A returning twinge of claustrophobia pressed up against his thoughts as he began to doubt whether the corridor right in front of him was large enough for just himself alone. Vievel moved up until he was in front of the hatch, feeling both his shoulders come into contact with opposite walls as he closed in on it. His knapsack squeezed itself up against his back as it was forced it into a tighter space. He could feel the contents poking into his back even through his thin metal hauberk. The sensation of being wedged in quickly escalated until he was confident that the passage was alive and intended to hold him still and ultimately crush him. Despite his best effort to control his anxieties a new panic-driven sweat beaded up upon his forehead, complimenting its warmth-borne predecessor.

“Well?” Halcyen urged from behind. Without looking Vievel could feel his cousin now standing close behind him. “Open it,” she said, pointing toward the small door. As his cousin spoke Vievel drew in a quick sharp breath, realising that his tenseness had been working against him. The sharp intake relaxed his shoulders and at once he felt free of the tunnel’s chilled stone, no longer being pressed in by both sides at once.

“Right,” Vievel said. Without meaning to he exhaled just as hard as he had inhaled a moment before, the force of it leaving him out of breath slightly. Vievel began to breathe in rapidly, a short and sharp pattern of breaths shallow enough so that his cousin wouldn’t hear.

Moving his sidearm-holding hand away Vievel stretched out with his fingers to grip the nearest of the handles on the doorway. The door was raised off the floor, the only part of the wall that was anything but smooth and uniform, and the oblong metal hatch was seated into a groove, cushioned by a string of four small vents which were each in turn surrounded by collapsible shutters. The vent shutters were thin and slender, the younger brothers and sisters of the shutters attached to the much larger square alloy vent on the curved far arch. Two of the three handles gleamed as the light caught them, looking new and clean, perhaps even recently polished, but the third of the handles was much darker and marked, reflecting very little light. The third handle, the closest of the three, seemed to be covered in a thin but almost all-encompassing layer of soot and blackened charred dust. Vievel reached for it apprehensively, intending to pull back if the handle was hot to the touch, but the second his finger grazed the handle he could tell it was chilled. He pulled back his hand, feeling the coarse surface of the handle as he withdrew it, and saw the soot fall from the handle. A black smudge lingered on his left fingertip. If the handle had been burnt, it had been burnt a long time ago.

Vievel grabbed the blackened handle, pulling it down and then releasing the remaining two handles afterward in turn. Once all three were locked in the ‘open’ position he pulled at the hatch, though to no avail. It didn’t budge.

“Try pushing it?” Halcyen said, her voice loud in his ear. The light from her flashlight hovered over Vievel’s shoulder, wobbling in her unsteady grip; every now and again the unsteady light caught the handles and reflected into Vievel’s eyes. He grimaced with each time it blinded him until he averted his gaze entirely, staring down at the floor.

“It’s kinda heavy,” Vievel responded. He gave the hatch a gentle shove as he did, though it was fixed quite securely into its groove. There was nothing holding it shut on this side of it, at least nothing obvious to him.

“I’ll help, shove up,” Halcyen said. Vievel looked over his left shoulder, though he couldn’t spot anything of his cousin but a dazzling brightness emanating from her handheld light. Pangs of anxiety returned, jabbing at him as he tried to shuffle up the remainder of the corridor. He drew in another deep breath so that he might squeeze up further, but even making himself as small as possible Vievel felt the walls pressing on both his shoulders simultaneously. He quietly resolved to exercise more, starting tomorrow. He cursed himself for forgetting previous resolutions of a similar nature.

As he nestled himself into the arch he felt Halcyen pushing up too, sidling up against him so that her shoulder was pressing into his chest. She placed both of her hands against the door, her flashlight and sidearm clanking softly against the metal as she did. Vievel himself managed to squeeze just a bit further, finding a previously-missed pocket of space for his elbow, and angled his body shoulder-first against the door. In their new positions both of their flashlights cast downward, granting the darkness enough leeway to come between them; Vievel could barely make out any of Halcyen’s features despite being less than a foot apart.

“Count to three then we push together, okay?” Halcyen said, counting the seconds. Still somewhat feeling out of breath Vievel didn’t respond, but he nodded and hoped that was obvious enough in the gloom.

The hatch didn’t swing open loudly, or clatter or clang as Vievel had expected it to, but rather made a quiet unlatching sound as the pair pushed it open. The noise was closer to an intentional mechanical catch than anything metallic or forced. The most comparable sound was the sort of door that was traditional on a terrestrial homeworld, but he’d only heard such sounds on the LAN; no such places existed anymore. Caught off-guard by the sound Vievel was fleetingly distracted and was second to look out into the dark beyond the door, taking a moment to remember to do so even after Halcyen’s light rose and shone past him. Vievel lifted his own hand, illuminating the space ahead of him, and a weight that had been quietly placed on him suddenly evaporated.

The corridor past the hatch was five or six times the width of the maintenance passage they stood in, more like a great room than the typically narrower halls that he was used to on his home starship. The wall directly opposite him was marked and scratched in a great many places, and on the right-hand side Vievel could make out a sharp turn, but the rest of it was blocked by the open door. With an escape now in front of him Vievel began to feel a lot less agitated over the tightness of the maintenance passage, even whilst he stood inside it, but still a rising urgency welled up inside him. It pushed him, willed him to step over the threshold and into the larger space beyond. Before he knew what he was doing, Vievel ducked underneath the hole and stepped out.

“Viev- stop!” Halcyen whispered sharply. Vievel didn’t stop at his cousin’s command. The words washed over him like background noise as he beheld the wall straight ahead of him, his light following his gaze as he took in the scene in front of him. It was quite unlike any other Vievel had ever seen; standing in the wider, thankfully empty, corridor, Vievel was able to see the wall in much greater detail than he had before. The scratches weren’t scratches or random markings, they were purposeful etchings, layered in strips atop each other and stretching the entire length, at least as far as Vievel could see. Each strip or layer depicted something different. Scenes of short stout figures marching in groups made up one layer, the same short figures rising from rectangular one coffins made up another. A third layer was reserved for what looked to be conversations or dealings between the small figures, and a fourth was marked with a series of purposeful runes and glyphs spelling out something indecipherable to Vievel’s eye. The entire scene rivaled the finest Aælfir tapestries, but all Vievel could find for the stonework was contempt. The markings, though they may be purposeful, were wild and angry. The scenes depicted lacked any sort of flow or connection between them. The likenesses were crude and ugly. It was at best on par with the work of an Aælfir youngling.

Vievel was vaguely aware of a light from behind him bobbing up and down as he took stock of the etchings. Vievel heard a loping step as Halcyen ducked underneath the door hatch and made her way over to join him.

“How… primitive,” Halycen smirked as she glanced at the carvings herself. She walked up beside Vievel. “Are you done taking in the local culture?” She softly hit him in the shoulder with her sidearm as she spoke.

“Ow-yes,” Vievel replied, glowering at his cousin and rubbing his shoulder. He took in his surroundings. Aside from the wall etchings, the corridor was as bare as the maintenance tunnel. Vievel stretched, his arms now able to move freely in the wide hallway.

The air outside the maintenance passage was a great deal cooler than the muggy warmth inside it. Now that he was less distracted by the cramped feeling of the tunnel Vievel the familiar chill of a starship pressed up against his body and passed through with little resistance. The cold rushed from his head to his toes even though he could still feel the warmth of the maintenance tunnel behind him. He shivered and briefly considered stepping back into the tunnel to catch some warmth before he properly ventured out, but the memory of the tunnel’s tightness stayed his feet.

“That was foolish,” Halcyen said, chiding Vievel. “What if there had been Dwurkn here?” she asked.

“Then both I and the Dwurkn would’ve been free of that cramped passage,” Vievel retorted quickly, not caring for his cousin’s tone. He looked down the halls, toward the right-hand turn. “Besides, it’s a dead ship,” he added. “There’s little left here”. The corridor was quiet save for the distant humming coming from the far end of the maintenance tunnel, but Vievel imagined on an active Dwurkn ship a hallway this size would’ve been anything but. As he glanced down he noticed his flashlight reflecting off of the metallic underlayer beneath the cracked stone floor.

It’s not all stone then, Vievel thought to himself. The metal underlayer was exposed by an uneven chipping; Vievel briefly wondered if it was the same chipping that Halycen claimed would be evidence of heavy-footed marauders or… he pushed the thoughts down again, trying to ignore them.

“It’s a near-dead ship,” Halycen stressed. “I heard the scan reports, there’s some life still aboard here, somewhere,” she said. Her voice dropped quieter than before as her flashlight joined Vievel’s, inspecting the broken stonework. “We should be a bit more careful”.

“Please, Dwurkn don’t scare me,” Vievel said, eyeing the turn up ahead. He didn’t move.

“Liar”. Halycen turned toward Vievel, her light blinding him. Vievel drew his hand up, as much to block the light as it was to stop his cousin seeing his expression. He felt his brow wrinkle as he frowned. He drew in a short breath, his chest shivering as he exhaled unsteadily.

“There are worse things,” Vievel mumbled, louder than he meant to.

“Please, those- that-” Halycen started. “The scans would’ve shown if there were actually such a thing onboard,” Halycen said, though she sounded unconvinced by her own words.

“How do you know?” Vievel asked. “It’s been centuries, and father seemed pretty convinced,” Vievel said. He recalled the flurry of activity when the home ship had finally picked up the scans of the Dwurkn ship they stood upon now. In all his eighteen years he’d never seen such zeal from his father and his father’s vassals, never seen such celebration at the culmination of a hunt. It was only when he’d caught a whispered word from the edge of overheard conversations that the excitement, and the fear, had made sense to him.

“You think there’s really one here? You think they’ll find it?” Halycen asked, a look of concern flashing across her face. It echoed the same concern that Vievel had seen on the home ship, whenever he’d overheard the whispered word.

Human.

Vievel’s answer was stayed by the distant sound of metal impacting stone. His ear twitched and he involuntarily jerked his head toward the sound, looking directly past his cousin. “Vievel do you think- what?” Halycen interrupted herself as she noticed Vievel’s distraction.

“I heard something”.