As Warian passed the man, the porter winked. A heartbeat's confusion gave way to recognition. Zel's really was a master of disguise. The corridor walls were smooth and polished. Redstone squares tiled the floor. Smokeless torches alternated on either side, about every ten paces. Nothing but the finest for the Datharathis. Of course, this was the executive entrance to the mining headquarters-the lower shafts sunk through Adama's Tooth were as rough and crude, but workable, as might be found in any mine. They reached the nexus, where several wide, well-lit passages met. Warian expected his aunt to take the passage that led toward family quarters, but she turned toward the lift tunnel. "We're going down into the mine?" Warian questioned.

"Yes. Shaddon has moved his staging area closer to the location where the crystal is extracted. He's waiting for us." Warian scratched his nose and said, "Porter, come with us, please. I have some items in my bag that I may want to ask my uncle about." "Yes, sir," said the porter, his accent and tone completely unlike Zel's normal speech.

Sevaera cocked her head, but wasn't curious enough to say anything.

Instead, she moved to the edge of the lift and addressed the lift operator, a burly half-orc. "Drop us to the Fifth Deep." The lift operator nodded and grasped a great wheel set into the wall. Warian knew the lift was raised and lowered through a series of counterweighted chains, and that the wheel didn't require much strength to turn. Those who traveled up and down the mine shafts were heartened to see a burly lift operator, nonetheless. As the shaft's gray walls flowed past on all sides, to the accompaniment of clanking chains and creaking pulleys, Warian asked, "Fifth Deep? I thought there were only four-and the lowest was where Shaddon first found the crystal we're all so happy with." Warian pumped his prosthesis to demonstrate. "We opened a new face on the dig." "Really? I don't know how that's possible, unless you're actually digging below the base of Adama's Tooth. If that's the case, wouldn't it be easier to sink a new shaft from outside?" "You'll see, Nephew. The Fifth Deep doesn't obey all the rules you're accustomed to." "What?" Sevaera merely smirked.

She was too smug by half. The long descent ended. A wide tunnel through the naked rock beckoned. They moved forward and, almost immediately, the nature of the tunnel changed. The lift shaft and all the tunnels above shared traits of recently excavated stone, with sharp edges, exposed facets, scratches, and blast marks. But the tunnel they now traversed was smooth, as if worn by extreme age or perhaps the passage of water. Stalactites reached down from above, white with calcite, and the left wall was thick with delicate boxwork, something normally found only in unworked caves. "You've found a natural cavity!" exclaimed Warian. "True, as far as it goes," replied Sevaera. The passage opened into a wide, domed cavern. "What's this?

Is that a building?" asked Warian. Ancient structures, half excavated, stood revealed in the light of brilliant mining torches. The ruins were so ancient, they nearly seemed natural formations of the cavern.

Worn and skewed by unknown ages, half walls emerged from the grasp of the stone. The visible structures were composed of purple stones, but they reached up from the detritus of millennia, tracing a broken, unknowable floor plan below the earth. The recent excavation ranged over the entire cavern, but even to Warian's inexpert eye, it was clear that more still lay buried than had been pried free by the work of pickaxe and rock knife. Several natural passages meandered off the wide cavern, some lit, others dark. "We think this was an old Imaskaran compound," said Sevaera, "hidden here for thousands of years." Warian nodded, studying the cavern. He could see small outcrops of the very crystal from which his arm was fashioned, and from which all the plangents drew their greater-than-human abilities.

The bits of raw crystal he could see from where he stood had to be worth a fortune. "Seems kind of wasteful to let all this crystal lie about, unless…" Sevaera nodded. "Yes, we've found a much purer, concentrated source. Shaddon says we no longer need to sift through the dirt and blast through rock-we have access to as much pure crystal as we'll ever need. This pure vein was what allowed the plangent project to move forward." "Hmm." Warian cocked his head sharply toward one of the darkened tunnels. Had that been a scream? His aunt hadn't reacted-but the porter also looked curiously at the dark tunnel entrance. "Aunt, did you hear that?" "Nothing for you to worry about-we're late, and Shaddon is waiting." So saying, the woman moved purposefully toward another tunnel. Warian shrugged and followed. The porter brought up the rear, still hauling the baggage. They passed a few dozen side passages, heard a few more worrying noises, and once passed through a mass of air so putrid that Warian had to pull his shirt up across his nose and mouth to filter it. Eventually, they reached another chamber. Unlike the previous excavation, this one was divided into two areas. One section had been extended by miners, or his grandfather's magic. The newly carved space was expansive and contained numerous wooden workbenches. About half the benches were neatly arrayed with tools of various types that resembled jeweler's and sculptor's adzes, hammers, and carving tools. The other benches contained the same, plus chunks of crystal mounted in vises, each partly carved to resemble some portion of human anatomy. Warian saw a preponderance of hands, arms, and legs, but also strangely sinuous crystal sculptures. These seemed uncomfortably organic, like something one might confine inside a human body. Looking at them made him feel faintly sick, because he knew that they were probably meant to replace natural organs. It struck him as insanely dangerous now that he saw these raw, unfinished prostheses. A doorway stood open at the far end of the work area. Warian turned to look at his aunt. How many of these internal implants did Sevaera carry? How much living tissue had she sacrificed to become a plangent? His aunt, watching him, misinterpreted his stare and said, "Soon you'll be updated, Warian, and become fully plangent, like me." Her smile was absolutely predatory. He swung around and looked at the natural portion of the cavern. It was bare but for a ring of ancient standing stones. Each menhir rose between ten and fifteen feet in height. A gap of perhaps five to ten feet between stones allowed access to the interior, which was empty. But… Dimness inhabited the ring's center, despite several brightly burning torches mounted just beyond its periphery. It was as if the light were having trouble reaching past the stones to illuminate the center. "Is that some sort of ongoing spell?" Warian asked. Several steel carts with wide metal wheels stood lined up along one wall. Ruts in the floor revealed that the carts had entered and exited the ring many times. But there was just enough room for one cart inside the ring. Most of the carts were coated with crystalline dust. Sevaera said, "I suppose it's a spell of a sort. It's a permanent source of magic that opens a door to somewhere else! The portal is a trade secret of Datharathi Minerals. We're mining extraplanar material, crafting it into prostheses of various types, and selling it in Vaelan to rich nobles and merchants. We're making a fortune, and we've only just started." "Where does it lead?" asked Warian. "Where do you think?" snorted Sevaera. "Somewhere strange, somewhere odd-someplace no one else has access to. We've cornered the market on the crystal." Warian squinted at the stone circle, trying to catch some hint of the realm beyond it. "Not now," said his aunt.

"We're late for a meeting." She turned to the right and walked past the workbenches and the prostheses, toward an open door. Warian wondered where all the miners had gone, as well as all the artisans that must have been diligently carving the crystal displayed on the workbenches. Perhaps the mine was between shifts. Through the doorway was a small corridor that emptied into a decorated chamber.