The climb up the cliff face wasn’t as harrowing, or dangerous without a giant-assed bear that shot spines like oversized armor-piercing sabot rounds chasing him. He felt like it was almost too easy, now. Garrett insisted he go up first, and with a little effort, they were back in the caverns. Shawn saw that Garrett had made short work of a few stray rats–though not all the damage was from his shredder rounds.

  Talons and knives had gotten their licks in on these persistent vermin, too. “Damn, I thought I was savage with the hammer,” he uttered with respect. “Too bad I had to leave those ore samples down below.”

  “We got up the cliff. We can get down it again,” Garrett replied. He pointed to a hastily scrawled marking on the wall. “Gravity shift zone, right there. Watch your step, it flips…that way.” He pointed to a corridor that had stactites growing in a strange orientation. He’d even put in a crude arrow marker pointing toward the ‘ground’ to avoid issues.

  “I’d like to find out what the hell can make something as fundamental as gravity behave in ways it shouldn’t. Garrett, do you know what we could make with this if we could get at this ore?” Shawn said, the idea of this discovery tantalizing to him. “We could make something to bridge the gap between the tectonic masses. Well, maybe. It would be unprecedented. It could be used to generate power with a shifting gravity well to drive power turbines. It could–Fates, I could make a long list of how useful it could be!”

  “Whoa there, settle down there, cowbird,” Garrett clucked. “You’ve already been beaten to shit today. Let’s not have you go spt with one misstep, yeah?”

  He let out a soft sigh. “Yeah. One step at a time. We don’t even know what this ore looks like. I mean it could be embedded deep in the rock. But, weirdly, it affects a specific, targeted area.” He frowned as he worked past the edge point, and held onto the extra rope for grip. “Wait a second. Maybe I’ve had it wrong. Maybe it isn’t natural. I saw some remnants of old buildings and passageways. What if…someone built it to work like that?”

  “My goodness, I guess Regia isn’t wrong about you. You can’t shut off the thinking machine!”

  “Sorry, I see something of a scientific curiosity, and my brain just goes into overdrive,” he apologized. Garrett gave a reassuring hand wave, while they worked their way back.

  “I could honestly do with more of that in Vea’nt. Valtiria Prime has magitech toilets that tidy up sewage…and we don’t have running water yet. Or these compression pumps that control heat and cold–er…what was the word? Something about a refrigerant cycle, so they can preserve stuff in a cold box.” They continued walking, and Shawn spotted more of those glowing mushrooms–and what almost looked like rocky, subterranean trees that gleamed with minerals in them. He pondered what kind of biology could enable such a feat.

  Magic, most likely the dim flickers of light the material gave off only added to the surreal feeling he was getting about this pce, despite the danger level. Two mutated bears were plenty for one day.

  “You guys have refrigerant cycles? That could be helpful,” Shawn mused thoughtfully a few seconds ter. They walked by a few more rat corpses, and what looked like an ominous, fifteen-foot-long snake with multiple shredder rounds perforating its head. He pointed to it. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Harian tunnel viper. Nasty things. See the carapace?” he pointed to the scales, which had an almost rocky appearance, dark grey and ste-colored, but very smooth, when he touched it out of morbid curiosity. “That’s one of the smaller ones. They can tunnel slowly through the earth, forcing it open using their natural magic. Ambush predator. I wonder if it got mad since I was killing its easy pickings, the rats. Usually, they go after smaller prey.”

  “Bullets to the head still work,” Shawn muttered. Garrett tipped his beak in concurrence.

  “The old rounds wouldn’t have worked. The high-velocity ones you and Cire made, work. But you see the impact where I didn’t hit the soft spots.” He observed bits of spalled metal embedded in the scales, causing possible internal damage, but no penetration.

  “Solve it with hardened steel tip cores, or tungsten,” Shawn concluded. “Damn, monster biology is resilient.”

  “Not all the creatures on Remaria are dangerous,” Garrett assured him. He pointed to a few sets of flickering eyes that skittered away into rocky crevices. “That said, firearms tech doesn’t cut it in all cases. That's why gestalts are your best bet against most threats, or safety in numbers. I would hate to run into something bigger than this, and they do come in bigger variants.”

  A thought clicked in his head. “What about those tremors we felt earlier? The partial colpse? Could that be one of those tunnel vipers?”

  Garrett’s eyes narrowed, and he rubbed his beak. “Possible. If it is, there’s zero chance we will open this mine without killing it. But as you can imagine, you need to hit it when it’s in the open.”

  Shawn noted the carapace, and how there were rge openings underneath the scales. How they could seemingly expand and scoot along through earth and possibly rock. Could he…force them open, give them something to shoot at?

  He had two theories. His force barrier could be used to pry them open–maybe–or he could try to use his frost bst to try and force them open with ice expanding as the water froze. But that second one seemed a slim chance, unless he had Regia to keep channeling water. He id the two ideas out, and Garrett nodded.

  “Not terrible pns. It's an idea. I also have some explosives from up above. I found a small cache when you mentioned it earlier.” He showed off the waxy blocks, a little dusty, but serviceable. “Unless it eats this damn thing, I doubt it's enough to kill it.”

  “We’re going to need a pn for this one. I thought the ursinas were bad. I’m guessing we'll run like hell if we find it?”

  “For now, yeah,” Garrett concluded. “Alright, enough of that. Let’s get out of here.” They continued the climb upward, and Shawn felt a lingering tension in his head–like there was still danger.

  Their journey took them up more sloping tunnels, and an occasional hop upwards past narrow ledges where his cws came in handy. He nearly stumbled backward when a narrow ledge crumbled. But with a flutter of his wings, and a quick grab from Garrett, he managed to avoid falling backward. Luckily, the tougher terrain was smoothing out, and this cavern was level, and worn smooth, minus a few stagmites and stactites looking like stone teeth littering the area.

  And, strangely, a building half-submerged in the cavern wall. Part of the building was visible, part of it hidden in the earth. He pondered if the theoretical tunnel vipers caused that. “You didn’t say this was here.”

  “Yeah, I figured we might find something like this once we broke into the natural cavern. Lots of ruins. Lots of dead ends. Or graves, as may be the case,” Garrett cautioned. “Many are unexplored, and these pces are ancient. Sadly, it might be too much work to bring a team in to dig for rubble.”

  “Anything special in these pces?” Thoughts of finding caches of treasure, rare knowledge, hell, and even some history on how the pnet split apart all came to mind. But Garrett clicked his beak and rubbed his chin gently. Or, lower beak, Shawn figured.

  “Around here? Maybe. This one’s out of the way, so we may find something. Depending on where you are in Remaria, yeah, there's plenty to be found that's useful. I knew a team who pulled up a cache of high-grade Etteria in a ruin, likely someone stashed it away and forgot about it in a sealed building. It was part of a set of ruins on the surface, some old keep. But the ones near big settlements and cities have been picked clean.”

  “Why would they build underground here?” Shawn posed. “Unless, this was part of a connected set to the other continent, and then when the world split, it became not so convenient.” He tried to picture that event. When the world split apart, he shuddered to think of the scale of what it took to rip apart an entire orbital yer. That kind of power was unfathomable to him.

  “The great sundering?” Garrett asked as he led them up a passage, with several quick hops on narrow ledges and mantling over stacked boulders. “No one remembers it. Ancient history, now. Anyone that survived to witness it, is long dead. Except maybe the Radiants. I think Telga is pretty young, so she wasn't around for that cataclysm. She's been busy trying to bring enlightenment to the masses ever since she and her brother had their falling out. We have plenty of other worries besides the fractured world state.”

  “Garrett, pretend for a second I don’t view the fractured state of the world as the most pending crisis. At some point, gravity is going to take effect, this world is going to colpse in on itself, and everyone will die,” Shawn said gravely. “What else could be so pressing?” Garrett nodded and directed him forward, walking and talking. Their talons echoed gently in the vast expanse of this cavern. Shawn noted there were also a few smooth, rounded passages the size of a sewer manhole

  “The creatures you see roaming the world? The ursinas we killed? Some of them didn't used to be so dangerous. Something made them more dangerous. The Radiants thought it was tied to the Etteria, they thought it was growing stronger. Or that there were fewer people to try and cap the power. Or, that something was throwing off an energy bance. I'm a warrior, Shawn, not an arcanist.” Shawn nodded softly. This was the time to bring it up, now.

  “Garrett, I think there’s something to that theory–” He put out a hand to halt him from walking forward. Something about the air currents, changing direction gave him pause. He saw a faint circle in the ground, smooth worn stone. No, it was carved stone, with faint runic whirls, about ten meters in diameter. Something about it wasn’t right. “Garrett, hold up a tick.”

  Shawn did something rather unscientific, grabbed a loose rock, and tossed it over the circle. Much to his shock, the rock veered off course and accelerated upwards toward the ceiling, where several sharp rocky formations rose. He froze and looked in horror. “Hey. I think they killed people here.”

  Several sets of bones of humanoid-sized beings littered the ceiling. And, what appeared to be the bones of an ursina, and other monsters with sharp teeth and even sharper cws, littered up above.. Garrett gnced upward and gnced around the cavern. “Damn, I walked around that, too. I didn’t think much of it before. Creepy.” He gnced anxiously upward. “I hate this pce, so much."

  “Not only that, they put these stones here to note the gravity shift. Or, they made it," Shawn proposed. This was both morbid and fascinating. “Uh…hang on.”

  He pointed to a small metal dial on a dais just nearby, behind some rocks, and walked over cautiously. Most people would have walked through the center of the tunnel, and he looked at a dial, his hand hesitating. The small console was simple, made of rusted metal, and had no bels. “Garrett, step way back.”

  He did so without hesitation, over to where Shawn was poised. “You push that, we could all go spt on the ceiling. I have a pretty good idea where this is going.” He grabbed his length of rope and secured them to a rocky outcropping. Shawn would also point out they had wings, but there might not be enough reaction time as he held onto the dais, and gently turned the rusty dial.

  A ctter of bones, shredded clothes, and a few other articles cttered to the ground in a morbid rainfall of death. A human skull smashed into the ground, leering at him with unspoken accusation. Shawn and Garrett stared at each other, the thought concluding with him.

  “Weaponized gravity. Wowza. Someone built this.” Shawn would have grinned at this discovery, but the bones littering the ground killed the mood. “Maybe the other gravity shift zones are the same? Some type of ambush tactic or area denial?”

  “When you can’t even treat gravity as safe, that’s scary. But I've never seen this in use anywhere I know of. Maybe this is like old tech. before the Sundering," Garrett theorized. He peered behind him, where he saw a small structure of metal and stone, with angur features–and partially camoufged with that green and blue moss he’d observed elsewhere, glowing lightly. This structure was intact. “Hey, check this out, this one’s in one piece. I was in a rush earlier, didn't think to check every corner."

  “Maybe someone built that to deter predators or bad company?” Shawn asked, pointing at the pile of bones. There wasn’t a single remnant of organic matter left, these had been here a while. “Honestly we should just fg this one to stay far the hell away from it, and get to the surface."

  A tremor shook the cavern, and Shawn saw bits of dust crumbling down. It felt like that noise was getting closer. A crunching, churning, grinding sound of rock being pulverized, like one of his rock polishing kits he’d had as a kid, but bigger, and more ominous. He pointed at the trap. “Yeah, let’s use that to deal with the pending crisis.”

  Garrett grabbed his rifle and the explosives and handed one to him. “If it’s a tunnel viper, they’re fast. Don’t try to take it one-on-one if you can avoid it!”

  They darted to cover from some of the various outcroppings as an ominous hiss filled the air, and a massive, ste and grey snake with rough and angur scales emerged from one of the manhole-sized entryways he’d noted earlier, bits of stone shaking loose as it slithered about. Beady green eyes darted back and forth, scanning the gloom for signs of prey.

  Shawn put his barrier up in a passive shield and felt a low drain. They had their work cut out for them as it spotted Garrett who deliberately peeked out of cover, and fired a round. “Lure it to the spot, and I’ll hit the trigger, just be clear of the circle!” he bellowed out.

  The creature surged forth, intent on making them their next meal. He saw this as his chance as he charged in, pulling from his Etteria core for a tough battle against the ten-meter-long snake, and his warhammer in hand, fire darts already bzing.