Summoned by Monster Girls

While it wasn’t something any of us really wanted to do, I still checked inside the ruined cars for any signs of who or what might have been here.

Though any bodies had long rotted away, there were still distinct stains and patterns on the metal that led me to believe that there had been corpses here in the distant past. That and a few bits of evidence, like a badly corroded circle of gold amongst the dusty pile of rust in one corner. I’d have missed it entirely if my sensitive eyes hadn’t caught the faintest glimmer of light on metal.

“That looks like a woman’s ring?” Rieka murmured when I hopped down out of the crumpled ruin of the carriage and handed it to her. Kassandra was beside her friend, her delicate brows scrunched in confusion as they used the light stone to inspect the object.

“Agreed. I can see where stones would have been set, but the tines that would hold them in place have mostly worn away,” said Kassandra.

“I had to pry it out of a pool of mostly congealed rust. It’s possible the stone is still in there. Do you think it’s worth scraping up and sorting through the rust?” I asked the two of them. The women shared a long look before shaking their heads.

“No. From the setting, it would be tiny. Not worth the effort and the mess, and all too likely it broke off during…this.” Rieka gestured with her free hand at the crumpled remains of the cars scattered around the open space.

From the way the falling of the ceiling had crushed the cars, it was obvious that they’d been moving at speed when whatever happened went down.

Another few minutes passed as we silently regarded the slowly rusting wreckage and piled earth. The entire adventure up to this point had been creepy, but interesting. Now, It was just creepy.

“So what’s next?” Rieka was the first one to break the silence, and we looked over at her.

“What do you mean?” Kassandra asked a moment later, her head tilting to one side in confusion.

“I mean, what should we do next? I may be a princess, but I’m not going to order you two around.”

“At least not all the time,” I teased her gently. Rieka rolled her eyes at me, but a smile gently curved her lips.

“Well, as I see it? We have a few options: we stay here and study this area some more. Head back to camp and do our tasks out in the valley. Or I start digging,” I listed off, counting the ideas on my fingers. Rieka and Kassandra both turned incredulous stares at me and I shrugged. “What? Did you two forget that I have earth magic? And an internal mana well?”

Kassandra grinned, her eyes sparkling behind the smudged glass of her spectacles. They had gotten dirty earlier, and she had never bothered to clean them off.

Rieka, at least, had the decency to look sheepish, as it became obvious that she had forgotten. I couldn’t actually blame her, as it was something I was still learning to master and not really my go-to skill.

“I’d say have Liam dig out what he can without collapsing the tunnel and then head back to take care of the rest of our hunting,” Rieka suggested, still blushing furiously. “I know it feels creepy around here, but we might want to move the campsite closer. That way, Liam can just come down and spend the mana he has in order to keep working on clearing the way..”

“Why can’t we just give him some of our coins to use? I want to see what’s behind this rockfall!” Kassandra protested. Rieka shrugged in response before turning back to me with a raised brow, as if to say the question was mine to answer.

“That would depend on you, Kass. Only I can use the internal reservoir that I have, but both of you can use the coins you have. Is it worth the cost to dig a bit faster?”

“That would depend on how much you can dig with what you have,” Kassandra said, ending in a playful ‘hmph’ and crossing her arms under her bust.

“I’ll take that as a polite request to see how much I can do.” I turned away while Kassandra smirked triumphantly.

Rieka must have done something in retribution while my back was turned, as I heard Kassandra yelp in surprise and then a playful argument broke out between the two of them.

Where is going to be the best spot to do this? I wondered while staring at the collapsed earth and stone.

There were several large rocks wedged into the collapsed tunnel, likely the roof itself, that had fallen and broken up over the tracks. A good majority of what filled the tunnel, though, was ancient and settled soil. I spared a moment to wonder if there was a hollow or depression on the surface above us somewhere to show the collapse, before shrugging and pushing the thought away as irrelevant.

The rails that had once carried the train through the tunnel ran to either side of it, with about three feet of space between the rails and the outer walls. There weren’t any central supports that I could see, but the tunnel itself was relatively low, only about ten or fifteen feet in height above us. Between the two tracks, there was probably about ten feet of space that would have given plenty of room for a support pillar or something similar.

It’s possible there were central supports, and that’s what the train hit to cause the collapse. Even without that, the center of the tunnel would be the most prone to collapse, I would think.

I doubled back a bit to get around the rearmost of the cars as the girls playfully argued back and forth. Both followed after me, giving me plenty of room so I could work while they watched.

Coming around the far side of the ruined carriage, I followed the solid stone of the wall on my left until it met the tumble of rock and earth that closed off the passage.

As I had hoped, the train itself, as well as the wall, helped support and shield this portion of the tunnel. There were still rocks here, but they were smaller by far. Rather than being man-sized boulders, most of these were the size of a human head instead, and far fewer in number.

“Hrm.” I made a few more thoughtful noises deep in my throat before nodding.

I’d been mostly casting on instinct so far, eschewing the established spells the girls had suggested other than to use them as a framework. Something similar would work here. I didn’t need to clear a lot of space, it wasn’t as if I was trying to unbury the train after all.

At least not yet. I’m sure Kass will want to see the full thing eventually, I thought with a smirk.

Laying my hands on the collapsed section in front of me, I focused on shifting the rocks and compacting the soil to create a low tunnel that we could use to move through. It didn’t need to be big, just enough for me to wiggle through, since both girls were smaller than I was across the shoulders. However, it did need to be sturdy. The still-standing wall sheltered this area on one side and the ruins of the train on the other. I didn’t want to take chances, though, and worked carefully.

Focusing just as Rachel Cedarfall, the elf woman the girls had asked to help by showing me the basics, had taught me. I focused on circulating the mana from the reservoir and into my left hand, up through my body and across through my shoulders and then down and out through my right hand. Since I wasn’t drawing the mana in through my left, it went out of my chest and up, then back down my left arm, then across. Once the mana exited my right hand, it crossed through the stone and then was drawn back into my left palm.

Granite, heavy and solid. This stone has sat here for a great deal of time and is comfortable in its place.

The information popped into my mind and I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t been directing the mana to do anything yet, just circling around in preparation for actually using it. I’d been planning on doing something akin to a mining drill to push through along the floor, packing the loose dirt and stones upwards into a roof, but now I had another idea.

Focusing on the heavy stones, I gently began to press the mana into them, packing them tighter and tighter together. The loose pile of earth and rocks gave a crunching noise and then shifted slightly. Both girls went silent as I began to work. A moment later, I heard a quiet murmur of surprise from them as, rather than away from the pile, more dust and dirt was flowing towards me.

The loose earth and dust began to mix together and packed into solid shapes, which I used to shore up the sides of a low tunnel that formed under the pile of stones. I had to dig a few larger rocks out of the way, rolling them out of the hole and then off to one side, but it was doable. By focusing on slow and steady movements, I could work with the soil’s natural inclination to settle into one spot. Using the packed earth as a crude mortar, I sealed the piled stones together to give them more stability and just enough of a curve to act as a roof, while the sides were made up of the more regularly shaped rocks supplemented by the wall or train where I needed to.

The ten mana that I had ran out rather quickly, at least it felt that way. Barely twenty feet through the debris, and I could tell that there was at least another fifty more feet before I cleared the obstruction. I was, however, able to confirm that there were no major obstructions along the path I’d chosen. I’d have to wind the tunnel a bit to get around two larger boulders that had fallen between the cars, but that was doable with a bit of work. Being careful, I’d even been able to pack spare earth in amongst the gravel that made up the floor of the tracks to ensure crawling through would be easier.

“Wow.” I wasn’t sure which of my girls spoke, but I turned to smile at them, regardless. Kassandra was staring intently at the tunnel like she wanted to dive in and explore, while Rieka was studying me carefully.

“How are you feeling, Liam?”

“Doing okay, Rieka. Just a bit worn out. It’ll take me two or three more rounds to get through to the far side, but I can do it.” My confident statement made Kassandra bounce on her coils and let out a little squee of excitement before launching herself at me. The confines were too tight to do my normal dodge or spin to bleed off her momentum, so I just braced as best I could and caught the happy dwarf lamia.

“Oof.”

The impact drew a grunt from me as, despite her shorter stature and size, Kassandra still had quite a bit of mass behind her. Not for the first time, I wondered how much a normal Lamia would weigh if mine was considered a miniature breed at fourteen feet long.

Anime never really got the length of the snake people anywhere near realistic, did they? I thought while Kassandra made happy cooing noises and buried her face in my neck. Her slim arms slid up to wrap around my neck as well while she hung on. I let my hands settle under her butt, using that as leverage to pull her against me while her tail wriggled around to wrap my legs.

“Thank you, Liam! I am so excited to see what lies behind this,” Kassandra said into my chest. “Just think, secrets lay back there that might not have seen the light of day since the time humans walked this world. And that was hundreds to thousands of years ago!”

“Exciting, I know,” Rieka said drolly, joining us in the nook between the wall and the train. She peered around me to look at the tunnel, holding her light stone up enough to illuminate it. “The question is: do we spend the mana to keep digging, or let Liam regenerate?”

“How did the hunting go earlier?” Kassandra pulled her face away from my neck long enough to look over at her friend questioningly.

“Fairly well. I got the aqua grass and the lyre mushrooms. We found a stand of singing aspen as well. Just need to fell a few of those trees and trim them down to tuck into the dimensional bag and we should have costs covered. If we can catch a few spring foxes or the stone bear, then we will come out ahead, guaranteed,” Rieka answered.

The platinum-blonde, wolf kin woman reached forward to delicately pluck Kassandra’s silver-rimmed glasses off her face. Before Kassandra could protest, she produced a white cloth and carefully wiped the smudged glasses clean before delicately settling them onto Kassandra’s face.

“Thank you, Rieka. I was so excited that I kept forgetting to clean them.” Kassandra said with a grin up at her friend.

“No worries, Kass. They were just bugging me is all,” was Rieka’s response.

“How are you feeling, Liam? Can you keep going? I know casting repeatedly can be exhausting, but I’m not sure if the same effect occurs for Travelers or with how you use mana.” Kassandra turned her intent brown eyes back to me.

Instinctively, I wanted to say yes and keep working. It was a conditioned response at this point. I held back, though, and actually checked myself.

My mind felt a bit tired from the focus and there was a slight ache in my chest from my reservoir being empty. My lungs hurt a bit from all the dust in the air, but that was it.

“I can keep working if you two want to front me the mana coins for it. We figured that my pool was about three mana copper total, and I think it’ll take just shy of a mana silver to finish this off,” I said.

Both girls winced slightly and considered it. We’d previously figured my each mana point I had to be around three mana-infused iron coins, which meant that it translated into three mana infused copper when converted over. Since I knew it’d take at least two or three more ‘full pools’, that put it at between six and nine mana copper, or almost a mana silver in cost.

“That’s almost as much as your initial summons, Liam,” Rieka said after a moment, biting her lower lip lightly as she considered it.

“I know. You both wanted to know what it would cost to have me keep digging immediately. I figured it would be easier for you to weigh the worth if I put it into coins,” I sighed. Kassandra was still in my arms and her coils gave me a slow squeeze before she exhaled explosively through her nose.

“I’ll cover it.’

“Kass! You don’t need to do that, we both can—,” Rieka began to protest, but Kassandra cut her off with a shake of her hair that sent her red-brown curls bouncing and stirring up a small cloud of dust. I had to smother a sneeze as the two argued.

“No, I need to know more about this place. There are so many questions that I want answered. If we burrow through and find that the rest of the complex is in shambles and destroyed, then we can focus on recouping for the rest of the week. I’ll take the loss out of my share, though, because I don’t want to wait.”

“Fine. But if you actually find anything of value back there, then pay yourself out of that.” Kassandra nodded in agreement with Rieka’s statement before turning to look back up at me. Her slit irises, which had looked so odd at first but were now fascinating, studied my face for a moment before she leaned in to press a soft kiss to my lips.

“Thank you, Liam. You help us so much.”

“I’m just doing what you need me to.” My reply got a giggle from the petite redhead in my arms and she wiggled her bum against my hands.

“I can tell you are helping yourself a bit, too.” Kassandra gave me a saucy wink before she opened the breast of her shirt wider and began fishing around inside of it. I was about to protest when she pulled a soft leather pouch from within her bosom and I remembered she liked to hide her higher value coins like that. I couldn’t help the snicker as the thought of boobie money ran through my head.

Kassandra gave me a side-eye look with a smirk before fishing out the requisite silver coin. It was like the others, with imprints of the country’s mint pressed into the shimmering sides and a faint, opalescent sheen to the metal.

“If you don’t use it all up, let me know, okay?” Kassandra asked gently and held the coin out to me. I accepted it, feeling the weight of the coin, still warm from her body, in my hand. A faint tingle ran through my body from touching the charged metal.

“I’ll use as little as possible. Especially since I’m thinking of this as one less time you can summon me for a bit of fun.” Kassandra blushed sharply at that and was about to turn away when I kissed her on the nose. She eep’d again in surprise, her eyes crossing behind her spectacles to look at the tip of her button nose before Rieka burst into giggles from behind her.

“What?” Kassandra demanded, turning to glare at her friend while trying to get the blush under control.

“It’s just so cute, watching you two!” Rieka continued to giggle, one hand covering her mouth but failing to muffle the sound of her laughter.

“You think it’s funny now? Wait till he does the same to you!” growled Kassandra playfully, but Rieka just giggled harder. “Liam! Do it to her too!” Kassandra turned pleading eyes on me and I raised an eyebrow.

“Do what?”

“Make her blush!” Kassandra ordered, her brows knitting in a cute glare.

Shrugging, I shifted to let Kassandra down and she went willingly, for once. Rieka was unaware of the danger she was in until I had already divested myself of Kassandra.

“Wait! Liam, what are—,” Rieka cut off her protests as I stepped over and pulled her against me. Her soft breasts squashed against my chest and I was annoyed that my armor made it so I couldn’t appreciate the sensation more.

Rieka’s cheeks immediately took on a deep red color, but she did not shove me away. Instead, her hands settled on my chest, and she shyly looked up at me through her bangs. The black-tipped wolf-ears on her head folded back shyly, but they popped upright in surprise as I leaned in and kissed her gently on the tip of the nose.

“That wasn’t nice!” Rieka protested, a disappointed scowl beginning to form on her lips. “I thought you were going to, mmf!” The last part of her protest was muffled as I pressed the delayed kiss to her lips. Rieka went limp in my arms, melting into the light kiss and leaning into me. The hands that had been about to pound on my chest instead gripped at my armor and she ground into me. A rapid swishing noise told me her tail was stirring up a storm once more.

The kiss continued for several more seconds before Kassandra cleared her throat nearby and made Rieka jump in surprise. My wolf kin princess had apparently forgotten that she had an audience, and we separated lips with a quiet pop a moment later.

“Sorr—,” Rieka began to apologize but Kassandra cut her off.

“What is there to be sorry about? He’s a good kisser! Either way, I was the one who sic’d him on you.” Kassandra was grinning, her hands on her firm hips as she watched us. A faint blush, this time one of arousal I was sure, graced her cheeks. “You two were hot!”

Rieka let out a surprisingly canine whine of embarrassment and covered her face with her hands. I pressed a kiss to the back of each of her hands before I released her, getting two more whimpers in return.

“Don’t tease her too much, Kass. Otherwise Rieka might change her mind.” My warning didn’t have any effect, though, as I could hear the smile in Kassandra’s tone.

“I don’t think I need to worry about that. She’s far too attached to you, Liam.”

Leaving the girls to deal with the argument themselves, I turned my attention back to the tunnel. A quiet smack and a yelp of surprise drew my gaze back to them and I saw Rieka rubbing her bottom with one hand while glaring down at Kassandra, who smirked sweetly up at her.

“You know you want it,” Kassandra teased, sticking her tongue out at Rieka.

“I will end you, Silverscale,” Rieka growled back, but I could see the amusement dancing in her eyes, so I just turned back to what I was doing.

Using the side of the train car and the walls of the tunnel to help brace, I continued to bore into the slide. I had two separate scares while building the low tunnel. One came when the entire pile shifted and several rocks broke loose because of it, though the loose stones were on the other side of the wreckage from us. The second one came when I was about two-thirds of the way through and finally found the actual engine of the train.

What I’d thought was the engine must have been a different sort of car, because when I reached this one, I felt something react to my mana. There came a groaning noise from underneath the pile of rubble, and I had to draw back quickly. More soil sifted loose, but nothing collapsed.

I worked quickly to shore up the tunnel and when I finally broke through to the other side, I groaned in relief. Kassandra asked me a question, but I shook my head and didn’t lose focus on the work. Going back over the packed tunnel I had created, I worked to ensure it was properly compressed and supported as much as possible before finally drawing back. The mana silver in my left hand still had some power in it, but barely a fourth of the energy it had started with remained.

“What was that noise earlier?” Rieka asked when I finally turned back to the girls. Both of them had backed up to give me room, but now that I was finished they were approaching again.

“Which one?”

“When the entire line of carriages lurched. I thought for sure the ceiling was about to fall in.” Rieka was again gnawing on her bottom lip in concern. The expression, while cute, made me want to reassure her.

“Nothing like that, Rieka. The train reacted somehow when I got further along. The engine is buried under all of this rubble, and I guess its movement disturbed the mess.”

“Engine?”

“The thing that pulls the cars. Think of it like the team of horses that pulls a carriage, only the engines I am familiar with worked off of steam power by burning coal. Do you think that they might have built this one to run on mana somehow?”

“People have uncovered stranger things about humans,” Kassandra joined back into the conversation. “I mean, there are those legends of humans who could spout fire from their hands without using mana, or humans that could fly through the air without wings. That is half the fun of working with you, Liam. We get to learn what is legend and what could be fact. Like that cake you said was made of cheese!”

“It’s called cheesecake, that doesn’t mean it’s made of cheese,” I sighed.

“What’s the other half?” Rieka asked while squatting down to peer into the low tunnel.

“The sex, of course,” Kassandra said with such deadpan conviction that Rieka nearly slipped and fell on her face.

“And here I thought you loved me for my body-heat,” I said while feigning mock injury

“Distant third,” Kassandra said with a wicked smirk. “Can we go through there? Are you done now, Liam?”

“Sure. I’ll go first to scout ahead, but you two can decide the order you want to go in.”

“Eeee! I’m so excited!” Kassandra’s voice rose in pitch and the sharp sound breaking the silence echoed through the cave until Rieka turned to hush her friend.

Silence returned once more, and it felt even more oppressive in the wake of being broken so abruptly.

“Sorry.” Kassandra looked contrite for once in the wake of Rieka’s hissed scolding.

The two of them began to discuss who would go second while I squatted down and peered through the tunnel. It was going to require me to crawl on my hands and knees, but it was at least wide enough that I should be able to get through without scraping the sides or having to wriggle on my belly.

Almost wish I could steal Kassandra’s tail. That’ll be a fun shift to have when I can handle that sort of mass. But to make it work for someone my size, that’s going to take a lot more than just fifty percent of my current mass. Even when I get Shape-Shifting (Mass Control) and it triples my current limit, I doubt it’ll be enough. Three hundred pounds is a lot to work with, but wouldn’t cover that. Maybe something else will come up that increases it further?

Pushing aside the thoughts on the shifting, I began to crawl forward on my hands and knees into the tunnel. Shifting my eyes to an owl’s once more, I did my best to maximize my sight with the bit of light that made it into the new passage from behind me. Rieka must have gone next, as the light stone cast further illumination ahead of us and I crawled a little faster.

The air filtering back down the passage was not as musty as I had expected. Considering that the tunnel had been sealed for so long, I half expected the air in the confined tunnel to be foul and nearly unbreathable. I did my best to not think about gas pockets or areas full of carbon dioxide that could kill us without any warning.

Wriggling past the two boulders, I had to use a little of the mana that had regenerated so far in my reservoir to widen the gap, but continued on. I’d nearly made it to the exit when a gasp from behind me made me stop dead.

I couldn’t really turn around in the tight confines of the rock and packed earth tunnel, so I just dropped my head and peered backwards between my arms and legs.

“What is it?” My words were quiet as I asked. Rieka was a bare ten feet back and had rolled onto her side to inspect a portion of the train. I was pretty sure that she was next to the engine, based on where we were in the rock-slide.

“I can sense mana from inside here.” Rieka touched the rusted metal gently with her fingertips.

Shifting slightly so I could see better, I examined what she was touching. The section of metal looked like an access hatch of some kind, though the long years and rust had eaten away at it until the panel looked more like it had sealed itself shut.

“I wouldn’t mess with that, Rieka. If you jostle too much, it might cause a cave in. The last thing we need is for someone to get trapped in here.” Rieka’s ears wilted slightly at my rebuke, but she nodded. “We’ll remember it’s there and try to get it later on. I can work on shoring up this section with my reserve, but right now, it’s not safe to mess with.”

“Okay, Liam.” Rieka nodded once before righting herself and beginning to crawl after me.

I emerged first into a darkness so absolute that, without the glow of Rieka’s light stone, I would have been blind regardless of my Shape-Shifting.

The tunnel continued to stretch out into the distance ahead of us, with both sets of rusty tracks guiding the way. The ceiling and walls of the tunnel appeared to be sturdy once it got past the collapsed portion, and I could see the faint edge of a central support column ahead of me between the tracks. To my right, I saw the blunt nose of the train’s engine poking out of the rubble. It had several dents, and the metal was warped in some places, as if it had either melted or been torn up from an internal explosion.

Stepping away from the train and the little tunnel I’d made, I gave the girls space to come out. Rieka came next, holding her glowing stone over her head and glancing around curiously. Kassandra followed a moment later, dusting off her hands and the front of her corset, which had dirt smeared on it from where she’d bent too far forward.

The sight reminded me of a teasing bout between the two of them from a while ago, where Rieka had told me once of Kassandra leaning over too far while slithering and scooping sand into the front of her bodice because of her larger chest.

Other than the sound of our breathing and the shuffle of footsteps or scales on stone, the cave was even more oppressively silent on this side of the blockage. Other than the collapse, there was only one other difference with this side of the blockage.

Scratch marks covered the stones and the walls nearby. A thousand tiny scratches like someone had been trying, ineffectively, to dig through the stone of the blockage or through the walls, but had given up in seconds. Or possibly like the impact scars of several grenades that went off here, and the shrapnel had bounced back and forth inside the confines of the tunnel.

“How far does this go?” The oppressive silence muffled Kassandra’s question, and the three of us shared a shrug.

“No idea. But I think we need more lights if we are going to keep going. I was hoping that the lights from the platform continued on down the tunnel.” Both girls nodded in agreement with my statement. Even Kassandra, who had been excited to see what was on the other side of the blockage, was biting her lip in hesitation as she glanced around.

“Let's look around here. I want to see more about this ‘injine’ that you were talking about, Liam,” Kassandra suggested, finally turning away from the absolute darkness of the tunnel vanishing ahead of us.

“It’s ‘engine’, dork,” Rieka told Kassandra. The wolf-eared woman rolled her eyes and gestured for Kassandra to follow her while she brought the sole light stone we had around to look at the wreckage from this side.

We really need more of those. Or something like them. Didn’t the girls mention they knew someone at Juneau who had light magic? Too bad we can’t just zip back to town and borrow them to help with this. Maybe if we make another trip?

Shaking myself free of the thoughts, I followed the girls but kept an eye on the tunnel behind us while the girls studied this side of the wreckage. Rieka bent to look closer at some of the deep scratches on the large stones, while Kassandra peered up at the side of the engine. The cave-in was more rock-heavy on this side, with the shattered remains of the support column blocking a good chunk of the tunnel. Part of that support column had crashed down on top of the engine, pinning it in place.

“Lucky you picked that spot to dig through, Liam.” Rieka gestured to the heavily scarred column. “What do you think did that?”

“No idea. Was thinking it looks like scratches from an explosive or something? Maybe from when the engine blew? It does look like parts of it exploded outwards, right Kass?” I turned the last part of the statement into a question directed at my snaky lover and she hummed thoughtfully.

“It does. I want to see into the front part, though. I just don’t want to risk climbing on the rock slide. Liam, can you come here for a minute?” Kassandra motioned me closer to the side of the engine and I dutifully obeyed.

Kassandra quickly wound around me, climbing my body like a tree and using me as support to get the extra few feet of height she needed without climbing on top of the engine. She peered into one section that was torn outwards and squinted.

Rieka didn’t need the snapping fingers or the ‘grabby-hands’ motion that Kassandra made. She tossed the light stone up to Kassandra. The dwarf lamia caught the glowing crystal and held it over her head before she peered into the shattered compartment again.

“Jackpot!” Kassandra murmured a moment later. “Liam, bring me closer. I need to fish some stuff out. I think we just made our investment back.”

“What did you find?” Rieka demanded, crowding in close to my side as I edged closer.

I tested the side of the engine with one hand to ensure it wouldn’t shift or shatter before leaning into one of the heavy wheels. Kassandra didn’t respond to Rieka’s words, just diving headfirst into the large, open crater in the side of the engine.

The sudden lack of light as she took the glowing stone with her dropped Rieka and me into near darkness. All I could see when I looked over was the glittering, icy-blue points of Rieka’s eyes in the darkness, and the faint halo of her pale hair.

Kassandra grunted a few times, her body weight shifting such that I was glad I could brace my hip against the side of the engine. A squeal of metal on metal came before Kassandra’s weight abruptly shifted backwards and she yelped in surprise. I nearly tipped over, but Rieka helped steady me.

“Catch!” Kassandra called before dropping something towards Rieka.

Rieka immediately stuck her hands out and caught the item, grunting in surprise at the weight of it. A moment later, Kassandra yanked something else out of the engine compartment with a crunching sound before she retracted and began wriggling down from her perch on my shoulders. The reverse trip was far more enjoyable for me, as she made a point of grinding her crotch into my chest and rubbing her breasts into my face on the way down.

“Thank you, Liam,” Kassandra purred, pausing to drop a kiss on my lips on the way by.

“What the heck is this?” Rieka asked, peering at the odd bar of metal in her hands.

It was about a foot long and looked somewhat like a pipe-wrench with a large sphere on the bottom end. An odd black metal, shimmering in the light of the glowing stone, made up the entire thing that Rieka held in her hands.

“Dunno, but I could feel the mana coming off of it. That’s why I got it free. It was already mostly broken loose from the mounting from the explosion. This, though, should do us some good!” Kassandra said with a grin, brandishing what she had in her hand.

The item she had was a spray of muddy-brown crystals that looked like quartz and was half the size of her hand.

“Mana crystals, specifically earth mana crystals. Not surprising in a cave like this. I think that might be why the engine reacted when Liam touched it with his mana.”

“Well, damn! That would have been nice to have before we burrowed through and used the silver,” Rieka muttered, hefting the metal in her hands. “This might be worth something, too. Since it’s got a mana charge to it.”

“Dunno what it is, but it might be useful. It definitely looked critical from where it was located in the engine. Whatever blew out the exterior clearly was what knocked it free.”

“Wonder what it’s for,” Rieka murmured again, examining the item. “There’s writing on the side here. Liam, can you read it?”

I stepped closer and Kassandra held the light stone so I could see the writing.

Most of it was gibberish, just numbers and letters combined with a few symbols that looked like logos. Though I found one word stamped into the tarnished metal that made my eyebrows knit together.

“What the hell is a samoflange?”