27

Other than Stralchus and Alexius, everyone else is definitely dead—torn apart by the temporal storm and scattered across this foggy ravine. You manage to move a pale and hurt Alexius away from the doomed craft, then go back to retrieve a medical kit before the flames consume it. Less than a minute later, an explosion obliterates where Alexius had been lying.

The flames stop spreading but several fires still burn. Beneath the watchful and curious gazes of the woman and her…soldiers?…a controller reads out a brief inventory of everything you could salvage. You have plenty of food, water, and wine, three Amantiou rifles (standard issue on Byzantine ships, which the Specular, arguably, was), four satchels of medicine, a crate of scouting equipment (including journals, pens, binoculars, and papers ), and a crate of photographic equipment.

Control seems more organized and independent now, despite being down to only eight functioning units. Controllers give each of you a rifle, and another controller carefully hands you exactly six bullets.

"Not much," Stralchus says.

"How many people are you planning to shoot today?" Alexius asks the mystic.

"We'll start with those creatures skulking on the hill and move on from there," Stralchus says.

"Unacceptable," a controller says as they all tie their brown hair into buns in unison.

"I saw the False Icon, and it saw us," the mystic says. "There should be no people here. And I'm in charge here, so you will follow my orders, you windup doll."

You remember the ugly gray polyhedral as it raced for the Specular.

"My task is to reestablish contact with Dr. Sabbatine, not to serve you," Control says.

"Why are we arguing?" Alexius says, rubbing his head. "Let's look around. Figure out which direction we should walk in and if those people on the hill want to kill us."

The mystic nods and backs away from the controllers to check his rifle.