Chapter 55: Echo of the Ancestors

“The value of your goal is measured by what you would sacrifice to reach it.”

-Blood Witch Amkara, 187 U.E.

The captain was gone.

It took the crew a minute to process that information. Both Kurko and Kazzul had seen her fall from the ship, grappling with Rand. The first mate was on his hands and knees, leaning out through the hole in the ship to try and find some sign of Quintilla.

“See anything?” Stephan asked.

Kurko slowly stood. He turned and shook his head. “Nothing.”

“We’re close to Dead Echo.” Stephan found his Rivello among the corpses and stuck it back in its holster. “Maybe she’ll wash ashore.”

“I’ve got the engine back online!” Kazzul called from the cockpit. “She’s low on juice, but she’ll take us to the island, at least. The captain would want us to keep going.”

“No,” Kurko growled. “We go down there and find her.”

“This ship won’t survive another boarding,” Kazzul said. “That’s saying nothing for ourselves. I say we burn hard for Dead Echo while we still have the chance.”

Stephan nodded.

Vormor hung her head. “I have to agree. Getting ourselves killed will not help Quintilla in the slightest.”

Kurko looked around at the crew in disbelief. He ran a big hand through his frosty beard, the other clutching the Knocker’s grip so tightly that Stephan heard the metal protesting. “You cannot seriously suggest leaving her.” He looked to Taira. “Surely, her own sister…”

“We go,” Taira said, gaze hard. “There is nothing for us here.”

That settled it. Kazzul burned the thrusters at max and they set their course for the forested island in the distance. Meanwhile, the crew looted weapons from the dead pirates and threw them in a pile, rolling the corpses through the hole once they had been stripped.

Face pressed against a window, Stephan was able to make out Dryden’s crew still facing off against the crew of the Concordian ship, pirates crawling between both ships like ants. The one Yin had boarded still floated stationary without its pilot.

A third loomed in the distance.

“Seems the bait didn’t take,” Kazzul muttered. “We’ll have to be quick.”

They reached Dead Echo, and the Tits Up hovered unsteadily as Kazzul took them down onto solid ground. The landing ramp lowered with a great crash, and the crew rushed onto the beach. Vormor wore a number of blankets wrapped around herself to shield against the sun.

The last Concordian ship was drawing near. Kazzul gave them a few minutes before it would be on top of them.

Kurko scanned the shallows for the captain. He spotted a silhouette floating in the water and rushed out to pull them out, wading into the water until it was up to his waist. Hoisting them onto his shoulder, he returned with significantly less enthusiasm.

He dumped a bleeding, barely-conscious Rand onto the beach. The man pitched over onto his side, clothes drenched, and coughed up water. His biomech leg was missing, and a wound in his gut soaked the sand around him red. Clutched in one hand was Quintilla’s beat-up revolver.

“I killed her…” Rand said with a spluttering laugh. “I killed Quintilla Wenezian. None of you can take that from me.”

“What do we do with him?” Stephan asked, hand to his chin.

Kurko opened his mouth to speak, but Taira waved him aside. She strode up to Rand and pried the revolver from him. She shook the water out of it, took a ragged breath, and aimed with both hands.

She put a bullet between his eyes.

Turning away, Taira threw the revolver to Kurko. “Keep that safe,” she said.

Kurko nodded solemnly and stuck it through his belt.

“Guys!” Yin called, jogging up the beach towards the interior forest. The ball of light flitted before her, pulsing and vibrating. “This thing is going crazy! I think we’re close!”

The crew followed after her. They struggled to keep up as she ran in among the trees, only the faint light of her floating ball guiding their way. It wasn’t long before they could hear the rumbling engine of a second skyship landing somewhere behind them.

“Keep going!” Stephan called. “We can still make it.”

Sounds of distant footsteps. Shouting. Then gunshots.

“Seems like they’ve come across the natives,” Kazzul muttered. “Hope they all kill each other.”

The crew broke out into a clearing. Yin had stopped in front of a squat stone formation in the shape of a pyramid, perhaps three meters in height. The stone was covered in moss and vines, but curiously smooth and unweathered by age, almost timeless. The stone was white as marble, with a reflective sheen that made Stephan unsure if it was made of stone at all, or perhaps some type of exotic metal.

The little light buzzed around the stone formation in frantic circles.

“This is it,” Yin whispered. “We found it.”

“This is the treasure?” Kazzul asked, approaching the formation. He ran a hand through his frills. “Looks like a rock to me.”

“It’s the entrance. The vault waits below.”

Yin stepped forward and placed a hand on the stone. A pure light spilled out from between her fingers, growing brighter, and the ball of light grew in kind.

The light intensified until the entire clearing was swallowed up in it, then abruptly faded. The ball of light had vanished.

A perfect, diamond-shaped tunnel had opened in the rock, leading downward. Soft light pulsed from the very walls, beckoning them to enter.

“Yes…” Vormor whispered. She stepped forward and touched the stone with great reverence. “At last.”

She was the first to enter the vault. The rest followed suit.

*****

“Hey, old man,” Yin whispered to Stephan. They walked side by side as they descended into the bowels of the earth down shallow stairs, surrounded on all sides by the same smooth rock.

“Yeah?” Stephan asked.

“Something’s strange about this. It doesn’t feel how I expected it to.”

He frowned and glanced over at her. “What do you mean?”

“When I finished that map, it…” She bit her lip. “It told me things, I guess. Gave me a connection to this place. Not to freak you out or anything, but I don’t think it’s a treasure at all. I think it’s more like a door or a… gateway.”

“That doesn’t sound very profitable,” Stephan said.

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Sounds of fighting could still be heard from the entrance, growing louder.

Better not dawdle, Stephan thought. Whichever side wins, it’s bad news for us.

The stairs abruptly ended. They entered into a large, open chamber with a tall ceiling, big enough to fit hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. It was mostly empty. A smooth stone altar rose on their left-hand side. Smatterings of dust and discarded rubbish lay on the floor.

On the other end of the chamber rose an obelisk perhaps four meters in height. It seemed older, more worn than the clean architecture around it, made of something like a dark granite. The stone was rough-hewn, marked with myriads of old runes that spiraled all the way up to the tapered peak.

Vormor fell to her knees. “The waystone…” she whimpered. “I have finally found it.”

“Waystone?” Taira asked. “You know what that is?”

The Spider shook her head. “There are things I should have explained to you and your sister a long time ago. I never found the words, then, and over time it just became harder to tell you.” She stood and walked towards the obelisk, the knuckles of her many first clicking on the floor. Shedding the blankets and ripping the old bandages off her ponderous form, she slowly crossed the room, her.

Taira jogged after her. “What do you mean? What are you doing? Speak to me!”

Vormor stopped briefly. “I love you, little one. But this is not my home. It never was. I was not born here, on this world. My coming here was an accident, one I have been trying to reverse ever since. I have to go back now.” She kept walking.

Taira sank to her knees. “What are you…?” Her voice broke. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m sorry. I doubt we’ll ever meet again. If we don’t… Just know that I loved you. Both of you.” She didn’t turn back as she reached the obelisk, the waystone, and threw her arms around it like a long-lost lover.

There was a brief pulse of light, and then nothing.

Vormor was gone.

“Okay…” Yin said. “That happened.”

Taira wept into her hands. The kithraxi, Shkzh and Gkhzj, helped her to her feet and guided her back to the front of the room. Kurko went to her side and helped console her.

Kazzul was already collecting fallen trinkets into his shirt, muttering under his shirt. “Deep Gods damn it all… There’s no treasure here! Someone’s already looted the place before us!”

“No,” Yin said. “We’re the first ones to step foot here in literally thousands of years.”

Stephan ignored both of them. He wandered over to the altar sitting off to the side. Tripping over something, he bent down and picked it up. An amber sphere, see-through like glass, with winking stars of blue inside it that seemed to move independently as he spun it around. With a shrug, he placed it in his pocket and continued.

The stone altar was indented with lines and shapes, angular grooves that made complex patterns that were marked with runes. On a whim, Stephan ran his index finger along one of the grooves and the lights dimmed.

Not an altar at all, then. A control panel.

Yin padded over to him, eyes wide and curious. “Can I have a look at that?”

Stephan shrugged and stood aside to let her have a go. Without any hesitation, she reached out and touched a single room.

The center of the floor split open with a deep rumble, sliding seamlessly until forming a perfect square.

“What in all hells?” Kazzul cried, scrambling back from the edge and dropping some of his loot in the process.

Something rose from the recession in the floor. A platform pushed out of it, on which stood a slender, tapered arrowhead of silvery metal, large as a decent skyship.

No, Stephan realized. It is a skyship.