I stretched my back as I looked around the hall. I had about 40 minutes before we had agreed to meet up again after eating. I wonder if there was somewhere around here I could use to practice some spells… I saw a familiar face. Short guy, thick glasses. Maybe he would be able to point me in the right direction.

  “Ey-up. I wonder if you can help me out?” I said to him as I intercepted him crossing the hall.

  “Hello? Oh the woman who helped us calibrate the teleporter. If I can?”

  “I’m looking for somewhere I can practice some spell casting, without having to leave the town and find some monsters.”

  “Errm. I can’t think of anywhere but if you come with me, one of the seniors might be able to help.”

  He led me into one of the side chambers where three men were working on a teleporter’s console.

  “Joshy, you get the tools?” the oldest of the three, a man whose head was growing out of his hair.

  “Yes, Chief. I also found the woman who helped us down in the Delve,” the short guy next to me said. “She’s looking for somewhere to practice her spells…”

  “Mage?” the old man asked, looking up at me. “I might be able to arrange something, I understand you can understand the Ancient’s language?”

  “Some of it. I’m still learning,” I admitted.

  He waves his hand at the console. “When the Com-Net came online, the system has been showing new screens and settings which don’t match up with what we know.”

  I walked over and took a look at what they were talking about.

  “The core broke, so we aren’t able to use the teleport from here,” he pointed at one of the red settings, ‘Primary Core Status,’ “the receiving side of things is still working,” he pointed to one which said ‘Receiver platforms.’ “We were just matching up what you told my engineers down at the floor five teleporter.”

  “Sure,” I said. “This system seems a lot more complex than the one you down below…” it looked like there were multiple receivers, and there were some settings for multiple teleporter cores, all red unfortunately.

  “It is,” he agreed. “My predecessor told me that they had reasons to think it was once part of a widespread network, and when it was first discovered you were able to move for hundreds of miles around. Sadly we still haven’t recovered from the damage caused during the rebellion.”

  “May I?” I asked, indicating the console.

  “Please do, if you could explain what you are doing?”

  “Certainly. First, these are the calibration controls for the power systems. It looks like the primary source isn’t available so it is relying on some back up systems,” I explained as I clicked on the relevant option and started translating what it was saying.

  “This is one of the new screens,” the old man said.

  I stared at the connection map and blinked. It zoomed in… and clicked to a different screen and then flicked back. The whole continent was shown and then it zoomed down until there was just Landing and here. There were faint green lines linking from here to slightly south, from that position the lines went west and north, and then those lines came together at Landing. Another pair of green lines headed north from landing connecting to nodes along the coast and further east of it more inland.

  I flicked to a different screen and then back to the map. Yes, I could see the grey nodes and hub spots. If I was reading this right, this was a global map of the fast travel spots and the communication nodes which would allow us to connect them up. I tried dragging the map around, and while I could move it the moment my finger came off of it, it scrolled back. I could zoom out with a pinch motion, but again it zoomed back in. The opposite wasn’t the case, I could zoom in and it would stay zoomed in. Ok, so it’s limiting me to only seeing that which was active. I touched Landing, it showed green on receipt and red on transmission. The same when I clicked on Storage C.

  “I think this is showing the places we could teleport to, if it was working. These look like the options to say which of the teleport platforms to designate for incoming from that node.”

  “People will be able to teleport here?” he asked sharply. “Joshy, go and fetch the Magistrate. He will need to be informed, immediately. Aenara, are you saying we can select which platform we receive them at? Can we also block teleports?”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “This better be important Chief Destri, I was in a meeting with the Fisherman’s guild about quotas,” the imposing figure of the Magistrate said as he entered the room.

  “Magistrate,” the Chief greeted the man. “With the Explorator’s help, we have made some startling discoveries about the teleporter system. The stories I was told as a child are correct, it is part of a Global network, which is starting to come back online.”

  “Are we vulnerable?” he asked.

  “We don’t think so. This map is showing only connections between ourselves and Landing, but it looks like offline nodes spread across the world,” the chief said.

  “Can we block it?”

  “I…” the old man turned to me.

  “Short answer?” I asked. “No. You can turn off the whole system, but then you will also lose access to the teleporters in the delve.” The look on his face made me think that was almost as bad for him as the idea of being invaded. “You can blacklist travellers, who will be unable to teleport to you. White listing doesn’t seem to be an option I can find.”

  “Black list is clear, White list, the opposite?” he asked.

  “Yeah, white list would be everyone but these people. You can route travellers to specific pads based on origin though.”

  “We’ll be able to set the teleporters from the Delve to the two rooms inside assessment,” One of the other engineers said.

  “So my options are to turn off the system or risk hostiles teleporting inside our defences?”

  “We don’t typically discuss them, but there are three teleport receivers in town… they were deactivated to ensure no one would bypass assessment…” the old man said, with some reluctance.

  “Deactivated? I thought the order had been to destroy them?” the Magistrate asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well… my predecessor and I, decided it would be better to have spare parts in case we needed them… so we dismantled them and stored them instead…” he admitted.

  “I suppose that would have made sense at the time…” the Magistrate sighed. “OK, for now, set all external teleports into the North chamber. I’ll have the guard fully man that room. Then get the one in the main courtyard back online. We’ll have visitors go there. If I remember correctly it had a console like in the Delve?”

  “It did, but you couldn’t teleport into the Delve from it.” The old man nodded thoughtfully.

  “Small mercies. Let’s hope that is still the case. If you will excuse me, I think I need to have another discussion with our Explorator liaison and speed things up in the negotiations with his people.”

  “Dominick, take Joshy, you’ll find the crates we need in the back of storage 8C. There should be a note on the inside of the crate saying from where they are taken. There should be four for the courtyard’s receiver, the notes will tell you.” With that said, the two engineers in question hurried off and the old man turned to me. “Thank you for your support with that…I owe you somewhere to train.”

  “Nah, that’s ok. It’s actually been fun exploring a new system. Don’t get to do that anywhere near enough and my friends should be here shortly. The reset is about to end soon and we are planning to explore floor six.”

  “Has anyone explained the priorities for being among the first to enter the delve?” the gate guard asked us.

  “No, we thought it was the same as our assessment delve, but without someone with us.” Voice said.

  “Mostly yes, but there will be no route markers, no warnings on traps. While you aren’t the first group to go in, most of the people going in now will be clearing the top floors and will stop once they find the Forge,” he said.

  “Apologies!” Diane said as she jogged up. “We haven’t completed your assessment!”

  “We’re not eligible? I thought we had all passed,” Darksider said.

  “You have and you are, we just hadn’t covered the standard signs and given you the supplies we give all teams going in. I heard a team was going in, didn’t realise it was all of you. I only brought five copies of the signs guide and a single packet of chalk,” she said, pulling out the resources.

  “I have some more chalk,” said the guy at the gate.

  “We skipping?” G asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Skipping?” George asked incredulously.

  “Gives gains dude!” G told him enthusiastically.

  “Really?”

  “Seriously!”

  I took out most of the groups of mobs we saw, before they got anywhere near the ten of us and it only took us fifteen minutes to find the stairs to the second floor. On the second floor, we passed a group on the way back up. They let us know they had found the forge and the stairs to the third floor were right next to them. The third floor was virgin territory from the lack of any markings on the walls, so we agreed to split the teams back up into two fives and report when we found the way down to four.

  Darksider had taken one of the copies of the signs book and had taken responsibility for making the marks like Clark had done as we moved down the corridors. By agreement, we didn’t bother to clear any of the rooms unless it was the only way through. We wanted to get down to one of the deeper floors and the better loot there, not waste time on what ended up being trash in comparison. In that regard, we made pretty good time and covered quite a bit of distance. After twenty minutes we got the message from the other team that they had found the stairs down. We back tracked at a jog until we found where our paths diverged and met Sam, who was on his way back from the stairs up, having marked the path down.