5 - Let Me In
Udaev (Minor)
Colonial Space
Midrim Caverns
Midday
Zeouna of Settler City hauled herself up to the top of a three meter basalt tower; careful to check her hand holds with each successive bound. One of her little pocket drones buzzed obediently above her shoulder; its three-hundred lumen LED torch illuminating the stone edifice. It tracked her position, though the programming didn't really know what to focus the beam on. There was barely any light for her to see where she was going other than the silvery strands of light piercing the occasional opening in the surface one-hundred meters above her.
The midrim caverns would be gorgeous if they weren't so dangerous.
Her chest burgeoned and sunk rapidly as she pushed out the cold, but humid cave air from her lungs. She was going to have to take a break eventually.
Once on top, she lined up her magnetic compasses' vial with the tritium-illuminated arrow. She was just trying to find a beam of light to the south to orient off of. Then she could find an appropriate river to follow from there. Water was life in the rim caves. If you heard droplets you were on the right path out. Once Ariane had finished inflating the folded up 'raft' in her ruck back at base camp, they'd waste no time finding that path.
The 'raft' was nothing more than a pool float Zeouna'd swiped from a Vikr-sponsored watering hole just outside Kam'Pa'Kar. Dusty Tails, she thought it had been called. The toy was made for one person, so they'd be floating together for the next couple of days. If it supported both their weight on the water they might even be able to have some fun with it.
If not, at least the journey would be relatively quick.
Down here you could do forty-fifty kilometers a day if you didn't tucker yourself out. There were also plenty of 'rest stops' on the banks of the rivers to break if they needed to. Lucky for them, they only needed about one-hundred kilometers of drift or so before they could emerge near the edge's southernmost rim. There weren't many rapids down here, just a strong, consistent current. And they all flowed south.
And hopefully it was flowing strong today, Zeouna thought, remembering her ruck's packing. We only have enough food for two days.
Zeouna's hope was to spend only one night underground. They'd be able to start a fire and lay down some fishing lines somewhere on the drifts. Not the most romantic date night she'd hoped for, but hard to beat for privacy. Camping at gunpoint, really.
They knew that these reservoirs flowed south and emptied into lakes. They were probably about thirty or so kilometers from where the water 'dropped off,' into the lakes and cisterns southerners drank from. They'd find refuge, trade with the locals for food and catch a ride back north. A few days later than expected, but a little bit closer to each other.
You could trust people down south, Zeouna thought. It was a routine she knew well. She'd done it enough times, so she was known to some; and the locals didn't need credits. They preferred information, stories and entertainment. Something Zeouna gregariously provided with enough food and drink.
Enough idling, she thought, lowering herself over the edge.
She found what she was looking for. Bearing two-hundred degrees would get her where she and her paramour needed to be. The pocket drone sallied forth to map it out.
She couldn't wait to be on the river and to put all this behind her.
Zeouna, rather recklessly, jumped the last meter or so on the decline.
She felt the ground beneath her crackle and dissipate as it dropped out from under her.
Zeouna yelped as she slid in the darkness for a few seconds, not realizing the stone beneath her was merely propped up by a thin layer of clay. Panic consumed her until she felt the grade of the drop decrease. Feeling each bump on the otherwise smooth stone, she didn't stop sliding until her side slammed into the side of another basalt formation. She didn't hit her head too hard, but stars were visible for a few seconds.
She didn't move, trying to regain her composure and afraid of what came next.
Her knee burned and she tasted iron. The little, buzzing drone caught up a second later. Zeouna. The three-hundred lumen could see blood where the rock had ripped a friction tear through flesh and fur. She exhaled in frustration; the trip had ruined her favorite field pants.
Testing the ground around her with two short jumps, she felt safe enough to start moving.
Can't leave Ari waiting, after all.
She grabbed a red chemlight from her side pouch, ignited it, and tossed it into the sagging part of the gulley she'd fallen into. It wasn't anything special, just a byproduct of millions of years of erosion.
Zeouna was reasonably off-course, a bit scraped, but she wasn't lost yet. It could have been far worse. Surprises like these were the reason this place was feared. Hikers could do everything correctly and still end up falling to their death or being trapped under a pile of igneous rock.
The glacially-carved 'wells' in the rim's surface often gave way to five hundred meter sheer drops. No more than a few meters wide, these blemishes were dangerous, often collapsing around landed ships or foolish Centers stupid enough to be using wheeled vehicles in their proximity. The crust was so thin, in fact, that the mere act of walking in large groups was dangerous in Udeav's equatorial region.
Not that these caves are much safer, Zeouna thought, realizing how lucky she'd been. Luckily enough, she prepared for this eventuality. She'd been dropping luminescent chemlights for the last seven-hundred meters or so. The habit marked safe areas to the waterline, and by placing one every twenty meters or so, she'd find her way back to her initial descent in no time.
She was about to attempt to climb back the way she came when she heard what she came for. The furs stood on her tail as excitement crawled up her back.
The sublevel cave she landed in reverberated with the pitter-patter of water droplets overlaying the distant, trembling roar of a river. It had been a happy accident; her target now closer than she thought. Making up for lost time, she thought, taking in the beautiful noise that reverberated throughout the cavern.
Being a bit more cautious to check her footing, she practically jogged down the volcanic
aisle before her.
Zeouna walked nestled between two towering, extrusive formations of basalt. The igneous stone stacked in the same hexagonal shape that was seen on the surface. She noted that it got progressively wider as she walked, her shadow's silhouette growing larger across them as the drone flew behind her shoulder. The walk was long enough that she broke a few more chemlights to mark her way back.
Zeouna estimated her pace at about fifty more meters before she arrived at a great expanse; a chamber that extended from the crust a hundred meters or so above her to an indeterminable distance forward. Even with piecemeal strings of light piercing through holes in the crust, she could see a great blackness laid out before her, a maw of darkened stone that she could barely make out.
There was something reflecting light in front of her at a distance that was hard to judge. Nothing should be reflecting light down here, she thought.
She wished she had Loiselle back for her longer loiter time; but the larger drone had sacrificed itself for the cause. Poor thing. Zeouna hoped the little drones self-destruct sequence had worked. She couldn't bear the thought of another failure tonight.
What she did have, was a couple of ingloriously unnamed pocket drones, only a little larger than her PDA. She fastened an emergency flare to a fishing hook tied around their struts. The little drones also had a forward facing light, but that reduced their battery life from ten to five hours. She twisted off the cap on each flare, covered her eyes and pulled the pins to ignite them. After a few moments They ascended mid way to the top of the cavern, about fifty meters. The flares did their work, illuminating the cavern with just enough lithium-phosphor white-light to barely see the space before her.
And not a moment too soon. She froze; not another step.
It wasn't dark rock before her anymore, it was a sheer drop into blackness. And her frontmost foot was mere centimeters from the edge. She couldn't see the bottom, and didn't want to find out how deep it was.
Zeouna whistled out of relief. She sidled closer to the edge, hoping to glance at the source of the reflection. She reasoned it was most likely a mineral deposit or ship fragments, both of which would be of interest to her.
She found what she was looking for as the captive drone floating around her shoulder caught another glint of something.
She tapped at her PDA and sent her three-light swarm out on patrol.
She didn't notice her hand was already straddling the craned grip on her shotgun; a free Udeavens' natural reflex to the unknown. Her finger crested on the release paddle.
The air was strange in a way she couldn't find the words to explain. 'Heavy' was the closest adjective that came to mind.
The visibility improved with the drones advance. Reaching into her waistpack, she pulled a new flare. With a flick of her wrist the twist-cap popped off and it ignited. She threw the orange burning torch at the ground before her. It illuminated something incredible.
Before her, surrounded by the ten meter wide 'moat' was an 'island'. It was more of a doughnut shaped abyss; something too artificial to be the natural result of a pyroclastic flow. In the center, Zeouna could make out that the 'island' was about fifty meters in diameter. It also had a land bridge, ruling out the abyss as an impact crater. The bridge was made of the same basalt as anything else down here. It had to have been carved into the face of the rock.
Her fur stood on end as she was starting to feel like she was being watched. None of her previous observations helped rationalize the situation.
Logic told Zeouna that Vikr would never set up an operations center down here; they had absolutely no reason to conceal any of their operations. Similarly, common-sense insisted that it would be impractical and unnecessarily dangerous. Her brain's frontal lobe attempted to comfort her with these thoughts, but her amygdala's fanciful overreaction took over.
Nestled in a low rock formation, Zeouna halted her breathing and dropped to a knee. The wrong knee, which stung considerably. She slowly drew her snub shotgun from its carbon-fiber scabbard. As silently as possible. She rubbed the steel barrel nervously, her nails tracing the intricate carvings left on its patina.
It was too late to recall the flare-bearing drones, and as they flew closer, she was relieved to see there was no indication the space was occupied. No crates, no racks or wires. It was all stone.
However, the scene became concerning for an altogether different set of reasons.
Across the land bridge, in the middle of the cavern, were two visible obelisks. Objects that simply should not have been there.
She poked her head above the rocks she had hid behind and moved toward the land bridge.
Zeouna crossed the rocky overpass as gingerly as possible to avoid risk of collapse. Once on the other side, she kicked the flare she threw previously a little further. Her shotgun held in her left hand.
Looking down with the available light, there was what almost looked like a path of poured concrete with specks of a shiny, yellowish alloy embedded in it.
Jet black. Reflective. Obsidian or onyx. She noted. Polished smooth.
It led to the first obelisk, which was more of a pedestal up close. Its shape and size mirrored that of a tree stump carved out of the plateau, with knotty masses congealing to and from it's base like exposed roots. It was made of the same obsidian-like material she noted on the ground, but it flowed down the roots and established a three meter circle in the sandstone.
There was a rectangular slot atop it. About ten centimeters long and three wide. Smooth, angle cut at the ends. Clearly mechanically cut, but no machining marks. No signs of wear at all. No flakes or splits in its glossy surface. Like a keyhole.
She ran her hand across the whole pedestal.
It's all too perfect. Too precise in some places, but too rounded in others, she thought. Obsidian can't do any of that. What the hell is going on here?
She unlatched the lid from her flask and sniffed the water. There wasn't anything wrong with the smell, but she popped another purification tab into it just in case. Just have to be sure.
Her eyes followed what looked like spindly lines of gold running across the rock in organic curves. Like vines. The gold lines ran throughout the smaller pedestal, and up towards the larger one. The lines were smooth and the same width throughout; like it was tempered into the darker rock by someone. Again, none of this could be natural. Gold wasn't even particularly common on this planet and definitely not in the rim.
Zeouna cautiously walked toward the larger obelisk, noting the ramped pathway the black and gold path led her.
This wasn't debris, nor was it a mineral deposit. There wasn't enough time to have broken down elements to look like this. Zeouna gulped as she slowly walked forward, the flare behind her emitting precious candelas of white luminosity against the large stone mass entracing her. Her mind desperately raced for any explanation.
Zeouna wasn't prone to superstitious belief in the paranormal; but she felt powered by something other than herself. A magnetic draw to the unknown. Desire to understand. To interact.
She emitted a single nervous chuckle. As if to chide herself for even entertaining fantasy. Her footsteps were still shallow, but almost guided.
Zeouna struggled to find a single plausible explanation for all this. If it wasn't natural, it was made by the Centers; Lylations. Udaev had only been occupied by sentient beings for a mere seventy years. Even then, there were only early gate-era researchers present until fifty years ago. The midrim region was virtually untouched as it was practically barren of value other than some pretty pictures.
Most likely explanation is that this is some kind of memorial sculpture. Or art installation. Built sometime in the last seventy years.
Unless everything we know is wrong, she thought; tendrils of doubt creeping into her mind.
She was within a few feet when one of the drone's flares went dead. Another dud. She recalled the drone with a sharp whistle, which returned to her pocked unaided. The other took it's place. She reholstered her weapon.
Zeouna touched off another flare, simply tossing in front of the largest object. It reflected the light the same way it had in the distance, but this time unveiling the final mystery on the far side of the plateau.
A ten meter tall black stone towering toward the surface roughly cut in the shape of an oval 'mirror,' shelved up on a square cut platform of the same construction. The lines of gold which ran from the smaller 'altar' made their way up the pathway in spindles, up the base of the mirror and wrapped around the base like lustrous vines. There were stairs carved into the base that led to the surface of the object.
The mirror surface was not totally reflective, which explained the visibility issues she'd had earlier. It looked like it had lost some of its finish over the years; if it was ever finished at all.
It was made by someone, of that there was no longer any doubt. But no machine marks. A plateau of strange stone on a pedestal mesa. The space had purpose, direction, aesthetic; even if it was unknown.
Realizing the implications, Zeouna's fur stood on its ends and she shivered for reasons other than the cold. It was eerie to look at. And the implications if her theories were wrong were too great to be ignored.
She slowly traversed the stairs to the mirror.
Before it, she could see there was enough ambient light reflecting that Zeouna could see a vague outline of herself in its patina. The details got clearer up close. She didn't notice it from afar, but it had smaller streaks of gold and granite coursing through it as well. Like fuse marks. They all coalesced to the center in spindly patterns.
She was drawn to it, but too afraid to act.
Aliens? She finally theorized to herself. It felt dirty; like taking the easy way out.
It shouldn't have been. Lylat had not one, but eight habitable worlds teeming with sentient life. The Aparoids had by definition been alien; though few considered them intelligent enough to be sentient. It was odd to consider. With the Aparoids, Lylations knew for sure they'd never truly been alone. Yet, popular belief felt that they'd never met an equivalent set of species.
Zeouna found herself more terrified by the prospect before her than she anticipated. She finally felt enough courage to touch it. As she reached out, her index finger felt the cold, smooth surface.
Who built you? She thought.
Zeouna was ashamed to admit it frightened her, and it wasn't just fear of the unknown. No, not quite; she could handle not understanding something above her comprehension.
But this? There were no rationalizations left to anchor her to conventional wisdom; she was lost for explanation. It wasn't just unknown; it was unknowable.
The Fox hybrid placed the palm of her whole hand on the center of the slab in a primitive moment of discovery. There was little that separated her from her million-year-old ancestors at this moment. She witnessed the fuzzy reflection of her own hand clasp it back; as expected.
Nothing happened. She chuckled again, having almost wished something did.
But nothing came. Nothing at all. Just a few water drops and the dull, distant roar of the cascade she'd already detected. A calm breeze from the abyss.
She removed her hand from the reflective feature, clenching it as she withdrew from the smooth, polished surface. Whomever or whatever this art installation was made for, it wasn't her and Zeouna didn't have it.
The hybe sighed. Part embarrassment and part relief.
What did I expect? She scoffed to herself, her hand still affixed to the slab. To be sucked into it? Injected with nanomachines? Should it glow blue?
With a few taps on her wrist, she marked the location as best as she could on her PDA. Zeouna vowed to investigate it further in the future or send its location to those who could; even Vikrmen if needed. It was worthy of investigation. She walked down the stairs, making it to the last step.
She took one last look over her shoulder, taking a moment to curse her own hyperactive imagination. Even though she was still shivering, reality on Udaev was much colder than fiction. This was no different. She allowed herself the occasional wish that magic was real; that her existence was a little bit more interesting. It was the only way to cope for some.
This had to be somebody's art project. Nothing more. Zeouna's cortex-driven rationality summed, preparing to return to the surface to retrieve Ari.
She took a sip of water from her rightmost canteen.
Before the cap was back on the flask, the cavern seemed to grow quieter. The feeling that she was being watched had returned.
Then, she got her wish.
Zeouna shuddered; a tingle down her spine, much more violently than those previous. It was almost like a cramp, but it started in her neck. Her legs almost gave out, nearly dropping her to the rocky path.
She knew it had to be the cool, subterranean air until she felt the warmth of a single breath on her neck. An unwelcome exhale. It was too strong to be her imagination.
Zeouna yelped. She recoiled, turning around, shotgun again drawn out of her scabbard and at the ready. Her drone responded half-a-second slower to illuminate the mirror about five meters away. Zeouna's own breath stilled, as her blood pressure skyrocketed. She felt her pulse in her throat.
The light revealed nothing. It was just thick, soupy blackness.
But out of the corner of her eye, she saw a thin, glowing gold line appear across the bottom right of the mirror's surface. It emitted enough light to carry through the space, but not enough to illuminate.
She doubled back, tripping up the stairs and nearly dropping her weapon. She sat obliquely on the platform and the top stair, inspecting the text.
It read, in elegant cuneiform:
'Meilliagos'ier Meri'dienne
Kip'Aela End'iesse.'
Chiseled script. Like it was carved in! How did I miss that? She thought. The characters were Lylation, but not of any language she'd ever seen. The words flowed and the syntax felt organic; but it didn't resemble the few minority languages still spoken in Central space or out in the colonies. It wasn't colonial linguistics either.
Another line appeared beneath it. It took its time fading into legibility, as the letters carved into the structure. Not carved, it didn't chip away. The inky black material flexed or absorbed itself into the text before glowing; like the text was being pulled into it.
Bewildered into stunned stillness, Zeouna read the second alien script that appeared before her. She was terrified. The fight and flight she was famous for having been replaced with a frozen obedience.
'Dyer'Diesse Sōm Wha'ady. Sai-Ounah.'
Paralytic dread; that was the mood now. Zeouna knew she should have left then, but she was still in a trance. Like a moth to light.
She feared the answer; seeing similarity in the sentences' second diphthong.
Another line began to etch itself into the edifice below the first two; this time in a deep red. She crouched to get a closer look.
As it faded in she noted it was written in someone's handwriting rather than the neat engraving-like script. Messy, but legible; and in Lylat's language.
The scripture bored itself into the rock one line at a time. An underline of emphasis whipped underneath as it printed.
Let me in.
The white and gray fur on her tail exploded outward as a fear response. She had seen enough. It was time to leave; and she wouldn't be back. Zeouna rushed down the stairs and jogged toward the pedestal obelisk and landbridge to make her way out. Her mind was clouded with panic on how she was going to escape the desert now.
She had a hard time hearing them over her own thundering heartbeat, but a series of steps reverberated throughout the cavern. It took Zeouna a moment to realize it wasn't just her own. She halted adjacent to the pedestal obelisk. As her eyes adjusted to the changing light, she caught the silhouette of a figure before her on her only exit.
Her halt became a freeze, realizing there was someone blocking her exit.
A shadow, even though the flare burning in the center of the plateau should have illuminated the figure. They looked opaque, but impossibly black. She could make out vaguely feminine features.
"Ari?" She called, almost by reflex.
There was no response. The figure didn't acknowledge her presence. That is, until Zeouna moved.
Zeouna strafed left to get a better view, cautiously placing one foot in front of the other. Its head seemed to turn to face her as she moved.
The figure matched her movement. When Zeouna sidestepped, the shadow did the same; tracing the polar opposite location on the plateau. It matched every little detail in Zeouna's gait. The two did this dance until they had exchanged places on the plateau. A mirror image.
"What are you?" Zeouna asked. Her trembling voice echoed throughout the cavern.
Again, she was greeted with nothing more than a brief gust of the subterranean air as response.
Zeouna began to walk toward the reflection; to meet this figure. With every footfall she unlearned everything she thought she knew, tearing up years of solidly-formed mental bedrock. She was in the presence of something ethereal. Some unknowable, ancient force. Supernatural. She was horrified, but she reasoned if it wanted her dead it would have already done it. If it was paranormal, she would be powerless to resist anyway.
Zeouna persisted. The shade similarly approached, retaining its oily black hue despite moving closer to the flare. There was no illumination, the figure simply ate the light around it.
She raised their hand to see what connected, if anything would. The reflection didn't err.
A meter away, Zeouna noted the figure was so black that it was darker than the space around it. Like staring into starless space. Her steps became shallower; shorter.
Their hands met. Open palm to palm.
Zeouna felt weight behind the blackness. There was something on the other side.
It gave way just as fast as she felt it.
There was a mild quake in the cavern. The reflection melted away silently into thousands of black dots; which dissipated into nothingness across the cavern. They seemed to flee independently; scurrying away like insects.
The display left Zeouna gobsmacked. She stood panting in existential panic, questioning her place in the universe. Trembling in a terrified silence until it was interrupted.
"You?"
A voice whispered, not her own, followed by a playful giggle. Jarringly, Zeouna couldn't recall its details. But she heard it, clear as day.
"W-what?!" Zeouna stuttered. Back-stepping from the pedestal.
While backpedaling, she tripped over the lit flare and fell on her tail and slammed her heel on a rise in the stone. Her fur stood on end as every part of her felt as though there was something threatening in the cavern with her.
"Stay away!" Zeouna screamed desperately.
It mustn't have perceived her terror. Or ignored it.
"I never imagined it."
It was the voice again, there was a warmth to it, but it didn't frighten her any less. The being didn't seem to be responding to her.
"Stay away from me!" Zeouna repeated, fear quivering her voice.
The cavern shook with a deeply unsettling bass note around Zeouna. The vibrations caused the pebbles to jump around Zeouna's feet; tectonic activity. The tunnels suddenly became the most dangerous place on the planet.
Quakes were quite common here, but she didn't believe in coincidences at the moment.
Zeouna bolted for the land bridge, making eyes at the nearest red chemlight she'd dropped. She whistled, corralling her drones to return to formation around her shoulder and maximize light to her front.
Mid-stride, a boulder slammed to her right, the vibrations almost pulling her to the floor.
It was so close that she felt sharp fragments of sandstone pepper her face. Had she been three meters to her right, she would have been smeared all over the plateau.
She made about another step before two more boulders slammed to her front. Her drones illuminated her twelve-o'clock, where the land bridge had been minutes ago.
It wasn't good. The land bridge had partially collapsed, leaving a craggy protrusion, hanging on by a crumbling thread. She didn't have anything to ford it with, and she wasn't in the mood to wait.
It was now or never. Aftershocks were not far behind, and rocks were continuing to fall. One of them was bound to get lucky eventually.
Zeouna doubled back for a second, picking up the lit flare by its base. She prepped herself for the jump, exhaling sharply.
She sprinted toward the trench. Her paces were so desperately long they felt like small jumps themselves. She reached the edge just in time to watch a falling boulder swat one of her flare drones out of the air, its little fuselage bursting to pieces before even hitting the cavern floor.
Zeouna leapt across the chasm. The one-and-a-half meter gap became two mid-leap as some rock on the far side collapsed.
She nearly didn't make it, hitting her side hard on one of the remaining formations. All of the air was knocked from her lungs and the flare she had in her hand rolled loose. She slid toward the precipice but caught her grip on a ledge. If she didn't have her canteen mounted at waist level, she'd probably have a broken hip from the impact with the jagged rocks.
The lit illuminator rolled into the chasm behind Zeouna. Although rattled, she recovered quickly enough to witness the light flicker off the stone for a few uncomfortable seconds before it was extinguished in the water below; a long drop.
She recovered, blessing her good fortune and resumed her dash through the caves.
Zeouna was up; running nearly by memory from one little phosphorescent red pill to the next. She felt her tail trailing as she ran the length of the stone crevasse.
The vulpes' ears were now semi-permanently flattened in a panic. The whispering voices swirling throughout the cavern wouldn't stop. The harder she ran, the harder it seemed to find the lights before her. Her drones struggled to keep up. She was hyper-ventilating, nauseous with terror. She halted for a moment at the end of the chamber's breach, circling about to find the collapse she'd emerged from.
"The only mistake you made," a coherent voice cut through the hysteria, "Was waiting so long."
Zeouna picked a direction to move in an attempt to flee the ghostly voice.
She found it! The same collapsed tunnel she'd created with her careless footwork, back when her biggest problem was a skinned knee. It was a miracle she'd found it at all.
She grappled up the slope, light from the drones helping her select her next handholds. Her PDAs communicator crackled, picking up radio waves from the surface.
"Zeo, are you-" Ari's voice barely eked out before the transmission cut out.
Zeouna didn't have time to respond as she emerged from the collapse.
There was more light here, so sprinted this time looking for the strand of light she'd entered from. She had dropped in in one of the larger surface caves, so she should be able to see the rope, her rig and climbing gear suspended in the air by the largest opening.
Another quake; her final warning. One she was heeding. Zeo was so afraid that she stopped considering her route. She didn't see or hear anything other than her own thundering steps. She weaved between the basalt spires, not able to recall where she was or where she was going. She fell into claustrophobic panic; trapped in this labyrinthine maze with something tremendously dark chasing her.
There was another quake and Zeouna dove for the nearest tower to avoid the falling carnage.
She crawled into a small hollow eroded in the side of the formation just in time to give herself overhead cover. She whimpered as stone, rock and clay smashed around her. The hollow partially collapsed, nearly burying Zeouna alive in darkness. She shrieked, only for one of her pocket drones to buzz near her ear. The drone's lights flickered, cowering near her for cover. Low battery. The wild maneuvering must have reduced its battery life considerably.
She pulled her lower body out of the debris. Zeo's second drone was nowhere to be found; having sacrificed itself for her safety. When she exited the hollow, she found that the rock had actually collapsed around her. Whatever had impacted it had hit it at just the right angle, sending the stone structure the opposite direction.
She scanned toward the direction she remembered was north. She could see her gear hanging only a couple dozen meters away! She'd found her way out, and it was just up a short rise.
Zeouna, filled with hope, made her way through the rocks between her and salvation, noting there were significantly more boulders on the bedrock than when she arrived an hour ago. She kept her eyes drawn to the light peeking through the crust. As long as she was in the center, she would be safer.
As she climbed over the final rocky embankment containing her climbing kit, she glanced at a long-cast shadow rising over her right shoulder and towering across the final stretch. She about-faced.
A new figure was shadowed in Usva's spotlight, peeking through the abyss. It stood motionless on the rock feature perpendicular to where she had rappelled down, about twenty meters away or so. They confronted each other; separated by the lower darkness.
Zeouna gulped. None of this felt real, but she couldn't give way to fear now. Whatever was chasing her had found her.
Unlike the previous encounter, that wasn't a reflection anymore. Something was different. Its genus was impossible to ascertain from its shape. But from its broad shoulders, it looked masculine; more imposing. The void-being possessed a sort of pole-arm or spear in its arm, one point resting vertically in the dirt and the other rising just above its head.
"This is my fucking planet!" Zeouna screamed. Her voice rang throughout the caverns.
Zeouna, without breaking eye-contact, reached for her shotgun in her scabbard. It snagged, a rock having jammed its way into the release panel. She struggled to remove the stone, using both hands to tug on the stock until the weapon finally drew free.
She shouldered her weapon and returned her sights to the target.
It was gone.
That isn't good.
It hissed to her left. Zeouna reacted rapidly by turning her body just in time to see the void attempting an attack. She barely dodged a stab from the weapon, which passed mere centimeters from her eyes. Like the shadow person, the spear was absolutely devoid of light; blacker than black.
On instinct, she attempted to grab it to counter, but her hand melted straight through the weapon. She committed to the maneuver, however, and she gasped as she suddenly fell through the figure's arms. Like the reflection earlier, it seemed to have weight right up until the moment it decided not to. She rolled left, her natural disposition allowing her the foolhardy grit to gunfight a spectre.
But as before, there was no one there to place in the shotgun's front bead site.
Another gust of wind ran through Zeouna's fur. There was nothing left to do. She had only enough time to look down at her chest as a black hand rushed through and out it.
No pain. She counted five fingers.
Everything went static.
She felt like she was falling.
In the blink of an eye, she was somewhere else. No longer in that cave.