“Selene!”

The Mora called out to her and she froze.

Selene was emotionally joined at the hip with Lunabelle. Astenna had good reason to talk while she had been gone, but unfortunately, Selene had walked in at probably the worst moment. Her eyes were moist as if she had been crying a short time ago as her form visibly shook.

“No!” Selene shouted.

“Selene please let us explain!”

“No! Lunabelle isn’t going anywhere alone and certainly not to the tiny planet!”

She bent down and gathered up the ruined crystal shards to the orb she had been so excited to show the others moments ago.

“Selene, please! Our follower unit is going down rapidly and-”

“No!”

She cried and ran out of the room, visibly in tears. Mora moved to go after her but Astenna stopped her.

“Just give her some time. She'll come around.”

“But what of our follower count? Every second counts!” Mora said with urgency.

She understood that the more their follower count went down, the less power they would have at their command. And in a universe where a rival celestial deity or eradicator class monster could come around at any moment, it didn't bode well with Mora who liked to be ready to fight anything.

“Right now our words won’t get through to her. Wait until she has a clear mind then we both should properly explain. As cruel as it is, Selene needs this just as much as we do.”

Mora nodded and the two left the conference room. Mora to go and oversee the containment of the mortals from the tiny planet, Astenna to go and research effective methods of raising their follower unit, and Selene went and cried at Lunabelles bedside, holding her tiny hand in her own.

_______________________________

“Amazing!”

The elven girl exclaimed from her hunched position over a microscope. She had been able to collect blood samples from the edge of the console and even was able to recover a strand of hair. When she placed it under the microscope she had shrieked in amazement.

“Will you pipe down!”

The irritated dwarf bellowed out of the floor crawl space he was currently in.

“Some of us have important things to do, such as make sure we not explode!”

He had been working for the better part of 3 days to fix what he could on the badly mistreated shuttle. Despite not having the materials to do so, so far, he had pounded heat sinks back into form, welded cracks in the hull, stiched the sensor grid back together, and a whole slew of other problems. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about the melted/missing main engine.

The communications array had been the first thing the captain had ordered fixed in order to get into contact with HQ, but despite his best attempts, there was still something wrong even after quadruple checking the dish alignments.

The elven scientist's sister was busy helping the Dwarf find the problems with the array when she heard him shout.

“Calm down Engineer Zahar! Sis, if you could please, again for the 50th time, study whatever is fascinating in silence while we are trying to work. There are a lot of delicate and small parts here and some of them we can’t replace.” the lieutenant said.

Recently, ever since her sister had gotten her hands on those cells of the little girls, she had been ecstatic about studying them, which was weird. Usually, she was quiet and poised whenever she was in the laboratory. When the others had asked her what was so interesting she had merely told them “Something that could possibly change the world!” and went on her merry way.

“I’m telling ya! Maybe if she wasn’t shrieking half the time, I swear we would be landing on Terra again by now!”

“Engineer Zahar! please, go back to working on the mana relay. Sis, have you seen the captain?”

“He’s out there playing with the barrier again.” she said not looking up from her microscope.

Ever since they had been imprisoned here, a transparent red barrier had kept them and their ship from moving out of the vicinity. It was about a mile in diameter and impervious to all the attempts to break out of it the captain and corporal had come up with.

“Well can you go and help them. You’ve been cooped up in here for days now!”

“But there's so much to do in here!”

They say that elves make the best scientists and scholars due to their closeness to nature and for the curiosity of that which they are bound by sacred law to protect. This fusion of both science and religion made the elven nation one of the most knowledgeable about the natural world with the dwarves being their close rivals with their extensive knowledge of metals and earth. Unlike the dwarves, however, the elves were not willing to exploit nature and mine it up to see what they could do with it. Because of this, in terms of military power, the dwarves win hands down.

The elf scientist rambled on for a few minutes about several processes she MUST go through before her sister finally had enough.

“Lemina! Just...go…”

She too had grown tired of her sister's incessant mutterings and random shouts of awe at something no one else in the crew understood.

“...Ok…”

The dejected scientist got up from her workstation and proceed out of the wide open airlock. The power had gone offline after the little encounter with the goddesses, the very expensive dwarvish crafted reactor no longer worked, and they only had access to backup generators. The dwarf had claimed he needed to use the majority of the power for repairs. Since the atmosphere outside was breathable and they needed the repairs done as soon as possible, the captain had decided to deactivate all unnecessary systems like life support and concentrate on things such as repair and communication.

The elf scientist had been able to convince the captain to allow her a small amount of power to run the microscopes and Electro-Arcane Spectrometer. He was reluctant to do so, but agreed, he too was slightly curious about the alien girl.

The crimson tinted dome that surrounded them was impervious to any of the weapons they had had on hand. In response, he had to use the Anti-Material explosives equipped to the shuttle to try and open a hole in their prison. They had originally been intended to set up a landing site for future expeditions, but under the circumstances had been repurposed to try and break out of the dome.

If they were still here after a week had passed by with no contact with HQ or interaction with the presumed goddesses of this area, then they would attempt to blow a hole out of the shield and launch all the life pods. There were twenty life pods in total, so if the goddesses came after them, they all had a 1 in 4 chance of surviving unless they could somehow tell which pods they were in, in which case they were all probably going to die.

It was day three and comms had not been fixed and there had been no interaction with the deities so the captain decided to experiment with the barrier and see how much explosives they would need to break the dome, or even if they could. Due to the limited supply of explosives they had, though, he had decided to do so on a small scale and calculate how much would be needed on a large scale.

“Captain!” the elven scientist called out from the airlock.

*BOOM*

'Never mind, found him.'

A small detonation of explosives rattled the shuttle and its inhabitants. From her perch on in the airlock, she was able to see where the smoke from where the magical explosion had come from and set out in that direction while her sister calmed a dwarf complaining about concentration again.

All around, a barren red desert was present. It was nighttime and the sands inside the barrier had cooled to a bearable degree. They had found out quick that it was near impossible to travel during the day thanks to the scorching sun and the barrier didn’t seem to provide any shade. Thankfully, there were no desert scorpions or other monsters to cause them problems. Small ways away from the shuttle was an oasis which they could use to replenish their water. However, there were no plants or trees with anything edible on them. On a side note, Lia took a few samples of the strange Palm tree-Oak tree hybrids to study later.

The elf scientist ran across the desert sands and made it to the site of the explosion in 15 minutes. The captain and Major were inspecting the barrier near a few dark scorch marks in the sand with measuring equipment borrowed from the lab.

“Great, another 5 charges down the drain.”

“Sir, I don’t believe this method is via-”

They spotted Lia coming up on their spot and stopped talking as she approached, silently looking to one another as if to say “We’ll talk later”.

“Hey, Ariel told me to come and see if I could help?”

“No actually, we were almost done and getting ready to pack up.” The captain said as he picked up his equipment. "If you could tell her we’ll be right up in a few minutes that would help, though.”

“OK! More time to examine the cells!” she said the last bit quietly.

She began to run back, excited by the new that she could go back to studying the cells she had been concentrating on before she had left.

The two men packed up all the equipment and began the trudge back to the shuttle with packs laden with today's water supply and measuring devices.

“Sir what should we tell the others?”

The captain thought about the results of the tests they had been running over the past few days.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring it up at dinner and as for what to do…”

He pursed his lip and looked back at the crimson barrier. It looked like something flimsy a novice magician might set up, but actually it had not even had a mark on it after detonating explosives on it.

Half an hour later, the whole crew gathered up in the main room and rations were handed out. As far as food goes, they had it better than your run of the mill soldier. Tonight was Steak and Potatoes stew. Metal tubes containing diced potatoes, meat, dried mushrooms, and various powders were combined with hot water and shaken. That and a bit of flat bread like a quesadilla and a spoon was all that was included inside. It was simple but compared to the hard bread and watery soup you get in the army, it was good enough.

Despite the tasty meal, everyone but the Lemina had a downcast expression. The meal was delicious, but to them, it tasted like ash. In contrast, the scientist had a chipper smile on her face as she gobbled down her meal, a spoon in one hand and a notebook in the other.

“So how did the testing today go?”

The dwarf hesitantly broke the silence with a question.

The captain and beastman gave each other another knowing glance. They wished they had better news to tell.

“About that. I’m afraid we haven’t even put a dent in it. Even using the tool you gave us Lia, we were barely able to detect any change. I’ll send you the raw data later, but even just eyeballing it, I doubt we can make even a pinhole in it...How about you? Did you get in contact with HQ?

The beastman and human gave hopeful looks to the dwarf and elf.

The elfish lieutenant and the dwarven engineer also gave each other a knowing glance. They had spent days working on the shuttle and had repaired some of the damage, but when it came to the broken comm array, neither could figure out what was wrong no matter how many checks and double checks they did.

“No, we weren't able to restore communications. We have been working on it for hours but we can’t find the problem. We realigned the array and even changed the magic cylinders, but it’s still not functioning...”

The dwarf fell silent and sunk in his seat. He was a dwarf! A machine that refused to work under his hands was an insult to his pride as a craftsman. But no matter how much he shined, replaced, and ran the system, there was no change. Failing to repair something in such a critical time such as this...it was just unbearable!

The elf, seeing his dejected look, went on with the explanation.

“Anyway, we were able to repair the auxiliary thrusters and seal the cracks in the hull. Life Support seems to work, but navigation is having problems too."

No matter what they did, they were foiled at every turn when it came to repairing vital machineries such as the comms or navigation.

Sir, it is my opinion that there is some outside interference stopping the radio and nav computer.”

Considering the evidence, the captain was more than willing to agree with her, but knowing the problem didn’t help if they couldn’t deal with it. No escape, no communications, no contact from their jailers. Not to mention there were going to be more problems when rations start to run low. Only him, the captain had access to the supplies like food, drugs, and explosives in case of a mutiny. And last time he checked the stocks, they were about 5 to 7 days off from running completely out of food.

The captain stared down at the bowl of stew that had gone cold. Which was a pity, he was sure that in another week or so he wouldn’t be able to enjoy such luxuries.

All while this happened, the scientist was busy licking her container clean while looking at a notebook full of scribblings and drawing in Ky’tharian, the elven language, a smile plastered all over her face. She turned her page every few minutes and wrote down something every now and then, humming a song from her childhood.

“What are you so damn happy about! Can’t you understand that we're steam'n trapped here!”

The beastman, who had been irritated by the girl's behavior, blew up and started shouting at her. She didn’t look up from her book and simply just replied with “you have no idea…”

Infuriated, he tried to get up but was back by the captain and the lieutenant. Even now, she was calm and reading her book. Not even bothering with the spectacle in front of her.

“Lia, I think we all deserve an explanation as to what you're been doing these days.”

Finally, the girl looked up from her notes glanced at the captain, a look of excitement on her face.

“You really wanna know?!” she said in a voice that quivered in happiness.

“Yes! Please, Lia, tell us in terms we can understand what's so interesting!” her sister said exhausted with her antics.

The scientist all but dropped the remains of her dinner and ran over to her workstation. She picked up a multitude of papers, microscope slides, and ran back over. She set everything down on the seat she had been using and began her improvised presentation.