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Of course, none of those brains were going to be particularly helpful until they located the reapers that went with them, but it was a start.

At length, they began to get the impression that there were simply no reapers to be found in this building, so Zeff moved on to the next warehouse over while Hector and Diego continued trying dig out more servant brains.

‘Hey, Voreese,’ said Garovel after a while.

‘Yeah?’ she said, floating over to him and Hector.

‘What’s the name of the passage to the Undercrust beneath Warrenhold?’

‘Oh, I always just called it the Warrenhole,’ said Voreese.

‘Ha! I knew it! Hector, you owe me money.’

“No, I don’t.”

‘The proper name for the hole, though, is Do’orach,’ said Voreese. ‘Proper name, as in the original one.’

‘Hmm,’ said Garovel. ‘Is that from the Apeirian language?’

‘Close. It’s Nykeirian, actually.’

‘Ah. Haven’t heard either of those languages spoken in, oh, must be almost two thousand years now.’

‘Yeah. They kinda died out with their empires.’

‘You wouldn’t happen to be Nykeirian yourself, would you?’

‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ said Voreese. ‘I was born toward the end of the empire. Never got to see it during its prime, sadly. Stories I’ve heard make it sound pretty wondrous. Though, they were probably overhyping it, the way legends tend to do.’

That brought a question to Hector’s mind regarding the builder of Warrenhold, so he stopped working for a moment to turn and look at Voreese. “Was Stasya Orlov, uh... was she N-Nykeirian, too?”

‘Ah, haven’t forgotten about her, huh? That makes me happy. But no, not exactly. She was a descendant of the then-displaced Nykeirian people, but she was born during the early Mohssian Empire and was therefore a product of the Mohssian culture. The Nykeirian culture disappeared pretty quickly into the larger melting pot that was the Mohssian one. Which sounds a bit sad, I suppose, but it was kind of ideal, actually. When different cultures are forced together but don’t blend and integrate properly... well, that’s oftentimes how we end up with things like institutionalized racism and generations-spanning wars.’

‘I have to agree,’ said Garovel.

Hector nodded, feeling like he more or less understood, and returned to his digging while the two reapers kept talking.

It sure was dark up here, though. The tall lamp in the middle of the warehouse had been useful for a while, but now it was just too far away to help him see around all these hard angles and crevices. If only he had a way to light things up better.

Wait a minute. He did, didn’t he?

He materialized a red hot cube above his hand, using the perpetually falling technique that Zeff and Asad had taught him. It worked pretty well, though it proved difficult to keep it perfectly still while he continued moving independently. Still, it illuminated the small cavern that he’d carved out for himself fairly well.