Xalaethra Is Found on the Experiment Table

The Pink Pony Girls entered the next stretch carrying grief and a shrine.

After completing a memorial for Nick Kremp, they left the forge entrance behind and pushed deeper into the old forge spaces. The route took them through jail cells and toward a rear complex where someone expected them to work rather than investigate. Dallas created the distraction, fighting a low-ranking officer while the others searched the hidden machinery of the place.

What they found was Xalaethra.

She was near death, chained to an experiment table while hags disposed of prior experimental bodies under the orders of a hidden scientist. The forge was not only a prison or a workplace. It was a place where bodies became material, where useful captives could be studied, consumed, or broken down.

Havyk freed Xalaethra with a surge of steel manipulation.

Kaya and Grease helped keep the rescue from turning into an immediate war. Then the hidden scientist chose rebellion, killed both hags, and led the group toward the only ship she had seen. Dallas and her mother were gathered into the escape, Arthur appeared from the ship, and K'Zhara Flamehand piloted them back to Jericha.

The group returned wounded but carrying proof.

Xalaethra was alive. The forge was worse than rumor. The hags had been experimenting. And the Pink Pony Girls had rescued people from a system built to turn them into evidence only after they were dead.