Something had shifted in me after the Green Delve and I couldn't name what it was. Not the dungeon itself — that had been almost routine by comparison. Something about coming back. About the report response sitting on Kael's desk. About the way certain things kept not adding up no matter how many times I filed them away.
I had started going to the library pretty much whenever I could in between jobs.
I liked it more than I expected to. I liked knowing things. I wasn't sure what that said about me, but I was starting to care less about what things said about me and more about what they actually meant.
Over the next couple months, life had settled into something almost normal.
Almost.
Another report response arrived on a Tuesday. I knew it was a Tuesday because Ojola makes a specific kind of flatbread on Tuesdays and I had just finished two pieces of it when Hask slid mine and Kael's copy across the table without comment.
I opened it and scanned the text as Hask summarized it. "Buried again."
I sighed. "What is going on, Foreman?"
"Dunno. I'm looking into it."
"Is that safe?"
"Dunno. Probably not."
Kael and Tessa stared at the letter over my shoulder with unease. It even had Alara's attention, though she didn't move to look at it. "That's so unfair!"
Tessa's exclamation was louder than it should have been. Hask motioned for her to quiet down.
She lowered her voice and continued. "We do all this work, we keep finding the exact same signs of tampering on every dungeon core we clean - First the Ebon Maw, Green Delve, then The Silent Court, Ashfall Cavern and The Pale Corridor. All the same!"
She looked thoughtful suddenly, snapping out of her frustration. "I mean, there haven't been any boss respawns, but we did have to deal with those goblins that weren't supposed to be there in The Broken Atrium. And Ashfall had those mephits…but those were minor, so the Guild might not deem those as abnormal…respawns happen...but it's still rare…"
Kael shook his head. "But the fact that the Empire has not officially opened back up the Maw after we cleaned it is telling. It could be happening in other major dungeons."
Hask grunted. "Guild reports are open-record for foremen and other higher ranked Janitors. I'm seeing nothing about Boss respawns, but the rest of the reports seem like they've been scrubbed before filing, along with ours."
"What do we do?"
"Put it out of your mind. We've been working a lot. No jobs for a bit. Relax. Train. Let me worry about the rest."
The Foreman was taking a lot on his shoulders, and it felt like it was at great personal risk. But if there was one thing I had learned after all this time, it was that I could trust Hask implicitly.
The closest city library was about twenty minutes from the guild on foot, which I had come to appreciate. It gave me time to think, and I had a lot to think about.
Over the past couple of months I had learned a considerable amount about the world I apparently lived in. The gods, for instance. There were three major ones — Auris, god of light and order, whose priests staffed every House of Healing in the Empire and whose paladins were the most capable healers alive. Velund, god of knowledge and secrets, whose scholars spent their lives cataloguing things most people would rather not know. And Morreth, god of endings and transitions, whose clerics had a complicated relationship with the concept of dungeon respawning that I found quietly amusing.
None of the three had apparently said anything directly to anyone in several centuries. Their followers maintained that this was intentional. I had no strong opinion either way.
I had also spent considerable time understanding how adventurer ranks worked. D through S, lowest to highest, each step requiring more than the last. D to C was just survival. C to B required a formal assessment. B to A required the assessment plus endorsement from people who already had the rank, which meant politics. S rank couldn't be applied for at all — the guild simply declared it when it became undeniable, which seemed like exactly the kind of process that could be quietly manipulated by the right people. I filed that observation next to several others.
The Silk Runners had an entry in the city's historical records that was surprisingly candid — Moorhaven's unofficial guild of thieves and information brokers, tolerated because the alternative was chaos with worse manners. Technically illegal. Practically acknowledged. I had read that entry three times and couldn't explain why.
The Scholar's Enclave had a much longer entry that I had read once and found deeply uncomfortable for reasons I also couldn't explain. Prestigious. Selective. Politically connected to everything that mattered. Expulsion was rare and carried consequences that followed a person.
I had thought about Alara for a long time after reading that one.
The library steps appeared in front of me. I pushed open the door.
Today I was looking for something specific.
The library was the kind of place that had decided long ago what it was and never felt the need to revisit the decision. Stone floors, worn smooth in the paths people most often walked. High ceilings that collected quiet the way other rooms collected dust. The shelves were dark wood, old and well-maintained, running in long parallel rows with enough space between them to walk without turning sideways but not enough to forget you were surrounded.
Natural light came from tall narrow windows set high in the walls, the kind that let in light without inviting distraction. In the mornings it fell in long pale columns across the reading tables. By afternoon it had moved on.
The reading tables were plain and large and always slightly cooler than the rest of the room. A small staff of two or three moved quietly between the shelves at any given time, reshelving, cataloguing, existing in the particular purposeful silence of people who had made peace with their work.
It smelled like old paper and stone and something faintly herbal from the preservation treatments on the older volumes.
It was, in short, exactly what a library should be and nothing more.
Head Librarian Alben greeted me as he always did, with a respectful nod that I returned. The staff here were always kind and polite in a way that made me feel like a person, rather than a Janitor, in the eyes of people outside of the guild.
I set about wandering the stacks, looking for books about the founding of the Empire and the Adventurers Guild.
I found a couple of volumes that looked like they would contain what I needed: one was an exceptionally thick and equally battered tome, simply titled "Delvenmoor and the Larger World: A History." The other was old but in better shape - "Glory and Steel: A Complete History of the Adventurer's Guild." They both seemed comprehensive, so I took them.
I sat down at one of the reading tables and opened the book on the Empire.
The contents were dry and unbelievably dense, clearly written by scholars who valued detail over readability. I found myself struggling to focus and had to re-read pages numerous times. But I did learn some interesting things:
Delvenmoor was the strongest and most organized nation on the continent, which I only just learned was called Thessan. The name stood out to me: it sounded old. Ancient, even.
As it turned out, Delvenmoor had not always been the dominant power in the known world. It had simply become very good at organizing itself while everyone else was still arguing about who was in charge. They established the various Guilds over a period of ten years. Each guild got an expansive description, except the Janitors. We got two sentences. That tracked.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I read on.
To the north, the Askar Confederacy occupied the mountain ranges that Hask had said he was from. A collection of Dwarven clans and city-states that had been borrowing Delvenmoor's guild system for fifty years and resenting every minute of it. They produced, by all accounts, exceptional fighters and even more exceptional ale. I felt comfortable believing both.
The southern nations were smaller, more numerous, and deeply suspicious of each other. They had developed martial traditions that looked nothing like Delvenmoor's adventurers — internal mana disciplines, no external spellcasting, fighters who were frequently underestimated and apparently preferred it that way. Their dungeon problem was significant. Their solution was messy. Mercenaries and free lancers. No cohesive organization. I couldn't quite picture that.
The Verdant Expanse to the east was the oldest inhabited territory on Thessan — dense forest and ancient woodland that had been home to the elven kingdoms since before Delvenmoor was a concept. The elves there had a relationship with the land that made Delvenmoor's dungeon economy look like a recent experiment. Halflings had coexisted with them peacefully for as long as anyone could remember and had been slowly, cheerfully spreading across the rest of the continent ever since. Nobody seemed to mind.
I noted that to cross into Elven land from Delvenmoor, one had to cross the Grimwater Swamp, which held the appropriately named Grimwater dungeon. I noted that without pleasure.
Finally, to the west, the Pale Wastes. Salt flats and dead stone where scholars believed a civilization more ancient than ancient had been centered. The dungeons there were vast and largely unexplored. Delvenmoor maintained a territorial claim. The Pale Wastes, by all accounts, maintained its own opinion on the matter.
At this point in the book, I had to take a break to rest my eyes. Alben was always happy to share a cup of tea with a patron, so I spent some time with the old man, as I often did.
Over his tea cup, Alben's eyes twinkled in a way that told me he was reading me. "You look troubled, Mr. Callister."
I had asked him to call me Lorne. He made his preference clear. It wasn't worth pushing.
I sighed. "A little."
"Is something happening in the Guild?"
I knew I couldn't tell him too much. But he asked the question in a way that made me think he knew something already. "Kind of. It's mostly just been a lot of work. I'm exhausted."
He nodded. "Janitor life is messy and thankless. I have great respect for your Guild."
"Glad someone does."
Alben smirked, refilling his cup from the kettle. "Have you had any luck with your memories?"
I could only offer a shrug. I'd been spending enough time with Alben that I had felt comfortable confiding in him. He had proved nonjudgemental and kind. I was glad for it. "Not really, about the same as always. Weird feelings. Hunches."
"That makes sense."
"Have you met other people like me?"
"A couple, but I've been alive eighty years. Faces come and go."
I pondered that. Memory loss due to age. Memory loss due to whatever happened to me.
We made small talk and shared the whole kettle of tea over a half an hour. I went to the privy and returned to my books.
I decided that the incessantly boring history tome had told me all I needed for the time being and moved on to the Glory and Steel book.
To call the writing "self-aggrandizing" would be a wild understatement: it was the kind of history that reads less like scholarship and more like a love letter to a mirror: the sort of book that quotes itself in the introduction.
It made me slightly embarrassed on the author's behalf.
But it was still informative. It exhaustively detailed the founding of the first adventuring parties, the structure of the Guild in its infancy, and notable adventurers.
Thunder Hawk had its own dedicated entry.
Founded roughly five hundred years ago, during the period when Delvenmoor was consolidating power and the Guild System was still being formalized. The first great adventuring parties hadn't just been dungeon clearers — they'd been the Empire's rapid response force. Establishing authority. Handling dungeon breaks in newly claimed territories. Thunder Hawk was the most celebrated of these founding parties. Five members. A clearance record that stood to this day.
The record listed the founding members.
I read through them until I found the one that made me stop.
A dwarf of unusual height. Broad shouldered. Known for an axe described as inseparable from him. Not listed as the most powerful member, or the most celebrated. Listed as the most reliable. The one who was always there.
The record didn't give his name. Just a title.
The Unmoved.
I sat with that for a long time.
I turned a few more pages before closing the book. A footnote in the section on guild administration caught my eye — a note about the Grand Database, the system that registered every skill array in the Empire. Established during the guilds' formalization period, roughly five hundred years ago.
The premise was straightforward: anyone with abilities that went beyond what training alone could explain — magical, martial, or otherwise — was expected to register with the appropriate guild. Upon registration, they were granted access to the Console spell. The Console was a standardized magical interface that codified a person's innate abilities into named, recordable Skills. A lot of guild members wound up with the same skill names — Mop Proficiency, Sword Technique, Healing Art — but sometimes a person's magic was unique enough that the system invented an entirely new skill to describe it.
The Console and the Database entry were not two separate things. They were the same thing. The Console was the personal interface for the individual's Database record. Change the record, change what the Console displayed. They were inseparable by design.
This served obvious practical purposes. Guilds could verify credentials. The Empire could track skilled individuals. Employers could confirm rank. A fishmonger had no Console because a fishmonger had no Database entry. A janitor, an adventurer, a priest, a mage — anyone whose abilities warranted guild registration — had both.
The text noted, with some institutional pride, that Database entries were designed to be incorruptible. Multiple redundancies. Imperial oversight. The integrity of the system was considered a matter of public trust.
Theoretically incorruptible, the text said.
I noted the word theoretically and moved on.
I closed the book, returned both books to their correct spots and waved goodbye to Alben.
My return trip to the Guild Hall was just as contemplative as the walk there.
I had been carrying The Unmoved around in my head for the entire walk back and I wasn't sure what to do with it. Not yet. It was the kind of thing that needed to sit before it could be looked at directly.
The guild hall felt different after the library. Or maybe I did. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
I found them exactly where I expected to. Tessa in one of the common rooms doing something I couldn't fully see, but I did notice lots of sparkles. Kael was nearby with SCRUB and approximately one too many components spread across the floor. Alara was laying on a couch, nose in a book. She had pulled the couch to the opposite end of the room, but the fact that she was in the room was surprising.
The guild was exactly as I had left it.
That was either reassuring or beside the point. I hadn't decided which.
I didn't really stop to talk to anyone. I felt like trying to hold a conversation right now with what was on my mind would be difficult.
For starters, there was Hask. I couldn't not think about it.
"The Unmoved": a dwarf of unusual size, bulky, wielding an axe. That book had described my foreman.
But how?
Surely Hask was just related. Maybe that dwarf's son? Maybe cousin, if nothing else? If dwarves were lucky to reach two hundred years old, it didn't make sense otherwise.
But that didn't ring true to me. I saw what Hask did in the Ebon Maw. I heard what Kael and Tessa had said about the original adventuring parties. Warriors and spellcasters with such staggering power that it made even the most accomplished of their modern equivalents look like children in comparison.
It shouldn't have been possible, and yet I had seen it.
Hask's final words before collapsing in the dungeon sprang into my head. "I'm rusty."
Those were not just the words of a man who hadn't done something in a while. Given the sheer terror and scale of that monster and what it did to him, "I'm rusty," implied he had faced even greater challenges before.
A chilling thought. What sort of monsters had he seen? What lurked in the truly high rank dungeons?
What monsters had been stamped out completely?
And why was Hask a Janitor Foreman?
If my wild suspicion was correct and Hask was a five-hundred-plus year old elite adventurer, why was he swinging a mop with a bunch of kids?
I couldn't make heads or tails of it. But I knew in my gut that it was somehow the truth.
I also knew I couldn't bring this up with Hask. I had already decided not to, but now the weight of it all confirmed that I might never know for sure.
The one thing that really stuck in my craw: Dwarves of Hask's size were probably pretty rare. Were they common enough that anyone who'd read up on the history of Thunder Hawk wouldn't question large dwarves over multiple generations? Was there something else at work?
And what was Hask's adventuring career like as Hask Morian? Tombweight. The Cleaving Tide. The Low Thunder. I had learned enough about the world to know that titles like that didn't just come from anywhere.
My head was beginning to hurt from the mystery of it all.
And what a mystery it was.
The dungeons. The core tampering. The breaking down of the Ebon Maw. The burying of the reports. What exactly was going on? I didn't have the vocabulary for bureaucracy or Guild politics, but what I did have was the understanding that you only smooth things over if they threaten a secret.
And Hask was ostensibly throwing himself in the middle of it.
His statement that he was looking into what was happening and his non-committal answer to my question of if that would be dangerous made me worry.
But I reminded myself, again, to trust him.