CHAPTER 1 - Star-Raven on the Remains of Planet Mznat

Steam burst from the earth, sending heat and vapor into the atmosphere, a harsh sizzling warning of massive burns to anyone who may wander too close.

The landscape was pockmarked with volcanoes and steam vents, all showing signs of disturbed tectonic activity that had in recent years scarred the entirety of the planet.

Smoke clouded the air, sunlight making its best effort to pierce the gloom with its unyielding rays. It wasn't much, but it brought with it the promise that maybe somewhere out there, there was hope.

As a ship burst from the lower cloud layer, within sight of the ground below, a dark feathered raven guided it over the landscape carefully.

"How do we even know there will be anything left to salvage?" The First Mate asked, a burrowing owl with a mechanic contraption built into the right side of his head, an electronic visor that could be raised or lowered over his right eye whenever at his will.

"Mznat is a big planet," the raven said, "After the war, many people have abandoned their need for their belongings and are just struggling to get by."

The burrowing owl looked out at the passing landscape below with a look of sadness on his face. "Not long ago, this planet was thriving everywhere you looked, it's a pity to see what war and a few carelessly placed bombs can do to a planet."

The raven nodded sadly, but concentrated on steering the ship toward its destination.

"Our contact said he'd meet us a few miles ahead from here, just outside of the village," he said, pointing at the map on the panel in front of him, "the area around the monastery is supposed to be highly volatile, so you'll have to make sure we have all the protective equipment we need."

"Got it," the burrowing owl said with a salute, and rushed to the hold to get everything ready. The raven chuckled to himself as he continued to pilot the ship to their final destination.

Reaching the spot their contact had directed them to, a flat stretch of empty ground just off from the end where a few buildings of a small village stood, the raven lowered the starship gently to the ground, touching down, he shut down the engines and disengaged the flight systems. Checking the panel to make sure that the air was breathable, he made his way to the back of the ship where his first mate was waiting with the protective equipment, and prepared to open the airlock.

"The oxygen level is thin, but still breathable, the air is heavy with smoke and other debris however, so it is best to limit our exposure as much as possible."

"I know Skree," the burrowing owl said, gesturing to his visor, "I read it on the way in."

"Right," Skree said, then disengaged the airlock.

Stepping out into the smoky air, Skree and his companion made their way down the ramp and across the ash-coated ground to where a goose stood waiting, a few meters off, by the beginning of the line of buildings. The goose looked just as dejected as the buildings behind him, their roofs in disrepair, even caving in at some points. Skree didn't know the full story of what had happened in this particular village, but he could tell this place had been in its share of hardship for quite some time.

"Hello there," Skree said, "I'm Skree, and this is my companion, Third Wheel. You contacted us about a trade?"

"Yes, yes," said the goose, reaching into his pockets and withdrawing a large key, which he almost dropped and fumbled with. He held the keys before Skree, showing them to him in the overcast light.

"The keys to the monastery," the goose said, "You are free to whatever you can salvage."

Skree took the keys and inspected them carefully, "We'll pay you exactly what we promised, but I have to wonder, what makes you decide to abandon your sacred pledge to give final access to the monastery to us?"

"All my brothers are dead, the land surrounding that place is not safe to live on; what good is holding onto your religion when even the world under your feet cannot be depended on. All I want is to charter passage off this planet and never lay eye on it again."

Skree looked at the goose and nodded understanding. "Third Wheel wire over his twelve-thousand share, and then we'll head over there right away."

Third Wheel looked up at him confused, "I thought we agreed to eight thousand."

Skree just gave him a subtly look, and pulling down his visor, Third Wheel ran through the programs and wired the money over to the goose. The goose's screen dinged, and he pulled it out and looked at it, a look of relief crossing his face.

"If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to," the goose said, then giving a bow, he turned and hurried back into the village with his money close by him."

"What was that for?" Third Wheel asked, "That's more money than we made allowance for for this place."

Skree waved a wing passively, "It's an ancient monastery on a dying planet, there's certain to be more than a few artifacts of value buried in there."

Skree grabbed his protective equipment from Third Wheel and readied it in his own pack. Taking to the air, they headed over the village and toward the danger zone where the monastery waited.

From the air, they could see even more in bad shape this village had fallen, not only had many of the roofs caved in and some buildings had collapsed entirely, but the streets had been littered with trash, and many residents were seen digging through trashcans like pigeons, searching for any scraps they could find.

"I do not like it here," Third Wheel said in observation.

Skree nodded, turning his gaze ahead to not have to pay attention to what was going on on the world below.

Flying was hard due to the planet's thin air and the heavy smoke that surrounded them on every side, and soon, Skree and Third Wheel, wings flapping hard, had to come in for a landing, barely a few miles past the village.

"I think we're going to need those breathing masks now," Third Wheel said, panting heavily.

"Okay," Skree said, each of them pulling their masks out of their packs. Skree handed Third Wheel a water, and they both took a drink.

Third Wheel pulled down his visor and looked at the map on his screen, "From here, it looks like we're about halfway to our destination... Here, take a look."

Skree pulled out his screen, and Third Wheel sent the map over to it. Skree looked at it carefully, then at the sky. "If we hurry, we should make it a couple hours before sunset. Are you ready?"

Third Wheel adjusted his mask and nodded, "Just a little out of breath."

The two took off again, the sound of their wingbeats heavy in the lightness of the thin air.

Once they reached the area, a gaping sinkhole in the valley that stretched miles in either direction, where the earth had collapsed beneath an entire city, the sun had grown near to the horizon, hanging lightly over the distant barren mountains.

The monastery was impossible to miss. Having been built on sturdy sandstone rock on a large hill, it had been on the only part of the city not to collapse, a giant mound of rock jutting out directly in the center of the sinkhole. Everything else in the city had been reduced to rubble when it had fallen, but there in the center, the monastery still stood.

Third Wheel reached up and lowered his visor, taking in the readings, "We're going to need the rest of our PPE for this, the air is barely breathable, unexpected updrafts, radioactivity... Might want to be careful while flying as well, the wind isn't unknown to kick up sharpened debris."

"Thanks for the info," Skree said. He added an extra oxygen disk to his breathing mask, lowered on a pair of goggles to protect his eyes from the dust, and took out a separate disk, putting it in a discreet chestpanel in his suit, activating the anti-radiation shield. It'd protect him from any dangerous radiation in the air, while leaving his wings open for flight. Not much he could do about the debris though, other than a few extra padding gear that didn't reduce flight, so they'd have to be careful. Third Wheel did the same, and the two of them looked at eachother in uncertainty.

"I'm still not able to get a proper reading of the air patterns. Still willing to risk it?" Third Wheel asked.

"You'll have to get the reading when we get in there," Skree said.

Giving a nod of agreement, the two took off across the sinkhole. The moment they left solid ground, they were assaulted by violent forces of air. An updraft threw Skree higher than he expected, followed by a side current which caused his wings to wobble off balance. Suddenly, an air pocket that caused him to drop a few feet. Skree fought the aircurrents and tried to steady his course.

Where was Third Wheel?

He glanced around and caught sight of Third Wheel a ways off, careening through the air, trying to read the currents on the panel in his visor, but they were changing too fast.

Having gotten a feeling for the air, Skree dropped down beside him, it was taking all of Third Wheel's power not to be thrown into a spin.

"It's not making any sense!" Third Wheel shouted over the wind, "First it's going this way, then it's going that way, and then... I can't make any sense of it!"

"We're going to have to land!" Skree said, fighting off a current of his own. He felt confident he could adjust to the currents given time, but burrowing owls weren't the most natural of fliers; they might try to fly over, but there was no telling how high this would go, and with the air already so thing on the planet, it wasn't wise to risk higher altitudes.

"I can figure this out!" Third Wheel insisted-

Just as a sharp shard flew through the air, barely missing his wing and taking a few feathers along with it.

Third Wheel looked at his wing, then at Skree.

"I can figure it out from the ground," he decided.

"Good idea," Skree said.

The two of them came in for a landing at the bottom of the sinkhole, where they could take in the full scale of the destruction of this once thriving city. Rubble lay everywhere, the streets had been shattered, broken chunks of building lay strewn this way and that, every which direction, everything had fallen together like grains in a bowl, that one could no longer imagine what this place had been intended to look like before the disaster had started. The wind was still bad, and dust was blowing everywhere, where even through his googles, Skree was having a hard time making out more than a few feet ahead. He knew that debris might be just as dangerous down here, so he activated his wing-mailing, no longer needing them for flying.

As protected as they could be, the two of them made their way through the shattered city, Third Wheel activating the infrared on his visor to see through the storm, calculating the air currents as they walked.

"It is really fascinating," Third Wheel observed after awhile, "No wonder I couldn't make it out from the air, you see-"

But Skree wasn't paying attention, he had come to a stop at a giant mound of weathered sandstone sticking out of the ground like a spire, where at the top rested the ancient monastery around which the rest of the city had once been built. They had made it to the center.

Because of the harshness of the wind, Skree and Third Wheel were unable to fly up the face of the cliff, instead they had to resort to their grappling guns and aufseiling up to the top.

Climbing over the edge of the cliff onto solid ground, they saw that the spire that had held up the monastery hadn't remained in as perfect of a condition as it had appeared from the distance. Though the air wasn't as intense here over the edge of the crest, here and there, pieces of sandstone had broken away, falling into the abyss from which they had ascended, and the shockwaves caused by the city's collapse into into the sinkhole had caused portions of the monastery to collapse in on itself.

While there was still a presence of the beauty that had once occupied this place, Skree could only imagine the pure desolation of what it must have been like to be stranded up here, the only way out either daring the unpredictable wind by air, or scaling down the deep cliff and risking all that had lied down below. Without the protective equipment that Skree and Third Wheel had brought with them, neither option carried much hope of making it out of there alive.

"No wonder why that goose never wanted to see this place again," Skree mused to himself, "He probably spent countless nights here watching his brothers starve away and die before he took the courage to get out of here."

Still, it was a pity, to imagine the endless number of generations that grown and learned here, devoting their lives to their religion, just to see it all fall in less than a day.

Skree removed his goggles and lowered his mask, deactivating his wing-mail and shaking out his feathers. His job was what he was here for, so it was time to turn his focus.

The party made their way up the veranda to the door, and Skree withdrew the key the goose had given him, and placed it in the door.

"In hindsight, we could've gotten in through one of the places the walls had collapsed," Three Wheel observed.

Skree shrugged, "It's a formality."

"A twelve-hundred share formality," Third Wheel remarked.

Opening the large door, the two of them stepped in to the dusty gloom that lay inside.

"Hello, anybody there?" Third Wheel called into the darkness.

"They're all dead," Skree reminded him.

"I know that," Third Wheel said, ruffling the nervousness from his feathers.

"Unless, of course, you're considering the possibility of the place being haunted.

Third Wheel's feathers fluffed back out again in mild annoyance, "The probability of ghosts existing is a near absolute scientific impossibility," he said, taking a few determined steps into the gloom.

"You never know," Skree said, hanging back a step at the entryway. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility entirely. You yourself said you were only ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent sure."

Third Wheel stopped and rotated his head all around to look at him with those round owl eyes. "I seem to recall I ruled it down to quite a few more nines than that."

And then he turned back and headed into the monastery. Skree shrugged and followed him inward.

They looked along the walls of the hallway, inspecting the ancient furnishing with great interest.

Third Wheel inspected a finely carved cabinet of lacquered wood, and scanned the items inside with his visor. Each of them would sell at a decent price on the market.

He took out a charge from his bag and attached it to the cabinet.

Skree led the way as they explored the hall and entered the various rooms, searching out whatever items of value they could find. Crumbling paneling in the walls and and ceiling let in small splotches of natural light here and there, giving faint illumination to their scrounging. A delicately lacquered vase here, a sacred carving here, tapestries and scrolls depicting the monastery's rich history that had carried the planet for millennia before the fall. A few items were the standard fair that wouldn't make much on the market, a few chairs or tables or other furnishings that had clearly been imported by one of the cluster's major corporations in more recent years, but given the dying nature of the planet, almost anything with a unique design or shape, or made of a special material that was specific to this world could be sold for something. Still, they didn't have unlimited space on their craft and couldn't leave with the entire building, so they would have to pick and choose what they took carefully.

Third Wheel found a few chests where they could transport their smaller pillagings in, and Skree attached a charge to each of them, then he turned his attention to a large rounded column in the center of the main hall, holding up the ceiling.

Carved into the pillar were images depicting the planet's creation myth, spiraling up its center from the bottom, all the way to the top in intricate detail. From the small bit of research Skree had done, when hatchlings were young, just starting out, they would be taught the beginnings of the creation myth; as they began to fledge, to learn to fly to higher and higher heights, the higher they flew, the more of the story they would see, unraveling before their very eyes.

"Do you think we can fit this in our ship," Skree asked.

Third Wheel adjusted his visor and did the calculations.

"Barely," he replied, "If we're willing to send it in in fragments. And it might be hard to get it back out. Are you sure? There aren't any readings for it on the market, not any I've checked at least."

"It'd be a shame to let such an important part of history die." Skree said. "Someone is sure to want to stake some amount of money on it."

Third Wheel shrugged, "It's likely to cause the building to collapse when we teleport it, so we'll have to make sure we've collected everything we're in here to get first."

Skree nodded. He took out a few charges, and flying up, lined them up equally along the height of the column. The transport would split it into five pieces, but with minimum damage that could be easily mended back together. That was if he had distanced the charges right. He checked back with Third Wheel, and Third Wheel nodded his approval.

"One more charge," Skree said, taking it out and flipping it into the air, "any idea what we should do with it?"

"I think there's one more room we still have to check," said Third Wheel once Skree had finished with the charges, "The door was locked when I passed by it, so I might have to pick it."

They flapped over to the last door located in the back corner of the hallway, and Third Wheel scanned it, preparing to take out his lockpick gadget-

"I'd stand back if I were you," said Skree, drawing a blaster and pointing it at the door.

The door exploded with a shower of debris.

"That also works," Third Wheel said.

"The building is about to come down anyway," Skree said passively, crossing into the room.

One the other side of the doorway was a flight of stairs going down. No apparent source of natural light, Skree took out a flashlight and Third Wheel activated his infrared; even an owl couldn't see in absolute darkness.

At the bottom of the stairwell, they both let out a sound of awe.

"Looks like we hit the jackpot."

The room had been filled with the monastery's most ancient of artifacts, carved jewels of ruby and jade, ancient scrolls dating back tens of thousands of years, maybe even older. Skree picked one up and shook the dust off of it, he didn't recognize the language, and he wondered if Third Wheel had that one in his system.

He gathered a few of the scrolls and loaded them into a chest in the corner of the room, taking out a few objects he didn't think would be of much value to make room for more.

As they inspected the room, Third Wheel paused at a cabinet and looked inside. They was only one item on display, a necklace holding what appeared to be a valuable jewel in the center. Third Wheel scanned it, then lifted his visor.

"Skree, could could I have a little light?"

Skree stopped examining what appeared to be a sort of censer and moved over to Third Wheel with the light.

Third Wheel held the jewel closely, looking at it with his large eyes. As he turned it over, the jewel shifted from red to dark blue to red again in the light."

"What do you make of it?" Skree asked.

"I don't know," Third Wheel said, lowering his visor again. "I would say some sort of ruby or sapphire... maybe a bit amethyst? But it's makeup is really confusing, like it keeps shifting on me, I can't make a proper reading at the moment... Hmm."

"What?" Skree asked.

Third Wheel handed the jewel to him. "Nothing, just the object's history, I'll pull it back up on the ship."

Then Third Wheel went back to his business.

Skree looked at the jewel for another moment, shining his light on in. It did seem to shift depending on the angle you looked at it, but it didn't seem like just the color, but the entire composition of the jewel as well, like it couldn't decide whether it was meant to be a sapphire, or a ruby, or something else entirely.

Skree shrugged and fit the jewel into one of his bags; no doubt there'd be someone out there willing to pay a good price for something like this.

He turned back to the room, and the two of them finished loading up the chest with whatever they could fit. When they were done, Skree looked at Third Wheel.

"Satisfied with our selection."

Third Wheel turned his gaze over the room, scanning the remaining items, "I don't think we could do much better if we tried."

Skree closed the lid of the trunk and planted a charge to it, then the two of them made their way back up the stairs and to the central column.

"For thousands of years this monastery has stood, teaching generation after generation, making this world all that it ever was, all for it to come crashing down on this very day. Ready?"

Third Wheel glanced at the column holding up the ceiling. "Wisdom would say we should get as far away from the building as we can before we activate the charges."

"Yeah," said Skree slowly.

...

"Want to take the dumb option?"

Third Wheel scanned the distance to the doorway and the structural integrity of the rest of the building and nodded. "I think we can just make it."

Skree took out the "detonator" and activated the charges. In a flash, each of the charges burst and imploded, taking the objects they were attached to with them. The column in the center ripped into five different pieces, then vanished.

The ceiling was coming down, right on top of them.

"Go go go!" Skree shouted.

The two of them took off, the building collapsing behind them! Columns toppled, beams crashed into eachother, nothing left to hold the building together anymore.

They burst from the monastery just as the door crumbled behind them; a loud explosion of wood and rubble. Skree and Third Wheel landed, whooping victoriously.

"We made it!" Skree declared proudly.

Third Wheel barely contained a burst of laughter.

Then the whole clifftop holding up the remains of monastery rumbled threateningly, and the two of them went still.

After a few seconds the earth settled, and everything fell back into silence.

...

"You know? We are not going to live very long," Third Wheel said observationally.

"If we keep making dumb decisions like that, we probably won't," Skree replied. "Got everything?"

Third Wheel checked his bag to make sure he hadn't dropped anything, then nodded.

"Let's get back to the ship," Skree said.