Niala stared at the bubbling liquid inside the beaker.

  With David gone, her shop as yet unopened, and not much calling for her attention, she had kept herself occupied for the past three days by brewing more stock.

  Three days... as long as she and David had shared a bed.

  It was corny, sappy, silly, and childish, but... maybe love at first sight was real?

  Obviously it hadn't been actual love! But strongly attracted? Yes, that.

  The more time she'd spent with him, the more she'd interacted, the more she'd fallen forward, unable and unwilling to resist.

  And then it did transform into the beginning of love, a burgeoning love that she thought, hoped, was shared. And it had been! She knew it had been. The smiles, the longing stares, the teasing.

  And still David had held back, never taking the last step. The mere thought of those last few torturous days made her eyes wet and her chest ache.

  But! Then he had appeared at her door in the middle of the night, a giant stupid smile on his face that had grabbed her heart and twisted it around, its fresh wound exposed to the scalding touch of hope.

  And then she was in his arms, and he kissed her, and cool healing waters raced through her entire being, her emotions drinking deep and blooming again.

  It had been her first kiss, too! Her cheeks turned pink from the memory.

  Now if only that annoying beeping could stop...

  The bellglass! Her brew!

  She snatched the beaker off the burner, holding it away for its content to cool. She inspected the liquid, sloshing it around, smelling it, frowned, and then sighed.

  Another botched potion. She set it aside with the others for later disposal and started cleaning her workstation.

  She stared at the table as she wiped it with a rag, her arm stopping in its motion.

  Three days hadn't been nearly enough. Only three days with her big, tall, lovable, hunky goof.

  With her big, tall, lonely, and sad goof.

  She'd watched him, his reactions, demeanour. He barely smiled outside of his interactions with her or friends and family, and even then, only for ephemeral moments.

  She'd felt it, in the way he'd kissed her, held her close. There was happiness and longing there, of course, but everything was tinted by a sort of desperation, encrusted into his fibres.

  And she wondered, were those smiles a cry of help from the real David, before his mask sealed back up? Clamping down on his feelings, forcing his inner sea into an unnatural calm?

  How deep did his waters go?

  What would she find if she dived far enough?

  David... please be safe.

  David circumnavigated the observation ring, trying to concentrate on finding a way out, the distant thunderstorm accompanying him with its grumbling.

  The wonders outside the glass kept stealing his gaze.

  He shook his head once more. Find a way out, ogle at the pretty cavern later.

  On his walk, he'd found several personal effects from ages past, small things like combs, clasps, pocket mirrors, clips and cuff-links, lying among what he assumed to be the remnants of clothes and purses.

  No bones though. Whatever had happened here either hadn't left anyone behind or something had cleaned up since then.

  He did pick up a few of the shinier jewellery for Karline, hopefully that would placate her. When he found a way back up.

  And then he spotted something at the edge of the walkway's curve, along its inner wall, which resolved to be a large passageway, about twice as big as the two doors he's squirmed through.

  Approaching with a light step, he peeked around the corner. The corridor went on farther than the light reached. A few meters in, on both sides, he noticed decrepit iron doors, much like the ones he'd passed through.

  It was something new at least. Bringing out his plaque and turning it on, he walked in.

  The number of discarded baubles increased as he proceeded. Had a stampede occurred? The corridor extended ever forward, the light of his plaque never revealing anything ahead but more empty corridor, until it did.

  The walls ended, the path opening up into a vast room. He crept up to it, holding a hand over his plaque to dim the light, and strained his ears.

  Nothing but the drip of water, echoing across.

  He let his light shine fully, barely reaching to a mirror of the path he'd come in from, across the empty hall. The ceiling had to be at least 10 meters high, with several fist-sized spheres poking out of it at regular intervals.

  He turned left and followed the wall. Ahead, on the right-angled wall, were three doors, about two meters across and three high, followed by an extremely large one in the middle, reaching all the way up to the ceiling, and then another three of the smaller doors.

  As he got closer to the smaller doors, he started to notice chips and dents on and around them, with a veritable pile of trinkets and rotted clothes crowding the floor in those spots.

  The doors had no discernible handles or mechanisms to open them. He tried pushing one of them. No budge. A bit harder – still nothing. He boosted and plowed his foot into one. He managed a small dent. He heard a metallic bonk.

  ...

  Nothing more happened. He released his breath, attempting the door again, to much the same result.

  The other two smaller doors were as barred shut as the first one. The large one, however, had something along its side, at elbow level, that made him think of a switchstone.

  Surely not...

  He palmed it, feeding it a sliver of mana.

  The tiniest of blue pulse ran along a complex pattern of lines over the switchstones' surface.

  Frowning, he fed it more. The lines lighted up for longer, struggling to remain alight before dying back down.

  Shrugging, he slammed his hand over the stone and pushed his mana out in an unending flood.

  The lines under his hands flared to life, extended up the wall, unto the ceiling where they split into angular pathways, each one reaching one of the spheres he'd spotted earlier, the same patterned lines revealing themselves upon their surface as he kept flushing the system with his mana.

  He pushed and pushed more and more.

  The racing lines of energy reached across the entire room and down to another switchstone on the opposite wall, and from there into a single thick line that ran down to the floor, disappearing to saint's knew where.

  The entire network reached a threshold, and the lines stopped flickering, turning solid and pulsating.

  He heard something whir to life, deep below his feet, a reluctant vibration reaching his feet in fits before quieting and stilling.

  The entire room lit up, bright lights gleamed from above, bathing him in a clinical white. Script he didn't recognize appeared along the walls, texts and singular words or varied colours, with what was clearly arrows pointing in various directions.

  The smaller doors now displayed a hand symbol where he would expect a handle to be, all but one of them covered by a red X. The large door he was next to began to rumble, grinding open, splitting from the middle. and began receding left and right into the walls.

  He let go of the switchstone and jumped back.

  The tortured metal gears screamed in protest as the doors mawed open, then clunking to a stop, revealing a 12 by 12 meter vertical shaft, two sets of tracks running up and down the side walls.

  David peeked over the edge, looking down. A line of light ran all the way down, half of them flickering or dead, blending into a blurry square several hundred meters down, the shaft's floor indistinct. Did it actually end somewhere?

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Looking up, he saw the lights go up to a metal gate, several dozen meters above him; an exit to the forest floor. He observed the walls of the shaft and smiled; There was a small ledge that ran all the way around, and to the left, a ladder of deep bronze metal, in near-perfect condition.

  He put his foot down on the ledge, stomping on it, feeling for any give. It felt solid, but why risk certain death?

  He unfolded the cargo cloth that held his courier tools, unpacking its contents and retrieving a small coiled vine that he wrapped about his wrist, wincing when small thorns extended and burrowed in his flesh.

  The consuming jungle's grasping tendril: A useful tool that extended one's reach ten-fold, the vine would uncoil and grasp for whatever his hand reached out for. Able to support over a hundred kilos, it would be strong enough to grab hold of something if he slipped and fell.

  He gingerly stepped out onto the ledge, a sense of vertigo assaulting him right away. Better not look down the seemingly bottomless shaft...

  Focusing his attention on the ladder a few meters to his left, he shuffled his feet forward, back to the wall, the low hum of the airy void in front of him a terrible whisper of death should he lose balance.

  Just a bit more... aaaand – there. He landed a hand on the ladder, grasping the closest rung. He gave it a tug. It felt solid, unyielding.

  The rest of his limbs took position along it, and, with one last look down, he climbed up.

  One rung at a time. Towards the exit.

  Karline had been “staying put”, but only in the broadest sense of the term, as she explored her immediate surroundings, hoping to find... something.

  After several full bells of fruitless searching and returning to the hole to yell after David, getting no answers back, she was beginning to wonder if she'd have to make her way back alone. He wouldn't have been the first, nor the last, soul lost to the forest's appetite.

  She took out her bellwatch, flipping it open. Early afternoon, still a lot of sunlight left.

  Electing to wait, she went back to a small mound she'd found not too far and climbed up on top of it, sitting down and hugging her knees.

  The sun advanced, the birds' squawking kept her company, and the deep rumble visited from time to time.

  Oh, that one was stronger.

  There it was again.

  She shot up after the third banging. She saw the edge of the mound slightly shift, like an eggshell during a chicken's birth, pushed out and collapsing back.

  Before she could jump down and hide, something slammed from inside the mound, a huge clod of soil exploded out, and a metal door fell to the forest's floor, below her, at the edge of the mound.

  Hand shaking, she began unsheathing her sabre, only for a blue-glowing idiot to walk out of the hole he'd just apparently punched out as if he was out for a Sunday stroll.

  Her sabre clinked. He froze and turned his neck, spotting her.

  “Hey Karline. I found a way out.”

  “... Why are you like this?” She asked, head slumping.

  He blinked.

  “You're telling me there's an entire... world below us? Through that door?” Karline asked, eyes narrowed.

  “More like a preserve, I think. Pretty much any environment you could think of is present, and life seems to be teeming. There's light and weather, I'm guessing the towers we've seen are actually collecting sunlight and humidity and carrying it below.”

  “That... I need to see it.” She said.

  “I thought you'd say that. My only problem with this is that it's almost certainly deadly dangerous. Just going down the ladder is going to take at least a full bell. Think you can last that long?”

  Her eyes popped. “A full... just how far down does this thing go?”

  He shrugged. “If I had to guess, maybe 300, 400 meters?” He wobbled his hand. “It's very deep.”

  She kept staring at him, then looking at the doorless doorway behind them.

  “Right, let's go take a look. If there are so many habitats down there, there's certain to be the plants we're looking for.”

  “They're likely to be out here somewhere further as well, out near the eastern edge of the forest.” He reminded.

  “Yes, but that's days away. This hidden world is right under our feet.” She argued. “And before you repeat that it's dangerous, so is this forest.” She raised a finger at him.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “I guess a little bit more danger is worth shaving off a few days...”

  “That's right. Slow and steady is fine and all, but sometimes you have to grab the snake before it strikes.” She said as she made her way to the doorway at the base of the mound.

  He sighed and followed.

  The descent took close to a full bell. By the time they reached the bottom, their arms and legs were cramped up, and both were red in the face from exertion.

  The shaft led them to a disaster zone, where a large platform seemed to have plummeted down a long time ago and from great height, creating a broken mess of metal and stone. The ladder had been hit by debris and had some rungs bent or missing at the lower end.

  They stepped off carefully, testing out the rubble to make sure it wouldn't shift. Navigating down from the mound of debris and onto what little remained intact of the receiving structure, they neared a set of two doors, one humanoid-sized, one a 10 by 10 meter giant, much the same as the one David had opened above.

  Karline massaged her arms and legs, looking up the ladder and wincing. “I am not looking toward climbing back up.”

  “Neither am I. We passed by a few doors on the way down. We should try and open those on the way up, maybe take a short break.” He said, stretching.

  “You think you can get them opened?”

  He shrugged. “I opened the first one.”

  “Hmm. I'm surprised this place still has power. Everything looks ancient.”

  David was inspecting the two doors. The small one had a handle this time, no fancy mana-powered mechanism. He gave it a wiggle; it was seized up. Forcing it did nothing. Turning back, he fetched a piece of rubble, walked back to the door, and smashed it against the handle. Something snapped.

  He tried the handle again; it hitched, but he felt something engage. Laying his weight into the door, it creaked open into a dark hallway. He looked at Karline, who was staring at him.

  “No power here.” He informed her.

  “...”

  “I guess it's too ancient to have power.”

  “...I don't get it.”

  “It's really old, power has fai-”

  “Not that! You! You either completely avoid a problem or you hulk your way through it. No in-between!”

  He looked to the door, back to her, and shrugged.

  “Just... go. Just go.” She said, shaking her head and waving a hand, taking out her plaque and lighting it up.

  He okayed, still glowing blue, plaque out and beaming light ahead, and stepping through the doorway.

  The hallway was as wide as the shaft, and as high as the main door was.

  A short way in, he found something familiar, yet alien; a large metal disc, with clear etched runes all along its side, and if he had to guess, they would be present in wide arcs on its underside.

  Karline walked up beside him. “Found something? Why'd you stop?... is that a...” She started to ask as she saw the metal disc.

  “A Carriair. It looks like one. I wonder...”

  He bent down and placed a hand against the disc, feeding it mana.

  A small smile graced his face as the runes lit up in sparks and fits, turning solid, and the disc began hovering a few inches off the ground.

  “Woah... it still works, and it's completely still, doesn't even slightly wobble like the ones I've seen.”

  “And it's full metal. The imbuements on this thing are impressive. Want it?” He turned his head towards her.

  “Wh-me?! I can have it? Wait, it's way too big!”

  “Is it?” He guessed at the Carriair's dimensions. “Can't be much more than five or six meters across.”

  “Huh, yeah? My biggest storage cloth is two meters across.” She said, resting a hand on a hip.

  “Oh. I'll carry it for you then.”

  She froze. “...wait.”

  He retrieved a one-meter cargo-cloth from his pouch and unfurled it. The image on it a rolled up and folded cloth.

  “Wait wait wait.” Karline repeated.

  He retrieved the cloth's contents, which turned out to be a cargo-cloth, which he unfolded to its ten-meters length, and unrolled it like a giant carpet.

  The image on it showed a similar disc to the one they'd just found, but mostly made of wood, with only its circumference made of metal. He unpacked that as well.

  “Wait!” Karled shouted.

  “What?”

  “What in the living saints! What is that monstrosity!” She pointed at David's unfurled cloth that was nearly taking up the entire width of the hallway.

  “My cargo-cloth.”

  “My CaRgO-ClOtH!” She mocked. “David, that thing is massive! I've never seen one bigger than five meters, and that was an ultra-wealthy merchant!”

  He looked at the cloth, blasé, then back at her. “I've seen bigger.”

  “You've se- Oh my founding gods, you're the most unperturbed man on this planet! I don't care anymore!” She said, throwing hands and moving ahead. “Stow my new carriair, we'll figure it out later!”

  He shrugged and pushed the metal carriair above his own, reactivating the cargo cloth, storing both contraptions and rolling the cloth back up into his pouch, then catching up to Karline.

  They kept exploring the underground passage, which soon opened on a large room, 20 meters high and close to a hundred meters wide. It had various collapsed shelves and rotted or rusted wood and metal crates strewn about. From the few that had ruptured open and spilled their content, most had seemed to contain something organic if the slightly mushy dust spread about the floor was any indication.

  One in particular had been with small metal tubes. One of them had rolled all the way to the entrance they had come in from.

  Karline bent down and picked it up, inspecting it. Shaking it a bit she felt something slosh inside.

  She handed it to David. “There's something inside, but there doesn't seem to be any caps; it's completely sealed.”

  He accepted the curio and, shaking it himself, pocketed it. He nodded forward. “Let's keep going.”

  The storage room they were in had a few doors on one of its wall, and the hallway continued further ahead.

  The doors led to what looked like living quarters, with dozens of individual bedrooms lining a corridor, one larger living room and mess area, along with what might have been restrooms and showers. They found several rotted clothes and personal effects, but again, no corpses or bones.

  They ended up at the continuation of the hallway, which ended up on a single massive metal door, with a small door nestled within one of its panels.

  They tried the small door, but it was entirely fused with its frame. Looking around, they found a heavy-set switchstone next to the large door.

  They visually consulted each other. Karline nodded, he shrugged, and palmed the switchstone, pushing mana into it.

  To his surprise, the mechanism engaged. Groaning and upset as it was, the massive slab of metal inched open, pulling up into the ceiling.

  Hot and dry air blasted them, churning the hallways' accumulated dust into eye-stinging clouds.

  Squinting, they shielded their eyes from the sunlight invading the passage and bathing them with a warm glow.

  The hidden gears ground to a stop, and the door remained suspended above.

  In front of them, an arid savanna stretched out, yellowed bushes and stumpy trees dotting the landscape, where, tall long grass didn't hinder their vision. In the distance, the sounds of wildlife filtered back to them.

  Looking at each other, they stored their plaques and marched forward.