"That is unfortunate," István said, unintentionally mimicking the gist of my earlier statement. We were both staring at it when Viktor walked up. I was waiting for an encore, but he just shrugged, then lumbered off towards the exit to the junction. There was another room in the current one, but we had already established it was empty, apparently the Umbral Veil was still in the process of converting this found space into a den of horrors.

We backtracked as far as the first room we'd entered into, then picked out the second pathway over. I'm sure Viktor was disappointed there was no 'Danger' sign, but my gut feeling told me that this was either outdated or an oversight. The echoing roars reinforced the thought.

We followed the leader through the door and were surprised to see that this one descended for a ways. Not super far, about one floor if the stairs back in the office were anything to go by. I could count the steps on these without getting distracted. There were twenty-one. Probably.

The next space was far less organized than the previous ones. And it was lousy with monsters. Even as we came into it I could see a few dozen in a rather pitched brawl on the far end. It was weird to see them fighting each other like that, but I had the thought that they probably weren't supposed to be loose in here.

Honestly I found the lack of any humans to be highly suspicious. I know the Veil had sent people - or what I assumed were people - after us, but only a complete idiot would send everyone. It was hard to grok why we hadn't encountered any formal resistance.

Viktor, as expected, was very excited to see that there was already a fight in progress and hurried ahead to join it. I rolled my eyes at István, who was laughing under his breath.

"I don't know how you put up with him sometimes." It occurred to me I was telling my boss about his boss.

"Well, someone has to be the face of the company," István replied, "His face gets more 'face' than mine."

I wasn't quite sure what he meant by the latter use of 'face' but I could guess from the context. "I think his fists could get more 'face' than both of our faces put together," I commented. I was still thinking about how István spoke about Viktor not as a formal boss, but as the best choice to present as one. Something to file away for later to be sure.

Sounds of pain reached our ears as Viktor reached his destination. I looked at István. "Guess we should go see if he's going to leave us anything."

I got a nod in reply, but István was already in his own little world, examining the geology of the cave.

Forget puppies, this was more like herding cats.

Viktor did not, in fact, leave anything but surfaces coated in unidentifiable bits of gore. He was huffing a little bit, the trademark heat rolling off of him in waves. I was tempted to hold my hands out to it like it was a fire, but was pretty sure that'd earn me a pummeling.

"Nice work," I said, which seemed to make him happy. He slammed his palms together and I dodged some pieces of yuck that got tossed my way. "Did you see anything different with these ones?"

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"More different types than usual."

"Like what types?" I asked, trying to glean more information. István still hadn't caught up.

"I dunno." He seemed embarrassed, mumbling his response in an even deeper tone than usual. Then he brightened up, "Extra squishy ones!"

"Oh, ah," I stuttered in surprise. "Thanks for that information."

"Come look at this," István said, freeing me from my inane quest to wring useful information out of a blunt weapon. Water from a rock, as Gran would say. I was missing her hardcore by now. The hug meter must be bottoming out.

I wandered over to where István was at. A thick cylinder pierced both the ceiling and the floor. It was perfectly smooth. I eyeballed it for a bit, seeing nothing. I indicated as much.

"No, I mean…" István pointed at my eyes, seemingly forgetting we'd talked about it before above.

"No can do," I replied. "They still hurt. How about this." I reached out and set my hand on the pipe itself, and instead gave a vacation to my poor eyes by closing them and relying instead on my inner sense to determine what was going on inside. I quickly resolved the feeling to a stagnant flow of whatever corrupt power we'd witnessed before in the 'sink room'. Artifact melter room? Whatever.

I looked at the scientist. "It's plumbing for up above," I said, involuntarily lifting my arm underhand to point at the the top of the pipe before I could stop myself.

Pretty sure he knows up from down, I thought, Viktor might need some help though.

It was only a thought in jest, though, since despite his simple actions and sizable exterior, I was pretty sure the big guy was smarter than he let on. I doubted István would trust him so much if he was just dumb muscle.

This time it was Viktor's turn to call out to us. "You will want to see this, István." Surprisingly, this proclamation brought the smaller man running over. I had to run myself just to keep up.

Where he was standing there was a large, unbroken patch of the cave wall. It was covered in the most disturbing thing I'd ever seen.

Purple moss spread out from the center, tendrils running in every direction, it was dense and crusted, looking almost like a stone on the surfaces farthest away from the wall. But that wasn't the creepy part, the creepy part was the dozens of eyes dotting it, appearing where the concentrations of the moss were the highest. Each had a white sclera, with a vivid, almost orange iris that depressed sharply inward from the clear surface, with a deep, triangular pupil. Every so often they'd move to look at a different person, but they were all staring at us.

If my skin crawled any harder, it'd have moseyed off my body of its own accord. Probably to another continent, just to be safe.

Then one blinked.

"Gah," Viktor said, taking a step back. "What the heck is this?" His hand was in a fist already, but István had moved between him and the wall, examining it in his usual clinical manner.

"What use would a moss have for ocular function?" he wondered, face only inches from the surface of one of the orbs, which was nearly the size of his head. "It is not as though it can react to the information it receives. Is this one of the Umbral Veil's creations?"

"I say we burn it," I, well, said. This received an enthusiastic nod of approval from Viktor, who evidently was having second thoughts about touching it long enough to punch it.

"Couldn't agree more," István replied, surprising me. Then he continued, "It would be valuable to see how it reacts to fire. That said, we're in an enclosed space and using up the breathable air would be unwise. We have no idea how this place is ventilated."

Ah, right. Good thing he was here, or Viktor and I would likely have met some pretty pitiful ends. At least we wouldn't have met them while being observed by dozens of wall eyes.

We moved away from the wall of horrors, István begrudgingly, and deeper into the cave. The walls were getting increasingly wet looking, which had me worried. Science Puppy was curious as always, since there wasn't really any reason for it to be happening.

Guess we'd find out what was up soon enough. Hopefully it'd be a little less horrifying than the eyes. Pretty sure those were going to haunt my nightmares.

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