Blake stepped out of the wrecked ship, his eyes adjusting to the strange light of the alien sun. The HUD flickered with activity, overlaying the chaotic landscape of the junkyard with a kaleidoscope of data points and annotations. He and Eland had taken a break to hydrate and get a snack, and now they were back to salvaging.He moved forward, his boots crunching on the debris-strewn ground, distinct from the crunching of the wheels on the cart that Eland had provided him. The air was thick with the scent of rust and mud. Wandering the haphazard metal stacks alone somehow made him feel young again, like his mother had let him take a cart and wander the grocery store on his own for the first time.

  His HUD pinged and flickered, tagging objects with targeting reticles and scrolling metadata. Blake's mind raced as he processed each notification, letting his training sort signal from noise.

  The scrap towers loomed higher as he penetrated deeper into the maze-like yard, jagged metal teeth against the alien sky. His augmented vision painted the landscape in false colors, highlighting salvage among the detritus. He found what he needed piece by piece - a coil of carbon-fiber cable rated for deep space, copper wiring still sealed in its original insulation, a cluster of fusion cells showing green on his power readings. Each discovery went into the cart, a growing inventory that might just buy him a ticket off this rock.

  Picking his way through the wreckage, Blake's thoughts drifted to Eland. The interstellar archaeologist, with a towering, cetacean-like frame, should have been a mystery—a riddle of alien biology and inscrutable tech. And yet, there was something oddly familiar about Eland, a thread of shared experience woven into his mannerisms that felt... human, almost. It bridged the gulf between their vastly different worlds, closing the gap of form, technology, even existence itself. Blake had always been comfortable flying solo, but the idea of having someone like Eland watching his six out here? Yeah, that wasn’t so bad.

  He was supremely lucky to have come across such a potential ally on only his second day being stranded. Hopefully that stroke of fortune wouldn't use up his entire allotment of good luck.

  The sun climbed higher in the sky, its heat beating down on Blake's back. A skittering sound drew his attention and he whirled, hand instinctively reaching for his sidearm. A small creature, no larger than a rabbit, regarded him with bulbous eyes set above a puckered mouth. Iridescent scales shimmered along its hunched back as it sat up on double-jointed hind legs.

  Blake's breath came out slow. Controlled. A smile tugged at his mouth as he watched the creature vanish into the twisted metal heap. Jumpy. Getting spooked by the local wildlife wasn't going to help anyone. But better paranoid than dead.

  Blake's heart rate ticked up again as the HUD pinged urgently, highlighting an anomaly amidst the debris. He approached cautiously, his boots crunching on the scattered scrap. As he drew closer, the sight that greeted him sent a chill down his spine.

  An arm, slender and lifeless, protruded from beneath a mound of twisted metal. Blake's breath caught in his throat as he carefully shifted the detritus, exposing more of the body with each piece he moved.

  Finally, the figure was revealed in full. It was an alien, but unlike any of the now 3 types Blake had encountered before. Dark auburn hair framed delicate, almost elven features. The body was clad in a sleek, form-fitting suit of black and graphite, reminiscent of a wetsuit but made from a material that not even Blake's HUD could identify.

  Blake crouched. Studied the dead alien with a combat veteran's eye. Entry wound: front. Exit wound: catastrophic. Whatever had hit this guy had meant business.

  The entry point was neat. Clean. Smaller than a dime. The exit was different. Gone. Just gone. Like someone had scooped out the alien's back with a shovel.

  Blake touched the suit. High-tech stuff. Not fabric, not armor, something else. It was responsive under his touch, almost like memory gel and ice-cold despite the heat of the day. Whatever had killed this person, Blake hadn't seen anything like it before. And that was a problem. Unknown threats were always the deadliest.

  That axiom proved itself perfectly as Blake thoughtlessly rested his whole open hand against the corpse's chest.

  The suit seemed to twitch beneath his touch. On instinct, Blake jerked his hand back, staring in disbelief as dark tendrils began to unfurl from the body like sinuous vines. They lashed out, snaring his wrist in a cold, vise-like grip.

  He yanked back. No good. The tendril's grip was absolute, microscopic hooks biting deep into flesh. Blake went for his knife but the damned tentacles were faster. More tendrils erupted, wrapping his arm in liquid darkness. Adrenaline started kicking in. Fight or die.

  The black mass pulsed. Alive. Intelligent. It flowed like oil, engulfing him before he could react. When it hit his face, primal fear took over. No air. Just suffocating pressure and writhing movement against his skin. His lungs burned. His muscles strained. Nothing worked.

  Pure animal terror gripped him as he felt the cold liquid pouring into his mouth and through his sinuses. The same gut-level dread he'd felt as the wormhole lifted him free from gravity's embrace filled him now.

  His supposed retirement was getting worse by the minute.

  For the second time in as many days, Blake Connover, infamous gun-for-hire and supposed professional bad-ass was rendered stone-cold unconscious.

  Eland walked on thin planes of golden light as he picked his way through the debris field, his shadow stretching like a giant's across crushed metal and broken machinery. Now that he was separated from Blake, he could leverage his movement technique to navigate the higher stacks.

  His Path had long since elevated him beyond mundane concerns like temperature, and he barely noticed the scorching heat that would have lesser men sweating. Still, he could feel the rays beating down on him. He didn't care for the slightly-too-blue light of the local star.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He checked his Demiurge menu again, hoping something had changed. And of course, nothing at all was different. He rubbed the bridge of his broad, cetacean nose, the irritation in his posture matching the frustration in his thoughts.

  Quest: "Orbit or Oblivion"

  Faction: n/a

  You’ve defied all logic and probability by stranding yourself for a second time. Coincidence? Only the One knows for sure, but we know that you've managed to land an entire continent away from the nearest Skaeldrin city with a functioning orbital lift. Great work!

  Repair your ship enough to take flight, either to the Skaeldrin city of Idrous, or up into low-planetary orbit.

  Good luck, Professor Turun

  — Yours Truly, Chronicler Durend

  His eyes dropped to the repair meter floating below the quest at the edge of his vision: [ Ship Integrity: 11% ]

  "Eleven percent," he muttered, more to himself than to Zephyr, though he knew his VI companion was always listening. "Barely out of double digits. At this rate, I’ll have to celebrate my birthday here."

  "Given Stokrine lifespans," Zephyr's voice played in his mind, "you’ll still have plenty more after this upcoming one. Hey, maybe you can enjoy next year's here as well!"

  "Hah!" Eland exhaled sharply. He certainly did not snort as he laughed, as such behavior was undignified for a scholar of his station. "Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, Zeph."

  His heads-up display stuttered, and Eland watched in horror as Blake's health indicators nosedived straight into critical territory. The nanite readout blared an alert that punched him right in the gut—Blake was dying. And the poor bastard didn't have any cultivation or even basic System access to help save him.

  Eland stretched his spiritual perception out to its limit, sweeping it through the junkyard like invisible fingers, his awareness crawling across twisted heaps of scrap metal and abandoned tech. Each piece of wreckage left a distinct impression against his metaphysical touch, painting a warped landscape of mechanical decay.

  The faintest wisp of aether caught his attention. It was Blake, but not as he had left him—the man's vital energies were guttering like a dying ember.

  Eland launched himself forward, each step precise and purposeful as he manifested more shimmering planes of golden mana beneath his feet. The wreckage might as well have been a paved road—his power made footing irrelevant. He arrived to Blake's location in less than a minute, his heart tight in his chest.

  Blake lay crumpled on his side, unmoving. Beside him, the corpse of a Tylwith warrior, naked and battle-scarred. Eland approached cautiously, his senses on high alert. He knelt beside Blake, his massive hand dwarfing the human's shoulder as he checked for signs of life. Blake's chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, each one a small comfort.

  "Zephyr," Eland rumbled, "run a deep scan; find out what's wrong."

  "You were taking your time asking, so I've already started." Zephyr's tone was dry in his mind. "I'm detecting abnormal brainwave patterns and elevated adrenal levels. There's physical trauma, micro-abrasions, and some puncture wounds from what might be needles. There's also abnormal nerve response indicative of electrocution, but I don't see any obvious external burns."

  A chill ran down Eland's spine as he extended one massive hand over Blake's unconscious form. Eland extended his spiritual awareness once more, the discipline ingrained in him through years of relentless training, even as Zephyr focused on assessing Blake's physical form. Gossamer threads of his Resonance and Intent quested toward Blake's unprotected spirit.

  The very instant those threads made contact with Blake’s spirit, he recoiled, sharp and instinctive, like he'd just seized a live wire with his bare hand.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  Blake's aura roiled with unfamiliar energies, pulsing and shifting in discordant patterns that defied Eland's understanding. Something had taken root within the man, twisting and reshaping his very essence.

  "Zeph, are you seeing this?"

  "Affirmative. Blake's vitals are... unstable. We don't have any information locally on anything similar. Some kind of parasite, maybe? Perhaps the Tylwith brought a guest with him."

  At that, Eland turned his attention to the fallen Tylwith to look for any signs of parasitic infection. As he did, he couldn't help but note the subdermal decorations and ornate scarring on the warrior's chest and arms. This was no ordinary soldier. This was man nobility—a scion of the imperial line.

  Trouble, Eland thought. But trouble for later.

  "Cause of death was almost definitely the vortex round he took to the chest," Zephyr sent. "It nearly split him in half coming out the other side. He must have taken the shot unarmored."

  Eland grunted an acknowledgment. At least it had been a quick death. His findings on the parasite front were less rosy. The energy weapon that had mutilated the noble shouldn't have damaged his spiritual framework too badly. Despite that, Eland was looking at a tangled and broken mess that could only have been the result of a deliberate spiritual assault.

  "Definitely a noble," he mused. "Someone went through a lot of trouble to make sure he died and stayed dead. It was a professional hit, then they threw him into a Breach to hide the body."

  "Can you tell if he had something living in him or not?"

  "I'd put money on it, yeah, but no aristocrat would let some random spiritual hitchhiker go untreated like this. We're after some type of construct. Could've jumped to Blake. Stay alert on his vitals—I need to know if anything shifts, even a little."

  "Understood. What about the Imperial?"

  Eland rose, his eyes lingering on the warrior's still form. "We'll deal with that mess later—if ever. Right now, Blake is our priority."

  He scooped up the unconscious man, cradling him against his broad chest. Blake's head lolled, his breath hot against Elan's neck.

  What in the seven suns is going on here? he thought, his gaze shifting from Blake to the dead Tylwith and back again.

  He wanted answers. But first, he needed to get Blake to safety.