The crew stared at the double doors in hushed awe.

Kalani was an unbridled ball of excitement since Elena stirred from her slumber and that wave of energy soon roused the rest of the crew from their deep sleep.

Aurelio recognized the image on the door all too well.

“What was it like down there?” Aurelio asked Kalani.

“I didn’t stay down there for long but it was… immense. Everything down there was much larger than I had expected.” Kalani replied.

And she’d gone there without a suit. And returned just fine.

This was yet another variable up for consideration between the board game and the actual world that Aurelio would need to wrestle with. The implications of her brief voyage suggested a lot in and of themselves if he could find a way to take advantage of it.

“Why’d you go in without the rest of us?” Elena directed her glare at her captain.

Kalani recoiled, “Well I was a bit restless and I found the gate and I couldn’t just ignore the invitation to enter the tunnel once they lit up the path for me.” Elena did not ease up on her open displeasure for the captain's actions.

Phineas lightly elbowed Aurelio, “So where does this tunnel lead, o wise one?”

Aurelio chuckled, “Well Phin, this was the set of double doors I asked you to find in the outpost.” He looked towards the rest of the group, “This entrance gives us access to the Night Glass Catacombs.”

“Is that what it's called…” Kalani trailed off, staring at the inert stones on the etched figure. She pointed a finger at the figure, careful not to touch the rock, “And who’s this creature in the center?”

“She’s the Radiance. Or at least that’s the name that I know her with.” Aurelio answered.

“I won’t even ask if the bitch is friendly.” Phineas sighed, already foretelling Aurelio’s next bit of information.

“As Phineas has noted. She’s not friendly and we’ll definitely have to confront her when the time comes.” He shuddered. The first time they encountered the Radiance in the board game, his younger brother and he lost three characters to a core meltdown across three turns. Aurelio could only imagine what kind of fight it’d be now that the system was different.

Kalani nodded. Her eyes registered something else from his explanation but she didn’t share with the rest of the group and Aurelio was not about to pry and destroy what little goodwill he’d gained.

The crew eventually left the entrance behind and prepared their provisions for the next venture.

“Why aren’t you getting in the suit?” Phineas asked Aurelio.

Kalani raised an eyebrow at the development.

He shrugged, “You all need to go on the next mission while I commit to learning as much as I can within the Archives.” Where there were books, there was knowledge. And although the {Archives} innovation only offered a shuffling option to the innovation selection in future solar cycles, his recent experiences in the world and his brief glimpse of the obsidian slates insinuated there was more potential there.

“Do you think I’m going to give this crew's valuable asset permission to sit the mission out?” Kalani asked in a combative tone.

Aurelio held up his hands, “Look, I get that I’m important here but I’m not sitting down and cozying up with a good slab of stone while you all fight things out with another Vessel.” He waited for Kalani to pull away from him before continuing, “It’d benefit you guys to go alone as a crew and suss out the experience without me. I want to know how your mission goes without my involvement so I can have a control group to compare a couple of variables that have been bothering me.”

The main variable on that list was assessing how the surveying phase for the crew went without his ability to bend fate. Whether events could repeat like they were bound to do in the board game. Whether combat retained a turn based, tactical feel to it while they fought or if this was the system bringing combat to the board games level for him.

A flock of birds killed with one stone.

Kalani relented, “You’re only getting off this time, Aurelio. And when we come back, you better have a report on your findings prepared and organized for us.” She forcefully thrusted her arm into the opening of the exo-suit, “And make an alphabet the rest of us can use. If we’re gonna have people sitting around this place, the least they can do is read through the archives.”

That got a groan from Phineas. Elena and Cantwell remained silent.

Aurelio handed his [Ember Lance] to Kalani, “You’ll be able to make better use of this out there than I will in here. Hopefully your haul’s good enough that I can make you something more up your alley.”

She grabbed the weapon and inspected it for a moment before throwing it onto her back.

“Anything we should be aware of out there?” Elena asked in a terse tone.

He shook his head, “Nothing that you guys wouldn’t avoid already. Make sure that you look out for storms and if anyone in the group starts acting funky, make note of it and inform me of the situation alone.”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Eventually the crew left him behind, walking through the eastern gates towards the mire, disappearing from view once they crossed through the dense threshold of metallic pines.

---

His first task of coming up with an alphabetical reference proved to be much more difficult than he had anticipated. He’d expected to make a rudimentary reference sheet with a series of runes connected to letters but the process was uncooperative.

His ability was altering the runes from his perception faster than he could sketch out their form. The task was going to require a second person to pen down the shapes for Aurelio to give it a translation.

His second task of contextualizing the runes that didn’t fall under the purview of his ability remained cryptic despite the fragments of legible script surrounding them. There were a number of books where the runes simply refused to translate, as obstinate and impassive as the stone they were etched into.

“Well fuck,” Aurelio mumbled, “I guess this has got to be done the ol’ fashion way.”

The third task pertaining to the library; his perusal of the various slates in the shelves, illuminated more answers than questions this time around.

His initial impression of the archives when they’d first entered its dusty domain was that some history of the outside world did exist but that the system was not registered for his scrutiny and he would eventually find slabs full of nonsensical text or ‘lorem ipsum’ placeholders taking up a lions share of the space.

His assessment was wholly false.

Slate spine after slate spine, the legible titles proved to contain information on the outside world, the thoughts of the author, scientific hypotheses, and a whole host of other topics that varied in how alien they were to conceptualize. Referring to the list of former scribes in the archives, it was even possible to find their materials squirreled away across various shelves of the old building. There was a zealous conviction in the way these scribes had needled into their respective topics of interest. Jad Salizar, for example, was completely consumed by the topics of heresy and the edicts that commanded them on the Great Rusted Plains.

Or the works of Qt’Walz, a name that he wasn’t sure how to pronounce but was assured of their importance when considering their prolific entries on the rise of the empire that dwelled ruined in the planet's underbelly. The author in question was having his oral history transcribed by another, marks on the stone denoting pauses in Qt’Walz as well as observational notes on the temperament of the subject when recalling certain aspects of this subterranean kingdom.

Of the material he remembered in the tabletop game and its supplementary works, they’d often referred to the scavengers and the time they inhabited as the ‘11th era’ of space exploration. There’d been allusions to what the other era’s were about but nothing concrete for Aurelio to sink his teeth into.

Until now.

The era’s in the world were demarcated by a rather morbid event from his understanding; at some point during humanity's space faring adventures, there was a mass culling event that’d leave the bulk of humanity disconnected and gone.

The culling event was always the same but never specific. There were humans in one location and then the next minute, they’d disappeared off the face of the universe, their empires and space stations left to sit and decay with the advancement of time.

One of the authors chronicling this phenomenon from the 10th era referred to this as the ‘Great Reset’ or the ‘Great Filter’, the parameters for remaining in the universe versus which humans got to disappear being unknown.

Historical institutions advised councils of interplanetary governments to enact aversive measures to prevent another cull, such as population quotas or limiting the number of universal space-faring ships across the cosmos.

Others recommended leaving behind a comprehensive starter kit for the next generation within planets and space stations, either viewing the continuation of the human species as an essential motivation in and of itself, or giving humanity a head start to reach the edges of space in search of an answer before another culling event occurred.

Some created pantheons to the old humans and their bygone empires while others personified the event as some equalizing deity, pruning the world of its decadence to humble humanity towards simpler earthen pleasures.

Aurelio found a sliver of stone etched with the thoughts of a scribe on the topic; “The universe only whispers, their children snuffed out to make room for silence.”

He inferred from the level of upkeep of records from era to era that the archives and its scribes were most prominent in the eighth era. A bulk of their records were defensive logs noting their fortifications and the conflict the humans would have with the autonomous creatures of the planet.

Braver folk would venture down into the catacombs to chronicle the slow decay of the monolid empire contained within the earth, their bodies torn apart by ethereal and cunning monsters, their flames drained of their essence so only rubble would remain.

Aurelio piled slate after slate onto the table in the center of the room until a sizable stack had formed. There was a lot he was curious about and the bulk of the tower was dedicated towards satisfying his curiosity but he was a man possessed on gaining new applicable knowledge.

The moment he introduced Phineas to the radar had not escaped him. There were other biomes on the planet that he was unfamiliar with and their presence meant something.

When scouring through the shelf after shelf of obsidian slabs did not yield results, he changed his behavior and searched for a registry. An archive was bound to contain a list of all recorded entries, which would make sorting by era or topic a breeze.

Aurelio went back to the table and considered the radar's mechanisms for activation. He searched for a smooth indentation in the grand table and found it at the table's end.

He took a deep breath and pressed his hand on his chest, a gout of cerulean flame coiling up into a ball in the palm of his hand. He pressed the mote of flame into the indentation and the table roared to life. The smooth black pane filled up with stars.

At the table's end where he stood was a small rectangle he intuitively knew to be the archives query mechanism.

He thought of the topics that he was interested in and found the system to be unresponsive. When that didn’t work, he searched for an interface of some kind and found nothing.

“Archives, are there books on the biomes of this planet?” Aurelio audibly asked.

The rectangular query mechanism closed and then opened.

“Unauthorized access of the repositories search function. Please defer to a Scribe for assistance.” the archives message read.

“Son of a bitch.” Aurelio whispered.

This was a minor setback. His crew was going to be on their mission for a long enough time. He was willing to dedicate as much time as possible towards figuring out the intricacies of the archives internal systems.