Halycen took off first, practically leaping forward the moment she had finished speaking, whatever doubt she had briefly held instead replaced with renewed vigor. Vievel glanced towards Halycen as she strode off, almost calling after her, but he instead lingered at the wall; his finger pressed firmly up against the razor-sharp edge of a rock protruding from it.

The rock here is deadly. A fall or push, an unfortunate cut, any number of accidents could be the end of someone on the jagged rock-face; Vievel resolved to stay away from the edges of the corridor, to keep himself aware of the potential for injury, and yet... A reckless voice leapt out, asked him to press his finger further, to see if it could prick him through the metillion layer of his gauntlets.

“Vievel!” Halycen exclaimed. Her voice rattled and echoed softly somewhere out of sight. She drew a hand to her mouth, clenching her fist so her knuckle pressed up against her lips. Vievel scowled at her, an exaggerated and playful scowl, but still pulled himself away and turned to follow his cousin.

As the two of them walked together a hatch drew their attention, a small metal door built into the curved wall much like the hatch they had emerged from into the etched passage. Halycen stopped to crouch down beside it, but as Vievel approached the hatch a sudden odour of burnt meat assaulted Vievel’s nostrils. The smell had faded into the background, barely present since he had first stepped aboard the main Dwurkn corridors but here, standing in front of the vented hatch, it was stronger and more grotesquely vibrant than it ever had been before. The odour escalated quickly, growing from a noticeable and unpleasant thing that wrinkled Vievel’s nose and left a sour taste in his mouth, to a rottenness that seemed to pervade every part of him. Vievel drew to a quick stop, struck by the invisible fetid barrier.

“Andlátta-” Vievel cursed, drawing his hand to his mouth. His gut and throat conspired, jointly begged to push the remains of his breakfast up and out his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Halycen asked hurriedly, stopping suddenly and turning towards her cousin with a mixture of alarm and confusion on her face.

“You can’t smell that?” Vievel coughed, choking back a gag. He unslung his knapsack from his shoulder and began fishing around in it, knocking aside the suit-mask that dominated the pocket inside.

“No…” Halycen said, her voice trailing off as she frowned towards him. Vievel touched the poly-weave cloth rag he was searching for and he fished it out of the knapsack without a moment’s pause.

“You can’t-” Vievel stopped as the cloth rag met his mouth and nose, making the smell beyond it less distinct. Halycen couldn’t smell. His cousin had no sense of smell. The flaw had escaped him briefly in the face of the overwhelming stink. “It’s like a furnace stuffed to the brim with meat, just charred, burning-” Vievel’s throat stung as he retched, but nothing came up.

“I can’t smell anything,” Halycen said pointedly, shrugging her shoulders. Vievel felt a not-unfamiliar pang of jealousy toward his cousin.

“You’re lucky,” he said, breathing deep into the rag as he walked to catch up with her. “It’s awful”. The smell didn’t dissipate entirely as they continued to journey onward, but it did begin to lessen as they moved away from the vented hatch; Vievel kept the rag pressed firmly against his face as he walked forward. The source of the smell wasn’t apparent, but after the first hundred feet, it became bearable enough that he was able to draw the poly-weave cloth away from his face. As the two continued onward the ward quickly became home to a series of arched openings, leading to small rooms that appeared to have been hollowed out from within the corridor walls. Vievel stepped up to the nearest opening, his curiosity keeping his feet moving where apprehension threatened to stall him.

The room was bare except for three cabinets built into the north wall, with heavy-looking coarse rock doors, and a series of twelve long basins, each carved of smoother stone and each roughly half Vievel or Halycen’s height. Beside each basin sat a small metal table with sharp thin legs that gave it an unstable appearance. The red jagged rock made for uneven and wild surroundings, and a ceiling which was sloped, half as tall in the far corner as it was above the threshold he stood beneath. The chamber was as savage and crude as natural rock, a tiny cavern carved inside a starship. As a childe, before his mother had passed, Vievel had begged to be allowed on a mining expedition; against his father’s wishes, his mother had taken him along with her away-team, on a supervised expedition to cut minerals from an orbit-stalled asteroid. Standing beneath the untamed stone in that moment Vievel found himself transported back to that moment and standing back inside the hollowed asteroid.

The basins inside the room lined three of the walls, save for the north one at which Vievel and Halycen stood. The many long basins lay adjacent to each other and flush against whichever side of the chamber was nearest; each held up by four legs, thick and extending at least a foot upward to the main block, and each featuring a thin flat lip around all four edges. A few inches past the lip the bulk of the basin curved inward, creating a deep recess which sunk halfway through the main block, and the stone’s colour warped as it dipped downward. Where most of the block was a charcoal grey, the interior of the basin was a similar red to the chamber walls.

“They’re recovery rooms,” Halycen said, leaning over his shoulder. “Look, I think those cot-shaped things are- they’re beds,” she said, pointing at the nearest as she did. Vievel took a half-step past the threshold and into the room. He stepped around the adjacent metal table and reached out toward the nearest basin, grazing it with the back of his hand before he pressed up against it properly; it felt the same as the smoother stone which had been more commonplace elsewhere in the ship, save for a slight dampness. At first, Vievel was sure he had imagined the slickness, or mistaken a chill for moisture, but as he pressed up against the stone a second time, he felt the same chill again.

“Eugh,” Vievel said. “Its wet”.. Halycen stepped past him and planted her own hand down upon the basin, failing to trust his word.

“Huh,” Halycen said. She nodded slightly, a motion that was almost invisible in the gloom of the chamber. Vievel rubbed his thumb idly against the edge of the curved recess and explored the texture with his fingers. He’d been mistaken. The stone was slightly different somehow, despite the dampness he couldn’t gain much traction; his thumb was sluggish as it slid across the red part of the basin, sticking to its surface. Beside him, Halycen drew her arm back to stretch, and as she did a striking bright crimson dashing her palm was suddenly and dramatically thrust into Vievel’s view. The crimson stretched from her palm along the underside of her arm and followed it down to her elbow, a dripping trail of red.

“Hallie,” Vievel howled. “- your hand!” His voice dominated the small red cavern and Halycen twitched quickly at the sudden sound, glancing toward Vievel with an incredulous look before she processed his words. She glanced down as his words settled on her and groaned softly at the sight.

“Oh, great,” she muttered. “Where am I going to wash that off?” she said, asking the question of her palm, as though the blame rested solely upon the hand itself.

“It’s blood!” Vievel said. His voice dropped to a muted and neutral tone that he hoped disguised his disgust. The red splashed across Halycen’s arm was a much more vibrant red in comparison to the dull rusted rock that made up the room, it was almost-gleaming, full of life and oxygen. It didn’t look anything like his own blood, nor any Aælfir blood he’d ever seen.

“Uh-huh,” Halycen said, as though she’d been covered in blood all along. “I mean of course-”

A crashing sound interrupted Halycen. The two Aælfir teens spun around, their eyes immediately coming to rest upon a figure standing at the other side of the chamber’s threshold; a nearly-nude squat figure with a snarling grin, wild eyes and a mouth full of broken teeth. A Dwurkn.