“Well you don’t see that coming down the street from Blaisbury Market,” Hannah replied. She didn’t know what a skaven was or what the significance of the name might be. Like most citizens of the Emprie she had never seen a beastman, but they loomed large enough in the imagination through travellers tales and works of fiction that she had some idea. These rat things were… well more similar than she would have imagined beastmen to be. With morbid curiosity she prodded one gently with the tip of her sword. The corpse rolled slowly over, the things long tongue lolling out of its mouth. The smell was abominable, made no better by the way lice seemed to crawl in the mangy fur that covered its body in patches.

“Do you know what we need to do?” she asked. Malcador didn’t respond, apparently not yet over the shock of discovering whatever a skaven was.

“We need to get the fuck out of here, that is what we need to do,” Hannah concluded.
Fortunately they had the presence of mind not to simply flee, no matter how tempting that might be. Unfortunately neither of them had a pack. They solved the problem by tying lengths of old dwarven rope to into improvised nets with shoulder loops, into which they piled waybread. They each took a keg of the dwarven ale as well, Hannah taking a second despite the weight.

“How long can you keep my seeing like this?” she asked, waving her hand infront of her face to emphasize the spell Malcador had cast. The tunnel still seemed to be lit by bright starlight, despite the fact they were clearly underground.

“It isn’t a very complicated spell,” he admitted, as though it were no more impressive than lighting a lantern. Hannah shrugged her shoulders, trying to settle her burden. It might not seem impressive to Malcador but it was infinitely preferable to carrying a torch that would mark them out for every denizen of these forgotten tunnels. 

“Which way should we go?” Malcador asked as soon as they were ready to depart. Hannah pointed in the direction the rat men had been heading.

“This way, I think it is south and that is where most of the surviving dwarf holds are,” she explained.

“Sounds as good a plan as any, unless of course these skaven were heading back to their … nest? Warren? What do you call it where a bunch of rats live?” he wondered.

“An Imperial Tax Office?” Hannah suggested, earning a snort from the wizard.


They headed into the tunnels. To Hannah’s unease there seemed to be a slight downward angle as they went. Sometimes the tunnel was wide enough that two coaches could have passed, in other places the ancient structure was partially collapsed and they were obliged to move in single file, or clamber over large piles of fallen rock and earth. Occasionally the tunnels split. Sometimes this was the design of the original creators, other times there were side tunnels which had clearly been dug, or burrowed, by later hands. By mutual consent they avoided these, judging by the runes and glyphs they saw daubed on the walls, goblins as well as these skaven had been in the tunnels at some point and they had no desire to meet either. 


After several hours of walking Hannah felt her spirits start to flag. She wasn’t sure what she had expected but the monotonous sameness as well as the idea of uncounted billions of tons of rock above her began to weigh on her. At least she was dry now and it was warm enough that her teeth weren’t audibly chattering. She was about to suggest they stop and rest when the stuffy closeness of the air seemed to change. Hannah paused for a moment, then realized she had no idea what she was waiting for. Shuffling forward they came upon tumbled blocks of masonry. To Hannah’s surprise rootlets were visible in the gaps, as though there were trees just above them. That wasn’t possible, they had been getting deeper into the earth for the last few hours surely? She exchanged looks with Malcador, though neither seemed willing to speak. They pushed on, the air seeming to grow less arid as they climbed over the fallen rocks until abruptly the tunnel opened into a vast cavern.

“Shyalla’s shapley ass,” Hannah marveled. The interior of the cavern was a city. Elegant curving structures had been carved out of the living rock in ages past. Terraces ringed a central declivity with larger grander structures seeming to ring the top level and humbler ones deeper into the bowl shape. The structures had an odd organic look, as though right angles had been considered too crude by whatever hands had shaped them. The buildings reminded Hannah of mushrooms, as though they were growing out of the rock rather than shaped from it. Nor was the city the only wonder. The roof of the cavern was a hundred yards above them, and made entirely of what seemed to be the roots of a massive tree. Rootlets the size of cathedral buttresses snaked down the walls of cavern like structural pillars. Less organized and younger roots twisted almost randomly downwards, as though the whole city was in a space which had been washed out from beneath some vast oak. Here and there walls of rootlets no thicker than a finger fell like hair follicles to touch and interpenetrate buildings. The overall effect was dizzying, as though the eye couldn’t find what field it was supposed to focus on.


“What in the god’s name?” Hannah breathed, taking a few steps out into the cavern. Something crunched beneath her feet and she bent down to brush the dust and dirt away. The floor was covered with tiny fragments of some kind of glass. Hannah picked up a piece and turned it over in her hand, showing it to Malcador. The wizard twitched slightly at the sight of it.

“Old magic,” he said, completely unhelpfully to Hannah’s lights.

“What is this place?” she demanded, suddenly wishing she had picked the opposite direction when they had set out on this trek.