Deck 40, Nar read, as the elevator slowed to a halt. We're almost right in the middle of the ship.

"Uhm…" Tuk suddenly said, making a face. "I forgot to tell you but, down here, the aether is really, really strong. We'll be okay in the office, but elsewhere…"

The lift door sighed open and there was a collective sharp intake of air.

"Ow!" Rel cried, throwing Tuk an accusing look.

"Sorry!" he said, putting his hands together. "I forgot! I've only been here once!"

"How do you forget something like this?" Rel asked, glaring at the ring tosser.

Nar looked down at his forearm, noting the raised hairs. "Is this… Ambient aether?"

"Must be," Cen whispered, her face scrunched in both pain and awe.

"Are you guys okay?" Tuk asked, looking regretful. "Maybe this was a bad idea…"

"No, it wasn't!" Cen said, her eyes suddenly shining. "Now that we're here, I'm really curious to see it!"

"That's the spirit! Then, follow m-Ow!" Tuk cried.

They laughed as they followed after the lanky trugger, who rubbed his arm with a sullen look. Falling behind them, Nar raised a forearm to his eyes again. Despite the hairs still being raised, other than that, he couldn't feel anything out of place.

No… There is something, he thought, narrowing his eyes. Is that pain? Burning?

He shook his head.

Whatever it was, it was… Distant. Yes, that was the best way he could think of describing it. It hurt, he realized, but it was as though his body was mostly shrugging it off. Ignoring and not deeming it worthy of acknowledgement.

Is this because of my training? He wondered, memories of blood, gore and bone easily filtering to the forefront of his mind. Or is it just because I have a lot of aura?

He shrugged off that touch of thick aether in the air as he followed the others.

More discomfort than pain, though, he thought. Though I think it's a bit early for me to start resisting actual pain… Must be the aura then.

And Crystal knew, neither his nightly sessions with Tys, nor the cilices random triggers had become any less painful.

He sighed. Might as well forget about it for a while, and let's just enjoy ourselves for a bit, yeah? Don't think that's such a bad thing.

And at last, he looked up and took in his surroundings.

The others chatted animatedly in front of him, howling in laughter or pain whenever one of them felt the sharp bite of a stronger pocket of ambient aether.

Around them, the corridors were wider than they usually were, and while the ever-present hexagonal shape was there, it was very heavily buried under thick stacks of heavy tubing.

The light gray, metal ceiling and walls, and even the floor underneath the metal grids they walked over, was all completely covered in thick, metal tubes. And at interspersed intervals, there were blackened screens with several buttons and waiting connections and ports.

Wait… Are they glowing? He thought, looking closer at the tubes.

Nar leaned in towards the wall, and a humming reached his ears, coming from the tubes. He leaned in a little closer and suddenly, a roaring of heat, numbness and Crystal knew what else made him gasp and stumble backwards.

"Oh, shit!" Tuk said, looking back.

"Are you okay?" Rel shouted, running to him.

Nar waived at hand at them and blinked to clear his blurry sight.

"I'm fine! I'm fine!" he said, irritation creeping into his tone. "I should've known better than to stick my head close to the aether tubes."

Tuk stifled a chuckle. "You should have. Especially because I just told you all not to do it. I thought you had good [Hearing]?"

"My bad," Nar mumbled. "I was distracted…"

"And shouldn't you have learned your lesson about sticking your face in places like…"

"I already said my bad!" Nar threw at the tosser, who cracked into a wide grin, Cen giggling at Nar's affronted expression.

He would never forget the embarrassment of having that wall of Pressure springing in his face, before the Sentry fight, and getting himself momentarily blinded by it. Though, despite his cheeks roaring with embarrassment, he had to admit that Tuk was right. He should've known better.

"Wait! Did you get hit in the face by one of those walls of pressure?" Rel asked, a wide grin spreading over her face. "I did too!"

"No way!" Nar said, laughing. "Really?"

And having said so, he threw Tuk a glare, who replied with a disbelieving shake of his head.

"Meh," Rel said, shrugging. "It was a dumb mistake, and it made me completely useless for the rest of that damned place. I was still half-blind by the time the Sentry fight started!"

"That was sore," Nar said, wincing at the memory. "But thankfully I recovered fast enough. Maybe you just got hit worse?"

The archer shook her head. "My [Constitution] was just really crap back then."

"Oh… That could be it."

"Nar still fought!" Tuk said, as they resumed walking. "Even blind!"

"Really?" Rel said, arching an eyebrow at Nar. "Ouch! For Radiants' sakes!"

He chuckled at the alfin at his side as she rubbed her thigh. Her hair was still growing, having now reached the top of her back, and its golden browns were getting fuller and fuller by the day, even as her body filled out more, regaining the solidness and mass that she had lost to the ravages of the Yearning. Her scars and skin marks were long gone as well, though perhaps it was her sparkling green eyes, with flecks of gold in them, which were the greatest change to the archer. Back on the Climb, Nar hadn't even been able to tell their color, so weighed they were by what Rel had done to survive and the Yearning, but now, despite the penance of her path and life, they shone as she took in every new day.

"I had enough sense attributes and already had [Instinct] back then," he told her, as she rubbed her leg. "That was probably it."

Rel let out a low whistle that echoed throughout the humming corridor.

"That attribute's insane," she said. "Wish I had that."

"Me too," Tuk said, sighing. "It would be awesome for ring tossing."

Rel slapped his back.

"Ow!" What was that for?

"You can literally control your rings!" she threw at him.

"Well… Well, so can you!" he said, reaching over his back with a long, double elbowed limb to rub at the place she had hit.

"Not like that," Rel said. "And maybe up close, sure. But the farther it goes, the more it takes out of me."

"You can use aura to guide your arrows?" Cen asked, frowning.

She nodded, pursing her lips. "We all do. It's hard though. And the further it is the worse it gets, and it's not the same as his rings! Plus, unlike him, nobody else has skills to help them out!"

"Hehe!" Tuk said, rubbing his nose.

"That was not meant to make you proud!" Rel said, aiming and missing a kick at Tuk's rear.

"The ring tosser remains the superior ranged class!" the trugger shouted, bumping a fist into the aether thick air.

Rel exhaled angrily, promising further violence. However, Tuk stopped before a door nestled in the tubbing.

"We're here!"

The ring tosser raised his long arm up and waved hesitantly at something they couldn't see.

"What are you doing?" Cen asked.

"Well, outside of the faculty and the combat crew decks, most of the decks on the ship are built for aethermancers," he explained, taking a step back and waving his hand again. "Engineers can open the door by just telling it to open," he said, and tapped the side of his head. "Remember those implant things?"

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Cen gasped. "You use those to open doors?"

Tuk hesitated.

"Well, you use it to do a lot of things. They call interfacing, and it just means accessing anything, really," he said.

He sighed and lowered his arm.

"Of course, not just anyone can come through. Implants need to have the right security codes and… Uh, don't ask. That part went right over my head," the ring tosser said. "Uhm…"

"So, we can't go in?" Rel asked.

"What? Oh, of course we can. They like having apprentices around," he said, smiling. "We just need to wait for someone to come out and open the door for us. Don't worry, there's always people going and coming…"

The door sighed open and two people stopped short as they saw the apprentices.

"Oh, apprentices!" the one on the left said.

Nar actually dropped his jaw at the sight of her. She looked alfin-like, though instead of hair, she had several fleshy appendages in green and red, and her completely yellow eyes wrinkled as she took them in.

The crew member wore a bright, neon yellow uniform of some kind, with a heavy looking and bulging toolkit at her waist. Strapped across her chest was something that Nar easily recognized as one of those oval aetherbanks that Professor Thim had brought along for his demonstration. However, so far, that had all been normal enough.

What truly made him openly gape was the two, enormous metal arms that jutted from behind her back. They looked like sapient arms, gentle curves and sleek lines failing to diminish its deadly look, and a mesh frame of straps and plates of scuffed metal covered her shoulders and upper arms and chest.

The metal arms too showed signs of heavy usage, age or both, but their surface was clean, and it gleamed faintly in a pearlescent dark gray that caught the light of the room behind the two engineers.

"Come to visit?" she asked, and her right mechanical arm rose to give them a wave.

Cen gasped again, and Rel's eyes went so wide the whites showed.

"Yes, ma'am!" Tuk said. He beamed at her, seemingly not bothered by her hulking limbs. "Our caster was looking for some inspiration, and I figured looking at aether might help."

"Really?" she said, looking down at Cen in surprise.

The other crew member, who sounded male, chuckled. "I actually don't think that's a bad idea, Larelaw. You always learn by watching."

"I guess…"

He, or they, was of another species that Nar had yet to encounter. They had long arms like Tuk, but their pouchy body stood atop short, stumpy legs. Their skin was leathery, a pink sort of grayish something, and atop a slender neck sat a long head that stretched from round chin to round, semi-crescent back of the head.

The engineer smiled at them with thick lips, his rows of dark, beady eyes of different sizes taking in the apprentices, and blinking out of rhyme on his semi-crescent shaped head.

Other than the same reflective yellow vest and heavy tool belts, they didn't seem to carry anything out of the ordinary besides a tablet that looked somewhat like what the apprentices used. Except his was made of metal and plastic, rather than the ethereal light that made up theirs.

"Well, anyways, go on in, then," the woman said, placing her real hands on her hips. "Just make sure you keep to the rules, okay?"

Tuk nodded brightly.

"Don't touch anything. Stay out of the way. Be quiet. And don't cycle!" he listed.

"And have fun and ask loads of questions!" the male engineer said, chuckling. "Don't forget that! Alright! In you go!"

"Thank you!" Tuk said, as the engineers made way for them to pass.

Nar mumbled his thanks together with Cen and Rel and stepped into that bright, white-bluish light. He immediately became more aware of that distant discomfort pressing against his skin, and even inside his body, but he quickly forgot about it as he took in their new surroundings.

"Wow," he breathed.

The four of them stood upon a long walkway of blue-gray metal, amidst a cavernous, hollow space.

Most of the walls were covered with enormous, shining pearlescent silver pipes, which glowed mostly in soft tones of light blue, red or yellow. Here and there, Nar caught some of them glowing white, and a couple that was obscured in a deep black, as well as many other colors across the piping covering the room.

Here and there, metal platforms took the place of the pipes. Built against the walls, those spaces were filled with busy people, screens and displays of all kinds, and workings of unfathomable purpose and design.

"Look at that!" Rel cried out.

"Hush!" Tuk said, raising a finger to his lips.

"Sorry!" she whispered. "But look!"

Flying platforms carrying people and equipment of many shapes and unknown purposes rose and fell in between the walkways and platforms. And smaller constructs, made of metallic tentacles hanging below large, oblong heads of yellow metal, zipped around the air on errands and tasks Nar couldn't even begin to imagine.

"And look down there…" Cen breathed.

Nar leaned over the handrail.

That massive room went down at least another 10 decks of walkways and platforms, and at the very bottom, there were huge metallic shapes of some kind, wrapped in tubing. Metallic arms and other machines moved in an efficient rhythm down there, and the whole section was covered in a translucent light-blue, and it took him a while to realize that it was a platform, and not light, that he was staring at.

It was made entirely of some kind of light blue and transparent material, and he caught sight of people walking across it. Their gear looked thicker, and light-gray from the distance, and there were desks and monitors and all sorts of equipment across that transparent material. But Nar's breath caught in his throat when he noticed a gathering of engineers pointing at flowing readings and charts on the very platform itself.

"That thing's a display?" he whispered, not believing his eyes.

"It is. It provides real time readings for all of those machines. They are connected to the aetherbanks and need to be monitored at all times," Tuk explained. Then he opened his arms wide. "Welcome to the heart of the ship! There are more departments of engineering spread around the place, but this is the center of it all."

"Damn…" Rel whispered, her eyes wide as she continued staring down.

"So this is aethertech," Cen said, her hushed tone awed and her face coated in light-blue light. "Crystal… When they told us we were losing out, I didn't really understand how. But now, looking at all this…"

"Our decks are very, very low tech," Tuk said, rubbing the back of his neck, having been zapped again. "And I was told that there are places that are a lot more high-tech than this one on-board. Places like the bridge, where we can't enter because our auras would fry all the equipment… And we can't go down there, of course."

"Of course," Cen said, her tone longing and somewhat down.

"But, hey! Come along! Let's go see if the Old Man's busy!"

Old Man? Nar thought. That had tickled his memory.

"You mentioned him before, right? When we went to see the gun decks?" he asked the ring tosser.

"Oh, good one!" Tuk said, chuckling. "Yeah, the undead and engineering have a bit of a thing going on between them."

"Because of testing the guns, right?" Nar remembered.

"Exactly!" Tuk said. "The undead need a pile ton of aether to keep the guns in good shape, but engineering keeps a tight hand over aether expenditure across the ship. Especially now that Gad has been using the Controllers Hall."

"That's affecting them?" Nar asked.

"It's affecting everyone!" Tuk said, throwing his arms wide open. "That place is sucking up an unbelievable Pile of aether, and everyone else has had to accommodate for it."

"Damn!" Rel whispered.

"If the other departments were already accusing engineering of being stingy, now it's even worse!" Tuk said, then he shook his head. "The gun deck was forced to turn off their RGB, and they were very sad about that… Though, of course, they don't blame Gad for it! Plus, the discovery of a controller apprentice is huge news. If she does well, it will boost the bonuses by a lot!"

"Bonuses?" Rel asked. "I think the COO said that word too, before the den."

Tuk nodded, making a face.

"It's a bit complicated… But basically, the captain, the faculty and the crew get paid based on how well they do. With us."

"With us?" Cen asked, looking up from the distant machinery below them.

"There's a baseline for how strong Tsurmirel wants us to be when we finish our apprenticeship, and for anything that they manage to go above that, the Scimitar gets paid in bonuses," Tuk explained. "To be honest, I don't really know how that actually works, but that's the gist of it."

He glanced at Nar, who followed after them with a thoughtful expression.

"Apprentices like you and Viy are definitely going to bring in a big, fat bonus as well!" he said, his brown eyes shining. "Two Ascendant disciples in one go? Can you imagine? Lots of people are really excited about that, and with Gad in the mix, it's gonna be a big, big payday… Erhm, if you guys survive."

"Tuk!" Cen snapped.

"Which of course you will!" Tuk quickly said. "Crystal… I was just explaining how it works!"

Nar shook his head.

"And they all get paid in XP, right?" Rel asked.

"Of course! What else?"

"I mean… I know that!" she bristled. Then she relented. "I just… It still sounds so weird."

Tuk nodded. "Yeah… Just wait till you get to the Nexus. It'll be even weirder! All that XP going around and most of the people are all non-combat classes!"

"That's wild," Rel breathed, then she smiled at Tuk. "It's that the right way to use that expression?"

Tuk grinned back at her. "That was perfect!"

"Woah!" Cen shouted, as a construct zipped past just a few feet from them.

And Creation continues to grow, Nar thought, tracking its flight and eventually getting lost in the complex machinery and tubbing that surrounded them. Crystal… Just how big is this whole aethertech thing?

It was likely a whole reality that was barred from his touch, perhaps even comprehension, and he couldn't help but think that this whole aethertech conversation was far from over.

"This way!" Tuk said, when they reached the other side of the room. "Up these stairs and we'll be in the Observation Deck. There'll be no more pain once we're in there."

"Thank Meullum-Herfthuri!" Rel muttered. "It's starting to get really sore!"

"Yeah…" Cen said, rubbing her left arm.

Nar followed upwards after the rest of them, but his eyes went to Rel's back instead of the technological wonders around them.

Meullum-Herfthuri… He thought. That's the Radiant that Aedina mentioned.

If memory served him right, that was the god with the twin-blades, the One that usually granted second chances to sinners, but was Who also the Destroyer, and the Butcher God… Just thinking about Him gave Nar the shivers, and this was the one who had granted Rel her penitent class.

Is she worshiping him now? He wondered. They had all start adopting the O-Nexian lingo, some more than others, like Tuk, and it wasn't uncommon for one of them to say "Radiants' sake!" instead of just "Crystal's sake!" nowadays, though "Pile" was still the prevalent one, instead of "Abyss", as the O-Nexians spoke.

But here, he couldn't help the tightening of his lips.

How far was Rel meant to go? How far was she willing to go? Would the archer eventually join the Church, and disappear into its unknown but sprawling vastness?

He sighed.

I should ask her how it's going. I didn't want her to stop learning from that priest… But I don't know what Aedina is actually teaching her, or what future she's pushing Rel towards…

"Hello!" Tuk called up ahead.

Nar looked past Rel's head and saw that they'd reached their destination, and that the stairs had ended before a simple looking door that had window panes built into it.

"Who is… Oh! Tuk! Haven't seen you in a while!" a female voice replied. "Glad to see you survived! And decided to stay with us for the long haul, eh?"

Tuk chuckled. "Of course I did. I would've missed you guys too much, eh Old Man?"

"Ah, shut it, you smooth talker!" came a wizened, grumpy voice from inside.

Tuk laughed alongside the first voice.

"Come on in!" that first person said.

Tuk waved at them all to get in, and Nar, who was the last one through, frowned as he passed by Tuk, eyeing the hand he kept on the door's handle.

A manual door? Here, where everything is aethertech?

"Welcome to the Observation Deck!"

Nar turned towards the source of the voice and found…

"An ex-Climber?" he asked.

Such was his surprise that he blurted the words without even realizing it.

The short human woman before him looked up and scanned his face. He had no idea of the length of her dark, ashen hair, as it was clipped neatly into a tight bun. Her skin was an ashen brown, slightly different to the purplish hue of his own skin, but those dark, ashen eyes… They reminded him of the ones he occasionally saw in the mirror, and in more ways than one…

There was no confusing her for anything other than someone born and raised in a cubeplant.

"I-I… Uhm, I'm sorry about that. I…"

"Don't worry about it!" she told him, reaching a hand to pat his shoulder

She smiled brightly as she did so, and Nar couldn't help but notice the thick coil of silvery and blue jewelry wrapped around her wrist, eyeing the light blue glow it left in its wake.

Aether… He realized, his jaw dropping. An ex-Climber using aether?

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