“They say I have to kill you too.”

Lusac didn’t have time to react as Quniwel charged him. He started to run, but the Nemarian used his frog-like legs to spring across the entire distance between them and tackle Lusac to the ground, knocking his air mask to the side.

Yonnex-Quniwel held his industrial all-in cutter in one hand, and while he used his legs to keep Lus pinned to the floor, he drew the sparking end closer, the flames too bright for Lus to see properly.

“Yonnex-Quniwel, what are you doing?” he shouted as he attempted to squirm free of the insanely strong legs keeping his arms at his sides.

The Nemarian didn’t answer, the fire approaching Lusac’s face. As the heat poured over his skin, Lus used the new panic in his body to wriggle one arm out and grab hold of the tool, keeping the flaming knife from touching down and searing him.

They struggled there, Quniwel using his entire weight to shove the tool closer as Lusac’s one hand held him at bay The newly upgraded [Strength] finally acted up, and Lus shoved the all-in cutter to the side, and with the Nemarian off balance, he was able to free himself entirely.

Yonnex-Quniwel attempted to grapple him again, but Lus was prepared this time and dodged to the side as the Nemarian sprung forwards. Quniwel faceplanted onto the stone, and Lusac pulled his blaster out, taking aim at the fallen Nemarian.

“I don’t want to kill you, Quniwel. Just calm down so we can talk about this,” Lusac said with a shaky voice.

Quniwel hissed as he pushed himself off the ground, and Lus pulled the trigger on his gun. A green bolt shot out, missing the target by several yards. Lus was a bad shot, but he wasn’t that bad, not normally at least.

He took several steps back as his enemy advanced, grinning as he held up the all-in cutter. Lusac shot at him several more times, but something was wrong with the blaster. Not one of the bolts went anywhere close to where he wanted.

A quiet beeping drew his attention to the thermometer on his gun which was deep in the red. It was overheating to the point of blowing up. But how? Lus hadn’t released that many shots, had he?

Glancing back up to Yonnex-Quniwel, Lus growled and tossed the gun at him in one last attempt at an offense, and this time his aim was true. It smacked the Nemarian right in the middle of his forehead, and Lus took his chance to start running. The only problem was that an insane Nemarian lay between him and the only path back to the main tunnel where Nippy and Zer-Dasht would be.The sound of blaster exploding echoed through the cavern, but a quick glance back showed that Quniwel remained in one piece.

With survival chief on his mind, Lus ducked into one of the branching corridors, praying to the Watcher he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of his life. He could hear Quniwel coming after him so he pushed himself into an even harder sprint, taking other paths as soon as he could in hopes of losing the Nemarian.

Without his air mask and with all the extra air he was taking in, he didn’t think he’d have long to live in the poisoned mine unless he found his way back to the main tunnel. Still, Lus ran on as the pounding of other footsteps sounded behind him. He didn’t dare look back, but he was certain Quniwel was gaining on him.

His feet kept pushing, and then the next thing he knew, he was falling to the ground, having found one of those tripping hazards that were so plentiful in this section of the mine. Cursing, Lus turned around, certain he could hear the clicking of an all-in cutter from behind, but as he looked around, he discovered himself entirely alone in the corridor. Lantern light spilled unevenly through the corridor, but now that he was sitting, he couldn’t hear any sound of Quniwel.

Taking a breath, Lus calmed his racing heart and started to push himself to his feet when he caught sight of the light glancing off two black eyes in the distance. So he wasn’t safe after all.

But why couldn’t he hear Quniwel any longer? Was the Nemarian really that quiet? Or perhaps the poisoning was getting worse. Lusac scampered to his feet in an instant. He reached for his lantern, but now that he knew Quniwel was so close, he feared he was out of time.

It was then he noticed a strong, metal door embedded in the wall only a few feet down a corridor a couple of yards away. It was a long shot, but he would rather have something like that between him and Yonnex-Quniwel than try to outrun him any longer while breathing in toxic gas.

The Nemarian didn’t have a lantern of his own, which meant without Lusac’s light, they’d both be blind. It would just be a matter of getting to the door before the would-be murderer caught up.

Lus offered one more prayer to the Watcher as he took a leap of faith, slamming his foot against the lantern to break it apart. The light disappeared in an instant, sending him into a void of blackness.

He silently found a wall and started towards where he remembered the door. The sound of Quniwel wandering behind him sent his heart rate skyrocketing, but he kept creeping forward, determined to reach safety before the Nemarian found him.

It seemed to take forever before the wall disappeared, becoming the opening of the corridor, and Lus stepped across it with his hands out in front to grab the next wall. Once he had a feel for that, he crept along to where the door waited. He found that it was unlocked, and he swung it open just enough to get in before closing it as quietly as possible, begging the Watcher to keep Quniwel from hearing.

He leaned back against the door as his heart pounded in his ears, waiting to see if he’d been successful. Seconds crawled by, but he forced himself to wait. The longer he could hold off moving around, the more likely it would be that the Nemarian had gone away.

Several minutes passed like this, with Lus keeping his weight against the door while he waited to see if he’d been successful in his escape. Finally, he decided that it had been long enough that he could safely move about whatever room or tunnel he was in now.

Lus kept his hands wide in front of him, softly swinging around to see what he could feel. Best he could tell, this wasn’t another corridor given the wideness of the space. He was making his way around the perimeter of what seemed to be a room when his foot struck something large and fleshy.

“Ack!” He jumped back in surprise as his hands went into fists. Silently he cursed himself for being so loud.

“Who’s there?” an exhausted, yet startled voice asked from below.

“Wsr? Is that you?” Lusac said in surprise. She didn’t sound well.

“Lusac! Thank the Suns. You’ve got to help me. Yonnex-Quniwel’s gone insane,” the Kremel started. Based on the faint vibrations on the wall and floor, she was adjusting to be more upright.

“I know,” Lus replied with a grimace. “He claimed he killed you and then tried to take me out too.”

“Blast it. I guess that means we aren’t getting out of here anytime soon.”

“We can probably sneak past him in a few minutes. At least if you have a light of some kind. I lost my lantern,” Lusac confessed.

“Yeah. Mine’s nearby. Let me get it on. I was trying to save the battery.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

There was the sound of shuffling from below, and then a dim light shot out from the lantern on the floor, illuminating the room they were hiding in. The walls were the same stone as everywhere in the mine, but there were far more metal beams supporting the ceiling than out in the corridors, and there were even a few light fixtures hanging from the rafters. The far wall where Lus had yet to venture was one large shelving unit, holding hundreds of books, the old, physical kind made out of enhanced paper and metal.

“What is this place?” Lusac wondered aloud as he took in the large desk at the center of the room.

“Some kind of-argh-office,” Wsr said as she sat up further against the wall where she rested.

Lus looked down and gasped. The Kremel was in obvious pain, with her gray skin looking a lot more dull than it should have been. Blood covered much of the front of her uniform, stemming from a gnarly shoulder wound.

“What happened?” he questioned as he swung his backpack off to dig out his medical kit.

“Quniwel and that blasted cutter,” she supplied. I had him walk in front of me to make sure I didn’t leave him behind, and then all of the sudden he turned back with the sparker on and stabbed it into my shoulder.”

“It’s the gas. The mine is filled with carbon monoxide which is why we’re all feeling a little crazy. I guess it affected him more than the rest of us, probably because you two released it all and came to explore the corridors full of it,” Lus explained.

“Carbon monoxide? Lusac, what are you talking about?” Wsr sat up a little more with his help so he could properly apply more bandages than the ones she’d already put on. “And we didn’t release anything. That stone wall was already broken when we arrived.”

“A gas that can be found in mines. It’s odorless and-”

“I know what it is. But that’s not what drove Quniwel insane,” the Kremel cut him off. “Poisoning like that has a lot of other symptoms, like a headache. And don’t forget that our suits are equipped with atmospheric sensors that would have gone off if it detected that kind of thing.”

“The suits must be malfunctioning. It might not be carbon monoxide exactly, but maybe a gas similar that more directly affects the mind,” Lusac argued.

“Maybe, but I can’t imagine all five suits would have malfunctioned,” Wsr said.

“We might find something about it in this room. All those books must have some kind of info about the mine,” Lusac suggested, glancing back over at the shelves.

“Yeah. We should explore it a bit. I didn’t get the chance since I passed out almost as soon as I got in here.” She started to stand but fell back with a grunt.

“I’ll explore it. You rest,” Lus insisted.

He stood up, leaving his backpack by Wsr as he walked over to the books. Grabbing one off the shelf, he opened it to discover a ledger full of numbers. He put that one away, he tried one in a different spot to discover more of the same pages of figures.

“Looks like this office belonged to the accountant,” Lusac explained after he checked a few more. “Just a bunch of numbers.”

“Check the desk,” Wsr urged.

Lusac walked to the worn metal desk. A couple centuries of dust covered the top, obscuring the details of the few objects resting on it. He went around to the back where the chair waited so he could check the drawers as well, but as he pulled the chair away, he discovered a gruesome sight.

“Ugh,” he said, wincing at the dead Nemarian skeleton waiting underneath. A writing utensil stuck out of one of the eye sockets, alluding to its death, and most of its clothing was rotted away.

“What is it?” Wsr sat up, groaning in pain from the motion.

Lus shook his head. “Just a body. But it looks like they stuck a pen through their eye.”

“Or someone else did,” Wsr murmured. “Do you think what’s happening to us happened to the original miners? Nippy said he couldn’t find the reason the mine was abandoned. Maybe it was because some of them went insane and tried to kill each other.”

“But what causes that? People don’t just go insane,” Lusac reminded her. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he tried to keep himself calm. There was no need for him to lose his mind too, not yet at least.

“Maybe this guy left us a clue,” she said, nodding to the desk once again.

Ignoring the skeleton the best he could, Lus started into the drawers. They contained all the remnants of a typical office desk with writing supplies and extra paper but nothing that held the information they wanted.

“Nothing. Sorry, Wsr.” Lusac started to turn away from the desk when there was a flash in the corner of his vision. Out of instinct, he looked directly at the spot, but it was just the old skeleton. Just before he turned away again, he noticed that the body was holding something close to its chest. “Wait a sec.”

Steeling his nerves, Lus leaned down close to the body and reached towards what looked like a notebook of some kind. He gently removed it from the skeletal hand, bringing a few remnants of cloth from the tattered clothing with it.

The dedicated pen location was empty, and it wasn’t hard to figure out where the writing utensil ended up.

Returning Wsr, he slid down the wall to sit next to her, and placed the worn notebook so they could both see it.

“What is this?” he asked as he opened the cover and flipped through the pages, revealing a lot of notes accompanied with a few drawings.

Wsr shook her head. “Some kind of field notes based on the pictures.”

“Let’s start at the end. That will be closest to when the mine was abandoned and our accountant met their unfortunate end,” Lus said as he searched for the final page of writing. It came about three quarters of the way through the notebook and didn’t contain drawings of any kind. “Huh. It’s that old Nemarian so it’s pretty hard to understand.”

“Let me take a crack at it. One of my professors back in school was over a century old so she spoke with a dialect.” Wsr took the book from him. As she scanned the words, her eyebrows scrunched together, but Lus couldn’t decide if it was from trouble deciphering the language or concern from what she read. She flipped back through, reading earlier entries while Lus sat in silence, waiting to hear her summary.

After several minutes, she sighed and leaned back, letting the book fall into her lap. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

“Let’s start with the good,” Lusac said, needing a win after all the troubles they’d been dealing with.

“It’s not gas.”

“So what is it?”

“Aliens,” Wsr said flatly. “At least according to whatever scientist wrote this. They call them ‘Shaquine,’ which means ‘of the shadows’ in the language of the Ancient Ones.”

“‘Shaquine. I’ve never heard of them,” Lus said.

“Me neither, but they seem to be native to this planet, hiding deep underground. At some point the miners found a temple they believed to be constructed by the Ancient Ones, at which point this scientist was called in. It wasn’t long after that some of the workers began reporting strange occurrences like flashes in their vision or feeling something on their skin when there was nothing there.”

“Sounds familiar,” Lusac replied.

“Effects of the Shaquine. The writer theorized that they were more or less invisible, living just out of phase with our own world, so we can only see them in our peripheral vision or feel the faintest touch of them.”

“And that drives us insane?”

“No. At least, not according to this theory. The Shaquine can also mess with our brains, making us see things or lose track of time or hear things that aren’t there. When the first miners went insane, the scientist noted that they all experienced the most fear and anxiety from the incidents. And the trend continued. Those who got the most scared were the next ones to lose it. This guy thought that the Shaquine were intentionally driving people insane in order to gain greater control over their minds,” Wsr finished explaining.

“So we’re up against aliens we can’t detect whose sole goal is to make us crazy so they can use us to kill each other?” Lus summarized. As he spoke, another notification popped up in his vision.

[Quest Complete: A Step in the Shadows]

That was it. The Shaquine were the secret in the mine.

“According to this notebook.”

“That's all we have.” Lusac couldn’t tell her how he was so confident in their discovery, but the implications of what they were up against terrified even more than the gas. These creatures sounded unbeatable. What could they really do against them?

“I’d bet on this theory over the gas,” Wsr said. She shifted and grimaced in pain.

“We have to warn the others,” Lus said, standing up again.

“One problem: Quniwel.”

“You have your blaster. Can’t we shoot him?” Wsr was given a nice blaster unlike the decades-old pistol Lus owned. Well… used to own.

“We can try. I got my pistol out when he first attacked, but the charging was all wrong and the shots never went where I was aiming.”

“That happened to mine too. Another effect of the Shaquine?”

“Probably.”

They didn’t have long to continue brainstorming ideas when the latch on the door clicked. Lus and Wsr stared at each other before Lusac risked turning around as it swung open. Wearing a twisted smile, Yonnex-Quniwel stepped inside, the all-in cutter held high as flames sparked out its end.