The loading dock stretched before them like the mouth of a great industrial whale, its massive doors yawning open to reveal the barren landscape beyond. Shadows played across the reinforced concrete floor as external light battled with the dock’s internal illumination, creating patches of uncertain territory that shifted with the movement of the clouds. The transport vehicle squatted at the center of this twilight zone, a hulking marriage of System design and pre-System Yaerellisian retrofitting that resembled nothing so much as an armored beetle that had swallowed a tank.

  The Wayfinders moved around this vehicle with the practiced efficiency of a team that had performed this ritual many times before, although rarely with quite these stakes. Each member executed their role in the preparations without the need for a conductor or a score—the dance of equipment and expertise choreographed by experience rather than vocal instruction.

  Alor circled the transport like a dissatisfied artist examining his canvas for flaws, his pink hair flailing in the wind as he ducked beneath the chassis to check connection points. His pack of essential supplies—a collection so eclectic it defied conventional categorization—waited on the concrete next to the vehicle, organized in a chaotic mess comprehensible only to Alor.

  “Redundancy is the key to continued existence,” he muttered, securing the pack to a side rack with straps designed to withstand forces that would turn bones to powder. “Two is one, one is none, and three means you might actually have one when you really need it.”

  With nimble fingers, he checked each compartment of his tookit—a series of pouches and containers that unfolded like an origami puzzle to reveal specialized instruments crafted for interfacing with pre-System technology. Some gleamed with the pristine shine of recent manufacture, while others bore the patina of countless expeditions, their handles worn smooth by decades of use.

  “Charging port converters?” Maija called from the other side of the transport.

  “Three sets, calibrated for standard, heavy-duty, and the weird hexagonal ones we found in the Vermilion Depths,” Alor confirmed without looking up from his work. “Plus two universal adapters that might work on anything else if we’re lucky and the universe feels generous. Should all of that fail, we will be in your hands, enchantress.”

  Maija acknowledged his rambling with a nod, then turned to her own preparations. Before her on a portable workstation lay a container of critical healing chemicals—compounds so volatile that conventional sealing methods would render them inert with powers. The platinum-haired woman held her hands above the container, her eyes narrowing in concentration as a subtle glow emanated from her palms.

  The air around her fingers shimmered like heat rising from sun-baked stone, but the effect seemed to sharpen reality to an almost painful clarity rather than distorting what lay behind it. Particles of dust caught in the field froze mid-air, then transformed into microscopic metallic spheres that rained down onto the container’s rim.

  Metal flowed like liquid where they touched, forming a seamless seal along the container’s edge. The transmutation process continued until the entire perimeter glowed briefly, then cooled to reveal a perfect molecular bond—a seal that would maintain the chemicals’ efficacy while preventing potentially catastrophic leakage.

  A small meter inside the container read 97.3%.

  “Not bad,” Cassandra complimented Maija while she passed through.

  “Ninety-seven point three percent is amazing; worship me.” Maija countered.

  Matti, transformed into some metal again, hauled the final gear into the vehicle, which Cyrus sort of assumed was too heavy for the dwarves. The blonde man hauled it with a smile, so it didn’t seem like a dereliction of duty.

  “I still don’t get why we can’t just transmute all this equipment on-site,” he commented. Cyrus still hadn’t come to terms with a good way to describe the strange effect on his voice. “Seems inefficient to haul it all this way.”

  “Because transmutation requires precise knowledge of molecular structures,” Maija replied in the impatient tone of someone who had explained something hundreds of times before. “I can’t transmute what I don’t understand, and Pre-System technology often incorporates elements and configurations we’ve never even heard of, let alone understand. Do you understand everything here, down to a sub-atomic level, brother dearest?”

  “Also,” Alor added cheerfully, “the last time we tried transmuting specialized scanning equipment, it achieved brief sentience and tried to amalgamate itself to the System as a new consciousness. The paperwork on that was a nightmare. I thought Maija would surely be tried for crimes against the System.”

  Matti laughed, remembrance flashing through his eyes. “I’d forgotten about that! Didn’t it start calling itself the Supreme Arbiter of Mineral Rights before we melted it down?”

  “I thought we agreed never to talk about that again,” Maija growled out tersely, but her lips twitched upward slightly despite her attempts to remain straight-faced. “That set our expedition back three weeks.”

  Cassandra, standing at the front of the vehicle, reviewed the dossiers of readings on the dungeon. Her red hair caught the flicker of the loading dock’s artificial lights, and she stood out even more than a pale woman in a fancy white robe should have.

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  “These energy signatures don’t align with any known pre-System site we’ve cataloged,” Cassandra observed, more to herself than her companions. “The pattern suggests either incredibly advanced technology or…”

  She didn’t finish the thought, but her hand drifted to Galatine’s hilt, and she drew reassurance from its comfortable hilt pressing against her palm. In response, an almost imperceptible hum emitted from the sheath, a subtle resonance that traveled up her arm and settled comfortably somewhere behind her sternum.

  Cyrus lingered at the edge of the group, his attention drawn to a small display case mounted near the loading dock’s security station. Within the transparent enclosure sat what appeared to be an unremarkable chunk of metal—a dull gray cuboid approximately the size of a playing card, its surface etched with microscopic patterns that formed larger designs visible only when viewed from certain angles.

  When he took a step closer to it, the artifact oriented itself toward him like a flower turning to face the sun, though no visible mechanism explained the movement. The bored dock manager observed this with professional disinterest; such phenomena had become expected whenever Cyrus approached everything.

  Cyrus placed his hand against the display case, not touching the artifact directly, but near enough that only the transparent barrier separated it from his hand. The cuboid responded by emitting a faint hum that oscillated in pitch and tone, creating a melody that wasn’t quite music, but definitely wasn’t random noise either.

  “What is this thing?” he asked quietly, addressing the item itself as much as his new friends.

  The humming increased in volume, and for a brief moment, the etched patterns on the cuboid’s surface glowed with an internal light that pulsed in time with Cyrus’s heartbeat. Then, as swiftly as it began, the reaction ceased and the artifact looked like nothing more than an interesting paperweight from a forgotten era.

  “It seems to like you,” Alor observed, sliding out from under the vehicle quite a distance from where he had initially slipped down. “PreSystem artifacts are an odd lot. Most must be coaxed into functionality with specialized tools, precise environmental conditions, or strange power inputs. They practically perform tricks like eager pets for you. Interesting.”

  Cyrus stepped back from the display case, his expression unreadable. “I’m not certain that ‘like’ is the correct term. Recognize, perhaps?”

  “Something that should prove useful in rescuing Lyessa,” Cassandra interjected. “If this dungeon is like the Dormant Archive, this center chamber could be a data repository—or it could be an entrance to the true dungeon.”

  She left the many varied implications to hang in the air between them. Unknown to Cyrus, information before the System established order was rarer and more valuable than stable wormholes. If the dungeon activated due to Cyrus’s arrival and had information, it could well be about him.

  “All preparations are complete,” Maija announced. “Get in; if we leave now, we’ll be able to establish camp before nightfall.

  One by one, the team boarded the vessel.

  “Does this thing have a name?” Cyrus asked Cassandra, while Maija got onboard.

  The redhead groaned.

  “The Shellback Sentinel. Alor claims naming rights of all the vehicles he designs,” Cassandra explained apologetically.

  Which Cyrus didn’t see why. It wasn’t that bad of a name for a vehicle resembling a horrific experimental crossbreeding of a gigantic beetle and a tank. Cassandra left him musing to claim the driver’s seat. Maija claimed the navigator’s seat beside her, and Matti and Alor settled into the reinforced compartment that served as passenger seating and a secondary operations center.

  Cyrus looked back, his gaze lingering on the artifact he’d interacted with. From this distance, it appeared utterly inert—just another relic salvaged from a forgotten age and preserved more out of habit than understanding.

  Yet, as he watched, the security screens behind the display case flickered. Briefly, their standardized System interfaces replaced for a fraction of a second by a pattern identical to the etchings on the cuboid’s surface. Had anyone else been looking at that exact moment, they might have dismissed it as routine electronic interference. Cyrus knew better.

  “Did you get lost, perhaps?” Matti called jokingly from inside the transport.

  “Sorry,” Cyrus replied and turned away from the artifact and the questions it represented. He stepped into the vehicle and watched with interest as the heavy door lowered and locked behind him. The sound of gasses and pneumatic hiss filled his mind with questions about why a tank would have a sealed environment.

  The vehicle shuddered, and Cyrus hurried to sit near Matti and Alor. The engine powering on sounded like a distant thunderstorm being corralled and tamed into submission somewhere above his head. After a brief shudder that ran through the whole vehicle, a subtle vibration ran through the vehicle. The transport seemed to have an overabundance of power held in check, waiting to be unleashed.

  The viewing port opposite him offered a glimpse of the semi-barren world he’d seen around the Wayfinder Outpost and a sky with hints of pink and violet. In the front, the two ladies discussed the route and optimum speed. In the back, Alor and Matti held a companionable silence—Matti played solitary with a deck of cards, and Alor fiddled with his knife gun.

  Cyrus lost track of time. He withdrew into his mind, into the black void of nothing that should have been vibrant and filled with memories. The vast emptiness, the devouring loneliness, made his heart ache desperately.

  “What the shit?” Maija cried out.

  The transport’s monitoring systems flickered and then died, only to restart randomly moments later. They displayed readings that the equipment hadn’t been designed to measure and that no one aboard the vessel even remotely understood. The group, barring Cyrus, heaved a sigh while the dark-haired man shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sorry,” he offered.

  What they couldn’t know, what even Cyrus only partially guessed at—was that the disruption wasn’t random. It was a communication. The newly awakened dungeon, a piece of pre-System history awakened after eons, was calling out to something buried deep within his fractured memory, which had once been vital enough to survive the comprehensive amnesia that had claimed his past.

  Alor stood up, and peered up at the view screens in front of Cassandra and Maija.

  “There it is,” Alor whispered reverently, a gleam in his eyes. “Our appointment with history.”

  Then Maija reached a hand up, and pushed Alor back into the secondary compartment with a surge of strength Cyrus hadn’t expected from the platinum-blonde. Alor made a spectacle of teetering and falling backwards, into Matti’s waiting lap.

  “And stay there!” Maija ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Alor retorted, happily ensconced in Matti’s muscular arms.