“She… fell?” Reiav asked quietly, “Because some JERK PUSHED HER???”

  Keshel blinked several times, trying to absorb the memory. His antennae were healing noticeably, but it still sent a twinge through his mind. He wondered how the others had even managed to see the memory; everything about the hivemind said that niortak should be exempt from things like that.

  It also didn’t help his thought process that there was so much light around at the moment, but he’d torn a piece off his cloak to use as a new eye covering earlier, and it was actually better at the job than his old one.

  “His name was Ulenik, right?” Tosono observed, “Does that mean he’s the one who founded the city that was named that?”

  Reiav paused in her rant to blink at him, “Ah… yes that probably does mean that. Ulenik city fell a month ago, a good number of the people moved to Teisel.”

  “I think she was cleaning out those vents wrong.” Eloi supplied. They all turned to stare at him.

  “Sorry what?” Reiav asked, fuming slightly, apparently protective of Teisel now.

  Keshel frowned; he didn’t know much about vents, but… well maybe? “What does that have to do with anything though?”

  “That's all I could focus on.” Eloi shrugged.

  Keshel was starting to develop an opinion that Eloi was useless; this only strengthened that opinion. Reiav frowned too, but for different reasons, “Let’s focus on things that are applicable at the moment. Does anyone know where she was in the memory? Maybe if we find that spot here we can get more clues?”

  Tosono shrugged and then pointed upward, “She seemed pretty high up.”

  Reiav tilted her head at the distant ceiling, “Alright then.”

  Keshel blinked as all three niortak summoned their spectral wings, not even thinking for a moment. “Wait what if there are more monsters here?” He reminded them. His arm was still sore where one of those creatures had clamped down on it. He remembered the sensation of claws scraping across the exoskeleton, and it was not pleasant.

  Eloi hesitated more visibly than the other two, “I think… I think we can deal with the monsters.”

  “We couldn’t before.”

  “We couldn’t see before.”

  Keshel sighed, watching as, one by one, the translucent wings appeared. He still wanted to know how exactly that worked; there had to be an explanation somewhere… Tosono picked him up, which was as humiliating as it sounds, and the four of them made their way upward.

  They had to do more circling and take more breaks than Keshel had expected. He didn’t exactly know anything about flying, but after an hour or so, they reached a part of the ship that could be generously called the top.

  “It doesn’t really look much like a boat,” Tosono pointed out, frowning at the vertical shaft.

  “That’s just because it’s a ship, not a boat,” Reiav supplied, pointing out a circular window and at a night sky outside. “It was completely destroyed not long after this I think, since it first wreaked in the stormlands every historian says that was inevitable.”

  Keshel was fixated on that view, so he approached the window, peering curiously out at the land. It was green with vast mountains spreading out on all sides. If he looked down at the right angle, he could see the ship itself, which did indeed look like a wreck. One section collapsed, there were holes on the exterior, and it had a certain… lost quality to it.

  It was also turned over on its side, which was why the shaft was vertical. It looked more like those flying machines than he’d expected—not that Keshel had any experience with boats to begin with, or flying machines for that matter, but like Tosono, he’d expected it to be boat-shaped.

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  He was mystified as to how the ship had ended up like this, but it had clearly broken years before. Then, a people very much like the modern suiki had built around the wreck, making their old home into their new home with pure efficiency. It almost felt like the burrows in that way.

  Keshel felt an indescribable sorrow for his lack of thought about Karbion. Was Abbil doing alright? Was the rest of the burrow doing alright? What about the elders now that their position had been usurped by his sister?

  Keshel sighed and glanced back at the others, who were arguing about if it was this walkway or that walkway that Teisel had fallen from below.

  None of them seemed to realize how terrified she’d been of falling. Keshel remembered the writing on the wall and he shuddered slightly. Who are you? Is there happiness away from here? Is there happiness in the next life? I won’t fall. Oh the noise the pain the sorrow, you want me to faaaallllll… Why can’t I fall? Who are you? Who am I?

  I think I will fall now. I must, must I?

  Keshel really hoped it wasn’t Teisel who’d written that. He wanted to hold onto a hope that he could help whoever it had been, but… well, something had clearly been wrong.

  He looked down at the distance below, walking closer to it and frowning at the various vents and sections of pipe, hoping to see something to tell him. Tosono had also stopped arguing to examine the architecture.

  “I wasn’t paying attention to the layout.” Reiav eventually admitted, huffing and folding her arms.

  Eloi did the same, shaking his head, “I thought we all agreed that I was the only one paying attention to the vents.”

  “But you said all you could see was how she was doing it wrong?” Reiav reminded him.

  Tosono pointed at an out of the way spot below one of the walkways, “Over there.”

  The rest of them quickly frowned at the area, and started arguing again, “What? I thought the pattern in the wall was different.” Eloi complained. “You see that pattern means—”

  Keshel tuned him out, allowing Tosono to pick him up again as they glided over to the area. It was definitely the right spot—there was a break in the metal bar that Teisel had been standing on, and there was the slippery pipe right there and… and there was the fall.

  “How in the world could she survive that?” Tosono muttered, voicing what the rest of them had been thinking.

  Eloi frowned at the distance, “I don’t know, sometimes an Exoskeleton would help but in this case the hard exterior would make it worse than if a niorta or larborak had fallen.”

  “Like an egg…” Keshel said softly, backing away from the railing as he became far too aware that if any of them were to fall he was the most likely to die.

  Reiav was silent. “But I’m positive she lived, how else could she have founded Teisel?”

  “I don’t know.” Eloi said gently.

  The four of them stared off that drop for a long moment.

  ~Stop looking for answers. Just hole up somewhere until it ends, I promise it will end.~

  Keshel flinched at the mental voice, his antennae protesting—though not nearly as badly as the last time. ~Who are you?~

  ~Who are you?~

  ~Keshel.~

  ~I don’t actually care, now that I think about it. I’m in charge here. Leave this place.~

  Keshel examined the drop for a long moment, “Guys, I think…”

  The ground far below turned a deep ebony black, and that’s when the demons appeared. They swarmed out of the blackness, some flying, some crawling, all of them moving upward. Towards them.

  ~Ignore the memories.~ the voice commanded, ~ignore the memories and leave.~

  The voice sounded different from before. It had been hard to pinpoint but Keshel was pretty sure he was talking to a different mind than the one who had asked for his pain. This one wasn’t as strong, but it was more whole for lack of a better word.

  “Alright tactical retreat, tactical retreat!” Reiav was shouting. Someone grabbed Keshel and pulled him away from the pit of blackness and the monsters waiting there. “We need to find Pleseln, does anyone have any idea where she might be?!”

  No one answered.

  And so they fled.

  Teisel watched the sun rise, she felt a soft smile on her face, a calm and beautiful light that it was. She wanted to watch that sunrise forever, over and over again. She wanted to chase that light and see if this faint hope in her heart could take it and use it to overcome the darkness.

  She looked over at the man who sat beside her, and smiled hesitantly, “Thank you for taking me to see this, I think… I think I’d like to see this every day.”

  He smiled back, “I think we can make it most days.”

  Teisel reflected that this man was almost like a father she’d never truly had.