43. Aru

Aru squinted at the drone footage, assessing the depth of the chasm with practiced ease. "I"d say it"s about twenty-five meters down to the pod," he said, glancing over at Dagor and Negal. "Am I right?"

"Let"s check." Dagor switched to a different screen that showed the stats the drone supplied. "Almost. It"s nearly twenty-eight meters from the top of the cavern to the top of the drone."

"Do we have enough rope to rappel down there?" Aru asked.

Dagor nodded, already rummaging through their packs for the coils of sturdy climbing rope. "We should have plenty. I asked for their longest lengths, which are supposed to be thirty meters long."

Aru smiled. "Aren"t we lucky? What would we have done if the pod was deeper than that?"

Dagor didn"t look concerned. "We have four ropes, each thirty meters long, so we could tie them together. Luckily, we don"t have to."

"Luckily." Aru motioned to a couple of sturdy boulders at the chasm"s edge. "Secure the ropes to those. Dagor and I are going down."

As Dagor and Negal removed the ropes from the backpacks, Jasmine put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "I wondered what you had in those packs that weighed so much. You didn"t tell me that you packed climbing equipment."

"We knew we were looking for a hole in the ground," Dagor said. "We didn"t expect it to be easy to reach."

"Right." She sat on the ground and watched them secure the tough, fibrous lines engineered for rappelling to a couple of boulders.

As they worked, Aru returned to the scanner in his hand and aimed it again at the chasm, hoping to pick up some hint of an energy signature from the pod.

When he got the same results, he had to resign himself to the sad fact that they would not find any survivors. If the stasis pods were still functioning, they would have emitted an energy signature that he would have been able to pick up on his device, especially from this close.

Jasmine walked over to stand next to him. "Did you get anything on that thingy?"

He shook his head.

"Does it mean that they are all dead?"

He hated to quash her hopes. "Maybe the scanner is malfunctioning, or the energy release is so minimal that I need to get even closer to detect it."

She nodded. "I believe that the prince is alive. The goddess wouldn"t have guided me to him only so he could get a proper funeral. But I also feel we are running out of time."

"I hope you are right." Aru crouched next to his large backpack and pulled out a smaller pack, much more suitable for the mission ahead.

Aru placed his water canteen, a couple of energy bars, and several tools he might need to open the pod into the pack.

"Alright," he said, shouldering his pack. "Let"s do this."

Aru donned his headband, which bore a mounted flashlight, his gloves, and the harness, checking each buckle and strap carefully. Next to him, Dagor did the same.

Once they were ready, they stepped up to the edge of the chasm and turned their backs to it. Aru gripped the descender, and after nodding at Dagor, he began lowering himself down, the rope feeding smoothly through the descender. His practiced movements were deliberate and evenly paced.

The cavern walls were slick with moisture, glistening in the beam of his headlamp, probably the result of melting snow. As he went deeper, the cool air enveloped him, the sounds of the outside world fading until there was nothing but the whisper of rope and his and Dagor"s steady breathing.

The descent went flawlessly until he noticed with a sinking feeling that the rope"s end was approaching much sooner than the cavern floor.

With about five to six meters to go and no more rope to spare, he realized he would have to jump the rest of the way.

Aru cursed under his breath, glancing over at Dagor. "My rope is too short."

"So is mine." Dagor let loose a few expletives. "I should have double-checked the length instead of trusting that lying scumbag."

Aru shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his lips at Dagor"s colorful curse word. "It"s not a big deal. We can jump the rest of the way."

Six meters was a short distance for a god to jump. Getting back up would be more difficult but still doable. They would need help taking the individual stasis pods out, and Edgar would need to come with the proper equipment to do that.

Securing the rope"s end, he unclipped from the main line, removed the harness, and leaped down.

Next to him, Dagor landed with a controlled thud on top of the pod"s curved dome.

"That wasn"t hard." Dagor dusted himself off. "But how are we going to get back up?"

Aru shrugged and pulled the scanner from his pack. "We climb."

They were gods. With their enhanced strength and endurance, they could punch their handholds into the rock face if need be. It would be painful, but it was far from impossible.

Dagor didn"t look happy about the prospect of scraping their skin raw, but he didn"t argue. They both knew that Aru was right.

Aru swiped the scanner over the pod"s surface, and his heart leaped at the faint flicker of energy signature that appeared on the screen. It was so weak that it was barely there, but it was better than nothing. Perhaps some of the people inside had survived.

Dagor looked at the scanner. "We need to open this thing," he said, the excitement in his voice echoing Aru"s.

Opening the pod proved to be easier said than done. The exterior was battered and worn, and the release mechanism, which should have been marked and easy to access, was nowhere to be found.

The pod had been designed by the gods, not the Kra-ell, but it was a seven-thousand-year-old model, an antique compared to the types he was familiar with, and apparently things had been made differently back then. Still, there was no way they hadn"t incorporated a mechanical release mechanism that was not dependent on energy supply or didn"t have an auxiliary emergency supply.

They searched the surface of the pod with growing frustration, scrabbling their fingers over every inch of the hull in search of a way to gain entry.

Just as Aru was about to give up hope, his fingers brushed against a small, almost imperceptible seam in the metal, and as he pressed on it, a lever popped out.

"I found it," he called out.

"Thank the merciful Fates." Dagor ran over the dome to where Aru was. "I hope it still works. This thing is ancient."

"Tell me about it." Aru took a deep breath and pulled on the lever, first lightly but then with increasing force when that didn"t work, gradually escalating it for fear of yanking the lever out before triggering the dome"s lifting mechanism.

When a rumble started, signaling that the mechanism had engaged, he was ready to jump for joy. When the dome started shaking, he leaped to safety, plastering himself to the chasm"s wall.

Dagor did the same.

Their feet touched the rim of the pod below the dome and their backs were to the rock. Hopefully, the rising dome would not squash them.

As a hiss of pneumatic pressure echoed from the cavern walls, a plume of dust and debris erupted from the pod"s surface, and with a final protesting groan, the dome began to rise.

The pod opened slowly and majestically, like the maw of a great beast awakening from a long slumber, and as the last of the debris cleared and the dust began to settle, Aru felt his heart leap into his throat at the sight that greeted them.

There, nestled within the protective embrace of the pod, were twenty stasis chambers, their surfaces gleaming dully in what little light filtered into the depths of the chasm, but mainly from their headlamps.