Some people might laugh at me for being so willing to cave to hard labor after a bit of ego stroking from a beautiful woman.

  Some folks are idiots.

  I’d challenge any guy I know to not immediately start working when someone as beautiful and earnest as Rieka whispers encouragement into your ear in that loving tone while giving you the most endearing set of puppy-dog eyes that have ever been known to exist.

  My girls did help where they could, they didn’t just stand around and look pretty. Not that I expected any of them to try and pull that either.

  Jane helped with some of her wind magic, using it to keep the dust and grit down when I shifted stones and sent sand or other particulates into the air. Shayla kept a bright light on me so I was always able to see well while I worked. Rieka and Kassandra took turns helping me actually lift or move smaller items they could manage, while also ensuring that I didn’t end up dehydrated by what amounted to heavy labor.

  It was honestly not that difficult to move the ancient, collapsed stone.

  Between having eighty points in strength and more than that in endurance, it was simple enough to wrestle most of the larger blocks of stone around and shift them out of the way.

  Anything too big for me to move as it sat, I would sink my earth magic into and find the tiny fissures that had formed over time. Then, when I had my targets located, I’d agitate the stone and either press on the fractures without softening it, or simply force fine grains of dust into the cracks to cause them to split on natural fault lines.

  Since the application of the Manipulate Earth ability was so simple, it didn’t really cost me a whole lot of mana to do so. And we were so deep beneath the earth that the air was thick with the mana. This meant that my natural reservoir was filling relatively quickly to ensure I never ran out.

  After about an hour of lifting, moving, shifting, and struggling, I’d cleared enough of the collapsed upper level to reveal the top four feet of the doorway that lead deeper into the lower levels of the complex. I spent another twenty minutes or so making sure the rubble wouldn’t shift and wedging everything into place properly before we headed deeper.

  Our formation was a loose group with me at the front, my left arm shifted into a thick carapace-covered claw like a fiddler crab and my right arm I shifted into the coiling length of a scorpion’s striking tail without the poison. Behind me, the girls moved in a pack with Shayla in the middle, Jane on her right, Rieka on her left, and then Kassandra on the far left.

  All four of my girls were quiet and focused now that we were delving into the darkness of undiscovered tunnels once more. They’d rotated through resting and helping earlier, but now they were all on point and watchful as we strode deeper into the shadows. Spell rods and weapons held ready depending on the person.

  Shayla’s bright light hovered above her, set right between the moth woman’s fluffy antennae and positioned so she could use those downy appendages to create shadows if needed so as not to blind one of us, but also so she could direct the ball of light into an attack with a single gesture.

  Because the source of light was behind me, it cast a long shadow directly ahead of me, which I kept a close watch on in case something that disdained the light might try and use the shadow as a means to get close. But it was hard, considering what we found decorating the walls here.

  While above in the main complex, there was lots of damage and signs of the battle that had claimed the lives of many if not all of the people working here, down in this section the walls were intact and showed no signs of the major scars, welts, burns, or melted spots that the upper halls had.

  “Did the collapse prevent that monster from getting down here?” Kassandra asked in a whisper, her voice echoing down the length of the tunnel loudly enough that she winced.

  “Probably,” I responded, not wanting her to beat herself up about breaking the odd silence that still hung in the air. It wasn’t as stifling as the sensation of pressure in the complex had once been, but there was still a sense of ancient patience in the air right now.

  “I wonder if there were any people trapped down here.” This time it was Jane who spoke, the mouse kin woman’s voice was thin and quavering, and I heard someone shuffle behind me.

  I could easily imagine that the sound was Shayla laying a reassuring hand on Jane’s shoulder. The gentle moth woman was very empathetic and it was easy to see she’d have been the one to reach out to reassure Jane.

  “Be sharp then. Don’t trust any corpses if you see a body. Remember we found undead last time we were here, and those dissolved into dust when we destroyed the animating force. So if it’s left a body, it’s probably got enough magic to animate,” Rieka reminded firmly, and we all made noises of assent.

  Since they were free of damage and had plenty of light, it was easy to see how elaborately decorated the walls along this corridor were. Carved out of the same gray stone as the rest of the complex, the molding of the walls were all clearly shaped to form knotted vines or elaborate patterns, and also divided the walls every ten feet or so. They’d go from completely smooth, to elaborate patterns done in ancient tiles in varying shades of white and gray to form abstract pictures.

  The tunnel we were in was about sixty or so feet long, and I estimated we were getting close to being directly below the area where the surgery theater was on the upper floor when doors finally began opening off either side of the tunnel. Like the outer doors, these were simple, metallic ones with a crude pull-handle set into one side. A tarnished brass plaque was set at roughly eye level on each of them.

  Pausing at the first set of doors, one on either side of me, I counted them off down the tunnel. There were a total of eight doors here, while I could see a ninth further down on the left and then the tunnel turned to the right past it.

  “Do you want to scout the whole hall out first, or check the doors out?” I asked, shifting to glance over my shoulder.

  Shayla shrugged, her attention fixed on the nearest tile fresco while her antennae bobbed questioningly towards it, looking as if they wanted to trace over the tiles in an attempt to memorize the pattern there. Jane glanced towards Rieka, clearly deferring to my wolf-eared princess.

  “Let's check these two first. I’d rather not leave questions or potential threats behind us,” Rieka said after a moment of thought. “Liam, check the left door first. I’ll cover the right-hand one in case something comes out. Kass, you and Jane cover the front while Shayla goes in with Liam to scout the room out. Shayla, can you leave another of your lights out here?”

  Rather than answering, the shy moth girl made a gesture with her spell rod and the ball of light zipped from between her antennae to fasten on the ceiling in the middle of the section of doors.

  I heard her mumbling her spell chant to summon another one, so I dug into my own Manipulate Element ability and used my earth magic to banish the tarnish and stains from the plaque in front of me.

  “Lab 1,” I muttered, studying the odd runes that were revealed beneath the hundreds of years of tarnish and buildup.

  “Probably means these are all labs. But we need to make sure nothing is hiding in them,” Rieka reiterated and I nodded before pulling the door open. The brilliant flare of light from behind me was enough indication that Shayla had her new spell in place, so I ducked into the room, holding the door open with my shell-covered left hand as I stepped through, allowing Shayla to edge in behind me.

  The lab was carefully and neatly organized, and reminded me somewhat of the old chemistry lab that I had used when I was in highschool. There were waist-high benches of stone that looked to have been carved out of the stone of the floor, with metal-fronted cabinets set into the underside of them. Glassware sat on top of the tables, stained with time and age as well as the dregs of whatever concoctions had existed within them.

  Some of the pieces of glassware still had liquid in them, others had crystallized concentrates, and others just had faint stains. It was clear that whatever had been in these before had long since decayed, dried, or expired.

  Straight out from the door was a clear path with a table on each side, and another path on the other side of them. Each table was easily ten feet long and maybe eight feet across, and they marched in sets of two into the depths of the room for a good eighty feet before stopping at a smooth stone wall. There was about three feet between each table to slip past, so I guessed there were about six or seven sets of tables.

  I wonder if these were carved or shaped? I thought curiously as I paused to inspect a table, peering closely at its dusty but smooth surface. If it had been carved, it had been done with some extreme skill. My own experiments with shaping stone and making the statues had taught me quite a bit about the work needed to ensure such things were well done.

  “Liam?” Shayla asked and I glanced back to find that my winged lover was still standing by the doorway, peering into the room with her light muffled behind her antennae to soften its glare. This had the effect of giving her a look like a fuzzy halo hovered over her head and I smiled.

  “What’s up, Shayla?”

  “You were just really quiet there, worried me for a moment,” she said, giving me a shy smile while her wings fluttered behind her. “This whole place is making my nerves dance, so I’m a little anxious. Sorry.”

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  “Nothing to be sorry about. Better to be wary after all,” I reassured her before gesturing for Shayla to follow me.

  We quickly scanned the room, checking under and behind each set of tables as we went. It wasn’t until we got to almost the end of the room that I felt a sudden surge of energy shoot through me. Out in the hallway, I heard Rieka give a yell of surprise followed by a sharp zot of electricity that I knew heralded a spell.

  I didn’t hesitate, and I didn’t leave Shayla behind. Turning about, I bodily scooped the moth woman into my arms, pulling her lush figure tight to me as I raced down the clear center of the lab back towards the door with long strides.

  If it wasn’t for my greatly improved strength balanced with my agility to not lose my footing, I wouldn’t have been able to do the maneuver without tipping over. As it was, Shayla flailed a bit in surprise as she was suddenly airborne and then pulled to my side. Even after our lovemaking a week previous, Shayla still wasn’t used to the sheer strength I had or my ability to bodily swing her about.

  Which, to be fair, I couldn’t really fault her on. Given that she was only a bit shorter than me, I know it would have freaked me out too, having someone my size or smaller just pick me up so easily.

  But I wasn’t focused on that at the moment. The only thing I was focused on was my girls and making sure they were okay. The surge of power earlier was my Ward Companion ability going off, telling me that something was threatening Rieka, and before I could make it to the door, I felt another pair of surges come racing through me from Kassandra and Jane.

  I ripped the door open as quickly as possible, flowing the armored spike on the end of my right arm into a hand again long enough to snatch the latch and yank on it before reclaiming my weapon in time to strike out at the withered head of the creature I saw flailing halfway out of the door directly across from me.

  The armored spike punched through ancient bones with a crunch and the form collapsed, rapidly decaying into dust as it went.

  Rieka was about five feet further down the hallway from the door, having retreated back the way we came with her spell rod out. Kassandra and Jane were on the other side, trapped in the middle of the group as four of the six remaining doors were hanging open, or beginning to open as more undead pushed through them.

  Unlike the ones that we had run into during our previous raid on this place, these undead wore only clothing and carried no armor or weapons. The clothing was faded and tattered enough that I had no idea what they had once been, but given their location, I had a decent guess.

  That guess could be handled later. Two of the four doors were behind Jane and Kassandra, so I released Shayla and darted forward, my right arm striking out with the speed of a furious cobra as it speared into the bodies of the undead.

  One took a shot to the spine, just below the bottom edge of the skull, and collapsed. The other door had two undead struggling to get out of it, so I slammed the door shut by bum-rushing it, using my massive left arm claw like a pad and the door crashed closed. I heard a forest of cracks as ancient bones gave under the impact of the heavy metal door crashing into unyielding stone.

  One of the two undead went limp, while the other flailed at me with a withered arm wielding a piece of tarnished metal like a dagger. The still-moving of the two ceased its scrabbling a moment later when my spike-hand crashed through its chest, pulping the other half of it, then ripped upwards to smash the head into the wall.

  On my right, I could hear the crackle and whoosh of Kassandra’s ice magic and Jane’s wind magic while the two of them worked to eliminate their threats now that they weren’t being pressed from both sides.

  A flash of light raced past me as Shayla threw in as well, the beam of incandescent, focused light racing over my shoulder like a laser-blast and zipped past my girls. When I glanced after it, I saw one of the undead that had managed to escape its room and make it to the center of the hallway collapse with a smoking crater on its neck where its head used to be.

  “Everyone okay?” I called, and the girls responded a moment later with a mixture of affirmatives. Though Rieka’s had a bit more crass language to it than I was used to with my wolfish princess.

  “Shit gargling ratsack slammed into the door hard enough it hit me,” Rieka swore, glaring down at what I now realized was enough of the ancient clothes and dusted undead to have been at least two of them. “Got the first one, but you nailed the second before I could finish the spell.”

  “You okay? Let me have a look,” I quickly pulled Rieka into my arms, peering at the spot on her head where she was rubbing ruefully.

  “I’m fine, Liam…” Rieka replied with a huff, but she didn’t fight or push me away, instead leaning into me while her pointed ears wiggled back and forth.

  She had a red spot on her head that looked tender, but no blood oozed from beneath her platinum blonde mass of hair. The impact had left a few fragments of rust tangled in those fine, light strands so I brushed them out of her hair gently before giving Rieka a squeeze.

  The other three all fell back to stand in a group around us, my girls leaning into or laying a hand on me reassuringly as we all caught our breath in the wake of the short fight.

  “Those weren’t soldiers,” Kassandra mumbled from where she was leaning her forehead into my stomach.

  I could tell my dwarf lamia was shaken up by the fight because she was just pressing into me with her tail loosely coiled about mine and Rieka’s legs. If she was normal, she’d have figured out some way to cop a feel by now, subtly or not.

  “No, they weren’t,” I agreed. “Given these are labs, I bet these were researchers that got trapped down here. The fact that their bodies were animated and preserved makes me think they were studying something dangerous down here.”

  “Do you think the threat is still here?” Jane asked from my left where she leaned her back against my thigh while keeping a watch on the tunnel ahead of us. The mouse kin’s long tail was wrapped around my thigh a few times, the tufty tip bouncing idly as she anchored herself there.

  “I doubt it,” I sighed. “The chemicals were all dried up in the one lab we got a chance to check thoroughly. For all we know, it’s simply the presence of the mana concentrations and something left over from the entropic creature’s presence that animated them. Hell, might even have been something built into the place.”

  “How so?” Shayla asked, the moth woman had her back pressed to mine while she kept watch back down the way we had come, having reclaimed her light spell from the ceiling to have it rest between her antennae like the other she had turned into a beam attack.

  I thought about it carefully before explaining the thought that had come to me at random. I didn’t want to give the wrong impression to my girls, but it was a legitimate idea that would likely horrify them if I didn’t put it right.

  “Given how… callous the people here appeared from the summoning chamber that links directly to dissection and study, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was some kind of ‘last line of defense’ thing they put into place. If the staff was somehow spelled to rise to defend the place, it might disincentivize someone from attacking it outright.”

  The expected silent horror came, but my girls didn’t shy away from me. Instead, they crowded closer in together for comfort, and I felt Jane’s tail tighten even more on my left thigh.

  “That is horrible, and if it’s true, we need to figure out how to disable it so that it doesn’t continue to happen. That sort of thing would be catastrophic for researchers if someone had an accident,” Rieka said at last, to nods of agreement from the other girls.

  “Okay, let's make sure the lab rooms are all empty. Rather than three of you staying in the hall, I’d prefer if you simply stood in the doorway so you could fall back easily,” I suggested and after some discussion, they agreed.

  The other seven rooms were much like the first, though what exactly was on the stone tables varied somewhat. Three of the eight rooms had glassware and various chemistry pieces. Four of them held ancient sample jars and racks of containers that I guessed were specimens being studied, with only rotten scraps of labels still attached to them. No ink remained in the stained labels though, so I had no way of knowing what they were.

  The last room was simultaneously the most sad and least horrifying one. When I banished the tarnish from the plaque on the door, it read ‘Break Room.’

  Inside, the room held a number of tables of ancient stone and the crumbling remnants of chairs. A collapsed shelf nearby had once held metal mugs and plates, but these lay in a heap against the wall now when the shelf had given out.

  Piled against the back wall were what looked like ten rough pallets made of crumbling cloth that looked like uniforms or lab coats. The cloths were stained and worn, just like all the fabric we’d come across, but from the way they were arranged, I knew what had happened down here.

  “They were trapped down here,” I muttered, staring at the pallets, unable to look away. “Trapped and without food or supplies. They knew that there was no way out, they had to wait and hope for rescue, so they made themselves comfortable and just waited for someone to save them.”

  “And they died down here,” Rieka finished grimly before stepping around me and towards the pallets. Because of the far sparser furniture in this room, it was much easier to see and confirm there were no occupants to the room.

  “Why weren’t they all waiting in here then?” Jane asked, sticking close to me while we slowly proceeded into the room and began checking the mounds of cloth and shelves for anything of value.

  “Habit.” It was surprisingly Shayla who answered. “The restless dead often repeat habits they had in life until something to feed on comes within range. They likely moved to their different labs or to storage spaces they frequented for supplies. They might have even came and laid here to pretend to sleep.”

  When she realized the others were looking at her in surprise, the winged woman shrugged and gestured around at the mess with her free hand.

  “After you all told me about the undead, I did some research during our downtime before the competition.”

  “I did the same after our first time here,” Kassandra grumbled quietly. “But I don’t remember finding anything about that. There wasn’t much information on the restless dead at all.”

  Shayla just shrugged helplessly.

  “I asked the librarian for information and she directed me to a few books. It’s possible some of them were out when you looked?”

  Before the argument could continue, Rieka, who had been bending over one of the pallets, snatched something up from the folded cloth.

  “Found something?” I asked, stepping past my dwarf lamia and the moth girl to check on my princess.

  “Yes. I did some research on human ruins and I remembered reading about them having strangely shaped keys. Not like ones we were used to, and this reminded me of that,” Rieka said, offering me the object she’d grabbed.

  It was a flat plate of metal, maybe half the size of my palm and made of tarnished and dirty brass with more than a dozen thin lines carved into it. A tug with my Manipulate Element ability and the tarnish fell away, revealing a shimmering plate of brass that had thin threads of iron running through it at the bottom of each of the channels. I could feel that it wasn’t regular iron either, but magnetized iron. There was a rough thumb-shape at one end of the strip of metal, as if to indicate where to grip the thing. It was maybe three or four times as thick as a playing card.

  “This looks like a key to me, though not a normal one,” I said.

  It looks like those old pass-keys from some video games, honestly, I thought, though I didn’t voice it aloud. While I’d told my girls a lot about Earth to amuse them, gaming was something I doubted they’d really understand or appreciate.

  “Well, if we have the key,” Kassandra said, dragging the sentence out. “Now we need to find the lock!”

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