The captain drew herself back up and glanced over her shoulder at Soren. "Sabotage, that's what's going on," she spat. "Your friends here compromised my mission; they released the spirit!"

She took a step forward, raising her hammer once more, and Tamina braced herself.

At the same time, Rylan lifted Arphin, his vision narrowing on the captain's neck. If I could hit her there, maybe... He swallowed.

[A-Are we really doing this, Boss? Isn't she also a friend?]

'Only if we have to, Arphin...'

"Will you stop?" Soren yelled exasperatedly, a few quick steps with his flashy boots placing him in between the captain and Tamina. "Whatever happened here, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for it that doesn't involve malign intent!"

"We'll know once I beat the truth out of them," the captain growled. "Now step aside."

Soren didn't move an inch as he stared her down. "No," he replied with a kind of calm authority, his voice for some reason reminding Rylan of the Thistlethorn matriarch. "We are going to talk this out like peers, Baroness. Acts of violence are to be reserved for when arbitration fails."

As he spoke, his hand landed on the pommel of his rapier so casually that it almost felt accidental.

The captain's eyes flicked down to Soren's hand, then narrowed. "Are you really sure the girl is your friend? Are you absolutely positive she wasn't planted with the sheer purpose of sabotaging my mission?"

"We got here by riding a mortally wounded whale's gas bladder, then wandering through the fog for weeks," Soren replied dryly. "I'll take my fogging chances."

Rylan shifted a little where he stood, lowering Arphin but not sheathing him. It seemed like Soren hadn't mentioned his tingles to the former pirates, at least. So the young noble hadn't completely betrayed Rylan. Still, there was little doubt in his mind that they'd only found the place thanks to the vision he'd described to Soren. Also, what was all this talk about a mission?

For a moment, Soren and the captain remained standing there with their eyes locked, in a silent standstill.

The tension was broken when, huffing and puffing, a red-faced Isai arrived at the bottom of the stairs. "What have you clodpolls done to my precious machine?!"

With a sigh, the captain lowered her hammer and glanced back. "Wasn't us, professor. Thar Rylan here released the spirit."

The professor's eyes, which were darting across the room, turned to the pool and froze. "She's gone?!" he repeated, aghast. Only then did his eyes seem to find Rylan, blinking in surprise. "How did you even find this place?"

"That's an excellent question," the captain agreed, a hint of danger in her voice. "How did the two of you find this place?"

Rylan and Tamina shared a glance. "We followed you," Rylan replied truthfully.

"Why?" the captain bit out as the professor sped past her, heading for the groaning structure in the centre of the room.

Rylan swallowed, his mind racing. How vague can I keep this? "I asked Soren the other day whether you'd found anything interesting in the ruins yet," he started, deciding to stick close to the truth. "And he lied through his teeth."

Soren blinked sheepishly. "You could tell?"

"I can always tell, Soren," Rylan replied coldly, some anger flaring up again. "Anyway, we followed you two, saw you enter the hole and come back out, then decided to have a little look down here ourselves. Then a drop of water fell on my head, and I heard a voice, and well... I followed it."

"See?" Soren said after a beat, spreading his hands as if to say, 'What can you do?' "Reasonable. In fact, I'm almost positive that if you'd just listened to me and had agreed with me taking Rylan into confidence, none of this—"

"You heard a voice in your head and decided to follow its instructions?" the captain interrupted incredulously. "Are the two of you daft?"

"I tried to talk him out of it, actually," Tamina stated coolly. "He was very insistent."

"And then when you got here, you just set her free?" the captain continued, ignoring Tamina. "With no thoughts of the consequences?"

"Look, Maris was in pain," Rylan replied, starting to grow angry at all the accusations flying around now that the shock was wearing off. "A lot of pain, and she asked for my help. Isn't that what Quinthar are supposed to do? Help those in need?"

The captain stared at him, her eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to read his body language, looking for hints of deception.

Rylan just glared back, unperturbed. None of what he'd said had been too far from the truth; he just hadn't told the full story. "Wait a minute," he continued, narrowing his eyes, "I just said I heard a voice, I never said I heard a voice in my head... You've heard her as well, haven't you?! Was it when you touched the moisture on the walls here?"

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The captain's eyes widened slightly.

I knew it!

Rylan straightened up, pointing an accusatory finger at the captain. "She asked you to release her as well, didn't she? You're supposed to be a noble now; why didn't you free her?"

The captain huffed out a breath, cocking one hand on her hip. "You're really asking why we didn't smash the priceless artefact holding captive an ancient spirit with untold amounts of lost knowledge from an ancient civilisation, just because she asked? Grow up, kid."

"But the machine was killing her!" Rylan argued. "What good is a dead spirit to you?"

"You always believe everything anyone tells you?" the captain asked snidely. "Of course the ancient captured spirit says it needs to be freed immediately! And I'm not saying we never woulda released her—we're not monsters—but we'd only just found her! Do you have any idea what our discoveries here could mean for the kingdom? We're talking technology that repels fog!"

"Well—you could have at least tried to decouple her or something!"

"Decouple her?!" the professor responded behind them. Rylan turned to find the man up on the ladder, shaking his head as he peered inside. "We stumbled upon a working Hermean device, capable of repulsing fog; I wasn't about to remove any critical components before I understood how it worked. And with good reason, I might add! Captain... I'm seeing signs of a critical mana shortage, leading to cascading failures. This fog repulser is shutting down real soon!"

Captain Hammermore swore. "How long do we have?"

"I already said real soon, didn't I? I'm an engineer, not a fogging fortune-teller!"

"Then we need to evacuate the camp before Dreadmaw finds us," the captain replied grimly. "Isai, try to buy me some time. Soren—I'm making these two your responsibility; don't let them near anything sensitive, and don't let them out of your sight! As for you two gullbrains: don't think this is done. I'll deal with you later..."

After one last menacing glare, she turned around, a glow appearing beneath her boots before she shot off at unnatural speed, practically flying towards the stairs before bounding up four steps at a time, all the while handling her hammer like it was made of bamboo rather than solid metal.

Fog, she's fast! Was that the Running Skill?

Rylan shook his head. Things were quickly getting out of hand, and he needed to stay focused.

"Well, you heard her," Soren said, clapping his hands together. "Please don't wander off or touch—"

Ignoring him, Rylan turned around and jogged up to where the professor was now poking his entire head inside the hole where he'd removed the panelling. "Professor! I'm positive the repulser worked independently of Maris—if we can just fix the mana shortage, it should stabilise!"

"That would be helpful," Isai replied, his voice echoing oddly inside the hollow sphere, "if I had a bunch of Decacubes to throw at this issue. At the rate it's draining what's left of the Cubes slotted in the wall, it's not going to matter whether this thing can operate without her or not in a matter of hours. I told you, didn't I? The faster you pull mana from Cubes, the faster they decay. Trying to draw out more mana will just accelerate that process!"

"What if... what if we scale the bubble down?" Rylan suggested, dread pooling in his stomach.

Isai snorted. "That would be lovely, but so far, I haven't found any knobs or levers to turn, my boy. Let me know if you spot any."

"Can't we just use the console?" Rylan asked. "That's how I freed Maris..."

The professor froze. His head popped out of the machine with a maniacal expression. "Show me. What are you standing around for?! Don't just stand there slack-jawed, do it!"

"Ehm," Soren interrupted sheepishly, after sidling up. "I'm not saying I disagree, just wanted to point out I was specifically instructed—"

"Out of my way, boy!" Isai barked, already down the ladder and pulling Rylan towards the console by his sleeve. "Show me exactly what you did!"

Rylan awkwardly cleared his throat as he stumbled to a halt in front of the device, trying to ignore the way Isai's eyes were burning a hole in the side of his face. "Ehm, well, first you put your palm down, like this. Then you say... Ethereon, activate console!"

Once again, the prism lit up with a deep purple glow.

《Welcome back to Aeloria Waeld's local network, administrator. What is your command?》

"What is Ethereon saying?" Isai demanded.

"Ehm, it's asking what I want it to do."

For a moment, Isai just stared at him. He glanced down at Rylan's hand on the prism then back to his face, wetting his lips. "Right then. Tell it to reduce the diameter of the fog repulsion field by... sixty-seven percent? No, make that sixty-four, to be safe. Worst case scenario, it won't cover the outhouse."

"Ethereon, please reduce the, ehm, diameter of the fog repulsion field by sixty-four percent."

《Parsing. Command acknowledged. The operating range of the dehumidifier is to be reduced by sixty-four percent, confirm?》

Rylan wasn't sure what a 'dehumidifier' was, but it sounded about right, and the sense of meaning Ethereon was conveying along suggested much the same. "Ehm, yes. Confirm."

The effect was immediate. The stuttering hum of the dehumidifier lowered in pitch and smoothed out. At the same time, the flickering of its glow stabilised, and the creaking noises it was producing disappeared entirely.

The professor ran over to the device immediately, flying up the ladder to stick his head inside. He stayed up there for several seconds before coming back down, wringing his hands together excitedly. "Good, good... the cascade has stopped, it doesn't appear to be shutting down anymore!"

"So, crisis averted?" Soren asked hopefully.

The professor shook his head. "No. But this bought us some time."

"How long?" Tamina asked, only a slight twitching of her brows breaking her blank expression.

The professor shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest! We decreased the radius to about a third, which means the surface area is about nine times smaller, but we're also still lacking the main mana source. The Cubes currently powering this thing will eventually decay, and we already plugged in every spare we had two days ago. Actually... the console may be able to provide a better answer."

Three sets of expectant eyes turned to Rylan, who still had one hand on the prism. "Ehm, Ethereon, for how long can the dehumidifier be powered by the current Cubes?"

The professor's eyes widened, and he quickly grabbed a pen and notebook from his vest pocket, seemingly muttering the term 'dehumidifier' to himself.

《Calculating,》Ethereon replied.《At current operating parameters and mana reserves, the dehumidifier is expected to cease operation in approximately eight days, seven hours, and forty-three minutes.》

Rylan relayed as much.

"Then we have eight days to find some Aetherium," Soren said with forced cheer.

"Five," the professor corrected him. "I need time to actually build my device, you know? And I'd rather not do so with Dreadmaw swimming around outside, looking for food. If it decided to rip apart the Soggy Shepherd to get at me, well..."

"Five days," Soren agreed. "No worries. We'll definitely find some."

"We're so fogged," Tamina muttered, glancing at Rylan, then shaking her head and turning away.

Rylan swallowed, feeling a little light-headed. What... what have I done?

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