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"The Renegades used something similar a few nights ago," I filled the others in.

"I don't understand," Darryck moved around the vast chamber, looking into its many openings. If these tunnels lead into the mountains, then the Eulachs have had access to this chamber for… since forever."

He wasn't wrong. So why had they only now begun trading with the Renegades? The Eulachs were a bloodthirsty race, but they were not very intelligent—slightly more than your average predator, but not enough to assimilate into another society. They had been enemies of us Leanders since time began. So why would they suddenly trade with the Renegades?

It had seemed like they had been evolving lately; some of them were smarter than others, smart enough to come to our cities to trade. Not many, because our dragoons were trained to kill them on sight. But a few had managed, dressed like Leanders, to sneak in. They’d still stuck out, but they’d traded and left without incident. Still, from wearing clothes and trading furs to trading weapons with Renegades was a big leap.

Myccael had stepped away, deeper toward one of the many passageways. With a curse, he returned. "Tovahr! How strong is that drill of yours?"

"I beg your pardon, Susserayn?"

Darryck and I turned to Myccael, alarmed at the timbre of his voice.

"I mean, when it drills through the rocks and sediments, is it possible that it sends some kind of shockwave through air pockets like this?"

"Oh, zyn," Tovahr nodded, "very much so. The harder the ground, the stronger the seismic echo," Tovahr finished, already moving forward. “Depending on the density and pressure layers, the energy could travel farther than we’d expect. These mountains are riddled with mineral veins—and tunnels, it now seems—so it’s entirely possible the shockwave acted like a conductor.”

Myccael gave a grim nod, then motioned for us to follow. “I think that’s exactly what happened.”

"Dead ends, all the tunnels we've explored so far lead to dead ends, Susserayn." Squad Leader Ekkarn, the head of the dragoon scouting mission, returned, interrupting us.

Myccael didn't look surprised at all. It was almost like he had expected this news. He nodded and motioned again for us to follow him.

"This is the main entrance," he pointed at a large metal door that held many imprints, like someone extremely strong had banged against the metal and dented it. That wasn't all, though. In the center of the door was a large, scorched hole, one that reminded me eerily of the damage I had seen in Bantahar. The same kind of weapon had been used here.

"There," Myccael pointed his light to the ground, illuminating several footprints. Three-toed, distinctive to Eulachs. What was different, though, was the size.

"Snyg, those must belong to… an eight-pace male…" Darryck concluded.

"To several, actually," Myccael moved his light enough for us to see distinctive marks within the footprints. One had a higher arch; another’s heel was flatter.

"How many?"

Darryck cocked his head. Between the three of us, he was the best hunter. The Icelands were often attacked, and reading tracks was necessary. "I'd say at least five."

At his words, he and I turned in a circle, sword in hand, as if we were expecting that whatever or whoever had been here was still here, lurking and waiting to attack us.

"That might explain what we found." Squad Leader Ekkarn drew our attention to him.

"Show us," Myccael demanded.

"As you wish, Susserayn." Ekkarn took the lead with us at his heels, followed by more dragoons. We walked through what had appeared to be several passageways, which I now realized were hallways leading to separate rooms and common areas, similar to the layout of a military complex. Quick glimpses inside rooms off the first hall reminded me of quarters for soldiers. When we entered the next hallway, though, the rooms changed; several were larger and looked more like workstations or laboratories. This hallway led into another, and at the end of it, we arrived at what Ekkarn had wanted us to see.

Pods, at least fifty of them, stood in the center of a very large area. Each pod was at least nine paces long and several paces wide. All of them were broken open. I stepped toward the first and recoiled. Inside were the mummified remains of an Eulach, but at the same time, he didn't resemble any Eulach I had ever seen. Not only was he taller and wider, but his cranium was bigger, elongated.

"Snygg!" Myccael exclaimed from the pod next to me, where he must have found the same. I looked at the once dome-shaped, shattered top. It had been broken from the outside.

Not like the one next to it, which was empty. It was the emptiness that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A definite indent bore silent witness that something had been inside. That and the fact that the cover had obviously been broken out from the inside.

After a few seconds, Darryck called out, "Ten empty pods, forty filled with corpses in various stages of decomposition."

I turned in a circle and found a lit console I had missed thus far. Fifty monitors, several with blank screens, two showing the inside of an empty pod, and the rest showing only distorted images.

"Whatever this was, it was still working," Myccael concluded darkly, having stepped next to me.

"For thousands of rotations," I added, shaking my head. That kind of technology was even beyond anything we had now.

"We should get the human, Claudia, down here. She's an engineer, zyn?" I turned to Kavryn, who immediately brought his palmtop up to relay the order.