“We are … delaying our report.” Elariel cocked her head. “My master says we need to discover what you know. He commanded me to heal you so you could speak to him.”

“Ah.” Gyre shifted to the edge of the table and stretched his legs. “I suppose I should thank him.”

“I would … wait.” Elariel’s ears drooped again. “He may decide the best way to obtain the information he needs would be to render it from your living brain.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Or he may not!” Elariel said, with a forced smile. “He is unpredictable. But now that you’re awake, you will have to go and see him.”

*

The state of Gyre’s clothes gave him some idea of what the rock ingestor had done to his body. They were practically shredded, ripped and torn as though they’d gone through a spiked mangle. When he asked Elariel if the ghouls had anything that might serve, she shook her head.

“I fashioned those”—she indicated the shorts he was wearing—“when I remembered how odd you humans get about your coverings. Are they insufficient?”

Gyre assured her they were perfectly adequate. They were a little large for him, but he managed to retrieve a mostly intact belt from the wreck of his gear. In the process, he investigated the remains of his pack, but his stash of alchemicals had either been confiscated by the ghouls or destroyed by the journey. Both his knives were missing as well.

Not that it matters. Gyre had no illusions that he would be able to fight his way out of the Tomb, if it came to that. Elariel had escorted him out of the room he’d awoken in, and just on the short trip to where she’d stored his gear he’d seen a dozen constructs. They weren’t the spiked, stone-lined guardians from up above, but many of them were large and powerful-looking, and presumably more martial versions weren’t far away.

Not all the constructs were humanoid, either. Smaller things trotted on four legs or hopped like rabbits, and even tinier varieties hummed through the air on delicate, multicolored wings. They all had a similar look, their bodies built of striated black muscle laid over metallic bones that poked through at the joints, like anatomy models no one had bothered providing with skin. Some had specialized limbs, sporting knives or hammers or more complicated tools whose function Gyre couldn’t begin to guess.

The complex they were in seemed to be mostly small rooms set off of long, winding corridors. The floor was covered in gray-green stuff that he initially thought was carpet but on closer inspection turned out to be some kind of plant, sprouting myriad fine, hairlike stalks that were soft on his bare feet. The walls were smooth, polished stone, and every so often light-patches gleamed on the ceiling, bright to his adjusted eyes but probably invisible to a normal human.