It had been hours since we set out from our first stop, coming to rest again in another room, after I had managed to pry the door open. Inside was another lab, unlike the first we had stopped in, this room was strewn with mechanical parts and schematics, a robotics lab or assembly station of some kind. I checked my timekeeper, 3052. We made planet fall near eight hours ago, and I could tell that Avanna was starting to get tired.

“We’ll break for camp here. I gotta get the next relay booster set up anyway.” I said, setting my pack down.

“Okay.” Avanna replied, her voice hinting to her exhaustion, “My peets were starting to ache.”

“Peets?” I say with a chuckle, turning to face her, “Are you still a pup?”

Avanna went red in the face, throwing a book at me in embarrassment, “YOU TELL NO ONE WHAT I SAID!”

I dodged the book as it hit the wall with a soft clatter, the two of us laughing as Avanna set up camp and I activated the relay, beginning the test I performed with all the others, a signal burst then a second burst before waiting for the same burst pattern from the FOB. When it came in I let out a sigh of relief, Avanna had gotten her sleeping bag unrolled as I returned the book she so graciously pelted at my head. Looking at the spine as I handed it to her I caught a glimpse of the title, ‘The Eternity of Javiis.’ A story known to most Seiran who keep up with popular culture. A collected works of the Eternal Javiis, a Hero during our feudal times, before we even dreamed of travelling the stars. Eternals, as I remember them, are figures from our history, heroes, villains, people of note basically, they performed legendary actions that cemented them as figures we should either aspire to be or learn from.

Avanna gushed on and on about the book, telling me everything up to where she had stopped, where the Good King issued his challenge to Javiis, “Honestly, I always get chills about the clash between Javiis and The Good King. The battle teaching Javiis about the weight of a life and what it means to swing a blade.”

“I always preferred the Eternity of Bedlin myself. I felt the message resonated with me better.” I replied, “Though I’ll be honest, I never figured you for the type of person to enjoy Eternities.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Avanna spoke, “They may not be accurate, but they are our history.” Her eyes bright with excitement before she let out a pronounced yawn, almost immediately apologizing for doing so.

“You get some rest Avanna, I’ll take first watch, I’ll wake you in a few hours for your shift.”

“Alright Terrid, I’ll see you in a few hours then.” Avanna replied, her eyes closing as she tucked into her sleeping bag.

She held out rather well for someones who had never done a field operation, I set an alarm to go off in four hours as I sat in relative silence, being alone with my thoughts was always a sobering thing for me. Letting me think about everything that may happen, reflecting on what has happened and the like. The silence of the room was eerie, the sound of my pile driver function echoed off the walls as I kept testing the speed of the arms primed state. The feeling of the action was strange, the stretching of the digits, the opening of the vents, the entire set of mechanisms and parts moving in tandem came naturally, despite how strange the action of priming the pile driver. I kept watch for the four hours, with nothing occurring during that time, the alarm rang as I woke Avanna.

“Shift change princess. Wake me in four hours and we’ll keep on trekking.” I joked playfully.

“You got it, I’ll try and brew some of this recaff before I wake you up.” Avanna said with a yawn.

“Trust me, that stuff is like drinking a muddy puddle, you’re better off just not drinking it.”

Avanna chuckled as I slid into my sleeping bag, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep. Letting the dark silence of sleep wash over me as I got my rest. My rest was quiet, my mind drifted into a dream, In it I was greeted by a visage of Eragus, countless bodies scattered at his feet a massive structure behind him as something otherworldly and massive looms behind him, its form was incomprehensible, a mass of flesh and appendages that seemed to stretch out for uncountable measures. The thing reached out for me, wrapping its hideous appendages around me, choking the life from me, its flesh enveloping me as the world begins to go dark before I’m jolted awake by the sound of a soothing and gentle voice.

“Terrid! Terrid wake up!” Avanna said shaking me, her voice hushed. “Something’s outside.”

I got up as quickly and quietly as I could, grabbing for my Sunburst and making my way to the side of the door, flicking the safety off. I signalled to Avanna to get clear of the doors line of sight as I readied to open it. With the press of a button the doors slid open revealing a massive mechanical construct easily a good three lengths taller than me looming in hallway. Its form was very blocky and symmetrical, save for what I assumed was its head. A perfect sphere that seemed to be made of a malleable, ever shifting material, it leaned into the room, as its head changed from a sphere to a pyramid and scanned the room. A cone of light swept over the room as the head changed back to a sphere, blinking with multiple colours and shapes and making a series of beeps before trudging alone its path,

the heavy footfalls of the construct trailed away as it worked its way down the halls.

“What in the twelve hell's was that?” Avanna said, her voice in a half whisper.

“I have no idea!” I replied, “But whatever it was we should NOT be here when it comes back.”

We struck camp as quick as we could, knowing that whatever that construct was, it was most assuredly performing patrols. As we hurriedly moved into the hall, rushing further and further down the ruins, sending out the common code for dangerous patrols along the way to base camp. By 0700 hours we had travelled almost 500 lengths from where we made camp, coming across more and more intricate doors, until we came across a massive pair of doors, almost ceremonial is design as we once again took a rest and recouped ourselves. Worrying that the construct would come back this way, we struggled opening the massive doors to this room, with some difficulty we managed to open the doors and entered a massive circular room. Nearly every length of the room was lined with computers, all running diagnostics and calculations with cables running toward a pillar in the centre of the room, the thrum of the systems performing their myriad alien calculations filled the air, as Avanna and I got the door closed we began to examine the room. None of the text on the monitors was familiar to me, despite my upbringing with it ancient languages and archaeological findings.

“Well, I’ve got nothing. I can’t make heads or tails of ANY of this.” I spoke, finally breaking the silence. “What little Vi'Kiiz I remember was pretty rudimentary. How about you Avanna, you’ve poured over my mothers records surely you’ve got a better grasp of their language than I do.”

Avanna studied the screens as best she could, “Only bits and pieces stand out, most of it is ‘output data’ and some values that I can’t make sense of. The only thing that really stands out are on these monitors over here.” she said pointing to two monitors, “The one of the left reads ‘Guardian Status: Standby’ and the one on the right reads ‘Paradox Key: Inert.’.”

“Paradox Key? That sounds important.” I replied, “Let’s see if we can find some more information on what it is.”

Avanna tapped on the console, seeing what she could interact with, even with her limited understanding of the foreign language, after some tinkering. We finally got some information, this “Paradox Key” was one of a set of three paradoxes, things that by definition contradict themselves and thus shouldn’t exist in the physical universe, in theory. These Paradoxes, while not translating to Seiran well, were listed as “The Symphony of Silence, Eternity in an Instant and Everything in one Place.” Each was kept in different parts of the Galaxy for some unlisted reason. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this is why Eragus came to Novux-em. He needed this Paradox Key for some reason. But it’s clear that he didn’t find it. Avanna poured over the data, unable to read most of the Vi’kiiz language.

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“We need to copy this data, I bet Omega-5 could translate it with the records we’ve recovered over the years. Do we have any portable drives?” Avanna asked.

“Our hazard suits are nanite swarms, they could be able to copy the information we need to their own drives securely.” I answered, “We should secure this Paradox Key as well, keeping this away from Eragus should be top priority.”

A slow clap echoed across the room from the entrance, Avanna and spun around, our eyes meeting with a figure we didn’t recognizer at first, until they spoke. “Well done Terrid. You’ve done quite an impressive job of finding the Key for us.”

One of the traitor knights revealed themselves to us, an armoury's worth of weapons pointed at the both of us, their body obscured by a strange shimmer, as if they were being displaced from our vision and perception.

“Vehylin Kaer, is that you?” I asked with a tinge of disgust, almost certain that it was her.

“Why Terrid, if I didn’t know any better I’d almost say you weren’t happy to hear from me.” she spoke, her voice slightly warped.

“Drop your Obscura and show your face you cowardly little heiress.” I taunted.

The shimmer faded, a lithe woman standing before us, her hair short and neat as she wore the traditional Knight’s armour, save for the Seiran Empire insignia being crossed out. A wiry smile was spread across her face as she mocking bowed toward the princess, “Princess Avanna, how lovely to finally meet you.”

“Enough of the nonsense Kaer. How long have you and your traitors been on Novux-em?” I spat, subtlety reaching for the Sunburst.

“Been on... Oh that’s right! Logyn left you the first clue.” Vehylin spoke, “None of us are here, Just me! A fun little Wildfael chase, but not one of the Knights are here, well, other than me of course. Well there is Jitt, but I... oops, don’t want to give away the surprise.” a twitch of her fingers trained the weapons on me.

“Wait, you’ve been here for three months on the random chance I survived my encounter with Eragus...” I questioned

“More or less, The system’s been abandoned due to those fun solar storms that kick up every few weeks. Screws with instruments.”

Half of her weapons shifted toward Avanna, “Be a good girl and open the case for me, and I’ll make sure you both die painlessly.”

Avanna turned to me, a worried expression on her face as she began to type away at the console, a series of alarms began to blare as screens flashed red with Vi'Kiiz script which I’m only assuming read out some kind of warning. The case around the paradox key let out a hiss as the metallic shielding lowered. A faint glow emanated from the case revealing a crystal shaped into an aesthetically perfect diamond. Its material was translucent, yet the inside flowed with a black light. Not like an ultraviolet light, a light that was black. It made no sense, it was confusing, paradoxical and yet, awe-inspiring.

My awe was interrupted but the clatter of Vehylin’s weapons hitting the ground and Avanna letting out a shriek of pain as she clutched her head, as if something were attacking her mind, in her panic she activated her Hazard suit, hoping that it would protect her, but the nanite swarm wouldn’t activate. I turned to tend to Avanna, I saw that Vehylin was in the same throes, drawing the Sunburst I pointed it at Vehylin and pulled the trigger, to no avail, whatever was keeping Avanna from activating her Hazard suit and assaulting her mind was also keeping me from using my firearms.

Wasting no time I rushed toward Vehylin, stopping dead in front of her and landing a punch square into her chest, the recoil of my strike running through my arm, Vehylin slid back as I followed up my first attack with another, landing blow after blow as I bloodied my knuckles against her. She got to her feet, raising her guard, a look of frustration on her face as tried to vanish from sight and being unable to do so, but no longer in excruciating agony, whatever that Paradox Key was doing to her had a range of intensity, but that didn’t matter, Vehylin was the priority.

She wasn’t the best close combat fighter, but she could still hold her own. In a flash she lunged looking to catch me in the chest, pivoting, I hit her with the back of my hand. Stumbling as she fumbled with something under her breastplate, revealing a combat knife, sharpened to a point and ready to tear into me, Vehylin rushed me yet again, slicing for my chest, I dodged as many of her desperate flurry of strikes before finally feeling her cut into my chest, drawing blood. She over-confidently rushed in a final time, ready to drive her knife into my chest and finish me off, I fell backwards, catching myself on my hands and springing off them driving my legs into her chest with all my force and knocking the wind out of her.

Vehylin lay on the ground gasping for air as I flicked the wrist of my right arm, much like it did in the training simulator, the vents on the forearm opened and began to glow red with heat as the impact rod shot out of my elbow, I grabbed Vehylin by the head, putting my whole weight on to her body as my fingers locked in place, the ejection port on my hand widening as I stared down at Vehylin.

“Vehylin Kaer, you are guilty of treason, attempted murder of an Imperial Knight and the attempted murder of a member of the Royal family, and are to be sentenced to death. You will forever be remembered as a traitor and will die with no honour to your name. What say you?” I spoke, reciting the executioners oath.

“Eragus Krei will free us from our suffering. I die in his glory!” she spat through a broken jaw, before she simply began laughing manically only for her to be interrupted by a click, a hiss, and finally a loud, echoing bang as the impact rod fired into and through Vehylin’s skull, killing her instantly. I got up, staring down at the now perforated head of one of my past comrade.

Running back into the chamber with the Paradox Key, ran over to the console Avanna was slumped against, she must’ve passed out from the pain the object was causing her, as I tried to raise it’s shielding, succeeding after a few attempts.

I looked over the shielded case, knowing that this is what we were after, I needed to retrieve it, and should the case be breached again, it could cause more harm to Avanna, let alone the entire staff of the Seleucia. As I tried digging through the console, trying to recollect what little I remember of the Vi’kiiz language, a loud thud could be heard intermittently between the blaring sirens. I finally managed to turn off the alarm only to have a shadow darken the entrance of the lab, a hulking frame, one I almost immediately recognized, The construct from before. It’s head pulsing erratically, almost as if was alerted or angry, and staring straight at me. In the instant I activated my hazard suit, as the black armour formed around my body the construct raised an arm and extended it into my right shoulder, what was once a dull appendage was sharpened to a fine point, like a blade.

The Construct let out an announcement in Vi’kiiz, “To’varan estra noxde. To’varan estra noxde. Reti’can vol’kirik keer.” I didn’t recognize the words at first, but as the Construct moved closer its head seemed to calm down no longer pulsing and returned to its original pacified shimmer, the appendage withdrew from my shoulder and returned to a dull cuboid shape. “Target identified as non-hostile, language incorporated from nearby nanoswarm. No permanent damage dealt to target. This unit apologizes for sudden and violent means of suppression.”

The shape of the hole the construct left in my suit was the same as the neck wounds as the Ankarii and Traitors near the entrance. “What are you?” I asked the now docile construct.

“This Unit is designated Defence Sentry Unit 226-Alpha.” The Construct spoke, “You have defended the Paradox Key from the hostile intruder. This Unit apologizes for the hostility.”

“The beings here before us... did you kill them?” I asked, “Did you harm any of the others who arrived recently?”

“This unit dispatched hostile reptilian and mammalian intruders when originally encountered. Request for intruders to vacate facility was denied, This Unit was met with hostility, Hostiles were dispatched. Not before absconding with cloning technology. New lifeforms were observed from a distance, determined non-hostile.” it answered as it withdrew from me, moving toward the pylon containing the Paradox Key, as a red light scanned over Avanna from its head, “Lifeform vital signs nominal, psionic stress receding. Warrior life form, This Unit must fulfill protocol, Research and containment centre Novux-em is no longer suitable for Paradox Key containment. Requesting transportation of containment pylon to Secondary containment site, designated ‘Library’.”

“What is this Paradox Key, why does it need to be moved?” I asked, hoping to learn more.

“This Unit is unable to relay requested information information, Delivering the Paradox Key to the Library will provide lifeform with necessary information. Nanoswarm has been updated with stellar coordinates and access code to star system.” The construct responded as it interfaced with the pylon’s terminal, ejecting the contained paradox key. “This Unit shall deliver the Paradox Key to the lifeforms near the entrance, Female lifeform will need assistance due to psionic stress upon regained consciousness.”

“Before you approach the forward operations base, broadcast code 8929 on all frequencies. It will signify you as a non-hostile.“I warned, knowing that without a recent check in form Avanna and I the FoB would most assuredly be on high alert for anything that arrive.

The construct lumbered away with an understanding chirp, the pylon in hand, I disengaged my hazard suit, the nanoswarm retreating into it’s wrist band shape. Rushing to Avanna’s side as she began to come round, letting out a groan as she stumbled to her feet, catching her as she stood up. I filled her in on what had happened as I helped regain her balance.

“So that... machine, we saw before is some kind of automated security drone? And it wants us to take the Paradox Key to this ‘Library’...” She repeated, “And you did what to Vehylin?”

“I perforated her skull with the pile bunker in my arm.” I said as I deployed the pile bunker, the impact rod shooting out of my palm.

“But... the Keren Tai... Why didn’t you...” she asked, still somewhat dazed.

“Yeah, I don’t think the last living loyal knight would be very trustworthy if he painted the walls of a training simulator with the crown princess’s brain.” I teased, “Besides, even if I didn’t hold back. I know you were holding back too.”

Avanna avoided my gaze, trying to hide an embarrassed smile. Able to stand on her own again, we made our way out of the laboratory room, stepping over the pool of blood and bone that was Vehylin. We made our way back to the Forward Operating Base, our objective on Novux-em was completed, but the mission was not closer to being finished.