"I'll call him!" She does this and secures Stoneheart a lift to the tunnel.

The colleague meets her at the mouth of the tunnel; there's a perimeter set up against wildlife. "Hi there!" he says. "Welcome! Do you want to come in or just look at the pictures to start out, settle in to camp a bit?"

"Hello! This is momentous, I think I may need to work myself up to it. That something like this could be just forgotten-"

"Well - yeah, if you don't write things down it would be easier, over long enough, to forget. It's hard enough to interpret old writing, let alone do without, and being reincarnated must help a lot but... this is old."

"Many things are old. Honestly it's a tragedy that my kind cannot, do not, read and write. Especially now that I see all you do with it."

"I mean, you can, right, for signs and things, just not large amounts?" He offers her a bottle of water.

Ah, plastic. Hopefully they're disposing of it properly.

"No need. But yes. Simple things only. Particularly stories, knowledge- It just sets something screaming and deeply wrong in the back of the head. For all that we're content with what we build for the most part, it's a terrible shame that nothing really lasts. I remember fragments from centuries ago, and my oldest memories imply remembering centuries before that. What have I lost? I ask myself sometimes."

"Well - we can keep some records for you, going forward, I guess, and people can ask us questions. It'll create work for historians, at any rate."

-Nod.

"I think I'll go hunting to clear my head." And merely avoid the looming - everything. "Who is - in charge, here?"

"Lead archaeologist is Kiki Sunatami, over there."

"Thank you."

She goes over and introduces herself to lead archaeologist Kiki Sunatami as simply 'Stoneheart'.

"Let me know if you want particular insight on anything? I have a native perspective. This place is fascinating and I helped search for the others but- I may not actually go in for some time."

"Oh, that's fine, you're welcome to hang around just for the native perspective. Have you seen the writeup on what we've found so far? Or had someone read it to you, I can have someone read it to you."

"Text to speech is sufficiently tolerable to me, so I have listened to it, at least.

-I think you should be ready for traps and other threats if you keep going down."

"It did look like it might be set up that way, some kind of system to sic animals on people, but it doesn't look, well, maintained, so poorly aging construction is probably at least as much of a threat - you think otherwise?"

"I don't know. The idea of labyrinths of traps and dangers hiding wondrous treasure is mentioned once or twice in the very, very old legends." That she wrote down. "'The tombs of the gods shall test your strength'... It's just a guess."

"The tombs of the gods... does that seem likely literal?"

"No, I don't think so. There's dozens of these, or so it seems, and the usage of 'tomb' has evolved and ancient uses of it could mean - bunker, secret buried facility, treasure vault, that kind of thing."

"Do you have an idea what kind of strength it's supposed to be, what kind of traps are likely?"

"I think the gods cared a lot about fighting and expect anyone going here to have well trained magic. Beyond that, I would largely be guessing."

"What's the... point?" he wonders.

"I wonder that, as well. The thrill of combat? Of triumph? We, my species, were designed. What's the point of us? That's the traditional answer. That we exist to fight glorious battles because those are inherently good somehow. That we reincarnate so we need not fear death."

"It seems like such a strange reason to design a species."

"Yes. Most of us are content with it. But me, I think I hate the gods. Or resent them, at least."

"Well, you don't do much glorious battle, right, you do a science thing."

"More or less, yes. I mean the inhibition against writing. It's so stupid and pointless!"

"Do you think it would... respond to medication, or... I don't really have a guess, I'm an archaeologist."