The young woman with pearlescent skin seemed to suffer immensely under Erol’s powerless gaze. Her eyes half-closed, she tried multiple times to reach her face, but without success. Weakened by time, her muscles were unable to respond other than with a few violent spasms at the level of her shoulders. Her hands ricocheted against the edges of the casket; her fingers got tangled in her long hair. Blood now spoiled her once immaculate jumpsuit.

“The mask! We have to remove her mask!” cried Octave, taking hold of the sleeping beauty’s head.

Impatiently, the student reached for something on the ground, grabbed his master’s blade, and sliced off cleanly the strange cables that tied the mask to the casket. A jet of white liquid suddenly burst out of the severed cords. Octave grabbed one by one the yellow cables that were now moving around like the tentacles of an unchained octopus. He used his scarf to block them off until the milky stream eventually stopped.

Once freed from her restraints, the young woman rolled to the side. A few seconds later, she vomited this same white liquid inside her box. She succumbed to a coughing fit before silence returned once more as the two looters exchanged a stunned look before the painful breathing of their discovery became the only sound resonating in the room.

Erol extended his hand towards her. She was shaking. What am I supposed to do? If she dies, everything will be lost! He had never made a discovery of this kind before. He wanted to take her pulse, caress her skin that was as white as her jumpsuit, and check that everything that had just transpired had not been an illusion. This maze of cement and steel had pulled quite a few tricks on them so far.

But after he touched her, she turned slowly towards him, in silence. Her face still bore the pink scars left by the mask. As he dragged back his hand, she opened her eyes. Her irises were a blue of the kind he had never seen before in his life. She came to her senses and Erol invited her to join him so she could get out of this dreary glass box. With the hint of a smile, the beautiful stranger closed her eyes again and fell into his arms. Erol stammered something that resembled a question while, behind him, Octave stood still as a statue.

Several minutes had passed and Erol had remained at the young woman’s side until he felt his stomach rumble with hunger. He checked their supplies, but unfortunately their food stores were at an alarming level. Reinor had supposedly been buried with half of their reserves.

Octave was standing in front of him, leaning against another glass casket. He had his eyes and nose deep into his notebook, chronicling the recent events. The silver quill kept a constant pressure on the paper. On several occasions, the thin parchment almost tore under the zeal of the young ginger’s hand. It was a habit that the archaeologist loathed.

“You know you will have plenty of time to write your report upon our return to Renaissance. You should rest.” Erol said before realizing it was the first time that he was speaking that kindly to his disciple.

“Even if I lose my eyesight from writing in the dark, I must report our discovery down to the smallest detail.”

“You—are you sure that you want to mention the girl in your report? Maybe we should talk about it with Herr Marian first.”

“Regarding the girl. The corpses smeared with... I don’t know what—a fuel cell in the transformer and all these other things that I have been able to extract from the still functioning terminals!”

“What interesting things did you find in the terminals?”

“Nothing conclusive. Only something about transcendence…”

“What is this transidance thing?”

“Transcendence,” replied Octave in his usual tone. “Transferring a conscience into a machine. I found a file that spoke of this.”

“Nonsense!” Erol chuckled.

“It doesn’t matter! I would still prefer that everything is reported. Especially everything concerning the girl. At least before you sell her to some technomancer who will butcher her.”

“Whatever her sale will make us,” Erol said nonchalantly while patting the young woman’s forehead. So many years spent gathering century-old trinkets had turned him into a bitter and venal man. His attitude renewed Octave’s annoyance.

“We are the very first to have discovered a being dating from the origin of the world! This has incalculable scientific value and I am under the impression that you don’t quite understand its importance!”

“Origin of the world? What do they teach you at the University?” Erol scoffed.

But Octave ignored his mark and continued his speech: “Then again, how is she able to sleep after all this time? It makes no sense!”

“We cannot be sure of anything about this,” objected Erol whose mind was still on the well-preserved corpses that lie in the preceding room.

His student had gotten up. After arranging his things, he headed in the direction of the glass casket. Under Erol’s questioning gaze, he rummaged quickly inside the box and dragged out the curious yellow cables. As he squeezed one of the rubbery pipes in his hand, a jet of fluid poured on his shoes, a few centimeters from where the archaeologist was standing.

“What are you planning on doing with that?” Elon asked.

“I am willing to bet that this liquid here is food! And it is probably what helped her survive for this long. Everything had been anticipated!”

Erol stood up and took the tubes out of his hands. “She hadn’t predicted one damn thing,” he said, putting them clumsily back into place. An air current made the grave robber shiver. The bitter smell of the corpses burrowed into his nostrils killing whatever appetite had been fueled by the life-saving liquid of the survival system. “By chance or I don’t know what, their congeners were turned on too soon for some unknown reason. This allowed the device to save enough energy to conserve this … young lady for years. While the planet was grilling on the surface,” concluded Erol as he readjusted the collar of his leather coat. Then, he turned away from the coffin and stepped away from his acolyte. Soreness sheared the entire length of his legs.

“Where are you headed to, Sir?”

“Outside,” responded Erol. “There is no question of us feeding three more corpses to this mass grave.”

But, before heading for the exit, he almost stumbled on a metallic box. When his boot hit the box, it flew open on the fly. His hapless gesture scattered in the darkness a dozen transparent circular trinkets rimmed with golden metal. They were no larger than his thumb. At the end of the day, he was no less clumsy than his disciple.

Perspicacious as always, Octave jumped to comment: “Temporary implants? Again, an impressive discovery. I have never seen any in such a good state!”

“They are extremely fragile in fact. As luck would have it, they are still in their protective shells,” said Erol, grabbing one of the implants.

The archaeologist rolled the implant around in his glove under the light of the torch. It was a splendid piece of equipment. The quality of the workmanship was so impeccable that it was in fact impossible to see the printed circuits, that’s how nanoscopic they were.

“And yet, everyone had one of these in the past,” the young man reminded him, pointing at the sleeping beauty with his chin.

“They wear down very quickly with time and without the appropriate thermal care,” responded Erol before reassembling his new treasure into the box.

“What about her? Does she have one?”

Erol had already taken out a knife that he kept in the lapel of his coat. Walking at a brisk pace, he reached the sarcophagus and grabbed her jaw between his fingers.

“Don’t even think about it!” Octave shrieked and seized him by the shoulder.

Erol shoved him away with a sharp strike of his elbow.

“Do you take me for a fool, kid?” he growled, tapping his blade against the temple of the young woman.

The back of the blade did not pierce her skin, leaving only a barely visible mark. A layer of silica, which is what the inhabitants of the High-Lands called these contraptions in common parlance, did in fact cover her skin.

The coldness of the steel made the young woman wince, but the weapon returned to its sheath as quickly as it had been drawn. The archaeologist then made a U-turn. He ordered Octave to verify if there were any other boxes and left the premises.

As Erol explored, several Plexiglas airlocks blocked his passage forward, although after so many years of neglect, they yielded easily to the strength of his fist and he was able to emerge quickly into a hall of interminable proportions. The room was so vast that despite the few halos of light flowing from the ceiling, darkness hid the end of the hall from his view. The majesty of that space overwhelmed him, and the archaeologist was stuck for a few moments in inner turmoil, scrutinizing every nook that his eyes could perceive.

A complicated network of tracks and pulleys loomed over him. The network circulated among gigantic containers made of dull red steel that were as thick as the walls of a fortress. Here and there, molten metal residue, now long solidified, covered their sides.

Above some of the chimneys that dotted the vault hung an impressive system of chains that must have been used to carry enormous loads. When in movement, these chains must produce a deafening roar.

“This cave must have been a factory of excessive magnitude!” exclaimed Erol, shortly after detecting a well of light that originated from one of the aeration pipes.

The well had a diameter of some dozens of meters. It could be accessed via a staircase that ran along the vault to reach a platform. A network of pathways would allow him to get to his objective.

Erol turned to exit the hall so he could return to Octave and begin preparations. But it was his student who found him first. At his side, the mysterious woman, who was still asleep, lie stretched on the glass lid of her casket. She had been firmly fastened with rope and the transport pipes used for her liquefied food. Octave had dragged it here.

“Octave? What are you up to?”

His student was out of breath and in a state of unprecedented panic. “Sir! Something terrible happened some moments after…” stammered the student, drenched in sweat. “All of a sudden, the current came back and then the interior of—her casket lit up and everything started to heat up inside!” Behind the student, huge flames had begun to invade the corridor while a foul chemical smell reached his nostrils. Already, the black smoke was overwhelming the space with air vents around them. “Because of the short circuit, the mattress turned instantly into a smelly puddle the moment I managed to pull her out of the trap!” he concluded breathlessly.

In an instant, the smell became so strong that Erol was folded into two by the pain. It felt like a white-hot sword had pierced his nose and the front of his skull. With tears in his eyes, he seized the young woman and threw her over his shoulders. She was so light that he almost resented Octave for bringing her here on a makeshift stretcher.

Erol urgently rushed to get to the first footbridge with Octave at his heels. Unfortunately, the metal steps had been rendered fragile by time and they folded under the archaeologist’s boots, plunging him into the void, only a few meters from his objective.

Acting on instinct, his right hand was able to latch firmly onto a cable. In his other hand, he held the young woman by the collar of her costume, as she hung in the emptiness. He was lucky that the synthetic fibers of the fabric were strong enough to support her weight despite the shock.

Following his master’s orders, Octave jumped on the platform. But just as he had done so, one of the steel ropes of the footbridge emitted a grinding noise. Everything was falling apart. Panic made Erol sweat in large drops, to that point that the young woman’s collar began to slip between his fingers.

“I am going to throw her to you. Catch her!” he ordered his disciple who was trying his best to secure a cable that threatened to break.

“You have lost your mind!” responded this latter as the stranger landed in his arms.

Erol was almost certain that he had just killed both of them. Gathering his forces, he embarked on his ascension. Underneath him, the thick toxic emanation had reached the tanks. It was pervading the compound at an alarming rate.

Screeching, the footbridge gave in and fell into the void beneath. With a final leap, the archaeologist was able to grab onto his disciple’s arm and managed to hoist himself onto the wobbly platform. His gloved hand gripped tightly a pair of screws as he fixed behind his eyeglasses the sea of flames that roared underneath. The toxic gas was ablaze.

Octave was at the rim, his scarf in front of his nose and his mouth, with tears in his eyes caused by the black flame rising with fiery waves. He had barely time to step back from the edge when one of the last cables attaching the footbridge to the chimney broke apart. Out of control, the steel serpent hit his assistant in the back with unimaginable force making him almost fall from the footbridge.

Erol caught him at the last moment. Then, without delay, he positioned Octave on his shoulder before beginning his climb until he reached a reinforced concrete slab, large enough for one man to go through. Daylight spilled through the gaps.

Lifting the slab with some effort, Erol hoisted himself out of the compound and laid Octave down on the floor of some sort of attic covered in pale humid straw. Farmers must have built it above the old relief vent.

Not wasting any breath, Erol returned to look for the young woman before the platform joined the network of footbridges in the depths. It was only once he had positioned her over his shoulder that he noticed what was written in the wall in front of him. The huge letters were painted yellow and several meters wide. Although slightly faded, their typography was rather strange and he had trouble deciphering what it said: “J-O-S-I-A-S. Josias?” Erol had no idea what the word meant. He had never come across anything similar during his searches.

A symbol had been drawn under the inscription, also in yellow. It was a circle. A few more lines continued underneath but it was impossible to make out the symbol in its entirety. Unfortunately, the fire had destroyed a good portion of it.

Perhaps the young woman might be able to give him some information on the matter. In any case, it was the sort of discovery that would interest Octave a lot. This latter had in fact regained consciousness when Erol rose to the surface.

“This bloody cable was not happy with ruining your jacket and shirt. It has torn your flesh without mercy, my poor Octave,” Erol noted.

“Does this mean I will need to pay for a new spine?” the student joked while taking his medical kit out of his satchel.

“You know my opinion on implants, kid. They’re nothing but a big scam. They rust, they rot your flesh, and all for some junk improvements. Their time is gone. This garbage should not be left in the hands of those charlatans who call themselves surgeons or technomancers.” Erol then hurried to snatch the bandage sheets from Octave’s fingers.

“Where are we?” asked the young boy grimacing as the archaeologist applied the green bandages to the wound.

Erol spared a thought for his disciple. With a crushed back, there was little chance that this injury might one day heal comfortably. He regretted having brought him to this underground trap and promised himself to have two words with Marian upon their return. From now on, the boy must remain at the University. And if his idiotic father was not happy about that, he could go to hell, him and the rest of the Foundation!

“Where are we?” asked Octave again.

In front of them, surrounded by the sad light of day, stood a door with its miserable-looking planks.

“Stay put. I am going to have a look around and then…”

But just as Erol was approaching the door, it opened with a bang.

A young boy of barely eight burst into the attic. He had short platinum blond hair that was covered in dirt and was wearing a simple burlap tunic and a pair of very uncomfortable wooden clogs. His eyes were red and his throat was covered in varicose veins.

While he had been stunned at first, Erol gathered his wits and addressed the child who had frozen in place: “What are you doing here, child?”

The boy gasped. “Ma—many apologies!” he began to stutter. “It was not my intention to surprise you.” He coughed before resuming: “My name is Luca, Luca Flumine. From the Wassen windmill, a bit farther down the river. Are you not a soldier?”

In silence, Erol judged him to be rather poor. His puffy eyes and his trembling demeanor betrayed his fear.

Meanwhile, Octave had glued his face to the closed door again, examining the outside of the attic. “Sir, the situation will not please you,” he said.

With a gesture of his hand, Erol ordered Octave to watch over the young woman. He had begun to realize that she was panting, the air quality in the High-Lands was bad.

The archaeologist went to stand against the opening. He pressed his face against the wood, looking for the best angle from where to survey the surroundings through the gaps.

A run-down farm emerged in the morning fog. A stone and mud barn made of earth and plastic bag remains was located to the left of the attic. A small house with two windows stood in front of the door. Its thatched roof was covered in moss and threatened to collapse in some places. It was a rather gloomy picture, but the place seemed completely deserted.

They had to wait a few seconds for the fog to disperse around the internal courtyard before Erol could distinguish a gigantic tree to the side of the attic. It was a walnut tree that stood bare of any leaves, despite the arrival of spring.

From its strongest branch hung three somber shapes still surrounded by fog. Adjusting his glasses, Erol blurted out a loud curse once the bodies of a couple and their child were revealed, swinging in the wind. The harsh squeaking of their ropes resonated across the courtyard.

At the same moment, some voices resonated next to the cottage and four figures holding military equipment emerged from the shadows. Three of them had flat helmets that came down to their noses. Two holes opened at eye level ensuring they could see. They were equipped with spears and wore an imposing albeit awkwardly arranged that fell to their knees. Underneath, the figures donned a mauve and black tunic stamped with the insignia of a local lord that Erol was able to recognize: the red fist of Firehorn.

The soldiers were accompanied by an officer. He was the only one not wearing a helmet because of the thick layer of bandages applied to his skull. The wound was recent, the farmers must have fought for their lives fiercely.

As the four individuals headed in the direction of the courtyard, Erol brought his right hand to his blade. If a fight were to explode, he would defend himself valiantly.

Foot soldiers of the Baronies, fanaticized by the Inquisition, had already crossed their kind in the past. He knew them to be trained, disciplined, but too sure of themselves. An advantage and an opportunity that Erol was ready to seize, assisted by Octave’s crossbow.

Plus, none of them has implants or improvements.

Luckily, at the last moment, the four men turned in the direction of the stable where a fifth individual was waiting for them with a barrel of spirits and slices of organic ham.

Tired of being left in the dark, Octave approached the archaeologist in order to take advantage of one of the openings around the door. “They are not wearing the symbols of the Inquisition. Is it a partisan emblem? I would have guessed Firehorn. What are they doing here?” he whispered, furrowing his brows. “Wait, they have organic ham! What in the heavens!”

Unfortunately, now was not the time to engage in culinary criticism. “Their gangs travel up the valley as far as Altdorf-la-Vieille, tracking down the Foundation’s allies and pillaging farms and villages,” added Erol with a disgusted look on his face.

“If the aggressive intentions of the Inquisition are so conspicuous, why doesn’t the Foundation attack them right away?” raged the young boy.

“The Foundation no longer holds much power in the southern valleys. The Inquisition is hiding behind its puppets even if nobody is fooled. But they will never send their Paladins to fight directly against the Foundation!”

“And what about us?”

“Altdorf will be the next to fall and as a result we will no longer be able to join the city of Renaissance via the lake. Which means we have to get to the river as quickly as possible,” replied Erol.

“Excellent idea! The stream will guide us if we can get to a boat. But where will we find one in the middle of these mountains?” Octave hesitated. “With the lumberjacks perhaps?”

“I know where you might find a boat,” said a timid voice.

It was the child. Erol had completely forgotten about him. He and Octave exchanged a look, happy that luck was finally on their side. But before they had a chance to question the boy further, a bronze blade pierced the door, failing to impale them by mere centimeters.