Jake was playing around with the centre console and occasionally looking up to glance at V. Nothing made sense with her. How was she still alive after millennia? Is she telling the truth? Is she hiding any motives? All of these questions only she would know the answer to. Maybe Glaze has a spell that can read her mind?

Slamming his hand down in frustration, he just stares at his console before he suddenly realised, they have symbols. There were markings slightly engraved into the console, ever so slightly that you would have to be focusing intently on one spot but they were there now that he noticed them.

The first one he felt out as they were difficult to make out all at once was what felt like a cone. Close to a speaker volume so pressing the button, a sound blared a bit from somewhere.

“Maybe,” he quietly said to himself, holding it down, “Testing testing, 1 2 3, help wanted.” Those were the words that boomed out from the room. A second later, the rest of the group enter one by one and so he didn’t have to do it multiple times, waited for the lot of them to enter.

“Okay, so the consoles use to have symbols to mark each button or control, but they have faded overtime.” Everyone but V was starring with a no shit stare. “They still have the symbols. I only just noticed a few of them on my one but they are there.” Walking over, he told them to touch the indent he found as V spoke up.

“Well done, they actually use to be neon pink for one reason or another, but so we could easily alter the colour, we made tiny groves and poured the paint into them.” This had the rest of them rush off to the other consoles to find out all sorts of new information about their consoles.

John found out he could place markers, change the map type, an entire keyboard but in the language of the ancients and for no other reason then maybe convenience, a cup holder. That was standard across all of the group’s consoles. Lilly had the ability to make all the screens into 1 or 2 and show 1 or 2 of the camera feeds. Her radar also could sink up with John’s mapping and show topography.

Glaze learned that he could create runes that the ship could use but they were fairly basic in appearance, but Glaze said the symbols looked different. He also could create a catalogue of them to use at a moment’s notice but maybe they degrade as there was none in the list from when this ship was used. Wolf was able to swap his weapon and what he assumed, element of damage. He also made a locker of weapons open on the deck along with various other offensive and defensive capabilities. Granted that they were weapons.

Frey’s was the only one we hadn’t figured out properly yet. Turns out, hers was similar to her tag, related to crafting, maintenance and storage. She was able to create blueprints, collect the materials for them, and create what she desired. She was also able to set different systems such as the engine to automatically repair. Jakes panel was a bunch of commander-based controls which some no longer worked as they were to do with communication.

“Well now tags, you’ve had your fun.” V said from her spot at the back. “We need to head to the mountains as not only do you need to train, but we also need certain things that generated there when terraforming.” John decided to head there but considering how the two biomes previously where, he wasn’t looking forward to it.

**********

It took about an hour of travel with everyone doing their own thing with most exciting thing being what Frey did. Using a blueprint and using that material called hollow and the stone glass, she was able to make at first, appeared to just be a sword hilt but picking up showed something else. Turns out, hollow is a near invisible material which only is slightly visible in some lighting while in almost every other setting it was completely invisible.

Wolf played with the weapon which seemed to be lighter than steel but as for resistance and strength, appeared far superior but it was impossible to tell how sharp the edge would be after use.

The Valkyrie had flown well into the mountainous region before V told them to land.

“Are you sure?” Lilly asked. “So far when we’ve have been anywhere near the ground something bad has happened.”

“I know.” She responded. “Really was quite enjoyable watching you guys panic. Well until you ticked off the spectre ents. But yes, land.”

At this, Jake slowly lowered the vessel till landing, and they left the safety of the ship.

“So then, we are here to train you and I thought of no better place then the mountains for strength and endurance training.” V announced to the small group to audible disapproval.

“Just for that, all of you go do 10 laps round the ship.”

“Why would we do that, ya cant make us.” John said with a smug look only to receive one in return.

“Really?” She said smiling. With a click of her fingers, John was suddenly on the ground doing push ups. “I may not be able to fully control individuals that I’ve tagged, but I can make you do what I want.” Looking across the group, “If ya don’t want to join his push ups which I will then have him do double the laps round the ship, I would start running.”

Jake looked at his friend before starting his jog followed by everyone but Wolf.

“How many are you making John do?” He said to the amused V.

“Not as many as you will. But if you must know, 75.”

At this, Wolf goes to do one handed push ups with V starring at him in a somewhat confused and annoyed look.

“Wait, are you not doing that?” Jake asks V.

“No, he is doing this with his own decision.” She responds.

While the rest of the group simply isn’t fit enough to do such activities and just continued their own laps, Wolf just continued to do his push ups before doing his laps along with John who while doing less, was more exhausted than the Clawed.

“Well seeing as you need a clearly harder task,” V said tossing a pickaxe to Wolf, “I need you to by the end of the day, dig at least 30 centre meters into the stone. Wolf went off to the side and started hammering away at the ground sending sparks everywhere. “As for the rest of you, lets continue.”

**********

The day pressed on slowly as the group of 5 were pushed to their limits and because they didn’t need to eat or use the bathroom and such, they only got a break when they simply couldn’t move, even with V’s control.

As the day finally closed, Wolf collapsed as well.

“So how far did you make it?” V says as she walks over to the exhausted individual.

“I got 2 holes down 30 with the last being about 5.” He responds from his spot on the ground which had a blanket of green moss, in the shade of the mountains.

“The actually impressive considering how unfair the task should have been. You see, what’s odd about these mountains is how strong the mineral rich stone is normally but when there are ore veins, the stone becomes quite brittle. But this only happens about 35 centre meters below the stone. So well done. Did any of these holes just kind of, shatter at the end?”

“Yeah, the first one over there.” He said pointing at a small divot near the side of the ship. “The pickaxe just kinda sunk into the stone at the end when I struck it.”

“Well I know what your doing to…”

A loud roar boomed out before the ground suddenly shook. Everyone turned to see a large lizard about the size of the Valkyrie. Covered in blue and green scales with large wings sprouting from the back. They were staring at a dragon.

“So, that’s why our queen felt a disturbance. You finally managed to get some subjects for your, grand, experiment.” The best said staring at V.

“Peg, its been to long, ya over grown lizard, how ya been.”

“It’s Pegereiss the Brave and you fucken know it you brat. Now then, our queen demands to know why you’re in her territory. Let me guess, you pissed Trev-“

“Not another word or your hide will become a dog blanket.”

“We both know how that would end so I would watch your attitude when you’re in audience with our queen or I might let that little threat slip through my teeth.”

“Fine you asshole, what does queeny want?”

“An audience as usual. Been so long since you brought tags so our queen would like to meet them.” Pegereiss says with a smile looking at the 6 exhausted individuals. “You will pilot that revolting form of flight at the old docks tomorrow and make your way to her chamber.”

“The Valkyrie is a fine ship and it could probably beat your draconic ass back into an egg. But fine, we’ll meet with your queen, but I am going to take something of hers for interrupting me and my endeavour.”

Laughing, Pegereiss retorts, “You can try little brat, you can try.”

The rest of the group had mostly ignored the whole conversation simply trying process the fact there was a real-life, honest to god, dragon just sitting there, rather than burning them alive, or crushing them, or similar deaths.

The draconic being flew off and V simply pointed the finger at him before flying to her spot on top of the ship.

**********

Sitting there, fuming interlay, quietly raging to herself, “I gonna first bash in a skull, steal something from that pretentious bitch, and then use it to slap that draconic bastard till he is unconscious. Then book it cause fuck fighting the legions of flying beasts that inhabit the deeper parts of the mountains.”

Thinking about it, V suddenly realised she still needed the mountains for not only the tagged training, but the metals and alloys she needs are all here with a few being exclusive to the region.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK”