“I saw something again,” said Zol.

  “Me too,” Mia added. “And what’s that noise?” She was the first to mention it, but the others also heard the unmistakable sound of small, rapid movements, scraping, chittering even.

  “You said there was nothing alive down here!” Kory hissed at Nash.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, the drones don’t transmit from this depth, not when Vercoden is involved!” Nash snapped. “And that’s why we’re here, or anywhere else we’ve been, isn’t it? Try to keep in mind what really matters!”

  “Do we matter!? Or are we being sent to these places to die?” Kory accused, emboldened by recent beatings at the hands of monstrous creatures and violated peoples.

  “How could you say that?” Nash’s voice cracked, betraying some deeper despair than the current peril. “This is so much bigger than us, what can I do to make you realize that!?”

  Her question went unanswered, as the source of the scurrying noise revealed itself. It was barely visible in the failing light, and it came upon them with deadly speed. Kory stood at the front of the group, nearest to the unexplored part of the tunnel, so it attacked her first. Still on edge, she wasted no time in drawing the epee from her side, charging it in her hand, and lunging point-first at the thing assailing them. She made contact immediately. The sharpened sword sank into the center of a body that was simultaneously soft like a living being and crunchy like metal. It let out an otherworldly screech as ribbons of voltage permeated its every cell, illuminating for an instant its unnerving form. No sooner had Kory begun to thoroughly fry the creature on the edge of her weapon that it vanished into thin air. It hadn’t even visibly escaped, just popped into nothingness, leaving only the crackle of residual electricity and the scent of iron and ozone behind.

  The five remained frozen, unable to comprehend what they’d witnessed. Zol was the first to move, rushing to the defender’s side under the assumption that he should have been there all along. She was still fixed in the lunge, watching sparks dance on the edge of the blade, half-expecting the thing to reappear before her.

  “Did anybody get a good look at it?” Nash whispered, conscious that the creature or others like it may be nearby.

  “It had six legs.” Mia said.

  “Yep. Six,” Greg agreed, not wanting to mention what else about it he had noticed.

  “Why did it disappear like that?” Mia asked. Nash, Zol, and Kory turned to each other with a shared realization.

  “It’s just like…” Zol started.

  “The eel.” Nash and Kory said in unison.

  “Hang on,” Greg interrupted, a certain sternness in his voice. “When y’all came up from under the water on Reccorsha you didn’t say a thing about the eel disappearing.”

  “Yeah, it would disappear and reappear all around us. We thought there was more than one until we figured out what it was doing,” Nash answered, wide-eyed and powerless to stop the revelation threatening to flatten them all.

  “Made it hard to fight,” Zol added.

  “It also breathed air for some reason,” Kory said, reigniting her epee as she stepped further into the darkness. The unsettling, creeping sounds were back, and the persistent groaning only increased. Not wanting her sister to have all the glory, Mia set her own hands alight with current and edged back down the hallway in the opposite direction, a wise decision, as it was impossible to place the source of the sound. It seemed to come from all around them.

  “Don’t you see what’s happening?” Greg implored. “Whatever that thing was disappeared, and so did the eel.”

  “We’ve established that,” Nash said as she summoned her own lavender glow in anticipation of another assault.

  “When power is applied to Vercoden, it creates tears in space and time. That means these things that live in old mines probably have their bodies saturated with the stuff, which is why they can vanish!” Greg explained, looking around rapidly for whatever was coming next.

  “That principle is only theoretical at this scale, and it’s only authorized for mechanical applications!” Nash insisted, wishing her logic held water here.

  “They don’t need to be aUthOriZed to warp through the void like spaceships, they’ll do it anyway!” Greg knew good and well she knew what he meant. More than a little bitterness from his old line of work crept into the argument. He never expected to see his unpopular theories proven by monsters.

  “You’ve got some nerve to take that tone with me!” She snapped, glowing brighter than before as the scratching and creaking increased to a deafening drone. “You don’t think we can see you’ve got some explaining to do about this place!”

  “I know as much as you do! It’s not like I built it myself yesterday!” It was only after this retort that he noticed everyone, himself included, all faced forward. Mia was the only one watching the rear of the tunnel some ten yards away from the rest of them. And she wasn’t alone. One by one they turned to see the figure who drew near to the young woman, paralyzing her in fear on what was supposed to be her low-impact maiden voyage. Unlike the thing that had charged at them sporadically from every angle, this one walked calmly on two legs. He appeared to be Human, or at least something like it.

  It wasn’t the sudden silence after the cacophony of sound that was the most unsettling, but the way it fell. A rush of cold, metallic air surged through the passage, carrying with it every decibel until only a quiet whisper remained. Mia stood alone, frozen before the intruder’s advance. As her companions turned to her, they whispered frantically to one another about what should be done to the stranger who approached them with a threateningly steady stride. One would expect the lights along the wall to flicker more madly or even fail in a moment like this, but if anything, they glowed brighter.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  In no time at all, he was upon them, in swirling, black robes with hair to match, skin like polished quartz, and unnerving eyes that gleamed either red or blue. When he spoke, his voice was shifting sand, betraying a dialect from somewhere both past and future. “I am Azervel,” he said, smiling wretchedly with a mouth full of teeth like tungsten. “Do not be afraid.” He added, as if it were an afterthought.

  It was Greg who saw through the performance first and ventured to speak, sensing something in this man adjacent to himself. “How did you get here? We didn’t see another ship when we landed.”

  “I was here long before the first ‘ship’ of your kind arrived,” answered Azervel.

  “What does that even mean?” Kory demanded, refusing to lower her weapon.

  “Rest easy, child. I am an early model, like you.” He reassured, extending a hand in a gesture of friendship. His fingers were long and tipped with black nails resembling granite.

  “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Kory whispered to Nash, hoping for one of the answers her friend always managed to cook up under pressure. Though what she saw shocked as much as it disappointed her. Nash had lowered her guard completely, and stood up straight and defenseless, eyes wide at the image of the tall stranger. Even Zol seemed to be confounded by her gaze and turned briefly to Kory with an expression of shared bewilderment.

  Azervel met the eyes of Mia, Zol, and Kory in turn, and explained himself. “I was there when the pillars of the temple to your goddess were erected. But now I am here, the architect of all you see, abandoned, like you, by my fathers.” He addressed the whole of the group now, but shot a disdainful look at Greg, adding: “Not you, your feet have never left the ground.”

  “Feet?” Greg mumbled, glancing shamefully at his shoes but for a second.

  “Now,” Azervel spoke again, this time more to Nash than anyone else. “Shall we discuss what you’ve come here to find, oh height of creation?”

  #

  Against all reason, the five followed their mysterious guide deeper into the ground. The tunnels took on a more primitive style, and the glow from the artificial lights soon gave way to a natural and transcendent illumination that seemed to seep forth from the rocks themselves. In spite of the distance from the generated atmosphere, the air down here remained cool and clear. It wasn’t until they’d descended for a while that anyone felt bold enough to speak. Zol, hearing echoes from a darker time in the stranger’s speech, took Kory by the arm and pulled her to the back of the group where Greg was. Mia remained in the middle, shooting occasional doubtful glances at the rest of them.

  “It’s just like it was on our world, under the city!” Zol whispered urgently to Greg and Kory. Kory kept her eyes forward, observing how Nash walked right alongside Azervel at the front. She’d always known her friend was comfortable taking the lead, but this felt different.

  “I wasn’t down there with you back then, so I wouldn’t know.” Greg answered.

  “I was,” Kory said, briefly turning her head towards the two before looking ahead again. “And he’s right. The glow, the way the air feels… it’s not far off.”

  “If we really are about to get what we came here for, why does it smell like something is wrong?” Greg asked.

  “Right? And it’s not just her, it’s all of it.” Kory agreed, glaring at Nash who strode serene and unaware by Azervel’s side.

  “Is he Human?” Zol asked.

  “I wondered that myself,” Greg lowered his voice, certain that Azervel heard their conversation in spite of the distance between them and the steady rumbling below their feet. “I’m sure by now you both can tell this place was run by Humans, but the last of them evacuated some sixty odd years ago. The youngest worker could have been twenty. But you tell me, does that guy look eighty to you?”

  “He doesn’t,” Zol said.

  “And he sure doesn’t look like a worker either.” Kory added, motioning to the others to keep quiet as she pointed down in front. Nash and the stranger had stopped. He bent over to whisper something in her ear which she consumed with rapt attention. Her eyes shone with awe, and she nearly levitated off the ground, greedily devouring every morsel of his secret words.

  “It’s not much further,” the Iolite practically sang. “Just around this corner.”

  “The leftover Vercoden?” Mia asked.

  “Everything he wanted to show us and more,” Nash replied, turning away to glide around a bend in the cave.

  The glow that lit their way took on a different hue; warmer, nearly orange now. As they rounded the corner to their right, a giant chasm opened before them. They stood on a precipice overlooking a massive pit of churning lava. Azervel turned his back to the pit and faced the group.

  “Your leader will help me in exchange for the reward you sought in coming here.” He smiled languidly as he placed a heavy hand on Nash’s shoulder.

  “Where’s the Vercoden?” Greg shouted from the back.

  “This is lava.” Zol contributed.

  “Nobody leads me.” Kory insisted.

  “Now, now, friends,” Nash held out her hands in a soothing expression of condescension. “Azervel will give us what we want.”

  “I’m not your friend, and neither is he, now where is it!?” Mia snapped, enlivened by the heat of the boiling magma.

  Azervel ignored her outburst and raised his head to the top of the cavern, prompting the others to follow his gaze. Unlike the rugged stone which comprised most of the space, the ceiling consisted of what appeared to be the bottom of a smooth, metal reservoir, one hundred yards in diameter or more.

  “Of course,” Greg’s eyes widened in realization. “That must be the bottom of the water tank. Ambient heat from this magma chamber boils the water, which keeps the geothermal plant running, providing power to the atmospheric manifold!”

  “The son of the fall speaks true.” Azervel lowered his eyes. The silky quality crept out of his voice, replaced by a potent taste of anger too long stewed-upon. “There is no air on this world without the power from here.”

  Ignoring the insult and the vague threat that followed, Greg drove on. “Why are you showing us this?”

  “And just what did you agree to!?” Kory demanded of Nash.

  Azervel spoke for her. “This garden, like others we planted, was meant to give life to those who would come after us. And instead of recognition, I was relinquished to wither away here among the wasted fruits of my labor, scorned unfairly by those who ascended to live outside of time.”

  Ignoring Nash’s earlier warning to ‘stay out of trouble,’ Greg advanced to confront the creature. “What are you talking about, man!?”

  “You are the man, a child of dust” Azervel answered, eyes burning with hatred. “I am something more… and that hull of iron will be destroyed along with your forsaken air if you don’t free me from the tomb your kind constructed over my sacred world.”