“Well I suppose you could, if you really felt like it,” Alf said. I took a look at the lists again. To be honest, quite a lot of what was on them was actually a bit boring, or incomprehensible. Things like Motivation Chamber, Navigation Calculation Office, and Secondary Advance Force Storage (which I still didn’t really understand). I’m sure they were useful but I didn’t especially care to find out at the moment. My eyes widened a little bit as I read Emergency Crew Withdrawal Mechanism. I couldn't really afford to let Eoin know that existed, or else we'd be forced to use it and then no more climbing for us.

  “Both sides are actually quite dull and technical,” I said. “So I vote we go left.”

  “Any particular reason?” Tove asked.

  “Literally none.” The others mostly seemed to accept that, and so off we went.

  The corridor banked to the right fairly quickly, keeping this gentle curve as we followed it around. It was more of the same brass as the rest of this whole place, but with the occasional door that branched off to break up the monotony. I listed them as we went past, just to keep the others interested. The Senior Observer’s Bunk, Internal Messaging Redistribution Room, and aforementioned Navigation Calculation Office all showed up and were passed by.

  We were moving fairly slowly, but this wasn’t a huge area and we could tell that we were already beyond 90 degrees, and turning back on ourselves. About now I began to smell what I can only describe as ‘old’. It’s a smell I knew from dungeon-diving – a musty, untouched smell which comes with the territory of long-abandoned places. Either there was something interesting up ahead, or we’d found where your hopes and dreams had gone. (Sorry).

  I slowed down to a stop. “Can you all smell that?” I asked. There was a chorus of sniffing before Tove answered on their behalf. “It smells like dust,” she said. “So what? It’s an old place.” Nalfis seemed to pick up on what I was thinking though.

  “If it’s an old place, then why didn’t it smell like this anywhere else?” Everyone turned to me as he asked that.

  “I don’t bloody know, do I? For all I know they left an old carpet in one of the rooms.”

  “And here I thought you were meant to be the expert,” Alf tutted. I was getting to understand him a bit though, so I could tell that was sarcasm. I think it was his default setting.

  “Well my second guess was the overpowering smell of your oldness had just smothered everything else so far.” He just grinned in response to that.

  “Seriously though,” Tove said, “should we be worried?” I gave a so-so gesture.

  “Maybe? Different doesn’t always mean dangerous though.” That seemed to be enough for most of them, so I started heading off again. It’s not like we were going to learn what it was by just standing here.

  As it turned out, we learned pretty quickly anyway. In this starkly, bright corridor, the tone of the light began to change, getting dimmer as we rounded the bend. On the outer wall, the metal gave way to a thick, floor-to-ceiling pane of glass which was now showing the glimmer of breaking dawn beyond. Further around on the right there was one more door, and then, anticlimactically, a ladder.

  Slightly more exciting than the ladder, though, was a bundle of faded, torn clothing that rested at the bottom of them. We hadn’t been talking, but now we extra didn’t talk as we crept to the foot of the ladder. I glanced at the door we walked past on our way to the ladder, reading the words Internal Guardian Workshop & Barracks stencilled on it. I didn’t have a chance to share my findings before Alf asked the obvious question. “Is this something we should be worried about, then?”

  “That really depends on the kind of things that worry you.”

  “Dead bodies tend to worry me.”

  “Really? I tend to be more worried about the things that make them.”

  “Could we all stop being funny for a moment,” said Eoin (but it’s such a good coping mechanism, I thought), “and actually take a proper look at this?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  We all shuffled closer, and just stared at the bundle. It was small, and if we assumed it was clothes, then it wouldn’t have fit any of us. It was child-sized at best, but far more likely to have been for a Gnome. Nobody had any immediate ideas about what to do, so Nalfis just kicked it a bit. It rattled. Realistically we’d all been expecting that, but it didn’t make it any more comforting. We all looked at each other, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be said.

  I turned around, properly taking in the glass wall that was opposite this unfortunate ex-person. As places to die went, I could imagine worse. The first fingers of red dawn were creeping up from the right, and the full, cratered sweep of the plains of Denofell stretched out below, so far down that I felt more like I was looking at a map than a vista. Way across to the left I thought I could see the silhouette of the Skoldur mountains, which was a Hel of a shock. The view was pretty special.

  There was a steady rise and fall, but not accompanied by any of the stomping and shaking that the giant footfalls were creating way, way down there. From up here it was much more like the pleasant rocking of a great ship. I imagined what it would be like for this to stride into the ocean, watching the water crest up over the glass, and the lights from above piercing the gloom and illuminating the sea floor.

  The light in the corridor began to change again as I looked out the window. Darkness crept in around the edges, and a faint amber tone began to take root. It pooled like a lens over my eyes, changing the features of the landscape. The useless, extraneous details faded away, while the bits that mattered were picked out in high contrast. Traces of old Gnomish earthworks and fortifications became clear, as did the route of the colossus, which hugged them tightly like the mobile fire-support it had been. I thought about the mission it had been given, considered how I could best carry that out as-

  “Hey, Indy. What’s this?” I turned to the voice of Tove, who was standing in front of another door, on the far side of the ladder. The amber light flitted away like a switch had been flicked, and I had a weird second where my train of thought abandoned me. Meh. “What’s what?” I asked.

  “This door,” she said. “What does it say on it?” I sauntered over to have a look. She leaned in next to me as I drew up next to her. “And also what were you looking at?” she asked.

  “I was just looking out the window.” I said. “It’s a nice view.”

  “You looked like you’d seen something interesting is all.” I stared at her a bit before she shrugged and continued. “I just wanted to know what.”

  “I mean, you don’t get to see views from this high up often, do you.” She looked at me in a flat, slightly unimpressed sort of way. “I lived in a hut up in the mountains for a few years,” she waved towards the outside, “so this is all a bit lost on me.”

  “That gives me so many questions.”

  “Answer mine first then.” She pointed at the door. “What does this say?” I stared at it, seeing a familiar and annoying phrase. “It says: Central Advance Force Control and Allocation Room.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “No idea. I keep seeing that phrase though – Advance Force. Still not sure what it means.”

  “Like a scout group?”

  “What?”

  “You know, the part of an army that goes ahead and checks for enemies and things like that. An Advance Force.”

  “Oh, right. Uhhhh, no, it’s not that.”

  “Well how do you know?”

  “Because of the word choices. Advance Force is a pretty literal translation, but I’d say it’s Advance like go forwards, and Force like shove, or push. The act of forcing something, not an army thing.”

  “Soooo, it’s the stuff that makes this move, right?” I looked at her, and just tried to think of any sort of response, or retort, or way to continue that conversation. Internally, I was just running up against the wall of my own idiocy. Lateral thinking clearly isn’t a strong point of mine, but in my defence, there was no such thing as an engine at the time as far as we knew. Taking my silence for confusion, Tove continued. “You know, like how wind could be considered ‘Advance Force’ for a boat?” There goes that excuse.

  “I get the concept,” I said, “I just feel really stupid.” She smiled sweetly.

  “Well don’t worry then,” I gave a half smile back, “because you only looked a little bit stupid.”

  I still didn’t really know how to respond, so I kept my mouth shut in case it got me insulted again. It did make me think though. The area I’d climbed through was, according to the sign I’d seen, Advance Force storage. So what was this mysterious thing? Engines might not have existed, but it’s not as if there was no such thing as fuel, and if there’s one thing that every type of it had in common (wood, coal, etc.) it was that it all ran out. The vapour I’d seen in those tanks had obviously been getting used, but it was also just as obviously regenerating. A neat trick.

  The room seemed quite important. “Hey everyone! This room seems quite important!” I yelled. It’s important to be clear about these things. I gingerly (no pun intended) pushed the door open, which got about 10 centimetres before hitting something. I pushed hard, and the door slowly ground open, until it was wide enough that I could stick my head through, and check what was blocking it.

  Of course it had to be a dead body.