The air in the open barracks was a stagnant soup of sweat, ash, and despair. It was a long, low hall built from the same grey, leathery stone as the rest of Kamaten Island, with rows of massive bunks carved directly into the walls. The only light came from a few sickly yellow glow-stones embedded in the ceiling, their light struggling by the perpetual gloom. The omnipresent chiku-taku of the spinning gears outside was muffled here, reduced to a throbbing ache in the skull, the Hitotsume's lullaby heard through a wall of stone.
Aurélie Nakano Takeko sat on the edge of a bunk sized for an Ogre, her boots dangling a full meter above the rough floor. The seastone manacle around her forearm was a cold, dead clamp that made her whole arm feel leaden and distant, a constant echo of the silence it imposed on the locust within. In her lap was her worn leather notebook. With a charcoal nub salvaged from a cook-fire, she was sketching, her silver hair falling around a face of focused intensity. The lines were clean, recalling the intricate, spiraling runes she'd seen etched around the base of the Jizo Ogre statues she'd been scrubbing. They were not decorative; their geometric harshness spoke of function, of containment.
The heavy iron door groaned on its hinges, scraping through a layer of fallen ash. Three figures shuffled in, their silhouettes blotting out the dim light from the hall.
The first was Maki Nazigai Wicklock. At fifty feet, she had to stoop to enter, her ram-like horns clearing the lintel by inches. The spiritual fire that once animated her was banked, reduced to embers. Her earth-colored skin looked dusty, parched. She moved with a deep, weary gravity and sank onto a bunk opposite Aurélie with a sigh that stirred the dust on the floor. The chains connecting her seastone cuffs clanked like a funeral bell.
Behind her came Juni Vexwell, his usual flamboyance reduced to a tragic parody. His vibrant, plume-like hair was matted with grey ash. He let out a dramatic, whistling sigh and flopped onto the bunk next to Maki, landing with a force that made the solid stone frame groan in protest. He rested the back of his wrist against his forehead, the links of his seastone shackle catching the faint light.
"Shew," he lamented, his voice a strained version of its theatrical boom. "This daily routine of turning the world's biggest corkscrew is not doing good things for my complexion. I'm developing wrinkles that could hide smuggling routes."
Lastly, Roco Vultion entered. The tiger-striped revolutionary looked like a mountain that had been eroded by a bitter wind. His ochre skin faded, the black stripes less distinct. He didn't speak, just sat heavily on a bunk beside Juni, his massive hands, capable of crushing stone, now lying limp in his lap. He stared at the floor as if reading accusations in the cracks.
Aurélie looked up from her sketch, her steel-grey eyes assessing them. "Your labor appears to be taking its toll," she observed, her voice quiet but clear in the hushed space.
Maki nodded slowly, not lifting her head. "Turning the screw ages you. The Anchor doesn't just move time… it feeds on it. The effects are not subtle." Her deep, resonant voice was hoarse, as if from singing too many dirges.
Aurélie opened her mouth to reply, but the door creaked again.
Ember slipped in, a small, darting shadow. Her neon-pink hair was dulled under a film of ash, her mismatched eyes wide and watchful. She moved directly to a lower bunk and curled onto it, drawing her knees to her chest. Mr. Cinders was clutched tightly in her grip.
Charlie Leonard Wooley followed, ducking his head under the doorframe. His pith helmet was, of course, still firmly in place. "Ahem. Good evening, all," he said, adjusting his wire-framed glasses as he picked his way across the room to Aurélie. "The ambient sulfur content tonight is particularly acute, isn't it?"
Roco lifted his head, his feline gaze sharpening. "Do you have it?" he asked, his gravelly voice cutting through Charlie's academic preamble.
Charlie took a seat on the bunk beside Aurélie. "I believe I do. Should we wait for Amira before we—"
As if summoned, the door groaned open a final time. Amira Kestrel Wevits entered, her white medical coat a ghostly smear in the darkness. She took in the scene—the exhaustion etched into Maki's noble face, the slump of Roco's shoulders, the dramatic sprawl of Juni—and her large, rabbit-pink eyes narrowed. She glared over her shoulder at the empty doorway as the heavy door slammed shut of its own weight.
"Barbarians!" she hissed, her clinical voice laced with a heat that surprised even her. She hurried to Juni, her 25-foot frame moving with a liquid, worried grace. She cupped his face in her hands, tilting it toward the poor light, her thumbs brushing the ash from under his eyes.
Juni sat up, flicking a wrist to gently bat her hands away. "Girl, please. You know there's nothing in that bag of tricks for this. We're just being… screwed right now." He chuckled, a dry, wheezing sound. "Literally."
Maki sighed. "That was terrible, Juni."
Roco rolled his eyes and let out a groan that was equal parts annoyance and profound fatigue.
"This isn't funny," Amira insisted, her voice dropping to a death-side whisper. "The drain on your cellular vitality, on your very lifespan…"
"Girl, stop!" Juni said, more forcefully now, though he didn't push her away again. "I already know. You fussing about it like a mother hen isn't going to change the rotation of the screw. Save your energy."
Charlie cleared his throat with a sharp ahem. The sound acted like a conductor's tap, pulling all their weary attention to him. "Now that we are all here," he began, "should we begin?"
Maki nodded, the movement stirring the air. "Yes. Why don't you start, scholar?"
Charlie sat up a little straighter, the glow-stone light reflecting off his lenses. "I believe I have successfully located the primary external communications relay. It's housed in a secondary spire adjacent to the Grand Chrono-Anchor's main capstan housing. The security appears to be primarily logistical rather than martial—they never expected anyone to want to call out from here."
Roco's head lifted fully, a spark returning to his gaze. "Oh. That is good news."
Charlie nodded, about to continue his technical analysis when Maki interjected, her solemn eyes shifting to Aurélie. "Are you sure your companions will come if you can reach them? And once they arrive… will they be able to follow through? Destroying the offshore rigs and turbines is not a task for the faint of heart."
Aurélie met her gaze, her expression unchanging. "Our companions are reliable. They possess resources and a certain… disruptive capacity that will provide the necessary distractions. They will come."
Maki leaned forward, her chains whispering. "You place great faith in—"
"Girl, stop!" Juni cut her off, waving a languid hand. "Unless you've got a better idea brewing in that lovely head of yours, what's the point of planning an escape if we can't even get off this rock?" He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, and by extension, the sea. "The moment we step out of line, Stanislav and his icicle of a brother will turn us into interesting stains on the ash."
Roco's voice, rough and pragmatic, cut between them. "And the armory? Faith is fine, but we need something that can make a dent in 'Deep-Freeze' or 'Stone-Heart'."
From her bunk, Ember's voice piped up, small but startlingly clear. "I know where it is." All eyes turned to her. She wasn't looking at them, but at the wall, as if seeing through it. "But it has constant video snail surveillance. Two snails, wide angles. We'd need to cut the transmission feed from the relay room itself if we want to get in unseen."
Amira nodded, tapping her surgical needle against one of her talon-like horns. "A logical assessment. We most likely won't be able to access it until this place is in a state of chaos. A coordinated disruption."
Maki lifted her massive wrist, the heavy seastone cuff and its chain looking like a bizarre piece of brutalist jewelry. "There are also these things. We need the keys, or a way to get them off. We cannot fight, let alone flee, like this."
Charlie interjected before the discussion could spiral. "Ahem. Before we focus on armories or shackles, let us focus on step one. Getting to the communications relay and getting the message out. That is the linchpin."
Ember, still staring at the wall, asked quietly, "Do you think they will be in range?"
Aurélie answered, her voice carrying a bedrock certainty. "The plan was to rendezvous with Marya and continue on. I am confident that once they realized we were not on Gora-Gora, they would have used our Vivre Cards to determine our direction. They are in our general vicinity. Potentially searching for us now."
Roco let out a low hum. "That is a lot of confidence. They must be very reliable."
Charlie cleared his throat again. "Ahem. Marya is a formidable individual. And her other companions are… decidedly capable." He turned as Aurélie held out her notebook to him, open to the page of runes.
Charlie's entire demeanor shifted. The pedantic scholar vanished, replaced by a man of pure, ravenous intellect. He took the book as if it were sacred scripture. "You were able to copy them? The glyphic structure is remarkably preserved!"
Aurélie gave a single nod. "Will you be able to decipher them?"
Charlie was already lost, his finger tracing the charcoal lines. "The syntactical arrangement suggests a warning, or a binding proclamation… the recurring trigraph here… Ahem! Just give me a few." He pulled a loupe from his vest pocket, his world collapsing to the page before him.
In the heavy silence that followed, broken only by the distant chiku-taku and Charlie's soft, excited muttering, the conspiracy felt both fragile and immense. Hope, on Kamaten Island, was a dangerous, combustible substance. They all sat surrounded by it, waiting for the spark.
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