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They arrived at a ruined structure that looked like it might’ve once been something quite spectacular, judging from the long, flat steps leading up to it and the empty grounds all around it, perhaps where one or more courtyards had been.

Had it been a castle of some kind, Hector wondered? Axiolis had mentioned something about royalty, hadn’t he? Maybe this was some sort of palace.

A sobering thought, he felt. He could hardly imagine how much time, effort, and resources would have gone into construction. And to think that it could be reduced to a state such as this? Little more thanknee-high walls and a pile of rocks?

As if he needed any more reason to feel small and powerless in the grand scheme of things.

Carver led them up the steps and through the vibrating rubble. The distant battle between the two giants had not ceased or even shown any signs of doing so. Hector was not the only one who was still trying to keep an eye on it, partially out of wariness and partially out of simple awe. When would they ever get another chance to see something like this?

The feldeath loosed a burning beam of black light that cut through thegolem and tore into the cavern ceiling. A half-dozen building-sizedstalactites crashed down on a section of the city that was much too close for Hector’s liking. Dust and wind rushed past the group,disturbing the broken castle grounds and unsettling more debris.

After that, everyone’s pace quickened noticeably, and they soon arrived at a large door in the floor of a blown-out chamber. Carver set to workopening it--a process which apparently involved inserting a key into ahole beneath a hatch in the floor, then flipping a series of adjacentswitches.

It took several attempts. Carver threw the group a few embarrassed looksand apologized after finally getting it open. “I have not done this inquite a while,” he said. “The mechanism is rather old and could do with a bit of maintenance, it seems.”

At last, he led them down a short ladder and then a spiraling staircase. A very long, spiraling staircase, Hector discovered. He had fun changing his iron box into appropriate shapes so that it could continue following the group--so much fun, in fact, that he would’ve left the damn thing behind if not for Mr. Sheridan’s pleading.

He did finally manage it after reassessing the problem and treating itlike a new form of training. Making the iron box grow and shrink asnecessary, becoming less like an iron box and more like an ironcaterpillar. Or worm, perhaps. Squirming its way down the hole, the ladder, the narrow and curving steps.

Garovel seemed to get a kick out of the whole ordeal.

Hector was the last to reach the bottom of the staircase, and they’d apparently been asking Carver more questions while they waited for Hector to catch up.

“You’ve really been down here for five years all by your lonesome?” Mr. Sheridan was saying.