“So that’s when the space fungus started swarming our ship!”
Hyren said. They had to have been walking for at least an hour, now, but Hyren had
scores more stories to tell. The tunnel was now so narrow that Hyren barely fit
in it, and if it got any narrower he was going to have to turn to one side. “I
turned to the Navibot helmsman and—“ He stopped short, drawing in an uncertain
breath.
“What is it?” Terra asked from behind him.
Just ahead, the tunnel ceiling abruptly dipped, reducing its
navigable area to a mere crawlspace a few feet high. It looked just large
enough for Hyren to squeeze through. He shuffled awkwardly aside so Terra could
see.
Her eyes widened, and Hyren didn’t know what to tell her.
“Blynn, you go first,” he said. “I’m sure we’re nearly to the end.” Well, that
was a lie. But considering there was still a draft, he held out hope.
Blynn started toward the hole, dropping to all fours and
holding the lantern ahead of her with one forepaw. The firelight slowly receded
until it was barely visible.
“Okay. Your turn,” Hyren said to Terra.
The owner stared at the entrance for a few awkward moments
before looking back over her shoulder at him. She said nothing, but Hyren could
tell that she really did not want to do this.
Hyren crouched down and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re
gonna be okay,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
“Gotta make sure Sloth’s test subjects get to him intact,”
Blynn said from down the tunnel.
Hyren frowned at the crawlspace. She wasn’t helping. “We
just have to keep moving forward,” he said to Terra. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“But—but what if something goes wrong?” she asked. “What if
there’s a cave-in?” Her entire body tensed.
Hyren chewed on the inside of his mouth. “You can’t let your
fears control you,” he said. “Trust me. I see it all too often in my job.
You’re—you’re a brave kid, Terra. I know you can conquer those fears.”
For a moment she looked unsure—and then she rubbed her face,
took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she said. “I trust you.”
“And trust yourself, too,” Hyren said. He didn’t care how
stupidly sappy he sounded right now. He wanted to see her feeling better.
“I’ll try,” Terra said. She turned to face the hole again, knelt
down, and quickly crawled in.
“I’m right behind you,” Hyren said, dropping to his knees
and elbows and huddling to get all of his bulk inside. His helmet and back armour
bumped against the ceiling as he moved, and it was rather annoying. One
downside to being big and strong was that sometimes, he had trouble fitting
places. “Well, at least this place wasn’t inhabited entirely by a kingdom of
Jubjubs,” he said. “Then we’d really have problems.”
Terra laughed weakly in response.
“I’m out the other side!” Blynn said.
Hyren gave a sigh of relief. “How big is it?” he asked.
“Bigger than where we came in,” she said. “It looks like a
hallway. Not a tunnel. There’s um, tile and stuff.”
“Sounds like we may have come out into a main area of the
fortress complex,” Hyren said. Terra quickly covered the rest of the distance to
the end. “From here it should—“ A jolt halted the commander’s progress and he
realised he was stuck. Grunting, he pushed with his shoulders, trying to find
the point of pressure. One of his pauldrons was being blocked by an outcrop of
rock.
“Are you okay?” Terra asked, bending down with the lantern
to peer back into the crawlspace.
“Yeah,” Hyren said. “I’ll be there in a second.” He bared
his teeth and shoved hard. The offending rock snapped off—but he heard a
sickening crack and bits of stone began crumbling from the wall and ceiling.
Hyren bit his tongue and mentally kicked himself for his
inability to learn that every time he acted without forethought, something
would inevitably collapse on him. He tried to quicken his pace, but the cramped
quarters made that difficult, and the rocks wouldn’t stop falling around him. In
fact, they were getting bigger.
“Hyren!” Terra called. Amidst the dust, a shape dove toward
him.
“Go back!” he coughed.
A pair of small hands gripped his own hand and wrist, and
pulled. Using the extra leverage, Hyren pushed himself away from the collapsing
stone and out into the open. He lay sprawled on the tile floor for a moment,
his chest heaving as the entire passage gave way behind him.
Hyren looked over at Terra, who was dusting herself off with
a cough. “Well… that’s twice you’ve saved my life now,” the Grundo said, rising
to his feet and offering her a hand.
She took it and staggered to her own feet. “You don’t owe me
anything,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’m not that pedantic,” he said. “You risked
your life to save me. You could have been caught in that cave-in, too.”
Terra swallowed hard. “I—I know,” she said. “But I couldn’t
leave you there.”
The commander paused. “You really are a lot braver than you
give yourself credit for,” he said. “No wonder you’re an explorer.”
“Yeah, too bad we’re gonna be stuck with Sloth after this,”
Blynn said, glaring up at the commander. “Thanks a lot.”
“Never mind that,” Hyren said. “Let’s keep going.” Why did
she have to remind him? Again the urge came to just leave them on Neopia and
pretend like he’d never met them. Would that be treasonous? Sloth couldn’t
possibly expect anything more out of Hyren besides surviving almost certain
death, could he?
“Which way do you suggest we go, oh fearless leader?” Blynn
asked, breaking Hyren out of his thoughts.
The tunnel had come out on the wall of a long, straight
hallway, the floor of which was lined with tile and the walls carved in
swirling decorative motifs. The corridor extended into darkness on either side
of them.
“Oh, I know!” Terra said. “The air was blowing in from here,
wasn’t it? So…” She held up the lantern and opened a second window, then
positioned the lamp so the openings aligned with the direction the hallway ran.
“All we have to do is watch the flames.”
Hyren peered over her shoulder. The fire mote’s flames
wafted toward the left lantern window.
“So we need to go right.” Terra said, pointing into the
shadows, then looked up at Hyren. “Right?”
He folded his arms over his chest and nodded. “That was
pretty clever, I have to admit,” he said.
She grinned and said, “Thanks.”
“I’m hungry,” Blynn said, plopping onto the floor. “Can we
stop for lunch?”
Terra’s smile faded. “We should keep going,” she said. “I—I
really want to get out of here.”
“I hate to say it,” Hyren said, “but Blynn’s right. We need
to keep up our energy and pace ourselves. Trust me,” he said again to a rather
anxious-looking Terra. “I’m an old pro at this. I know what will work here.”
“Okay,” she said quietly, sitting down next to her Neopet.
Hyren felt like he had to make it up to her somehow, but he didn’t quite know
how.
Lunch was sandwiches and fruit. Hyren let them eat their
fill, reasoning that they had to be close to an exit by this point, and food
was always in abundance in Neopia, especially for the resourceful. And he
didn’t want to scare Terra by having them ration their supplies.
Hyren himself took no food. “I can go without eating far
longer than you can,” he explained to Terra when she tried to offer him a
sandwich. “I’ll be fine.” He did, however, concede to a small sip of water from
her canteen.
Terra finished eating before Blynn, and the human girl puttered
around the hallway, carefully staying within the circumference of the lantern
light. “There’s a door here,” she said, feeling the wall nearby.
She placed her hand on a tall slab of wood carved with
images of Neopets in battling poses. The girl pulled its rusted handle and it
creaked aside, sending dust sifting out of the doorway where it had lain
undisturbed for centuries. Hyren grabbed the lantern and jumped up, not wanting
her to meet with any nasty surprises on the other side.
“Hey, wait for me!” Blynn said, stuffing the rest of her
sandwich in her mouth.
Hovering over Terra as she peeked in, Hyren held up the
lantern and let it cast its orange glow into the area beyond while Blynn stuck
her head between them. Dust motes skittered into the dark corners of a small
room that was not nearly as lavishly decorated as the great hall. What made all
three of them gasp, however, was what the room held—armour and weapons of every
make and function.
While some pieces were arranged on racks and shelves, others
had been scattered around the room in disarray, or tossed carelessly into urns.
All of them were covered in cobwebs. That was a good sign. It meant the three were
close enough to the surface that they had reached areas where Spyders and other
Petpets lived.
“Looks like we found the armoury,” Terra said. “Neat.”
Hyren grinned. Finally, the potential of some treasure worth
taking along. “Maybe there’s something still useable in here,” he said as he
moved past the two into the room. His blaster only had so much power left, and
while he was well-trained in unarmed combat and could usually win fights just
by throwing his own bulk around, Hyren still mourned his lost sword. Besides,
this stupid place owed him something for all the trouble it had put him
through.
His two young companions quickly followed him. “Look, look!”
Blynn said with a laugh. Hyren glanced over to see her try on an ornate helmet
that looked like it was crafted for a Lupe. “This is awesome!” she said as the ill-fitting headgear fell over her eyes.
“Who are you this time?” Terra asked, inspecting a heavy
spear.
“Corporal Blynn of the 679th Division!” the Zafara said. She
picked up a long sword from the floor, attempting to draw it out of its
scabbard. “Onward… nngh… troops!” she ordered while struggling with the hilt.
“Today, we march for—“ With a loud snap, the hilt came loose in her hand. What
was left of the blade at the base was mere jagged rust. “Blehhh.” She made a
face and tossed the hilt away. “Gross.”
“All of these weapons are corroded,” Hyren grumbled as he
sifted through them. He pulled cankered scimitars from their sheaths and
watched crumbling spear heads fall from their hafts as soon as he touched them.
“Although I guess I’d rather have air and rust down here than no air at all,
but still…”
“What’s that?” Terra asked, pointing to the far corner.
Hyren’s eyes followed her finger to a stack of tall urns
matted with Spyderwebs and detritus, looking like they’d been there for even
longer than the rest of the cache. One of them was cracked down the side, and
through a tiny hole shone the unmistakeable glint of untarnished metal.
His breath caught in his throat. “Whoa,” he said, dropping
his current armload of scrap metal to stride across the tile floor. Lifting
another urn out of the way where it had fallen on top of his target, he removed
the lid, and his eyes widened.
“What is it, what did you find?” Terra asked from behind
him.
“You’re never going to believe this,” he said. A grin spread
up his face as he lifted his discovery from its hiding place and turned to present
it to the girls. He held a load of weapons that looked as unspoiled as the day
they were forged. The blades were not so much as dulled or nicked, like they
had never even seen battle.
“They… they aren’t rusted,” Blynn said as Hyren knelt down
and spread them on the floor along with their sheaths.
He picked up a long, straight sword and turned it over,
inspecting it closely. It was the perfect size and weight for a larger, heftier
species of pet such as a Grarrl or a Skeith—or himself. “And the workmanship is
incredible,” he said. Detail on the blade caught his eye, and he angled it to
catch the lantern light better. His jaw dropped as he said, “Faerie runes.
These were forged by the faeries.”
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