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Aly let out a frustrated breath and shut her sketchbook tight. Forget it. That's what she needed to do. Just forget it. Even the vrisha had told her as she lay there on the ground in shock. The vrisha had risen from the table as she had watched her companion go then slowly stepped over to peer down at Aly with little concern.

"Just let it go, girl. The nillium are an uptight race with a lot of pride. You’re lucky he even let you speak to him, really. It is strange..."

And she left Aly alone on the ground, with a dozen or more pairs of eyes staring at her and the soft voices of laughter filling the room. When she had finally calmed down enough, she had gotten up and—like a dog with its tail between its legs—left the bar more embarrassed than she was sure she had ever felt in her short life.

Sometimes she wished she could just listen and obey. But maybe it was just in her nature to get into trouble. Her family back on Earth would certainly agree, but then, she had never liked playing by their rules.

Aly took a sip of the black tea, hot and soothing as it ran down her throat, and set it back when her techband dinged with a message. She looked down at it, and her frown deepened.

Braxin wanted to see her and the others first thing in the morning. Oh boy, they were in for it now.

Or at least she was. Once she had gotten back to her unit and settled down a bit, allowing the embarrassment of the moment to dissipate a little, her stomach had dropped, and she'd cursed silently, realizing that talk was going to spread quickly about what the others had seen. There was no stopping its spread to the top. Braxin would hear of it for sure, and he would send her to the warehouses, away from the others.

Panic welled up in her at the thought, and she tried to tell herself she could convince him to let her stay, though it was probably unlikely. She looked back out the window to the darkness beyond.

Maybe going to the warehouses would be safest, anyway. Now that she seemed to have made an enemy of the most dangerous person in Lethe Maws. She had never felt any inclination to go to the lower levels, mainly because she knew of the horrors that awaited down there. Now she knew if she did somehow escape the warehouses, she would never allow herself to go beyond even the fiftieth level. If she could obey no one else, she would at least take the nillium's threat to heart.

***

Ryziel stared down at the map before him with the intensity of a predator on the hunt. Yes, this was perfect. The tunnels led straight into the undocumented parts of Lethe Maws, out of Xolis’ marked working grounds. They delved into Yurza's Keep as Xilya said, but that didn't worry him too much. He, instead, focused on the clusters of green and blue dots scattered within a holographic copy of a cave system in red.

"Can't believe it," Nar said beside him. He pointed to the cluster. "That's a lot of minerals. And they are closer than we thought. Xilya, you are amazing."

Ryziel nodded in agreement. He pointed to a tunnelway beyond which the minerals were said to be, to a network of caves. "And here is where I want the tracer to start looking. There's an entrance here"—he pointed to a narrow opening—"that goes down a little further."

Nar looked at it curiously, his beady little eyes blinking. "Looks like the urk party didn't go beyond that point...I wonder why."

"It is odd," said Ryziel. "What's more troubling is that they didn't harvest most of the minerals within the cluster. By the looks of it, they only maybe got two barrels’ worth. Xilya had said they hadn't taken it all."

"Because they didn't want to be down there for long," Nar stated.

Ryziel rubbed at his nose and straightened. "Something keeps them from sticking around for too long."

Nar shrugged. "It is in Yurza's Keep. Who knows what nasty beast is lurking around...and stories of Yurza's corpse lumbering around have been told to my kind since I was a youngling. Though, they are just stories."

Ryziel crossed his arms and stared at the map, in deep thought. "We might have to use some of the brightburns, just in case."

"It's going to be a rough fit in some of these areas," Nar noted, pointing to where some of the minerals sat in tight tunnelways.

"You think you can handle it?" Ryziel said, forcing his eyes not to linger over Nar's two metal legs.

Nar snorted. "It's not about whether I can handle it. It's about whether I can be discreet enough. Metal clanging around on rock tends to echo. Whether we use drills or hammers, there's going to be a lot of noise. And someone is bound to hear it."

"We will use a different method to harvest them, then."

Nar glanced up at him and grunted. " I know what you’re thinking, but that could take twice the time."

"It's that or we have to deal with whatever hears us. And it means having to constantly back off, like the urk party."

Nar grumbled. "Using liquid fire might damage some of the minerals."

"That's a risk we might have to take," Ryziel said. "Thankfully, there's a lot and, knowing anything, some of them won't even need harvesting. They could just be right on the surface of the rock."

"True," Nar said, though still not sounding entirely convinced. "Even if we decide on that method, me crawling around with metal legs isn't going to be totally quiet."

"Then you will just have to go slow."

Nar grumbled again but didn't argue this time. "So, how long?"