“See, I told you it was worth sticking around for a bit,” Halycen said. She felt a grin break out across her face, doubt ebbing away until she couldn’t feel it anymore. Her gaze followed a narrow crack in the floor, so thin that it was almost imperceptible to her naked eye. She traced it from beside the threshold until it reached the base of a metal table, upon which sat three distinctive tools. The first was a metal pinwheel, almost three quarters the length of her forearm, with small points spaced evenly upon the wheel. The second was a pair of forceps with spikes running along the grips, with a latch built into the handle so the forceps could be locked into position once extended. Halycen spent only a few seconds looking over the first two tools before her eyes were drawn to the third, an oversized pair of serrated scissors, with teeth as sharp as any Halycen had seen before. Stepping over to the metal table Halycen gripped the scissors with both hands. Each of the three tools were sized for a Dwurkn grip, with handles much wider than an Aælfir’s hands could stretch, but the scissors were particularly unwieldy. Her arms shook as she raised them, trembling slightly under the weight as she tried to stop them from dipping forward. She brandished them out, holding them like she would a heavy-weighted sparring sword. For a moment she was back on the home-ship, fencing with, and defeating, all the older cadet hopefuls. Drawing her hands together she closed the scissors shut carefully, watching as the spikes on each blade nestled together and formed a tight toothy maw.

“That thing looks ridiculous in your hands,” Vievel said. He was holding a small tablet in his hands and tapping on its dull computerised display, his flashlight tucked beneath his underarm. The exterior of the tablet seemed to be carved from a smooth black rock, polished until it gleamed. As Halycen looked toward the tablet its screen flickered and then turned off entirely. Vievel prodded at it and then murmured a noise of disappointment.

“I think they’re brilliant,” Halycen said. The scissors were polished and unblemished, much cleaner than most of the metal tools in both the room and elsewhere on the ship. The metal caught the light in a pleasing manner. “They look like they’d hurt,” she said, drawing the scissors open again so she could snap them shut forcefully. Snikkt. The blades chopped through the air with a mechanical clap.

“This thing-” Vievel started. He tapped again on the now-dead tablet. “-said the room should be stocked with meds, maybe there’s something valuable or something the ship can use”. Halycen felt the weight of the scissors beginning to become too much for her, the blades beginning to pitch themselves forward as her arms tired. She drew them back and placed them on the metal table, taking her knapsack off of her shoulders once her hands were free.

A crash of metal on stone snapped Halycen’s attention toward Vievel again. He was now standing beside one of the chamber’s long basins, digging through a pile of metal tools and boxes. Several tools were strewn across the floor beside him, with a round polished tray riding a circle along its own edge until it ran out of momentum and fell flat against the floor.

“Sorry,” Vievel said, without looking up from his search. As he reached the bottom of the pile he moved from his basin to the next in the sequence, beginning again with a separate pile. Halycen sighed.

“Try the cabinets,” she said, gesturing toward the stone doors set into the north wall of the chamber. Vievel glanced over his shoulder for a moment and then snapped back to his own search, a reddish tinge to his cheeks.

“Yeah, sure, let me finish this-” he mumbled.

Halycen set her knapsack on the stone basin beside her. The scissors were neither short nor slim enough to fit inside her bag. Imagining all the different angles she could try and squeeze them inside her knapsack was enough to dissuade her from trying, and instead she reached into her bag. Pushing past some drybread and spare autoloader clips her fingers closed around a coarse-surfaced ball which she promptly retrieved. The fibre-twine was strong enough to bind the scissors to her knapsack. As Vievel made his way toward the middle of the three stone cabinets Halycen began to loop twine around the handles of the scissors, and through the decorative metal loops attached to her knapsack. When she’d completed three knots and pulled the final loop of the twine taut Halycen stood back, admiring her handiwork. The scissors would stay pressed tight against her knapsack now. She took a deep breath and shuddered slightly. A growing exhaustion nagged at Halycen as the pain in her side began to ache a great deal more.

“Yup,” Vievel said, speaking loudly to the chamber. “Plenty of meds here,” he said. One of his hands flew backward, clutching a white plastic box labelled with Dwurka-scribed runes. He waved the box around without turning his head.

“Any medigauze, or bandages?” Halycen breathed heavily, the words difficult to pronounce under influence of the pain. She slipped a hand beneath her hauberk and tunic, lifting both slightly as she pressed it to her side.

“Why medigauze?” When Halycen didn’t reply Vievel turned from the cabinet and began to repeat himself. “Wh-Hallie!” he cried as he caught sight of the oozing red wound on Halycen’s side.

“By Gany- How long have you had that?” Vievel started, his mouth agape. “Are you okay? What happ-was it the Dwurkn?” he asked in quick succession. Halycen shrugged.

“The rocks on the floor, I guess. When it tackled me,” Halycen said. “It’s just a scratch, it barely hurts. It’s not a big deal,” she lied. With her hauberk raised and the edge of her tunic balled together in her fist, the blood-stained gouge on her waist stood out. She kneaded her knuckles against the edges of the wound. Pressing against it alleviated some of the pain.

“Andlátta fool-” Vievel murmured, purposefully loud enough for Halycen to hear. “You should have said something. Let me look”. Vievel noisily rummaged through the stone cabinet shelves as he spoke, knocking several boxes to the floor in one large sweep. “I’ve still got that cloth if you want to tie that around it?” he offered.

“Your sneeze rag? No thanks”. Halycen let her hauberk and tunic fall again and moved toward the cabinets. She stepped to the right of Vievel and grabbed the edge of the third cabinet’s door, heaving the already-ajar door toward her with all her might. It resisted the movement at first but then began to swing open more readily as it gained momentum. Inside she caught sight of a great many plastic boxes, the same as the med-boxes inside Vievel’s cabinets, another stone tablet with a cracked screen, a series of flasks and beakers, and, taking up the majority of the bottom shelf, a large pile of linked chain. Halycen ran one of her fingers against the chain, feeling the cold wrought metal beneath it.

“Ah, here!” Vievel said. A second later he thrust a thin grey mesh square in see-through plastic packaging toward Halycen. She tore open the packaging with both hands and peeled an adhesive-guard strip away from the edges of the square, then lifted her hauberk and tunic slightly so she could press the mesh against her bare skin. As she waited for the mesh to attach her eyes travelled across the plastic boxes in the cabinets. All were marked in the crude Dwurka script that the wall-etchings had been written in, runic symbols that made no sense to her. Some, however, were marked with pictures of plants and even colourful symbols that she recognised, giving clues to their purpose. Halycen winced slightly as the medigauze adhesive began to work; looking down she saw the mesh square’s edges bubbling as it affixed itself to her skin and cleaned the wound.

Beside her Vievel had begun gathering up some of the nearby boxes, dropping them into his open knapsack.

“Some of this could be useful for the home ship,” he said, paying a great deal less attention to the symbols and pictures, emptying everything he could grab into his bag. Halycen nodded, her eyes closed. She began to feel slightly giddy as the medigauze’s painkiller effect kicked in, the ache on her side alleviating as it did. The absence of the sensation was louder and more agreeable than the presence of it. A noise echoed out across the chamber and she opened her eyes again, ready to chide Vievel for his clumsiness. As she came to look at him she instead noticed a sharp look of alarm on his face.

“What was that?” Vievel whispered. He glanced toward the open chamber threshold. Halycen cupped a hand to her ear, placing a finger against her lips to prompt Vievel to stay quiet. The noise came again, closer but also softer, as though the source of the sound was being a great deal more careful.

Halycen placed a hand on Vievel’s flashlight. He glanced down at it and then looked to her as she mouthed off. His hand twisted the flashlight grip and the light went out, dropping the room into a sudden darkness. In the absence of Vievel’s flashlight Halycen noticed a dim and distant light coming from the doorway.

Illandr, she cursed silently. Something was following them, but what? She moved toward the chamber arch, stepping past Vievel carefully and watching her feet as to not trip over any of the debris strewn across the stone floor. As she passed her cousin he frantically shook his head, wordlessly pleading for her not to continue. A spark of paranoia at the back of her head begged the same, but she continued onward nonetheless. As she reached the doorway Halycen ducked down and dipped her head around it, out into the corridor.

At once the no-longer distant light flared and intensified, bathing her in a bright white glare. A number of flashlights came to bear on her face, blinding her and obscuring the group of figures standing in front of her.

“Halt!” cried a familiar voice.