FALAHA'S JOURNEY 2: Graveyard of the Gods

Episode #8

The tunnel site was even bigger than I expected. Orewen and Tagai stood by my side, dwarfed by the structure.

"Falaha to Gal Runagh. How do you read me?" I tested my mic connection before heading in.

"Loud and clear," Eyuran responded.

"Good. We're ready to head inside."

"Good luck," Baro tuned in.

We decided to use simple communication instead of Nodes or soma. It was a bit unusual, but at least that's the only thing that hadn't failed us so far.

Orewen stepped into the tunnel first, followed by Tagai. The white Baal seemed calm on the surface, but I smelled his nervousness. He couldn't boast being a superb warrior among his kind, but he still was a creature of immense power and strength. And being an extreme torture survivor, he was resilient. Tagai smelled the air and I could tell his senses were all heightened to the top of his capabilities. He was a bit stressed, not knowing what to expect from this endeavor.

I caught up with Ore, but I couldn't tell his inner condition, hidden under the huge black monstrous mask of a bloodthirsty battletech creature. He seemed calm and collected, but since he unfolded his most dangerous form, he was ready for the worst. And he expected the worst, cold and calculating. Was that a good thing or bad? We were yet to see that.

Me? I was wearing a light spacesuit, and I didn't even bother to sprout my helmet on. All of us could see in the dark, so there was no need for external light sources. I couldn't tell precisely what feeling dominated me right now, but fear wasn't one of them. Was I curious about the situation? Indeed. Did I want it to be resolved as soon as possible? Yes. Did I want to discover something unusual? Of course.

The enormous tunnel seemed to stretch on indefinitely. I listened to our footsteps reverberating through the empty space. Heavy, dominating, almost metallic Orewen's. Barefoot, predacious and cautious Tagai's. And mine, almost a normal person in a spacesuit.

Our walk ended when we reached the split, various tunnels leading in different directions: up, several to the sides and down.

"I think we should go down," Orewen's beastly voice boomed over my ear.

"There are three tunnels going in that direction. Which one? Because I don't want us to split," I replied.

"What are your senses telling you, love?" Orewen asked, lowering his head to me.

"Nothing." I shrugged. "But you know my left hand rule. So."

The monstrous black mask stretched in a menacing grin, showing sharp carnivorous teeth, his unblinking eyes burning blue from the machine 'heart'.

"Left it is," Tagai also agreed. "I do get that feeling that make all of my hair stand from that direction."

"Fear?" I asked him.

"No, more like a discomfort." He narrowed his nostrils and eyes, and revealed his true form with a prolonged guttural growl. He was getting defensive. The unpleasant feeling must have bothered him a lot.

And so, we began our descent into the depths of the megastructure.

The walls of the tunnels were rough and unrefined, as if they were a natural occurrence, yet still precisely circular, though not perfectly straight. The color of the material ranged from beige to reddish to yellowish to brownish, the colors of the Grave's desert. And the material itself had the same composition the rocks of the plateau had. Something quite big had burrowed through the large rocky formation and created this tunnel site. The material was millenia old, but the processing was not, hinting that these structures were created around fifty years ago. Not so ancient. So it probably wasn't a remnant from the Lael. Something made its way here to the surface in the not so distant past and holed up in these rocks. Something that had ties to soma.

"It's getting a lot warmer," Orewen noted. "There's definitely a power source of some kind. Such temperature gradient isn't natural. We are not that deep in yet. We've been walking only for two hours."

"I noticed that too," I replied. "Let's contact the base and continue. Two hours passed; we need to inform them that we are still alive."

Orewen nodded and proceeded to communicate with his son and Baro. I heard breaths of relief on the other end and smiled. Those two were incorrigible.

***

After another two hours following the tunnel and another contact with the base, we reached a strange formation. It looked like a massive wall was blocking our path.

"A dead end?" Tagai's palm touched the surface in front of him. He then attempted to scratch it with his clawed finger. "It seems this thing is similar to what your ships are made of." He tasted the material he scratched off on his tongue. "Indeed it is. That's quite a tough defense here, considering the strength of the material."

"Let me make a way for us then," Orewen said.

"No, I'll do it myself," I replied. "You'll be too loud." Before he could protest, I approached the wall and touched the cool surface. The walls of the tunnel were warmer to the touch. I tapped into the power source I always had a connection to and the material under my palm began heating up. The temperature was rising and soon the wall began to melt, flowing and dripping to the floor. Normally this kind of material can withstand the plasma of a star or pressure of a space dive. Being a daughter of a DIVE engineer I knew all the limits this thing had. And indeed it had limits. And being what I am I had all the resources to break those limits. I needed to check if I was still connected to the outside world, and it seemed the soma had no issues tapping into external power sources. At least this its function was available to me. And so was my defense in case of combat emergency.

I melted a large part of the wall, revealing another empty space. Only its walls and ceiling had small greenish lights. Another tunnel that seemed to stretch into nothingness again.

"Interesting. Shall we?" I made an inviting gesture to my companions. Orewen nodded and entered first. Then Tagai. As I was entering the hole, I made notice of how the wall started self-healing. So it was definitely connected to a central processing unit somewhere that was very well functioning. What was this thing? A ship? An underground city? Something else? That remained to be seen.