A roar of frustration burst from his throat and hurled the broken rod into the glittering pool beneath his workshop cavern. He slumped to the ground as he heard the faraway hiss of the hot metal meeting frigid lake water.
It hadn't worked. Again, it hadn't worked.
How could a planet with almost nothing but rock produce so little workable ore? He had been able to use his knife to carve out a handful of crude tools from some of the sturdier ore, a material he had named scale for its abrasive, reptilian feel, but even that wasn't good for much more than rudimentary chores. This place seemed to have only three forms of stone: the fine, powdery dust that covered the surface of the planet, that blew constantly in wind and only ever seemed to settle during the storms; the scale, which acted as a sort of skin for the harder, impenetrable stone; and the stone itself.
Casper looked at his hammer with a mixture of frustration and awe. In all his years on Horus he had never come across a material so unyielding. Nothing he had tried so far had even scratched the stone. Weeks of experimenting with fires as hot as he could make them and ices as cold as Jericho provided, and still, not a blemish. It was as if the rock chose a form and refused to change. And they had found it in any and every shape inside this mountain. Long, slender poles, gigantic, mammoth boulders, and minuscule, delicate-looking flakes. But all unmoveable.
The soft voice of the Commander woke him from his reverie. "Any luck, Cas?" she asked quietly. He knew she was only being polite. The whole colony was sure to have heard his bellow in the echoing chamber. He simply shook his head, afraid that if he spoke, his defeat would be complete.
Aurora approached him gently and slid down the wall to sit at his side. "You'll figure it out," she said mildly. "I know you will."
Casper scoffed. "You know no such thing. How can you? How can anyone? We know nothing about this place except that we were sent here to die. And we will. Jericho will kill us because the Overlord was too afraid to." He picked up a small stone fragment and skipped it across his workshop floor. It skittered to a halt just before the boulder he had been using as a boulder.
Aurora contemplated the path the stone had made through the fine dust before answering him. "I think you are wrong." Casper looked into her tiny face, searching for the hint of a smile, waiting for her joke, but finding none. He raised an eyebrow in question and she continued. "We know more about Jericho than the Overlord does. He sent us here to die, but we haven't. We know there is water here in the mountain. We know there are edible creatures and plants in the lake. We know that within this mountain we are able to survive. Those are all things the Overlord doesn't know, and that gives us the advantage."
Casper laughed again at her optimism. This from the woman who had nearly died when she was stranded. "Jericho? An advantage? I think your topside excursions have baked your brains."
The grin he had expected finally made its appearance as she chuckled. "Yes, perhaps a little." She looked away from him and he followed her gaze out into the wide, spacious cavern that glowed in the light of Jericho's luminescent moss. "But Jericho has more advantages than you think. We'll figure out its secrets and we'll survive."
"But how will we make it back to Horus? How can we protect those we left behind?" He knew he sounded like a child, but he felt hopeless, and if anyone could inspire hope, it was Aurora. It was why, despite her small stature and her gentle nature, she was the Commander.
"We'll find a way. Jericho will show us." With seemingly no effort, Aurora bounced to her feet and held her hand out to Casper to help him stand. "Come," she demanded "we have new arrivals."
Casper chuckled at her outstretched hand and waved away her assistance, pushing himself up heavily from the floor. "I really should get back to the scale." He strode to his fire and lifted a small log lakewheat to build it up. "I'll come along later and see who all they chose this time."
A hand curled over his arm and stopped him from throwing it into the fire. "Casper, Sebastian is here."
Casper dropped the lakewheat in surprise. "Sebastian? You're kidding."
Aurora shook her head sadly. "Come."
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