When they entered the stargate, only Vera remained on her feet. Arden and Sya both fell flat on their faces. Sya had managed to catch herself at the last moment, only scratching her hands in the process. The same could not be said for Arden, whose nose broke in the fall.

  “Damn it,” he muttered.

  “You alright?” Vera asked.

  “I will be. Hold on a sec.”

  He activated his Legacy Ability, and his nose glowed a pale white as it healed. Arden clenched his teeth at the soul-searing pain. He learned long ago that biting his lip was a surefire way to injure himself a second time.

  Arden let out a sigh and stood up, joining the girls on their feet.

  “How come you were fine?” he asked.

  “One of the first things I learned from my family was how to always keep balance. Stargates screw up your equilibrium when you first enter, so it's not unusual for the first five minutes to be the most dangerous, alongside the boss.”

  “Then why are we just waiting around?” Sya asked.

  “Because this is a red-tier stargate. If we were going to be ambushed as soon as we entered, it would either be from Celestials with some form of intelligence, or a stargate with a truly horrifying amount of Celestials. Red-tiers have neither. The boss might have some intelligence if it's stronger, but its minions won't.”

  Arden looked around the cavernous area that they found themselves in. There was very dim lighting, but he could still make out some of the shadows for what they were. Stalactites were jutting from the ceiling to meet the stalagmites from below. They gave off the vibe of the mouth of some monstrous creature.

  “That's unsettling.”

  “Need a light?” Vera asked.

  Before he could answer, Vera produced a small handheld flashlight from her inventory and shined it toward the far end of the cave.

  “First rule of dungeon crawling: always come prepared.”

  They noticed a tunnel leading deeper into the cave, and walked towards it. There was nowhere else to go, after all.

  “I was expecting more of a crypt look,” Sya said, breaking the silence. “Not a cave. This place is called a mausoleum.”

  “We’ll get there,” Vera said. “We're pretty much just in the lobby. The actual hotel will look much better.”

  “Man, I could use a hotel,” Arden said with a yawn. “I was hoping for some more sleep.”

  Vera smiled.

  “Did I wear you out that much?”

  “You were the one that came into my room after you sent me to bed. It’s not my fault that you find me irresistible.”

  Sya put her hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  “I'm pretty sure that is your fault, actually,” she said.

  He thought about it for a moment, and realized that she had a point.

  “Shit. You’re right. It is my fault for being so darn good-looking,” he said sarcastically. “Damn. Why must I be cursed with such unquestionable charisma?”

  “I never said you looked good,” Sya said, receiving a pained look from her brother. “You’re a malnourished effeminate short guy with long hair.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Just that you make a good, easy target.”

  Arden stopped and repeated his question again.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Look, Arden, we both know that you are a sub.”

  “What?”

  “I believe you said something about wanting to be objectified a few months back.” Sya turned to Vera. “Were you or were you not on top of Arden earlier?”

  She chuckled. It echoed throughout the dark cave.

  “I was, as a matter of fact, little miss voyeur.”

  “I resent that,” she replied. “I’m taller than Arden.”

  “You’re not going to deny eavesdropping on us in the morning, then?”

  “Eavesdropping? Vera, your house has no doors and thin walls. You guys woke me up. Scratch that actually. It was Arden who woke me up with his constant pleading that he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Can we stop this?” Arden asked, trying to spare himself from further embarrassment. “What do you think we’ll find in here, Vera?”

  “Well, it's a mausoleum,” Vera said, leading the group. “I’d wager skeletons or other types of undead. Honestly, this might prove to be just what you needed. You wanted more training right? Undead are among the weakest Celestials, perfect for novices like yourselves.”

  Vera shined the light at Sya. Sya quickly covered her eyes with her hands, exposing the slingshot that Vera gave her.

  “Take care of that slingshot,” she advised. “That Satellite will be your weapon until we increase your stamina.”

  “It's a Satellite?” Sya asked, inspecting her weapon. “It just looks like a normal slingshot to me.”

  “It might as well be,” Vera said.

  Vera's Status window appeared in front of Arden and Sya and they read the strangely mundane description.

  Rascal’s Pocket Rocket

  Satellite Tier: Red

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Satellite Rank: Protostar

  Satellite Type: Weapon (Slingshot)

  Satellite Description: Hidden

  Satellite Aspect: Hidden

  “Pocket rocket,” Arden repeated flatly.

  “You can’t see it since you're not a Starborn, but the Aspect increases accuracy by a large degree.” Vera explained.

  “Will I even be able to use the Aspect?”

  Vera nodded.

  “Passive aspects don't consume essence, so you'll be fine. It'll be used on its own.”

  “How many things did you steal from your family?” Arden asked.

  “Enough to get by.”

  “Anything for me?”

  “If you're expecting me to give you my bed, you'd be mistaken.”

  “You already did that,” Sya said.

  They had walked a few minutes when they found a change in the stargate. A bit further in front of them, the cave morphed into a proper mausoleum. Torches burnt brightly along the carved walls. Ornate designs were carved into the walls of the new area.

  “How long can torches normally burn?” Arden asked.

  “It's best not to apply real world logic to stargates,” Vera replied.

  “Fair enough. Real world logic doesn’t really apply to me anymore, either.”

  For the first time, Arden realized the magnitude of the situation. They were actually in a stargate. A smile ran across his face and his heart began to beat faster in excitement. He knew that a single misstep could result in one of their deaths, but he couldn’t help but feel happy. He finally felt like a Starborn.

  They proceeded into the mausoleum slowly, taking in their surroundings. There were alcoves cut into the wall where bodies should have been laid. However, they were currently empty, save for some torn weathered cloth. Whether the bodies were missing due to the endless march of time reducing them to dust, or they decided to stretch their legs was unknown to the trio at the moment.

  The thing that Arden focused on the most were the carvings along the wall. It was hard to make out what the designs were in the flickering torchlight, but he managed. He ran a finger along the carving of what looked like a tree with a beautifully decorated canopy, and roots that ended with skulls.

  “That’s interesting. Are trees correlated with death?” he asked Vera.

  It was Sya who answered the question.

  “Repose, rest, and solace,” Sya answered. “People watched trees grow, die, and regrow over the years. It's possible that the carvings symbolize the cycle of life and death, or the souls of those who have died returning to the roots.”

  Both Arden and Vera shot her a glance that told her that they were surprised by her analysis.

  “I read a lot,” she said, preemptively answering Arden’s unasked question.

  “Mausoleums are built to honor the dead, right?” Arden continued. “If this place is filled with walking skeletons, or undead in general, that means that their rest has been disturbed, and they have been sullied.”

  Vera slung an arm around Arden’s neck and pulled him close with a smile.

  “Then it's a good thing we're here, right?”

  Behind them, Sya cleared her throat loudly to get their attention.

  “I'm still here. Get freaky when we're not all together.”

  Arden wiped his finger coated in dust and cobwebs on his shirt and they continued along the cobbled ground. Large burial urns lined the ground near the empty alcoves.

  “Do you think they’d mind if we looked for treasure in their resting place?” Arden asked with a grin

  “We’d be pretty bad dungeon crawlers if we didn't do that,” Vera responded. “Also, don’t feel bad about yourself yet. I think we’re gonna have to kill these guys,” she said as she pointed towards one of the numerous empty resting chambers.

  “Damn.”

  “Or re-kill them. Loot away.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth an object whizzed past them breaking one of the urns with a satisfying noise. Vera turned to look back at Sya.

  “What?” Sya asked, slingshot still in hand. “You said we could loot.”

  “I said loot, not destroy.”

  “Same thing. Looting is just destroying the possession rights of whoever had it first.”

  Arden moved to the burial urn and removed the top to look inside. All that he saw was a rock resting in the urn opposite a hole in the urn. The very same rock that Sya shot.

  “They didn’t leave anything for us? Boo.”

  Arden went to another urn, while Vera looked through one as well. Not wanting to be left out, Sya looked between a few urns and the carved alcoves. After everything in the room was looted, they piled all of their findings between them.

  “Wow,” Arden said.

  “I know,” Sya responded.

  “Normally there should at least be something to loot. This is all very bare bones,” Vera said, receiving flat stares from her friends. “What? Am I not allowed to make jokes?”

  “Leave the dumb jokes to Arden,” Sya said. “That way when we laugh, he can’t tell we’re laughing at him.”

  “Hey,” Arden said.

  Their attention returned to their loot, or rather lack thereof. There was literally nothing of value. No jewels, no gold, no weapons buried alongside their former masters. The most valuable pieces of loot were the cracked burial urns themselves. Sighing, the trio continued their expedition into the next stretch of the mausoleum after shoving the masonry into their inventories.

  “Maybe there is someone in Ring 4 with a pot fetish,” Arden hoped aloud.

  “There probably are,” Vera said. “Different type of pot though.”

  Sya chuckled.

  When they entered the next area, they quickly quieted because of what they heard. The click-clack of bone on bone nearby. With no meat on their bones, the bones alone had to support the weight of itself, and they were straining due to their age.

  Vera poked her head around the corner and saw a pair of skeletons walking jerkily around with a sword in each of their right hands. The skeletons were yellowed from years of rest down here, with hairline fractures running across them in several places. They were looking the other way from the trio of dungeon crawlers.

  Vera gestured to her two disciples for their plan. Arden and Vera snuck out from the corner to each take down a skeleton, with Sya watching and covering them should anything go wrong. Thankfully, skeletons were among the weakest of any Celestial.

  In a flash, Vera grabbed the first skeleton’s skull and smashed it into the ground, shattering it. On his end, Arden knocked the legs out from beneath his target, sending it to the cobbled floor. Before it could do anything, Arden jumped onto its skull, shattering it.

  When the skeletons were killed, they turned into piles of dust to Sya’s and Arden's surprise.

  A Status window appeared next to Arden and Vera.

  You have slain a red-tier protostar, Grave Guard.

  Vera knelt next to her quarry and sifted through the gray dust, looking for something. When she found it, she held it up for the brother and sister duo to see. It was red orb the size of a marble. It thrummed with an unknown energy.

  “Star core,” she said. “Celestials drop them. They are manifestations of their stellar essence. They get used as a form of currency, or are absorbed to grow stronger. We can’t absorb them since we’re not Starborn, but we have them for when we awaken. They also make pretty good makeshift bombs.”

  “Hey Vera,” Arden said with an evil grin. “I just had a great idea.”

  “We're not bombing Miasma.”

  “Aw.”

  Arden sifted through his pile of dust and plucked the red pearl out of it and put it in his inventory. Arden smiled looking back at the ground. The skeletons had been reduced to ash, but not their weapons.

  Arden picked one up while Vera did the same with the other.

  “They look a bit weathered, but they should make it easier to take down more skeletons,” she said.

  “Something blunt would be better,” Arden replied.

  “With the age of these things, they probably are blunt right now. But look at you now. You know which weapons are better for a certain target.”

  “That's not surprising,” Sya interjected. “Ask pretty much anyone in the slums and they'll all say that Arden has a mind for murder. Especially now.”

  Arden sighed.

  “Are you sure we can't bomb Miasma?”

  “You're not helping your case,” Sya said.