The Ruins

We had several probes ready, we knew we needed to find what we were looking for as fast as possible and so once we arrived in the system we deployed them and waited, both for their data and to see if we had indeed bought ourselves some time away from The Behemoth. Each moment that passed seemed an eternity, I knew the ship would come back for us once it figured out our ruse, however what I didn't know was how long it would take. A few minutes had passed, so at least I knew it had worked, otherwise I would have expected the ship to have arrived by now. With so many probes it didn't take long to narrow our search down to just two planets, both had an atmosphere that could sustain life and both had life upon them, though a few moments later it was clear which one we wanted. The ruins of a civilization were there and some of the markings on those ruins matched those that were on the energy device we had been studying. We quickly made our way to that planet and landed on its surface, we then powered down the ship and as much of our own technology as we could, we would be mostly blind but with nothing running we had the best chance of staying hidden. We also employed our mindforce powers to cloak ourselves as best we could, we just hoped it wouldn't give the entity a way of finding us.

The ruins would have been fascinating if it weren't for the urgency of what we were doing. There was clearly a lot of information and history stored within the markings, however with our supposed limited time we had to work quickly to find the symbols that might give us the information we sought. Using a distinctly outdated means of research meant it took quite a bit of time for each of us to evaluate our designated section, having to create the books with all the deciphered symbols that Nasero had didn't take long, but it was strange to hold such an old type of technology in our hands. Flipping the pages back and forth made our fingers tired and by the time we were a quarter of the way through our first sections we all knew what a papercut felt like. I was the only one who kept a piece of technology running, and barely functional at that. It was a simple sensor to detect gravitational fluctuations in this solar system, so far it had been quiet but it didn't put my mind at ease, I knew either the ship would overtake our energy phony or it would figure out that it wasn't the real thing, in either case I was sure it would come back after us and it probably wouldn't take it long to analyze the previous course we were taking and figure out where we had been heading, it was the thing's planet that we were on.

As the hours dragged on in our effort to find an answer, we began taking breaks, getting some rest to keep ourselves sane. Ambri and Nira had both had theirs and were urging me to take mine, I resisted but eventually knew that they were right, I would be able to work harder and faster if I took a moment to relax. I handed over the monitor to Nira and explored the ruins a bit, I had kept the book with me but instead of looking for something in particular I was just learning what I could, it was much easier to do than to desperately look for information on the technology that held that energy being in. Most of the information wasn't anything insightful, though there were some areas that gave me some extra information regarding their language and understanding of scientific things, but nothing that brought me to the conclusion that they were brilliant. I read about their history, how many of them there had been in various areas, how peaceful their lives had been when compared to other civilizations and how they constructed things. Most of their work was done with natural materials, which made me wonder at what point they had been able to create such a device as we had seen. There was no talk of flying machines or space travel, mostly the stars were regarded with wonder and awe, several stories also contained predictions based on their studies of these "lights in the sky". Each piece of history I read brought me further into the belief that this entity was not really tied to them, though the writing was the same here that had been on the shell of the prison. It didn't seem like long, but eventually Ambri found me and asked if everything was alright, I had been gone over two hours. This startled me a bit and I told her I hadn't been aware of so much time passing, so I went back with her and we continued studying the ruins for the specific symbols we needed to find.