Warriors of Light: Caged

Part Two

The trio of miqo'te descended into the bowels of the prison. Halls bent out of sight, leading into darkness. Thresholds to chambers beckoned them, like yawning maws. Gloom traced their every step, leaping along corners and desperate to snare the group. Mikh'a headed the party, though he was loath at his ignorance of the path ahead. Their only guide through this labyrinthine tangle were the lights that buzzed on. Millennia of neglect had worn on the technology that pervaded the prison. The lamps that once shone with certainty now crackled as aether powered them on, shedding rays of off-putting color. Mikh'a pressed on, his hand resting firmly against his sword. Energy beat through the walls now, flowing like life-blood to a beast. Even as he crossed an intersection of hallways, the thought crossed into his mind. Mikh'a felt suffocated, as if a great monster had swallowed him and now he was creeping through its gullet. Another lamp blinked on, showering him in fetid light. The captain continued on, not desiring to entertain ill-founded musings any longer. As a lamp died behind and another roused to life, Mikh'a's eyes went wide as he saw the next was nearly three hundred yalms ahead of them. Filling the space between them, plates barely large enough to place two feet on drifted lazily over a gaping chasm. Walls shorn of detail or inscription flanked the bottomless abyss. Y'shara approached the edge of the platform and peered into the murk.

"I do not believe we want to drop down there." Zifa gave a nervous chuckle as she responded,

"I think I have to concur." His sister looked to him for guidance. Mikh'a did not have to ponder the options long before he gave a course. He instilled his words with certainty, despite the fear that chained his heart,

"We have to keep moving forward. If this were any other group, I'd tell you to turn back. But we can make it across, we have to." Y'shara cricked her neck and stretched her arms out. The gunbreaker stepped forward, her boots skirting the edge.

"See you folks on the other side." She leaped off the edge and landed on a floating plate. The whirring machine dipped slightly under the sudden weight but recovered as it continued its aimless path. Hopping to another, Y'shara winced as the plate struggled to recover as quickly as the former. Her gait changed as she landed on the next plate, this time sharing her weight on two neighboring platforms. Yet, she'd little time to savor the success as the plates floated apart. The miqo'te jumped to another pair, plates that afforded her little time to gauge her next leap. But Y'shara was not deterred. She took steps in rhythm, bouncing from plate to plate. Soon enough, she'd crossed well over halfway and neared the far platform. The gunbreaker alighted onto another pair of plates, whose erratic movement had not yet separated them. Her mind formulated a path forward as she identified the trajectories of the plates ahead of her. Her body tensed as she found a line, a series of leaps that would carry her safely to the other side. Pushing off, the gunbreaker capered from plate to plate to plate, not pausing lest she lose her path. As she came within twenty yalms of the far platform, her foot pressed against a whirring plate. Immediately, the device died and fell from beneath her. Miscalculating, she had placed her full weight on that platform and now tumbled down. Instinct drove her to reach for the gunblade and fire a shot below. The cartridge exploded with a boom that echoed through the space and launched her into the air. Careening above the plates, Y'shara curled into a ball and rolled onto the platform. Mikh'a felt relief wash through his heart as she landed safely, precarious those last few moments were. His ears flicked as he heard the plink of brass against stone. The shell ejected from her gunblade ricocheted off the wall and slid onto a plate. Its aetheric load emptied, the casing leaned over the edge as the plate sat still. The plate resumed its motion, the sudden shift sending the empty shell over and into the chasm. Mikh'a watched as it fell only a few yalms before a field of aetheric energy seized the casing. The brass melted into slag in an instant, revealing the lethal barrier to the abyss below. The party cringed as the space was flooded with the blaring of alarums. Mikh'a roared at Zifa, his voice straining to be heard over the din,