Chapter 8

The villages decided to relax and heal for the rest of the day.

They wanted to give the potions time to work and the aches and pains to fully subside. They would go hunting and foraging the next day. They were interrupted in their plans when one of the women came scurrying back to the impromptu meeting.

“Go look in your homes!” she yelled at everyone excitedly. “Go see what the mages did.”

People had to go look. They were amazed their homes were now clean both inside and out. They were also in good repair and looked as if they had just been painted and re-roofed. They also grasped that their homes were nice and warm and no longer drafty.

It had been a cold winter, and while it was nearing its end, many of them had suffered. They were all malnourished, and this hadn’t helped with the diseases that had been affecting them.

Then they found the strange flame in their fire cups. When asked, Ernie explained that the flames wouldn’t go out, as the spells would stay active as long as the crystals stayed on the house. The people were amazed and delighted.

David and Jax had found a number of sick people in several houses and had treated them as they went from home to home. The families of these people were delighted to find them also on the mend.

The villagers were sad to see the mages go, but the team had one more project they wanted to check before the day was done.

The team blinked to the spaceship.

They found it shining in the midday sun. The area around it was pristine, as all of the old branches and leaf litter were gone. Even the snow inside the shielded area was missing, and the ground was just bare.

“Hey, the door is closed,” David said, stating the obvious in his surprise.

Jax went up to the ship and placed her hand beside the door, and the ramp-half lowered as the top-half lifted up. They all entered and were astonished to find all of the rubbish had disappeared. The four lower storage areas were now just empty boxes, and the lift doors were now closed.

“Did anyone go look in the storage rooms up on the next floor?” Blair asked as they headed to the lift.

“No, for some reason, they didn’t have the ladders in place, as they do now,” Ernie replied.

“I think the lift opens at that level, and you can access them from the other side,” Bluey said, pointing to the doors.

“Well, let’s see if the lift works now,” Eddie added and stepped inside.

The others soon followed and chuckled when Tommy pushed all of the buttons. She shrugged, “We want to see everything, hey kids?”

The Nix kids agreed, making everyone smile. The doors closed, and a red light started blinking. When it went green, the lift went up one floor. They were worried when the doors didn’t open immediately.

The lights flashed to red, and it took nearly half a minute before they went green again, and then the doors behind them opened. They all wandered out to check out the room.

“It must be part of engineering, but I have no idea what all of this machinery and all the vessels are for,” Jax said.

“Well, if you don’t know, we don’t have a hope unless we can find a manual for this ship somewhere,” David replied.

Ernie had found one of the doors leading back into the main storage area, and once the lights had cycled, it opened. They went to check out the containers and were surprised that they had magical locks on them. Only Jax, David and Blair had permission to open the doors, so they went and unlocked all four rooms.

“Damn,” Tommy said as she looked inside one of the containers. “Well, it looks like we can feed the Nix and the Pix in the village for the rest of winter.”

All four containers were linked into an alternate-dimensional space and appeared to be at least four times as long and as wide as the original 4m wide by 3.5m high and 5m long container.

They were stacked with floor to ceiling shelves and crates containing all manner of packaged and dry goods that would sustain a dozen people for a year or more. They even had basic hardware like gardening equipment, housewares such as pots and dishes, home building tools and an assortment of accessories.

“I wonder why these people didn’t empty these rooms years ago?” Bluey asked as they inspected the contents.

“They couldn’t. You needed to be a four-gem mage or higher to get into these rooms,” David reminded him.

They inspected each container and found that they were basically identical as far as the contents went.

“Hey, what’s this thing?” Eddie asked as he pointed to a thin device stuck in a slot near one of the container’s doors.

Jax touched it, and a list appeared on the screen. “Inventory list, very handy,” she said as she had a bit of a scroll through the items.