There must have been over a hundred rockpools stretched across the cavern, Dez reasoned as she climbed over another – continuing toward the hum of intelligence she sensed. The cavern had remained unchanged, the orange glow of crystals providing a hazy glow, and soon she found that the trail of rockpools was bending around a curvature in the cavern. A sense of excitement drove her and Dez climbed over yet another rocky edge, and sent her golden figure diving into the following pool.
The Del’azza Ka’darn were more than decent swimmers. Their home planet held no continents, at least not in the traditional sense of a large body of land. Instead, it was dotted by small islands, often loosely joined by scattered shoals of white sand. This environment was why she could effortlessly dive down for many minutes at a time, without taking a breath, and it was why she would outpace Earth’s greatest swimmers.
Soon repetition came to an end, and Dez found herself diving into what appeared to be a subterranean lake, separated from the rockpools by a straight edge of rock. The water stretched on and into the dark, forcing Dez to swim further to see where it led. The glowing light above illuminated the land enough that she could see what was immediately in front of her, and some distance ahead, but it quickly faded in the tranquil cavern. Shallowing, Dez found herself kicking up sand, and soon she was forced to walk in knee-high water - tiny fish nipping at her skin in the dark, but crystal clear water. It must have been a couple of hundred meters before the water receded below her ankles, and the sand climbed up a slight bank toward a sandstone wall marked by the same runes and depictions of the tiles up above.
This was where the sensation emanated from, and Dez's heart quickened as she approached. Two massive sandstone pillars stood at either side of a passageway, centered on the wall. Their façades were ornamented by the stone sculptures of foreign insectoids - Dez could not place. Nasty-looking maws covered most of their faces with tiny feeder arms, whilst four wings spread out across their backs. Were these the creatures that build this temple? And if so, where had they all gone? A simple explanation was that they were an extinct race, and Dez was already familiar with how often that occurred across the universe; having been a Lorekeeper, and studying the remnants of multiple long-since-passed races. The Del’azza Ka’darn scout and exploration fleets had discovered dozens of such races over the centuries of their sprawling expansion. But something told her that there was more to the tale of this ancient species.
Eyeing the passage, Dez wished she had another torch. Not that the one she had left in the upper chamber would've been much use after traveling through the water. The glowing crystals above illuminated the wall well enough, but that did not extend into the tomb, and she found herself faced with an impenetrable darkness beyond. Wearily, Dez peered through the arched entrance, hoping to catch sight of something, anything, but it was hopeless. Uncertainty crept into her thoughts, but just as they did, she felt the faint call of the sentient mind beyond. It could guide her, or rather, she could guide herself, listening to the not-yet discernible waves of thought emanating from it.
Reflecting its last shimmer of light as she disappeared into the shadow, Dez's metallic armor lost its sheen to the darkness. It might appear as if the metallic garb Dez wore was some kind of cloth or clothing, as it perfectly molded around her body, barely thicker than a sheet of paper. But it was far more than that. Crafted from Kryralanite alloy, the thin armor that covered Dez from her shoulders, down to her thighs, then starting again to cover her feet in a slipper-like shape, didn’t just provide a shell equivalent to a couple of inches of steel, but also provided a dampening effect against most elements. And if she had been a warrior of the Battlekeepers, it would have covered her completely, and have been crafted several times thicker. Helpful when you're shrouded by darkness, led only by a faint directional awareness of where you should be headed; a directional awareness that provided no help navigating walls and ruined rubble. It did not take long for Dez to stumble into things, and kick discarded slabs of stone, and she was all too happy to be saved the brunt of it by her layer of Kryralanite.
Several minutes passed as Dez descended further into the tomb, its dizzying passageways tricking her senses and leading her to believe she was walking around in circles; if not for the constant reminder of her mark, she would believe those senses.
When a spot of light finally appeared as Dez rounded another corner, her heart picked up once again. Warm light spread out from the room beyond, seeping into the dark passage, urging Dez to charge forward - held back only by the threat of traps. Though, she was not confident in her ability to deal with them either way.
Creeping into the light, Dez found herself in another chamber, brightly lit by another of the orange crystals. However, unlike the tiny shards littered across the cavern ceiling, this one was the size of a football, placed in a socket at the center of the ceiling and surrounded by more runes.
The chamber was perfectly round and lined by more columns, with another entrance similar to the one she had entered through at the other end, and at its center a well-like structure. Stepping with great trepidation, Dez approached. It did not take long to realize it was no well, but rather some kind of alien incubation pod. A hard, unmoving, charcoal cocoon sat beyond a thin film that looked as if it could either be glass or a giant bubble. Green, alien runes covered the rigid shell, and Dez realized she recognized them from the tiles in the upper chamber.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Extending a hand over the half bubble, Dez concentrated her thoughts. This was the source of sentience she had felt. But it was idle. Perhaps because it appeared to be in some kind of cocoon. Or was that what was keeping it alive, whilst its entire species appeared to have faded away around it? If the bubble sealing it in incubation was removed or destroyed, would it die or hatch?
There was no reasonable timeframe where Dez figured out how any of it worked, of course. But she couldn’t just leave this discovery behind. Her instincts told her that whatever this lifeform was, it might be useful to her. That’s what had driven her to this place, to begin with.
Reverting to brute strength wasn’t her style and even the thought of what she was about to do left a bad taste in her mouth. But some things just needed to be done. Raising her hand, Dez brought down an obsidian dagger she had looted from a pygmy against the incubation shield. At first, it seemed like the bubble would just bend along with the dagger's trajectory, appearing to have a rubbery-like texture, but it soon stretched too far and shattered into thousands of pieces like a car window.
Nothing happened, and Dez stood in suspense as she eyed the cocoon for a long moment. Gradually, her breathing returned to normal, and she could sense that the creature’s sentience was still intact. “Come here, little guy,” she whispered as she scooped it up and into her hands.
----------------------------------------
“What happened here,” Odis grimaced, pulling a hand up to his face.
“A massacre, poor little guys didn’t stand a chance,” Kuul replied with a shake of his head. “Did you manage to get anything on them?”
A mechanical band wrapped around Odis’s forearm with several lights lit across it, and a digital screen placed over his wrist – as he brought it to his face, the screen extended out and tilted to a readable angle. “The native Rosette Pygmies of Urdal IV are a stone age period civilization. Classified as an A-tier protected species; in other words, entirely off limits for interaction by spacefaring races. If the anomalies did this...” Odis said, trailing off as he spoke.
“Monsters. Truly despicable.” Said Kuul, crouched beside several corpses that appeared to have been cut down without a fight. “We can't let them leave this area. They’ve got to be brought in, one way or another.”
“Damnit, I hate when I agree with you,” Odis replied with a cough - turning away from a corpse before his guts had a chance to empty themselves.
----------------------------------------
Waiting with nothing to do got awfully boring, awfully quickly for Vern. Worst still, an incessant drip refused to cease, and with it, Vern felt himself maddening. “Why, why, why? You weren’t dripping before, so why now? Why when I’m stuck here, did you feel the need to begin your endless torment?”
The dripping didn’t stop.
Signing, Vern resigned himself to the noise, leaning back to crack his neck. “Click” No, please no. Vern gritted his teeth and slowly looked down. He could see the tile that had been indented when he stood on it, he could also see that his foot now stood halfway between it, and the next tile; and he could also see that the tile was no longer depressed.
“Shit.”
----------------------------------------
I wonder what you are? Dez mused as she held the cocoon up in front of herself. But the thought was cut short as the sound of grinding stone filled the chamber, followed by loose debris and sand cascading down from the ceiling above. “What have you done, humaloid!” Dez hissed as she swung toward the direction she had come, sprinting for the exit.
She still couldn’t see, but at least she had some memory of the way she had come, and did her best to trace her steps, only occasionally crashing into the walls. Battered and bruised, Dez continued stubbornly, but it was of no use. Barely an inch of light escaped the dwindling gap at the bottom of the door by the time it had come into view.
Falling to her knees, Dez realized she had forgotten about the silver shadow. "Idiot," she whispered, the cocoon still wrapped up in her arms. With the passage blocked, once she used the silver shadow, there was a very real chance that whatever else may be locked away in this tomb, might be lost forever.
Almost a minute passed before Dez finally brought herself back to her feet and wandered back to the incubation chamber. Worth trying, she figured as she walked crossed the chamber toward the other passage.
Much like the one she had come through, darkness greeted her, but this time she could already see the light at the end of the passage.
Stinging her eyes briefly, Dez stepped out into the light. It was not the artificial light of the orange crystals, this came from a star. Where was she? The passage had opened up into a vertical cliff face, looking out across to another vertical sheet of rock. It was a ravine – perhaps fifty meters across. A stone stairway had been carved into the rockface and it led down to a platform that hugged the rocky surface.
Steading herself against the strong gusts that whistled through the ravine, Dez carefully began walking the stairs. Without rail nor guard, the edge of the stairway's meter-long width descend hundreds of meters straight down into a vertical drop of which the bottom could not be seen. Edging her head over the precipice gave Dez an instant pang of vertigo. The wind whipped and picked up around Dez, threatening to turn her into a kite. Forced to her knees, Dez made a terrified retreat back to the cliff wall behind her. Forcing herself back to her feet, Dez kept her back against the wall as she meticulously made her way down.
Reaching the natural, rocky platform, Dez realized a cleft separated the rock behind it, creating a hole several meters wide. Eyeing the opening, Dez walked forward, passing a jagged edge of the rock to reveal what lay beyond. Covered in a thick layer of dust, a dilapidated and forgotten curved metal vessel stood upon its mechanical legs. It was a spaceship, a long-abandoned spaceship.