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Xilya made a clicking noise. "I'm sure it won't be as bad as you think."

"Yes, it will."

"Where are we going?" Aly asked as she stopped in her search, with growing disappointment, and looked back at them and the console.

The two didn't speak at first, and Nar turned back in his chair. "You fill her in."

"Very well," Xilya said. She gestured for Aly to follow her and stand beside the console opposite where Nar sat. She brought up a map, which Aly looked down on. It had clusters of colors, yellow being the most prominent. The area was not unlike the one they had been working in before, only more enclosed, with one noticeable entrance. "We have discovered a new room filled with every mineral we could possibly need including," —she pointed at one of the yellow clusters—"ionx."

Aly's eyes widened, her mouth gaping open slightly as she stared at the map. "That's all ionx?" she breathed with astonishment.

"Yes, as well as a few clusters of tython and byril, enough to finish the ship I imagine."

Aly could scarcely believe it. All her time on Lethe Maws, she had been told (mainly by Braxin) how precious ionx was and how incredibly rare. A miner was lucky to find maybe one every other season. And here, before her, was a map that showed a whole chamber filled with it. Enough for billions of credits. Enough for a miner to be wealthier than some of the richest silions in Xolis. Probably even some—if not most—of the nillium too.

"How?" was all Aly could seem to say.

Xilya was quiet for so long, Aly eventually had to look up at her. She caught the vrisha looking over at the urk, who wouldn't meet her gaze.

"What is it?" Aly asked, intrigued but uncertain.

Xilya scratched at the side of her neck. "It is...not a natural occurrence that these minerals are here." Nar made a sound, and Xilya fixed him with a fiery glare before looking back at Aly. "Something has placed them there on purpose."

Aly frowned, her mind taking that information in to slowly work through it. "Something...?"

"A slight inconvenience."

Nar shot his head around at them with an alarmed expression. "Slight inconvenience?" He nearly choked. "Aslightinconvenience." He let out a laugh. One that was clearly meant for how absurd he thought her comment was and not because it was funny. "I don't know what your kind considers a slight inconvenience, butCoriais no such thing."

"Fine." Xilya waved her hand indifferently. "Perhaps, then, she is a respectable foe, at best."

Nar rubbed a hand over his face. "You vrisha would think that. But I'm telling you we should just forget this whole thing."

"That isn't going to happen because this is our one chance."

Aly listened and watched them bicker before raising her hand. "Um, sorry, but who is Coria?"

Nar stopped his arguing with Xilya to look straight at her. "A wicked she-beast, that's what. An ancient, nasty, monstrous, fiendish—"

"We get it, Nar," Xilya interrupted. "She's an old creature from the deep," she explained to Aly. "Possibly around when the Keep still held its people."

Aly's brows furrowed as she looked back at the map. "And she is just...hoarding these minerals?"

"As it would seem."

"Why?"

"Possibly for her own selfish purposes," Nar said, bringing up a page of texts on the screen. "But also, to lure."

Aly didn't like the sound of that. "To lure what?" she asked nervously.

His look told her all she needed to know. "The urken texts say she would use several methods to trick victims into following her somewhere far and unseen. They say she would usually disguise herself in some way as something one would trust, but if that didn't work, she would use objects of temptation depending on what might work best, such as jewels, crystals—"

"Minerals," Aly blurted.

"Exactly," said Nar. "She lures her victims then feeds from them, draining them of all blood then discarding the husk of a body."

Aly felt her own blood draining from her face. "Those miners...you think?"