When he thinks about it, Drenar realizes she makes a good point. He had his dreaded suspicion that the mine had been closed for this specific reason, to avoid drawing attention. An abandoned site far away from town, that no one would cross paths with unwittingly. Now they had proof that these people had been victims of a dark fate.

"The more time we spend here, the more I worry we run into someone.” He takes one last look at the bones, and he offers a small bow and a hand to his chest. "I don't know who you were, I don't know if there's a life beyond this mortal coil. But I'll bring the people who left you like this to justice. If I can," he says solemnly. Julia beckons him over, and he turns to leave. Angela however, has an idea and snaps her fingers. “What, thought of something?”

"I had an idea. I think the power flow was going away from the sphere. The wires were hotter the closer we came to it. This may have been used in furtherance of something else. As a power source, just like that weird crystal in a tube. The texture looks almost the same, but this crystal is pure black. Look!" She compares it to the small crystal in the mini power pack they had taken earlier. It is rather uncanny.

"So what were they powering? They already had one source we don't know the limits of,” Drenar points out. “Unless this was some kind of secondary objective. Like, they stumbled onto it, but used it for some primary task?”

“Oh, this had to have been a priority for them to torch five guys, and then pass it off as an industrial accident. Some of those tunnels had a lot of debris, as if they collapsed it to stage an accident, then cleared it later?” Julia theorizes. “With a crew of dragons, you could clear a lot of debris in a hurry. It’s a little close quarters here, but some of these caverns are seven, ten meters high.”

The radio Angela had picked up earlier suddenly crackles to life. “Karl, demo charges are in place, want me to pull the trigger on the lowest levels?” Angela hurriedly turned the volume down–the last thing they wanted to do was telegraph their position.

“Take a count. See how many people report in,” he says quickly.

“No. Not until we’re all out, this place already has structural damage, wait until we’re out,” someone else counters. “Greg, get back up here to the refinement section, help us load the last cargo into the transport. Robespierre is getting anxious.”

“That’s nice Nigel. I’m anxious. No, I’m more like terrified–”

“Cut the commentary. The shroud enchantment on the iso-sphere is failing, and it’s failing fast. We’ve got maybe twelve hours before the Conclave gets a reading on it, and when they find it empty, there is going to be a panic, and every SAF trooper from here to Boston is going to be crawling up in our business. Get up here and help us pack, now.”

“Why the urgency? Did Val screw us yet again?”

“Yes–no–I don’t know. All I know is that our cover guys that were getting all that blood sample work done at Delta Tech cut out, someone tracked the records. Last I heard, SAF was crawling all over there, and we’re lucky they don’t know where we’re set up!”

“What?! Jimmy and Richard were over there!”

“I know, Robespierre is going to skin those idiots alive, they were supposed to be as low profile as a corpse in a coffin, and yet, they managed to screw that up!” the other man replies irately.

“Gentlemen, I appreciate my associates using the highly secured communications relay as an impromptu forum board, but we have objectives to finish. Get moving! Unless you like the idea of SAF walking in and finding a plethora of evidence of our activities, I suggest we move with utmost haste! Val is on cleanup detail in town!” someone else announces, sounding much bolder and--somewhat more charismatic than the others. Julia and Drenar both turn to stare at the radio.

“And then it got worse,” Angela replies unhappily.

“Robespierre, you put Val in charge of clean-up? Her method of clean-up is to burn a hole in the world, then throw any witnesses into the hole,” one man groans. “No offense, but her cleanup tends to attract more attention. On a historically routine basis. How that murder-happy dragoness has evaded SAF and the Valkyries for this long, is beyond me.”

"Believe me, Nigel, I know,” Robespierre responds gravely. “It’s a…slight flaw in an otherwise impressive ability to grease the wheels and get the supplies and support and manpower we need.”

“I’d like to live long enough to undo the Ascension stuff. And maybe enjoy a padded retirement account without being burned alive, thanks,” Nigel replies sourly.

“Uh, since we’re grabbing everything, should we uh, inform our guys at the lab at Site Bravo to start packing up?” Greg asks curiously.

“No. The site is secured, and it is highly improbable anyone would think to check there of all places,” the charismatic one assures them. “Still, best to start backing up files to local media.”

“Robespierre, there’s Petabytes of data over there, do you have any damn clue how long it’s going to take to back that all up?” Greg shrills in response. “Oh man, Jack is going to be pissed, and our nefarious advisor may finally object to this.”

“Nefarious advisor? You mean King?” he inquires in an annoyed manner.

“No, the other enigma who has a ‘choose your own adventure’ litany of identities,” Greg grumbles.

“That enigma is one of the best logisticians on the planet, to say nothing of his other talents. Be nice, Greg.”

“Okay fine, King’s alright. But he’s got secrets guarding secrets. And he’s the only other individual who can talk Val down and not become human flambé. Alright, I’ll call him as soon as we’re done packing up, we’re almost done by the lab.”

"Well. Apparently, our lovely cult of the Talons have names," Angela comments wryly. "I mean, Greg, Karl, Nigel? How suburban." Drenar rolls his eyes at this.

“Okay, new plan, let’s bounce after we check out that lab. That was about a count of four or five guys. We have no idea if they have backup.”

“And they’re playing with explosives. Great, Drenar. It’s like you want to keep doubling down on a bad idea,” she responds agitatedly.

“Angie, I believe we all share credit for that,” Julia points out. “Let’s just get this done and get out of here. I wonder if we’ll make it back home before Drenar doesn’t fit in the car.”

“Hey, it’s all muscle–wait, am I taller or something?” he couldn’t help but feel like his stance had shifted just a little–aren’t they the same height as him, or is he on an elevated spot on the cavern floor?

“You grew an inch! Now I don’t have any leverage over you!” Julia fumes. His spine twitches almost in reaction to her words. “Angie, we need to wrap this up, because lugging around an unconscious half-ton dragon is a bit beyond even my strength level.”

“We could just find a very large cart,” Angela offers. Drenar winces, because that splintering pain is increasing, and he is not keen on thinking just what is happening inside his body at the moment. Drenar keeps listening to the radio while they backtrack to the crude signs.

"Robespierre, you sound upset by all this. I mean, we've all been working under stress, we're in a cave, hiding out from the Conclave, and working with a device we barely understand with current magitech theory, and we still don’t have your old notes to get us into a better spot on the rune translation.”

“The issue of my old notes is being handled. King has been working on that thread and has a lead. For operational security purposes, he has been working very low to the ground on this one, to avoid tipping off the research center in question, or the Conclave.”

“Wait, he’s keeping secrets?”

“Operational security.” Robespierre sounds extremely irate at this interject by Greg.

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“Alright, can’t talk about it with us, got it. I’m not offended.”

"Yes, that’s the point,” he says with a sigh. “I’m headed upstairs for coffee. All the Eldritch powers in the universe, and mages still can't conjure up food, I'll be back in a bit. Just focus on the device and the server racks, anything not critical, leave it behind."

"Oh man, do we have any of those scones from Malena's bakery left? Since you're up, can you get me one?" another comments. Drenar glances at Angela, who has a disturbed look on her face. Julia looks simply murderous.

"I'm so conflicted. Are these guys really bad guys, or so laughably bad at being evil that I almost feel sorry for them?" Angela whispers.

“Um, guys? Crispied human beings. Assume hostile, okay?" They really do need to focus in order to not get killed here. He doesn't have long to ponder the thought.

Drenar can hear it now. Voices. Faint, but audible. He signs to Julia and Angela, and Julia is practically slinking along him when he edges up the tunnel, where more permanent lighting is visible. An improvised steel bulkhead is up, and he eases it open very carefully.

“Radio off. Julia, hand signals if needed.” He peeks past the door, takes a lowered stance, and quickly darts to a series of packing crates half as tall as he is. He holds his wings tight against his body. He peeks over, then signals them silently, and signs to Julia.

[Up ahead. Four or five men. Going silent.] Drenar can feel a worrying feeling of fatigue. Whatever is going on, it’s eating up a significant amount of his strength now. Down below is a respectable laboratory within a metal and plastic enclosure with plexiglass windows, and several other heavy-duty tents set up on temporary metal platforms and scaffolding to even everything out on the ground. Packing crates are scattered everywhere, and four men are busy chattering, packing up equipment.

Near the far end of the room, Drenar can see something. A tubular device of brass and steel construction, with organic whirls etched into the metal. Small glowing symbols–or runes, since the description seemed to fit well in his mind, adorn the device. These runes sit on a series of interlocking plates, and one man taps a rune, and it rotates. The symbols overlap onto an adjoining circular plate, and there had to be dozens–even hundreds of them. Some of them are inert. Others glow with a soft white light. A spire of metal extends from the top of the device that gleams with light.

“Greg, do be careful with that thing,” a thin, tall man with scraggly, dusty red hair calls out while attending to pulling a server rack. “Unless you like the idea of becoming dust, don’t press any buttons that don’t have the sticky notes.”

“Nigel, the glyphs keep changing! There is literally no point to the stickies! I just remember which ones to press to fold it up for transport, and that’s it.” Two others are milling about, packing lab equipment. “Seriously, I can’t believe Delta Tech screwed us this badly. Or Val. We were perfectly cozy here, and then Robespierre gets all uptight and says drop what we’re doing and get the stuff packed up and shipped on the teleportal. This is such a drag.”

“Betcha this is Jimmy's fault,” someone growls. “Great thief, bad common sense.”

“Drenar, we can take them. They’re not armed,” Julia whispers to him. He shakes his head, and focuses his observations of the men. They have some kind of rod or device on two of them, attached to their belts. A shock prod? Or a magical device capable of rapid firepower response? There is an unknown element. Risk.

“Let's wait and observe. We need to know what exactly it is they’re packing,” he whispers back. A throbbing headache is still building, just behind his eyes, and he winces in pain.

“Drenar, your arm,” Angela taps him for emphasis to get my attention. Much to his shock, small cracks have appeared at his wrist and itch significantly--and more impressively, they've taken on a silvery, metallic sheen. “We need to get you out of here. Now.”

“No guarantee that we won’t walk into any backup teams.” Julia is busily taking camera images like before, trying to get closeups of the men as a means of identifying them later. “Anything we can pilfer fast? I see a tunnel on the far side, there might be a secondary egress point. Maybe back up to the loading dock?”

“No. Definitely the wrong direction. There’s a rail track down there, it goes into the tunnel, maybe there’s a cart further up, it’ll beat walking. They’re still packing up. I wouldn’t go near that sealed-off room–it looks like chemicals and deadly stuff. We can ID them later, and hopefully, Nick will be able to lend assistance,” Julia responds. Drenar mulls over a plan.

All of them are wearing dark-colored robes, with runic symbols threaded into the sleeves and across the waist. They look like uniforms, and once again show the silhouette of a dragon clutching a skull and a lily. Like an insignia, or a coat of arms. “Matching uniforms. Look familiar?” Drenar whispers.

"Talons. Their uniform is similar to the mural at the school," Julia affirms while taking photos of their robes. Drenar rationalizes that ‘robes’ is the wrong term--they look like extended lab coats, dark gray and green, and what looks like metal bands and studs protecting the chest, torso, and upper arms. He can see an emblem on the sleeve--it looks like the crest of a dragon's head, clutching a white flower. Maybe a lily? The similarity to the graffiti at the school is not lost upon him.

“Why does Robespierre get to fetch coffee while we lug crap around?” Greg asks and is ignored by the worker with blonde hair. Drenar notes that Greg is about middle-aged, has a square jaw, stern face, and salt-and-pepper hair, but moves with a grace that indicates he’s still in good shape.

“Hey, he does heavy lifting, too. For a guy who could be running the Talons, he's far more comfortable in a lab than in that shark room with Val and her cult of killers. Luckily King's got his own ice-cold men, too.” The shorter man with red hair and clean-shaven face sets down a crate–Nigel, Drenar notes silently. “SAF is currently occupied anyway, they’ve got the Awakenings to deal with. I'll bet Jimmy screwed this up bad. I wonder how Val is taking this. I’ll bet it’s not good at all.”

"Knowing her? Killing people and then frenzy eating.”

“That's an odd juxtaposition,” Greg retorts at the third man.

“Okay, let me spell this out. She isn't binging on ice cream.” Greg looks nauseous. “Yeah man, that rumor isn't a joke.”

“I still blame Nigel,” he retorts. Nigel doesn't look pleased by this.

"Oh don't you start, I warned you that David's equation might not scale linearly with the increased power draw!" Nigel responds irately. “If you had listened, the iso-sphere wouldn't be running on fumes! If we hadn’t hit the on switch last week, we’d have another six months of power out of this thing!"

"Enough already," he hears Greg grumble. "Just because you were right, doesn't mean you get to rub it in my face."

"Haha. You still owe us lunch, don't you," one of the others chuckles.

"Oh, go take a long walk off a short pier," Greg shoots back. "Focus on the objective? I can't believe you idiots can focus on food at a time like this." He lets out a frustrated growl. “'Join the Talons', they said. 'It’s all in the spirit of world empowering revolution', they said. We aren’t even close.”

“Greg, relax. You’re stressed. I think this is just an overly precautious move back to the main lab. Let’s just get this packed on the teleportal and get out of here. It’s not like anyone’s coming here anytime soon," Nigel assures him.

“Oh, are you a psionic now? Got your thought sense and an extra coating of fur, do you?” Drenar assumes he’s mocking Karl. Unless there are real psionics–which could easily make the cut in this increasingly weird and wild world he is now navigating.

“Hey, if I was a fluffy, mind-reading humanoid, I’d keep it to myself. And pick up a nice corporate espionage job and name my salary along the way,” Karl replies smugly.

“Did you say ‘fluffy’?" the fourth one echoes.

“MacKenzie, I had a buddy back in grade school named Jeff, and when his winter fur came in, he looked like this giant fluff ball. It was funny as hell,” Karl replies with a laugh. “Ya know, they don’t all have that ability, you stupid prigs, much as everyone says they’ll steal your lunch on a good day, and your mind on a bad day. Jeff was cool. And he never cheated on me during tests, either. I duped myself by getting some answers wrong on purpose,” he adds with a sardonic grin.

“Seriously, who believes that anyway?” Greg huffs while trying to lift a crate, and fails miserably.

“I knew that,” Nigel responds with an air of indignity. “And you know what, who cares? We’ve got wizards, wargens, flipping dragons, and fey. Oh and dwarves and elves without all the extra steps. We live in a wild world, man, and it’s all awesome.”

“How about, you two try less postulating, and more helping me lift this stuff!” Greg grunts and gestures for the fourth man to help him pack the device in an empty crate. The strange device had folded down to the size of a small desk, compacted down–but Drenar could still make out the runes. And he could hear an audible hum, growing louder. He shook his head, thinking it was just some auditory issue with his awakening. The sound did not fade.

After a minute they got it packed and wrapped up and started lugging it to a series of metallic plates sitting on the cave floor. The man tripped over a fragment of rock and sprawled forwards, and the crate tumbled and tons of packing peanuts popped out.

“Careful! You break this thing and the only thing left of us is going to be scattered at the bottom of an impact crater!” Nigel shouts, cursing loudly.

"Julia, photos. Whatever that device is, it’s important,” Angela whispers. Julia is already clicking away. Drenar has an idea–they’re in a dimly lit area, and there is a straight drop-down of three, maybe four meters. Maybe he can use his wings to parachute land, steal a couple of the hard drives on the nearest bench, then hop back up. Surely they won't miss one, since they are packing in a hurry. The two men are still arguing, and it’s getting heated.

“Sorry? You're sorry?! This thing is older than any known man-made or dragon-made object on this planet, and you drop it!” The one in charge is rattled and immediately helps the other repackage the device before placing it on the metallic plates on the ground. “Allie-onsie, and let’s ship this thing back to our brighter, less cavernous home.” One other figure taps a console that seemingly dances with light. The platform turns bright, white hot, and Drenar shields his eyes. When he was able to get the swimming spots out of his eyesight, he sees the crate has vanished.

Wizards are indeed at work now.