Slowly, her heart returns to a normal pace, the thudding of both its beating and of the heavy steps of the C-class grow quieter with every passing second.

Soon, everything is completely silent again. Everything is completely silent except for the noise of the single humming bi-refractive crystal, laying here somewhere close by. Cautiously Pen gets back up to her throbbing feet, wincing as she does so and looks over the pile of metal and stone rubble she had hid behind; the coast is clear.

Shuffling out, she looks around the space, trying to figure out where the dull buzz is coming from. Heat. She needs heat. Pen steps out of the shadows and heads towards the center of the room, staying still near to the entrance however. The sound is hard to pinpoint as the hum seems to resonate around from everywhere at once. But it does seem to be just a little louder down this way. She hobbles for a minute through the large empty space, trying to find the crystal. The more she walks however, the larger her awe grows at the size of this room.

Even now after minutes she hasn’t managed to get close to the walls on the sides, let alone span the length of the total distance of the hall. Granted her leg is hurt. But what was this place for? They could have fit an entire town in here, no, an entire city. But instead it is empty; empty except for the many heaps of metal and stones broken by a long forgotten skirmish. The hum grows louder, a faint yellow glow catches her eyes.

– A crystal!

Pushing forward as fast as she can with her hurt foot and body, she stops as she sees the shard sticking out from beneath a pile of collapsed rubble from the ceiling. She looks at the old, timeworn, yellow rocks spread out wide over the thing. No. They’re not rocks. They’re bones. A hand.

She flinches and steps back a bit at the sight. Of course there were sometimes bodies in the ruins, mostly from other divers. But that was to be expected, it’s a dangerous job. But this is… old. She had never seen a body before though to begin with. Despite everything. Somehow she had avoided it until now. Pen’s eyes look past the long dead hand reaching out from the rubble, covering the crystal as if to protect it. She takes a deep breath together with a step forward and tells herself that she needs it.

Bending down she grabs the far end of the shard and wraps her own hand around the sleek, humming body, pulling it free from the bones, which slap down to the ground, crumbling into pieces; into dust as they strike from the tiny fall, as if they had just been waiting for the opportunity. It is as if they had been waiting for someone to come by, for someone to take this for them.

A small metal ring clanks against the ground, still attached to a fragment of a bony finger.

Pen holds the new crystal shard tightly against herself, somehow even tighter than the last one and absorbs its deep warmth into her core. The heat. The radiating, streaming heat fills her with life. This one isn’t just warm, it’s hot. Almost painfully so, but she holds it tight anyways and stands there for a moment looking at the ring down at her feet. It is a plain, silver band with no stones and no engravings of any kind that she can see. She takes a deep breath and exhales, seeing her own vapors again now as her worn body quickly warms up.

It’s for her dream. It’s to get out. To escape. To make it. For that place… She nods and bends down. Besides, she already took the crystal so she might as well…

Her fingers grasp the ring and pull it free from the bone that slides out easily, crumbling apart with the rest. Holding it at a slight distance she looks at it curiously. Can she sell this? Probably. She might as well… right? Yeah… Yeah. She might as well. The ring is too big to slide on her own scrawny fingers which aren’t much larger than the skeleton’s, so she instead slips the ring into the single pocket she has on the inside of her ragged, tattered dress. She had added it herself, since the ‘dress’ had had no pockets of its own.

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Letting out a deep breath, the girl turns and walks through the large room, down and away from the entrance and towards whatever lies in the distance. Hopefully there is another way to go, another path. She hugs the crystal tighter, the hum of it present in her body, she can feel its resonance in her bones, in her teeth that seem to hum with it. Their chatter finally starts to stop. It is so warm. It’s about the same size as the last one too. Another good one. She smiles. Another good one.

How long has she been down here now? Only a few hours probably. She wished she had shoes, next time she says. Next time she’ll have shoes.

No.

No. Next time? There won’t be a next time. Pen shakes her head. She’s getting the rest of those crystals and she’s getting out of here. She’s going to the city and she’s going to find that place. She’s going to open that store she’s been dreaming of. There won’t be a next time.

Pen keeps walking. Minutes pass. The room stretches on seemingly forever and she begins to wonder if she’s even going anywhere. But as she moves forward the entire time, something in the distance catches her eye. A large clump of debris before her at the end of her field of vision that keeps growing in size as she approaches. More prominent than all the rest of the mess. A large, hulking silhouette, framed on all sides by bent metal struts, that hold it aloft in midair. It is suspended by many cables and wires, like a bird stuck in a spider’s web.

Pen quickly ducks down and looks forward in surprise as her eyes finally catch what it is. A bot?! She stares at it from the distance, expecting the slit eyes to shine a bright cardinal red and stare her down with a dead gaze. No. No it doesn’t look like a normal bot. It is human in shape, but like a giant of a man; wide and heavy. A dark, gray metal, like that of a tarnished iron, makes up the whole of the body. Slim red markings sit just above the left foot and on the square face of the right shoulder. It is different from the yellowed, once white chitin of all the other bots that she had ever seen. It is less… round. Less polished. More square. More rough. More… heavy.

Arms, each the size of herself, covered in dust, are outstretched to either side of the hulking body with the giant palms of its human hands facing forward, the long legs outstretched to either side like that of a soul ascending to the heavens. Only its head, shaped like that of an angled helm; somewhat like that of a knight’s visor, is cocked forward and slightly downward, drooped, but still gazing straight ahead in its slumber.

It gazes straight towards her with its dormant eyes, that are manifested only in the elongated slit, spanning from one side of the head to the other. Only that part of its pose makes the odd thing seem less surreal.

Creeping out curiously from behind the rubble, Pen walks towards the dead bot. If it was alive, it would have come after her by now. No. This is just another pile of scrap like all the rest. Her eyes curiously look over the suit of armor that could belong to a giant. It was easily a full few heads taller than the biggest person she had ever seen. Let alone wider. A dead bot could be worth money and this hall is littered with them, but she doesn’t have the means to get it or any of them out of here. Bots are heavy, you needed a team of strong men with a wagon and animals just to move a single D-class. She has none of that. All she has is the hot crystal, which is pressed so tightly against herself, that it begins to singe the skin on her fingers and chest.

Stepping closer now, Pen stands before the suspended automata. It really is large. Not even close to the C-class in size but, still. But why is it person shaped? She had never seen a person shaped bot before, she had never heard of such a thing. All of the other bots are more like twisted monsters and animals, like insects or other creatures. They have too many legs and oddly round forms mixed with off-putting geometric shapes and odd appendages with too many ruby-red eyes. This is just… a big person. A big knight.

Quietly she stands there for a moment, staring up at the strange thing.

Her ears perk up and she hears it. The thundering calamity of the metal howl in the distance. The giant C-class from before, having seen something, has triggered an alarm. Thundering heavy steps of the giant returning once again now hammer out around the empty hall. Pen looks around herself, listening in terror as it thunder sback towards the grand hall she finds herself inside of. Why?! Didn’t it leave?! What could ha-

A quiet hiss beneath her foot catches her attention. She sees a faintly glowing red of a long since destroyed bot looking up towards her from the ground. It saw her. A single, disembodied flickering eye, still connected by a single wire to some old heap of metal that focuses on her. With a panicked yelp she stamps down on it with her bare foot, not even noticing the sensation of the breaking glass cutting in her soles, which have long since gone numb again.

Frantically, she looks around for a place to hide, but all the rubble seems so far away from here with the thundering steps ringing in her ears, with both of her feet now shredded. Looking up, her eyes catch something on the back of the suspended bot. A hatch.