Galatea usually considered herself a patient person.

Living a life as long as hers had consequences. Even if large stretches of it had passed almost in a haze of time slipping by. Her experience of time was not like that of an organic being, sometimes, although it had stuck rather close to that after she'd left her little cave. Still, right now she felt impatient. She had been waiting for Madris to reach them for a while now.

It really would have been better if she'd taken some drones along — ones who could actually talk, not just a mount. Then they could have just relayed a message. Or if Galatea had been a better psychic herself. Unfortunately, for what little skill she'd gained, contacting Madris on her own while she was so far away was outright impossible.

Therefore, when she finally sensed Madris' magical presence touching down outside, accompanied by several other people, Galatea almost gave a visible sign of relief. Not that she needed to, of course, it would be more of a habit. But she didn't, and instead waited for people to move.

Their current location had been fortified in a remarkably short amount of time, especially considering the Empire was currently preparing for war, and not on the border closest to here. But the improved organization that came with an expanded bureaucracy and civil service — ironic as that might be — had helped, not to mention the cohesion among the Delvers. They were rather clearly taking the lead, even if it was still officially a project at least partly sponsored by the Empire.

Well, Regina seemed content to let Galatea oversee things here. She and several other people, obviously including Madris, had her trust. So there should be no issues there.

Galatea slowly floated out of the room she was currently in and into the open. There were several fences and one wall around this compound, hastily raised and not the most steadfast, but still more than adequate. Several tents had been placed, as well as quickly constructed buildings that would have to be expanded if they were expected to stand the test of time, but that wasn't the focus right now. She had personally also added a few less physical defenses. Zephyr had consulted on them and they'd added a few protective rituals whose efficacy she was not quite sure of, but they would hardly hurt.

"You seem to have fortified this place rather well, Galatea," Madris commented as they met. "Are you trying to build a castle?"

Galatea smiled slightly at the weak joke. She could see Madris was tired, although most probably wouldn't be able to tell. "I'm not sure a castle would be of much use here," she replied. "Not that I would object if there was one conveniently situated right here. But perhaps I should show you more of what we've actually been doing here."

"That would be appreciated," Madris replied, glancing around curiously.

She wasn't the only one. The arrival of several powerful and presumably well-known Delvers had attracted some interest. There were many members of their order here, along with some Imperial soldiers, a few drones and some other Imperials who were not fighters.

"Lady Madris," Gwen greeted her, stepping up to them and bowing her head slightly. "It is nice to see you again."

"Likewise, Lady Cern," she replied with a small smile. "I should have guessed you would be here."

"Where else would I be, Eminent Mistress?" Gwen smiled a little ironically. "I would prefer not to stand on formality, even if I am more of a lady now. Please do call me Gwen."

They both looked like they were trading a small joke, but Madris quickly turned serious again. Galatea supposed they might know each other more closely, since they were both Delvers, and she wouldn't be surprised if Gwen had sought Madris out as soon as she arrived in her vicinity.

"You have assembled quite a few fighters, in addition to solid defenses," Madris noted now. "I assume this is connected to the recent increase in monster activity around here?"

"Our digging might have had a few unpleasant side effects on the countryside," Galatea admitted. "Come on, I think I should show you a few of the artifacts we have found first, before we go down."

She was glad that at least the Delvers had experience and knew how to organize everything pretty well. They only had to walk a short way to reach the basement of the most solid building, where ice had been packed into the corners and the airflow was tightly regulated with an airlock-style doubled door and a ventilation system that could be used, with the help of magic, to cycle the air in the room or otherwise keep it still and filtered. It wouldn't be the same as actual stasis or even truly modern storage methods, but they also didn't have anything fragile enough to fall apart if it was exposed to the air. It had all survived for almost a thousand years, after all.

"Ah, I see why you wanted me here," Madris muttered, going directly to the stone table to the left, where several objects had been carefully placed. She hovered her hand over them before withdrawing it without touching anything and instead bending closer to examine them.

"This is dark elven script, yes?" Galatea asked, glancing at a dark, curved plate with symbols etched in the center and around the edges. She was pretty sure of it already. But it was only a minor variant of surface elven script, and these were pretty old examples anyway, so not completely sure.

"Yes," Madris muttered. "This must be part of an armor worn by a dark elf soldier. I don't recognize the House crest, but it's probably fallen in the time since, if it survived this war. The blade is also in our style. And this …"

Galatea glanced at them. The armor and weapon were both clearly damaged, the sword had a visible chip in the edge. More interesting was that someone had clearly drilled a hole through the biggest plate. She didn't recognize the material, perhaps a monster carapace. There must have been thread or wire used to hold it in place with that tiny fastening, though it was now gone. "It implies someone took and repurposed the armor for themselves," she said. "Probably someone with a rather different body type."

"Which tells us something about their access to good equipment," Madris murmured, nodding. "This was almost certainly loot, I agree. Unfortunately, I don't think we can identify which battle it came from."

"I didn't think much was known about individual battles," Galatea cut in.

Madris glanced up at her briefly. "No, but if we were able to determine a location, we might gain information about one we didn't know about before," she explained. "Regardless, I'm sure this isn't the only find you have." Looking a bit reluctant, she turned to the rest of the room's contents.

There were several other weapons and sets of armor, all only partial, damaged and incomplete. It would be harder to precisely identify some of them, but Madris did indicate several pieces that might have been used by dark elves, even if the design was not restricted to them. Galatea was glad the psychic had such good working knowledge of weaponry and armor, even historical ones — although she supposed that given her age, it would be much easier for her than for a human even if dark elves weren't slow to change in that field. Several more objects were already identified as different, and she confirmed those evaluations, too. But the weapons weren't the most interesting part.

There were bones as well. Galatea really wished they had access to modern technology — what she wouldn't give for a DNA analysis of a few of them. Of course they could still do morphological comparisons and other analysis, and she was pretty sure of what it meant: There were several species present, and one of them was almost certainly Hivekind.

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"These could be from my people or surface elves; we are not that different beneath our skin," Madris said. "But these …" She stared intently at the remains of especially thin bones mixed with larger ones, all a slightly different shade than the rest — they did not undergo quite the same chemical processes as the others, presumably, due to their somewhat different chemical composition.

"Almost certainly Hivekind," Galatea completed. "And interestingly, there are noticeable differences from the Hivekind we know."

She glanced at one of the drones present, Jae, a Drone Witch who had specialized in healing magic and was thus very familiar with their anatomy, and who was working with the Keepers — one of whom was also here, but currently occupied elsewhere — to analyze these. He quickly ran through their preliminary evaluation.

It turned out that the basic biological structure was clearly very similar to today's drones. If they were able to sequence their DNA, there would presumably be high similarity, but it would hardly be identical. She supposed that made sense, as the Starlit Hive was clearly related to the few Hives Earth had seen before. Regina's egg must have come from somewhere, after all; it was almost certainly from one of the Hive Queens on Earth, and it seemed likely that all of them — there couldn't have been more than a few who'd made the trip — were relatively closely related, if not actual siblings. Thus, finding such similarity didn't actually say much about how diverse Hivekind Hives in general might be, biologically. It was entirely possible there were much larger differences in other members of the species. Regardless, while the makeup might be similar, presumably with somewhat different levels of things like heavy metal accumulation or heavier isotopes, they didn't precisely map onto anything they had seen before.

"We're trying to analyze them for radiation damage, but it's difficult," Jae explained. "Even if we could sequence their DNA, it's all denaturated by now. However, the macro-structure is different, even if the shells seem to be almost the same chemically. This particular bone is clearly reinforced in a way we have not encountered before, and heavier than normal as a result. The general shape is also a bit off, from what we can tell. It's a clear morphological distinction. The best conclusion I can come to is that the type of drone — the Template — was different."

"At least for some of these," Galatea added. "Others might as well have come from a living drone."

"Quite the intriguing find," Madris muttered after a moment. "I have not heard of any existing Hivekind remains surviving. Pardon the pun. From what I have heard, and this is more hearsay than anything, some groups tried to bury the Hivekind's existence as much as they could."

Galatea nodded; that fit what she'd heard.

"It's also been long enough that it is very much down to luck," Gwen added.

Madris turned back to them. "How was all of this preserved? I assume it wasn't out in the open."

"I suppose it's time to show you," Galatea said.

She glanced at a few other objects gathered here. They would be harder finds to analyze, she suspected. There were only scraps of rough parchment with barely any remains of letters, but no real paper, which had probably rotted in the time since.

They stayed silent as they left the building and moved to the hut which covered the entrance into the underground dig site, or at least the lower part situated beside the open excavation ground in the center of their new fortifications. Madris only spoke up as they entered beneath the cover and she glanced at the passage down.

"How long have you been here?" she asked. "How long has this been here? I imagine you didn't find all of this immediately. It's been months and you didn't seem all that interested before, but suddenly …" she gestured around them. "Besides, either Regina or you would have called me in earlier if you were going to. So, did you break through somewhere?"

Galatea smiled slightly. "Good catch. Yes, we did, in a way. This is a recent development. Not that we've truly succeeded yet." She started down the short drop, braced by a few large steps hewn into the earth, and ducked into the short tunnel at the end. "There are several layers here," she explained. "To the west is a larger structure, or the remains of it, built of solid concrete. But we need to pass through two other layers of construction first, from here. The upper one was easy enough to explore and catalogue."

They passed through tunnels the Delvers had dug in their excavation, which slowly gave way to more natural formations. They were all bare and while the occasional shard of interesting things might be found here, that wasn't really her goal right now.

After a few meters, it became less of a conventional dig site and they once again entered what could be called more of an underground tunnel network. It did not seem to connect to the other tunnels she'd seen to the west, as far as they knew right now, at least, and it was clearly not Pre-Cataclysm construction. They followed it for a longer time. Earthen walls receded to show more stone peeking through as they went slightly deeper, before they were in fully stone-clad passages.

Finally, as Madris came to a stop, the stone changed and she knew this was actually a more artificial material, a variant of concrete. They stepped through an archway and, a few meters further, through a doorway with the remains of a metal door hanging on its hinges, carefully pulled out of the way.

"We opened this a short while ago," Gwen explained. "The really interesting part is further within."

There were several corridors, but Galatea had decided to show Madris straight to the most interesting one, so they ignored several crossings. As they continued, she could tell the dark elf was building a mental map.

"Magic is behaving strangely here," she finally said.

Galatea nodded. "Ambient mana is restive," she said. "It's similar to the twisted mana I've seen before. We've also explored far enough and opened some passages that seem to have been used or found by local monsters. Mostly, I think they're reacting to the mana, but their increased activity is too specific and large-scale to be just a natural reaction. This must be a defensive mechanism."

Personally, she was excited to explore this aspect of it more. Galatea wasn't concerned about the 'twisted' mana. She'd certainly encountered worse — was made of worse. They'd instituted some safety regulations and were watching everyone who came down here or lingered in the vicinity closely, but there didn't seem to be any ill effects. It wouldn't be the first lingering magical remnant of the Cataclysm, blocked off and kept behind meters of stone and dirt.

"This is a different kind of structure," Madris observed as they cautiously kept walking forward. "And there's something rather interesting ahead."

Galatea nodded, not bothering to reply, as they were coming up on it anyway.

A slight bend in the passage and a few more meters saw them standing before a set of great double doors. The tunnel had widened, so there was more space. Off to the side, they'd set up a table and a few chairs. The table was covered with papers full of sketches, and Thaumaturge Zephyr was writing something else down on one of them. He glanced up as they arrived and stood up with what seemed like a bit of reluctance.

"What is this?" Madris asked him directly, nodding at the door.

Even someone with no mana senses at all would have been able to tell it wasn't mundane. There were symbols etched into the frames and covering the center of the doors in arrangements that formed larger symbols. The concrete to the side also had some symbols etched into it, along with plates of other materials, and she suspected strands of metal covered by the concrete.

Most of the symbols were unfamiliar. Or, at least, would be entirely unfamiliar to most of the people here.

"A defense, obviously," Zephyr answered, frowning at it. "We've been trying to figure it out for a bit of time now. Your insight would be greatly appreciated, I have to admit. Whenever I stare at it too long, it gets harder to keep looking and to focus, and I can feel increasing strain on my mental defenses. There must be some sort of psychic defense built into it, too."

"Along with something agitating the monsters, and the plain blocking of the door," Gwen added.

Madris stepped forward cautiously. "I can see why you wanted to gather everyone in Regina's circle with magical expertise," she commented quietly. "I haven't seen something like this before. Although I have encountered stronger psychic defenses, certainly nothing this old." She frowned, pointing at one of the clusters. "What language is this?"

"I have already called for Iseis, who will hopefully be able to offer more help," Galatea said. "She's supposed to be on her way. But — I think this is Aishan — High Aishan or Late Aishan." Leian might be the only one who could truly tell and analyze it in detail.

Madris glanced up sharply. "But, what does that mean?"

"The Hivekind probably knew it." They probably spoke and used it, if they had a common language that wasn't of their own creation. "It implies this might really be their work."

It would be interesting if they could confirm this was some kind of Hivekind dialect of the language, but her knowledge didn't extend that far. She'd barely ever seen anything written in it or heard Leian speak a few words.

"Another old Hivekind base," Zephyr mused. "Aren't we lucky. Although I have a feeling this one is different than the other."

"Yes, it does appear there was a battle fought over it," Gwen said sardonically, "and we can still find signs of it."

Galatea just looked at the door, wondering what else they would find behind it. Not just a few scattered remains of people and weapons — people who must have been fighting a battle and been caught outside the door, most likely, and then placed in just such a way that, by chance, their remains had survived to be found by them.

There would probably be more bodies, if nothing else.

Someone must have broken through the door at one point. Perhaps they'd closed it behind them, or perhaps there'd been a few scattered drone survivors, who'd perhaps fled and returned.

They would have to break through it first to find out.

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