“It’s - I’m sure it’s just the door rattling now that it’s free,” Halycen said. Her voice shook slightly as she spoke. She put a hand on the hatch they’d emerged from, pushing on it as if to demonstrate the noise it made when shook, but the hatch stayed silent, even as she pushed it almost-shut.
“It’s not that”. Vievel shook his head, listening to the strange clashing of metal and stone that echoed in the distance. There was a certain composition to the sound, a sequence of strikes that began with a single strong note and then continued with a cacophony of lighter sounds, but always with the same pattern to the discord; it was an organised thunder of blows against the stone. Vievel looked toward Halycen, catching her with her head tilted in the direction of the sound. For a moment he was sure that he caught a flicker of recognition passing over her face, but a split-second later she shook her head slightly, shaking off whatever conclusion she’d come to.
“I hear it…” Halycen said, an uneasy undertone softening her words. “Do you think it could be Dwurkn?” Through what little light caught Halycen’s face, Vievel saw a dread building behind her eyes.
“No,” Vievel said, speaking before he had reflected on the question. Doubt quickly assailed him, he had no idea what a Dwurkn sounded like. “Most of it is too soft for that,” he said, trying to retroactively justify his assertion. “It’s organised, like-”
“Marching,” Halycen whispered. Her eyes lit up with an alarm and she darted toward Vievel, holstering her sidearm as she sprung forward. Halycen grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him backward. Caught off-guard Vievel half-stumbled, half-fell, as Halycen pulled him around the nearby corner.
“What-hey-” Vievel stammered, protesting. He felt Halycen’s flashlight collide unkindly with his shoulder bone. A dull thudding pain radiated from his shoulder, running down his arm wildly and away from the site of the blow until his entire arm felt limp and throbbing. His grip loosened around his own flashlight and it fell to the floor, the polymer casing bouncing against the stone with a dull subdued wallop. He pulled his uninjured arm free of Halycen’s grip, softly massaging at his pained shoulder. Halycen didn’t pause, stooping down to scoop up Vievel’s fallen flashlight before he had a chance to retrieve it; as Halycen stood up she twisted the studded handle, a faint click acknowledging the act as the light from the head of the torch quivered and turned off. A second soft click came from her other hand and the corridor plunged into darkness.
The pitch-black swallowed them much quicker than Vievel had been prepared for, the corridor vanishing before his eyes as they struggled to adjust to the lack of light. A faint rustling beside him caused his entire body to tense up, his legs bidding him to run whilst his arms drew up to guard his chest; only a split-second later did he realise the stirring sound was Halycen adjusting her knapsack. A part of him relaxed, but he still was wholly aware that he was functionally blind. His nerves were a hair-trigger set to be fired at the slightest thing, his surroundings a swamp of darkness without reference, hiding anything that might be or could be. He had no idea what lurked past the corner they’d now rounded, and no ceiling or wall fixture watched over any part of it. Were there any lights? He struggled to recall if he’d seen any, if it was just the crippled starship’s dwindling power that dwarfed them in darkness, or if the ship itself completely lacked them. Did Dwurkn see in the dark? It felt like something he should know, but the memory of his limited lessons on Dwurkn physiology escaped him at that moment. Vievel considered asking Halycen, stopping only for his already-bruised ego. He was unwilling to risk his pride and admit he was blind to the dangers of the ship in more than one way. Still, not knowing what might lurk close by, what might even be sneaking up on them right now-
“Hallie, turn the lights back-”
“Quiet!” Halycen snapped. Vievel glared in the direction of his cousin, mouthing insults he knew she couldn’t see. “Look,” Halycen said. A gloved hand reached out of the gloom and pressed itself against his head; Vievel recoiled but it pressed up against his head and pushed him to look past the corner, down the long etched corridor they’d emerged into shortly before.
His eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness, Vievel began to make out the faintest shapes in front of him; Halycen stood pressed up against the wall, slightly in front of him, whilst he stood apart from her. Her hair was coiled and bunched up, draped forward over her shoulders, whilst her knapsack was hanging low to the floor, slung loosely from its strap across her left wrist. Without his flashlight, and standing in the open, Vievel felt exposed. He squeezed the grip of his sidearm firmly, and an anxious finger made sure it remembered where the trigger lay.
Halycen craned her head around the turn in the corridor and Vievel followed her gaze, staring down the etched passage. It seemed to run forever, disappearing quickly into darkness and showing no evidence that it ever stopped. A series of lights flickered in the distance, so far away that for a moment Vievel believed himself looking at distant stars, positive that he was somehow staring out through the walls and into the deep and dark itself. The distant lights were like pinpricks in the darkness at first, but as Vievel watched several more joined them, and the lights grew in luminance until they suddenly turned toward him, bathing the long etched passage in a flourish of light.
Halycen and Vievel both shrank back, hiding behind the corner. From where he stood Vievel could see nothing but darkness, the gloom once again reaffirmed from his dance with the distant lights. Waiting for the lights to suddenly rush forward and consume the darkness, he noticed the corner remained as dark and still as when Halycen had deactivated their flashlights.
“Vievel, look,” Halycen whispered. As his eyes readjusted Vievel made out his cousin already peeking around the corner again, watching the distant lights. He considered keeping itself hidden, but his curiosity pushed him to take a tentative step forward, stopping as far back as he possibly could whilst still able to see the flickering lights.
The light dwindled as it carried along the long corridor, stopping completely before it reached either Vievel or Halycen. Vievel glanced toward the open metal hatch. The door was near flush against the wall, barely ajar and therefore mercifully evading the little light that did make it as far as the hatch. Had it been any further open the metal surely would’ve lit up and reflected the light back as if it were an entirely new flashlight, giving the distant wanderers something to investigate; he was thankful that Halycen had pushed it almost-shut.
As the far-flung lights swept the corridor, moving in sharp controlled motions, they cast the etched passage into a gloomy shroud and revealed a series of turns and intersections along the passage’s length, a nest of alternate paths that Vievel and Halycen had yet to investigate. The other explorers were as far away on the ship as they could be, and still be within sight, but Vievel felt his body root itself to the ground.
Are they humans? The thought paralysed him, even his breath slowed and became stilted as he considered the possibility. He only knew the very worst stories about humans, tales of how they had almost hunted the Aælfir to extinction. One human was supposedly worth twenty Aælfir soldiers, let alone two teenagers. The prospect of seeing one, alive and in the flesh, it filled him with a sort of sick giddiness; Vievel couldn’t take his eyes off the flickering lights, yet every second spent staring at them he felt a little more nauseous.
“Scout company,” Halycen breathed, exhaling forcefully. She had been holding her breath as well. “Aælfir. It’s the Ulmadr Advance”.
“How do you know?”
“Look at the way the flashlights sweep, that’s Aælfir training,” she said. Vievel wondered if his cousin had also considered whether they were staring at a band of humans. “-and there aren’t enough of them to be the main group, to be father or uncle’s war company. We’d - I’d have heard them from much further away,” Halycen continued, briefly flustered. Vievel stared at the dancing lights, eager to see what his cousin had seen, but their movements didn’t reveal anything to him. The heavy stomping of metal on stone continued and Vievel felt like turning to run further away. For a moment he glanced down at his own boots, hanging beneath his dark fibre-weave trousers. Had he and Halycen been deaf to their own noise?
The distant lights twitched nervously about the ship’s corridors, sweeping separate arcs that occasionally lurched in one direction or another. Vievel flinched needlessly as one pointed directly at him. The light didn’t pause for him, snapping elsewhere without so much as a second spent lingering.
“We’ll be in trouble if they spot us,” Vievel said, as much for his own benefit as his cousin’s. If they’re Aælfir, he added silently, not voicing the concern. Vievel stepped back behind the corner as best he could, but a self-destructive spark of curiosity kept him far forward enough so that he watch the inquisitive lights.
“They won’t spot us,” Halycen said. “They’re far too far away. I doubt even Sera Odill’s eyes are so great,” she said.
“That’s a risky bet,” Vievel replied. “What if you’re wrong?” Some of his father’s vassals were extraordinary Aælfir, but Odill stuck in Vievel’s mind more than most. The ship’s cook had once claimed the Sera to have spotted and strung a weevil-mite from the opposite side of their ship’s framework. If that, or even half of what he’d heard was true, then his nervousness would be quite founded.
“If I was wrong they’d have turned this way already,” Halycen said, louder than before. Vievel could still only make out the vaguest shape in front of him, but the clarity of Halycen’s words suggested she had herself had turned toward him. Vievel lent out beyond the corner just once more, long enough to see the far-away flashlights continue down the same intersection they’d originally been facing, away from Vievel and Halycen.
“At least it wasn’t a group of Dwurkn,” Halycen said, whispering now. Vievel felt a solid object press firmly up against his hauberk as Halycen pushed his dropped flashlight against his chest.
“I’d rather a group of Dwurkn than my father,” Vievel muttered quietly. He grabbed the flashlight from Halycen’s hand, huffing as he did. It was a rare hunt when his father joined the war company, but his father was leading the soldiers of the Ulmadr home ship even now, scouring the Dwurkn ship for still-living Dwurka, for salvage, and-
For the humans, Vievel thought. He wondered if the war company had come across any yet. He hoped, for the army’s sake, that they hadn’t.
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