Page 34 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

" S o, Daphne," Darryck fished curiously.

Not that I could blame him. He was my closest friend, despite the many rotations between us and my having raised him like a son. Friendship didn't know age or any other barrier; it developed where it pleased.

"Zyn, Daphne," I answered with a smirk, shaking my head. "I still can't believe it."

"I heard rumors, but I didn't believe it," Darryck admitted. He had known Daphne for a few short rotations before she left us. Daphne had been more mother to Darryck than his own, even in the short time she had been with us after the birth. He’d come to us when she was pregnant, and in my heart of hearts, I knew that he and Thalia had been destined to find each other.

Had our Thalia not been taken, they would have grown up together and fallen in love.

Over twenty rotations had been stolen from them. Just like for Daphne and me.

"Some moments, like right now, when she's not with me, I can't believe it myself," I admitted, pushing down the dark rock of dread that was already building inside my stomach with every step the nicta took me away from her.

When she was by my side, it was all good and clear, but when she wasn't, I was afraid—not that this had been a dream—but that she would be gone just as mysteriously as she had appeared.

Given what had happened, I didn't think it was a baseless fear.

"Grandyr sent her to make me stop the magrail," Myccael entered our conversation.

"Why?" Darryck furrowed his brow.

"We think that the Pyme mountains cover an ancient Zuten city," Myccael continued. "The digging of the magrail opened passages that were never meant to be reopened. Do you remember Arcoro mentioning that the Zuten created weapons the gods disapproved of?"

Darryck nodded. Arcoro was the leader of the Zuten Myles had discovered on Oceanus.

He told us how his ancestors had incurred the wrath of the gods, bringing destruction to their homeworld.

Some of the Zuten fled throughout the fourteen planets, some stayed and perished, and some survived inside a mountain that was eventually swallowed up by water.

The only reason they made it was because the Sirens sustained them. The Sirens, who were of their making…

A thought hit me. "The Zuten created the Sirens. Do you think it's possible that they created the Eulachs too?"

The silence that followed was telling. Both males picked up my train of thought and followed it.

"We'll know soon," Myccael said, pointing forward. We had reached the drill side.

Tovahr's males had been busy. The hole had been enlarged enough to fit even a vissigroth and susserayn through.

"I took the liberty and already sent a legion of dragoons down," Kavryn announced, bowing to Myccael.

"Good," Myccael dismounted. "Let's go."

There hadn't been enough time to build a lift, so we had to descend the old-fashioned way, on a rope.

It had been a long time since I had done this, and by the time I reached the opening to the air pocket, my arms were screaming at me.

Time to get back in shape, old male , I promised myself.

When Darryck entered, he shook out his arms as well, cursing, "Now that's a workout I'm not used to. "

His words did make me feel better; maybe I wasn't as out of shape as I thought.

"Snyg, who would have thought rope climbing could be this strenuous?" Myccael echoed at his arrival. "Make a note that we incorporate that into the training," he added to no one in particular.

Several dragoons had waited for us; others were already exploring the many branching tunnels in groups. But for now, it was this chamber we were most interested in.

The chamber was vast and shadow-stained, but even at first glance, I could tell it had once been organized.

Storage crates lined the curved walls, stacked in deliberate symmetry, but now many of them sat askew, lids tossed aside like discarded fruit skins.

The air smelled of ancient metal, the sharp bite of oxidizing alloy, and something else. .. something fungal.

“It looks more like some kind of storage unit than an armory,” Myccael muttered, kneeling beside a cracked container.

Inside, I saw a handful of the same black orb weapon the Renegade had used on our camp.

Each one was cradled inside a sturdy, foamy wrapping.

But several of the wrappings were empty.

"The Renegades used something similar a few nights ago," I filled the others in.

"I don't understand," Darryck moved around the vast chamber, looking into its many openings. If these tunnels lead into the mountains, then the Eulachs have had access to this chamber for… since forever."

He wasn't wrong. So why had they only now begun trading with the Renegades?

The Eulachs were a bloodthirsty race, but they were not very intelligent—slightly more than your average predator, but not enough to assimilate into another society.

They had been enemies of us Leanders since time began.

So why would they suddenly trade with the Renegades?

It had seemed like they had been evolving lately; some of them were smarter than others, smart enough to come to our cities to trade.

Not many, because our dragoons were trained to kill them on sight.

But a few had managed, dressed like Leanders, to sneak in.

They’d still stuck out, but they’d traded and left without incident.

Still, from wearing clothes and trading furs to trading weapons with Renegades was a big leap.

Myccael had stepped away, deeper toward one of the many passageways. With a curse, he returned. "Tovahr! How strong is that drill of yours?"

"I beg your pardon, Susserayn?"

Darryck and I turned to Myccael, alarmed at the timbre of his voice.

"I mean, when it drills through the rocks and sediments, is it possible that it sends some kind of shockwave through air pockets like this?"

"Oh, zyn," Tovahr nodded, "very much so. The harder the ground, the stronger the seismic echo," Tovahr finished, already moving forward. “Depending on the density and pressure layers, the energy could travel farther than we’d expect. These mountains are riddled with mineral veins—and tunnels, it now seems—so it’s entirely possible the shockwave acted like a conductor.”

Myccael gave a grim nod, then motioned for us to follow. “I think that’s exactly what happened.”

"Dead ends, all the tunnels we've explored so far lead to dead ends, Susserayn." Squad Leader Ekkarn, the head of the dragoon scouting mission, returned, interrupting us.

Myccael didn't look surprised at all. It was almost like he had expected this news. He nodded and motioned again for us to follow him.

"This is the main entrance," he pointed at a large metal door that held many imprints, like someone extremely strong had banged against the metal and dented it.

That wasn't all, though. In the center of the door was a large, scorched hole, one that reminded me eerily of the damage I had seen in Bantahar.

The same kind of weapon had been used here.

"There," Myccael pointed his light to the ground, illuminating several footprints. Three-toed, distinctive to Eulachs. What was different, though, was the size.

"Snyg, those must belong to… an eight-pace male…" Darryck concluded.

"To several, actually," Myccael moved his light enough for us to see distinctive marks within the footprints. One had a higher arch; another’s heel was flatter.

"How many?"

Darryck cocked his head. Between the three of us, he was the best hunter. The Icelands were often attacked, and reading tracks was necessary. "I'd say at least five."

At his words, he and I turned in a circle, sword in hand, as if we were expecting that whatever or whoever had been here was still here, lurking and waiting to attack us.

"That might explain what we found." Squad Leader Ekkarn drew our attention to him.

"Show us," Myccael demanded.

"As you wish, Susserayn." Ekkarn took the lead with us at his heels, followed by more dragoons.

We walked through what had appeared to be several passageways, which I now realized were hallways leading to separate rooms and common areas, similar to the layout of a military complex.

Quick glimpses inside rooms off the first hall reminded me of quarters for soldiers.

When we entered the next hallway, though, the rooms changed; several were larger and looked more like workstations or laboratories.

This hallway led into another, and at the end of it, we arrived at what Ekkarn had wanted us to see.

Pods, at least fifty of them, stood in the center of a very large area.

Each pod was at least nine paces long and several paces wide.

All of them were broken open. I stepped toward the first and recoiled.

Inside were the mummified remains of an Eulach, but at the same time, he didn't resemble any Eulach I had ever seen.

Not only was he taller and wider, but his cranium was bigger, elongated.

"Snygg!" Myccael exclaimed from the pod next to me, where he must have found the same. I looked at the once dome-shaped, shattered top. It had been broken from the outside.

Not like the one next to it, which was empty. It was the emptiness that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A definite indent bore silent witness that something had been inside. That and the fact that the cover had obviously been broken out from the inside.

After a few seconds, Darryck called out, "Ten empty pods, forty filled with corpses in various stages of decomposition."

I turned in a circle and found a lit console I had missed thus far. Fifty monitors, several with blank screens, two showing the inside of an empty pod, and the rest showing only distorted images.

"Whatever this was, it was still working," Myccael concluded darkly, having stepped next to me.

"For thousands of rotations," I added, shaking my head. That kind of technology was even beyond anything we had now.

"We should get the human, Claudia, down here. She's an engineer, zyn?" I turned to Kavryn, who immediately brought his palmtop up to relay the order.

"She'll figure this out," Tovahr agreed.

"Make sure she's well protected," Myccael added, looking at Tovahr.

"I beg your pardon, Susserayn, but what does this mean?" Ekkarn wanted to know.

Myccael ran his hand through his hair, closing his eyes for a moment, "It means that after the Zuten destroyed their home planet, Oceanus, they created the Sirens there, and then they continued their godless work here on Leander."

"Angering the gods once again," Darryck added.

"And when I decided to build the magrail, it was charted to run right over the dead city. Grandyr sent a warning, but it was already too late," Myccael finished.

"You couldn't have known," I tried to stop his self-censure.

"But I should have. The priests told me this was sacred ground. I didn't listen. Neither did I listen to the reason why none of my predecessors allowed spaceships to land close to Bantahar."

"We thought it was to keep us humble," I reminded my son. This wasn't his fault.

"Well, zyn," he snorted derisively, "and look where it got us by me not staying humble."

I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way to stop Myccael from taking the blame for this. But I also knew that he would get over it.

"Let's look on the bright side," Darryck smirked, and both Myccael and I turned to him. "We get to hunt us some Eulachs."