By its outward appearance, the central tower wasn’t that imposing. As engineering efforts went, Nix had seen grander structures on at least a dozen other worlds. Taller spires, heavier armor plating, grander architectural flourishes. Where the Children of the Storm had fallen short on each of those fronts, they more than made up for it with the ambiance they captured though.

Each step into the tomb, and Nix was sure it was a tomb, at least of some sort, filled her with an every growing agitation and dread.

Should they be here?

No. Obviously not.

What right did they have to the treasure that was housed in this place?

The right of power?

Yes.

They were here, despite those who tried to stop them. They could take what they wanted because there was no one who could stop them.

No one besides themselves.

Would Sali or Zindiana stop them? Would they want the treasure for themselves? Of course they would. Could she win a fight if it came to that? If she had the treasure she could…

Nix smacked the intrusive thought right on the nose.

She was used to her mind wandering off into dark corners like that, especially when she was in creepy or dangerous places. 

It was so easy to avoid her fears by imagining herself as violent and powerful and more horrible than anything horrible that tried to hurt her.

She didn’t need to be angry though. She didn’t need to be hateful. Neither of those states led towards outcomes she was usually all that happy with. Inventing misery tended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. What she needed was to pay attention to where she was and what was happening around her.

And how her wife was doing.

Which wasn’t hard to tell at all as soon as Nix consciously considered it.

Ayli was on edge.

She was driven.

She could sense the same intangible peril which seemed to haunt the spire like a ghost laughing just beyond the edge of their peripheral vision. 

Nix kicked that thought away too.

She was afraid. She knew that. No need to go inventing ghosts to explain it. She wasn’t all that used to being shot at, even if the people doing the shooting were easy to avoid, and that kind of experience lingered under your skin well after you thought you were past it.

As for why her mind went to ghosts? Well, the entire aesthetic of the Children’s Spire was one of subtle menace and anger. The designers wanted to encourage a certain fearful and submissive mindset in new visitors. Why? Because they were a cult, and cults are ultimately all about control. There were many methods for controlling sapients, but fear and anger tended work well no matter what background the person in question came from. 

Nix felt that, more than knew it, but being aware of the elements that were artificially inducing fear in her helped her find the distance and perspective she needed to reclaim a center of calm to work from.

“The top of the spire will be an exalted place,” Ayli said. “The treasure should be there.”

Nix nodded. “If there are any defenses that are still active, they’ll be concentrated there too.”

“Right. We’ll need to be careful,” Ayli said, unholstering one of her blasters with her free hand.

“I don’t think we’ll run into any guards,” Nix said. “Any defenses that are left here are going to be environmental, like locked doors or prison rooms.”

“Can you get us past those?” Ayli asked.

“Probably. It’ll all be old tech, and unless they had some actual, well trained security specialists in their membership, I’m betting it’ll be pretty poorly hacked together. Amateurs are terrible at setting up real security system, and there’s a lot of amateurs who get paid as professionals.”

Ayli glanced over and gave her an amused smile.

“I thought you were a ship’s mechanic? Are you secretly a security tech?”

“Oh, not in the slightest!” Nix said. “I’m strictly an amateur too, I’ve just read enough to have a clue about all the things I don’t know. Like, for example, that this door here might or might not kill us for standing in front of it.”

Their careful walk into the spire had led them to a door made of purple crystal which lead to an enclosed crystal staircase which in turn led up to an opaque room at the top of the tower.

“I could shoot it?” Ayli offered without a hint of seriousness. 

Nix squeezed Ayli’s hand and stepped closer to bump their shoulders together. It was nice to see the intensity drain away from Ayli. There was something unhealthy about being too invested in what they were doing, even if it did require their complete attention.

“Help me pull up the floor panels around here,” Nix said.

They released each other’s hands and both knelt down to inspect what seemed like the solid floor beneath them.

“We’re not going to get around the door by dismantling the tower are we?” Ayli asked. “Because I’m reasonably sure our orbital friends will get their acts together and get down here long before we can manage that.”

“Nope,” Nix said, prying up one of the otherwise invisible tiles with a small vibro-blade from her carry-on kit. “This just confirms we’re working with amateurs.”

“How so?” Ayli asked, looking over Nix’s shoulder to peer into the mass of wires and control boards which were crammed into the small space beneath the floor panel.

“Apart from what a mess this is, these controls should all be in a secured box somewhere a lot less accessible,” Nix said. “Professionals can do that because they install it correctly the first time. Amateurs install a system, and then come back and fix alarms that are going off every two minutes. Then they come back again and fix the alarms that are every five minutes. Then ten minutes, and so on, until they eventually put all the controls close by so that when they inevitably have to come back and fix the system again everything’s nice and convenient.”

“Which is also nice and convenient for people who want to bypass the security. Brilliant,” Ayli said.

“To be fair, they did a decent job of hiding the panels though.”

“So not entirety incompetent then?”

“Not entirely. Can you pull up the panels leading off to my left? I don’t think this is all the controls they have for monitoring the door here.”

Nix let herself fixate on the security controls she could see for a moment, feeling out the connections and trying to intuit what they did.

It wasn’t particularly hard.

The door was, indeed, secured.

At least two of the monitoring systems on it lead back to control rooms which were likely on other levels of the building. There were also three different locking mechanisms and two leads she suspected controlled some sort of deadly “intrusion prevention measures”.

“Is this what you need?” Ayli asked, pointed to the underbelly of the fifth tile she’d pulled up where another mass of  jumbled wires was visible.

“Probably, yeah, let me see what we’ve got there,” Nix said.

What they had were three locks that were painfully easy to bypass since they relied on a secure code system that was probably a century out of date when we it was installed, and two explosive traps which were less easy to deal with.

“I’m glad you didn’t blast the door,” Nix said. “The photonic charge on the door handle  might have been incinerated but I think the Thermex bomb they have rigged underneath the door might be strong enough to vaporize the whole top of the tower.”

“Would the Thermex still be stable after all these years?” Ayli asked.

“Not even slightly,” Nix said.

“So opening the door could set it off?”

“Our breathing could set it off, in theory,” Nix said. “In practice I think the case they have it in is probably isolating it from the environment pretty well or the storm outside would have blown it up ages ago.”

“We can risk going up then,” Ayli said. It didn’t sound like a question, which worried Nix a bit, but she nodded in agreement anyways.

There was something at the top of the spire.

Something they needed to deal with.

She didn’t think they’d be happy to deal with it, but it was a problem that had waited for a long time and it was one they could fix.

And fixing things was what she did.

With a few quick clips, Nix disabled both the locks and the sensors which would trigger the offensive defenses.

She hoped.

“Let me go first,” she said, reaching for the door handle but Ayli caught her arm and then hesitated.

“Yeah, okay, maybe that would be best,” Ayli said, shaking her head and relaxing again.

“Good news,” Nix said. “If I’m wrong about the Thermex’s container it’s biologically impossible that we’ll feel a thing when it goes off.”

Ayli shook her head, “You are objectively terrible at being reassuring. You know that don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it meant you didn’t have time to worry when I opened the door, see!” Nix said, gesturing to the open and unexploded portal.

Ayli narrowed her eyes at Nix.

“You’re lucky you’re so damn adorable, you know.”

“I do!” Nix said, thrilled as ever to hear Ayli describe her like that.

The thrill faded as they ascended the stairs though.

The crystal walls deadened the sound of the storm outside to a whisper.

Or maybe the whispers were something else.

With each step upwards, Nix became more convinced that they were not alone.

This wasn’t the hazy, jumpiness brought on by the intentionally creepy decor of the tower. She could feel a presence surrounding them. No. Many presences. 

Strangely, at least one of them wasn’t malevolent.

But only one. 

The rest were so filled with malice there couldn’t be room for anything else in any mote of their being. The rest except for one other, and that one was hungry.

A small voice inside here wanted to turn to Ayli and say ‘we shouldn’t be here’, because they shouldn’t. But they needed to be here and reaching into the calm she’d made for herself she found the strength to believe that and keep moving forward.

Which was how they found the tomb that wasn’t a tomb.

“It’s a cenotaph,” Ayli said, pausing at the entrance to the elaborately adorned room.

In the center, on a dias surrounded by shards of jagged purple crystal formed into the likeness of a bonfire, rested a coffin-like shape made from black basalt and carved with symbols and figures which all seemed to be writhing in rage. Atop the black coffin, the figure of a woman was carved in the same jagged purple crystal as the flames. In her outstretched hand she held…

Nix wasn’t sure what she was holding or supposed to be holding, because she had to move. Immediately.

She’d pushed Ayli to safety and leapt away from the attack before she was consciously aware of what she was doing.

Rolling to feet, she had no complaints about that though.

From the walls, hulking and only vaguely humanoids shapes had detached, their bodies formed from seething smoke and shards of the purple crystal the walls were made of.

“Nix!” Ayli called out, blasters in both hands, bolts flying at two of the monsters which were swiping their serrated talons at her.

Nix pitched herself forward, evading the attack Ayli had been warning her about.

She turned to face her monster and raised her hands to…

To what?

Her hand were empty. She didn’t know what she could do with them that would make any difference against a three meter tall inhuman beast.

Trust in.., an oddly familiar voice, yet garbled voice said from much too far away. You know more than you realize.

As advice went, that was terrible.

Nix was the sort who preferred to get her instructions in simple numbered lists, ideally with a detailed owner’s manual to back them up.

Blaster bolts rained past her, driving the monsters back.

Until Nix heard an anguished cry from behind her.

She whirled to see Ayli had dropped to her knee and was holding a hand to her shoulder, clasping a deep gash. 

She’d dropped her blasters.

She was defenseless against the monster that was standing over her.

“No!” Nix shouted and thrust her hand out.

Nothing should have happened.

She was too far away to save Ayli.

But she needed to.

She needed to more than anything she’d ever needed before.

The monster was blasted backwards.

It shattered the wall it crashed into and sailed out into the empty air outside the Tower.

Through the breech, the storm raged in. Lightning painting the room in a gashes of strobing red .

Nix felt exhilaration run through her.

Then she felt three of the monsters talons run through her.

That shouldn’t have happened.

Except she wasn’t paying attention.

She’d known she was in danger, but that hadn’t mattered.

She’d had to save Ayli.

And she had.

“NIX!” Ayli screamed.

 As Nix collapsed, she saw Ayli leaping over the cenotaph towards her.

Nix hit the ground. Hard.

Something terrible had happened.

She wasn’t going to die.

She would fine.

She knew that.

But Ayli stood in front of her.

And a blade of crimson light blazed in her hands.

Something terrible had happened.