Cristin was staring off into the dead forest; the navel had emerged from beyond the horizon a few hours ago, and Cristin was now feeling the fatigue of going through the night without rest. As he felt himself about to doze off, a large hand was placed on the back of his shoulder. Turning over, he saw Ray kneeling next to him.

  “Hey Cristin, about time w—” Ray stopped as they noticed the deep black ovals underneath Cristin’s eyes. With an expression of concern, Ray continued, “you good? You look… rough.”

  Cristin nodded, pushing himself up and out of his bedroll. Looking around, he saw that everyone was preparing for the day to come. The main thing that caught his eye was Porter; he was holding the book Cristin had investigated the night before, flipping through the pages. As Cristin was staring in Porter’s direction, Porter looked up from the book, and—noticing Cristin’s gaze—flashed him a friendly grin.

  Looking quickly away from Porter, Cristin collected his belongings. While rolling up his bedroll, he couldn’t help but wonder if Porter knew that he had rifled through his belongings. Cristin told himself there was no way, but that intrusive thought refused to leave his head.

  As the privateers finished their preparations, Emery stoked the fire, reigniting the flame. From her bag, she retrieved a large assortment of green leaves and threw them over the orange fire. The black smoke emerging from the fire turned white, and after five minutes, Emery put out the flame.

  “Alright,” she said, “the ship knows we’re safe. Let’s get on with this already.”

  Porter nodded, “thanks for that Emery. Let’s check out this building real quick and head on back, alright everyone?”

  The group gave various forms of agreement, and the five privateers once again stepped into the clearing, heading towards the stone structure. With Ray in front, the party reached the building's entrance. Ray grabbed the door's handle and pulled, but was stopped by a thick metal lock.

  “Oh,” Ray said, “didn’t notice that.”

  “Looks like whoever was here before really didn’t want anyone else going in after them,” Emery noted.

  Cristin placed a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “Let me,” he said, stepping in front of them. From his bag, he retrieved his tools and began to pick the lock.

  “Oh,” said Porter, “you can pick locks, Cristin?”

  Cristin paused for a few seconds, internally chiding himself before continuing. “I can, but I’m a bit of a novice,” he lied.

  “Interesting,” Porter responded.

  Cristin continued to twist his tools within the lock, not turning to face the group until—with a soft click—the lock popped open.

  “Cool,” said Ray, “Let’s do this.”

  As Cristin returned to his position at the back of the group, Ray pulled the metal door open, revealing the building's interior. Inside, illuminated by naught but the navel’s rays, the group saw a room filled with broken, wooden furniture on top of a dirt floor. At the center of the room was a wooden trapdoor, slightly obscured by dirt.

  Ray looked around as they stepped into the building, the rest of the group soon following. There was little of interest, at least as far as the five privateers could tell. Emery moved over to the trapdoor and opened it, causing the dirt resting on its surface to slide to the ground.

  As Emery held the trapdoor upwards, she turned towards the group. “Yeah, I think I know what that group was here for,” she said.

  The rest of the group moved to the trapdoor in order to take a look. Looking into the open trapdoor, the group saw an exceptionally deep vertical shaft, with a ladder leading down. The bottom of this hole was shrouded in darkness, but it clearly went down further than fifty feet.

  “Huh,” said Porter, “look’s like we’ll be getting some exercise.”

  At this, Ray moved towards the hole and placed their legs onto the ladder. However, before they could begin climbing, Cristin interrupted them.

  “Wait a second, take this,” he said, retrieving a small oil lantern from his belongings and giving it to Ray.

  Ray nodded, igniting the lantern's flame and placing the metal handle in their mouth. With the lantern now providing them with light, Ray began to rapidly descend the ladder.

  Soon, the remainder of the group followed after Ray, with Cristin at the back. The ladder was completely vertical, causing some of the less physically capable individuals of the group, particularly Cristin, to have some difficulty as they descended. However, after a couple of minutes, the group managed to safely make it to the shaft’s bottom.

  As Cristin’s boots touched the smooth stone surface, he got a look at what had captured the other four’s attention. The five privateers were standing in a clean, dark room. The walls were made entirely of grey stone, and there was a single metal door directly ahead of them. The group was silent, but they each wore similar, uneasy expressions. As the five took in their surroundings, Porter began to whisper.

  “This is odd, huh? Let’s make sure to keep an eye out; there could be dangers down here,” he said quietly. “You good to continue leading the way, Ray?”

  Ray nodded in response and began to quietly move towards the metal door, the other four in tow. Upon reaching the door, Ray grabbed the handle and cautiously cracked the door open. They leaned to the side, peering through the small gap they had created, before opening the door wider and walking in. As the rest of the group followed them in, Cristin looked around in surprise. Inside the room were a multitude of steel countertops, all adorned with various oddities. While it was not Cristin’s field of expertise, he recognized the various tools and oddly-shaped pieces of glass as the tools that one would use for alchemy.

  Upon entering, Ives broke away from the group, immediately moving to a countertop and inspecting the tools.

  “Any of you know what all of this is?” asked Ray

  “A laboratory,” responded Ives in a dry tone.

  “If it's a lab, they must have been working on something, right?” asked Ray.

  “If they were,” responded Emery, “it’s long gone by now.”

  Cristin soon saw what she meant; he had been too surprised to notice at first, but upon closer inspection, it seemed as though this lab had been looted. There were no documents, materials, or anything one would typically expect to find in such a setting, just tools and glassware.

  Porter let out a sigh, “that’s pretty unfortunate, I wish we could at least find out what they were working on here. Oh well, I suppose we should head back to the ship.”

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  At this, the group slowly began to regroup and head towards the exit. However, as Cristin was moving back to the exit, the large rectangular box on his back bumped into a piece of glassware, causing it to fall from the counter and shatter on the stone floor. In surprise, Cristin jolted away from the source of sudden noise and looked at the fallen glass.

  “You good?” asked Ray.

  “Yeah I’m fin—” began Cristin. He stopped himself, however, as he noticed that, below the shattered glass, he could make out something that did not match the rest of the gray stone. Getting on his knees and pushing the glass aside with his gloved hand, he picked up a small key.

  “I don’t think this room is all that’s down here,” he said, standing and showing the rest of the group the key.

  “Do you see a door down here?” asked Emery. “That’s probably just a key for the lock upstairs or something.”

  Cristin shook his head. “That lock had five pins, this key is made for a lock with six. There must be something in here that this key goes to.”

  “Well then,” said Porter with a smile, “this just got a lot more interesting. Let’s start looking, everyone.”

  At this, the five privateers began to investigate the room, looking for any potential use for this key. Eventually, as Emery was investigating a counter, she spotted it. Below one of the counters, a section of the wall was just slightly different in appearance from the stone surrounding it. Placing a hand on that section, she discovered that the section of stone could be slid to the side, revealing a keyhole.

  “Alright, I found what you were mentioning, Cristin,” she said, stepping out from underneath the counter.

  Cristin walked over to where Emery was indicating and climbed under the countertop. Seeing the keyhole, he placed the key into its slot and twisted. As he did so, he felt pressure release from behind the wall and backed up and out from underneath the counter, as a three by five-foot section of the wall began to gently push against the metal countertop.

  Moving aside the metal counter Cristin had been under, the group realized that the key had belonged to a hidden door, nearly indiscernible from the rest of the stone wall. Ray pushed on the stone surface, causing the door to slowly open, revealing yet another exceptionally dark room.

  Immediately after taking in the new sight, however, Cristin, as well as the rest of the privateers, were hit with a wave of sudden stench. Cristin attempted and failed to stifle a gag, as he pulled his cloth mask over his nose.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Cristin with a groan.

  “Smells like death,” responded Ives, seemingly unaffected by the foul odor.

  “Yup, undoubtedly,” affirmed Emery.

  Porter moved closer to the door, peering into the darkness. “I highly doubt the group that came through here before knew about this secret door, we might be able to find something interesting in there.”

  Having mostly collected himself, Cristin piped up. “Do we… want to go in there?” he asked.

  Natalie shrugged. “Better than going back empty-handed.”

  Ives also responded. “I’d like to know what was going on in this lab.”

  Porter smiled at Cristin. “Look’s like you have your answer.”

  Cristin sighed and looked into the dark room; he had gotten used to the smell at least, but he was generally still nervous about the situation.

  Noticing this, Porter walked up to Cristin and placed a hand on his back. “We’ll be making sure you stay safe. Also, it seems like whatever was in there has been dead for quite some time,” he said, directing a soft smile towards Cristin.

  Cristin nodded but took no comfort in Porter’s words.

  Not long after, the five privateers had once again formed a loose line. Ray stood at the front while Cristin remained in the back. As the group stepped through the rather small entrance, they saw a room similar in appearance to the one they had previously been in: stone floors and steel countertops. However, it was significantly larger; some of the further away aspects of the room were not lit by the lantern in Ray’s left hand.

  The countertops were littered with similar items to the previous room. However, in addition to alchemical glassware and tools, there were various substances one would use in alchemy. Due to a lack of labels, Cristin was unable to make out what the materials were, but there seemed to be an exceptional variety of them.

  Looking towards the far end of the room, the group soon discovered the source of the smell. Placed in an orderly fashion was a multitude of cages—at least twenty— of various sizes. Inside the cages, Cristin could just barely see the shapes of dead animals, all in the process of decay. As quickly as he saw what was inside, Cristin looked away, not wanting to get sick again.

  As he turned his gaze away from the cages, Cristin saw a door on the room’s right wall. Soon after, Porter cleared his throat.

  “Alright, let’s start looking around. Ives, I’m sure you have interest in a lot of stuff here, but be careful.”

  The cloaked head of Ives nodded in response.

  As the five dispersed to different parts of the room, Cristin gravitated towards the door he had noticed, wanting to get as far from the cages as possible. Gently opening the door, he looked into a much smaller room. Inside was a wooden desk, on top of which was a stack of papers and an oil lantern. Picking up the lantern, Cristin noticed that it still had a bit of oil in it, and lit it. As the room was filled with the orange glow of the lantern’s flame, Cristin could make out finer details about its contents. The papers appeared to be a few pages of loosely gathered notes and there was a small drawer built into the underside of the desk. Opening the drawer, Cristin saw something that perplexed him.

  Strewn in a disorganized fashion throughout the drawer were a multitude of glass vials, filled with a dark fluid. They varied slightly, some appeared more purple in hue while others were ashy black; each vial was labeled with a number and letter. Not knowing what these vials were, Cristin looked to the papers on the desk, hoping to perhaps find answers within the text.

  Cristin decided to start with the paper on top of the pile. As he picked it up, he noticed that there were two different kinds of penmanship on this page. About half of the text was very poorly written requiring great effort to understand, while the other half displayed excellent penmanship. The first sentence on this paper was written in the former.

  Requesting further assistance from Bermor lab, materials too limited, safety is questionable.

  Bermor—Cristin recognized that term; it was the name of a rather large section of the upper isles. He continued reading as the handwriting then swapped to one far easier to understand.

  Message received, can expect arrival of courier in a period of fifteen to twenty days.

  The handwriting then once again swapped.

  Group F5 unsuccessful, accomplished attunement results in termination of subject shortly after dormancy period.

  Reading this paper was giving Cristin more questions rather than answers. Despite not understanding the text completely, he decided to continue reading. In the neat handwriting, the paper continued.

  Understood, proceed to the next group.

  To Cristin’s surprise, the next line of the paper was once again very easy to read, breaking the loop.

  Location compromised, execute contingency four.

  After this, the remaining section of the paper was completely blank. Cristin read over the paper one more time before drawing any conclusions. Slowly, parts of the note began to make more sense to his sleep-deprived brain. He opened the drawer underneath the desk and—after looking through various glass vials—retrieved one marked F5.

  As he was examining this vial, however, he noticed something in the peripherals of his vision. The desk took up most of the space in this small room. However, in the small gap between the stone wall and the side of the desk, Cristin saw a small keyhole. Cristin, looking for answers, took the key he had found earlier and placed it inside. As Cristin twisted the key, he was pleasantly surprised to feel the shifting of a lock.

  Despite feeling the key function, Cristin did not notice any changes immediately. After looking around quizzically for a few moments, Cristin turned back to the desk, looking back to the papers.

  As he moved to begin reading the second page, however, he heard a loud crash behind him: the sound of metal on stone. Before he could even turn around to identify the source of the noise, he felt something cold and hard grip the back of his head and without any hesitation, slam him into the desk.

  Cristin managed to throw his arms in front of his face just before it made contact with the desk, preventing the worst of the damage. However, the force from his assailant was enough to completely break through the wooden desk. As he was slammed towards the stone floor, he felt shards of glass cut into his face as he broke through the shelf housing the many vials. Finally, when Cristin made contact with the stone floor, his tired body failed him, and he was unable to completely shield his head. As Cristin’s vision slowly went black, he could make out the hectic shouts of the other four privateers.