Nightsea Outlaw

Clunk-Clunk.

A shadow passed over Erin as they rolled over a bump and into the tunnels, the wind instantly vanishing as darkness covered the cart. Erin shivered, but not because of the cold. She had lost sight of the old woman in the darkness, and the healer in her was reacting as it always did.

As their cart rolled through the darkness, Erin spotted lines of light down the walls. They were going fast, and the small lights blurred together a little, but she realized that they weren't torches but square panels embedded in the walls that glowed in the darkness.

After a while of their ride through shadows, her eyes began to adjust, and she could make out the others in the cart. Their bodies leaned back and forth as the cart followed its winding track until, finally, Erin could see a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

She gasped as they entered a wide-open cavern.

It would have been a massive mining operation when it was still active. Skeletal humanoid machines stood frozen in various states of activity; their parts rusted and broken off, and some had collapsed. Some had specialized drills that they still held against the wall, frozen like statues. Others lay collapsed on the ground, crushed by ore as large as their bodies. Still, others were frozen in place as they walked between the machines with drills and several partially loaded mining carts.

"It's like they abandoned it all in a hurry," Alex whispered as he stood on the cart to look over the side.

He had pulled off his goggles and mask, and the wind blew his black hair back as they rolled past the machines and further up into the dome. The track went up and around in a winding circle, and Erin could see that it cut back into the tunnels about halfway up the dome's height.

"But for such a grand construction, I wonder how many years it took?" Sayed asked next to him.

He had removed his coat entirely, and steam rose from his bare arms. He still had his leather chest piece on, but he clearly had grown tired of the restrictive cloak. Erin envied him. Even in the mines, she felt she needed all her gear to stay warm.

"Everyone left with the aetherstorm started," the machine in the cart said, its yellow eyes tracking Alex. "The initial storm was stronger and even penetrated into the mines. The only automatons that survived the storm were the ones who were completely enclosed by stone."

"It was a wise decision to leave," Jean said, still wrapped in his heavy winter clothes. "I know little of aetherstorms, but they sound dangerous."

Erin wasn't an expert in aetherstorms, but from what she understood, they caused severe disruptions on an island's aetheric fields. They had a tendency to disrupt most kinds of technology and saturated the area with more aether than was normally present. However, she had never witnessed one personally, and very few people across Erth knew much about it. As always, the Military Police did their best to squash any information beyond the stories of sailors about what was going on on every island across the Erth.

"You two were safe from it?" Erin asked.

"No," the machine said. "Runa made us after the aetherstorm started."

"You were made," the one driving said, looking over its shoulder. "I was bandaged up and treated."

Erin raised an eyebrow at that. It was clearly a machine driving the cart. While he was wearing a coat, goggles, and a long red scarf, the visible parts were clearly metal. The machine in the cart shook its head, using one mechanical finger to brush the old woman's head.

"You can ignore Gary on that," it said. "He thinks he is a human for some reason. I think it must be an error in his aetheric crystals."

"By Fury and Stone, I am a man." Gary turned back again. "If you think I cannot see the difference between flesh and metal, you have wool over your eyes, Firril."

"Whatever you say, Gary," Firril chirped back. "That is how we came to serve Runa."

"And she's been here for the last twenty years since the storm started?" Alex asked.

Firril tilted her head, and Erin had to ask herself if a machine could lie. How would you tell without facial expressions or a heartbeat? She had done interrogations before. It was difficult enough to tell in people, but a machine presented an entirely new problem.

"I do not know," Firril said. "Runa will be better able to tell you once she wakes up."

That killed the conversation. They rolled the remainder of the trip up in silence, which allowed Erin to notice that Mari was staring at Runa, the old woman. Her blue eyes flickered every few moments, but she didn't take her gaze off Runa. Before Runa collapsed, she recognized Mari and even called her by the name that Mari had first given Alex and Erin back on Nowhere in Death's Yard.

M.A.R.I. Magical Artificial Recombinant Intelligence. That was what they had first heard when they had woken up Mari from the temple ruins a few weeks ago. A set of coordinates from a metal book had led them there, and now, Mari had led them to Diamond Peak, where an old woman had recognized her. Erin knew it had to do with Roald. She wanted desperately to have the answers. However, so long as Runa lay unconscious, all she could do was speculate. Unfortunately, there were just too many missing pieces to come to a conclusion.

"We're almost to the elevator," Gary said as they reached the top of the tracks in the dome and entered another tunnel lit by the same square stones. "She'll be alright in a bit, Firril."

Creak.

Firril said nothing as the cart stopped in a circle of dim square lights. It was the end of the line, and a metal platform with struts that ran up a dark shaft rested before them, a single lever next to it. It was a simple mining elevator.

Alex and Sayed were out of the cart first, hopping over the edge without any problems. They helped pick up Mari, who kept her eyes locked on the old woman until the cart formed a barrier. Erin watched her as she stepped out from the cart, and Mari started looking at the tunnel around them.

"Are you alright, Mari?" Erin asked, kneeling beside her and putting a hand on Mari's shoulder.

"I will be fine," Mari said, smiling at Erin before looking around the room again. "There were just additional points of unprocessed data that needed to be parsed."

Erin raised an eyebrow but let Mari go, and Mari waddled over in her coat to Sayed.

"Come now, Mari." Sayed grinned wide as he picked her up and carried her over to the elevator. "We will ride up this shaft to the next page of this tale."

Alex followed after them, shaking his head, while Jean stayed back and assisted Firril in carrying Runa out of the cart. Erin kept to the back as they rode the elevator through the shaft toward a small square of white light above.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

Creak-clunk.

The elevator stopped in a small fenced-in area on the edge of a massive stone chamber. The rocks around them were smooth, with only lines marking the individual stones that had been laid in a dome pattern long ago. Erin's breath caught in her chest as she looked to the top of the dome and saw the small hole that opened to a bright, open sky above. It wasn't the cloudy storm-ridden sky of the aetherstorm but a bright sunny day above.

Even the area they were in was warmer than the outside. Brown, red, and green patches of grass covered the ground, and several tear-dropped-shaped trees formed a park across the room in front of them. Short stubby brushes and long brown stalks made a maze across the interior, and Erin heard birdsong coming from flitting shadows between the branches.

Tweet. Tweet.

"What is this?" she asked as Firril walked past her carrying Runa.

"It used to be a park," Firril said, pausing to look around.

"What about the aetherstorm?" Jean frowned as he looked up at the dome.

"The keep is at the eye of the storm," Firril said, pausing to look around. "If you look closely, you can see windows on the walls for all the rooms of the keep. Some look outward as well."

Erin did her best to contain her urge to go out and start searching through the entire area. There would be so many seeds she could add to her garden back on the base or possibly modify to use with her curse. There were so many possibilities with each new island she visited.

"Going to gather some seeds again?" Alex asked as he walked past her.

"No," Erin said, her face burning as she rushed to catch up to him. "I was only admiring how beautiful it was."

"I'm amazed they could make it with the storm outside. How hard do you think they'd have to work to maintain an eye in the storm?"

Erin paused as Alex kept walking, his hands behind his head as he looked up at the open hole in the dome. Erin looked around the area again. Building the entire dome would have been a feat of labor, but it would have been easy work for an island core. It was the same for leveling the top of a mountain perfectly flat. She thought about how the island was shaped when they had first seen it. The two towers and the dome could have been products of an island core. It was less ornate and large than Glory Plateau, at least.

"You think there's a core involved," Erin said as she caught up to Alex.

Ahead of them, Jean and Sayed walked with the other two machines, Sayed still holding Mari over his shoulder. They had a few moments where they could talk without being overheard, which was why Alex brought up the subject. He was the type to already plan for that.

"I do," Alex nodded. "Makes you think about the aetherstorm. Cores mess around with aether. Maybe the storm was caused by someone mucking about with an island core."

"There isn't another chance of a 'Black Spot?'" Erin licked her lips as the events on Glory Plateau came back to her.

"I don't know." Alex shrugged. "But it'll be something to look out for."

"Why does everything always have to be so complicated?" Erin sighed.

"If it weren't, we'd have never met, simple as that." Alex grinned at her. "The complications are what make life fun. I can't say that I like that learning more is always out of reach, but we're getting closer now. I feel like Runa is the key to cracking this entire Roald problem wide open."

Erin didn't think he was wrong, but she was already preparing to be disappointed. It always seemed like what they were looking for was one step out of reach, whether it was Alex's desire to go home or her search for Roald. What if the ship wasn't on the island? What if this was all a dead end and for nothing? Those were the doubts that ate at the back of Erin's mind.

"Look at Sayed and Jean," Alex said. "They're fine living in the moment and just enjoying the journey. I think we could both learn a lot from them."

Erin sighed, but she couldn't disagree.

"I'll think about it," Erin whispered.

They crossed through the park and through a stone arch to the interior of the keep. Massive, long circular hallways with occasional sets of stairs marked the interior of the keep, and Firril led them up a set of stairs and deeper into the keep.