The next day they flew by grav bike to the towers, avoiding the deserted dig site where the sentinels waited beneath the rock and instead speeding along the river, their grav bikes throwing a wake of spray behind them until they rose higher and turned north to fly across the dense jungle to the towers, which they first circled at a distance. There were three towers rising from a shared base, perhaps 40m high and 60m across, barely tall enough to rise above the thick jungle. The towers were built of pale stone, covered in moss and creepers, mostly intact but with occasional breeches where parts of the walls had crumbled under the pressure of time. Near the shared base of the three towers the usually dense jungle thinned, the trees strangely stunted and twisted, as if some poison or foul influence corrupted the forest in the immediate vicinity of the old stone building. They set their grav bikes down in the shadows of the towers and searched the base for an entrance, sweating and gasping in the intense heat of the early morning and jumping at every shadow and animal movement.

  They found no way into the towers at their base, nor was there any visible entrance immediately above the ground. They returned to the grav bikes and scouted higher up, flying in slow tight cycles until finally, right at the top, they found two small arches that would allow them admission to the central of the three towers. They carefully flew their grav bikes in through the arches and brought them to a halt in the shadows of a large, open hallway, from which stairs descended into the tower itself. Moving carefully, with Adam at the front and Siladan to the rear, they walked slowly down the stairs into a circular chamber as wide as the tower, lit by sunlight that streamed through rents in the alabaster walls. It was dim and musty, the walls irregularly shaped with protrusions of the same pale stone extending into the room at uneven intervals as if there had once been rooms separated by flimsy barriers or doors that had decayed to dust over the eons since the building was abandoned. The corners where the walls met were heavy with shadows and thick with cobwebs, and creepers and threads of ivy extended into the room from the breaches in the walls, stifling any breeze from outside and casting long shadows through the dusty air of the room.

  Adam called them to a halt and pointed to the center of the room, where a long-decayed body lay on the floor. As he moved towards the body something emerged from the shadows on the far side of the room and darted towards him, a lean and pale humanoid creature that slashed at him with long, vicious claws on bony hands. The claws raked harmlessly across his armor but the beast grabbed him and tried to bite his arm with a sunken mouth lined with broken, rotten-looking teeth, and Adam had to push it away with his other arm, his strength far greater than the beast’s. As it stumbled back he turned his weapon towards it, preparing to fire, but in a flicker of shadow it suddenly disappeared, leaving a faintly disturbing whispering darkness in its wake, sensation of Mystic power that they were becoming increasingly familiar with. Adam stepped back towards the rest of the Firebirds, saying, “Something from the Dark,” by way of warning as he did so. Keeping his weapon trained on the room he slipped the lenses out of his pocket and hastily donned them, looking vaguely ridiculous to his fellows in the multi-layered, fragile device.

  “Where’s it gone?” Olivia asked, her own carbine pointing into the shadows of the room.

  “Disappeared,” Adam grunted. “Captain, am I using these right?” He gestured with his head, indicating the lenses.

  “I think so,” Al Hamra told him. “Maybe it can move in and out of our space?”

  “Abomination,” Adam hissed, searching the room with darting eyes for any sign of it.

  “Keep us under cover,” Al Hamra instructed him. “We’ll search the body.” He moved forward slowly, accompanied by Siladan and Saqr, with Dr. Delecta, Olivia and Adam covering them with pistol and carbine.

  When they drew near the body Adam gave a yell of warning and opened fire. A moment later three of the creatures appeared from the shadows and lurched in towards Siladan and Saqr. One died instantly, exploding in a burst of Vulcan fire as Adam’s shot hit the creature where it materialized. The remaining two were in amongst the group before Olivia or Dr. Delecta could shoot, one grabbing Al Hamra and one knocking Saqr over. Siladan, sword out, struck at the one attacking Saqr, striking it in the back of the neck just as its ragged, broken teeth sank into Saqr’s shoulder. She screamed and the beast fell sideways, hitting the floor and scuttling away in confusion towards the shadows, where Olivia picked it off with a burst of Vulcan fire. Al Hamra wrestled with the remaining one, trying to stop it biting at his face as he pushed it away until Siladan could close the distance and strike it hard in the spine with his sword. It sagged to the ground and he sliced its head off as it let go of the Mystic, the wrinkled, elongated, vaguely human face twisting in pain and anger as the head bounced away into the shadows. The conflict came to a halt, the room ringing with the echo of Vulcan gunfire and dust motes swirling in agitated spirals through the streaks of sunlight.

  Dr. Delecta dashed forward to Saqr, dragging out her medkit and checking the pilot’s arm where she cradled it and moaned, twitching her skinny legs on the floor. Blood streaked her vest and ran down her left arm, smeared across the geometric tattoo and dripping from her sharp, bony elbow. “It’s okay,” Dr. Delecta assured her, “Nothing too serious.” She looked to Siladan and Al Hamra with a worried expression and asked, “What were they?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Darkbound, I think,” Siladan told her. “I read about them in the Infoteca before I came here, thought they were just a myth.” Seeing her confused expression he added, “I read they were once human, but they’ve been bound to some creature from the Dark Between the Stars for so long that they become like that.” He gestured to the dessicated, tattered body lying at his feet. It wore rags that, now it was not moving, could be identified as simple overalls, the kind of clothes a laborer on an archaeological dig might wear.

  “Does that mean something worse is in here?” Al Hamra asked him, dusting himself down, but Siladan could only shrug.

  “Were they hiding in the Dark Between the Stars?” Saqr asked between hissed exhalations of breath as Dr. Delecta bound her wound.

  “Maybe,” Siladan replied, then shrugged again. “Who knows?”

  “They weren’t in the room,” Adam told her. “Then they appeared in the lenses but they weren’t in the room.”

  “Using the shadows as a Portal,” Al Hamra suggested. “I wonder if a Mystic could do that?”

  “Don’t get too many ideas, captain,” Olivia warned him from her position near the stairs. “You might come back as one of them.”

  “Don’t you Mystics know anything about your own power?” Saqr almost snapped, accompanied by the hiss of a drug dispenser as Dr. Delecta dosed her with vaccines, antibiotics and painkillers. She nodded thanks to the medicurg even as she spoke.

  “I told you, I didn’t really spend any time with other Mystics,” Al Hamra explained patiently, again. “I just discovered these powers and started using them. Have you ever heard of a Mystic circle? How would I find one?”

  “I can see why,” Olivia muttered, squatting next to one of the dead creatures and pushing it gently with the barrel of her gun. “Everything about the Dark Between the Stars is evil. No wonder they call you Accursed.” And then, “No offense, captain.”

  “None taken,” he shrugged. “I’m starting to feel the same way myself.”

  “There’s a weapon,” Siladan announced from beside the corpse, interrupting everyone’s speculation. He showed them a pistol that he had picked up from the ground beside the corpse. “A thermal pistol. Looks old, maybe expensive.” He scooted it along the ground to Dr. Delecta, who checked its charge and pocketed it. After that he picked up a book, reading the title aloud to them. “Arvan’s Exomorphs,” he said. “Unusual, look, it’s paper.” He flicked through it, and as he did so the pages crumbled to dust, drifting away on the brief gust of their own movement. “Curse of the Judge!” He swore, invoking his own Icon. By the time he finished swearing the book was gone, reduced to just its leather cover.

  “Well,” Olivia offered by way of consolation, “It doesn’t look like that book helped him very much.” She stood up from the dead Darkbound, pointing to the corpse that Siladan was investigating. “Probably not very informative, if his current state is any guide.”

  Siladan stood and cursed again, not persuaded by Olivia’s laconic observation. “The body must be hundreds of years old,” he decided, and stepped back. “Nothing else here.”

  “Down, then,” Al Hamra ordered, pointing to a set of stairs recessed in the far wall of the room, and they resumed their downward progress. Adam led the way, lenses on and carbine ready, with Siladan stopping regularly at the rear to check for pursuers. The stairs led down through several wide spirals, seemingly moving around the outer edge of the tower but not opening on any doorways into the tower’s central spire, until they emerged into another large room that they guessed must be at the tower’s base. This room was dimly lit by a strange golden light globe inset in an alcove in the far side of the chamber, and empty except for a small tent pitched in the center of the room. A single hallway led out from the far side of the room, its destination unclear from their position at the stairs. Nobody responded when Al Hamra called out a gentle greeting, so they moved forward to examine the tent, Adam remaining near the stairwell with his carbine trained on the room.

  “I think our friend camped here,” Olivia decided, shining a flashlight into the tent and peering at the scattered belongings inside. A ragged, rotting bedroll, an archaic tabula, two small toolkits and a few empty food containers were scattered around inside the tent, any identifying details long since decayed or crumbled to dust.

  Siladan crawled in and pulled out the tabula, then tossed it away once he had looked at it a little. “Incompatible and certainly dead,” he declared. Beneath it he found another book, this one made of karst paper, a type of parchment composed of recycled granite in a plastic emulsion, which does not decay on civilizational timescales. He flicked through it briefly, stopping at one page with a drawing that clearly depicted the towers, and which had been marked with notes in the margin. “The script is old, it will take me some time to study. I wonder what he was doing here?”

  “Seems obvious,” Saqr said quietly from a position squatting against the wall next to Adam. “An explorer, who got eaten by the Darkbound. Nothing special.”

  Al Hamra pointed to the golden light globe in the far wall. “Siladan, is that a sugar globe?” He asked, referring to the strange lights that the Firstcome used to light their ruins, lights which seemed to require no power source and last forever, and which were quite valuable across the Third Horizon because of their unique longevity and the stable, steady quality of the light they released. Seeing Siladan nod, he added, “Let’s grab it and go down that hallway,” pointing to the hallway. “Even if we get nothing else in here, at least we can sell that.”

  “Are you sure?” Saqr asked, complaining, “This place is creepy,” as Al Hamra nodded.

  “Very sure,” Al Hamra told her. “We’ve come this far. I want to know whatever evil was holding those Darkbound here.”

  “Agreed,” Olivia said, pushing herself away from the wall. “Who doesn’t want to sell necromantic secrets to the highest bidder?”

  With that they headed into the darkness at the base of the tower.