Chapter 2: 'Red' (5249 words)

If you want chapter updates and to support me, check out my twitter! (@NorthDT)

“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.

The moment his flashlight was securely in his grip he twisted the activation switch, causing his cousin burst forward from the gloom. Even though he was sure she had been there moments ago, Vievel found her presence comforting. “If we get found-” “I’ll say it was all my idea,” Halycen said. “Well, it was”. “Honestly bidja,” Halycen taunted. Vievel bristled at the word, reaching for any slur or nasty jab he could return. It was an unkind childhood nickname that still, years later, always burnt at Vievel upon any recall. It was especially vexing to hear the word slip from his cousin’s mouth. His better judgement rallied against a bitter reprisal, but Vievel nonetheless felt his fists curled around both his sidearm and flashlight. Each pressed uncomfortably against his palms, gripping so tightly that he was momentarily possessed of the idea that he might snap either in half by the sheer force of his grip. “Father and Uncle’s company must be nearby,” Halcyen said, staring up at the ceiling as she twisted her own flashlight back to life. Vievel followed her gaze but saw nothing other than smooth stone. The footsteps of the scout group were drifting off, that much Vievel was able to tell, but he couldn’t make out where they were headed. He turned back toward the corner he had rounded and his flashlight quickly revealed the rest of the corridor, a short stumpy thing that ended much more abruptly than he had imagined. Not more than a few arm-lengths in front of him stood a wide door, made of a silver and polished metal that bore a crude reflection of the two Aælfir teenagers and the turn behind them. The mirror-like material looked much the same as the layer of metal that ran beneath the stone floor of the ship. Running unwaveringly down the middle of the door was a hair-width fracture, a line which divided the door into two distinct halves. Vievel’s flashlight suddenly caught the right half of the door unfavourably, and the door brandished light back at him. He squeezed his eyes shut and flicked his hand to the left sharply, hoping to shake loose the shapes and colours that cavorted in front of his eyes. After a moment spent blinking, to banish the floaters and flashes from before his gaze, he noticed a strange thin square box on the left side of the door. The square box was carved of a dark stone, darker than the wall from which it protruded. Upon the bottom half of the box was a series of ten rune-inscribed thick buttons, each recessed into the box. Affixed above the buttons lay a small light-grey panel, standing out from the box by half an inch. Halycen was already moving toward the door as a rapid and grating noise from the panel drew Vievel’s attention to the top of the box. She froze in place, not moving even a muscle as the panel at the top of the box slid quickly back to reveal a watchful lens and a sinister red light. “Illan-,” Vievel began to curse, the word slipping from his mouth before he had time to stay it. He bit his lip. Halycen didn’t move for a moment. Her hand hovered, fixed above her belt and holster. Vievel imagined she was waiting for something to happen, much the same as he had been for the past few seconds; seconds that were decided and content to behave like minutes in his mind. Vievel glanced at the panel on the box, expecting some sort of response toward them. The lens itself, the camera, seemed satisfied just to be present, neither alert nor perhaps even aware of the two intruders in front of it. The red light, no larger than the head of a screw, sat similarly placid and disinterested. Neither gave any indication they were doing anything more than existing; no alarm blared, no Dwurkn horde came crashing out of secret panels. A dead ship, Vievel thought to himself. Halycen’s dropped suddenly, going for the sidearm still in her holster. “Hey wait-” Vievel lurched forward and grabbed her by the elbow, Halycen’s hand stopping just shy of the strap on her holster. “You fire that thing and the scouting group will definitely hear it,” he said. “What if something’s watching?” Halycen whispered, glaring at him before she turned to eye the camera again. “Then they’d have set off the alarm, or they’re already on their way,” Vievel said. “We need to get away from here, not draw more attention. There aren’t cameras elsewhere, we just need to get away from this one”. Halycen frowned. Her fingers restlessly stroked the release button on her holster. “Can we get through the door?” Halycen asked. “Not without the code, retina or skeleton pass,” Vievel said, nodding toward the buttons and the lens on the panel’s box. Halycen’s eyes darted back and forth, from the camera, then to Vievel, glancing between both several times until eventually, she sighed. “Let’s take a different intersection, away from the scouting party,” Halycen said, turning away from the camera. As she made to turn away she drew her sidearm regardless. The pair slunk silently back around the corridor, Halycen leading their quick march with Vievel following. Several intersections opened and closed, beckoning, whispering of tech and treasure hidden in their darker recesses, as Vievel and Halycen stalked quietly past them. As a precaution, they extinguished their flashlights before turning the corner, in case the scouting party remained at the far end of the ship, but no lights hid anywhere in the pitch-black of the main passage. They were alone. Vievel felt his breath quicken nonetheless, imagining all sorts of spectres and beasts hidden in the gloom, especially each time the walls gave way to a new opening. Twice he saw a shadow or gloomy outline render a false figure in front of him, a trick of the darkness that nevertheless made him halt in fear. The second time he drew to a stop Halycen tapped him on the arm, eager to know what had stalled him. “It’s nothing,” Vievel said, sure he was imagining all the pretenders sitting quietly in the gloom. Together they hurried along the wall that had been lined with etchings, the bumpy surface providing companion and guiding them through the familiar place even without their lights. In the darkness the etchings seemed to carry on even with the breaks in the wall, though Vievel couldn’t make out whether the same patterns bridged the gaps, or whether they started anew. Suddenly Vievel saw Halycen’s shadowy outline disappear in front of him, vanish before he could work out where she’d gone, and for a moment his breath stopped entirely. “Hallie?” he whispered, silently begging the darkness for a reply. A gentle click answered him, the tell-tale spread of a flashlight lighting the intersection in front of him. Vievel grasped his own flashlight tightly, waiting to turn it on until he too rounded the corner. He turned right into another long corridor, one that he imagined ran parallel to the door-blocked passage they’d been in minutes ago. How many intersections had they passed before turning down this one? How far did the passages on the ship run? Vievel imagined that he might spend days exploring the ship and still not cover any considerable portion of it. This place is a maze, he thought. Halycen was standing in front of the etchings with her flashlight pressed up them, inspecting one of the layers. It had changed from a series of pictures depicting coffins to a series of runes not unlike the top-most layer. A long recessed line ran the length of the strip, tiny marks in the line making arrow shapes at even intervals. “The wall here is a different shade, a different stone,” Halycen said. Her palm was flat against a bare part of the rock-face, her hand gently rubbing the surface of it. Vievel lent closer, facing towards where Halycen was indicating. Sure enough, the stone was a different colour, a rusted and withering red that was both unsightly and unshaped. It fell and rose at random, taking on a cavernous and natural appearance, seemingly weathered and struck by the elements until it took its present form. The red and wild wall stood in remarkable comparison to the uniform charcoal walls that occupied the rest of the ship; to his eye, the dull red reminded Vievel of blood. Vievel saw the red rock-face continued onward, the carved etchings appearing warped and aged where it moved suddenly. The floor of the corridor was similar in shade, though it maintained a much more even and smoother surface. It looked as if the red rock-face continued down the rest of the way, though he couldn’t make out much beyond Halycen’s blinding flashlight. “What does it mean?” Vievel said, turning to his cousin. He pressed his own hand up against the cold stone, feeling the jaggedness of the uneven rock. It was uncomfortable compared to the smoother walls elsewhere. In his mind he was sure he’d stammered, a nervousness replaying his words in his head no sooner than they’d left his mouth. “It’s a different ward of the ship,” Halycen said. Whether imagined or not, his cousin didn’t comment on his stammer. “Dwurkn use different types of rock and stone to indicate different places within the ship, instead of signs or lights like on our ships,” she said. “What does the red mean?” “Uh-” Halycen hesitated. “Barracks, armoury or med-bay, I’m not sure”. “Those,” Vievel swallowed an urge to laugh in his cousin’s face. “-those are very different things,” he said, forcing his smile to dissipate before Halycen turned her flashlight on him. “At least I know what it means,” Halycen scoffed. “You should, you’re older,” Vievel said, not taking the bait. “You’ve had more study than I ha-” His voice trailed off as his finger found the long recessed line that ran the length of the wall, drawn over one layer of the etchings. “We should follow this,” he said, thinking aloud. The strange rock pricked the side of his finger as he traced the guiding line. Something about the rock felt peculiar, raw. The image of a dusty asteroid, wild and untamed, jumped to the fore of his mind. “Why?” “Because it’s been over forty-five minutes and we haven’t found anything interesting yet,” he said. The lack of spoils from their unauthorised expedition was beginning to weigh on him. Perhaps the line would lead them to treasure, useful salvage, perhaps even a human. Yet again Vievel considered that were he to come face-to-face with a human it might be the last thing he did, and yet again he found himself intoxicated by the possibility despite the danger. It would be a story even his father would have to respect. “We’ve only got so long anyway,” Vievel said. Regardless of what they found, it would too soon be time for them to return, lest they risk their hypoxin tablets failing, or their respective fathers finding out about their absence before they’d had an opportunity to justify it. Despite the very real chance of death in the former, Vievel couldn’t help but concentrate on the possibility of the latter. “There has to be a point to this”, Vievel said, flourishing with his free hand. “The line looks like it’s guiding to something,” he said. “I want to find out what”. Halycen shifted for a moment, rocking on the thick polymer heel of her metal boot. “Alright,” she said, with a keen grin. “Let’s follow it”. 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.