Page 655 -- LXXVI.

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Chapter Seventy-Six: ‘Thy buried history...’
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Hector was glad for Amelia Carthrace’s presence. The woman could organize just about anything, seemingly, and she had a handle on his funds. She was almost like an elderly version of Gina, he thought, and he could see why the Queen had asked her to help him out. The only thing he didn’t understand was why Madame Carthrace had actually agreed to.

By mid-morning, Warrenhold already had two separate crews onsite. The first was the preliminary reconstruction team, which Amelia tasked with making immediate and primitive repairs to the aboveground buildings. Their primary goal was to have enough rooms with four walls for everyone by the day’s end.

The second crew was a team of surveyors, and Hector accompanied them underground. At first, they wanted to split up and go in all different directions to help speed their work along, but Hector wouldn’t allow it. He wasn’t going to let anyone wander around down here alone until he was more confident in the castle’s structural integrity. He knew that these people were professionals, but even so, he doubted that many of them had experience with places quite like this. If a hallway suddenly collapsed on someone, Hector wanted to be right there to shield them in an instant. The surveyors were a bit annoyed at his insistence, but the longer they spent underground, the less that seemed to bother them.

They didn’t experience any cave-ins or otherwise have any brushes with death, but that didn’t seem to matter. Gradually, the surveyors all took to clustering around Hector, and they became rather fidgety and irritable. They busied themselves with their work, taking measurements, charting the rooms out, inspecting walls and columns for signs of weakness; but not a single one of these people appeared very comfortable in this place now.

“...Are you guys alright?” Hector asked.

The lead surveyor had introduced herself as Sharon Calloway earlier. She took a deep breath and adjusted her hard hat, then her spectacles. “We’re fine. Don’t worry.”

“There’s something about this place,” said someone else. “I can’t put my finger on it, but...”

“It’s unsettling,” said another.