Page 1694

((Triple Monday -- Page 2 of 3))
It was a breakthrough, but not a large enough one. Voreese immediately volunteered to squeeze through and check on everyone, but Zeff didn’t want any of the reapers going in on their own. So the group waited a while longer before the Lord Elroy finally managed to widen the hole enough to peek through, and ultimately, for a person to fit through.

Zeff made an icy staircase extending up from within the warehouse and connected it to Hector’s platform. They all descended in single file with Zeff in the lead. Hector was slightly worried that a staircase made of solid ice would be rather perilous to walk on and so added a ribbed layer of iron to it.

The light source from within the warehouse turned out to be a tall lamp with several people clustered around it, all wearing climate suits, though none were donning their helmets.

Hector recognized a couple faces from House Sebolt, one from House Delaguna, two from House Blackburn, and after a moment, two from House Elroy. Marcos and Ramira Elroy stepped out from behind the others.

When they saw their father, their eyes lit up, and they ran to him. The man dropped to his knees and hugged both, a child for each arm.

Hector breathed a sigh of relief. It had only been a few days, but it felt like he hadn’t seen them in ages, and it was certainly a load off his mind to finally see that they were okay. Their living conditions didn’t look too bad, either. They had some chairs, the lamp, a pile of books to read, a cart full of food, and a bathroom.

There was still much to be done, however. Just this one warehouse was loaded up with pods full of sleeping Rainlords, and getting them all out of here safely was not going to be an easy task. The first task, everyone agreed, was to find all the captive servants and free them so that they could assist in the effort. Certain servants like Dimas or Melchor might have been a priority, but the problem was that no one knew where any individual servant’s brain was located. They only knew that they were all stored somewhere up in the rafters or in one of the other warehouses--all of which were currently filled with whatever that black material was.

Hector, Zeff, and Diego set to work trying to find and free the servants while Manuel got started removing the plethora of pods from the warehouse.

Hector didn’t much care for the digging. Since they were only looking for servant brains this time, they didn’t have to be quite as careful as Zeff had been earlier, but there was still the concern that they would run across a captive reaper and accidentally kill it. Not to mention all the slumbering Rainlords below could get hurt by any falling debris.

So it was an exercise in precision. And damn this black stuff was tough. Hector couldn’t even put a dent in it without resorting to his orbiting technique, but he was simultaneously afraid of using that technique with the same level of intensity as he had against the worm. It was tricky, trying to find a happy medium. So tricky, in fact, that he only managed to find one brain by the time Zeff and Diego had each found four.