Magic spilled from the walls. The floorboards sweated it out in large beads. It streamed to me. I understood now. I was an innkeeper, and this wretched abomination of an inn knew it. It was beyond healing, but it was reaching out just the same, like a dying dog, crawling to a human for one last pet on the head. Dragging itself, battered and broken, for just one more cuddle to ease the pain.

It hurt so much.

I wiped my tears. I would find whoever did this. I would rip them apart with my bare hands.

And I would have to find them. If this was an inn, someone was controlling it. They would never let me get to Sean. My best chance was to locate the innkeeper and kill them.

I took my whip out of its strap and walked through the doorway. A big domed room spread before me, lit by a blue cube caught in a network of robotic arms that formed a pillar between the floor and the ceiling. Ahead the rotting boards ended in a ragged semicircle, leaving a bare polymer floor. The rotting walls went up about one third of the way up, and then fell short, mirroring the boundary defined by the floor. The rest, the walls, the high rounded ceiling, was transparent material, and beyond it, olive nothingness spread.

The cube pulsed. A pearlescent wave passed through the glass-like dome. It took me a minute to put it all together. We were under Karron’s ocean, and the base was running a short range forcefield generator to keep the planet at bay. Someone had brought an inn inside the mining facility, but it couldn’t thrive here. It was poisoned, corrupted, and dying, so weak it couldn’t even claim this room all the way.

High-tech instrument consoles lined the perimeter of the dome. The lights still blinked. If I was right, the cube was a zero-point energy generator siphoning power from a microscopic dimensional pocket. I had seen one before, powering an artificial wormhole. The Tuhls had no respect for the universe, but occasionally their gadgets worked. This was one of those rare times their tech was stable. No wonder Kosandion was sure the mining facility was operational. The cube would power it nearly indefinitely, running all support systems and keeping the force field bubble around the facility so Karron couldn’t touch it.

And right now, the robotic arms were blocking my view.

I walked forward. The magic followed me, chasing after me, pooling in my footprints. I stepped off the boards onto the high-tech floor. The magic swelled behind me, unable to follow. More and more of it flooded in like a tide, desperate to keep touching. Every contact with it hurt like watching a loved one take their last breath.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered.

The magic tide shivered, emanating so much distress I stumbled.