The chamber she entered under the Temple was much, much bigger than she’d anticipated. She thought she’d explored all of the earliest chambers when she’d been down in the depths previously, but somehow, it seemed, she’d always managed to swing a right rather than the left she’d chosen this time. When she pushed open the ancient, heavy door, it was stiff with age and the settling of stones around it. She had to put the her full weight into trying to move it, trying to shift it even a foot, and when she finally did, the sound that barked through the chamber beyond was like the shout of some great beast, echoing and echoing and echoing while she shrunk back in instinctive surprise.
“Depths, I’m sorry,” she whispered back, and it was the most appropriate of oaths. She stood back a moment longer, listening as distant stones fells down a distant wall, a tiny avalanche of gravel that was maybe not so tiny… just far away.
When it settled and there was no sign of the roof caving in, she dared to peek around the edge and into the chamber beyond.
Air that hasn’t circulated in a long time has a very particular smell to it. She coughed as she breathed it in, oxygen that hadn’t been through anything’s lungs in decades and maybe longer. It was stale and gray and uncomfortable, and it felt like it took something of her away with it when she breathed it out. She winced, but had to go further. An untouched chamber was the most likely candidate to hold what she was looking for. Either it was here or she’d have to go deeper. Much deeper.
While that would be fun, in a way, it wasn’t something the Sisters would necessarily appreciate, she was sure. So she muttered a hope for quick resolution and slid through the dark crack of the doorway, into the unknown.
The first thing she saw was a strange stripe of light that brought back memories. That blue light, where a ribbon of seawater cracked through the stone, held back by thick clear crystal. Beyond were tiny critters whose bioluminescence lit so many of the tunnels in Tieke City above. She’d never seen it below before.
It couldn’t have been intentional. The light barely penetrated the chamber below, not even casting silhouettes.
So she pulled the flashlight from her pocket and shone it.
And then she swore.
The light didn’t even touch the far wall. It showed narrow pathways, and on either side the stacks and the heaps of machines and old artifacts that she was so familiar with, only these were so tall that she had to crane her neck to see the top of them. Her first thought was that if nature was feeling especially cruel, it could send the tiniest of earthquakes to rattle this space and she’d be mercilessly crushed until a few tons of ancient treasure,
Certainly a poetic way to go, but not the ideal choice. Not by a long shot.
She hissed a few more curses, polluting the pristine air for all time, as she shone her light around, imagining the search that was ahead of her. She considered that she’d have to turn around, go knock and kick at the door until someone heard her, and then demand a team of helpers.
If they wanted the artifact so badly, after all, wouldn’t they have to comply? She’d thought so.
But then again…
She was just about the turn around, to go back and try just that, when the beam of her light hit something that made her pause. It wasn’t what she’d been looking for, but in a way, it was. Not the artifact she’d been sent for but a shape of some shocking familiarity.
“That can’t be…” she whispered.
She stepped closer. Her light played over long flat planes and sharp angles, a pair of cylindrical shapes coated in strands of dust, the dust of ages long, long past. It danced over the curve of something dark that shone like black crystal.
And she’d seen it before, if only in illustrations.
It was a ship. Not one that sailed on the seas, but one that descended from the skies.
She blinked several times. Her light had fallen on a hole in the side, large scrapes, torn as if… by great claws.
She idly pulled the paper from her pocket, looked at the diagram of the machine she was meant to find, and suddenly found that she didn’t care so much about getting it back to the Sisters in good time.
She shoved it deep back into her pocket instead.
And she headed forward to explore this new, much better prize.