Page 37 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

I didn’t smile.

Not because I disagreed, if anything, the prospect of running down whatever horrors had crawled out of those pods stirred something primal in me. But the weight in my chest told me this was bigger than a war patrol. Bigger than a clean kill.

“Let’s move,” I said gruffly, turning from the monitors. “There’s more. I can feel it.”

The dragoons fell in behind us, silent and professional.

Ekkarn stayed ahead, his torchlight sweeping over the floor as we navigated another bend in the corridor.

My boots hit stone, then metal, then something between the two.

The transitions were seamless, like this place had been completely preserved.

We passed another shattered door, its edges blackened, scorched.

More lab stations followed, empty, ransacked, or perhaps just long dormant.

A few still blinked with power. Residual energy?

Some hidden core deep beneath the surface?

I didn’t know. I only knew that we were walking deeper into the throat of something ancient.

And that it didn’t like being disturbed.

My thoughts drifted to Daphne. At least she was safe in camp. Or so I told myself. But even as the thought formed, I felt a chill down my spine, like a premonition.

We emerged into another chamber, this one was round and ringed with alcoves, each holding what looked like a suit of armor.

At first glance, they appeared to be ceremonial with their sleek, violet-black plating lined with chrome-like filigree.

But then I saw the claws. The razored edges at the joints. The built-in power cores at the spines.

“Battle suits,” Myccael muttered, keeping his hand close to his sword.

“Not for Eulachs,” I added. “These are too large. Broader. More… refined.”

“They’re for somebody else,” Darryck agreed grimly.

I stepped closer to the nearest one, watched, fascinated, as the light rippled across the surface of the breastplate. Then I saw it, an insignia etched into the metal near the heart. Zuten script, precise and unbroken, the lines thinner than a hair but pulsing with latent energy.

“This reminds me of an old dragoon vault chamber,” I said at last, keeping my voice low with recognition.

As I stepped further in, I took in the details, the faint outlines of sealed cubbies lining one wall, all still shut.

But I’d wager anything that inside, they still held what soldiers left behind: a faded image of a mate or child, a battered palmtop, maybe even a set of civilian clothes never worn again.

The benches—some overturned, others half-buried under dust and debris—only reinforced the sense of what this place once was.

A place where dragoons readied themselves for war. Maybe even for death.

“Then where are they now?” Darryck asked. “If they were just corpses, why bother preserving the gear?”

"Ney, these weren't meant to fight off Eulachs." Myccael turned one of the suits around, pulled it off, and held it against Ekkarn. "They made these to fight whatever was in those pods."

A chill went down my spine. I didn't say it out loud, but I knew it was on all our minds. Whatever had slumbered down here had been awakened by us, by the drilling.

"No time to waste, let's get those creatures and finish them," Myccael pulled his sword. Without waiting for us, he marched on ahead.

Darryck and I exchanged a quick glance and followed him. Myccael was right. It was time to finish the Eulachs and whatever other threat lurked close by once and for all.

We didn’t make it more than a hundred paces before we were faced with a collapsed wall.

Stone, dust, and ancient steel had once choked the corridor entirely, a jagged wall of debris frozen mid-fall, like the mountain itself had tried to swallow this place whole.

It had probably been sealed for thousands of rotations until recently.

Until hands from this side of the passage had carved a path through the rubble.

A tunnel bored not by time or erosion but by claw and will, big enough for us to climb through.

Ekkarn raised his hand in silent signal, and we slowed. All noise vanished. Myccael crouched by the disturbed debris, brushing soot from a stone chunk near the entrance.

“See this?” he whispered, motioning toward faint grooves scored into the surface. “Tool marks. Something cleared this. Recently.”

“Whatever was in here,” Darryck motioned behind us, “is now out there.” He indicated the other side of the tunnel and the Pyme mountains beyond.

My hand tightened on my blade as we slipped single file into the passage.

The opening was low, forcing us to crouch and twist sideways in parts, while our armor scraped along uneven walls.

The air changed as we got closer to the other side, colder, staler, tinged with something like ozone and old blood. I could taste the shift.

It didn't take long before the corridor opened again, at best a hundred paces.

But carving a hundred paces through treacherous debris would have taken a lot longer.

And a lot more determination—or despair.

We emerged into another cavity, an air pocket between levels.

This one looked… accidental. A bubble left by pressure or tectonic shifts, still ringed with remnants of architecture: shattered braces, angled struts, bits of crystal tubing embedded in the walls.

Here, natural rock met Zuten design, until the rock took over entirely.

Wherever we had been before, a lab of some kind, a training facility, we were no longer in it.

I pulled out my palmtop and checked the signal.

It was weak, barely clinging to the nearest signal repeater from the surface. But enough to place us.

“We’re under the Pyme Mountains,” I said, straightening.

Myccael’s face hardened. “Well, we're in their nest.”

The passage ahead still wasn't entirely natural now, and the rock to our sides looked like debris.

Cords poked through rocks; in parts, the floor was too even, the walls too flat.

In others, we had to climb over slabs of whatever material the Zutens had used to build their buildings.

When, suddenly, a chair stood in the middle of the passage, we all stopped.

It was tipped to the side, one leg missing.

One of the dragoons cursed. His lamp illuminated the skeletal remains of a hand poking through the wall.

"This wasn't bombs," Darryck said.

We had used bombs and missiles on our enemies, the Chrymphten, before.

I had seen the kind of damage they did, and Darryck was right; the damage done here was a thousandfold worse, as if something had melted the entire city.

Whatever bombs the Zuten had invented or used, it was of the most devastating force one could possibly imagine.

"Enough sightseeing, let's go," Darryck hissed, pointing at several tracks on the ground made by clawed feet. Many of them. Pressed deep into the grit and dust, some fresh, some already hardening. He pulled his sword and ordered, “Let's follow these.”

Ekkarn raised two fingers to the squad. “Dragoons, two by two. Quiet.”

My instincts prickled as we moved. Something about these tunnels felt wrong. Not just the dark or the silence, but the way the walls seemed to pull at my body heat, swallowing it whole. My breath steamed in front of me. Cool dampness settled on my skin before it began to crawl beneath it.

Slowly, the ground below me began to rise under my feet. We were moving up. The path snaked into a yawning vein of shadow that suddenly broke out into more tunnels. More debris littered the grounds here. Bones, discarded. Some fresh, some old.

"That's a nicta foot," Myccael declared, picking up one of the bones.

We had been right, the Eulachs lived here. Like animals. They walked these tunnels, ate, and discarded what they didn't want.

Ekkarn picked something else up and held it so we could see it. It looked like a pen, but the end was different; there was no ink.

"Guess they don't have use for that." Ekkarn snickered.

Ney, they probably didn't. I didn't think the Eulachs had any idea how to read or write.

We kept going, steadily up now, picking tunnels at random; there were too many for organized exploration. We found discarded arrowheads, a broken dagger, shards of a pitcher, and a dented cup. All signs that the Eulachs walked these tunnels. Except we didn't see any of them.

"They have to know we're here," Myccael cursed.

I agreed. As animalistic as the Eulachs were, they were also predatory; I didn't think they would leave their homes so unprotected that they wouldn't be aware of intruders. But that they hadn't charged us yet, like the brainless beasts they were, worried me.

"Without mapping this entire area," Darryck shook his head, "we wouldn’t even know where to look. They have the advantage of knowing the territory, so they could be anywhere."

I nodded. "That, and we don't even know if these mountains connect through underground tunnels.

" Which I had a dark suspicion that they did.

If our digging crews had hit this many air pockets and underground shafts, there had to be multiple of them.

From this part of the Pyme mountains to the other side, where… our camp was…

"Snyg." I cursed. "They're not that smart, are they?"

Darryck visibly paled. "To keep us busy here while…"

"They're on the other side, attacking our camp?" Myccael finished. His jaw worked. "Snyg. I'm not chancing it. Let's get back. Ekkarn, I want scouts and drones out here. Secure and map these tunnels. I want every nook and cranny catalogued."

"Zyn, Susserayn. Will you be returning to camp?"

"Damn right I will," Myccael looked as pissed as I remembered him being when he confronted Kennenryn, "and once there, I'll send the seffies back to Bantahar and order every legion here.

" He turned to Darryck and me, "I want several legions from each of my vissigroths.

We're going to war against the Eulachs and the Renegades, and we have no way of knowing what kinds of weapons are already in the hands of the Renegades. "

He turned back to Ekkarn. "I also want all the weapons you find cataloged and tested. I want our males trained on them."

We usually fought our wars with swords, but in this one, I was sure we would equip our legions with the phasors usually reserved for the space legions. Myccael was right. This coming war would not be like any we had seen or fought before.