Three Hunters
They slid down the service ladder one at a time into the deep below. At work with their power tools and crowbars they broke open the rusted hatch with a tremulous cough that echoed into the breach. Landing on the metal floor and training the barrels of their weapons to the abject darkness of the keep before them. Three. Three to face the long and uncharted journey as one. The last to land did so with a thud, the hull of his body broad, square, and itself metallic. An engineered carapace housing an artificial intelligence no inferior to any organic. The lion's share of their supplies he bore on his back, his shoulders stamped in auburn the designation RDD. The second was a small and lithe creature who upon entering readied a machine which suspended in midair in front of them and spoke to a weathered terminal she operated. The drone would map the surroundings as they traveled and it hummed with a light that illuminated especially the white linen wrap she wore about her neck. In the d...