“This,” she turns to me proudly, pointing to the ceiling above us, “is my work here.”
The torch catches something in the stone of the walls and ceiling; for a panicked second I think it must be a crack in the stone, the earth and rock about to collapse around us, but then I see that it’s something organic.
“I’m the mycelium Keeper. I tend to the thriving network here in the dark. Nothing else can survive this far down – no plants, no insects. Only us and the network. It extracts nutrients from the rocks here and feeds off the decaying wood, and I ensure that there will always be more wood for it to consume.” She holds up the bundle I saw her collecting on the surface.
“It’s alive?”
“Yes. And it’s network spans the entire Settlement. I’ve tended to it for as long as I can remember.”
She points to a patch of swirling strands, in a geometric pattern too precise to be organic.
“We also work together to create art. It will always take the most direct route to any nutrients I place on the walls, and so it can be guided into shape.”
I look at the intricate web of pale, feathery tendrils, breaking up the pieces of rock with swirling designs that catch the torchlight.
“It’s beautiful.”
The Keeper beams at me.