Bats! Sorn held away the burning torch and squinted into the darkness where he had heard the telltale chitter. Tiny blue motes of dust glowed faintly at the end of the bleak hallway. The low ceiling glinted with glass shards and stripped wiring like tiny snakes. A panel on the wall hung rusted and collapsing, its sockets gaping like the dead. Whatever ruled this place must lie stagnant in the cold stone columns. It couldn't be entirely hostile if bats came here to roost.

Silence pressed close to his ears, broken only by the flutter of fire and the occasional flap of bat's wings somewhere down another hall.

Sorn pushed open a door that groaned on broken hinges, letting out a wafting smell of fresh dirt. He pushed the torch into the black room and the light illuminated clusters of bright violet mushrooms that infected the floor, the walls, the low ceiling, the cabinets and steel tables. They shimmered in the firelight, pointed and tasseled, like something alien. A shattered glass box in the back of the room held a small machine that sat sticky with shining residue, covered in tinier mushrooms. But there was no way to safely get across the room without disturbing the fragile fungus that carpeted the floor.

A low hum lilted musically in Sorn's throat. Something was here. He listened and breathed the musty air, a little lightheaded from the smell of the mushrooms and decaying metal.

The mushrooms are sacred, he decided. If he wanted this spirit's favor, he would need to give an offering to the mushrooms: something fresh and dead. He peered down the hall again, waiting for the noise of beating wings.

Now. Where was that bat?