The problem wasn't that we took a detour. The problem was that I chose to take one.
We'd already confirmed the mimic node, faced the fake fire signature, and cleaned up the mess. The smart move would've been to head back to Ashring, regroup, reinforce the command thread, and let Quicktongue yell at me for abandoning post again.
Instead, I opened the map, saw the low flicker of a fragmented relay echo blinking off the side of a known tunnel path, and said, "Let's check that."
And just like that, I created our next crisis.
The terrain was awful. The kind of dungeon shelf that had been collapsed and re-collapsed until all the dirt learned not to trust anyone. Moss clung to dead copper root-lines. The air was too still. And the earth smelled like someone had tried to cook gravel and failed.
We weren't far from the last mimic signal—less than a half-day's walk—but this place felt… forgotten. Not mythical. Not deep. Just used and discarded.
