by J M D Reid
“Ōbh—”
Fingers’s dirty hand clamped over her mouth. He pulled her back. Indignation surged through her. She thrashed, the whispers swelling. They were so close. Why was he stopping her?
The crystalman stepped out of the next alley down the street. Its diamond eyes shone bright and swept at them. An alarm blared loud from it, ringing through the ruins. With lumbering steps, it marched at them.
Avena stopped fighting against Fingers.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Idiot!” she snarled at herself as she and Fingers ran back down the alley.
The booming steps of the crystalman thundered behind them. The alarm screeched and echoed through the ruins. Something groaned above. Her shoulders crawled, realizing the ceiling was shifting. It could collapse on them.
The light from their lanterns swung wildly, dancing and painting the alley with splashes of illumination and patches of night. They had to find some way to outrun it. To lose it in the maze of buildings and half-collapsed tunnels.
If they made the wrong turn and were cornered . . .
She threw a look over her shoulder. It had reached the mouth of the alley and marched down it with the implacable force of a flash flood. Nothing could stand in the way of a boiling torrent of water surging down a river, destroying docks and bridges, devouring the banks and spilling into towns.
“Door!” Fingers shouted and threw himself to the right. He slammed into a rusted slab of iron and bounced off. “Black-filled roaches!” He threw himself into it again, the metal groaning. Flakes of orange-red drifted off.
The crystalman thudded closer.
“Out of the way!” she shouted, clenching her right fist to activate her earthen gauntlet.
Emerald spilled across Fingers’s frightened features. He threw himself back. Her shoulder ached, still injured from yesterday, but she could move it enough. She thrust her hand, palm open, at the door. The metal groaned as she pressed on it. The emeralds surged strength into her, resonating with the Colour of Forgiveness.
Or the Tone of Earth, as Ōbhin would put it.
Metal flexed, moaned. Patches of rust sloughed off like the winter coat of a yak. The crystalman’s alarm rang in her ears. She could feel the automaton almost on top of them. Fingers screamed. Her shoulder burned, the pain a shouted warning at her. She felt the ball of her humerus grinding in the socket close to dislocation.
She roared and pushed hard.
Something snapped. Metal clattered to the ground on the other side. The door swung open, and she charged through it into a hallway covered in a thick layer of dust. Clouds burst around her feet as she rushed forward. Fingers followed, his boots stomping behind her.
“Elohm’s bright Colours illuminate our souls! It’s right behind us, Avena! Run!”
The entire building shook. A mighty crash of bricks were collapsing. The walls around her flexed and warped. She knew the automaton had battered through the wall to chase after them, destroying vital structural supports of this building. It held up more than just its own weight, but all that earth and the Upfing Forest above them.
She turned in an open door and darted into an apartment, passing rotten furniture she hardly had time to notice. Something yelped and darted out of her way. She plunged into another room and gasped at the debris choking the windows, blocking any escape that way.
The crystalman crashed onward in a wave of shattering masonry.
“There,” Fingers pointed. “Stairs!”
She had no idea if that was a good idea. She had no time to think. Her feet were already racing for them. Her lantern danced in her hand, swinging light before her. She raced up the stairs two at a time. Sweat spilled down her face. All those mornings running laps around the manor with the rest of the guards gave her the stamina to reach the top with her breath.
She found herself in a hallway. It led the length of the building. The far end was lost to the gloom, but she thought it looked open. A dark portal through which her light couldn’t reach. A way out of here and away from the crystalman smashing below.
“It’s on the stairs!” growled Fingers. “Go, go!”
Avena sprinted down the hallway. Something heavy crashed below. She threw a look behind her. Dust billowed up the staircase. It flowed around Fingers, swallowing him for a moment in a dusty haze of brown illuminated by his lantern.
“Did the stairs collapse?” she shouted.
“Think so!”
She slowed as she reached the window. It was clear. Below, she could see rubble piled around the building’s foundation, debris from the collapsed ceiling. There was a trough of dirt carved up into the earth above them. The top of his building and the next held up the rest of it. She could see tree roots thrusting through the collapsed ground. The tendrils seemed to be holding the soil together, keeping more of it from collapsing down on them.
Across the alley, another window loomed. Its glass had long since broken out, leaving only a few sharp teeth thrusting up, all covered in a thick layer of grime. She bit her lip and looked down at the debris. They were higher up than they should be, or the ground here had collapsed over the eons.
“Should we climb down?” she asked. “It’s about twenty cubits down.” At that height, they risked breaking an ankle.
“It might batter through the wall while we’re doing that.” Fingers looked behind him. It hadn’t followed them. She could hear it crashing through the house below.
“We can go up maybe another level.” Avena thrust her head out the window, peering up. Then she looked left and right. The alley on both sides seemed to end in walls of collapsed rubble. “We have to get across to the other building.”
“Too far to jump,” Fingers said. “Close, but I couldn’t make that.”
Avena shook her head. The other window was so tantalizingly close. “Let’s climb down and then up the—”
A crystal fist burst through the floor a cubit from her foot. Broken concrete rained down on the automaton. It rang like wind chimes. Another fist smashed upward, erupting closer to them. The floor groaned beneath them, cracks radiating out from the blows.
Fingers growled and seized her. She gasped as the larger man lifted her with ease, thrusting her out the window. No, he didn’t thrust her. He threw her. She screamed as she soared across the gap between the two buildings. She dropped her lantern. It tumbled low and broke against the wall, snuffing out.
She slammed into the lip of the other building’s window. The air burst from her lungs. She groaned, her arms thrust through the opening. Her booted feet skittered on the building’s face as they searched for purchase. Almost immediately, she started falling. She screamed, the frame scraping at her skin through her shirt, at her breasts.
She caught it, throbbing scratches beating pain with her heartbeat. The soles of her boots gripped crumbling brick and rotten mortar. She climbed up and spilled over into a room. She landed with a dusty thud, millennia of destructs bursting around her in a writhing cloud.
A skeleton lay beside her. She hardly noticed as she rolled to her feet and whirled to the window. “Fingers!”
He had his back to the far window. Concrete cracked. The crystalman was about to batter through the floor. She could see its amethyst body through the lower window. Fingers turned around and threw his lantern across the gap. The light soared at her. She caught it.
“Go!” he shouted. “It’s fixated on me. You have a chance.”
His emotions were writ across his face, that desperate love a parent had for a child. He would make sure she lived. Emotion stung her eyes more than the dust billowing around her. She shook her head. It wasn’t fair. She had just found him. Realized who he was. She couldn’t lose him again. Not so soon.
The whispers echoed through her mind. Numb fingers clutched the lantern. She held it high, desperate to find something to bridge the space.
*
“This is a problem,” whispered Ōbhin.
They had snuffed out their lanterns. In t
he dark, the crystalmen appeared as faint glows of purple moving through the vast space. As his eyes adjusted to the heavy darkness, he spotted another glow even farther away. The automatons patrolled before the very building they needed to enter to shut them down.
Ōbhin’s mind worked as he watched them. The open plaza appeared to be twice the size of the grounds upon which Dualayn’s manor rested. He judged it to be as big as St. Jettay’s Square before the Temple of the Seven Colours. At least two crystalmen circled it. While there seemed to be some obstructions that occasionally blocked the sight of the automatons, there wasn’t much cover to hide them for more than a few heartbeats.
“There’s no way we can cross that unseen,” said Ōbhin.
“We must,” said Dualayn. “Look. You can see our destination in the glow of the far one. Those steps.”
“Can we work our away around through the buildings?” asked Miguil.
“There are more around than those two,” said Ōbhin. Their presence seemed to confirm Dualayn’s theory. The crystalmen were patrolling close to where they were controlled. They would stay by their headquarters. Their creators would have ordered them to guard it. Without anyone alive to give them commands, they now followed their previous instructions.
Ōbhin glanced at Dualayn. “You are certain you can shut them down?”
“Absolutely.”
Just like you were certain Chames wouldn’t die, or Avena wouldn’t lose control of her body. Ōbhin’s shoulders itched. Avena was out there. He wanted to rush out there and shut them down. To end the most dangerous threat to her life.
Being brash wasn’t the solution. Slowly. Stealthily. Taking their time to reach it. Miguil was right. He couldn’t let his fear of ‘what ifs’ drive him to do something reckless. He drew in slow, measured breaths.
“Okay, we’ll work our way—”
The distant alarm echoed through the ruins. The screeching sound dumped frozen snow down his back. Dajouth groaned and Dualayn muttered beneath his breath. Ōbhin gripped the debris they hid behind.
The crystalmen had found Fingers and Avena. The luxury of time evaporated.
“I’ll distract them,” Ōbhin said and rose. He drew his resonance sword and picked up a lantern. His eyes had adjusted to the near night, the light glowing from the nearest crystalman surprisingly enough for him to see shadowy shapes of obstacles before him. “You rush for the building as they chase me.”
“That’s insane,” Miguil hissed. “They’ll kill you.”
“He’s in love,” Dajouth said. “That makes every man crazy. Ōbhin, we’ll do it. I’ll drag Dualayn in there myself if he objects.”
Ōbhin nodded and burst from his cover. He raced across the craggy surface of the plaza. He had made it twenty cubits away when he activated his sword and lantern. Light flared around him. The nearest crystalman stopped and began to turn. Ōbhin slashed his blade at it, striking its arm as he rushed past.
The ear-splitting screech, like the rising cry of a hawk that never stopped for breath, burst from the automaton. Ōbhin kept running. He leaped over a pile of rubble. Ahead, he made out a street leading into more buildings, their top levels crushed by the falling earth.
To his left, a third crystalman lurched to life and trudged out. The far one marched at him. He had three of them following him. It had to be enough. He was placing his trust into the hands of a man who had proven himself unworthy of guarding the midden heap.
*
It wasn’t more than ten cubits separating the two buildings. That wasn’t that far. Just two of Avena stacked together. She had to find some way to save her father. She ignored the whispers echoing through her head. She rubbed her tongue across the roof of her mouth.
It felt fuzzy, like it was covered in prickling caterpillar down.
She couldn’t collapse. She had to keep her mind here. She fought against the signal interference, hoping the fear flooding through her body would help to keep the connection between her mind and flesh strong.
This room had debris like the rest of the ruins. The interior walls here were made of wood. There were planks. . .
Planks!
She grabbed the longest one she could spy, one end snapped off. She didn’t have time to measure. To plan. She picked it up and thrust it through the window. With a mighty heave, she shoved it across the intervening space, screaming her father’s name.
He grabbed the end and lifted it up. It stretched across between them. It was barely wider than Fingers’s thigh. It had to be enough. She pressed her hands down on her end, anchoring it. Tears beaded her eyes.
“Please!”
He climbed out onto the window and groaned. He didn’t stand but crawled across it. Dust billowed behind him. The automaton still punched. For a wild moment, she thought he would make it. He was somehow crossing the gap, his gaze locked on hers. The board creaked and bowed as he neared the middle. It slipped in her grip, wanting to slide free and fall. Nothing anchored the other end, allowing it to move.
She pressed down with all her weight. Her entire body felt light. Alien. Her vision swam. She felt on the verge of her collapse. The numbness spread up her arms. Her legs. She couldn’t feel the plank shifting beneath her hands any longer.
“Hyurri,” she slurred. “Fyingyers!”
The plank cracked. Fingers growled and threw himself the last few cubits. She grabbed his outstretched arms with numb digits. The board fell away. It slammed into the debris below as she hauled him back.
Her fuzzing feet tripped over each other. She squeaked and crashed to her back, Fingers on top of her. The weight drove the air out of her lungs a second time. Her vision washed black for a moment. She almost lost her body. The connection between thought and action grew tenuous, a slender thread.
The crystalman slammed into something. The wall? She struggled to move. Fingers rolled off of her and shook his head. He snatched up the lantern she’d set down to thrust the plank across. He whirled around as she fought to rise.
“Fyingyers . . .”
He glanced down at her. “Black’s foul piss, it’s happening?”
She nodded and managed to sit up. His right arm swept down and hauled her to her feet. She staggered against him. The world swam about her. She wouldn’t surrender. She wouldn’t give in to the signal loss. She would stay in control of her body.
They staggered forward, the alarm fading behind them. The whispers dwindled. With every step, more and more control returned to her body. She stopped being half-dragged by Fingers. She started placing her feet with strength.
They were leaving the interference behind.
“There are stairs,” she said, the words coming clear.
“You’re getting better,” Fingers said.
“It’s the crystalman,” she said, frowning. The whispers were coming from the automaton. The thing was talking to something else. It was sending strong tones through the immaterial. Was the antenna attached to her brain picking up interference? Was that even possible?
She had no idea. She didn’t understand how half of the hits worked. But she could feel it retreating. The whispers were muted as they descended the stairs. The fuzziness retreated down to her fingers and toes.
“I can detect them,” she said, sparks of excitement bursting through her. “I can tell when they’re close.”
“Yeah, so can I,” muttered Fingers. “Hear that one bellowing? I think it’s bringing help.” He frowned. “Is a second one blaring an alarm?”
Avena shook her head. She couldn’t tell. The awful screeching radiated around them as they moved through the first floor of the building. Everything down here looked strangely preserved, just covered in stains of filth on the wall and a thick layer of dust. Nothing lurked in here. No bones littered the floor.
“Door,” said Fingers, holding the lantern to his right.
She nodded in agreement. They crossed to it. She bit her lip. The whispers echoed through her mind. They were growing stronger again. It was like she was heari
ng a second voice now. Two of them. Three. Maybe four. It was so hard to tell.
“More coming,” she muttered, a hunch bubbling in her mind. “The controller is directing them at us.”
“Then let’s move,” Fingers growled.
She nodded, the fuzziness creeping up her. Was the presence of more intensifying the interference? She swallowed, unsure. She clung to Fingers as he thrust open the door. Their lantern spilled out onto a street. Large mounds of rubble littered it. One had crushed a demon, its leg thrust out from beneath blackened stone.
“Comying cloyser . . .” She held him, the whispers screaming in her mind. The alarms blared all around them.
“There’s light,” Fingers said, looking to their right.
The unmistakable shine of a swinging lantern illuminated the intersection. Then Ōbhin appeared and turned towards them. He spotted them as he ran at full speed, his resonance blade held in one hand, the lantern in the other.
“Run!” he shouted.
The whispers slammed into Avena’s mind. Her body went limp, unable to fight off the interference. She felt her thoughts plunged into an empty void. The whispers were all around her. But there was something else. Another voice. One that she had followed before. A voice that had called to her the other times she’d blacked out.
She entered a dream.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the dream, she screamed with frantic desperation. Avena didn’t understand the words pouring out of her mouth. She had her hand outstretched before her, diamond light gleaming at her fingertips. Before Avena stood a man. Raya’s lover.
He stood rigid, his arms pinned to his sides. A web of darkness slowly crept over him. Thick tendrils of gleaming obsidian coated him like an invisible spider slowly cocooning him. On the edges, the darkness vanished, leaving behind unmarred reality.
It’s a rent, Avena realized. One of the rents the demons poured out of. She could see the hole in the fabric of the world repairing itself. It wasn’t a spider cocooning him, but a weaver stitching cloth together with threads of black.