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Runes and Mercenaries - Chapter 3 - Ares Facility

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It was twelve o' clock of the next day. Vulsegardt was standing on the train station looking at all directions for any signs of Fedor. The train was just about to leave and she was uncertain if the train is their means of transportation or not. After a few minutes the train left. She sighs and sits down on one of the benches at the train station. A few minutes later Fedor arrives.

"Hello, sorry I'm late, someone had a light bulb issue," He cringes. "Can't believe some people need my help with those kinds of things."

"The train left Mister Conhanger, you're too late," Vulsegardt says.

"Oh, the train isn't our source of transportation. Follow me." He leads Vulsegardt behind the station where there was a pickup truck.

"We are going with this?"  Vulsegardt asks with a slight unimpressed voice.

"Yes, Ares station is deep within Hayseed Swaps, we can't exactly take the train to there." Fedor opens both doors to the truck. "You want shotgun or are you going to be in the back?"

"I will sit in front, your vehicle seems to have lots of luggage in the back" Vulsegardt looks at the the trunk, in which there were many tools, small boxes and such, probably things that only an engineer would use, she thought to herself.

Both of them get into the car and Fedor starts driving down a dirt road. "So, Miss Vulsegardt, where did you stay for the night?"

"The princess gave me a room for the night, the crystal tower is very comfortable, you're lucky to live there," Vulsegardt replies.

"Meh, you wouldn't like it as much over time, place is always loud and full of people doing work. Speaking of which, Where do you live?" Fedor asks.

"I live with my grandfather outside of Canterlot. Compared to the crystal tower it is more peaceful," She answers.

"And what do you do for a living?" Fedor asks with interest.

"Runes. Anything that has to do with runes. I also like going with history." She replies with a smile.

Fedor chuckles. "Why you're perfect for the job, exploring dark caves of old treasures and knowledge."

Vulsegardt smirks. "Funny. But we are not Daring Doo and we are going in a facility to translate an abandoned artifact. Not to retrieve it, at least not the whole thing, we are expected to bring back a sample..."

Fedor looks at Vulsegardt with an unamused face. "You must be great at parties, but I suppose you're right." He looks back at the road. "Alot of bad things happened there, I've lost friends when it happened."

Vulsegardt looks on the road with a sympathetic expression on his face. "I'm sorry to hear that, did you ever ask what happened to cause everything?"

"Celestia and Atlax weren't too keen on answering and neither was EarthGov, everything was strictly confidential and we weren't allowed to talk about it in public."

"I suppose that is for the best, they wanted to avoid panic amongst everypony," Vulsegardt says with slight worry.

Fedor starts mildly laughing.

"What's so funny?" She asks.

After a short while he stops laughing and looks at Vulsegardt. "Somepony, anypony, everypony, I still can't take that seriously."

Vulsegardt looks at Fedor with an unimpressed face. "It's the way it is Mister Conhanger and please, keep your eyes on the road."

Fedor still doesn't look at the road, making Vulsegardt slightly worried.

"Don't do that Mister Conhanger, we could get really hurt," She says.

Fedor looks back at the road and takes a deep breath. "Yeah, we are going to have so much fun together."

"I don't know for you Mister Conhanger but, I'm going to enjoy translating the artifact, runes are my passion." Vulsegardt explains herself.

A couple of hours of driving later Fedor parks the car deep in the Hayseed Swamp's forest not so far from a cliff. "Alright Miss runes are my passion, we're here."

Vulsegardt jumps out of the truck and looks down the cliff. She sighs. "Down this cliff. It's very deep."

"We could go down there, or we take the closer entrance." He points to the ground not to far away from where he parked.

Vulsegardt steps to where Fedor pointed and starts looking around her. She notices a barely visible valve on the ground. "Here it is!" With her magic she spins the valve around opening a small entrance in the ground. There was a ladder leading deep underground. "We go down here?"

"Yeah, this was the emergency exit I've got through when the evacuation went off. Watch your step, I'll go first." He starts to climb down the long ladder after a short while Vulsegardt starts climbing down as well.

The place where the bottom of the ladder was located was dark, which made sense since the station did not have any power. Vulsegardt starts emitting light from the top of her horn, performing a light spell.

Fedor looks at her with relief. "Let there be light." He takes out a flashlight and turns it on. "Alright, what we are looking for is on the bottom level, the observation deck."

Vulsegardt starts trotting down the hallway with enthusiasm in her voice. "Then there is where we go. Come Mister Conhanger, the artifact awaits!"

Fedor starts following her with a slightly concerned expression on his face. "Wait, there is something not quite right about this place..."

Vulsegardt stops and starts staring at something on the ground. The expression on her face was saying that something is very wrong. "Mister Conhanger, you might want to see this..."

Fedor walks up behind Vulsegardt and looks at the same direction as she was staring. It was a human corpse. Judging by the dust on it, it has been there for a long time. He had an Ares Station staff uniform holding a weapon. "Ares Staff, this man was here and stayed here ever since it happened." Fedor sighs. He picks up the shotgun and a small bag that was attached to the man's waist.

"Mister Conhanger what are you doing? You can't loot the dead!" Vulsegardt raises her voice.

"Of course I can, this is an old EarthGov shotgun model. They don't make them like these anymore," Fedor explains himself.

"What about the bag?" Vulsegardt points towards the taken bag.

Fedor opens the bag and looks inside of it, "It has a few crystals in it, I can use them, these things are very expensive these days you know." He attaches the small bag to his belt.

Vulsegardt looks at him with a disappointed face. "I still don't think that just looting them is right."

Fedor sighs again and takes out a small crystal from his pocket. He taps it and from it a blue flat image appears above it. It was a map. "We can go this way to the Marker. You get your runes and I get my crystals." He starts to walk down a hallway, Vulsegardt following him.

While they were walking they were both silent. They were in a dark place, it had a large variety of hallways and closed doors. They kept walking until Vulsegardt stepped on something.

"I think I stepped on something." She looks closer on what she stepped, it was a small pool of dried green liquid. "Ah, disgusting, What is this?" She looks around the pool and quickly noticed another corpse. It looked like an earth pony but after close examination she found out otherwise. "This is a changeling! What are they doing here?"

At first Fedor didn't answer. "They were the one who attacked Ares. They did something, they ruined everything, wanted to steal it too." Fedor steps closer to the changeling corpse and starts to look for any valuables, but the corpse had none.

Vulsegardt slightly gasps. "The changelings attacked? That's awful, was the Queen here too?"

"No, I don't think so, they weren't all insect like horses, they were some sort of a group, crazy people and ponies. And changelings," Fedor answers.

"Do you know why they attacked?"  Vulsegardt asks.

"No. But I'm just guessing they wanted the Marker for themselves," Fedor speculates.

Vulsegardt thinks for a moment. "And how did Ares get under radiation then?"

Fedor becomes slightly upset and looks at Vulsegardt "Look, Miss runes, I don't know what happened here, I want to, I really do, but I don't."

Vulsegardt stays silent for a moment while they are walking. "Can I borrow the map?"

Fedor gives her the map, she activates it and starts looking across the map displayed. "We could go to the observation deck above the storage. They observed the artifact from there. There sure has to be some information on what happened here. The elevator to it's just right of the entrance to the storage. Can you get the elevator working?"

Fedor takes back the map. "Why are you so interested in this place? I don't want any trouble with the Government, you know how strict Atlax and Celestia are? I don't want to get on their bad side cause you wanted to snoop around."

"This is your job mister Conhanger, you are a mercenary after all," Vulsegardt replies.

Fedor smirks, "You can ask Celestia when we get back all I care, after all, she shut all of this down herself."

"I assume she did what she did to protect everypony from any threats," Vulsegardt explains her point of view.

"Threats like what, having power? You know how badly Earth is doing ever since the Marker project was shut down? Why do you think I live here?" Fedor slightly raises her voice.

The thought of millions of people living under bad circumstances made Vulsegardt worry. "Yes, but I heard EarthGov got some plan in their heads to get new resources."

Fedor smirks and looks at Vulsegardt. "You mean planetcracking? I've heard of that. Funding space travel to steal from other planets since our own has nothing. You've got to be kidding. Something like that is way more expensive than the Marker project. Come on, let's keep moving." Fedor continues to walk. "It should be close."

Vulsegardt continues to follow Fedor. "Don't be so fast to lose hope mister Conhanger. Sometimes the most crazy ideas turn out to be the most efficent."

They come upon a large door. It was the entrance to the storage, where the artifact was held.

Fedor starts knocking on the door. "Well, great. I knew it wouldn't be as easy as this."  

"I guess nopony is home, can you open it?"

Fedor puts down a backpack he was carrying around and pulls out some kind of metal rod. "Yeah, I hope this thing still works though, made it myself." Fedor looks with a smug face. "I call it the can opener, if I'm lucky enough to find a control panel I might be able to send in a little bit of power in that will open the door. Hopefully enough for us to pass through it."

Vulsegardt becomes slightly upset. "What do you mean hopefully, did you think this whole thing through?"

Fedor still smug, turns around to Vulsegardt. "Trust me, if I can't get it open no one can. Help me find a panel, every door has one in case if malfunctions, you take right, I'll take left."

They both split up Vulsegardt taking right and Fedor left. Vulegardtt notices a small hallway ending with an elevator. She thinks to herself. "This is probably the elevator to the observation deck, hmm." She ponders and starts looking up on the ceiling. It was very high, she couldn't see it all the way, it was to dark. "Hmm, what is that?" She sees a small shaft opening with something sticking out. It looked like a Pegasus. Vulsegardt begins to stare up, taking a few steps back. "Mister Conhanger, there is something here you need to see."

Fedor turns around. "I hope it's the panel, cause I got nothing on my end." He starts walking towards Vulsegardt.

Vulsegardt, still staring at the Pegasus, she notices that the Pegasus moves and started to stare back at her. "Oh, Celestia, someone is hurt up there! Hello! Are you alright?" The Pegasus didn't reply, it let out some strange noises that sounded like someone vomiting and screaming at the same time. After a short stare it hides back to the shaft.

Fedor steps by Vulsegardt and looks up. "I see nobody."

"It was something, I swear, a Pegasus I think," Vulsegardt says.

"Miss Vulsegardt, this is an abandoned station that was flooded by radiation, I don't know what you saw, probably an animal which got in through a hole, or mutant rats, I don't know." He looks to the left on the wall and sees a panel. "Jackpot." Quickly, he approached the panel and opened it. Through a small hole in the controls he sticks the rod and presses a button on it. The rod started to illuminate much brighter than Vulsegardt light spell and let out loud noises, ironically sounding like there was a power failure, but instead of a failure, the panel lights lighted up for a short moment and the door started opening. It opened somewhere around a meter wide before everything shuts down again. Fedor pulls out the rod and puts it back in the backpack. "Alright, now we're rolling."

Vulsegardt still worried about the Pegasus in the vents, she convinces herself that it was something else and follows Fedor to the Storage department. "Glad that thing worked, for a moment I was worried we would be stuck."

Fedor smiles. "Don't be so fast to lose hope miss Vulsegardt."

Vulsegardt with an unimpressed look on her face looks at Fedor. "They told me you were the best for the job, why would I lose hope?"

Fedor cuts down the smile. "You were supposed to say ha ha, Mister Conhanger you used my words against me, you are so funny."

"No," Vulsegardt replies.

Defeated, Fedor turns around and enters the storage department. It was a big space, not all of it was seen cause of the dark. Fedor starts pointing the flashlight in every direction until he spots a large object in the centre of the area. "I think that's it! Man this place stinks of metal and vomit." He starts to approach the supposed artifact.

Vulsegardt steps in front of the object and illuminates it as much as she could. The revealed object had a black exterior with red runes carved in it. She takes a few steps back and looks up to the top of the object, it was three times the size of Fedor and on the top it had two peaks that were symmetrically connected from each side. "This is it."

"You sure?" Fedor asks.

Vulsegardt looks at Fedor with joy. "Yes mister Conhanger, this is the Marker."
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