From such a distance, Vayra couldn’t make out who the voice belonged to. She feared that it might have been Nathariel’s, or maybe Glade’s. But if those two were going to chase her, they’d have come from behind.

She stood up and ducked into an alcove, where it would be harder for anyone to see her. Then she pulled her scarf off and stuffed it into her boots, stopping the stars from glimmering. As long as she stayed perfectly still…

‘And veil your spirit,’ Phasoné said.

…and kept her breaths tight and restrained, so no Arcara could move through her body, no one would see or sense her.

The voice drew nearer. There was a pair of them, a man and a woman, talking to each other. Soon, a bluish-green glimmer filled the hallway. They had a light of their own. Vayra tucked herself further back into the alcove.

“…need to go deeper if we want to find anything,” said the woman. She held a vial of glowing turquoise liquid ahead of her, illuminating only the center of the hallway. It was barely enough for Vayra to see her in. She wore a brown tunic and a sash, coloured with vibrant lines—white, yellow, red, and blue.

The man wore a sleeveless shirt, and he carried a pair of muskets on his back. He glanced at his companion and said, “Ahead. There should be a few trails down, if we keep heading onwards.”

‘They’re from the Chambers Company,’ Phasoné said. ‘Low stage God-heirs in the Company, likely being tested.’

Vayra didn’t dare raise her voice to speak. Instead, she directed her thoughts at Phasoné: I thought they were supposed to be alone. The doors only let one in at a time in.

‘The doors can stop them from entering together. There’s nothing to stop them from meeting up with each other after they’ve entered.’

Should we be worried, then? Vayra asked mentally. If they survived long enough to meet up…

‘Scan their spirits. I don’t know who they are, and they aren’t using any magic.’

How?

‘Use your spiritual vision. I’ll guide you through it. As long as they aren’t veiling their cores, you should be able to see them.’

Vayra tightened the muscles around her eyes, and imagined she was putting on a pair of eyeglasses. Vibrant colours bled into the walls, like someone had danced through the chambers with bright red and orange paintbrushes. Vayra winced, shocked by how bright it was. It wasn’t nearly as bright at the Arcara storage room, no, but it was almost as bright as day.

‘That’s what’s left of the flame-Arcara the dragons used to build this place with,’ Phasoné told her. ‘Now, look at the two Companymen.’

Vayra found the two people, now silhouettes by comparison. How do I see their cores? she inquired.

‘Imagine you’re tracing Arcara through their channels with your imagination.’ Phasoné paused, as if waiting for Vayra to respond. ‘Trace it down through their body, through their channels, and into their core. You should be able to feel how strong they are.’

Vayra tried, but compared to their surroundings, these two companymen just looked black. Were they veiling their spirits?

‘No, they’re not. They’re breathing too deeply for that. Concentrate.’

Vayra turned her gaze to their heads. Their eyes glimmered with colour—just a little bit—and she thought it might have been their eyes reflecting the light. But…the light was turquoise, not faint purple.

Their eyes were the window into their bodies. She stared and focussed, and hard as she could, then extended her imagination and perception into their bodies. Their channels were both filled with a shade of purple Arcara, which she traced down to their cores.

Their cores, fist-sized balls of purple magical energy, swirled. She couldn’t read it, but she could compare it to her own. It felt…slightly stronger, slightly fuller, but not an entire stage ahead. She knew the difference between Master’s Mate and Master, so she applied the same to these cores.

‘So they’re Masters too,’ Phasoné said.

Could their cores be stronger than mine? thought Vayra.

‘Do they feel an entire stage stronger?’

No.

‘Then they’re not. Your instincts are a powerful tool, so use them.’

Vayra started to nod, then caught herself. She didn’t want to move at all. She loosened her face, letting go of the spiritual vision, and held her breath.

“Did you feel that?” the man asked. His head flicked back and forth, and Vayra’s stomach dropped. Maybe he was friendly, and maybe he wasn’t. But she wasn’t part of the company, and that might make them rivals. “Someone scanned our spirits.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Let’s keep moving,” the woman replied. “I heard that Myrrir’s taken the Narvelpeare Facility. There’s something goin’ on on this planet, and I don’t really wanna be a part of it. Just go deeper and wait it out.”

They walked down the tunnel at a brisk pace, and Vayra never saw them again.

Once she was certain they had passed, she took a deep breath and let a smile bleed onto her face. The Narvelpeare Facility? Knowing its name would make it much, much easier to find. She’d find it faster than Wren and Myrrir were expecting her to…

Maybe Vayra would be the one to surprise them, after all.

[https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_2bcdeab6626a49c1bc2fa21d230a67c6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_560,h_281,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/ship%20better.png]

Myrrir paced back and forth across the control deck of the mining facility. The facility owners had begrudgingly given him a corner of the control room, where he and his sailors had set up a table for maps and other sheets of parchment. Tye wrote out plans and documented all the possible ways this could go wrong.

He was being hyper-cautious. But Myrrir also didn’t mind planning around Tye’s worst scenarios. It gave him something to think about as he paced, waiting for Vayra to arrive.

The control room was a broad rectangular room with a low ceiling. Its walls sloped outwards, with orange glass windows interspersed every few feet to give the workers inside a view of the mining facility.

And it was quite the view. A few hours ago, a volcano erupted, pouring lava down the riverbed in front of the facility. Long spindly arms of Arcara-enchanted metal hung outwards over the river, and the most daring workers dangled nets off into the flow. They fished out patches of dark rock, which glowed blue when Myrrir observed them with his spiritual sight.

Some sort of valuable, mana-soaked material. Perhaps they were chunks of the Chambers’ walls, or maybe a really powerful and deeply-buried treasure was bleeding into the magma, sharing its mana.

Myrrir stopped pacing and walked closer to the window, watching the workers with a deep curiosity. Even though they all knew he was here, using this facility as bait, they kept doing their jobs.

Brave, though if he was them, he’d have left already and started looking for a new job.

Their foremen called out orders and pointed to the biggest patches of dark material in the flow. They couldn’t have had spiritual vision, but they must have known precisely what types of stone to look for.

When he grew tired of watching, he turned back and walked across, where workers in the control room scratched down tallies on sheets of parchment or made note of workers who were pushing themselves especially hard. A few times, one of them even had to run to the lava-flow-facing wall and shout orders into a brass cone.

The most important duty of the control room workers, however, seemed to be pouring Stream water onto rune-lines to fuel them. The mana ran along the lines, following simple runes whose only purpose was conductance, until they reached the enchanted panels that guarded the facility from the flow’s heat.

Myrrir returned to the table where Tye and the others stood. Tye scrawled down another scenario on a sheet of parchment, while an oceanfolk woman with gills on the side of her head ran her scaly finger down a map.

“If the Mediator never comes,” Tye said, “your father will be most displeased with this occupation.”

“What more can he do to me?” Myrrir asked, circling around the table before dropping down in a chair on the far side. A lantern hung from the roof, swaying.

“He could kill you,” Tye stated, his expression calm but intense.

“He doesn’t have to know about this, then.”

“Karmion may hear about it. We are on the north side of the mountains, and news travels faster.”

Myrrir shook his head. “The Mediator will come. I’m certain. I know it.” He leaned back in his chair and feigned nonchalance by putting his hands behind his head. “She’ll want to rescue her friends. She’ll be drawn to them.”

Tye tapped his quill against the page, putting a blot of ink in the corner. “What if she never finds out?”

“Wren will tell her,” said Myrrir. “That ‘not a God-heir’ is practically made of spite, and I know she thinks she’s screwing me. Or Karmion. Or Nathariel, or whoever she’s decided to hold a grudge against.”

“You know her?”

“She was following us all the way here, then she fluttered off. It’s only a matter of time before she tells the Mediator, and only a matter of—”

A bell clanged, cutting Myrrir off. He cast off his indifference and hopped to his feet. Was the Mediator here?

The bell kept tolling. Myrrir leapt over the table, scattering the maps and spilling Tye’s inkwell, then ran towards the stairwell that led down through the facility. He had posted sentries at each of the facility’s corners; nothing should have slipped past!

Before he reached the stairwell, a few people sprinted up it. First, an ash-smeared worker, then a one of Myrrir’s pirates. She was a half-goblin, and her hundreds of facial piercings clinked and clattered as she panted. Instead of carrying her musket on her back, she held it in her hands, and it was cocked.

“Captain!” she panted. “The prisoners are gone.”

Myrrir felt his calm expression melting, and he couldn’t control it. His eyebrows scrunched.

“Captain?” the half-goblin pirate asked again. Her pointed ears drooped.

“Gone?” Myrrir asked. “What do you mean?”

“They aren’t in the storage compartments! The doors are all open, and the Harmony’s crew is gone!”

Myrrir pushed past her and sprinted down the stairs. The bell tolled a few more times before falling silent. He took the stairs to their bottom, past the bedraggled, sweaty workers and down into the facility’s basement. He turned down a hallway, pushing through another crowd of workers. A pair of his pirates stood on either side of the hallway, holding their pistols up and ready.

“This way,” he snapped. They turned down the last hallway, pushed open a pair of doors, then arrived in front of the storage rooms. As promised, all of them were empty.

He walked down the hallway, eyes scanning side-to-side. After a few minutes, he heard another set of bootsteps. Someone stood at the doorway. Myrrir looked back and grimaced. “So, Tye? Did you have a contingency for this?”

The old man chuckled. “None is needed. You have set the ball rolling, and there is little you can do to stop it. As long as the Mediator doesn’t find her crew first, she will still come here.”

“But—”

“Do you think she helped them?” Tye asked, walking down the hall. He ran his hand along one of the storage compartments. “She would have cut them open, but there’s no sign of her magic. She still thinks they’re here, and all we have to do is wait.”