Chapter Text
There isn’t enough time to say anything else before I feel that strange tugging at the back of my brain again. I hoped that the last time I felt it had been a fluke, but no—there it is, instantly recognisable in its strangeness, in the way it so intrusively invades my mind. No supernova. I can’t even say goodbye to Solanum before everything around me burns away.
It’s exactly as it happened the last time I was on the Quantum Moon. The discomfort, my vision disappearing before my eyes, and then I am adrift in the void that greets me at the end of every loop, my memories playing back in reverse.
Is the time loop faltering? I don’t think so. The Quantum Moon doesn’t interact normally with space-time. Maybe it interferes with the connection between me, my statue, and my mask? Or, if Solanum is still alive because the moon was out of range of the ghost matter, maybe I’m out of range of the supernova when it orbits the Eye. Is that what the burning is? Is the Ash Twin Project taking my memories when my 22 minutes are up, dead or not?
When I wake beneath Giant’s Deep, that rock digging into my back, I look up at the sky. The Quantum Moon circles the ocean planet beyond, and I know I have a friend waiting there. I still can’t believe that Solanum is alive. That I had talked to her. That we shared something special. I won’t ever forget that exchange, and when everything is over, I’ll speak to some Hearthians that are much smarter than I am, and we’ll get her off that moon.
My heart is pounding with the residual exhilaration of finding her as I lie in my sleeping bag. I repeat her sentences back to myself in my head, and even after so many repetitions, I still don’t believe the words. She’s up there. Alone. Knowing something has gone terribly wrong but not knowing what; feeling her death, or her fraction of life, settling uncomfortably into her bones. Is she lonely, up there? Or does time only pass for her when she’s observed?
Despite everything, she had patiently explained her situation to me. Her clan’s hopes and dreams, her complicated history with the Eye of the universe. And, finally, she had called me a friend. After all the time I have spent tracing her journey, nothing could be truer.
Disparate feelings arise in my chest, oddly harmonious in their cohabitation. Feelings of loss, of longing, but also of catharsis, satisfaction, hope. They compound each other, growing and growing until they’re near overspilling. Perhaps that is why, when I finally get the sense to head up to my ship, I find myself directing us towards my favourite crumbling planet.
I barely round the corner before my helmet is off and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs.
“I TALKED TO A LIVING NOMAI!”
A banjo string snaps with a harsh TWANG.
“AHHH!” Riebeck screams back. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
Riebeck sits beside their campfire, surrounded by trees. They had been playing their banjo, but my impromptu visit quickly put an end to that. I stand in the middle of their campsite and stretch out my arms as wide as I can.
“I TALKED TO A LIVING NOMAI!” I bellow, just to hear myself say it again. “WE TALKED AND I COULD TRANSLATE EVERYTHING SHE SAID AND HER NAME IS SOLANUM AND SHE WAS BORN HERE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO AND SHE’S ALIVE!”
Riebeck tenses their shoulders and holds up their hands defensively, as if preparing to fend off an attack. “I don’t understand! I’m very excited for you, though!”
“SHE MADE ALL THESE LITTLE STONES SO I COULD ASK HER QUESTIONS AND I DID—I ASKED HER LOADS OF QUESTIONS—AND SHE ANSWERED THEM AND SHE SAID WE’RE FRIENDS!”
“P-please stop yelling!”
“SHEISONTHEQUANTUMMOONRIGHTNOW BECAUSE SHE WENT THERE ON HER QUANTUM PILGRIMAGE—” I stop myself. “I guess you don’t remember that, but the Nomai went on pilgrimages to the Quantum Moon as a coming-of-age ritual.”
“N-No!”
“Anyway—SHE IS ON THE QUANTUM MOON AT THE SIXTH LOCATION WHERE THE MOON CIRCLES THE EYE OF THE UNIVERSE! ALL THE OTHER NOMAI ARE DEAD BUT SHE DOESN’T KNOW THAT BECAUSE SHE’S BEEN STUCK THERE FOR AGES BUT SHE ISN’T DEAD BECAUSE I GUESS TIME WORKS DIFFERENTLY THERE SO SHE’S ALIVE BUT ALSO SHE IS DEAD BECAUSE THE GHOST MATTER KILLED HER TOO BUT NOT AROUND THE EYE SO THAT VERSION OF HER IS ALIVE—”
I suck in a deep breath to continue, but I suddenly realise I’ve said all I really wanted to say, so I let my arms fall to my sides and watch Riebeck expectantly.
“...W-what?” they stammer incredulously.
Panting, I make a tired gesture. “I just told you.”
“I… What?”
I repeat myself, a little more calmly this time. Riebeck listens intently.
“...On the Quantum Moon, you said?” they ask when I’m finished. I nod, and they throw up their hands. “There’s a sort-of-living Nomai on the Quantum Moon?! WELL, WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?!”
They jump to their feet, and a wide grin spreads across my face.
“Oh, wow!” they exclaim. “Wow! This is the best thing that’s ever happened in the history of Outer Wilds Ventures!”
I nod eagerly, and the campsite starts bubbling with our shared giddiness as Riebeck paces.
“I can’t believe you talked to an actual Nomai!”
“I know!” I say. “Me neither!”
“This is fantastic! We can ask her all sorts of questions!”
“I know! I did!”
“And think of what we’ll learn!”
“I learned so much!”
“What do they eat? What do they wear? How long do they live? Where did they come from? Why do they have such specific pronouns? What customs do they have? Why did they settle here? Why—” Riebeck faces me suddenly. “What was it like? What were they wearing? Are the masks really part of their space suit or just ceremonial? The translator tool worked well? They understood you? How?”
I let out a chuckle and hold out my hands placatingly. “It was amazing! The moon doesn’t have a breathable atmosphere, even when it seems like it should, so she was wearing a space suit. It’s teal and gold and so unbelievably intricate. So much more decorated than ours. The masks are like our helmets and they attach to oxygen tanks they wear on their backs, but I think there’s some…cultural significance to the masks, too. And the translator tool works great! Solanum understood me as best as she could, but I think if you go you’ll be able to do even more. You’re pretty decent with the language, right?”
Riebeck nods their head enthusiastically, then stalls. “Uh, I, well, I’m alright with it. Not an expert, no. But I can read it well enough…Maybe I could write something?”
“That would be fantastic! I’m sure she’d love that!”
“Oh, wow! The second conversation between a Hearthian and a Nomai. What should I write? What should I say? Should I invite her to the village? Oh, no, that might be a little overwhelming. That’s okay. We’ll talk on the Quantum Moon. And, and…” Riebeck shakes their head exasperatedly. “The moon. When did you…How did you…?”
They don’t need to finish their thought for me to understand. “It took so many translations!” I answer. “There are these rules—three rules—that you need to know to get to the moon! You have to take a picture of it before you land so it won’t blip off to some other planet, and when you do land, you’ll be dropped at the south pole. But Solanum is only on the moon around the Eye, so you have to go to the north pole to get there—that’s another rule—”
Frantically, Riebeck pats their suit for their notebook. “S-should I be writing all of this down?”
“No, I’ll just give you a picture of my ship log!” Then, realising all the less-than-thrilling things I’ve discovered and written about, I add, “Just ignore all the other notes I have that don’t relate to the moon, though.”
“Got it!” Riebeck beams. “So, what next?”
“Yes! To get to the north pole, you have to travel between the planets that the moon orbits. There are all these pesky rocks and vines and cyclones in the way—which ones you see depends on the planet you’re orbiting—so you can’t just walk straight there. You’ll understand when you get there. It’s hard to explain. You can travel with the moon as long as no one is observing it—that's the last rule, the rule of quantum entanglement. But you’re an observer too, right? So how do you stop observing the moon? Well, the Nomai built this huge shrine that’s entangled with it, so it’ll hop about just like everything else that’s quantum. When you go inside and turn off the lights you’ll be transported with the moon to another orbit! When you reach the north pole, just blink a whole bunch until the shrine appears and get in, then it will take you to the Eye of the universe where Solanum is!”
Riebeck raises their hand timidly. “Um…Q-question?”
Energized from my lecture—no wonder Chert does it so often!—I point excitedly at Riebeck and say, “Answer!”
“You, er, said it a few times and I was just wondering…What’s ‘the Eye of the universe’?”
“No idea!”
“Okay! C-cool!” They nod, and let out a breath. “Great! So, I just have to go back into space, fly to the Quantum Moon with zero visibility, find a spooky ruin, and travel through a few different types of dangerous terrain to get there. Okay, yeah, that’s…” They nod again, more vigorously this time. “That’s not so bad. That’s probably doable…”
“It’s nothing!” I say, walking over and giving them an encouraging pat on the shoulder. It’s the least I can do after what they did for me the last time I was here. “The moon’s perfectly safe! Just don’t crash your ship too bad. But I crashed mine so many times and I’m fine…Don’t mention that to Slate. Oh! And don’t jump through the cloud layer once you’re on the moon or else you’ll end up in space without your ship!”
“You…You went into space without your ship?!”
My eyes widen and I backtrack. “Me? I—uh—No! Of course not! I just…Shot my Scout up there to see what would happen. Did a couple of experiments. You know…Science! Yay!”
Riebeck nods distractedly and I gawk in disbelief that they actually bought my story.
“Okay…” they say quietly. “Okay. Yeah! I’m going to the Quantum Moon!”
“Really?!”
“Yes! I’m going to do it! I’m going to go and I’m going to meet Solanum!”
“Yes!”
“Just...Not yet.”
They head back over to the fire and sit down, digging for their notebook. I blink, and the wave of energy that had been carrying me high crashes meekly across the basalt. Defeatedly, I follow them.
“But…Why not?” I ask. “Isn’t this incredible?”
“Of course it is! I can’t mess this up! I have to work out what I want to say, and I have to be as precise as possible. There has to be no room for translation error. And then I actually have to prep the translations! Have you ever tried writing anything in Nomaian? Writing just one sentence will take me an hour, at least…Oh! I should prepare some basic replies, too. Anything I think she might ask about us, to save time when I actually go. And maybe a few words I can point to to piece together basic answers…”
“Yeah,” I say, watching a piece of the Hanging City bridge tumble down into the black hole below. “But…you know, thinking about it more, why bother with all that? Save that for the third conversation. If you go now you can meet her sooner! I-I’m sure you can have just as nice a conversation with the rock-and-translator-tool method. Maybe she’ll even make more rocks for you!”
“I’m an archaeologist!” Riebeck replies, flipping open their notebook to a blank page. “Or, uh, an anthropologist, now? I guess? I have to get this right.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, of course.”
Riebeck glances my way. They must notice my disappointment, because they hastily try to cheer me up. “Hey, at least you can still go explore while I work on these! Have you checked out the Hanging City? I haven’t worked up the courage to head over myself yet. But if you find anything, you can tell me and I can add it to my questions! Um, if you want to, I mean.”
Idly, I nudge a fallen branch with the toe of my boot.
“So, you won’t be finished in like…ten minutes, right?”
“...Er, no.”
“Gotcha.” I tap my fingers against my belt. “Okay. Well, yeah. You work on those translations and I’ll go look around Brittle Hollow for some information that might be useful. You just radio when you want to see my ship log or need the translator tool, yeah?”
“Thank you! Yes! I will do that!” Riebeck begins to jot down notes as I pull my helmet over my head. As I leave their camp, waving my goodbye, I hear them muttering excitedly to themself. Though I am a little saddened that I couldn’t get my buddy to the Quantum Moon this loop, I’m glad I at least left them in a fantastic mood, with lots of things to think about.
I climb back up to the crossroads, but I don’t head towards the Hanging City. I look across the bridges and see the towers in the distance. It’s so strange to think that I’ve scoured every inch of those ruins for translations. Then again, there’s still so much to learn. What could Riebeck glean from the architecture of the Nomai? What would they be able to decipher about their daily lives just by walking through their halls?
After all my exploration, I am still no archaeologist. But I would love to walk through the city with one, one day.
Upon reaching the surface, in the small settlement where Riebeck had first made camp, I see that the ground is cast in an orange glow. Volcanic bombs from Hollow’s Lantern hover in the sky, dwarfed by the massive orange sun behind them. The fiery moon itself crests a crumbling ruin not a moment later, and I watch its lava boil and convect, swirling at the base of its four supervolcanoes.
The moon looks…shrunken.
I never noticed that before. But of course it does. Its supply of magma isn’t infinite. The little moon can only hold so much material, and ever since the time loop started, its activity has increased tenfold. It’s like that for a lot of places, really. Giant’s Deep has always had its cyclones, but doesn’t the current amount seem…a little worrisome? And the sand-transfer between the Hourglass Twins has never been so quick…
A lava bomb crashes into the crust just beyond the valley. The ground shakes, and I place a hand against a wall of the gravity crystal workshop to steady myself. The moon rotates overhead, affording me an unparalleled view of its volcanoes. It’s difficult for my heart not to race every time I find myself staring right into one’s caldera, muscles bracing for an impact that thankfully never comes. A modest-sized volcano turns towards me, and through the smoke and ash I see—
What do I see?
A flash of sand-coloured rocks from within the soot-stained vent.
And instantly, I know I’m about to do something exceedingly stupid.
Hollow’s Lantern is unique among the astral bodies in our solar system, and not just for its impressively deadly eruptions. Every planet rotates in-line with the planetary plane, with negligible axial tilt. The poles of each planet are perfectly perpendicular to their orbital path, and that’s why the planets have little variation in climate as they circle the sun throughout their respective years—though solar activity and other natural cycles certainly lend themselves to temperature and weather fluctuations. Even the Attlerock follows this pattern, with the small caveat that the moon is also tidally locked to Timber Hearth. Hollow’s Lantern, however, is the exception.
Hollow’s Lantern spins so wildly about that its axial tilt is constantly changing. Chert has a theory that the massive volcanic eruptions (relative to the moon’s size) are what throw the moon off-balance, exerting conflicting forces that cause it to continuously alter its spin. It’s why the volcanic bombs are so destructive—the volcanoes never circle Brittle Hollow in a predictable way, and every bomb is sent spiralling off on a completely random trajectory.
This is a fun little fact we astronauts like to bring up at bonfires, but it’s a lot less fun when it gets in the way of trying to land a spaceship on its lava-inundated surface.
My hands are steady on the controls as I pilot my ship around Hollow’s Lantern. Volcanic bombs hang in the sky around me, but the great thing about space is just how much space there is—it’s easy to dodge the ship-sized rocks as they burn just beyond Brittle Hollow’s atmosphere. The real challenge is aligning my ship with where I want it to go.
Much of the lava covering Hollow’s Lantern’s surface has been cast away by the eruptions, but not enough that the molten rock fails to pose a threat. Get too close and the heat will surely melt a few vital computer parts on my ship, to say nothing of what a close encounter with the stuff will do to me. The lava isn’t quite as hot as the sun is, and I can’t expect a death so swift.
That leaves me with only a few landing sites to work with, and by nature of the moon’s erratic spin, they keep racing away from me on unpredictable paths. I can do my best to land my ship on the side of one of the volcano’s cones, but Hollow’s Lantern doesn’t have a gravity field near strong enough to anchor my ship down for long. Ideally, I want a nice, large, flat platform sheltered from the bombs, and I’ve spotted only one candidate that ticks all the boxes. Unfortunately, it sits alongside sand-coloured ruins as they broil away within one of the moon’s many vents.
Landing a ship on the surface of the moon is challenging enough. I’m trying to land my ship inside the moon.
Now that so much of the lava is gone, it’s easy for me to lock onto the volcano I want. It sits on the magnetic north pole of Hollow’s Lantern, and is just as active as its siblings. Not once, not twice, but three times do I have to yank my ship away from the caldera as a volcanic bomb bursts from the lava. I try timing the eruptions, but it’s pointless—as far as I can tell, the volcano lives by no schedule.
My race around the moon is made more difficult by its size. The pull of Brittle Hollow’s black hole is so strong that my ship can feel its influence from all the way up here, and given the choice to orbit the moon or to fall down to the columnar crust below, my ship will always choose the latter. My hands can’t leave my controls, not even for a second, and I feel my muscles begin to cramp as I constantly make minor adjustments to my path to stay in the same place.
I glimpse the ruins within the vent, and I know I can’t give up.
Why the Nomai had selected such a hostile environment to build in eludes me. The very same moon had driven them beneath the crust in the first place—so what were they doing on its surface? The obvious answer is that they were conducting research, or that they needed Hollow’s Lantern for something just as they needed the black hole for the development of the warp cores. But for what? Why?
I see the rise of smoke and ember and I pull my ship away from the caldera as yet another lava bomb erupts from the subsurface. My ship tremors with the force, and as ash streaks across my windshield, I know what I have to do. I have to go for it.
Piloting with decreased visibility is never fun, especially not when I’m one errant thrust away from getting burned alive in lava. But I’m so close. I can do this.
I bring my ship in close to the caldera. I can hardly see my target landing area through the ejecta covering my window, but I’ll just have to make do. I ready my hands on the controls, and race with my thrusters at full-force into the volcano below.
My speed carries me into the vent, but also straight into the interior wall. My windshield cracks and choking heat blasts into my cabin. Coughing, eyes watering, I turn on my landing cam and do my best to get my ship onto solid ground and away from the path of any developing bombs. I’m not satisfied until I can’t see any hint of lava below me, and by the time my ship settles onto the platform I’m wheezing in the dry air. Clumsily, I grab my helmet and tug it over my head, the relief of cool, fresh oxygen hissing across my face as I engage the seal. I’m still uncomfortably warm, to put it mildly, but at least I can blink away the tears and breathe without silica particles ripping through my lungs.
Staggering out of my ship, I’m shocked to find just how precarious my landing spot is. One leg of my ship is barely sitting on the rock, and my entire starboard thruster bank dangles over the lava pool in the middle of the vent. I try not to think of how my fuel stores are handling the heat, electing to believe that Slate was rigorous when it came to installing their insulation.
The vent rumbles, and I grip a broken Nomaian column as a lava bomb rockets out of the central pool, leaving a smouldering trail of ash behind. I wave the smoke away from my visor, and it hits me.
I just landed my ship inside a volcano.
Stars above, I can’t wait to tell this story around the campfire!
Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I take in my surroundings. The rock walls and floor of the cavern are brittle and black, coated with volcanic dust. Ash grips the corners between sandy pillars and boulders, and the pool of lava in the middle of the chamber bubbles with an intense heat. Thin layers of rock solidify across the surface before burning away. The whole place is painted in a red-hot glow.
Across the pool from where I stand is the purple light of Nomai writing. It’s difficult to make out through a haze of volcanic gases, but it’s definitely over there. Examining the lava for any signs of an oncoming eruption—and seeing none—I place a firm hand on my jetpack controls and fly over the gap. Hollow’s Lantern’s gravity isn’t strong enough to grip me, and its spin sends me flying in one direction and the ground circling below me in another. For a spine-chilling second, I think I’m about to land right in the middle of the molten rock below, but some quick panic-steering on my part saves me from a fiery demise. My boots land hard on the rock across the way, and I find myself in the middle of a projection pool.
I lean on one of the two podiums while I collect my bearings. There’s the projection pool, yes, and also its corresponding chalkboard sitting between the ruins of support pillars. A projection stone sits at the brink of the lava pool beside it. Nearby, an active terminal glows purple—that’s what I spotted from my ship. Cautiously, I walk over to investigate, translator tool at the ready.
WARNING: Increased solar activity detected.
WARNING: Increased volcanic activity detected.
VERDICT: Location is now inhospitable. Evacuation recommended.
Huh. So Hollow’s Lantern is more active than usual. And the increased activity is because of…the sun?
Actually, that makes perfect sense! Geyser storms tend to align with solar activity, too, and geysers are basically watery mini-volcanoes. It also explains why it’s happening now—the sun’s activity is increasing due to the impending supernova. Perhaps the change in solar activity is also why Giant’s Deep is stormier than usual, or why the sand-transfer is happening over the course of twenty minutes as opposed to hours.
Taking serious note of where the lava is, I head over to the chalkboard and pick up the projection stone. I look at the image emblazoned upon it in puzzlement.
Timber Hearth.
There are Nomai ruins on Timber Hearth. In fact, for reasons unknown to me, my planet was important enough to the Nomai for them to have built a warp tower to it. The projection stone I hold in my hands only further solidifies its significance—somewhere on Timber Hearth is a corresponding projection pool. Projection pools weren’t a form of mobile transmission. No. They were a dedicated means of communication, set up, seemingly, only at locations of the utmost importance, where clear, real-time discussion was necessary.
It’s not the fact that the Nomai were on Timber Hearth that shocks me. It’s that Timber Hearth must have been vital to the success of the Ash Twin Project for them to have gone through the effort of setting up permanent outposts there. But…Why? And where are they? Beyond the ruins in the crater and the warp receiver, there’s no evidence suggesting any sort of settlement exists.
Fortunately, I hold in my hands something that may contain the answers.
I plug the stone into the empty podium and watch as the chalkboard’s surface comes to life with spirals.
—
Root studied the lava as it bubbled around the swiftly-melting sample. He glanced at his staff as it scanned the basin, a percentage marker ticking down as a timer ticked up. When the sample finally vanished, mixed beyond separation with the molten rock within the volcano, the interface lit up with a glowing zero. He stopped the timer and added his notes to an extensive list he had been keeping since he was first stationed at the test site.
It was hot, hard work, but someone had to do it—and the timing had worked out impeccably for him. With the warp core project finally drawing to a close, the Black Hole Forge had reduced on-site personnel back to its original teams. As a materials scientist, Root wouldn’t be needed until development for the advanced warp core reached its testing stage, and at the pace Poke was working, that wouldn’t be for quite some time.
In the interim, he had been posted to the volcanic testing site on Hollow’s Lantern alongside a few others from the forge to test ore for the construction of the Ash Twin Project. Yarrow’s description of the ideal properties of the ore had been perplexing, but necessary. The Ash Twin Project had to be protected from every possible disaster, at least while it was active. Oeno, Coleus, and Cycad had worked tirelessly to find samples matching Yarrow’s outline, and the samples had in turn been sent to Root for testing. Their last bit of ore had just been liquefied, and the results hadn’t been quite what they were aiming for, but were still promising.
As others cleaned up after the final test, moving across the basalt floors that covered all but a narrow, well-marked pocket of the lava beneath, Root scanned his notes. That last sample had been especially encouraging—it lasted nearly thirty seconds under heat-stress after their processing. This was impressive for such a small sample, though they were all hoping to make the ore a tad hardier, to set their minds at ease. If the protective shell of the Ash Twin Project disintegrated before the project activated…
Well, it was now Root’s job to ensure that did not happen.
The heat tests were the final quality-control stage. Every sample they tested had already undergone rigorous experiments elsewhere—from in-field hardness evaluations to compression tests at the forge. One ore consistently surpassed expectations. Not only was it among the top samples for heat resistance, but it also scored high in hardness and compressional strength, with additionally impressive results in terms of its shear resistance and markedly low porosity and permeability. Root and his team were now working to bolster the ore’s resistance to heat, though this was proving more difficult than anyone had anticipated. Yarrow wanted a full minute of resistance, and that was a tall order indeed.
“Do we have any more ore from Timber Hearth?” Root asked around, to a chorus of Nos. They’d need more if they wanted to further experiment with different pre-processing techniques; they had five they were working on simultaneously. Shrugging off the minor setback, he headed to the projection pool, knowing just who to contact. The world around him rippled as he inserted the projection stone, and he acknowledged the Nomai beyond with a raised staff. Artificial stars glowed from the cave walls.
“Friends in the Timber Hearth Mines,” he greeted, “the last type of ore you sent us survives the longest in direct heat. Can you send us more of the same for additional testing? We’re attempting to improve its durability, and our forge has already burned through everything you sent!”
Oeno, balancing a torchlight with his staff, paused along his hurried path to wave obligingly to Root.
“We’ll deliver more ore to Hollow’s Lantern immediately. You must be fired up about crafting the Ash Twin Project’s protective shell!”
Root chuckled and tapped his staff. “My gratitude! And, yes, the idea of an encasem*nt that’s supernova-proof, however briefly, has kindled my curiosity! I imagine we’ll also have an updated estimate soon of how much ore is needed to seal off the Ash Twin Project.”
At this, Oeno titled his head with resignation.
“Will it be more than we initially thought?”
“It will be significantly more,” Root said. “The smallest crack or opening in the protective shell would destroy everything.”
Oeno waved in farewell, and walked out of sight grumbling something about an unprecedented workload.
—
Supernova-proof? Why would the Nomai need to make the Ash Twin Project supernova-proof? Unless…
The Ash Twin Project required an immense amount of energy to power a 22-minute time loop, and the Sun Station wasn’t positioned so close to the sun by happenstance. So many Nomai disagreed with its construction, fearing the worst. And if the Ash Twin Project needed such thorough protection…
The Sun Station is the cause of the supernova. Not by fluke, not by equipment failure, but by design.
The Nomai had planned to blow up the sun.
I brace myself against the podiums, mind reeling from the discovery. I know that they had sacrificed everything in their search for the Eye, but to intentionally destroy the sun? Of course, if the Ash Twin project succeeded, the sun would never actually be destroyed, but what if it hadn’t? What if something went wrong?
The Sun Station had failed back then. It must have, for them to have not found the Eye. For whatever reason, the Nomai hadn’t been able to prompt a supernova and get adequate power for the Ash Twin Project. But why is it suddenly working now?And, most importantly, how do I get there and turn it off? Glancing to my sparking ship, I know I’m not good enough a pilot to risk landing on the station manually. But maybe if I spent a few loops practicing…
Turning back to the chalkboard, I read over the sentences again. Mines. So, that’s why no Hearthian has found the Nomai outpost on Timber Hearth—it’s beneath the surface, just like the Sunless City! My heart skips a beat with the anticipation of discovering Nomai relicts right on my home planet. But where are they?
I pry the stone from the podium and head over to the projection pool, hoping to see something familiar. My vision ripples and dark liquid swirls around my boots, the fiery glow of Hollow’s Lantern fading to black.
I blink, and look around. Rocky walls are lit incrementally with torches, chalkboards and workspaces dotting the dim cavern. A gravity beam pulses behind me, and below, I see the glow of stars…
No, not stars! Timber Hearth ore! The starry rock has long been mined by Hearthians for everything from construction material to lanterns to electronics. And if they had used ore from Timber Hearth for the Ash Twin Project…
Ever since I first saw the interior of the Ash Twin Project, I’ve been confused as to where it actually is. It was named for Ash Twin, and the way the Nomai talked about it seemed like it was inside of the planet somewhere, but it wasn’t housed within any of the towers and the space beyond the memory masks always glowed with starlight. It makes sense as to why I couldn’t find the constellations—there aren’t any constellations at all! The Ash Twin Project is on Ash Twin, buried somewhere within, encased by a protective shell of starry rock I should have recognised.
Eagerly, I scan the cavern for any indication of where the mine lies within Timber Hearth, but the cavern is too wide, too dark, and beyond the rocky walls I can’t make out any revealing features.
That’s just fine. I know my planet better than I know any other. If there’s a Nomai mine on Timer Hearth, I’ll find it. I’ll just have to follow the stars.
