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Danika rolls her neck to loosen tensed muscle as she watches her team of fellow Hunters from a small, rocky outcrop. The tall, powerfully built blonde white woman massages the flesh that remains of her left shoulder where the cybernetic components of her metal arm connect to skin, impatient for the team to finish. Ten or so feet below, spread out across the cavern, most of them hoist the pilfered arcane device: the one they’ve brought to crack the seal on this back gate into Sage’s Hollow. The visible wound in the fabric of reality that forms the gate is a near perfectly vertical seam glowing red in the air, painting the entire cavern in its murky crimson haze.
“Bit early to need your next dose,” Jess says quietly as she climbs up the small hill to Danika, Jess’s boots echoing loud against the cavern stone. The smaller, dark-haired white woman pushes off the wall she braced herself against on her way up to Danika’s vantage, watching where she steps. Water runs free in rivulets and streams along the floor of the cave; the flows treacherous even for those used to wandering subterranean paths like these, hunting trophies from the kind of creatures that are only supposed to exist in stories.
“Couple hours left,” Danika says as Jess wipes rock dust from her hands. “Going to let the last ones taper. I want to be clear-headed for this,” Danika says, glancing at her friend.
“Small mission window. You still hellbent on going after the thing that did that, too?” Jess says, inclining her head at Danika’s metal arm.
Danika opens her mouth to answer, before the two women turn their attention back to the team below as the stolen device hums. Its ringing echoes around the cavern, resonant harmonics converging from cavern walls and bouncing back again, creating rippling layers of sound. Melodies evolve into acoustic resonance, building until a set of stones crack, shedding old rock in flaking chips to reveal complicated patterns of light and tech in evenly spaced pylons arranged to either side of the gate.
Danika smiles as the gate itself begins humming with the strange music echoing through the cavern. “Given what Gideon was kind enough to share with us from S.P.E.A.R.’s recon work?” Danika glances down at the massive briefcase at her feet, Jess following her gaze. “Absolutely.”
