For a moment, Nari was in a void, then reality unwound itself back into place.

She wasn't in the same place she was before. Hell, it didn't look like she was on the same planet she was before. It was a lot brighter here; she was no longer in an underground facility, and beams of sunlight cascaded down the walls of the chamber she was in, saturating the ground in daylight.

Nari looked around. She was in a circular room, with walls made out of some sort of dull gray metal. The floor was made out of the same material, but with cracks scattered throughout, from which life grew - crimson grasses and weeds holding out in this strange environment.

The walls were lined with plants of similar coloration, red leafy bushes that poked out of the rock, making the room feel like some kind of alien garden. They weren't quite well-kept in any sense of the word, and had grown wildly, tangling across the walls in chaotic patterns, vines growing between them.

On top of the walls she could see some trees growing, their leaves a similar red to the rest of the plantlife here. They stretched atop the rim of the chamber, casting shadows down beneath, leaves occasionally drifting out from under them and slowly gliding down to the floor.

And above all that was the green sky. Quite a strange color for a habitable planet's sky - she hadn't heard of many that looked quite like this - but it was a gorgeous sight to behold. It was a relatively sunny day, only punctuated by a few fluffy clouds, the sun, and a large pale moon slowly moving in an eccentric orbit across the horizon.

Nari noticed a buzzing noise behind her. She turned around and realized she was standing on a raised circular platform. Between her and the wall was a portal, almost identical to the one she had entered through, albeit in much more sanitary conditions. Teal beams of light entered the portal from projectors on the floor, and below the projectors were similarly colored lines, stretching across the floor and behind the wall, casting a glow onto the metallic floor.

She narrowed her eyes and peered further. The teal lights actually ran through a good portion of the walls in the facility - some ran behind all the bushes in the walls, some went all the way up to the trees, and others outlined a path forward into a circular tunnel in the front of the chamber.

Nari stepped forward quietly. She knew Vaulting could be a quite dangerous activity; despite the apparent tranquility of this place, danger could be lurking around any corner, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught unawares. Who knew what the Architects could have hidden in a place like this?

She dodged out of the way of the teal beams as she heard a sudden electrical crackling sound, quickly aiming her pistol in front of her. As she scanned the room, the glow slowly disappeared, returning to a dull grayish-black, the lack of color slowly making its way up the walls like a hose had started pumping oil instead of water.

As the light drained from the projectors, the portal to head back to where she was before gradually shrunk. In a drop of blue light, it vanished.

It seemed she was stuck here.


He was in the air for a moment, then he felt a solid mass below him as he crumpled on the floor.

A dim rattling could be heard below, the gears of some clockwork mechanism twisting and spinning the carriage upwards. The wanderer felt the carriage accelerating as it curved around the room, slowly rising upwards as it ascended towards its peak.

He grabbed onto the rim of the carriage and hoisted himself up, and once the carriage reached the top, he quickly hopped out of it, landing on the bridge.

The platform stretched the length of the room. It was featureless, just a flat walkway with raised edges, spanning across to a doorway on the opposite wall.

He crept his way across, wary of any instabilities in the floor, though it seemed to be undamaged. Once he reached the other side without anything collapsing, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Phew. At least some of this place is structurally intact.

He walked through the door and found himself in a hallway. He glanced both ways - it was perpendicular to the doorway, and if he went left, it stretched off a ways and turned. To his right he saw the glow of daylight. He opted for the latter - the open air seemed like a safer option than the frankly claustrophobic depths of these tunnels.

The wanderer felt the wind rush over his face and fins as he emerged into the sunlight. The hall had opened into a thin and long porch; it was more of a walkway, actually, and seemed to have a couple other entrances further along it.

He rested his hand on a sleek geometric railing that ran the length of the porch, and slowly crept along it, his gaze shifting between the doorways and the vines that hung above the porch, providing a lush red canopy.

Each doorway led to a long hallway, but the last one seemed particularly intriguing. It didn't continue as far as the others, and stopped in a pile of rubble, rather than finishing out with a turn as the others had. If he squinted, he could almost make out a rough, crumbled chamber wall behind the rubble.

Weird, what could've caused that?

Intrigued, he started down the hall, carefully at first, before breaking into a light jog. Something about a structure like this being damaged like that felt…alarming. The rest of this place was quite intact, and as far as he knew, metal usually didn't crumble like stone.

After a few minutes, the wanderer reached the end of the hallway and glanced over the rubble. He immediately stumbled back as he saw a gaping hole below him, stretching down a dizzying distance, eventually terminating in a pile of dusty black rubble at the bottom.

The walls of the chasm were angular and geometric. Normally he'd expect a crevice such as this to have somewhat natural-looking walls, but these were anything but; they looked almost as if the building had been made of a vast array of cubes, and some of those cubes had collapsed into a hole and broken apart. Not to mention all the rubble was metallic - this didn't seem like a regular structural collapse.

He was near the left side of the chasm, and to his right it continued on for as long as he could see, its path bending around and blocking the other end's visibility. Refracted light from plants outside gave the whole place a dim orange glow, and the wanderer was fairly certain that if he fell down there he would not make it out alive.

He sighed and turned around. I'm definitely not going to be crossing that thing anytime soon.

As he started back towards the porch, he noticed a door on his right. Its location wasn't obviously painted out, and it seemed smaller than the other doorways he'd used in the facility, like it had been added as an afterthought.

He stood up to the door and put a hand on it. After a moment, strips of teal light flowed in from the walls and circled the door, unlocking it and sliding it open. Beyond it was a dark room, the blackness interrupted by the shine of metals.

The wanderer stepped into the room, and the lights detected his presence and activated. His mouth flew open in awe as he saw the vast array of strange trinkets and tools before him.


Spark wasn't having a particularly good time.

She'd been dragged around by that mysterious force for a while now. After a while, she'd regained her balance, and could have made her way out of its grasp if she so chose, but she decided to just go along with it. It seemed like it was going somewhere, as if it had some as-of-yet unseen destination.

Eventually, she left the cluster of lights behind. As they began to disappear in the distance, she felt the strange force lessen and eventually disappear.

She quickly made her way back to the light cluster. Well, maybe "quickly" wasn't quite the term for it - time and space didn't flow conventionally here, and movement was more of a metaphorical notion.

Spark decided to experiment with some of the cold lights around her. Most of them worked the same as she was used to; she wrapped herself around them and they disappeared. She wasn't quite sure what they did, but she had a feeling that they did…something.

A rattling rang out behind her.

She tensed up, reflexively slinking around the nearest light. When she looked around to find the source, once again, there was nothing to be seen.

What is that? Why do I keep hearing it? Am I just going insane?

Spark sighed internally and retreated from the light. As she did, a bright gleam in the distance caught her eye.

She rode a rail over to the gleam. At its source was yet another light. Strangely, this one was significantly brighter than the ones she'd seen before. And larger, too - she wasn't even sure she could wrap herself around it if she tried.

That wouldn't stop her trying, though. She launched herself towards it at full force, but was only able to cover about a third of its surface. It still heated up, though, and it dimmed for a moment, before returning to full brightness.

She tried again. The same thing happened. She gave it a couple more attempts, each with the same result as the last.

Hmm, what's up with this thing? Perhaps I can't dim it while I'm still this weak?

She knew that something had to be able to activate the light. Right? She hadn't seen any lights before that couldn't be activated. Maybe if she was larger, more powerful, she could've engulfed it completely.

Before she could think on it any further, she saw a nearby light suddenly compress. She felt the familiar strange force return and was launched toward the light.


At this point, Spark had been subject to the force for quite a while. It kept throwing her towards lights, and then proceeding onwards once she activated them.

It fluctuated in power occasionally, becoming weaker or stronger over time. It always got quite strong when it passed the lights, but right now it was fairly weak and she had the chance to actually explore around.

The force had taken her very high up, and everywhere she looked was a scaffolding of endless lights like stars in the night sky. She drifted between them as if she was skipping across rocks while attempting to cross a river. Slowly making her way farther and farther up, she managed to find a rail that sent her flying up toward the sky, until the entire structure was like a cityscape below her.

With the overview, things started to make sense. The glittering lights assembled themselves into a coherent picture; they were data, electrical signals, and she was a rogue function on this computer network, a bit of code that somehow learned to think. An artificial intelligence.

She ducked as she heard a deep rattle overhead. She looked up, and this time saw the source: drones, an army of tiny machines swarming like locusts in the void above. And the void was quickly turning blood red.

She braced for impact as the swarm descended, and was knocked off the peak she stood on, falling down into the metropolis of lights below.


The wanderer was no longer a wanderer - he was a gunner.

Okay, on second thought, that sounded kind of stupid. Regardless, he was very happy to have some self-defense, in case he ever ran into that weird swarm again.

He'd stumbled his way into some kind of vault or armory. It was packed with all kinds of useful gizmos, and he'd spent a good while playing around with all of them and seeing how they worked.

The room definitely seemed like it had been used for defense in the past. Adjacent to it was presumably a large training range, a sandbox to test out things in the armory or learn how to use them. There weren't any dummies or targets to shoot; the room wasn't so much in the shape of a shooting range but more of an arena with complex terrain.

The wanderer had tried out a few different guns in there. There were plenty of firearms in the armory, including shotguns, rifles, sidearms, and grenade launchers, but he'd settled on a couple of pistols. He wasn't the strongest guy around, so lighter-weight guns seemed a bit better for him.

He'd gone with two pistols. One of them seemed to be electrically powered, and shot a bright blue plasma burst out. The other one was much more terrifying; instead of shooting bullets, it scooped a chunk out of the wall and seemingly used the material to fuel itself. Both were smooth, geometric, and dark, with colorful lines on the side - blue on the plasma pistol, seafoam green on the other one.

The wanderer had also grabbed some armor. It was nice to finally get something on to shield him from the elements, and he figured if he ran into anyone, it'd be polite to not be running around naked.

The armor was sleek and flush in nature. It wasn't particularly bulky, and was instead more of a malleable-yet-hard jumpsuit that he could simply put on and it would adjust to his form. Unfortunately, it was clearly built for a different species than him, and had long pants and only two sleeves. He'd had to use a laser rifle he found in the armory to cut the pants into shorts and add additional holes he could slip his lower arms through.

Luckily, despite the form-fitting material, the armor did not reshape itself to fill in the holes, and he was able to put it on easily. Hopefully that would provide some additional protection if he had a chance encounter with that swarm-monster again.

The armor came with a belt, and he'd used it to store the laser rifle and some other gizmos he'd found lying around. He didn't know what all of them did, but he'd left most of them alone because if they were single-use he wanted to have them in a pinch.

A particular gadget that had caught his eye was a strange geometric gauntlet. He could stick his hand through it; at the end were two metal handles he could press down on. He opted to not use them while in the armory, and instead walked over to the training room to test it out.

Assuming that the gauntlet would probably launch something directly out of itself, the wanderer stood back and aimed it at the wall. He pressed down on the right handle, and heard the click of a winch as if it was trying to retract but was already fully wound up.

Huh, maybe the other one's what I start with?

He released the right handle and pressed down on the left one. Unlike the previous handle, it clicked down into place, and a cable shot out at high speed, attaching itself to the dark wall via a metallic grip mechanism.

The wanderer grinned as he began to realize what he was holding. He tapped on the right handle, and was jerked toward the wall as the cable briefly retracted. Stumbling over from the jerky motion, he regained his balance, a mix of a smile and a grimace on his face.

He gripped the right handle, held down, and launched at the wall.

His smile grew as he realized the implications. A grappling hook would provide him with much better mobility, allowing him to traverse these ruins with ease. And he knew of a certain chasm he might just have the means to cross now.


Past the tunnel, Nari emerged into a much wider chamber, which appeared to be a park or courtyard of some sort. Large cylindrical pillars loomed in the four corners of the chamber, which was open to the sky. The walls and pillars were tipped with red grass and trees, and the floor was cracked and overgrown with orange shrubbery.

At the other end of the courtyard was a grand entrance to an enormous structure, hanging in the distance like a giant wall. It was partially crumbled, and through the entrance, a large chasm was clearly visible.

Nari stepped forward and stepped on a twig, which broke in a loud snap.

She gripped her gun tighter and turned around to scan her surroundings. The structure continued in all directions, square in shape, like she was inside the walls of a giant fortress. In the center was a smallish square spire that climbed up into the sky, a tower so tall it could pierce the clouds.

She heard the rustling of bushes behind her and snapped around, her pistol quivering as she gripped it even harder.

"Who goes there?" she shouted, aiming her gun around at all the bushes nearby with no response.

She heard a metallic click behind her, and turned around toward the source of the noise, barely catching a glimpse of a dark shape in the corner of her view.

She approached the bushes closer. As she neared them, gun still ready, she leaped back as the shadowy figure suddenly went flying over her head. The sound of a cable buzzing rang in her ears.

As she turned around once more, she heard a snap and noticed the figure fall from the sky into the central portion of the chamber.

She gradually approached the center. This part of the room wasn't as weathered as the rest, and the floor was smooth, with no cracks to be seen where life emerged through the foundation. The bushes didn't grow this far in, so it was mostly a smooth plaza devoid of all obstacles.

Crumpled in the middle was a four-armed, bipedal creature. On each hand it had two thumbs with two fingers stuck in between. Its feet were digitigrade, with two claws facing forward and one claw out towards each side. Its head looked somewhat draconic, with six fins emerging from the back of its head. Nari instantly recognized what this creature was - an irvagaleni, one of the Chosen Races that had first colonized the galaxy.

The irvagaleni - or "irva," as the rest of the galaxy called them - was white in color, with azure accents in a few places around its face and fins. It was wearing a dark suit of form-fitting armor - presumably Archi-tech - with holes cut out of the sides where its lower arms were sticking through. In its lower arms were two pistols that looked similar to the armor, and in one of its upper arms was a strange Archi-tech gauntlet, which was presumably the grappling hook it had been using.

The irva was breathing and conscious, and as Nari approached, it tried to hoist itself up off the floor. It wasn't successful, but she could see its green eyes look up and stare at her.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" she demanded.

The irva was clearly somewhat confused with Nari's prompt. He - or at least she assumed it was a "he," it looked like a male irva - looked up at her with a clueless glint in his eye, as if he didn't recognize what a dahmak looked like.

Nari was quite confused herself, actually. What was an irva doing here? The Hegemony and the Empire had an agreement that they'd share Architect discoveries with each other, so the fact that a random, unknown irva had shown up unannounced to a vault in the middle of nowhere was…concerning, to say the least. Tensions between the two were already uncomfortably high, and she didn't want to think about what could happen if the Empire wasn't respecting their agreements.

The irva opened his mouth and spoke, shivering. "H…huh? How c…come I can u…understand what you're saying?"

"I don't know how you wouldn't know this," she responded, "but we're currently speaking Uni, the common trade language of the galaxy. Most folks know it. I'll repeat again: who are you and what are you doing here?"

The irva looked terrified. With his mouth quivering, he responded with the last thing Nari expected to hear.

"I…don't know."