Three times Vievel tried to leave the red chamber. On the first, he found his feet unwilling, snared by invisible tendrils and thoughts of hidden monsters in the darkness. On the second he found his legs unwilling, consumed by a cramping soreness brought about by his experience hiding in the chamber cabinets. The third attempt, on which Vievel managed to actually step across the threshold, was successful, but the triumph lasted only a fleeting moment before he came to face-to-face with his new reality; he opened his eyes to a darkness perhaps even blacker than the backs of his eyelids, lit by nothing, not even his own torch. Vievel had prepared himself for what he imagined to be the worst possible conclusion, prior to even stepping outside of the chamber he’d shut his eyes, grit his teeth and braced his ears, but now it seemed worse than that. Putting a foot across the threshold he had half-expected a wave of Ulmadr Advance flashlights to crash down upon him, and for a snide Sera Odill to reveal that they hadn’t been fooled by his deception, not one bit, but that had turned out not to be the case. A moment spend gazing into the gloom, a gloom that revealed naught but that the Advance had long since departed, and Vievel revised his imagination. He was alone.

Keeping his right hand pressed firmly up against the wall Vievel started to lumber along the red ward’s solitary corridor, his fingers tracing the carved line that he and Halycen had originally followed. He glanced over his shoulder, staring into a darkness that looked much the same as the darkness ahead of him, and he remembered the carved line continued much further into the ward; a pang of regret echoed around his mind as he realised he never managed to follow the line to its destination. Vievel resolved himself, turning back to square his facing with his feet as he marched onward. There were worse things than mysteries.

This is going to take forever. His thoughts quickly turned to his growing fatigue as he made his way through the rusted-red corridor. The soles of his feet felt each and every painful bump on the stone floor, and his legs burned with residual discomfort from being crouched for so long previously. A small part of him ruefully wished that he had taken the opportunity to get caught after all, to save himself the solitary journey, but it was a small part, and Vievel kept to the dark despite a want to dispel the gloom with his flashlight. Doing so would only make him visible to whatever else was hiding in the darkness.

Stopping by the bumpy and coarse corridor wall Vievel unslung his knapsack and set it on the ground.

All of a single minute and you’re resting already. He pushed aside his suit’s mask, making sure to keep it at the top of the bag’s contents, in case he needed it in a hurry, and retrieved a plastic bottle from beneath everything else. Without hesitating Vievel unclipped the bottle’s lid and drank from it, watching through the clear sides of the bottle as the amber liquid sloshed around inside.

Hardly nutritious but- He swallowed some of the drink, causing a burning sensation to strike the back of his throat as the liquid wound its way down. The tenderness lasted for a few seconds thereafter, but it was a good kind of sore. The best kind. Vievel placed the bottle on the ground beside him and held the remainder of the liquid in his throat, fishing out two foil packs of capsules from his bag with his free hand. He pressed a compartment on each of the foil packets so that one capsule from either dropped into his hand, and then swallowed both with the aid of his drink. One for hydration and one in case the air started to thin any more. Vievel dropped the foil packets back into his bag, and then swept the bottle into it as well, drawing the knapsack’s knot tight again.

Setting off down the corridor again, Vievel’s thoughts turned sour.

Halycen’s lie damned us both. The marshall, any member of the ship’s council, was an extension of the patriarch when it came to matters of law and obedience. By lying to Sera Odill about Vievel never leaving the home ship, Halycen had made him responsible for their hides. If he didn’t get back to quarters before someone noticed him missing, or worse, he got caught… Vievel sighed. At least he had the spoils of his knapsack to justify his trip, the Dwurka medicines, but his cousin hadn’t gathered anything of use to the home ship. Perhaps Halycen’s father would go easier on her than his father would have on him, but he couldn’t be sure whether his father would see it as his own duty to issue punishment or not. Halycen would fare little better against the Patriarch’s judgement.

A pang of guilt announced itself, prodding at the back of his mind and daring him to indulge it.

It wasn’t my fault she got caught, Vievel thought tersely. Scowling he pushed his fingers up against the rock face, dragging them against it until he felt the prickly crags pressing up against the surface of his gloves; a pressure began to build as the metillion layering bent beneath the sharp rocks, the pain rising until it overpowered his frustrations and he drew his hand back. Halycen would be okay. She always got away with everything. Vievel had no such fortune, every mistake was always punished; his father always held him to an image that he had no hope of meeting. As a child, he’d always wished Halycen’s father, easy-going Vost’, would somehow turn out to be his own father. The memory surprised him. He hadn’t imagined such a thing in years, hadn’t even recalled it, but once it had been a hope so frequent he had thought of little else. The pang of guilt swelled up in size.

Vievel found his already-sluggish pace beginning to slow even further. His calves ached, each step a modest misery. Already the pain had grown, his legs begging to stop no matter how often he beckoned them forward, and he wondered how he could possibly make it back to the home ship before the companies of the Ulmadr returned. The journey into the ward had not taken him as long as he had already been travelling, and his perception of time felt clouded and hazy in the face of his constant cramping. He needed to rest, Aælfir weren’t built to keep moving forever. The thought lit a light at the front of his mind as he imagined stopping to sit, to spread out his legs and stretch his muscles. Perhaps another drink… A dull pulse exploded in his shoulder as a shrill scraping sound struck his ears, the sound of his metillion hauberk grinding against stone as Vievel collided with the rock wall. The pain continued to radiate down his bicep and forearm and he grunted in the dark of the corridor, for the first time glad that no-one had been around to see his preoccupation drive him so off-path.

The impact drew Vievel back to reality.

“Ow…” he moaned. The soft cry pierced through the vacant darkness, punctuating his solitude. His hand rubbed at his shoulder, inspecting for any sign that his hauberk had been punctured. The armour was still intact. Vievel squeezed his shoulder, hoping to dull the pain, and then slowed his previously rapid breaths. He held himself as still as he could for a moment, listening out to the darkness in case something unseen was lurking and listening to his noises. When no such assailant materialised, and once he was convinced that the darkness was devoid of hidden foes, Vievel drew himself away from the wall. The corridor was a straight walk, he didn’t need the carvings to guide himself; better to travel through the gloom even in the absence of markers, the shadow could hide him as well.

Without knowing for sure where the Advance was, Vievel didn’t dare turn his flashlight on. If a member of the war company caught him he could at least pretend he had ventured onto the ship alone, and save Halycen from getting caught in her own lie. If a member of the Advance caught him then they’d surely work out that he’d been with her. The light wasn’t an option so Vievel walked forward blindly, his arms outstretched in case he finally left the ward and met the wall of another passage. Several times he nearly fell, catching an uneven dip in the floor with his toe or almost tripping over a rock outcropping; whenever his feet him his pace slowed further, giving way to tentative steps in lieu of steady strides before his confidence fully returned. Eventually, Vievel’s muscular pains were replaced by countless stubbed toes and twisted ankles; he felt his foot grow a garden of weals and bruises from the repeated impacts, envisioning a discordant painting of blue and red beneath his metillion boot.

Vievel forced himself to stay alert despite the growing pain, stifling every instinct he had to yell in pain. His ears listened out for any sound of movement, but to his great frustration, he could only hear the constant soft clanging and shifting of his boots. Without his revolver his hand was empty, a useless vestige; it gripped the air fruitlessly and the space between his fingers felt hollow. With his flashlight doused his already-strained eyes became prone to playing wicked tricks, imagining every strange shape as a Dwurkn marauder ready to kill and every unfamiliar sound the Advance returning to discover him. His thoughts were so dominated by fears of being caught that the possibility of a second Dwurkn attack became an afterthought; Vievel didn’t know what he would do should he come across a Dwurkn again, and pushing the vision to the back of his mind was the most he could do to combat it.

All of this for few boxes of Dwurka medication. The thought sat sourly as he made his way blindly through the dark corridor. So much for my first salvage trip. He even envied Halycen’s ridiculous serrated scissors, briefly imagining the reactions of his friends. Eaden would be delighted, of course, and would surely ask if he could pull them apart and put them back together. Ria might not sure the same interest in the scissors themselves, but she would nonetheless be impressed by Halycen’s exploits. Or maybe she’ll think the whole thing foolish. Of the four of them, Ria was definitely the most sensible. It didn’t bother Vievel to admit it; Ria was wonderful that way, reliable. He shook his head, trying to shake clean his imagination, but at the same moment his feet suddenly caught beneath him, hooked on a shallow dip in the floor, and he stumbled forward. Raising his hands out to catch his fall he instead stopped suddenly, colliding with a firm and cool surface.

His fingers ached, stubbed against the smooth wall he’d struck with both hands, but he still stretched them out, exploring the surface. His fingers pried their way around the stone until they met a series of shallow dents, familiar indentations. Vievel turned, scanning the darkness futilely for anyone nearby, and then turned back to the new wall. He swallowed, apprehensive of what he was about to do. Gripping the neck of his flashlight he twisted the studded activation band; light spread out around him instantaneously, touching every part of the passage and illuminating his figure just as surely as it revealed the etchings in front of him. He’d reached the central corridor.