Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

"Wren." The answer broke around a ragged breath. "Wren. Oh, thank—"

"Where are you?"

"Service seam. It runs parallel. About a metre and a half of rock between us. I’ve been following it for... I don’t know. A while."

Wren pressed her forehead to the stone and closed her eyes.

"Say the second line."

"What?"

"Say it."

"And the fourth man carries the lamp," Sela answered. Her voice gained strength through irritation. "Which is idiotic, Wren, because nobody has carried the lamp fourth in the history of the company, and I have said so repeatedly."

"That’s her," Wren said. Her voice cracked once before she brought it under control. "That’s her."

Ashmark had already warned me that the colony could use Bram’s voice. What answered through the wall knew a private argument and sounded dehydrated enough to sand wood. It was not proof by itself, but Wren knew what she was listening for.

Aria watched the route behind us while Teo and Wren kept Marek upright. I stayed near the resin without touching it.

"Sela, my name is Adrian. Why can’t we cut through?"

"Because that isn’t a door. It’s a plug, and it’s carrying load." Her breathing steadied once she had something technical to explain. "The burrowers hollowed both haunches and took about a third of the section above the arch. I can see the void from this side. The resin is the only thing still supporting the roof."

"How much roof?"

"Enough. If you cut the seal, the crosscut comes down on you, this seam, and me."

I stepped away from it.

The colony had not simply closed my route. It had made the obstruction look like the only part that needed removing.

"How do we reach you?"

"Go back eleven metres. Inspection panel on your right, behind loose rock. Cast frame from the original construction, independent of the arch. Clear it from the lower side and don’t lever against the crosscut wall."

Aria and Wren removed the fall in four minutes while I covered the pump-station approach. Teo kept Marek seated against the wall. The cast frame came free with a noise like a dropped bell, and Sela Iyen crawled through on her hands and knees.

Dust had turned her hair the colour of the rock. Her lips were cracked, and she took Teo’s water skin with both hands. A field dressing sat high on her left thigh, bound with a strip cut from her jacket. It had been done properly and a long time ago.

Teo sat her down and cut the wrapping.

"Through and through?"

"A spine went in. I pulled it out nine hours ago."

"You pulled it out."

"It was in me," Sela said reasonably.

Teo used antiseptic and gauze from my medical pack. He did not reach for the restorative vial, and Sela did not ask him to.

"You’ll walk," he told her. "You won’t run, and you won’t take weight quickly. Tell me before the leg goes numb, not after."

Wren crouched and put one hand on the back of Sela’s neck for two seconds.

"You absolute—" she began.

"Yes," Sela said.

Then she counted the people around her, and her expression changed.

"Where’s Bram?"

Wren did not look away.

"He held the retreat at the sub-level stair. He gave us enough time to get clear. He didn’t come after."

Sela sat with the water skin in her lap and absorbed that. Then she nodded once and set it down.

"Right. Then let’s not waste it." She looked past Wren. "Who is the knight?"

Aria stood at the corner, sword in hand, listening to the dark.

"My ally," I said. "My class is summoner-type. It let me call her temporarily. She isn’t from here. That’s what I can tell you, and it is true."

Sela studied me for one uncomfortable second, then let the question go.

"Fine. Here’s what I know, and what I don’t." She pulled her injured leg around and drew in the dust. "I’ve been inside the old service geometry. Maintenance seams and original bores, not the working levels. Most of them lead nowhere useful to the colony, which is why I stayed alive."

"One of them leads somewhere useful to us," I said.

"A disused maintenance raise, north-north-east. Old iron rungs, thirty metres, surface hatch. It only appears on the original plan." She drew a second line. "I reached the chamber nine hours ago. The hatch was open. I could see daylight from below."

"Why didn’t you climb out?" Wren asked.

Sela tapped the bandage on her thigh. "I tried. Six metres up, the wound opened again and a loose rung nearly put me on the floor. No rope, no belay, and nobody above to take my weight. I would have fallen before halfway." She drew a short mark back toward the working levels. "Later I heard controlled impacts through the rock. Ashmark patterns, or close enough that I came looking."

That answered the part that mattered. She had found an exit she could not use alone. Now she had five other people and a route the colony might not expect.

"How far?"

"Twenty minutes. Faster than your crosscut and worse in one specific place." She tapped the line. "A sixty-metre connector. Eighteen metres of the floor is a shell over an old void. The supports still stand, but the second cut was never benched properly. I crossed at four kilos of kit. I cannot promise what it does under six people and a shield."

"What do you need?"

"No impacts. No explosives. Nobody runs. I know where the original supports are and where the floor lies. If somebody panics, we lose it."

I checked Aria’s timer.

[Manifestation Remaining: 00:47:26.]

The crosscut route would take eighty minutes by the wounded group’s pace. Sela’s route might kill us in twenty, but at least it contained a version where Aria was still present at the end.

"We take yours."

The service seam narrowed until Wren had to turn her shield flat. Teo took most of Marek’s weight while Sela led, limping but precise. When we reached the unstable connector, she moved three paces ahead and called every placement.

"Left of the rib. There’s a bolt plate under the dust—stand on it, not beside it. Four paces to the next support. Wren, pass the shield forward before you cross."

I kept one hand against the right wall and listened. Rock settled above us in slow granular runs. Beneath that came another sound, sharper and less regular.

"Stop."

Everyone froze.

The settling continued. The other noise did not.

"Only rock. Move."

We stopped twice more. The second pause saved us.

"Ahead," I said. "Under the floor. Left side, eight metres. That isn’t settling."

Sela went still on her good leg.

Something scraped against the underside of the false floor.

"Everyone to the right wall," she said. "Single file. Tight to the supports, and do not stamp."

We moved while something followed beneath the route we had been about to take.

Aria fought at the rear without using any of the techniques I had seen her bring against the gate at Eastbridge. Short thrusts. Half-extended cuts. Nothing that drove force into the structure. When a scout slipped past her, Wren caught it on her shield and absorbed the impact instead of striking back. Even so, the floor moved beneath us.

Twice, resin squeezed through cracks overhead and hardened across our path. It looked less like a barricade than an attempt to make us hurry where hurrying would kill us.

"It knows we’re here now," Sela said.

The connector opened into a round chamber with a shaft rising from its ceiling. Old iron rungs climbed thirty metres toward a pale square overhead.

For several seconds, it was the best thing I had ever seen.

Then Sela raised her lamp.

Fresh resin filled the hatch frame in a layered grey cap.

"That was open," she said. "I looked up and saw daylight."

Something heavy entered the far end of the connector. Its weight travelled through the floor and into the chamber walls.

[Manifestation Remaining: 00:12:04.]

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