Chapter 6: NEKKERS IN SHAFT A
The noise came from below.
Not the productive sounds of excavation—the rhythmic crack of picks and the grinding of ore carts on rails. This was something else. A clicking, skittering pattern that echoed up through the old workings of Shaft A like a warning.
I'd been reviewing the morning assignment board when the SEG pulsed amber in my peripheral vision. Threat proximity alarm, medium intensity, bearing west and below. The overlay resolved into specifics: red circle at the Shaft A base, estimated 12-18 individuals, territorial behavior consistent with nesting.
Nekkers.
I'd read about them in one of the old journals I'd found in Konrad's belongings—a previous owner's notes on borderland hazards. Pack predators, roughly child-sized, claws and teeth compensating for individual weakness. In a tunnel, with no room to maneuver, twelve of them could overwhelm armed men.
The SEG showed the nest position: a tunnel junction at the bottom of Shaft A, connecting to old Level 0 workings that hadn't been accessed in years. The creatures had been there for months, according to the system's occupancy estimates. Hidden in spaces no one had reason to enter. Growing their numbers in the dark.
Brac was checking the morning crews when I found him.
"We have a problem." I kept my voice level—no need to start a panic among workers who were just beginning to trust that the colony was safe. "Shaft A. Lower levels. Monster nest."
His expression didn't change, but I saw his hand move toward the knife at his belt—an unconscious reflex from decades of underground work.
"What kind?"
"Nekkers. Twelve to eighteen, maybe more. They're in the old junction below Level 0."
"How do you know?"
The question I couldn't answer honestly. Because the system showed me. Because a holographic overlay in my head tracked threats the way it tracked ore deposits and water tables.
"Sounds from below. I checked the shaft entrance this morning and heard them moving." True enough—I had heard them, after the system pointed out where to listen. "The clicking is distinctive."
Brac absorbed this without challenging it. He'd worked underground long enough to know that some people could read stone, read water, read the particular frequencies of danger that preceded cave-ins and floods. If I claimed to hear nekkers, he'd assume I had the ears for it.
"We'll need to clear them before they spread. If they get into Shaft C—"
"I know."
Twelve nekkers in a tunnel junction was a problem. Twelve nekkers in a productive ore shaft was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Workers would die. Production would stop. The colony would be right back where it started, except now with a monster infestation instead of just structural neglect.
"I'm going down," I said. "Get me four guards and anyone who's willing to fight in close quarters."
"You're going personally."
It wasn't quite a question. Brac's expression carried something I couldn't entirely read—surprise, maybe, that the half-blood noble who gave orders from the surface was planning to descend into a monster nest.
"I'm the one who knows where they are. I'm the one who can track them if they scatter." Both statements technically true. "And if I send workers to do this without going myself, I'm the kind of leader who sends people to die while staying safe. That's not the reputation I want."
Also, the system gives DP for cleared threats, and I need every point I can get.
The second reason stayed private.
The descent team assembled within the hour.
Four guards—workers who had been assigned to overnight watch rotations after the population growth made perimeter security necessary. They weren't soldiers. They carried repurposed mining tools converted to weapons: picks with sharpened heads, hammers weighted for combat, one salvaged sword that had seen better decades.
Brec was there too. He'd heard about the situation from the overnight crew and appeared at the shaft entrance with his tunneling pick and a torch, asking no questions, offering no explanations. He'd been in the colony for less than two weeks, but he was walking into a monster nest like it was routine shift work.
"You don't have to come," I said.
"I've done this before." His voice was matter-of-fact, the tone of someone stating professional qualifications. "Nekker clearing. Twice in the Kovir mines, once on the road near Oxenfurt. They're fast but they're stupid. Keep your back to the wall and don't let them flank you."
"How many?"
"Twelve in Kovir, first time. Eight the second. The Oxenfurt group was smaller—maybe six." He adjusted his grip on the pick. "You said twelve to eighteen. That's closer to a proper nest. They'll have a warrior class and a digger class. The warriors come first."
I filed the information, grateful for the expertise I didn't have to fake.
"Formation: two guards in front, Brec and I in the middle, two guards behind. Tight spacing. If they try to get around us, make them pay for it."
The guards nodded. Brec just started walking toward the shaft entrance.
Shaft A was older than the other excavations—cut by the colony's original settlers before whatever disaster had driven them away. The timbers were gray with age, the walls showing mineral deposits that had accumulated over years of neglect. The SEG overlay painted the space in dim amber, highlighting structural concerns that were secondary to the immediate threat.
The clicking grew louder as we descended.
Not a unified sound—many individual clicks, overlapping, creating a pattern that seemed almost deliberate. Pack communication. The nekkers knew we were coming. They were discussing it among themselves, if creatures like that could be said to discuss anything.
"Forty meters," Brec said quietly. He'd been counting steps, measuring the descent. "Junction should be close."
The SEG confirmed: red circle ahead, maybe twenty meters, multiple heat signatures clustered in a defensive formation. They'd heard us. They were ready.
"Torches forward," I said. "Spread the light when we clear the tunnel mouth."
The junction opened in front of us—a wider space where three old tunnels had converged, now serving as a nekker breeding ground. The torchlight caught movement: pale, hunched bodies with too many joints and eyes that reflected orange in the darkness.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: NEKKER PACK]
[Estimated Count: 14]
[Threat Level: Moderate]
[Recommended Action: Engage with numerical advantage in confined space]
Fourteen. Within the estimate. Close enough to the lower bound that this was survivable if we didn't make mistakes.
"Here they come."
The first wave hit us like a living wall—six nekkers charging from the central cluster, claws extended, voices making that horrible clicking screech that I would hear in my dreams for weeks afterward. The guards in front caught them on repurposed picks, the weight of mining tools turned to killing leverage.
Blood and ichor. The smell of something dying that had never been properly alive.
I swung my own weapon—a hammer I'd borrowed from the equipment shed—and connected with something that crumpled satisfyingly. The impact traveled up my arm, and I understood in that moment why Konrad's body had the forearms it did. This was what they'd been built for.
"Second wave coming left!"
Brec's warning gave me half a second to turn. Four more nekkers, smaller than the first group—the digger class he'd mentioned, faster but less durable. They hit the left guard hard enough to knock him into the wall.
I moved without thinking. Three steps, hammer raised, brought down on the creature that was trying to claw through the guard's leather jerkin. The nekker's skull collapsed with a sound I didn't want to remember clearly.
The fight lasted eleven minutes.
Afterward, I counted bodies in the torchlight: fourteen nekkers, distributed across the junction floor like the debris of a structural collapse. One guard was wounded—deep scratches across his forearm, bleeding freely but not dangerously. The rest of us had survived intact.
Almost intact. I looked down at my left arm and found a gash I didn't remember receiving. Shallow—the creature's claw had caught me during the second wave, probably—but bleeding steadily.
"Not deep." Brec was examining the wound with the same expression he used when assessing timber grain. Professional interest, not concern. "You've had worse."
Have I?
Konrad's body carried scars I hadn't catalogued. Previous injuries from a previous life. I nodded like I understood the reference.
[+10 DP — MONSTER CLEARED (TIER 1)]
[+15 DP — NEST DESTROYED]
[Current DP: 48/100 | Lifetime: 68 DP]
The system pulsed its notifications without fanfare. Twenty-five points for clearing a threat that could have killed workers and destroyed production. The math was cold and precise, exactly the way I preferred it.
"The nest tunnel." I pointed toward the opening the nekkers had been guarding. "Collapse it. Make sure nothing else can use this junction."
Brec moved to examine the tunnel mouth, picks and hammers appearing as the other workers understood the task. Stone-work was what they knew. Monster fighting was improvisation. This part was routine.
The tunnel collapsed with a satisfying roar of displaced stone, sealing the nest forever.
We climbed out of Shaft A as the afternoon sun was starting to fade—six people who had gone into darkness and returned intact, minus some blood and some innocence. The guards peeled off toward the camp's makeshift medical station. Brec lingered at the shaft entrance, examining the structural integrity with fresh eyes now that the threat was cleared.
"Three chambers below that junction," he said. "I spotted them on the way back. Unexplored. The nekkers had been guarding them, but they hadn't gone in."
The SEG had shown me the same thing.
"We'll survey them tomorrow. After the watch rotation is established."
"Watch rotation?"
"Formal security presence. Someone at every shaft entrance, every night." I started walking toward the equipment shed. "We got lucky that these nekkers stayed where they were. Next time might be different."
Brec didn't argue. He'd cleared monster nests before. He understood that the work didn't end when the bodies stopped moving.
The gash on my arm stopped bleeding by nightfall, treated with supplies from the colony's limited medical stores—a salve that Orta had prepared according to some dwarven recipe I didn't understand, bandaging that Marta Voss had done with textile worker's precision.
"You went down yourself." Brac had appeared at my side while the bandaging was happening, watching the process without offering commentary. "Most administrators would have sent someone else."
"I knew where they were. Sending someone blind into a nest would have gotten people killed."
"You're not wrong." He paused. "But there's a difference between going because you have to and going because you want to prove something."
Both, probably.
"The nekkers are cleared. The shaft is accessible. The workers are alive." I flexed my bandaged arm, testing the range of motion. "Whatever my reasons, the result is what matters."
Brac's expression suggested he disagreed with that reasoning but wasn't going to argue about it while I was bleeding.
That evening, I established the formal watch rotation.
Two workers per night, positioned at the Shaft A and Shaft B entrances. Better housing assignments in exchange for the duty—an incentive structure that turned security work into a benefit rather than a punishment. The overnight guards from the nekker clearing were given first choice.
The nekker parts went into the resource inventory. Whatever the alchemists on the borderlands might pay for ichor and claws, it was value the colony needed. The numbers went on the board, next to the ore production figures and the housing construction timeline.
Brec found me at the assignment board after the rotation was posted, studying the names and positions with the careful attention I'd learned to associate with him.
"The three chambers," he said. "Below the old junction. You're going to explore them?"
"Tomorrow, if the survey team is available."
"I'd like to be on that team." His voice was flat, stating fact rather than making a request. "I saw something on the way back. In the rock. Something that doesn't match the geology."
"What kind of something?"
"Heat. Four, maybe five degrees warmer than it should be at that depth. No water source, no volcanic activity, no obvious explanation." He paused. "Just rock that's warmer than rock ought to be."
The SEG showed me nothing unusual about the lower chambers—mineral deposits, unexplored space, the standard fog of territory I hadn't personally surveyed yet. But the system tracked what was present, not necessarily what was anomalous.
"Put it in the survey notes. We'll check when we go down."
He nodded and walked toward the worker bunks without elaborating.
The camp settled into its evening rhythms—dinner fires, conversation in multiple languages, the particular quiet of people who had worked hard and would work hard again tomorrow. Thirty-seven residents now, with more applications pending. Two productive shafts, one cleared and ready for expansion. A resource inventory that included monster parts alongside iron ore.
I sat outside the equipment shed with my working ledger, adding notes by torchlight.
Nekker nest cleared. DP earned: 25. Injury sustained: minor, healing. Security implications: watch rotation established. Strategic implications: Shaft A accessible to depth. Three unexplored chambers pending survey.
The system overlay showed the colony from above—a schematic of territory, resources, threats, and opportunities that no other leader on the borderlands could see. The advantages it provided were profound. The dependency it created was dangerous.
I can't read the system without using the system. I can't know what I'm missing without knowing what I have.
The three chambers below the cleared junction waited in the darkness. Warm stone, according to Brec. No obvious explanation.
The SEG had shown me nothing unusual. But the SEG only tracked what it was calibrated to track.
I added another line to the ledger: Temperature anomaly reported by Brec. Investigate.
The guards took their positions at the shaft entrances. The night crew headed underground for their rotation. The monster parts dried in the storage shed, waiting to become trade goods.
Somewhere below—below the cleared junction, below the three unexplored chambers, below the limits of the current survey—the system's map faded into fog. Level 9, still sealed. Legacy designation, still pending.
One problem at a time.
I closed the ledger and went to check on the guard rotation. The nekkers were dead. The watch was established. Tomorrow would bring the survey of what they'd been guarding.
The work continued.