(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

Chapter 100
The northern tunnels were ancient, the shoring crumbling at the edges. Any
moment the place could've caved in on us, and we had to step carefully,
checking the integrity of the walls frequently. A knock on stone here, a prod
of a beam there. When we did pause I tried to focus, sifting through the bog
of forgotten thoughts in an attempt to conjure up some familiarity. Nothing.
If I had been a miner in a previous life, it didn't seem like I picked up much.
Pity, that. It would've been useful, if only to prevent myself from being
trapped for a few centuries under a mass of rubble.
Even the roaches didn't dare come this deep. Anything living had abandoned
this place. Anything dead had long ago withered into dust. Even the drip of
water, so faint and rhythmic in the higher tunnels, was gone from here. Our
footsteps were grave and lonely such that even Morte shut up by now. It
was like walking through the hollow of a dry old bone, the marrow cored out
long ago so that not a scrap of flesh remained.
"Still nothing, Nordom?" I asked, breaking the silence so suddenly that
Annah jumped.
"Negatory," he chirped in that sexless drone, "No portals detected.
Confidence interval at 99.9998205%."
"Three significant digits is enough, Nordom."
"Affirmative!"
Well, at least someone was cheerful doing his work.
We had stopped at an intersection when something snagged at my
consciousness like a barbed hook.
Was there an instability in the walls I had noticed? A weak support beam? I
paused for a moment, head tilted and trying to listen to the echo of
memory. No... it was something deeper than that. More primal, akin to the
animalistic fear of the dark and the terror of predators in the night.
There's nothing to be afraid of... I told myself. There were no signs of life,
and decades of dust coated the ground... not even the undead would leave a
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