Tunnels 02, Deeper

foot and a half tall was positioned between two flickering candles. Before it a copy of the Book of Catastrophes lay open.
    Her eyes lit upon something on top of the table. A large sheet of paper with colored patches was spread open, occupying much of its surface. Glancing over her shoulder, she checked the door, at a loss to know what she was supposed to be doing. Then she gave in to her curiosity and, stepping closer, leaned over the sheet.
    She found it was a map. She stared at the top left-hand corner, spotting two minute parallel lines, meticulously cross-hatched, which, after about an inch, culminated in an area with a series of infinitesimally small rectangles by them. By these was the inscription, THE MINERS' STATION, and some symbols which were unfamiliar to her. Then she moved on, noting another inscription that read THE STYGIAN RIVER by the side of a meandering dark blue line.
    She began to move away from the corner, scanning the rest of the map, which encompassed a huge light brown area with many connected blobs, some shaded with such different colors as darker browns, oranges, and an array of reds ranging from crimson to deep burgundy. In fact, these colors looked to her exactly like blood in various states of clotting. She decided to see if she could find out what they represented.
    Choosing one of the areas at random, she leaned even nearer to examine it. It was bright scarlet and roughly rectangular, with a tiny jet-black skull, a death's-head , superimposed over it. She was trying to decipher the legend next to it when there was a sound from close by. The faintest release of a breath.
    She immediately looked up.
    She recoiled, blundering into the chair and trying not to cry out.
    On the other side of the table was a Styx soldier, dressed in the distinctive gray-green fatigues of the Division. He seemed incredibly tall and, with his hands linked in front of him, stood little more than three feet away, scrutinizing her silently. She had absolutely no idea how long he'd been there.
    As she raised her eyes, she saw that the lapel of his long coat had a row of short cotton threads protruding from it -- they were of many different colors, reds, purples, blues, and greens among them. Like the medals they gave Topsoil, these were decorations for acts of bravery, and he had so many she couldn't count them. She raised her eyes farther.
    His black hair was raked back into a tightly bound ponytail. But when her gaze fell on his face, it was all she could do not to take another step away. It was a fearful sight. There was a huge scar, not dissimilar to a cauliflower in both its color and texture, down one side of his face. It engulfed a third of his forehead, extending over his left eye, which was misshapen to the extent that it looked as though it had been rotated ninety degrees on its axis. The scar blossomed out as it spread over his cheek and down to where his jaw hinged. His mouth and the already impossibly thin Styx lips were also stretched wide by the scar, so that his teeth were exposed to the gums and almost as far back as his molars.
    It was the stuff of nightmares.
    She quickly sought out his unaffected eye, trying not to focus on the damaged, weeping one, which showed blood red tissues above and below it, laced with a network of blue capillaries. It was like an incomplete anatomical investigation, as if some mad coroner had quit halfway through a dissection of his face.
    "I see you started without me," the soldier said. His words were breathy through his distorted mouth, his voice quiet but commanding. "Do you know what the map shows?" he asked.
    She hesitated, then leaned over the document once more, gratefully lowering her eyes to it. "The Deeps," she answered.
    He gave a nod. "I noticed you'd located the Miners' Station. Good. Tell me..." His hand was poised over the drawing of the railway track, and she saw that several of his fingers were completely missing, while others were little more than stumps. He waved this butchered appendage over the rest of the map. "...did you know that all of this existed?"
    "The Miners' Station, yes, but, no, not all this," she answered, truthfully. "But I've heard stories about the Interior... many stories."
    "Ah, the stories." He grinned fleetingly. The effect was disarming, the glistening margin around his teeth rippling like a lazy sine wave, then straightening out again. He sat down, indicating that she should do likewise. "My job is to ensure you can operate in