Tyvon stood in front of a tower.

It was shiny and reflected light of all colors, it was created with an incredibly light, neigh indestructible alloy who’s construction method had only been known to a species that died so long ago there weren’t even stories of them.

The building looked pristine, no cracks in the foundation, the sharp edges of the doorways and windows hadn’t been eroded down by the wind and sand that surrounded the city.

It was a perfect specimen for the research team, before this even one of the collapsed structures would have been the most intact precursor structure he had ever laid eyes on.

By all rights they should be scouring this city for artifacts and anomalous devices, scanning and creating models of every building and then ripping them apart for materials. While everything else had been worn and buried into small veins of alloy this city alone stood untouched by time.

And the only question he had was why this city alone was still standing, it was unsuitable for a researcher to not be brimming with questions when presented with such a find.

He entered and found that the inside of this tower was dark. Of course it was, the prequ-alloy was showing signs of wear in most buildings, any other materials are long gone.

No lights, that was manageable. His power armor had methods of dealing with that.

He needed to stop acting so skittish, they had been observing this city for months and only touched the ground now, there had been no movement sighted, no life signs.

They were the only things in this city other than the structures made of prequ-alloy.

And now he was confronted with a decision. There was a stairway going up, and a stairway going down.

“Set up a base camp, Dolphir you take a team upstairs, Rivi your team is in charge of this room. I want a completed model in our data banks by the next hour and then I want you to start setting up for a long term stay in this location. Ensure there are proper sleeping areas, food, medical and waste management.” He listed off his orders, in a war you kept your forces dispersed so a single bombardment wouldn’t kill everyone in one strike.

“Understood head researcher.”

They saluted and began their tasks.

“The rest of you follow me. We are investigating the basement.”

The fact that this made him nervous did not change his goals. If he did not search this area someone else would be sent who would. Shifting who took the risk to preserve his own life would be cowardly.

Besides, he trusted his own judgment more than anyone else’s. He could mitigate risks most others would not even think of.

He went down and saw nothing out of place, for this city.

Tunnels lined in precious metal, small rooms interspaced lacking any objects to disconcert their original purpose. An empty shell that had obviously once served some kind of purpose to the civilization who created it.

And in one of the rooms was a hole in the ground. A small three foot wide hole.

A singular imperfection in this building.

He had noticed this ten minutes into scouting out the basement, but had gone around getting details of the underground network to make a computerized model of the area for the last two hours. The plan was to wait until they had a proper fallback area in case of a mistake.

“Send a drone down to give us a rough approximation of the next area, bring out some fission torches and cut a fifteen foot hole into the ground.”

He had to set up a proper access point where they could send down the power suits and equipment they might need. Possibly create a simple type of elevator for easy extraction.

It took an hour, a shorter amount of time than he hoped.

They had a map of the lower areas, flood lights as a redundancy to suit failure. They had pressurized a small small sealed container on the ground floor that they could retreat to if their suits were breached. A backup medical facility outside.

It was time to take the next step, he set forward onto the elevator. The ten by ten platform moved downward with him and four others along with a few containers of supplies.

They were greeted by a large tunnel system, the number of stalactites hinted it was naturally formed and was deep enough that titan’s inner liquid oceans began to leak into the caverns.

If life had managed to form down here that would be worth studying too, there was some sort of natural heat source, liquid water and air.

He scanned some of the water with a bright blue light, a brackish liquid with a high salt and iron content. It left a bright rusty red tinge on anything it touched but the main body was a dark black. It formed into small pools in the crevices of the uneven ground.

The more brittle stone had been worn away over time by the water, leaving the stronger stone standing. There were huge fissures in the ground that presented a risk to his personnel and equipment, considering the power armor everyone had equipped the risk was mostly that ‘they might need to fish someone out of a collapsed shelf’.

He stepped over a gap filled with the dark water and walked down the tunnel, pausing to scan every nook, creating a three dimensional map that was actively being sent to each team.

Slowing the team’s advancement. It took forty minutes just to finish the first cavernous room. He stopped for another hour to get all of the tunnels and passages that were too small for a person to fit into, power armor or not.

Six hours later he stood at the end of the cavern and came to the conclusion that this tunnel was not naturally formed by a heat source melting ice, and said water wearing down the stone over time.

He knew that because there was a door in front of him. A solid metallic door.

It was not made of prismatic metal, the prequ-alloy that had drawn their attention. This door was a stark black, while the usual alloy would reflect all energy based weapons this material seemed to absorb it.

Or at least shining a laser onto the door resulted in it heating up slightly more than it should and the light that touched the door did not reflect back into their optical devices on even a micro level.

It was only surface level testing, they had spent two hours trying to figure out the properties of this door. They knew it was about 4.037 meters tall, they could not use height scanners as the door did not allow for laser measuring devices.

The door was not locked, its hinges were made of the same material and intact but the locking mechanism had wasted away long ago.

Whatever was on the other side of the door warranted such security that this was still here when the rest of their empire was dust. Was it an artifact? A doomsday device? A creature they imprisoned?

The most important question was of course, ‘if it was an item did it survive the untold thousands upon thousands of years which it had been locked away?’

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Xeon Empire had so precious few anomalous items they could research, and generally it was either fragments of blades or broken fractions of a part to a machine.

Bringing back precursor tech was rated as more important than their lives, the ships in orbit and the solar system itself.

Which was why rather than spend months trying to ascertain the exact properties of this door he reached for the handle and pulled. The hinges didn’t squeak, moving as if oiled, but he had to engage his suit’s hydraulics to create enough force to pull the enormous slab of metal open. Picking up and throwing a car would have taken less.

The door weighed more than it should have, and once finally opened it revealed a torrent of the same water that had soaked into everything.

His hopes of recovering an intact artifact plummeted, water and time was a force to be reckoned with. The liquid was dyed black with the fragments of minerals it had dissolved from solid stone after all.

“Ensure that none of our equipment has been affected by this-” it was enough water to knock a floodlight over, or maybe submerge the elevation platform and-

All at once his thoughts stopped and his mind went blank, he stared into the other room.

Despite the water, despite the time, despite the fact that it looked like a bomb had once gone off in that room…

It looked new. Not new like the mostly intact buildings topside, he could see a painting of an armored figure, they weren’t made of known anomalous materials, there was even a throne and-

He had to calm his breathing. That wasn’t fragments of a blade, that was an entire sword lodged into the chest of some ancient decrepit corpse.

Tyvon moved forward, his order of operation, before making an exact model of the room for future research, before taking samples of the body and the water or sending the intact pieces of art to his homeworld came the retrieval of that sword.

It couldn’t have just been a blade either, what use was a sword in an interdimensional empire where range held supreme?

No, he could see from here, the side was glowing. Not just reflecting the light his own suit was projecting, but creating its own energy.

He grasped the hilt and pulled only for the sword to refuse to budge.

And only after pulling for a solid seven seconds did he take a moment to look around the room.

A slight stairway the width of the room brought the throne itself high enough the seated person could look a standing man in the eyes, they could look slightly downwards onto their crowd if they were human sized.

Paintings decorated the room, each one a picture of a dark figure. In some they were staring straight at you, in others they were frozen in a position of violence, chopping heads off or tearing people apart.

The corpse itself bore thick dark metal armor, reminiscent of the paintings. He paused his fruitless pulling and flipped the visor open to reveal a worn grinning skull.

Human.

They were connected to this somehow, he would need to go over the data gathered on human cultures and stories again to see if there were dark knights spoken of in their legends.

He gripped the weapon, positioned himself for maximum thrust and grabbed the crossguard of the sword before pushing with every ounce of strength provided by his suit.

The sword did not move, it didn’t even shift. It stood completely still and mocked his efforts.

So, enough force to shove an entire train onto its side was not enough.

“Grab a winch.”

~

The winch hadn’t worked, having everyone in the forward research team grab the rope and pull similarly did not work.

It was stuck there, impossibly lodged into the small metal throne behind the armored skeleton.

Which was how he had come to the proper conclusion.

The throne was cracked nearly in half, he set two winches down and put them on either side of the throne, tearing the two halves apart.

It was not made of a known anomalous alloy, it seemed to be some kind of precious metal that had been oxidized.

The sword finally came loose, dropping straight down through the skeletal figure, chopping through the bone and the metal it was decorated with like paper before burying into the ground blade first up to its hilt.

He tried pulling on the hilt, it did not budge. The black alloy ground had cracked from the impact with the weapon’s hilt and he still couldn’t pry it up.

However much this thing weighed, it seemed dense enough that it should have collapsed into a black hole.

Though he did not want to, he realized the futility of his actions and allowed the weapon to rest in the floor.

He took one last look around the room, it would likely be weeks before he saw it again. Forget two destroyers, they would send a fleet of battleships and devote multiple planets of resources for the retrieval of this artifact

The paintings, should he retrieve those? Protocol dictated that he should not wait for any reason to report the location of an unretrievable artifact but if he left all of these objects here the water may cause damage before they could be scanned and secured.

Similarly despite the water there was carpet in this room, mushy wet carpet, should he remove that as well? Not to mention the…

He blinked, there was a person standing in the entrance to the room.

Not one of his research staff, a human in white robes. He had no mask or helmet to provide air or proper pressurization.

His skin hung as loose and wrinkled as his clothing, white strands of hair dominated his eyebrows rather than the top of his head.

He was speaking, and his suit delayed the speech slightly in order to translate, giving him the appearance of a cheap offworld movie.

“You have no idea of the doom you have unleashed, there lays the man even death bows to. You must return the sword quickly before he awakens fully!”

Tyvon checked his helmet’s hud, the human appeared to be speaking a human language that was popular seven thousand years ago.

Which was strange, it took longer than seven thousand years for this metal to degrade. Given the extent of the damages above ground he would put this ruin at hundreds of thousands of years old.

“Please, sir knight, for the good of all you must return the blade!” The monk was pleading, he sunk to his knees and crawled to Tyvon’s feet.

The researcher had other priorities. “Where did you come from? And what purpose did this weapon serve?”

“I have spent my life wandering this city, the King of Corpses’ power grew even in death and I am the last surviving guardian. Please sir, this weapon cannot be crafted again. You must return it to the body before he can rise!”

The researcher had learned little to nothing from that conversation. The monk lived here in this airless, foodless, freezing city on a moon revolving around a gas giant.

A moon he had been scanning intensely for the last month for any signs of life or movement, anything that gave off heat should have been noted.

He was doing all of this to prevent the skeleton behind him from walking around?

The monk ran past him with surprising speed splashing through the thick liquid that coated the floor and grasped at the sword, Tyvon swiveled towards him and raised his personal defensive weapon.

“Step away from the artifact and place your hands above your head.” He leveled his warp rifle at the anomalous creature.

The thing that looked like a human pried at the sword, pulling upwards, tearing at the ground.

He couldn’t budge the blade either. The human realized the same thing that Tyvon had and turned.

“You must help me! He must not be allowed to live again, no matter the cost.”

The monk fell to his knees with a slight splash, the flood lights flickered and the monk stood again and charged the researcher.

Tyvon shot him in the head and watched him withstand a shot that would melt through both sides of a tank. The human closed distance before Tyvon could get away and the monk grasped both sides of his power armor.

“You must return it, pick up the sword and return it! Put it back. Put it back. Putitbackputitbackputitback-”

The man’s hands were compressing the sides of the power armor, his helmet started flashing red and screaming at him as the metal began deforming under his grip.

Tyvon shot again, slamming another beam into the monk’s face. He punched with his hands and tried to break the monk’s grip unsuccessfully.

Then the lights flickered again and the monk slumped forwards bleeding from his mouth, falling forwards onto the wet ground with a splash.

Were those some kind of combat implants? Anomalous technology to enhance his survivability?

He caught a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Then he heard a rasping voice behind him. “Who… Are… You…”

He turned, aiming his warp rifle and squatting slightly, preparing to launch himself away from any hostile creatures.

His team did likewise, though they were researchers they were prepared to fight over their prizes and if necessary remove traitors from their midst.

A skeleton stood, dark armor dripping the black liquid that he had just been slouched in.

Some kind of construct? A robot? Warp powered devices were common, they generated a small hole to another dimension filled with energy and used said energy to power both the warp and whatever else it was attached to.

So did the sword sever this construct’s connection to the warp?

Or was that old man just an insane anomalous experiment conducted by different powers yet?

He considered his words carefully, this construct was showing no energy readings similar to the door and conflict was ill advised until they knew more. “I am head researcher Tyvon. Who would you be?”

The skeleton ignored him, its armor shifted slightly and one of the plates fell off into the water with a splash. “Who… Sent… You… Here…”

Tyvon considered his options, “I will answer you if you answer one of my questions first.”

The black water seemed to trail up the skeleton, leaving red streaks along the white bone.

Red. Tyvon was reminded that human blood was red. The scarlet that was pouring out of the monk’s mouth, the same color that was crawling up the construct’s legs.

“I.. Accept..” It was taking less time between words, it would be best for him to decide on a course of action while this thing was still clearly weakened.

“Why were you imprisoned here?” the real information he needed right now.

If he had time and didn’t feel his chitinous scales crawling he might have asked how it was speaking a modern language to him without connecting to his coms system. He shouldn’t be able to hear anything without it going through his helmet first, and it should come out to him as a level and monotone voice.

Not the rattling gasps that the construct spoke in.

“I. Brought. Death.” It pulled in another breath, as if through a hose. “Why. Have. You. Come.”

He decided on a half answer. “To learn of this place, why it was made and through what methods.”

“Yet. You. Destroyed. My. Throne. To. Get. A. Weapon.” Blood began trickling into the skeleton’s empty eye sockets. “You. All. Hold. The. Mark. Of. Conquerors.”

That did not sound good, “All units retreat, prioritize information delivery over search and rescue.” He switched coms, “Squad, staggered formation, prepare for melee, if necessary sacrifice any members who end up grappled to score damage on the enemy.”

Then he addressed the skeleton. “What does the mark of conquerors mean?”

The grinning skeleton shifted to stare directly into Tyvon’s eyes.

“Competition.”

The walls and floors collapsed with the force of a volcano and an ocean of blood tore into the room with enough force to vaporize everything before it.

Everything other than one laughing skeleton.