89. The mining facility

With the latest disaster averted, Fureva-Yung decided that the rest of the facility deserved a search and went to find the collapsed passage. She marched through the facility, with Marius jogging behind, to the two black pillars at the top of a set of stairs. The two pillars looked smooth, but under a raking light they could see thin lines forming the outlines of two sleeping individuals, their arms crossed in front of them. The lines continued onto the floor between the pillars where a circular pattern was visible.
 
Pulling out her purple worm, Twitch, Fureva-Yung gently squeeze him to encourage him to dust the pillars. He looked up at her uncomfortable, but did nothing. She tickled his nose, instead, causing the desire effect and splattering the area with pink dust. Besides making some of the lines stand out more, the dust did nothing and Fureva-Yung put him back in her pouch.
“Step over the circle together?” She suggested to Marius. He nodded his head, eager to see what was beyond and after a countdown, tney stepped over…
 
…into darkness.
 
One minute they could see just fine by the light of the glow globe, the next nothing could be see, not even a hand in front of a face. Marius hearing a quiet grinding of stone from either side and a bubbling liquid noise from ahead. He stepped back, hoping that light would return, only to be disappointed.
“Shit! It’s still dark down here!”
Further ahead of Marius, regardless of their collective step, Fureva-Yung was tossed off her feet as the ground beneath her feet roiled and quaked. From nearby liquid bubbled up and flowed along the buck ground towards her.
 
Still in the dark, Marius squeezed his eyes shut and listened to what was happening ahead. He heard the thump of Fureva-Yung’s landing and even closer the grinding of stone. He ducked out of the way as a heavy and very sharp something wooshed through the space he’d just been standing. From her position on the ground, Fureva-Yung’s echolocation identified the two pillars coming to life, angular arms forming blades. A blade swung down at her head, she deflected it aside, but not without it cutting the rubber of her armour.
 
Nox, who had been hanging around the monitoring station, heard Marius cry of frustration in the dark and the heavy thud of Fureva-Yung hitting the ground. She flitted around the machinery looking for her companions to be confronted with a bubble of blackness ahead. Her little Hedge light only defining the darkness, could not make an impression through the black where her friends were battling.
 
Inside the darkness, Fureva-Yung lashed out at the pillar, the pillar was faster than it looked at twisted away, dragging Fureva-Yung across the slick, shivering floor. From within the liquid ahead, a four-petalled flower appeared just as she flipped directly onto it by the pillar. Marius heard the squelching sound and was unsure what that meant. He blasted the location with his molecular rearranger and hit both the plant and Fureva-Yung. Fureva-Yung grunted with pain as a lump painfully rose up between her shoulder blades. Around her, the floor still quaked, and she stayed prone, thinking she was better off on the ground. Under her, the petals of the plant opened and four vine-like strands whipped out to wrap around her limbs.
 
The pillar nearest Marius swung again at him, missing again as Marius jigged away in time. The second pilla,r however, seemed content to stand guard over Fureva-Yung as the flower seemed to be dragging her somewhere. Instead of whatever her enemy had in mind, Fureva-Yung grabbed the flower and impaled it on the arm of the stone pillar.
 
Outside the bubble, Nox tried a combination of two of her spells, the little hedge light and a bright but instantaneous flash. What resulted was a small, brilliantly bright ball like a tiny sun. Still, even this painfully bright ball of light was not bright enough to break through the darkness around Fureva-Yung and Marius.
 
To Marius, it seemed like the darkness was shrinking around him. He heard Fureva-Yung grunt with exertion as she plunged the flower down onto the pillar’s arm.
“Are you hurt?”
“Moderately,” came the reply, giving Marius a direction not to punch. He swung and missed the pillar as on the other pillar, the plant squelched to the ground. Vines wrapped around Fureva-Yung for a second time, as it’s pillar companion no longer waited passively. It stabbed down, hitting Fureva-Yung. The electric shock it received from the strike compared badly when Fureva-Yung realised that no damage had reached her.
 
Marius blasted this pillar with his molecular rearranger ray as above snuffed out the tiny sun she’d created to try another way of seeing. Linking into the senses of Fureva-Yung, she sensed the world through her friend's echo-location. Now she could see the looming pillars of stone, the squelching plant-thing. But what could she do to help.
 
Fureva-Yung seemed to have the plant all wrapped up as she pulled the vines off her legs and wrapped them instead around the pillar menacing her. Marius had a little less success as he went to punch his pillar, a small vine whipped out and caught him around one leg. Dragged off his feet, he slipped down the corridor to where the ground still shivered and quaked.
 
The plant slithered away out of Fureva-Yung’s grasp, and the pillar hit her again, receiving another round of electrical damage. Ignoring the ineffectual pillar, Fureva-Yung continued her attack on the plant. She wrestled the plant out of the ground, wrapping its vines as if coiling up rope. Suddenly, the vines became very lumpy and heavy.
“That’s me, Furry. Can you put me down?” Marius said. In coiling up the vine, she’d reeled herself in a Marius!
 
The darkness around them dimmed and shrank.
 
Above, with an image of the battlefield from the prone Fureva-Yung Nox tried her psychic bursts. Though it was very active, the plant creature didn’t seem to have a central nervous system to hurt. The two stone pillars she missed entirely. Frustrated, Nox racked her brain for what she could do next.
 
Also frustrated with his view on the world, Marius, now upside down, trained his Molecular rearranger on the pillar that had attacked Fureva-Yung. Its weapon arm turned to soft putty, sagging and useless. Buoyed by his success, Marius made a concussion bomb. The pillar flails its useless limb at Fureva-Yung, who dodges away, the plant still held in place by its coiled vines. She shattering-shouted into the more dangerous pillar as she turned and impaled the floppy-bladed pillar with the loop of vines. Nox rummaged in her satchel and pulled out her monoblade whip. She considered using it for a moment, thought better of it and put it away. Instead, she placed a stasis on the floppy bladed pillar.
 
It was the turn of the battle. The Shattering shout went off, rocking the pillar. Marius, still upside down, used his ray once more, and finally the pillar of stone disintegrated into dust. His Molecular Rearranger gave a spark, rearranged itself and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Nox released the second pillar when Marius and Fureva-Yung were ready, and it was soon a pile of rubble. The plant, no longer able to control the darkness, tried crawling away. Fureva-Yung handed the plant as a bouquet to Jaden when she finally caught up with the group. The lights returned to normal, and they could all see where the circle had once been, now, a hole full of thick fluid remained.
 
Jaden took a sample…you never knew when such a thing would come in handy.
“That will be great fun to play with when we get back,” She said, looking at the flower, unsure how to care for it until them. With Nox’s help, they found the bulb that fed the plant and cut it off. This, with the sample of fluid, was stored in Bellyache.
 
Fureva-Yung searched around the broken pillar until she’d found a piece the right size. Nox didn’t need telling what it was for and quickly shaped it into a new link for the chain.
“I think I will call it cloaca,” Said Fureva-Yung, who had heard the word once and thought the clacky-stone pillar reminded her of the word.
“What?” The other three said at the same time.
“Yes, cloaca seems to fit very well.”
 
 
Once Marius and Fureva-Yung had cleaned up, the group started exploring the passageway beyond the battle site with the pillars and their plant accomplice. At a fork, the group were stopped by six ethereal figures, guards by their appearance. Popping into appearance at the intersection, three ghostly guards went down one path, three the other way. Nox and Fureva-Yung ran after the first group with Marius and Jaden close behind. The ghostly six met up again at another three way intersection. A narrow hallway gave access to the space between all the passages. The guards seemed to confer for a moment before splitting up once more and heading back.
 
“They’re not physically here. They’re recordings of what happened before, “ Nox said after scanning the group, “They seem to be looking for something, or someone.” They all glanced down the narrow corridor.
“Throw you hedge magic down there and see what’s at the end,” Marius suggested to Nox who shook her head. She knew they were recordings, probably set off when they reached a certain point. It would make sense that if there was something to see at the end of the narrow passage, you would have to go there. She started shuffling sideways down the hallway until she came to the tiny chamber at the end. Huddled, as if hiding, was a small ethereal child in fine clothes. To those watching, the little boy’s expression was not fearful of being found, but…excitement…playfulness.
 
Meanwhile, Fureva-Yung walked down the stairs to a closed door. It did not respond to her magic arm, which was unusual. Even Jaden’s attempts to hack the lock did no good. Fureva-yung started punch random numbers of the control panel…and the door opened. It was an elevator shaft, without a car. Jaden now realising it was her old nemesis, reapplied herself to hacking the elevator and soon called the car up to their floor.
 
There were two options: Up or Down.
 
 
 
When the party were altogether, they rode the elevator up. The door opened up onto a hallway that broadened out to a wide ramp that, in turn, lead back to the surface of the plain. Glad to know there was another exit, but not ready to leave yet, they piled back into the elevator car and rode it all the way down to the bottom.
 
 
Here, the corridor turned right to a room where an ethereal Latimor worked on two columned machines like the ones on the floor above. The Latimore seemed to be doing basic maintenance on the machine, wearing a uniform with similar colours to those of the guards. Fureva-Yung touched the column and depressed the button. One column started up. She found the switch for the second and turned it on too. They worked well, even though it may have been a millennium since they were last used.
 
Beyond the room the left hand corridor lead out into a natural cavern. Stairs carved into the stone led down to the cavern floor where a small stream ran. Nox reestablished her tiny sun and threw it high up, so it followed the roof of the cavern and filled it with light. Another ethereal Latimor, this one was naked and sat hunched up in the middle of the path. It looked around suspiciously before disappearing. Fureva-Yung noted there was no pattern of fungus on the back of this Latimor. A wild Bursk, but what was it doing in a mining facility in the datasphere? Fureva-Yung left the room and returned. The image of the female Latimor appeared again, reinforcing the idea that this was a recording made for people to experience, like a game or a story.
 
Marius bent down and cupped some of the spring’s water in his hand. Sipping it, he tasted fresh water. Whatever this was, the stream was real…as real as the datasphere made things anyway. Following the underground path, Nox’s tiny sun lit the way.
 
Nox pulled out the compass. It still read ‘up’.