Shiver stared down at the two kids and the salmonid looking up at them, assessing.
The salmonid was a small fry; although, how one got all the way out here was a mystery. She had never heard of a salmonid being taken as a pet before.
The boy was clearly scared out of his wits, his mantle a stark white, the way inklings expressed fear and submission, among a host of other emotions. If it started flashing, it would mean he had full on surrendered. He looked like he was on the edge of that already. She also noticed he had hand one hand on his backpack, as if trying to hide it behind him. That told her there was something valuable inside, which meant these kids had probably already been inside the ruins.
That wasn't good. If they had meddled with things, it might have spoiled the clue leading them to the treasure, which meant their plans could be sunk.
She switched her gaze to the girl. She stood in front of the boy, her mantle a threatening red. She wore a brave face but Shiver could see the uncertainty behind her defiant eyes. She was a cornered animal and that made her dangerous and unpredictable. The wisest course would be to try and talk her down. Doing so might also tell them how they found this place to begin with. They couldn't have just gotten lucky.
"Lost, children?" She asked, adopting her at-home persona.
The girl's lips pulled back in a snarl. "We ain't lost. If anyone should be gettin' lost it's you."
Shiver smirked behind her mask. The girl had spunk but she could hardly sound threatening with such obvious strain in her voice. She noted the boy's reaction, staring at the girl slack-jawed as if she had just blasphemed. Shiver would have to try and work her way around the girl to get at him. He would talk.
Frye clicked her tongue. Her arms were crossed and though her hood was up Shiver didn't need to see her friend's mantle to know she was disgusted.
Frye wasn't critical of most people but she had grown up with strongly traditional values and her grandfather was the shining example of inkling masculinity. This lead her to be rather critical when it came to the males of her own species and how she thought proper males should act. Seeing this guy cowering with the girl protecting him was reprehensible to her. Shiver would have to keep that in mind and try to steer the conversation away from anything that might set Frye off, forcing her to revise her response to the girl.
"Sorry for almost burying you, but you're supposed to have flags up to let people know you're there, aren't you?"
The girl bared her beak. "Yeah, like that stopped you from running over some of our people last time. Don't try to lecture me on rules you corporate goon!"
Shiver blinked. She thinks we're with Black Steel? I know we have one of their landships but they would hardly send people out here dressed like us and everyone knows they don't employ any of our three species.
She noticed the boy suddenly looking less afraid and more inquisitive, as if he had suddenly realized that very fact. So he's the brains of this pair? Alright, I can work with that. But she needed to keep him submissive and compliant so she needed to maintain the fear.
"We don't have to be enemies," she said, taking a few steps down the slope. "We aren't with Black Steel, we're just… borrowing one of their land ships. We had need of it."
The boy's fear came back to the forefront of his expression. Of course, anyone who was capable or even willing to steal a landship from the corporations had to be dangerous. The girl's expression showed surprise even… admiration? It was difficult to tell. She didn't know what the purple and orange ripples travelling down her tentacles meant, and those were only the ones she could see.
"They're after a certain something and we are trying to keep it out of their hands. It's rather important so I'm afraid we can't allow anything to compromise our mission."
"Mission?" The girl showed wide-eyed interest. "Wait, are you working against the Scrap Corporations?"
The boy looked at her. "Neo, Black Steel would never use inklings, octolings, or mantas to run their landships."
Having that spelled out for her, the girl, apparently named Neo, adopted a more relaxed stance, but she still regarded the three of them warily. "How do we know you're good guys?"
"Hmmm, an interesting choice of words," Shiver said. "'Good' can be relative. From the perspective of the Scrap Corporations, we're the bad guys, as are you, perhaps."
"No we aren't!" The boy said frantically. "We didn't do anything; this is legitimate salvage."
Shiver lifted her chin towards him. "You found something?"
The boy froze, suddenly realizing his mistake. Neo scowled at him for a second before moving to block him from Shiver's sight.
"Just because you're not with Black Steel doesn't mean we trust you. You might be bandits."
And she'd more or less be right, Shiver thought, but she could put a better spin on it than that.
"Even if we were, does it matter if we're against the Scrap Corporations? We take only from their ships, we would never take from honest, independent scrappers. We're no more bandits than you. After all, haven't you just taken something from ancient ruins? This might even be a holy site, which makes what you did even worse."
The girl blanched. Her mantle turned from a bright red to a pale rose colour, stained with pastel blues. Evidently, she hadn't considered that angle.
While Neo sorted that out in her head, Shiver slid to the side to bring the boy back into her line of sight. He seemed to be dealing with the same thoughts but his eyes kept flicking between Shiver and something at his feet that he apparently found very fascinating.
"You don't seem like the type to do something like desecrating a holy site. Did she put you up to this or did you perhaps have a different motive?" Shiver added a hint of playfulness to her voice to entice him to lower his guard. It had the desired affect.
The boy looked at her, his mantle producing warmer colours amidst the white. His eyes brimmed with hope, hope that she would relinquish him of the responsibility or consequences of his actions here and put it on Neo.
"Um… well… yes. I mean, we were just trying to keep it out of the hands of the Scrap Corporations."
Seeing the boy getting so easily flustered, Shiver reconsidered her approach. Hmmm, maybe I should turn up the charm a bit.
Shiver got a little closer. "That's very noble of you, risking yourself in order to preserve a place like this, holy or historical. We wouldn't want anything to happen to this place either. You'd be surprised how few people care about history despite how important it is. That was very brave."
The boy's eyes narrowed, but not at her, instead he glared at Neo's back.
"Yeah, nobody seems to appreciate history around here or knowledge."
That snapped Neo back to reality and she turned around to glare at him. "Hey, how often do you expect to run into ancient ruins? Anyway, what do I need to know about that when I have you?"
So, he's the brainy type in general, not just of the two of them. Interesting. The boy's need for spectacles in the Outlands probably necessitated that. Poor eyesight was not a good trait in a place where people had to fight to survive. He looked too scrawny to be a scrapper and his skin was more fair than even Neo's so he probably spent most of his time inside.
A profile of the boy started to form in Shiver's head. Given the general lifestyle of the scrappers and that these kids were most likely from Crater's Edge, a boy who was more brains than brawn would probably struggle to make his way in life. A scrawny boy who didn't look like he'd ever hunted anything larger than a small sand lizard and who spent most of his time inside probably couldn't even see the top of the social ladder or the list of eligible bachelors. He would probably find more success in the city where he could use his brains to get himself an administrative job, and that gave Shiver another piece of bait for her hook.
"Oh, so you're a scholar?" Shiver asked.
The boy tore his gaze from Neo and met her eyes. "What?"
"A scholar, a researcher, an academic, someone who prefers to flex their brain instead of their muscles."
The boy didn't look offended, per say, but he definitely became more defensive. Given how Shiver imagined he'd been treated most of his life, she wasn't surprised.
"We could use your help then. Why don't you take us inside that hole there and show us what you've found."
"Hold a sec!" Neo put herself back between them. "Why should we do that?"
Shiver grinned behind her mask. The girl was like a scavenging animal, posturing to discourage others from trying to take of its meal. It still wasn't entirely clear what the relationship between the two inklings was but she was starting to get the impression it wasn't romantic, at least on Neo's end. That would make it easier to control both of them.
"Because you also want to stop the Scrap Corporations. A scholar on our team would be useful. I can promise you it would certainly be more appreciated with us than in Crater's Edge, and you wouldn't want him to leave you behind, would you?"
Neo frowned but the boy appeared intrigued. Shiver knew she had him but she needed to get Neo over the edge too. She could probably help influence the boy and she probably knew the desert and Outlands better than Frye.
Neo took a few seconds to process that then her mantle flashed green in acceptance before returning to a lighter red. The impression Shiver got was that she was still somewhat wary but for the time being she would tolerate them.
"Are you sure about this?" Frye whispered in Octese as they approached the dark hole.
"I know it's risky to rely on them, but we already agreed we had to accept greater risks. We're against a ticking clock and we have to keep moving. Clearly they know something if they're able to find this place without the map and I want to know how. Besides, we don't want the Outlanders turning against us either."
Frye hunched her shoulders and Shiver gave her a pat on the arm. "Don't worry, things will work out. If this guy is actually able to figure out the clues, and I suspect he already has, we'll be on to the next clue or right to the treasure, that much quicker. The Scrap Corporations have to be hot on our heels by now. We need to make this quick."
They followed the two Outlander kids into the hole and became awed when they entered the main chamber of the shrine, seeing the beautiful model of the night sky above them, glittering gemstones in the place of stars.
The boy produced a large, red sphere from his backpack with an arrow and circle symbol on it.
"This is something we found that Black Steel Corporation was looking for. We used it here and it helped us solve the puzzle."
The three of them just stared at it for a moment. Frye was the one to ask, "what is it?"
"No idea," Neo said. "It's just a ball but it has the same symbol as that disk." She pointed at one of the disks. It had the same symbol on it, pointed at ninety degrees to the right.
"Wait a minute," the boy said. "It wasn't pointed like that before. Did it change direction when we solved the puzzle?"
"What was it like before?" Shiver demanded. She couldn't let any detail escape them, not when every clue might be needed to get to the vault.
The boy held the sphere in a way that canted the symbol on it to one side. Shiver thought she might have seen that somewhere, but couldn't place it. Arrows were everywhere in inkling cultural iconography, so maybe her memories were overlapping.
Frye pointed her finger up and traced the direction of the arrow along the domed ceiling until it intersected with one of the "stars" only this one was a different colour from the others. This one shone gold in the light of the flashlight.
"Why is that one different?" Neo asked.
"I… don't know," the boy admitted. "But it has to mean something. Are there any other gold stars?" They looked around but saw none. Neo found one not far from the disc the arrow was on.
"It's where the arrow was originally pointing to," Tiyes murmured. "I wonder if it was a ruse and you could only get the right star if you got the sphere. But what could it mean?"
Shiver rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "It might mean the direction we're supposed to go next."
The Outlander kids stared at her.
"What are you talking about?" Neo asked, now less hostile and more curious. Her eyes were wide pools of blue that seemed to gleam even in the dark. It reminded Shiver of an excited child eager to hear tall tales from the sailors.
The boy's reaction was more reserved but his spectacles couldn't hide the interest behind his own eyes. There was a hunger in them, a desire to pursue this knowledge, a starved intellect begging to be satisfied. They saw her baited hook, now she just needed to make them bite.
"Potentially, a great treasure, left by the Precursors themselves. A wealth of knowledge and technology is out there, waiting for us to find it."
She smiled as their eyes widened even further. She thought Neo's might pop right out of her head.
"Unfortunately, we're a bit behind. The Scrap Corporations got their hands on the knowledge of its existence by stealing precious ancient artifacts from the museum in Splatsville. We're trying to get to the treasure first and keep it out of their hands. We would appreciate it if you would lend your aid to our noble mission to rid the Splatlands of their influence."
The 'noble' adjective she added purely for Neo's benefit. Neo was standing on the tips of her toes, her mantle a bright, neon-orange. "We'll help, we'll help for sure! You're freedom fighters, right?"
Frye put her hands on her hips and Shiver could imagine a proud smile behind her mask. "That's right! We're totally independent freedom fighters. We're tryin' to put together a gang to oppose the Scrap Corporations and stop 'em from taking over Splatsville."
"And if we can do that then they won't be able to hurt the Outlands either," Big Man added.
Neo was clearly sold on the idea while the boy remained somewhat hesitant. He clearly wanted to go but something was holding him back, perhaps aversion to danger. His mantle was showing all kinds of pastel colours in patterns too complex and fast for her to identify. Still, harsh as Frye's assessment of him had been, she was probably right that he was a timid one, a boy still clinging to his mother's tentacles, but he was still a teenager so there was also likely a desire to prove himself.
Seeing that Frye had Neo distracted, Shiver stepped closer to the boy, and reaching out, gently turned his head to look at her. Only then did she lift her mask up so he could see her eyes. She heard him suck in a breath of air, saw his pupils shrink, and his mantle turned a number of bright warning colours.
By showing her face first to him and doing so behind Neo's back implied a sense of intimacy between them, and that got her right past the protective barriers he'd erected around his mind.
"What's your name?"
The boy swallowed. "T-Tiyes."
"Tell me, Tiyes, when were your talents last appreciated hm? Growing up in Crater's Edge, I bet people didn't treat you well, not fitting into the mould everyone expected you to. How many people judged you to be useless or a weakling, even though you had a mind anyone would have – should have appreciated, everywhere else?"
His eyes fell, the colours of his mantle becoming more muted. It was as she suspected.
She lifted his chin, delicately. "Come with us and prove that you aren't useless. The people in your town might not appreciate your talents but I do. Helping stop the Scrap Corporations from getting their hands on a priceless treasure is quite an accolade. Think about what that could do for your future. It would open up a great number of opportunities for you in Splatsville and get you the appreciation you deserve."
Shiver expected his face to flush brightly and maybe starting stammering; instead, Tiyes' eyes became distant as his thinking became more inward focused. His mantle roiled briefly, with some bright reds and even a few rosy colours before he flashed green and she smiled. She had him hooked.
Replacing her mask, she proclaimed, "Wonderful, great to have you both aboard. Now, are you able to tell us the next place we need to go?"
Her proclamation interrupted the conversation Neo was having with Frye and Big Man. Tiyes stood up straighter and looked back up at the single star with his flashlight and then reached into his pocket, taking out a compass. He seemed to be comparing the two. Then he moved his flashlight to look at the opposite side of the ceiling and found a star that was a bright silver colour, and frowned.
"I thought it might have been showing north but the gold star is pointed south-west."
"It's a compass?" Big Man asked.
"No, a heading. See how there are other stars aligned along the same axis all around the ceiling? They're spaced at regular intervals. But none of them line up directly with North or South."
Neo scratched her head, looking baffled. "How do you know?"
"Because this is North." He indicated a tight cluster of three stars above the imaginary plane of the evenly spaced stars. Shiver could only make out that detail now that he had pointed it out. Among so many it was difficult to tell.
"That's Polaris" Tiyes explained. "Most people don't know that it's actually a triple star system. They line up almost perfectly with true north. It's what the arrow we moved pointed at too. It was another test."
"So someone with good knowledge of astronomy and the Precursors wouldn't confuse the two," Shiver murmured. "But what about that sphere?"
Tiyes lifted it up in his hands and said. "I don't know. The symbol means 'male' and we think there must be a female to pair with this one. That might be where the heading is leading us to. I don't know what will be waiting wherever that heading is pointed to though. I'd like to get back home and check my books again. They might offer some clues."
Shiver nodded. "We'll take you home then. After that, we can head straight for the next clue. We'll share with you what we've learned on the way."
Big Man raised a fin. "Um… wait, do we have time for that?"
"Of course. The first thing anyone pursuing us is going to do isn't going to be to enter the shrine; they'll assume we're already headed to the next location. Whatever tracks we leave from here they'll assume is the direction the next clue is in." She couldn't help but smile.
The ground around Crater's Edge was fairly hard, and the countless tracks from other landships would help disguise theirs. They would have to keep away from the town itself but they could get close enough to drop the kids off and pick them up again. That would give all three of them a chance to get some rest too. They were all exhausted. Besides, Tiyes' books might be needed for solving the next clue.
So we got some new recruits to our new gang, the heading of our next clue, and we get to pull one over on the Scrap Corporations yet again. Not a bad day's work.
Maximinus stared out onto a vast cityscape clothed in a rainbow of different colours and in a variety of styles designed to make a prettier building instead of a more practical one. The tallest buildings in Splatsville were dwarfed by most of the towers he could see just from this window, and they weren't even the tallest in this bustling place. Inkopolis really did seem as amazing as the tales he'd heard led him to believe. If only he could go out and actually experience it himself.
He turned his head away from the window to an ornately decorated room with brass finishing, crystalline fixtures, and white marble floors. It was probably the most well accoutred prison he could have imagined.
Representative Betanuss had brought them to the fanciest hotel Maximinus had ever seen, outdoing even the finest efforts of the Manta Clan. Their party was given a hotel suite with several different bedrooms where they could rest and she would speak with them in the morning. Guards posted outside would keep them safe but also prevent them from going anywhere.
They were being detained until they could somehow verify their identity or at least until they were convinced they weren't spies. Maximinus still wasn't sure how they had come to that conclusion but then again, claiming to represent someone who hadn't been seen or heard from in a century was probably enough to arouse a healthy amount of suspicion. He'd anticipated that, but he hadn't expected them to take it this far. Still, he was determined to make the most of it.
They had enjoyed their first night, despite how anxious they felt. The food had been excellent, the washroom more than adequate for their needs, and the beds were like sleeping on clouds. Things didn't become serious until the next morning after breakfast when Betanuss had returned and began asking them her questions. She had been polite and cordial but Maximinus easily detected that same underlying layer of suspicion she'd had when they first arrived.
He turned his gaze to the seating area. His wives sat quietly on plush couches made of actual leather. They idly watched the television mounted on the wall with the largest screen of any he had ever seen, yet it was no thicker than the breath of his hand. Even if this was an upper-class establishment, it still spoke of a society that enjoyed a standard of living more advanced than those in Splatsville by several orders of magnitude. Even after three days they were still finding it all novel.
Lias and his wives were also watching television, making a few notes here and there when they saw something interesting or worth noting. He knew they were just trying to keep busy, lest boredom and idleness force them to worry about their son back at home and drive them mad. It had proven useful though, allowing them to glean some information on the nature of things in the Ascendancy.
They had watched news channels in an attempt to get an idea of what current events were like but most of it was pretty innocuous. They did see octolings on the television, either showcasing a talent or candidly doing some kind of activity. It did seem to point to octolings enjoying equality within this society but he got the impression from the tone of what he'd seen and heard that it was a fairly new thing. As he'd suspected, the homeland hadn't been back very long. Would it be able to help Splatsville as they hoped?
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and then Betanuss came in wearing a polite smile and noticeably less suspicion than before. Or perhaps she had simply gotten better at hiding it.
"Vir Rezni," she greeted, glancing briefly at the television before continuing. "You told me before that you would be prepared to speak in an official and diplomatic capacity at a moment's notice, yes?"
Maximinus swallowed. He had said that, hoping it would encourage them to take their delegation more seriously and squeeze them into whatever small hole in some official's schedule they could take advantage of.
"Yes, of course."
"Her Royal Majesty has found some time and would like you and your delegation to join her for lunch. I realize this is last minute but I thought you wouldn't want to miss the opportunity."
Maximinus' hearts began beating rapidly. "Of course, we would be honoured!"
Going from being treated as spies to meeting the queen herself for lunch seemed like a huge leap, but what better could they hope for? What greater opportunity to plead their case?
"Good, I can give you half an hour to get ready, then we'll take you directly there."
They didn't need half an hour but they took it anyway. They'd had countless discussions since they had arrived about what their arguments would be and how they would explain their situation but they went over it all again anyway as they got ready.
Freshly groomed and dressed, they departed their room and were escorted downstairs where Betanuss waited for them in the hotel lobby. They boarded a large truck waiting outside, finding the interior furnished like a limo, so they were quite comfortable by the time it began moving.
"So I take it we have been cleared of suspicion?" Maximinus asked the young representative.
She dipped her chin. "For the most part. It is hard to ever be certain but we are suitably confident." She smiled as if she'd just made a joke.
"Then would you mind if we asked a few questions of our own while we're on the way?"
Because they had been considered spies, they hadn't been given much information on the state of the nation or how things stood.
Betanuss sighed, her tentacles curling slightly. "I am sorry we kept so much from you. Understand that we have had bad experiences with people who might have appeared to be sneaking into the country." She didn't elaborate but Maximinus could relate. They were dealing with similar issues in Splatsville, after all.
"Then I'll start with the most obvious thing: what happened to the homeland? When did everyone leave the domes and how was peace made with the inklings?"
She gave him a rueful smile. "Things happened so fast it's almost hard to believe it was just this past winter when most of it happened. It's somewhat of a long and complicated story but I will try to explain the highlights."
Betanuss explained that Lord Octavio, the hero who had preserved the nation had effectively gone mad over the past century and tried to make war against Calachora, only for a handful of inklings to successfully stop him and his entire army. Then, after a period of lowered hostilities of about two years, he tried again, only two be thwarted a second time. Finally, a handful of people decided to end the conflict and forge a lasting peace beneficial to all parties. Understanding that the Octarians just wanted to live on the surface and escape the collapsing domes, the same force that had initially opposed them became their strongest allies.
The reason they had been treated as spies was because of something they were calling the Youngblood War that had occurred almost immediately afterwards, with the Grand Consortium trying to destabilize and eliminate both the Octarian Empire and Calachora. The war forced three nations: Calachora, Perlugen, and the Octarian Empire to unite in order to survive, creating the Soren Ascendancy.
By the time Betanuss was done with that part of the tale, they were outside of Inkopolis, travelling down what seemed like a fresh road carving through rocky hills and piles of rubble.
"I can barely believe it," Maximinus murmured as he glanced out the window at what Betanuss said had once been a border town. "Going from bitter enemies to uniting under a single banner in less than a year?"
Betanuss shrugged her tentacles. "Speaking as someone who lived through it I can barely believe it myself. Still, it has worked out better than we could have imagined. Everything seemed to be in balance and we were all united by a common cause." She leaned forward, her eyes turning serious. "Then you come along."
Maximinus swallowed. "You believe we might be a destabilizing factor?"
"We didn't know about a fleet of refugees. Inkling records do mention a large fleet but they didn't track you beyond their own waters so nobody knew what happened. But as far as any of us know, you're still a part of the old empire, and the last we saw of that nearly brought us into an unnecessary war. When we have finally achieved peace, united under our queen as Octarians, suddenly a new group of Octarians appear and ones who don't understand all that we've been through and have not acknowledged or submitted to the authority of our queen."
In other words, Betanuss was saying that some thought they might try to undermine the queen's authority. Lord Balt Ralok could be seen as a rival, the octolings of Splatsville as a whole new faction that could divide their people. Yes, he could see how that could evolve into conflict, so if he was going to convince the queen to help them, he had to prove that they were no threat to her rule or this hard won peace. He worried what that might cost.
The truck stopped before a set of large doors built into the side of a hill. Maximinus' hearts beat faster as he realized this must be the entrance to the fabled domes. He knew so little about them, only that they existed and had originally been built by the Precursors. He was about to see where most of their people had been living for the past century.
Yes, it's important that I think of these as my people too. If I go in with that mentality it will be easier to convince the queen.
The truck passed into the dark, dank tunnel. He couldn't see much outside the window other than the tunnel wall until they reached the first dome.
It was brightly lit, forcing him to shield his eyes for a moment. Tall, transparent towers, rose up from the ground to the ceiling of the dome. They looked like brand new construction. He could see new ones being built in other parts of the dome. Inside each tower were various plants and he could see octolings inside tending to them.
Other domes further in were less picturesque, many were busy and reminded him of the forges and refineries of the Scrap Corporations in Splatsville; filthy air, hot, and people forced to work in oppressive conditions. At least here the workers seemed to have protective equipment.
Eventually, they reached a dome full of warehouses; though he noted it seemed to have much cleaner air than most of the other domes. There were many people moving about as well, carrying wagons of foodstuffs or equipment, along with a handful of trucks being unloaded.
Their own truck came to a stop in front of what appeared to be another warehouse. A number of armed guards stood outside. Most of them were octolings but one or two inklings were present as well. But why were they stopping here? Was there something Betanuss wanted to show them before they met the queen?
Betanuss disembarked first and Maximinus followed her out, then the others. Mara did so more delicately, the large and ornate headpiece she wore carefully kept level.
The headpiece resembled a little building sitting atop her head but decorated with long metal shafts with decorative glass ornaments at the tips, all meant to draw attention away from the little round building with oval mirrors. They were one-way, with Lias able to see outside but nobody able to see in. He hoped the queen wouldn't take offence.
They were led towards the warehouse, only for Maximinus to notice the huge, ornate door.
Don't tell me… this is the queen's residence? It was the only explanation for why a building like this would have such large and fancy doors. But why was the queen living in a warehouse instead of in a palace? Betanuss' recounting of past events evidently hadn't done the dire straights their people were in justice, stained perhaps by the newfound optimism of their present circumstances. He decided to keep his thoughts to himself.
Still, why is the door so big? That hardly seemed practical or necessary if they were trying to be frugal.
Inside the building was completely different. It actually did resemble a palace with polished wood floors and warm colours creating a homey atmosphere. A single maidservant waited for them, curtsying.
"I am Yuma, Her Royal Majesty's head attendant. She is waiting for you in the parlour."
She guided them deeper into the building. Every ceiling was high, every corridor unnecessarily broad. Perhaps they had tried to make the warehouse seem more like a palace this way, but given the limitations it seemed like a pointless effort.
Ahead, two guards defended another set of huge double doors. They nodded at Yuma and the head attendant gently pushed the huge doors open.
"Your Majesty, Representative Betanuss and the delegation from Splatsville."
Yuma had barely stepped out of the way before Maximinus and the rest of their small delegation realized that extravagance hadn't been the reason the doors and corridors were so large.
Author's Notes
Have you ever looked at those ancient ruins in some of the Splatoon 3 multiplayer maps and wondered what they were doing there or how they got there? I certainly have.
Anyway, our heroes have their first clue. What will they find when they get to the end? Will they find the treasure or will they only find trouble?
As for Maximinus and his group, what do you think their reaction to the queen will be? ;)