54. Rockspine inhabitants

The last watch was long and quiet, but it did give Fureva-Yung time to contemplate all that had happened. In the heat of battle, things flashed by that she was now only just remembering, one being a passageway she’d seen while underwater. As she rode Fuzzy-Wuzzy down the shaft, the passage had flashed by, an empty void. At the time, she’d barely registered its existence, but now, in the quiet of the last watch, she wondered where it went.
 
When the other woke fully rested and ready to explore again, she mentioned the shaft and her wish to explore it.
“Sure, Nox could explore above, while you could explore below,” Marius said, breakfasting on scraps of dried meat.
“I do not feel that is wise. Keep in contact with Nox while you can. I will not be gone long.”
 
With the group's blessings, she dove into the centre of the pool and swam down eight metres to where she remembered the void. She had no light with her, trusting in her echolocation to sense the hard surfaces give way to a tube-like tunnel heading south. However, she took the rebreather in case she couldn’t find an air pocket before her ten-minute time limit ran out.
 
The passage opened into a circular room with smooth walls. A central pillar dominated the space, going up into an imagined surface and down beyond the effectiveness of her sonar. Below her, something large moved. It was long, maybe twelve metres, with the segmented carapace of a giant flatworm. It moved around the walls, seemingly eating something off them, maybe algae.
Don’t worry about it, Fureva-Yung, Marius’ thoughts came over the telepathic link. It’s beneath you.
 
Fureva-Yung let her natural buoyancy take her to the surface. The air was good, though still and dank, and she could breathe normally. The ceiling stretched up high above, almost out of sonar reach, and off to her right, a small platform and recess in the wall gave a place for her to stand. Fureva-Yung climbed out of the water and found a broken Numenera device missing large chunks. Ignoring it, she spied a panel of buttons three by four nearby. Fureva-Yung knew from experience that the best way to know what a button did was to press it, so she did, picking one randomly.
 
Suddenly, a clear gel started encasing her from feet to head. Once the bubble of gel was sealed at the top, she was plunged back into the water, moving fast for the bottom. She passed the tunnel and kept diving, surprised that she didn’t feel the pressure on her eardrums. She tried her echolocation and could sense her world only as a soft impression of what she had previously. She pressed more random buttons on the panel only to realise that before her, not fifteen metres away, two glowing dots watched. The creature wasn’t beneath her any longer. It was in front of her.
 
She could see the tiny particulates in the water in the dim light of the luminescent eyes. The water was murky. The rest of the creature could barely be seen. Fureva-Yung tried pulling the bubble away from her ear, but the membrane was tough and would not budge. All she had left to her was more button-pushing. So she did. The first few did nothing, but after pressing a third, the bubble around her contracted to form a suit. Instantly, her hearing cleared, and she no longer had to rely on the meagre light from the creature.
 
The whole time, the creature hung suspended in the murk before you, dully watching. With her sonar back, Fureva-Yung could sense the shaft continue down. She pressed some more buttons, and a light way down deep turned on, illuminating the beast more fully. It was a long segmented worm as she’d sensed, but the two eyes were lights and what she had taken for a mouth streamed tentacles of the same substance that now covered her. Swimming over, she placed her hand in the creature’s mouth. Instantly, she could feel the tug from the gel. It was drawing her into the creature. She pulled back her hand and, on a hunch, flipped over and placed her feet in its mouth.
 
As she expected, she was drawn wholly into the creature. Inside, two pads of more buttons, one for each hand were easily located within reach. She found she could breathe in the beast and see through it’s eyes. Now, it was time to see if she could move. The controls at her hands were intuitive, and she soon found herself almost flying around the underwater shaft. She swam around the shaft, investigating the light below. The creature bawked at being so close to the light and the hairs on Fureva-Yung's arms stood on end. Whatever the light was, it wasn't good and afterwards stayed clear. She dived to the bottom in search of numenera she could take back. When nothing useful was found, she steered her nudibranch back to the passage.
 
She was feeling good when the telepathic network connected once more.
Hey, you’re back! Find anything?
You could say that, Fureva-Yung replied as she let the nudibranch slowly rise the shaft so they could all see.
What is it? Marius asked.
A thingy, Jaden replied helpfully.
A cool thingy for flying underwater! Celebrated Nox as the Nudibranch broke the water, returning victorious.
 
Jaden spent some time checking out Fureva-Yung’s new gel suit, taking samples from her and the nudibranch. She then went over the living machine to understand how such a wonder could exist.
 
“Okay, no more mucking about. Your turn,” Marius said to Nox, who once more levitated up the shaft and into the active facility above. She rose in darkness beside her tiny hedge light. In one section, her light reflected off a dark surface like glass. She wondered if that was another window like the first shaft. Unfortunately, it was too dark to see, so she continued her flight to the top.
 
Above, light beams from slitted windows lit the roof of the small shed-like building on the plateau. This shaft rose the full length through the facility. She levitated into the shed. It was quiet here. A small space around the shaft gave the group a place to teleport if they needed another hiding space. That was good to know, but it was getting them no closer to Trask.
 
Nox dropped back down to where a crack in the wall offered a tiny slither of light. Using reshape, she made the crack larger so she could peer through. On the other side was a rough-hewn corridor with a large rock in the centre. The sounds of people eating and taking were nearby, she must be near the mess hall that Fureva-Yung identified. Bamfing to the corridor ceiling, she quickly blended into the ceiling gloom behind the rock and watched a moment as guards came and went, starting or finishing their shifts.
 
Ahead were two sets of stairs. The one on the right went up to the larger of the two buildings on the surface. The second went down, a mirror image of the stairs on the facility's west side. Nox was looking for Trask, not more guards. So, when the corridor seemed quiet, she crawled across the room and down the lefthand staircase.
 
At the bottom of the staircase, the passage turned to the left and onto the lower bridge. It didn’t seem well used and was almost forgotten by the current residents. What did intrigue Nox was the wall directly ahead. It looked cobbled together, full of chinks and cracks.
 
She sent her hedge magic light through the crack to the otherside and found it was a full chamber. Orientating this new hidden room with her mental map, she realised it was the dark space beyond the glass she’d seen in the shaft. With no better place to go, she bamfed in.
 
A column in the centre of the room dominated. It was a Numenera energy conduit of some sort, but without power she had no hope of seeing what it could do. Around the outside of the column and against the wall was a gap just wide enough for her to drop into. Again, this was a dead end, so she slipped down the wall into a space below.
 
 
On this level, the column widened, taking up nearly the whole space of the room above. A narrow corridor wrapped the column and led around to a new passage heading south. At this level, she was within the telepathic range of the others and had reconnected.
Hey kid, what’s going on?
Lots of nothing spaces. I’m in a corridor just to the south of the shaft that no one’s been in for…ages.
 
Her Hedge light held in her hand for fear of the light giving her away, Nox glided down the corridor as it dogleged left then right. Eventually, the wall on her left hand gave way to another large circular shaft. Sending the Hedge light out, she could see the twinkle of water below.
Hey! I found the top of your shaft, Fureva-Yung! Nox exclaimed. This was fun. Exploring new places quietly, not disturbing the people who lived there, and still in touch with her friends.
Over the telepathic link, Marius coughed, Er…right.
 
Nox followed the right-turning corridor as it ended in a second smaller room. As she entered, the synth pattern on the floor began to glow. Suddenly, the whole exploration thing had become not so fun, as a spectral form burst from the floor and lunged for her, brandishing a ghostly knife. She dodged aside, only to have the creature turn for a second attack. Sticking out her tongue, she bamfed back to the pool room and her friends.
 
“A ghost! It tried to stab me!” She explained as the roof above them started to glow. Two motes of light entered through solid rock and descended to the party. The first formed a ghostly form wearing a mask. It lashed out at Fureva-Yung, screaming. She dodged it expertly and brought her chain up to attack. The second with the knife went to attack Jaden. She sidestepped, moving it into the path of the first. Now she had a chance to look at these creatures, Jaden deducted they were out of phase with their reality and vulnerable to electricity. To keep them distracted, she started talking in her techno-babble
 
Marius struck both creatures with his light fists, but the damage wasn’t as great as he’d hoped. As Fureva-Yung added vibrations to her chain, Nox reached out and touched one of the ghosts, mind-controlling it. Suddenly, the creature relaxed, becoming less substantial.
I don’t like that other one, She directed it by thought, Maybe you should attack it.
 
The controlled ghost turned on its ally, who was surprised by the change in fortune. Angry, it struck out at Jaden. In that split second of surprise, Jaden seized the opportunity, pulled out an iotum and lit up the ghost with a burst of electricity. With a shudder, it dissipated into nothing. Nox’s tamed ghost relaxed, hanging, like herself in mid-air awaiting instructions. Nox read its mind, hoping to find out information about the facility's layout, even a sighting of the elusive Trask. Unfortunately, the creature had died millennia ago in an exotic energy laboratory experiment. As she tapped its thoughts, however, a sudden rush of images, thoughts and ideas almost overwhelmed her. She now knew how to work the machinery once used by these beings.
“The poor thing is mad. It was made that way by an experiment gone wrong,” she said, pulling away from the being and letting Marius at it. “It’s never left the room I found it in. It doesn’t know where Trask is, and neither do we.”
 
With only a little more information than when they started the day, the group sat down and discussed their options.