Navigating the cliffs became much easier after some of the soldiers learned to carve hand and foot holds from the stone. They still used the miasma creatures as failsafes against falling, but descending became nearly like climbing down a ladder. Now and again, some enormous bird would take a swipe at the line of soft, squishy people clinging to the bare face of the cliffs, but Grandma and the mages fended them off with sharp slivers of stone, bursts of flame, and water chainsaw things.

The very bottom of the dungeon was a vague, dark landscape. This far down, no birds tried to eat them. In fact, there was very little in the way of anything resembling living creatures. Even water was scarce down here, and Mina and Grandma had to work extra hard to pull enough from their environment to hydrate everyone.

“Should we stay down here as much as possible before climbing back up?” Mina wondered. “It would be a pain to have to climb up and down so much.”

“But there’s nothing here,” Tanner countered. “There’s no food and little water, and we don’t even know if the valley goes the right way.”

[Pluot, Fiddler, do the valleys take us to the mana knot?] Grandma asked. She wasn’t sure if they would know, but it never hurt to check.

[No,] came Fiddler’s response. [Circles.] The crab sent a mental image of the landscape around them, with a pulsing blue dot that marked the knot of mana that they wanted to get to. 

As far as the miasma creatures could tell, the dungeon was arranged in roughly concentric circles, each ring of mountains carved by a jagged valley. Sure, it was possible that there were passes between the mountains that connected the concentric valleys, but there was no guarantee of it, and searching would add a huge unknown to how long they’d be here.

Grandma shared the image that Fiddler gave her with Mina and Tanner. Both kids closed their mouths with an audible click as they absorbed the information.

“Well. That’s unfortunate,” Mina said, dismayed.

“What’s wrong?” Jiyon asked, leaning forward. His black eyebrows furrowed in concern over wide eyes.

“The miasma beasts just told us that this dungeon looks kind of like this.” Using mana, Mina carved a rough rendition of the map into the stone floor of the valley where they had camped. “There’s no telling whether the valleys connect to each other. The surest way is simply to climb up and down each layer of mountains until we reach the middle.”

[If only we had a zipline between peaks,] Grandma said.

[What’s a zipline?] Mina asked.

Grandma shared a memory of when she was much, much younger, screaming in terror and exhilaration as she shot down a taut wire, dangling in a harness over an expansive landscape that flew by beneath her.

[I think I’m gonna be sick,] Tanner groaned, getting second hand motion sickness from the dizzying view.

[Okay but that looks amazing?] Mina crowed exultantly. [I want to try that!]

[We’d need a long, long, long line, probably strengthened by magic, and we’d need to anchor it to the next peak somehow.]

They decided to cross the valley and climb the next mountain, gather materials for a zipline along the way, and try the risky maneuver once they crested the peak. Aerial lines were time honored methods for connecting isolated peaks, being used for travel and cargo transport since ancient times, but none of the soldiers here were familiar with it, being mostly from flat lowlands that were easily traversed by foot. Grandma had only seen steel cabled ziplines, never a traditional rope line, and also had never set one up herself. She would go first, both to stress test the line and because if she fell, she would probably survive.

The climb was arduous, but mostly due to the height of the mountain. The soldiers took turns carving out hand and foot holds for the team, and they practiced circulating mana to restore their muscles and recover from the fatigue. 

The free floating miasma creatures darted through the air around them, chattering amongst themselves and occasionally bringing back lengths of vines. Tanner took the vines and braided them together, extending his rope with each new batch that the miasmas brought. 

It took them many sleep cycles to reach a gap in the peaks before they could cross to the other side and start their descent. They aimed for a small plateau, a slightly larger flat area than the tiny ledges and shallow caves they had used on the way up. Grandma fashioned a hip harness out of a short length of rope that Tanner made her, and made a loop through a hole in the center of a circular stone with a groove along its circumference. Then, she raised a smooth stone pillar and, threading the end of the extremely long rope through the loop she had made with the harness and the round stone, tied a sturdy knot to anchor one end of the zipline.

To set up the far end of the zipline, she had Pluot, Fiddler, and several of Tanner’s miasma creatures carry her to the next peak. The ride was disconcerting. The golem could not actually feel the miasma creatures lifting her up, so it felt as if she would fall at any moment, with very little control over where she went. She occupied her mind by spooling out the rope slowly, wondering if she would run out before they arrived.

The next peak the miasmas brought her to was dotted with scraggly trees, more nest sites on sheer cliffs, and a convenient flat area to land. [Put me down over there,] Grandma said to Pluot and Fiddler.

As she pointed, the miasma creatures suddenly all scattered, letting go of Grandma just in the nick of time. A blur of talons flashed by, buffeting the golem as it dove past. The enormous bird screamed in frustration at having missed the morsel, opening its wings and looping back for another pass. Grandma caught a glimpse of a dark head, a pale belly, and flashes of dark streaks underneath its eyes. Some kind of falcon?

[Hey, come back and catch me,] she sent to Pluot and Fiddler, too stunned to even get worked up. What else could they even have done? At least this way, her bones hadn’t been shattered by the impact with the huge predator, though she might break a few if she hit the ground. And as an added bonus, she hadn’t lost hold of her rope.

The miasmas zipped down faster than Grandma thought was physically possible, scooping her out of the air and into the cover of the nearby cliffs before ascending again. If there were falcons here, that would complicate the crossing by zipline. 

[Is there anything you can do to deter the falcons?] Grandma asked.

[Eat?] Pluot offered.

[Well, I’ll need a few of you to help keep the people crossing safe on the zipline, and the rest can go eat the big birds.] Hopefully that would be enough to get everyone safely across. It was a good thing they had chosen to go with a much smaller team for this dungeon. Grandma didn’t want to think about how much of a hassle it would have been to try and zipline over twenty soldiers across the valley.

They finally set down at the plateau that Grandma had indicated. She repeated the process on this plateau, shaping a smooth pillar of stone to anchor the far end of the zipline. Grandma tightened the rope as much as she could, then used a clever hitch to cinch it even tighter, until she could pluck it and send vibrations up the line.

The miasma creatures carried her back to the starting point on the other side of the valley, where the rest of the team waited. The others had taken the opportunity to rest, eating and drinking as they sat around the anchor stone. They leaped to their feet with a cry of relief as Grandma returned, and Mina and Tanner rushed up to embrace her.

“We saw you fall!” Mina cried, burying her face into Grandma’s chest and squeezing. Grandma couldn’t feel it, but it made the girl feel better anyway.

“That bird was huge! Was it another shrike?” Tanner hugged both Mina and Grandma, crushing the two of them in his arms until Mina gasped for breath.

“Falcon, I think,” Grandma replied laconically, forcing air through her throat reed and shaping the word awkwardly, pieced together from chopped up parts of other words.

[How will we get past that?] Mina asked anxiously. [Is there more than one?]

[I think it’s safe to assume that there are more than one falcons around here. I saw an awful lot of nesting sites on the far cliffs.] Grandma hugged the two kids close to her. [The miasmas think they can eat the falcons before the falcons eat us, at least enough to discourage the birds. How far do you think you can reach with your water chainsaw thing?]

[I’m not sure, I’ve never tried to find out. It’s harder the farther it gets from me.]

[If you can cover half the line, and I can cover half the line, then we can provide an added layer of protection for the people ziplining across.]

[I want to help too,] Tanner grumbled.

[You’ve already been a huge help, dear. You made the rope after all. Neither Mina nor I have as much ease working with living plants as you.] Grandma smiled and ruffled Tanner’s hair.

The boy sighed, mollified, and nodded in acceptance.

“So what’s the plan?” Donovan asked after giving the trio a moment to regroup.

“I go first,” Grandma said. “Test the line.” She pointed at Mina. “She goes last. We protect you when you cross.”

They spent some time working out the ordering for the remaining nine members. Everyone agreed with putting Jiyon in the middle. Donovan would stay to protect Mina for as long as he could. Fariel and Tanner would cross in between the other soldiers.

Grandma climbed into the hip harness, cinching the lines that wrapped around her thighs and around her pelvis. She had to reinforce the golem’s skin so that the rope didn’t simply cut through the clay. Reaching up, Grandma set the grooved disk of stone onto the top of the zipline and asked Fiddler to hold it upright, but let it spin and roll forward and back. She tested its movement, lowering her weight onto the harness and scooting along the line. Fiddler kept the wheel aligned, and she moved smoothly despite the small bumps and unevenness in the zipline.

[All right, I think this will work. Wish me luck!] Grandma scooped up a few sharp slivers of stone and a handful of dust with mana and set them whirling overhead, well above the zipline. The cloud of dust and shards formed a small screen, obscuring her from the view of overhead predators. [Hopefully this much is enough to confuse and deter the falcons.]

Grandma walked to the very edge of the cliffs, then kicked off. Fiddler guided the wheel along the line, pushing it along when it started to slow. The line dipped under Grandma’s weight, and she swayed and bounced as the rope stretched. Still, the assembly held, and she arrived at the other side as fast as falling. She could hear a frustrated shriek overhead as a seething cloud of miasmas harassed a falcon above them.

[Can you take the harness back?] Grandma asked after untying herself from the rig. [You’ll have to go back and forth a bunch of times, too.]

Fiddler condensed its miasma and bobbed up and down. [Fine,] it answered sulkily, but moved off with astonishing speed, pushing the rig back up the line to the previous mountain.

One by one, the team members slid over the valley, guided by Fiddler, protected by Mina and Grandma as well as the other miasmas overhead. Grandma paced anxiously until Mina finally crossed over, safe and sound, whooping with glee at the exhilarating experience.

“That was amazing!” the girl bounced excitedly.

This earned her some glares and dry heaves from some of the assembled soldiers, as they desperately circulated mana into their bodies to calm their roiling stomachs.

“Rest here. Gather more rope,” Grandma told them, and began pulling overhangs of rock to shield them from aerial predators.