The groom reluctantly stayed behind with the horses this time and switched places with Hastro, who was getting bored and had fighting skill. "I do want to go farther in sometime," the young man said.

"Next trip," Hastro said.

Now that everybody else had regrouped, they returned to the garden and pressed on. Tamur managed to force the metal door open and discovered a little supply room with spades, shears, seed packets, and long glass bulbs.

"I wonder if any of the seeds are good," Lisette said. Faded pictures on a few of them suggested vegetables or berries.

Ruyo said, "Grab 'em on the way out."

Khulis said, "Are those spare lights for the ceiling? There's power in this place judging from that other maint room, so maybe we could turn the lights back on."

"If we could get up there, maybe later. Any ladders?"

"Not in here."

Elly said, "Maybe they had magic to just float up to the lights!"

Ruyo would've dismissed that as silly, but it was possible in a society where everyone had magic and there were more gadgets to help with it. "Nusina, can you ferry people downstairs?"

"Let me try something." Nusina floated into the staircase and collapsed into a puddle on the upper landing. Then she flowed down as a slow-moving wave and lifted back up to reappear at Ruyo's side. "It looks safe down to the first landing, but the stairs right below that are badly cracked. Milady, you should try sensing the difference too."

With Nusina and Ruyo scouting ahead, they descended. At one point Ruyo laid down a reinforcing layer of ice and Virid covered it in rock dust. Along the way they studied a plaque showing a city of tall towers -- old Starshore? -- and another with pictures of odd mechanical arms and legs. Each had text they'd need to translate.

Several flights down, they reached a plain metal door that creaked open. The room beyond was the meeting point of a caved-in hallway, the stairwell, and a desk with thick glass protecting it. The desk watched over another hall with several doors, but a set of horizontal metal bars blocked that path.

"Looks like a guard post," Ruyo said. She touched the barrier and thought Unseal! but nothing happened.

Tamur stepped forward and yanked a bar, but it didn't budge. He stepped back, looking impressed.

Ruyo shrugged. "If we have to, we can weaken the bars with freezing. But can we get through the glass window instead?"

Khulis said, "Security gear isn't meant to totally keep people out, only to discourage them."

They banged on the window with a mace and some spells, to no effect. Elly looked thoughtful, took out the picture card from the lab, and touched it against the bars and then a black square set into the guard's window.

Something beeped, a tiny green light flashed, and the bars slid halfway open. "All right!" she said, and cautiously walked through.

The bars immediately clicked back into position.

Ruyo cursed. "Pass the card back through?"

She did, but it didn't help. Elly said, "Maybe it keeps track of whether this person is inside or outside. I'll just touch it to this panel on my side... which does nothing." She laughed nervously.

Ruyo got started trying to freeze the base of several bars and damage the metal. "Nusina, guard her."

"Pir, go," said Lisette. The two spirits floated through the gaps to attend Elly. Virid summoned an earth elemental to push and pull at the bars, and Tamur conserved his strength for the moment and helped the others with ice magic instead.

Nusina reported, "Bad news. There's a big auditorium nearby, and there are a lot of serious robots. Like that pillar you fought but more dangerous looking."

"Elly, stay close and help with the ice." She added to Nusina, "Are they moving?"

"No."

"Maybe we can wall them off with ice." She relayed that to the others. "What else is in there?"

"I..." A chill struck Ruyo, coming from Nusina before she even spoke. "Bones. A large pile of them."

"Bones?"

Hastro said, "More dead people ahead? I figured people were hiding down here when the war happened."

Ruyo answered quietly. "This sounds worse. Like the machines were the ones that killed them."

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"Why?" Lisette asked, fervently helping to break down the barrier.

Tamur nudged the others aside and yanked, snapping one of the rods near its weakened base. He staggered and the broken metal flew out of his hands to clang against the floor. "It's light."

Ruyo froze at the noise. Nothing immediate happened. Nusina said, "No reaction. These machines would've been ordered to do something, and did it. The question is what would set them to moving again. They tend to be very specific."

"Can I give them orders too?"

"Maybe, at the risk of getting their attention."

Ruyo shook her head. She'd save that as a backup plan. She told the others, "You know, if the card worked to let people in but not out, maybe it was a trap."

Elly started to answer, but a creature came scuttling down the hall. Not a machine or elemental, but more of a misshapen stone-shelled crab with a whiplike tail coiled over its back. "What is that?"

Ruyo and company were busy wrecking the barrier, trying to get two bars at once. Elly added, "Dog-sized. How'd it survive down here?"

Ruyo cursed. "Nusina, wall." She stood up and as the spirit floated down the hall, flung water at her. Nusina helped catch and freeze it into a barrier. Wobbling globs of water rapidly turned white and hardened into place, emitting chilly mist. The oncoming creature was no longer in view, but it tap-tapped at the sudden ice and cracks appeared. Elly flung more water and added to the blockade.

That seemed to be enough to hold the crab off. Ruyo had been neglecting her elementals and they'd faded out of existence, but she made another spiky Quill to coax it into helping damage the metal. In another minute Tamur yanked and kicked a second and third bar free.

"Whew! Thanks," said Elly, no longer trapped.

Ruyo crawled easily through the gap and the others followed. She reinforced the cracked wall, then peeked into the auditorium. A heap of skeletons lay there amid overturned chairs. Everything was smashed, burned or melted together, and the likely killers stood in a ring around them, facing inward. Each was metal, a squat vehicle with treads or belts instead of wheels. Its body had a wicked looking weapon tube like a stringless crossbow, and a pair of spindly metal arms with no head. At least a dozen of them.

Nusina hissed mentally at her to get back. Ruyo agreed. The spirit said, "Who knows if they'll react to seeing people!"

Ruyo gulped. "I don't think I register as 'people' anymore. But I'll hang back for now." She conjured a large bolt of cheap cloth and with Nusina's help, froze it into place as a curtain blocking the room's line of sight. Only then did she have the others approach and walk quietly by.

The creature on the ice-wall's far side was determined to break through. Ruyo pointed for Nusina to float by the wall's upper edge, then fired a jet of freezing water at her. The spirit redirected it down on the beast to trap it in ice. It took half a minute to get the thing to stop jabbing away with its claws and tail. Finally Ruyo raised one hand and made the wall crack and crumble out of everyone's way.

They had a decent look at the creature: a living animal, at least until just now, with beady eyes and six spindly legs.

Tamur grunted. "Scorpion, from the northern lands. Avoid that tail's venom!" He reached down to rub a scar on his shin.

Ruyo asked, "How is a non-machine, non-spirit surviving down here?"

Virid guessed, "A machine that generates food like your spells?"

Nusina said, "I didn't get a good look at that cafeteria from floating in a sink. If there's one there might be more."

Ruyo armed herself with a pair of Quills to scuttle at her heels and coaxed everyone else to try the same. Virid's latest earth elemental rumbled along like a short statue, the sisters who'd trained with him each managed to create a Quill and sustain it, and the men each managed a waterball or in Hastro's case a slushy, inferior Quill of his own. If nothing else this squad of summoned creatures was an expendable distraction.

They continued on down the hall. There were signs of a deadly battle that had left burn marks and dents in the walls.

As they climbed over a rubble pile from some upper room that had collapsed long ago, the air grew stale. Yet it was moving, in a swift downdraft that shoved at Ruyo as though trying to knock her down.

She staggered. Lisette got knocked into a wall. The wind sucked up dust and pebbles, made them hover for a moment, and then truly began trying to hurt them.

Ruyo flung a jet of water in its general direction, her arm slashing down like a sword. "Elemental?" she said, cutting the air to no effect.

Elly fired an arrow through the floating pebbles, uselessly. The living wind rushed past them all, slicing clothes and exposed skin with swift-moving grit. Most of the elementals shattered into fog. Elly took the worst of it; it had ripped the breath from her lungs, and she crashed painfully into Khulis and knocked him down. Ruyo staggered, shaking off the trivial hits. Tamur bared his teeth and raised his shield.

Virid shouted, "Trap it! Stop it from moving!" He raised his arms and yanked all of the airborne bits out of it, toward his hands. He looked surprised by his success.

Now they could only see the spirit as a ripple in the air, trying to lash out at them. Ruyo scowled and shouted, "Ha!" as she shakily poured gallon upon gallon of icy water to the floor, rapidly raising a wall to hem it in. The others joined in to reinforce the wall or add their shields to the blocking maneuver.

Pir floated at Elly's side, radiating heat. Then he darted toward a seemingly random spot and burst into true flame, tearing at the air around him. The wind screeched. The ice started to melt from Pir's aggression. Fog filled the open space, making Pir hiss and the air creature's darting movements become more visible.

"Can you make a wall too?" Ruyo asked Virid, straining to reinforce her barrier and feeling the waves of heat from Pir.

"Sure; give me an hour!" He improvised, though. He commanded his walking earth elemental to stretch and flatten, more like a board than a statue. That gave the ice something to anchor to.

The wind howled furiously at them but Virid had stolen the worst of its strength, forcing it to try slamming them around one at a time. Lisette faced the worst of its rage but stood her ground, shield high.

Ruyo clenched her fists and solidified more water, making some of it float before her as a liquid wall. Now the cruel wind battered at its trap but couldn't get out. "Anybody badly hurt? Elly?"

Lisette was at her side. "She'll be okay." Elly was coughing but nodded.

"All right. Now, spirits, can you talk to this thing?"

Nusina said, "I tried, but it's dumber than Pir. Um, you should be able to kill it if you're so inclined."

"Any objections? Sounds like a mindless guardian." Nobody complained. "Actually, let me try something."

She conjured a sturdy glass bottle and carefully pulled open a hole in the water-wall. When something slammed into the glass she yanked it free and corked it. The bottle shook in her hands. "Got a present for the army to deliver. Hand me some twine."

While securing the thing better, she looked at Pir. "Thank you, by the way." She didn't know the ancient words for that, but bowed slightly.