The surface crew was plagued by small issues. They didn't really want to talk about it, but by the time they were halfway through clearing the second floor down, even Sophia knew they were haunted. Most of the time, it was minor things like a tool not being where it was left; those generally turned up later. Sometimes they were even in a place that the person looking for it swore they'd checked.

It was the handful of incidents that were too severe to dismiss and simple forgetfulness that made them seem really haunted. A few days into their building project, one of the horses somehow managed to knock down a section of the corral. The entire group had to be tracked down through the snow and returned once the corral was repaired. It was fortunate that they hadn't gone too far. As it was, two of the horses were simply gone; they hadn't stayed with the herd and by the time anyone knew they were missing, the trail was muddled enough that it couldn't be followed.

The second major incident was when one of the remaining walls collapsed. It was sheer luck that the only person near the wall at the time was Corwin; he was sturdy enough that he was buried rather than killed. Even that was a stroke of good luck; some of the stones that fell were large enough and high enough that they could have killed him if they'd landed wrong. Even without that, it took hours of effort by the expedition's medic to get him in good enough shape to be healed the rest of the way by Dav without risking something healing wrong.

The rumors of the surface being haunted started soon after that. It was made worse when they started to tell stories about other expeditions around the campfire at night. To hear the tales, the hauntings on the surface were nothing compared to the things that had been seen in the depths of past ruins.

Ruins apparitions and bone remnants weren't the only monsters that had been found in ruins. Most of the stories focused on monsters that had moved in from outside, which clearly didn't apply to this ruin. The other stories were hard to figure out, because they seemed more like horror tales than real incidents.

Sophia really didn't like the idea of shadows that could come to life and shred someone in moments. Anywhere there was light, there were shadows. It was enough to make Sophia regret listening to all of the stories.

Stories were for the evening. During the day, they made their way through the second floor, slowly but surely. There was a second bone remnant on the far side of the farm, far enough that the two bone remnants had probably never encountered each other.

It was even more misshapen than the first, with horns that seemed to be made of distorted spines that somehow also joined up with misplaced malformed shoulder joints that each then held more than one arm. Its legs were closer to normal, with only the major issue that they were different lengths.

Unlike the first bone remnant, it spat acid and was not at all clever. Sophia wasn't certain if it could control the ruins apparitions or not, but if it could, it didn't bother. That made it easy to kill the nearby skeletal sheep, then handle the acid-spitting bone remnant on its own, without having to resort to the tricks they'd used on the first bone remnant.

It was just as well. Sophia wasn't acid-resistant and Taika couldn't exactly protect her from that. Instead, Horus and Lan'ti led the way, Horus because he could enhance his shield to block the acidic spit and Lan'ti because he could target bones to break without having to go through the monster's shield first, without touching the monster. What they couldn't do easily was kill it. Sophia did that with a lot of True Death Bolts. Dav could have helped, but there was no reason to risk him; the bone remnant couldn't move and couldn't heal.

At least, not unless it found more bones. With it unable to move, it was fairly easy to make sure there weren't any bones near it.

They took their time and completely searched the floor. It was far larger than the first floor, though once they got far enough out the number of ruins apparitions was much lower and they never found a third bone remnant.

Most of what they found was long since rusted and unusable, but it still told a story. The level was once a working farm, but it looked like the farmers simply walked away one day and left their equipment behind. It was hard to say if they'd taken most of the animals or not, but the evidence was there that they hadn't taken all of them. The bones used by the bone remnants said that much, though it was very possible that some of them once belonged to the farmers themselves.

Even with that, the vast majority of the floor was never used for animals. Instead, it was a series of smaller areas for different crops. Exactly what most of those crops were was hard to tell; even the areas that probably once held trees no longer had the obvious signs they could recognize, other than the fact that the ceiling was far higher in that area.

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There was no obvious sign of why the farmers left. Sophia kept expecting to see the signs of an attack, but if they were there, they were hidden by the centuries since that day. They did find some suspicious damage to some of the stairwells, but in none of those cases was there any sign that the fighting was with the residents and not simply earlier ruins apparitions and bone remnants. Volat proposed that it could all have been done by something attempting to nest in the relatively warm underground space and Sophia couldn't really counter that suggestion.

The only thing they found that was noteworthy was an egg-shaped agglomeration of amber-colored crystals that glowed faintly with magic. It was a little larger than an egg, but still well within the size that was easy to hold in a single hand. It sort of reminded Sophia of a salt lamp, though it was a bunch of pieces stuck together instead of one solid chunk. There were a number of them scattered around the level, but most were clearly broken and no longer held any magic.

What they did was clear the first time Xin'ri tried to analyze one; she nearly dropped it in surprise when a voice started speaking out loud. The language was immediately recognizable to Volat as Old Kestii. It was a voice recorder, or at least a playback device. While figuring out how to get it to repeat what it held was easy, Xin'ri couldn't figure out how to record anything.

Sophia and Dav were significantly less impressed than everyone else, who thought it was amazing; similar enchanted devices were known but not common. Xin'ri wanted to figure out how they worked, and while no one was willing to let her destroy one of the few functional ones they had, there were a lot of already-broken recorders. She figured she'd be able to work on them for a few tendays before she really needed one of the functional ones.

Lan'ti hoped they'd found the secrets of the past, but when Volat finished translating the first one it turned out to be a rather dry log of the daily events of a farm. Whoever kept the log seemed to have an obsession with soil temperature, moisture, and light levels. None of them were farmers, but those all seemed like they were probably important on a farm.

The second one was a little more interesting, it seemed to be a more personal diary. Everyone listened while Volat translated it. Sophia didn't mention the fact that she could understand it; she didn't want to steal Volat's thunder, when the only reason she could understand it was the Ability the Guide gave her for crossing worlds.

The fact that he could translate a dead language as fast as a native speaker could speak it with meanings very similar to the ones the Innate Communication Ability gave Sophia was nothing short of incredible. Sophia could only do that with a handful of languages and they were all languages she'd grown up speaking.

They were on their third sweep of the entire floor, looking for anything they'd missed the first two times, when Sophia saw something move in the distance. At first, she thought it was going to be more ruins apparitions or maybe a third bone remnant; there were still bones scattered around, after all, even if they hadn't collected into a monster.

It wasn't.

Instead, Sophia's magelight revealed a humanoid figure that seemed to glint in the light. She didn't get a good look at it, because as soon as the light hit the figure, it froze. When Sophia headed towards it to see what it was, it seemed to wait a moment as if it wasn't sure it had been seen, then turned and fled.

Sophia stopped, puzzled. That definitely wasn't the behavior of a ruins apparition and it seemed pretty odd for even a smart bone remnant. Even more tellingly, it moved like a human. The ruins apparitions they'd found upstairs might move like that, but they'd never have run away.

Sophia followed the fleeing all the way to a set of stairs. All she knew about them was that they went down; they weren't ready to head to the next floor, so they'd deliberately avoided exploring too far. She also really shouldn't keep going without letting people know where she was headed and probably taking some others along. If there were more ruins apparitions, she'd probably be fine, but the wrong sort of bone remnant could definitely get Sophia in trouble.

When she got back to the campsite on the first floor, Sophia went to find Lan'ti. He might not know the answer to her question, but he'd know who to ask. She needed a real answer, not the fanciful tales she'd heard every evening since they made it to the second floor. "Are there monsters in ruins that walk like a person?"

"Of course," Lan'ti answered absently. "You've seen the ruins apparitions on this floor; why are you asking?"

Sophia shook her head. That wasn't what she meant, but she'd asked poorly. "No. Uh, I saw something down on the second floor. It ran away from me. I lost it at the stairs down to the third level. I don't think it was anyone from here, so … are there any monsters that will run away?"

This time, Lan'ti didn't have an immediate answer. He slowly looked up and seemed to think for a minute before he spoke. "Yes, there are. The bone remnant tried, sort of. That's not what you mean, though; you mean something ran from you without even testing how strong you are. Was it close enough to test your aura?"

Sophia shook her head. She knew exactly what that distance was at all times, and she'd have felt it if someone else's aura tried to feel how strong hers was. "It was much too far away. It looked a lot like a person wearing shiny clothes, but it was completely silent. I don't think I'd have seen it if it hadn't glinted in the light."

"I don't know what it could be," Lan'ti answered with a smile. "Which makes me even more interested in what's below. I can't believe there are people down there, but at the same time that's the only answer I've got. Why don't we go ask around and see if anyone else has seen anything?"

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