In complete darkness, Adelle vigorously shook the device in her hand. Click clack click clack click clack. A marvellous little gadget, it was the first time she truly felt excited at having left her forest to explore the world. It was a fine distraction given that she had not seen anything but dirt walls for hours and smelled nothing but mud.

Talia's voice said through the dark, "That should be enough." She stopped shaking. "Flip the switch."

Adelle with her elven vision slightly boosting her sight in the dark, quickly found the synthetic material piece. Flipping the plastic, a bright beam of white light shot out the handheld baton-shaped torch into the ceiling of the cave.

"Alright," Talia noted. "We have light again. Let's move out."

Everyone stood to their feet, but Adelle continued to marvel at the tiny contraption lighting their path in the dark cavern. It had no magic crystals or steam engines to run it. No gears or other overtly complicated mechanics to turn it. It just had something called a battery. When she asked if she should hit the battery, since it was in the name, Luce said to do so only when it was no longer charging properly.

"What did you call this thing again?" she asked.

Josh answered, "A flashlight."

"Wait... it's made from... flesh?"

Luce exclaimed, "No! Flash. As in 'flash of lightning'."

"Oh... yes. That does make more sense." She held the flashlight forward, casting the shadow of Talia in front of her in dancing elongation. "Bottled lightning without crystals. Incredible."

Luce said. "I never knew you could make a face like that."

"Like what?"

"Amazed." Luce smiled.

Adelle clicked her tongue and turned away. It was getting hotter. She wondered if they were nearing the exit. It was supposed to be hotter the further north they got. But she did not see the exit. Could she be embarrassed? No. Impossible. She and Luce traded jabs all the time.

Josh - leading the way alongside Talia - voiced to the main Guide, "I'm surprised you're taking it so well with finding out Adelaide being a sentinel."

Talia scoffed, sweeping aside her blue dipped white hair to rid it of some sweat. "Don't forget. I'm a hume. I was alive before the sentinels disappeared."

"Right. Sorry that my lowly human lifespan couldn't keep up," he replied sarcastically.

Adelle asked, "What happened to the sentinels? Do you remember?"

Talia turned her head back questioningly. "You don't know? How old are you?"

Adelle shrugged. "About two hundred."

"Huh. A baby back then. You must be one of the last baby born of the sentinels. If that's the case, you really deserve the title of Last Sentinel more than Lachesis."

Adelle rolled her eyes. "Just tell me what happened, will you?"

"Fine. No need to be snippy." She let out a whimsical laugh. "I don't know all the details, but before, the sentinels were one of the few people capable of crossing the Helm. They made good money, you know? Bringing supplies and bodies across. That was how we did things for a long time. Smuggling goods and technologies over the border back then was good money. Of course, only a few managed to do so. There were tighter controls then. Less Titan and more foot soldiers. And most of the money was in smuggling weapons, not people."

"What happened then?"

Their footsteps echoed down the cave as the sound of running water reached their ears.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Talia shrugged. "Don't know. One day, the sentinels teleported. And they just never came back. All of them. Thousands of them just vanished without another trace." She paused and even from behind, Adelle could tell she was reminiscing the past. Finally, she continued, "There were theories, you know? That they returned to their own planet or that they were simply mass hallucinations. All hogwash, of course. We knew. We were just trying to make ourselves feel better. It was the same feeling we had throughout this stupid war. They were gone because they were dead. Nothing speaks more to someone's death than never hearing their voices again."

She stopped walking, and everyone halted, waiting for her to speak again or make the next move.

"I'm thirsty," she noted. Taking out her bottle, she drank the last of the water within and turned to a nook in the wall next to her.

It was then they noticed a rope on the wall tied onto a hook, running down the ground into a hole the size of a man's head. Talia started pulling at the rope.

Luce asked, "What are you doing?"

"Refilling my water. There's an underground lake here." The end of the rope came up to a clip and Talia tied her bottle onto it. "This will be the last water point for a while, so drink up while you can."

"What happened to the story!" Adelle exclaimed. "That was seriously anti-climatic."

Talia shrugged. "That's all I know. The sentinels disappeared. We never heard from them since, and no one had managed to cross the Helm after to find out more. At least, that was until you three showed up."

Grumbling at being blued, Luce and Adelle emptied their water-skins into their bellies and passed the skins to Josh who sat next to the hole, pulling the rope up and lowering it back down to fill the containers. Adelle took a seat, leaning against the wall, light from her flashlight dancing against the opposing dirt, painting murals of shadows.

Luce sat down next to her. "What are you thinking about?"

Adelle scoffed. "None about anything. I'm not much of a thinker."

"The sentinels?"

She shrugged. "What am I suppose to think? Never met them. Never knew them. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a wood elf. I'm curious, but what can I do?"

"Not your war?"

"Not my fight," Adelle agreed.

They sat together in silence for a while. Talia squatted down beside Josh and muttered about the changes to the road ahead. It seemed she had been slowly updating Josh on the differences to the continent, getting him ready to take over the lead once they had reached Citi.

"What about back at the mine?" Luce asked. It was the one question Adelle had been quietly trying to dodge.

"What about it?"

"Saving those people."

"I killed them. I thought you were against killing?"

"It's... not that simple. I've killed out of mercy before. It doesn't feel any better, but it's definitely not the same thing as murder in cold blood." Luce looked her way. "You've killed people. And so did those guys."

"Weren't you the one who told me "Murder is murder."?"

"Did it feel the same?"

Adelle shook her head. "No. I don't do it for fun or resources. It had always been for survival. As quick and painless as possible too. We only get to live once. It's... important to protect that life for as long as possible. And when you're about to die, it shouldn't be slow and painful without a sense of self. That bitch, she stole the hearts from those people. Turned them into resources, into... things."

"You'll kill her?"

"If I get the chance? Yes. Definitely."

"Even though it will make you the last of your race?"

"If this is what my kind does, then yes. I'll be more than happy to be the end of it." Just thinking of the level of manipulation Lachesis had put in place got her blood boiling. She decided to change the subject before it cooked. "What about you? You haven't really been yourself since you came back."

The Titan Ranger let out a sigh. "It's... difficult coming back. I ran away from here because I didn't want to fight any longer. But the first thing that greets me when I'm back is being asked to fight again."

She held back wanting to say the deaths were mostly from Titans. "What's it like? I've been through the civil war and revolution, but nothing like this. Nothing as... big in scale."

"It's... horrible. These creatures. These Titans. We give them life, either from machine or magic, then send them out to die. Maybe it's no different from war horses or drakes, but we've given them minds and intelligence to act. Even free will, maybe. Enough so that when they see themselves in the reflection of glass or still water, they'd touch their own faces, as if understanding their own existence."

"They're..."

"Alive," Luce punctuated earnestly. "I'm sure of it. The way they look at us sometimes, as if questioning why they were being sent to death. There aren't as many Titans as there are mortals. So every time we kill a batch, it just feels like genocide."

They lapsed into silence again. Not able to continue, the two simply waiting for Josh to finish filling the water.

Adelle was about to doze off when a small vibration in the ground shook her awake.

"What's that?"

Talia turned with a questioning look. "What's what?"

"That rumbling." Adelle stood to her feet and listened, but could not hear anything. She placed a hand on the wall and felt the tremors again. "There! It's like the ground's shaking."

Luce got to her feet. "I felt that too."

Talia thought for a moment, then exclaimed, "Excavator golems!"

"Minesweepers?" Josh questioned. "But we're barely into Graveyard territory."

"Seracue's been sending out Excavators whenever they've got a footing on Titan's Graveyard. It's an on again off again thing. I think they're not clearing mines so much as trying to dig something out of the dirt."

Josh asked, "Any ideas what that might be?"

"Don't know," Talia shrugged. "Might just be a Titan."