Page 60 of Returned to the Vissigroth
"Fully," Oksana acknowledged, and my respect for the male grew. He reminded me of Mallack with his no-nonsense attitude, and suddenly I missed my mate terribly. But I knew it would be even worse, sitting in the tent waiting for him; at least here, we had some kind of adventure ahead of us.
Now that I was on top, and the dragoons had lit up all kinds of lights, I could see where we were. A long hallway, with doors in regular intervals on both sides.
"This will take rotations to catalog," another dragoon, whose name I thought was Zhoran, remarked.
"Stay back," Surnak warned. Several dragoons stepped in front of us seffies, swords out, while Surnak pointed at two others to open the first of the doors to our right.
One kicked it open, then three more moved inside. We listened to them near soundlessly moving about, before one yelled, "Clear."
With a sigh of defeat, Surnak waved Oksana, Thalia, and me on. Curious, we walked inside.
It didn't look much different from the room below, only here the couch was still covered in material, and on the table still stood a plate and cup, as if the occupant had left in the middle of a meal. A window to the left was shattered, and debris had rained in and sealed the opening with it. It looked as if the mountain itself had grown right into this room.
As if by unspoken agreement, Oksana, Thalia, and I moved together like a unit, from room to room. Just like below, there was a bedroom, a small cooking area with machines we could only guess as to their purpose, and a bathroom.
One by one, we entered more living units. They were all pretty much the same, except one had been burned completely. It was strange, as if the fire that had raged inside it had stopped at the walls, not daring to go any further.
"Fire seals," Surnak explained.
I shuddered at the sight of melted metal against the wall, which must have been the screen we had seen in the other rooms, butthat was nothing to the scorched form in the corner, curled into itself.
"Oh, I think I'm going to be sick," Oksana turned.
There wasn't much to see; the body was too charred to make anything else out besides that it once was a person.
Reminded of the tragedy that had played out here thousands upon thousands of rotations ago, the three of us were more subdued as we followed the dragoons further down the hallway. After about twenty doors, we discovered that the others were all open. The insides had been ransacked.
Surnak frowned, "Somebody has been here before us."
I agreed and felt a cold shudder moving down my spine. "Do you think it was Eulachs?" I asked nobody in particular.
"Probably," Oksana agreed.
"I think they've been scavenging these ruins for rotations," Thalia agreed.
"But why," I turned to look at the doors we had opened, "stop here, why not go further?"
Surnak stopped at that, his frown deepening, before he turned to Oksana. "I beg your pardon, Susserayna, but for your own protection, I must insist that you and the vissies now return to camp."
Another shiver moved through me. It looked as if the Eulachs had been ransacking this place. Stopped by us… recently.
"Zyn," Oksana must have come to the same conclusion and nodded her agreement.
"Zohran, take four males and take the ladies back to camp," Surnak ordered, right before the tip of a spear pierced his throat, and with a terrible croaking sound, he fell to his knees.
Ididn’t smile.
Not because I disagreed, if anything, the prospect of running down whatever horrors had crawled out of those pods stirred something primal in me. But the weight in my chest told me this was bigger than a war patrol. Bigger than a clean kill.
“Let’s move,” I said gruffly, turning from the monitors. “There’s more. I can feel it.”
The dragoons fell in behind us, silent and professional. Ekkarn stayed ahead, his torchlight sweeping over the floor as we navigated another bend in the corridor. My boots hit stone, then metal, then something between the two. The transitions were seamless, like this place had been completely preserved.
We passed another shattered door, its edges blackened, scorched. More lab stations followed, empty, ransacked, or perhaps just long dormant. A few still blinked with power. Residual energy? Some hidden core deep beneath the surface?I didn’t know. I only knew that we were walking deeper into the throat of something ancient. And that it didn’t like being disturbed.
My thoughts drifted to Daphne. At least she was safe in camp. Or so I told myself. But even as the thought formed, I felt a chill down my spine, like a premonition.
We emerged into another chamber, this one was round and ringed with alcoves, each holding what looked like a suit of armor. At first glance, they appeared to be ceremonial with their sleek, violet-black plating lined with chrome-like filigree. But then I saw the claws. The razored edges at the joints. The built-in power cores at the spines.
