And thus:
“Boss!”
I turned, frowning at the figure who came jogging down the tunnel. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Right! Very sorry, boss.” My subordinate was sincerely contrite, but the old form of address was too thoroughly ingrained, and wouldn’t seem to go away. In my mind, “boss” had become outmoded; in imitation of the Amutech company, I had instructed that I was to be called “Manager.” But it wasn’t going very smoothly yet.
In any event. “Eh, forget it. What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
I thought I recognized the man as part of the tunneling team. If he had left the dig to seek me out, it meant they had come up against something the on-site team felt they couldn’t handle on their own. Had there been a cave-in or something?
We dwarves mostly used specialized magic in our tunneling projects, but even magic had its limitations, and it wasn’t uncommon to have to proceed by hand. Large-scale projects involving mountains and stone were one thing, but if you simply shoved softer earth aside with magic, then the moment the spell ran out, it would come crashing back down. It could even cause subsidence in the land above, and nobody wanted that.
All of which was to say that although tunneling work might be our bread and butter, it was more dangerous than it looked.
“We dug up something strange during the excavation,” my subordinate told me. He looked less panicked than he did simply perplexed. Apparently the situation wasn’t urgent.
“Did you, now?” I raised an eyebrow. A new vein of ore wouldn’t be described as being “dug up.” You would simply say you “found” it. And you certainly wouldn’t look so confused about it. I looked at the man, silently encouraging him to continue, but although his lips twitched under his mustache, he didn’t say another word. Perhaps whatever they had found was beyond the power of words to describe.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll come have a look.” I gave my subordinate a slap on the back and started down the tunnel.
Although parts of the dig site were reinforced with wire netting and steel supports, most of it was just exposed earth and rock, the floor and ceiling rough and unrefined. It wasn’t a proper passageway yet; still more of a hole. That meant both poor footing and poor air quality. The tunnel got narrower as I went along, until it would have been challenging for two or three to walk abreast. Weaving around mini-golems that were busy carrying soil and detritus away from the dig, I worked my way ever deeper into the tunnel. At last I arrived at a dead end, a wall of earth in front of which stood two members of the tunneling team. “I hear you’ve come up with something strange,” I said.
They turned to me. “Boss...”
“I told you not to call me that!”
“Sorry, boss—er, I mean... what was it again?”
“Ahh... Forget it,” I groaned, instead turning my attention to the object indicated by the two team members. It was in the shape of a box, seemingly made of metal. “What have we here?” I went over and looked at the thing where it sat on the ground.
It was long and narrow and stuck out towards us. If I had to describe it, I might say it was similar in shape to a coffin. And not one for a dwarf—more like for a human or an elf. But humans and elves usually made their coffins of wood, not metal. And then there were the perfect hexagons, each about the size of a grown-up’s palm, spaced at even intervals around the surface. Such a regular pattern rarely occurred naturally: this thing had been built.
“We just stumbled on it while we were digging,” one of the tunneling team members explained.
“Hmm?” As the other two looked on, I slowly, carefully rapped the surface with my fist. It was hard. And the sound—barely an echo. Whatever was in there, it was packed tight. There were streaks of dust caked on the surface, evidence of how long this thing had been buried here. Months, maybe, years. Still, the metal showed no sign of rusting. What could it be? I was starting to understand why my subordinate had found himself at a loss to describe it.
“Is this the only thing you found?” I asked.
“The only one here, sir. But next door, in tunnel Red 45, they came up with something else.”
“Next door...?” I frowned.
These tunnels, Red 37 and Red 45, were technically next to each other, but if one thought of them as city streets they would be two or three blocks apart. And yes, sometimes we found things from old ruins underground, including precious objects and even coffins. But to find them simultaneously at such a remove—was it coincidence, or was there some sort of connection? I didn’t have enough information to say.
“What should we do, sir?” The question came from the first subordinate who had come to get me.
“If these are relics of some kind, then we’ll have to inform Minister Cordobal.”
In principle, everything that could be found in the empire was the property of the empress. Even a noble’s domain was, formally speaking, “on loan” from Her Majesty. But at the same time, anything discovered in the process of digging these tunnels belonged, for practical purposes, to the Guld Workshop. That included finds like this.
Anything that was readily identifiable, like ancient eating utensils or some commoner’s ornaments, we were customarily free to do with as we pleased, to use it or sell it.
