Swamped

"It means they've been opening gateways underground. Which might explain some of the strange readings we've gotten lately. Theodore thought they were calibration errors caused when an anomaly was too close to the camp... but it might also be that they were picking up underground gateways that we never noticed. And we had to deal with that at least a dozen times."

"You could do a lot of damage with a dozen full-grown tunnelers," Corvus mutters.

"Or even with a dozen greatrat burrows. Tunnelers aren't the only danger below the ground, after all." You give your sandrunner a quick pat. "I'd better get back to the group now. Try not to get too far behind - your desert-horse might be slower, but the site's not that far off."

You rush forward, regrouping with your team. In less than ten minutes, you reach the site.

Not that you could miss it. There's a massive sinkhole, which wasn't here last time.

"I've only seen this happen when tunnelers get in a fight with each other," Barb mutters. "Wouldn't recommend going down there, ma'am."

"Well, someone seems to have other ideas," Dominique says. "I'm seeing ether patterns that suggest active casting."

"That's also where the anomaly is, judging by my readings," Stefan says. "So the anomaly could be a spell on its own, or the caster might be doing something with it. We're not going to find anything else out by staying up here."

"Tangling with a wizard's a bad idea," Rudolph interjects. "I wouldn't recommend it."

"What, you want us to just head back?" Stefan shouts. "And pass up our best chance at studying an anomaly up close?"

"Seems to me the Director's gotten close enough to know what they do. What else, exactly, are we trying to find out?"

"Calm down, you two," you say. "I need to think about what we should do next."