah, well, if you’re planning on taking an adventurer’s path, then get used to it.” Claudia walked on, completely ignoring the mess, with the exception of stepping over things. “Unless you’re the type to stay in one spot and not travel around, you’re bound to run into some nasty situations and places.”

Leya glanced up at Kay with an interesting expression but didn’t say anything.

Kay saw the look but decided to let Leya say anything if she wanted to talk about it.

“I think I see another split coming up,” Stephen called back, and he was right. A few feet in front of them, the tunnel split in two, both continuing down at an angle. The left path wasn’t as steep as the right one, and the literal trail of refuse led down both.

“Which way do we go?”

“Well,” Kay gestured to the right, “That one goes westish, and it’s deeper. We’ve been going pretty far east, but since I have no idea where we’re actually going, that doesn’t matter much. I say we go down this one, and if we have to, we backtrack.”

“Yeah, that’s how it goes.” Stephen stretched a little, then started slowly going down the incline. “Make sure you watch our backs even more than usual,” He told Kay, “We’re right in the middle of their territory.”

Kay gestured behind him, and thin tendrils of blood floating in the air glinted in the light cast by Claudia’s fires. “I’ve been trailing some trip lines since we ran into enemies. If they touch it, I’ll know.”

“Good thinking,” Stephen nodded and stepped into the tunnel for real. The group followed behind, keeping the same formation they had for the last few hours.

The tunnel was basically a really long ramp, and they had to move slowly as they walked, each footstep carefully placed so that they didn’t slip and start tumbling down. They made it down a few hundred feet, and Kay started to hear something below them. A faint rushing noise traveled up the tunnel to his ears.

“Do you hear that?”

Claudia nodded from the position in front of him, “Sounds like water. Cindy said that hitting water meant we were close but a little bit off. Should we turn around and go the other way?”

That made sense, but Kay decided otherwise. “If there’s this much trash left behind, I’m guessing they go this way a lot; it might be their main source of water. Let’s go down and check it out; make sure there aren’t any stragglers down there. Then we can come back up, or there might be another path down there.”

Claudia groaned quietly, “We’re going all the way down then back up again? That sucks.” She tapped Leya’s shoulder and whispered the plan, who passed it on to Stephen.

The rushing noise grew louder as they got closer, eventually becoming the roar of moving water in an enclosed space. The ground leveled off before rounding a corner, revealing an entire underground river. The flowing water ran through an obviously man-made channel with square edges. It flowed underneath a destroyed stone bridge that used to lead to another bank across the way but now just sat over the water uselessly. On the other side was a closed door set into the wall.

The group cautiously glanced around the area, checking for enemies, but only found more trash, including broken bits of pottery and cracked bowls.

Leya grabbed one of the ceramic pieces and looked it over. “This has some of the same designs I’ve seen a few times on the walls of the tunnels.”

Kay walked to her and looked at the piece over her shoulder, “You’ve seen designs on the tunnels? I didn’t notice any.”

“There were some on the ceilings and a few on the walls here and there. They were small, but they’re similar in design to these.” She wiggled the broken pottery, “There was a slightly bigger one under the edge of the entrance we used yesterday.”

“Huh,” Kay grabbed a different piece from the ground after making sure it wasn’t covered in poop or rotting food and looked at the markings covering it. The designs were simple, composed of straight lines intersecting each other at angles to make shapes. They looked like very angular runes to Kay, a bit like old Nordic runes he’d seen in a history class. “Do any of you know how long ago the Rune Master showed up?”

“It’s been two or three hundred years,” Stephen answered, “Why?”

“Because these shapes look a lot like runes from a language back home, and I was wondering if there was a rune magic connection. But I think that whoever made these tunnels did it more than a few hundred years ago, so maybe these are just words or letters.”

“Or just pretty shapes they liked putting on stuff.” Claudia suggested, “Although if that were true, I’d think there would be more of them on the tunnels, and they’d be easier to see probably.”

Kay shrugged and slipped the fragment into his bag. “It’ll be an interesting thing to try and figure out. Once we have enough people and finish this Quest to protect everyone, we can actually explore for real.”

“We might even draw in more people who’d come just to look around and try and figure out who these people were.” Stephen grabbed a few more clean shards of pottery and put them away, “I had some pretty good tutors growing up, and I’ve never heard of anyone living in this area in recorded history, let alone a society with enough power to carve out this much of a giant plateau.”

Kay chuckled at the idea, “We might become an archaeological attraction? That’d be interesting.”

“Well, for that to happen, we have to wipe out some kind of madness-inducing being and its minions,” Claudia pointed up the tunnel, “So let’s start walking. The only other path down here is that door over there, and we aren’t getting there without a lot of work.”

“I don’t know why you’re so worked up about going back up. I’m the one covered in heavy armor,” Stephen remarked as he started towards the tunnel.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Kay waited for the other two to file in before continuing, “Why isn’t your armor a lot louder?”

“Quieting charm.” He tapped at his chest plate, which only made a small clicking noise, “I wear it under here, and it makes all of my armor quieter. It’s a must-have investment for any adventurers with loud armor or weapons.”

Claudia nodded. “Cost our team a lot of money too. Totally worth it though, we were in a lot of places where him clanking away would have gotten us killed.”

The climb up was just as annoying as the careful shuffle down, if not more so. With gravity as an enemy dragging them down, they took twice the time to get to the top as it took getting down to the bottom. Almost an hour after getting there the first time, they made it back to the fork in the tunnel. They immediately headed down the left-hand path, which was thankfully much easier to walk.

Unlike a lot of the other tunnels, this one snaked back and forth at regular intervals, creating a large number of corners they had to cautiously check for enemies. Their pace slowed to a crawl as the group did their best to avoid ambushes.

Stephen slowed to a complete stop after stepping around one of those corners with his shield out. “I see light.”

“Since we’re looking for them, I’d say that’s a good thing.”

Kay nodded in agreement, “Everyone ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.”

The light was coming through an archway ahead of them where the tunnel straightened out. The edges of the archway were squared off, making it look a bit like an empty door frame. Now that he knew to look for them, Kay noticed a few symbols carved into the arch like Leya had pointed out earlier.

Stephen poked an eye out to look, then gestured at Kay to move closer, “Look at this.”

Kay peeked out. Directly outside the tunnel, they were in was a small ledge that overlooked a lower level. Said level was filled with Rittians, enough of them to completely block out sight of the ground. They were gathered in a massive cluster in the ovoid chamber, scrambling and fighting with each other. Kay watched as one Rittian ripped out the throat of another and started eating the body, while more of them sprang forward and tried to rip the corpse from their grasp. At the edge of the chamber were two more of the monstrous mouth-covered rat creatures that they’d fought earlier. They mostly ignored the swirling mass of Rittians, except when one got too close. Then they’d snap the squealing rat person up into one of their many mouths and start crunching them into meat.

At the opposite end of the chamber, three Rittians stood alone, staring into a small doorway while they ignored the noises coming from behind them. The three were dressed similarly to the Rittian that had hit Kay with the green energy whip and tried to drag him off to be sacrificed, with tattered robes covering most of their bodies and long stone staffs in their hands.

After what felt like an eternity of watching the giant tangle of rat people fight, kill, and eat each other, there was suddenly movement from the doorway.

A massive Rittian covered in corded muscle and wearing only a leather loincloth squirmed out of the much smaller doorway, eventually popping free and looming over the three waiting figures. Even from the distance he was watching from, Kay could see the strange swirling eyes of this new figure, which glowed green as he stared down at the others.

“Time of Great çצ¿ñ↓ªu▒ arrival is here!” He boomed in a surprisingly deep voice, and Kay winced and drew back as the name of the creature caused him physical pain, “Great çצ¿ñ↓ªu▒ says new, powerful sacrifices are near! Half look for them! Half begin ritual! Go! Go!” The big Rittian screamed and bellowed, and the mass of rat people split.

Roughly half of them rushed towards Kay’s group, disappearing into a tunnel beneath them and just out of sight. The rest waited in place as two of the three robed figures stepped on either side of the small doorway and held out their staffs. A glowing green shimmer appeared between them that the rest of the Rittians started diving through. As they passed through the effect, their bodies started to glow with the same green color as they rushed through the door into the chamber beyond.

The other robed Rittian, and the large one just watched as half the gathered rat people pushed their way in with maddened eyes.

Kay slowly looked over to the rest of the group, who were also watching the proceedings. “That seems really bad.” He whispered.

“I think you’re right. We should probably do something.”

“This is going to suuuck!” Stephen complained as he readied his shield. “Do we have a plan?”

“No, but if you give me a moment, I’ll do my best to think of one.”