“What a mess.” Scarlet muttered to herself, checking Keera’s pulse. Finding it was easy and it felt strong, if rather fast. Another check made sure that Keera’s monster crystal was still secured in her pouch. After a second of hesitation, Scarlet took it into custody, until Keera was back on her feet. She was simply not sure if Keera’s mental control of the crystal would break at any point and if it did, having it near her person would allow Scarlet to handle the monster without harming Keera in the process. If it jumped out right in the pouch, its first actions would most likely be to savage the back the pouch was pressing against.

After placing a hand on Keera’s forehead, Scarlet stretched her senses towards the others mind, curious what she would find. It was almost completely blank, not just passed out from over-exertion but in a deep state of unconsciousness. Without the physical contact, Scarlet might have missed the signs of continued mental activity and put Keera out of her misery. While coming out of a full vegetative state was not unheard of, it would be foolish to hope for a full recovery without dedicated care, which Scarlet was neither able nor willing to provide.

“Some sort of feedback? That means I should make sure to never let a monster I’m controlling be defeated straight up, instead forcing them into their crystal or severing the connection.” shaking her head, she decided that she wasn’t willing to find out. Luckily, Keera had managed to find the first pitfall, another reason to keep her around.

With that in mind, she placed Keera in a stable position, making sure that she wouldn’t suffocate on her own tongue or some equally embarrassing death, and walked over to the treeline, looking for the best spot to make camp in the vicinity. Even if Keera woke up the next moment, she doubted that Keera would be up to continue and forcing her seemed needlessly cruel.

What she found wasn’t the best of locations, but it would do. After a second of contemplation how to best move the unconscious body, she grabbed Keera slightly below the chest, letting her feet drag after them. As Scarlet laboured, she muttered curses under her breath, wondering just why Keera needed those jugs lying on her arms. And why she needed to be that tall and heavy. But luckily, the way wasn’t far so Scarlet was only slightly tempted to cut off pieces to make the work easier, not that she would ever have admitted that.

After making sure that Keera was reasonably comfortable, Scarlet decided that making camp then and there, allowing Keera to recover at least somewhat was likely the best idea. It showed care for her follower and it allowed her to look at the beautiful lake some more. She truly wanted to see it in the light of the setting sun.

Soon, there was a small fire burning near the still unconscious Keera and Scarlet took out the various crystals she had acquired, comparing them. Maybe the most interesting were the crystals of Crysna and the strange turtle-monster she had fought before. They were very similar in size, but, at least judging by hand, Crysna’s crystal was a little heavier. But what made them truly interesting was that both crystals had a similar blue hue to them, only that the blue swirls in Crysna’s crystal existed next to a distinct second set of purple swirls and the turtle’s crystal was lacking those and the imperfections were not in the form of swirls but looked almost like small starbursts within the crystal.

Scarlet’s first theory was that the colour of the crystals was something akin to camouflage, both monsters had been water-based and, at least to a point, ambush predators. So, having crystals that blended with the water was not too big of a leap. At least if one ignored that normally the crystals were not visible at all. Or maybe she was looking at it from the wrong direction, maybe the colours of the crystals decided what form the projected monster would take, even if she saw the projected monster-form as the “true” form of the monster, it was likely the other way around, the crystal being the true form and the projection merely being that, something used to interact with the world.

That in turn led her to the question where the colours came from, the Doctor had not mentioned anything regarding some colours of crystal being more valuable than others, so either the differences were not in chemical composition or the differences didn’t matter to the Federation. Or, another possibility was that all colours were used in some sort of research or that the differences in their value just didn’t filter down to Verdun. That last idea was the least likely, why should the Federation care to hide it if one form was more advantageous, it wasn’t like the prisoners on Verdun could truly pressure them. Not unless and until the prisoners managed to throw off their shackles, which would require time, leadership and a lot of effort.

A small part of Scarlet’s mind, the part that had enjoyed the mundane, sociology lessons at the institute was a little curious what the population of Verdun would look like in ten or maybe a hundred years. From what she had gathered, Albertina was only a few years old and the prisoners had mostly kept to the routine set by the Federation, not experimenting and venturing from it.

That likely was due to convenience, trying to venture from it would require resources and without tools, gathering those would be difficult. And getting the tools would, in turn, require at least some infrastructure. If the Federation carefully controlled what was coming down, making tools more sophisticated than tying rocks to sticks would be complicated. But that would be the required starting point, unless someone managed to con the Federation into sending down tools that allowed to circumvent some of the process, for example some sort of kiln would help a great deal.

But even something as simple was working metal would require the appropriate tools and likely knowledge that the people of Verdun lacked. She made a small, mental note to check out what kind of tools the workers in the field used, if the Federation was careful, those would either be made from one of the highly resistant alloys, something that needed insanely high temperatures or absurd physical forces to change its shape, or they would be some hard duraplast, something that burned rather than melted, making it impossible to reshape into whatever tools the prisoners needed to break from the Federation.

No, the Federation would most likely carefully control what came down, to make sure the prisoners were unable to make their own tools, unless they wanted to go back to the simplest tools. And if the question was whether someone wanted to work with tools made from stones and sticks or follow order from, literally, up high, people would follow the orders.

Suddenly, Scarlet had a thought that she had ignored before, when the refracting light drew her eyes back to the crystals. The monsters seemed to break all sorts of normally established rules of physics and she had already seen them used as working creatures. Who said that there wasn’t a monster with the ability to shape metal, similar to the way the badgers shaped and formed earth, or the rockdogs used their rock spikes? Or maybe a monster that controlled fire in such a way that allowed working with metal?

Either of those would likely be more powerful than what was conveniently used by the prisoners, but maybe Scarlet could get there.

“I don’t suppose you can arc-weld?” Scarlet asked Cyca, who padded over, hopping into Scarlet’s lab and demanding scritches instead of showing off her talent as a welder. Shrugging, Scarlet put away the crystals she had previously held, busying her hands instead in Cyca’s soft fur.

She sat there for a while, petting Cyca who took the attention with the indifferent arrogance only a feline could muster. But Scarlet hardly noticed, her eyes looking out over the lake, her mind busy thinking, at least until the lake seemed to become alight as the setting sun peeked through a gap in the trees, causing the red and orange lights to refract in the water. It was an awe-inspiring vision, almost as if the lake was made from liquid fire, a thought that seemed absurd, but on a planet that broke all kinds of physical laws, as she knew them, she was not certain that she wanted to make that claim.

Finally, she managed to drag her eyes from the spectacle and as she did, she took another look to Keera, who was still completely out of it.

“You know, that could be a problem. I don’t think I can drag her into a tree for safety.” she told Cyca. Leaving Keera down here was a large risk, so, after a few more minutes of contemplation, Scarlet decided to keep watch throughout the night and decide on a further course of action in the morning.