14. To the top

“You’re injured. Let me help,” Marius said, pulling out his first aid kit to help Jaden. The first aid soothed Jaden’s jangled nerves after having part of herself torn away, and she almost felt herself again. Yung was pacing frustratedly, looking for something to hit. Marius reached out to soothe down the pink hairs standing on end along Jung’s neck. Suddenly, Yung’s heavy fist swung back and caught Marius across the head. It sent him flying across the room to land in the broken machinery.
“Oh, come on, Furry. I was just trying to help.” Marius complained as he scrambled to free himself from broken circuit boards and wiring.
“Not behind the horns!” She growled, not her usual gentle self, “Only mates scratch behind horns!”
 
As Marius blustered his apologies, Nox stepped down from Guardian and over one of the four alcoves in the room. Empty of dead margr, she explored the small space inside, leaning on the back wall to make a few small lights brighten above her head. Yung used her pent up energy to punch the back wall of another alcove, making the lights brighten further, but neither alcove did anything else.
 
“So, are we leaving or what?” Marius said, rubbing his smacked face. Now that Fureva-Yung and Jaden were healed, there seemed little reason to go outside and rest, and Marius was keen to find Ironhorn.
“I want to, “ Nox said from inside the alcove. Under the bright lights, she was bruised and pale, exhausted by the full day and night of activity and still feeling the effects of the lizard bites, “But I don’t want to leave Guardian alone. What if ghost-Jaden comes back?”
“Maybe…” Jaden said aloud and started rummaging in Bellyache, “Maybe with your knowledge of how Guardian works and my engineering, we can pull off a sort of ectoplasm shield for Guardian.”
 
Sitting amongst the dead bodies parts and broken machine components, the two women created a device that would work with Guardian’s own systems and keep it safe from interference. They installed the device, and Nox was able to control Guardian as before, safe in the knowledge that ghost-Jaden could not interfere.
 
“Thank you, Jaden,” Nox said after the work was done, “Guardian would hate to fight us.”.
“It’s temporary, mind, but as we’re not sticking around, I don’t see it as much of a problem.” The thought of Guardian’s shield having a short life got Jaden thinking, “I wonder what sort of shelf-life those ghosts of our have?”. As they left the pyramid and entered the margr village, she wondered what trouble her ghostly self was likely to cause in their absence.
 
The fires had all but burnt down as Jaden and Nox found a comfortable place to rest. It had been a long day of foraging, exploring and fighting, and it didn’t take long for either of them to be asleep. Jaden was soon snoring, with Nox resting her head on the older woman’s belly. Fureva-Yung sat down beside them and as she allowed her rage to slip away she became more thoughtful and reflective. Marius was feeling antsy and, after a short rest, went for a walk around the village, looking for what he could find. He was not disappointed and pocketed a cypher left behind by an ignorant margr. When he returned to boast of his good fortune, he spotted Fureva’s melancholy mood.
“Hey, what’s up, Furry? Are you feeling alright?”
She looked up at Marius as if waking from some unhappy dream.
“Hmm?” Slowly she stood, brushed herself off as best she could and took a deep breath, “Let’s do this!”
 
As the sun rose over the pyramid and brought sparks of light to the crystal mountain to their right, the group started stirring. They ate a quick meal of scavenged nuts and berries from the day before as Marius applied first aid to Nox. For her part, Nox recognised her big friend’s more introspective mood and took a large finger in her tiny hand. Fureva-Yung looked down to see the bright smiling face of Nox glowing in the early morning light.
“Little one, you are my friend.” It wasn’t said as a question, but Nox squeezed her finger reassuringly.
“And you too are my friend, “ Fureva-Yung turned to Marius, who was a little taken aback by the change in the warrior woman.
“Yes, even when throwing me across the room,” He commented, falling in beside her.
Fureva-Yung barked a dry laugh, “You have very good balance.”
 
As they stepped into the relative dark of the cylinder room, Fureva-Yung stood facing the goat-man sleeping in the green gas. Of a similar height, she could have looked him in the eye if he had only opened them. She stared at him for a moment, willing him to do just that, willing herself to remember more.
 
Nox climbed back on Guardian, and the heavy metal clang of its clawed feet broke Fureva-Yung’s revelry. With Marius, she took the lead down the right-hand passage, with Nox on Guardian and Jaden in the rear with her spear ready.
 
It did not take them long to find signs of devilry. Fureva-Yung put down one of her heavy booted feet on a floor panel that triggered a hidden trap of crude metal spikes to spring up and hit her and Marius. Marius sprung away in time to avoid the spikes, but Fureva-Yung took the panel of spines to the torso. The trap was makeshift but cleverly used the resources available.
“Ruddy, copycat!” Jaden growled as she noted her handiwork, “No, margr made that.”
“What else may you have rigged up along here?” Marius asked as Fureva-Yung pulled up the spiked panel so the others could pass.
Jaden moved through the column just behind Fureva-Yung, who now brandished the panel like a tower shield. As they moved, Jaden checked the floor, walls and ceilings for opportunities to spring another trap that her ghostly counterpart may have thought to lay. It didn’t take her long to find another panel slightly lifted on one side. She studied it a moment before informing the others.
“Probably delayed to hit more than just the leaders. Probably explosive.”
 
Fureva-Yung held the panel in front of the explosive as Jaden carefully worked on the trigger. With her lifetime’s worth of experience and clever hands, she disarmed the device, stepping back to allow Marius to salvage what could be gathered. Seeing the apt clay pulled out of the device, Fureva-Yung took a sample of the substance and swapped it for her responsive synth chewing toy. Where the responsive synth had bounced back with each chew, the apt clay-coated her mouth in a novel texture that was pleasing, at least for the time being.
 
The group made it to an intersection with a set of stairs heading up and a path continuing straight ahead. As the group knew the broken machine room lay directly above, they continued ahead, entering a small theatre.
To their left, a wide flight of steps that could be used as seating sat opposite a wide black wall. Ahead, a small one-metre tall dais sat empty. Jaden circled the room looking for traps. When none were found, she sat on the stair, looking around the room trying to make sense of it. Nox was drawn to the black wall, discovering it was a similar contraption to the broken monitors of the Unseen, back under the pit.
 
“So, if people could come here and watch things on that wall, there must be a way to turn it on,” Jaden mused and put her searching skills into finding the switch. It didn’t take her long. A small panel in the wall popped open under her touch and revealed a control panel. She chose a button and pressed it. Suddenly the light in the room dimmed as a picture appeared on the black screen. It was a symbol of two circles and a cluster of intersecting lines with small circles at intersections. The style was reminiscent of Fureva-Yung’s arm tattoo but in a different pattern entirely. The symbol was replaced by the head and shoulders of a goat man speaking directly to them. The audio was corrupted and broken, but little of the margr language was known to any of them, so after a moment’s adjusting, Jaden gave up.
 
An image of a starfield took the place of the talking head, dominated by a large space station.
“A spaceship!” Nox said in awe as Marius proudly crossed his arms before his chest.
“Yep, like I always said,” He crowed.
The image flickered again to one of a large city filled with people. There were the goat people, but also people who looked like Fureva-Yung and even humans.
“We lived with them,” Nox’s awe only increased as she sat as close to the screen as she could get on top of Guardian.
 
Suddenly the crowds of people started running away from something off-screen. Chaos descended, and the presentation showed a society in disorder. The image flicked again to silent battles in space between ships with the same circle and line symbol on the side. Another flash and the space station reappeared on the screen, this time with a pentagram symbol marked on its side. A light flashed on the dais, and a holographic projection of the space station appeared before them. It had the first circular symbol marked on its side.
 
“Can we get the audio to work, do you think?” Jaden asked, “Even if we can’t understand them, there may be some other clues in the sound we’re missing.”
 
Nox followed the wiring from the control panel to speaker boxes on either side of the monitor. Here she could see recent scavenging for electrical parts too fine and delicate for margr claws.
“I think ghost-Jaden has been here looking for parts for her traps,” Nox sighed, and Jaden’s frustration at her doppelganger grew.
“If only we’d come yesterday,” Marius commented, gaining a foul look from Nox.
 
Sitting back down on the stairs, Jaden took out a cypher and concentrated. Through the cypher, she connected to the datasphere concentrating on the gas ghosts they’d created. Without access to the green gas that made them, the ghosts would likely evaporate over a few weeks. It was good news of a sort. Once they left this place, the ghosts could live no more than a few weeks. It did not make Jaden happy as right now, the treacherous ghost-Jaden had a ready supply of energy and all the technology she needed to make their life difficult.
 
While Jaden interacted with the datasphere, the hologram of the space station drew Fureva-Yung’s attention.
“I think I come from there,” She finally said after a long while of contemplation.
“Do you want to go back?” Nox asked quietly, secretly hoping that was the case.
Instead, Fureva-Yung took one last look at the space station and let out a large breath.
“Enough,” She said and marched up the amphitheatre steps through a passage into the next room.
 
 
The next room looked more industrial than the last. Across from the passage was a two-metre high cylinder surrounded by an intermeshed synth forming a fence around it. Another clear tube hung high above, its cone base pointing to the protected cylinder below. Inside they could see twenty or more green spheres clustered inside . Jaden pulled out a homemade cypher, a butterfly drone. Its spluttering flight took it up the top cylinder where Jaden could look through its eyes at the spheres.
“The green goo is dripping from the spheres. It seems to be the source of the good goo.”
There was some discussion as to how to get access to the spheres. Nox even tried lifting one with her hedge magic without success.
“Well, I’m not touching them, “ Jaden said, putting away her now dead butterfly drone, “Last time didn’t go so well.”
 
Fureva-Yung led the way up stairs that encircled the cylinder. Marius was left on the ground as he studied the cylinders and their contents. The cylinders seemed to be made of the same tough crystal, but the spheres inside were not, being permeable. He confirmed that the bottom vat contained the waste goo they’d been following through the pyramid. The spheres were something else, drawing life energy from seeming empty air.
“I can’t tell if the spheres are living or not,” He said aloud, “This is definitely the filtering process as the spheres themselves contain the good energy. I’d still suggest they would not be good to eat.” He looked up at Fureva-Yung as if reading her mind.
“Oh,” She sighed and continued up the stair to the next level.
 
One side of the large room was open to the sky. It looked east to the rising sun, now well above the horizon. A ruined machine in the centre looked like a framework with two seats affixed to it.
“I bet that was a flying machine. Think you can get it working, Nox?”
“I think it looks like Ironhorn’s walking suit,” She countered, taking in all the missing components. Still, she had to admit it looked like it could have flown at one time. Fureva-Yung pushed the framework over. It groaned in protest but could not resist her.
“Stuff breaks,” She replied philosophically.
 
Along the walls, more alcoves were visible. Marius tried his head at the alcoves, leaning in and pressing his forehead to the back wall. Once more, the lights lit up. Following the feeling of familiarity that had plagued her since walking into the pyramid, Fureva-Yung did the same. Just as Nox and Jaden thought nothing would happen, as usual, the two companions slumped over in their alcoves, unconscious.
 
“Oh gods, quick, help me get them up!” Jaden yelled, running in and pulling Marius off the wall. The lights dimmed and disappeared, and Marius came back to himself.
“We were floating...We? Yeah, there were three of us. Me, Furry and someone else. It felt like we were supposed to be somewhere else, but…we didn’t know why we couldn’t get there.” Marius explained the experience as Fureva-Yung also woke.
“I too sensed the same, though it felt very familiar to me.” The same loss looked across Fureva-Yung’s face, “I tried to make contact, and the other was recognised me. I must go back.”
“Ooh! Can I try too!” Nox said, already climbing off Guardian to stand in an empty alcove.
 
With only a mild protest from Jaden who insisted on a time period and marius who enforced a one minute time restriction, Fureva-Yung and Nox stepped back into the alcoves. As described, there was a feeling of floating, of being one among three.
Hello, Fureva-Yung called once more, making contact with the third mind present.
Hello? Came the weak response.
Are you the goat man?
Confusion and anger spiralled together as the being felt that Fureva-Yung should know who he was and of being unsure how to proceed.
You’re downstairs in the crystal tube, Nox added gently as she could, You’re hurt.
I am wounded, The mind agreed and negative emotions were exchanged for confusion once more, This place was taken from where it belongs.
I don’t know your people. What do you call yourselves?
The mind was quiet for a moment unsure how to proceed, We are the Karrah. What backwater are you from not to know of us?
Celeron, Nox replied without animosity. It was a nowhere place.
 
Fureva-Yung, who had been quiet up until now, refocused the conversation, Do you know me?
Not personally, but your career is well known to all.
 
Just then, Marius pulled Fureva-Yung off the wall with Jaden holding Nox. Fureva-Yung reflexly lashed out at her attacker, and for the second time in twelve hours, Marius flew across the room.
 
“They are the Karrah and need to be sent back to where they came from,” Nox said, coming too, “Oh, and Fureva-Yung is famous!”
“I think he was mistaken, “ Fureva-Yung checked her small bag and other possessions, “I do not have a career.”
“Go back!” Marius exclaimed, excited by this new exciting information. Try as they might, though, the alcoves were now dark. They were no longer working.