79. Infiltrating the Temple of Erinai

The storeroom was cramped, but empty. Marius activated all his embedded cyphers as Jaden turned on a range weapon cypher she’d been holding onto for a while. This was it. After they opened the storeroom door, the surprise would be sprung and there was no going back. After fighting for their lives, fleeing their only home. After months of travel, building, exploration, and struggle, they were back in Celeron and ready to reclaim their home once more.
 
“My, there are very few cupboards as nice as this one,” Marius admired the space they found themselves in. “Look at how shiny the shelves are…and all the shinies on them. Can I salvage?”
A shuffling, stepping beat from the other side of the door was his reply. Were they too early? Nox silently moulded the door shut as Fureva-Yung took the opportunity to use her mutation. With a thought, she’s gone from Fureva-Yung to a huge Marius with a trunk-like nose stuck to it.
“Now I am beautiful!” Fureva-Yung whispered, and Nox giggled.
“Yes, you are.”
 
Marius took his chance to rummage through the spare parts and other supplies. Jaden lamented that they couldn’t have brought Bellyache, as with one swift gesture, she could have tipped it all into their cavernous storage.
 
The motors in the door began to whine as something on the other side requested them to open. They were going to get one chance at surprising whatever was behind the door before all hell broke loose. Putting aside the shinies until later, Marius started making a bomb as Fureva-Yung charged up her chain. Nox turned on her black armour and unfused the door, stepping aside.
 
On the other side was a very surprised servitor with an arc cutter unsticking the door. Marius pushed his molecular rearranger to the limit. One moment, the light sensors on the servitor were scanning the four intruders; the next, the entire servitor was a cloud of steam, heat, and a puddle of water.
 
A noise in a room ahead made the group scramble. Marius grabbed what cyphers he’d found and the group crept up a northern corridor. Two doors lined the corridor. As the group passed, Nox and Marius listened at each other, determining nothing was moving behind them. At the end of the corridor, it opened up into a round room lit by lines of energy on every wall. In the centre, steps led to a console illuminated by the dark glow of blue squares on the wall above.
“I know this place!” Nox squealed, almost forgetting why they were there, “This was the room where Celeron was betrayed…the person, not the town.”
“Yes, we saw it in the footage collected at the Spire,” Jaden replied as they both investigated the room. Nox instinctively was drawn to the console where Celeron was last seen alive.
“We are on a mission,” Fureva-Yung warned Nox as she turned on the console and began getting systems online.
“We can come back, Nox,” Marius agreed, just as the four dark blue lights flared.
 
Suddenly, like a piece of fluff picked up by a vacuum servitor, Nox was lifted from her spot in front of the console and up into the light. Instantly, her corporal form dissolved into energy, and she was pulled into the datasphere. Reaction before thought, Marius leapt to grab Nox before he felt the pull of the lights too, and backed off.
“Turn off the machine!” Marius yelled, but neither he nor Fureva-Yung knew what Nox had done to set off in the first place. With a shrug, Marius ran for the console and was quickly dissolved by the light.
 
Nox found herself in a datasphere. Floating without effort in an octohedral room, Nox took in the glowing purple comets flying around her. They were coming in at the top of the room and exiting through the bottom, oblivious to the girl-sized obstacle in their way. She dodged a few before spotting a small cube sitting stationary off to one side. Blinking across to the cube, she picked it up. The cube’s edges softened, forming a small round metal case with a single needle pointing towards the exit below. She turned it over and discovered a stylised ‘C’ engraved into the case.
“Celeron’s compass!” Nox exclaimed, her voice barely above a whisper out of awe for what she’d found. Clutching it to her, she called out to the datasphere, “I am coming back for you! I promise!” and bamf-ed up to the exit, ready to leave.
“Ah, Nox!” A very familiar voice called from behind her, and Nox turned to see Marius floating above. He was trying to swim towards her, but was being drawn, with the comets, down deeper into the datasphere.
“What the hell, Marius!” She exclaimed, bamfed effortlessly across, a creature in her element.
“I came to rescue you,” He said as he tried and failed to stop himself from spinning away with the comets.
With an exasperated sigh, Nox touched Marius and bamfed them both back out into the room with Fureva-Yung and Jaden. Examining the compass, the needle pointed towards the machine.
“It’s pointing to her! Celeron’s compass is pointing back at her!” Nox exclaimed.
“Celeron’s compass?” Jaden said with awe, gently taking the compass and examining it for herself. She found the ‘C’ engraving and almost wished that they could take a moment or two to find Celeron, the founder.
 
But they had a mission. She returned the compass to Nox, who wrapped it in a cloth and placed the relic in her satchel. Together, the group turned back and retraced their steps down the corridor. The heavy clank of metal footsteps betrayed the presence of another servitor ahead. Another ordinary servitor went to the open door of the storeroom, stopped to scan the space, before stepping in. Waiting for the doors to close behind it, Nox sealed the door shut while Marius kept an eye out into the main room.
 
There were heavy doorways, one to the north and the other opposite, that stood silent and foreboding. Opposite the hallway they now stood in, stairs led up to the public temple above. They resembled the same type of heavy metal that had halted Nox’s bamfing ability back at the foundry, and he pointed them out to the group.
“No easy escape from there then,” Nox commented as the doors to the north opened and two heavily armoured servitors exited and climbed the stairs.
“And if we’re going deeper, that’s the way we should go,” Marius suggested. Once the clanging of the servitors had disappeared, Nox flitted out and sealed the southern door. While she did, Fureva-Yung listened to the complex, getting a feel for the layout beyond the walls, floors and doors. Above, there was movement in the temple. Beyond the doors, an elevator motor hummed. Other than that, the super dense metal of the wall blocked her senses like it blocked Nox's teleport.
 
In the storeroom, the servitor was cutting through with an arch cutter. Nox went to hold off the servitor by sealing the cut behind the cutter.
“We need to go!” Marius called, but Jaden could find no console to open the northern door.
“What about your arm?” Nox asked Fureva-Yung, who looked down at her tattoo. Waving it at the door.
The lights in the room went out, only to return a moment later, red.
“We just told the shard their enemy was here,” Marius said, saying what everyone had realised.
They’d messed up, and it was time to move.
 
Fureva-Yung pulled out her crowbar as the sound of the elevator grew closer. The group slipped to either side of the door as the northern doors opened, revealing a room beyond and an elevator very much like the one in the Spire. The elevator doors opened, revealing a heavy fighter servitor and a smaller, squat-bodied servitor on tracks behind.
 
Marius was first, shooting for the tracks on the squat servitor with his molecular rearranger. A force field flared, dispersing much of the ray's energy, but some still made it through to hit the servitor. Waiting above the door of the elevator, Nox reached down and touched the Protector servitor. Though tough, the Protector’s mind was a simple thing, and Nox easily gained control. She turned the Protector on the servitor they were now calling Squatty and tried to pick it up. The attack was slow and clumsy; Squatty dodged it. Jaden shot at Squatty, the shot hitting the shield and missing completely.
 
Squatty shuddered like a jackhammer, sending a rippling vibration through the air and metal structure of the complex. Both Nox and Fureva-Yung were affected, their senses reeling from the sonic attack. Squatty then sent out a beam of energy at Marius, who dodged it before sending back a rearranging ray. It missed, hitting the wall and leaving a hole in it. Shaken by the vibrations, Fureva-Yung jumped up and slammed her chain down onto Sqatty with such force that it broke through the force shield with a flash of light and knocked the sturdy servitor prone.
 
Clang! Clang! Clang! The heavy footsteps of servitors coming down the stairs alerted the group. Pushing Squatty to one side, the group started moving through the door as Fureva-Yung stood guard. The two servitors swung their empty fists at the warrior, their movements so slow she dodged both easily. With her trunk, she pushed Marius back behind her as she too stepped past the door threshold.
“Jaden, close the doors!” She shouted, and Jaden jumped to comply. It was a straightforward task on this side of the door, and she quickly regained control. A servitor's head got through the gap in the door just as it slammed shut; the metal head popped off and rolled to the ground at Jaden’s feet.
 
Nox slowly began to mould the door and wall into one mass as Marius picked over Squatty for parts. Jaden turned her attention to the elevator across the room. After hours of sweating over the elevator controls in the Spire, Jaden knew the systems backwards and quickly bypassed the security to regain control. She called the car as Fureva-Yung listened for more servitors. A screeching sound told her and Jaden the emergency brakes had been engaged, bypassing Jaden’s hack. Prying the door open with her crowbar, the car could be seen several metres down the tube. Another door was clearly visible above the roof of the car.
Fureva-Yung jumped into the shaft, knocking the car down half a metre. Jaden followed, expecting to be caught by Fureva-Yung, only to float gently down the roof of the car. Above, Nox had caught Jaden in her telekinetic mutation of the day. She did the same for Marius before turning Protector to guard the lift door.
 
Jaden opened the door to the new level and Marius peaked out. A corridor leading left and right was empty ahead, and they exited the car. Above, Nox sent Protector down via telekinesis before flying down herself to join the others on Basement level 2. Fureva-Yung was already at a door to the north listening for activity. She could hear whispering, but couldn’t make sense of the words. With her crowbar, she opened the door to reveal another storage with two rows of shelving.
 
 
 
 
 
Marius spotted the spirits first, flitting around the shelving. At first, he thought they may have been the blue people of the Order of Sync and Trace. Then he realised they were wearing old-style devotee uniforms. He stepped in and recognised an invader; the spirits hissed and moved in.
 
The ghosts screamed a sound full of fear and anger.
 
Marius swiped at one of the spirits with his heated hand but missed, only to succumb to the ghost possession. Nox reached for the mind of the nearest ghost and found a creature driven mad by fear and starvation. The ghost tried to possess Nox, who batted their intellectual attack back. Fureva-Yung placed a shattering shout on the second ghost as Jaden fired her heavy laser at the one engaged with Nox. Haunted by disorientating paranoia, Marius felt a looming presence behind him. Swinging out with his heated hand, he connected with Fureva-Yu, who was distracted by the ghost and surprised by the sudden attack, and in the tight confines, knocked Marius prone.
 
The two spirits' wails continued.
 
Once more, all their minds were assailed. Fureva-Yung, already sensitive to sound, succumbed to the ghost's attack. The ghost possessing Fureva-Yung attacked Nox, missing as the young girl flitted aside. Suddenly, her Shattering shout went off, shaking the ghost to pieces to dissipate into the empty room. Getting back on her feet, Fureva-Yung lashed out at her attacker, Marius, who rolled away just as the heavy chain smashed and cracked the ground behind him. The movement in the room allowed Marius to get behind the spirit and strike unseen. Jaden is haunted by a fear of a fluttering presence in the shadows, not far from her. A deep part of him recognised the fear as not her own, and she was able to stop an attack on Nox and master herself once more.
 
The fight, now longer and more bloody than the one with three warrior servitors and Squatty, was taking its toll. Nox lashed out with a psychic burst at the lone ghost, hitting even though the Protector’s fists went straight through the incorporeal being. From behind, Marius’s blaster cut short the wail of the spirit as its presence dissipated into nothing.
“Huh, I missed,” Fureva-Yung looked at her chain and the dent she’d made in the floor.
“No, I dodged,” Marius replied, and took a moment to search the storeroom.
 
Exhausted, Nox and Jaden found a place to sit and contemplate what they were doing. They’d successfully made it into the enemy base only to tip them off as to their presence. They still had a long way to go, and the worst thing was, like the spirits, they had no idea what to expect next.