“Oh, really?” Rune chided. “I thought the murderer had gotten his next victim.”
I let out a strained laugh, unable to tell if he was serious or not.
“We’ll come back to that,” he said after a moment. “Right now, we need to go. The others are waiting on us.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What, is this going to be another powwow with all the suspects? Because I need to tell you, I think it’ll just be a waste of time.”
“Not in this instance,” Rune said. “We think we may have figured out how Gamma was murdered.”
Chapter 18
A short time later, I found myself in a large chamber — maybe fifty-by-fifty feet in size — along with the six Incarnates. Although the place was square-shaped, Rune and his colleagues were in the middle of the room, loosely gathered in a circle that was about fifteen feet in diameter.
I stood in a corner of the room, wondering what the heck was going on. I hadn’t had an opportunity to ask Rune any questions; he had simply made a gesture and “Poof!” — we were here. Upon arrival, he had told me to stand back and observe, then rushed to the other Incarnates. Now as I waited for Rune and his contemporaries to do something, I glanced around the room.
I had been wrong when I had initially called the castle drab and unadorned. During my exploration, I had come to realize that each room typically had at least one embellishing feature. Sometimes it would be a mural painted on a wall, or a vaulted ceiling. Other times it would be something as simple as a rug in the middle of the floor.
In this particular instance, I noticed that the walls themselves (which were made of stone) had been meticulously sculpted to depict various battle scenes. On one wall, a group of archers on a hilltop were raining arrows down on charging cavalry. On another, a minotaur wielding an axe was in battle against some kind of tree monster. In yet a third, men armed with halberds were facing off against…well, I honestly didn’t know what they were, but they looked like bipedal squids wearing armor and carrying spears.
At this juncture, my attention was drawn back to the Incarnates, who had tightened up their circle so that it was now perfectly symmetrical. All six of them were standing completely still (so still, in fact, that I wasn’t sure they were breathing), like soldiers at attention with their feet together and hands by their sides. And then — in unison — they all turned their hands so that their palms faced inward, toward the center of the circle.
Almost immediately, I noticed something happening. Light began to form in the center of the circle, initially bright and effervescent but then dimming considerably. As I watched, the light quickly began coalescing and taking on shape — human form, in fact. At a guess, I thought the figure appeared feminine, and I was proven right a few moments later when the light vanished altogether, revealing a woman standing there.
She was about medium height and had a slender frame. Her petite features were accentuated by rather pale skin and dark eyes. Her shoulder-length hair started off achromatic at the front near her forehead, then segued into streaks of color — going from left to right across her head like a rainbow — before becoming colorless again at the back. (And when I say like a rainbow, the streaks in her hair literally mimicked a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.)
I said, feeling certain that was the only way the dead Chomarsus could be making an appearance.
Reverse engineering? I thought.
I turned back to Gamma. As I looked her over, I realized that I’d misspoken when I said that she was “standing there.” It didn’t appear that her feet were actually touching the floor. Even more telling, I suddenly noted that I could actually see through her, as if she were a ghost.
I had additional questions for Rune, but before I could ask them, Gamma went into motion, drawing my attention. Spreading her feet apart, she appeared to brace herself and then raised her arms until they were parallel to the ground, palm-outward. At the same time, her face became a mask of concentration as, lips pursing, she frowned with effort.
Frankly speaking, she looked like a mime trying to push an invisible wall. I got the impression that she was struggling against something, which I simply wasn’t able to see. And then it hit me.
Like other Incarnates, Gamma’s name was a reflection of her attributes. Gamma rays, I knew, were at one end of the electromagnetic spectrum, beyond the ability of the human eye to perceive. Fortunately, that wasn’t a limitation for me, and I quickly cycled my vision through the spectrum until I found a range that allowed me to see what was happening.
Gamma appeared to be in a pitched battle of some sort, with rays of light firing out from the palms of her hands. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to discern who her opponent was, as the beams she produced vanished when they passed outside the circle formed by the Incarnates present. That said, her adversary, whoever he or she was, seemed to give as good as they got, as noted by the fact that similar shafts of light were being fired back at Gamma. Even worse, they seemed to be taking a toll.
I had to admit to being impressed by what I was seeing. Like a bomb expert rebuilding a detonated device, the Incarnates were somehow visually reconstructing what had happened to Gamma. It was a mind-blowing display of their abilities, once again highlighting just how powerful they truly were.
On a whim, I reached out empathically. As expected, I detected no emotions from Gamma; she wasn’t really there, so no surprise at being unable to detect anything. Likewise, I didn’t pick up any vibes from Rune and his fellow Incarnates — except Static. The feelings were much the same as before (basically sorrow and resoluteness), but they were almost overshadowed by anger this time. (I did notice, however, that in this part of the spectrum, all of the Incarnates — not just Static — seemed to have a luster about them. In fact, Static seemed to have an additional glow — an inner shine near his chest area — as if he were trying to one-up his colleagues.)
My gaze went back to Gamma, who had seemingly started to wilt under the attack, letting out what appeared to be a groan of pain. Wincing, she stopped her own assault, while the attack on her appeared to intensify. Then, her eyes went wide, as if she’d suddenly had an epiphany, and she screamed, “No! No! No! Cerek!”
Catching motion with my peripheral vision, I looked away from the scene in the middle of the room. Much like Gamma had done a moment earlier, my eyebrows went up in surprise at what I saw.
One of the archers sculpted into the wall had stepped down to the floor of the room.
Chapter 19
It took me a moment to get over my shock, during which time the archer unexpectedly turned toward me, drawing his bow. Immediately recognizing the danger, I automatically went into defense mode and shifted into super speed without consciously thinking about it, just as the statue loosed his arrow.
The world around me went into slow motion. A dust mote floating near me appeared to get stuck in midair. Gamma’s facial expression froze in place. Most importantly, the arrow that was fired at me seemed to get mired in place. Nevertheless, being able to estimate its trajectory, I got out of its flight path — and not a moment too soon.
I had barely stepped aside when something whizzed by me, almost grazing my chest. I stood there, momentarily stunned by what had just happened, for two reasons.
First, when I’m at super speed, there’s practically nothing that whizzes by me. Nothing. Frankly speaking, I’m just moving too fast at that stage for anything like that to happen.
The second reason I was jolted related to the identity of the object that had come close to tagging me:
the stone archer’s arrow.
Relative to me, it had moved at what I presumed was its “normal” speed.
Somewhat stupefied, my mind raced for a moment, trying to figure things out. Had I lost my powers — somehow shifted out of super speed? But a quick glance around revealed that Gamma (as well as the dust mote I’d noted earlier) still looked frozen. That meant the statue had sped up!
As I was coming to this conclusion, I looked back at the statue and noted that it had nocked another arrow. More importantly, several of its fellows had also stepped down to the floor. In fact, all around the room, the images sculpted into the walls were coming to life. And they all appeared to be moving at super speed.
“Heads up!” I shouted toward the Incarnates. “We got company!”
At the speed I was going, my voice probably sounded like rapid-fire nonsense. Truth be told, however, I probably could have saved my breath, as — moving almost in synchronized fashion — the Incarnates broke away from the circle they had formed. The image of Gamma immediately vanished, and then I had no more time to focus on anything other than fighting for my life.
The archer who had previously shot at me was drawing a bead on me with his second arrow. I phased, becoming insubstantial, just as the arrow came flying toward me. As expected, it passed harmlessly through my chest. A moment later, someone thrust a spear through my neck from behind, while two more arrows passed through my midsection.
I was still phased and thus managed to escape injury, but an unsettling fact quickly came to light: as each weapon/projectile passed through me, I noticed that I was starting to feel the contact, despite being insubstantial. With the first arrow, I hadn’t felt anything, but with the spear came the sensation of being lightly touched with a feather. The last two arrows had generated a sensation along the lines of someone lightly tracing a line on my skin with a fingernail.
I fought to stay calm as the horrible truth dawned on me: whatever was fueling these sculptures had not only granted them super speed, but was also giving them the power to affect me while phased.
Deciding to go on the offensive, I focused on the first archer I’d seen and teleported his head to a corner of the room. Much to my surprise, the archer’s body — instead of collapsing to the ground — calmly nocked another arrow.
Of course — these things weren’t actually alive. They were being animated by some force, directed by some other being’s will. They didn’t really have eyes, brains, and so on. Thus, merely removing its head was not enough to incapacitate it, as it would have done with a living creature.
Taking a different tack, I phased one of the archer’s legs; off-balance, it toppled over and smashed to pieces as it hit the floor. Now that it was gone, I noticed two of its fellows nearby also taking aim at me. Understanding that they were quite likely the source of the two arrows that had been aimed at my gut, I telekinetically grabbed them and smashed the two statues together like a wrecking ball slamming into the side of a building. They fractured and crumbled to bits almost immediately.
I watched for a moment, half-fearful that the shattered fragments would somehow reassemble themselves. Thankfully, they stayed where they’d fallen, appearing now to be nothing more than broken chunks of stone.
Feeling a little flush with victory, I was giving myself a mental pat on the back when another spear-thrust lanced me through the shoulder blades and sent the tip of the spear poking out through my chest. This time, the contact felt like someone tapping me on the shoulder to get my attention. This thing was getting real serious, real fast.
Spinning around, I found myself facing one of the armored squid-things; it was holding the weapon that, presumably, I’d just been run through with. Deciding not to waste time, I telekinetically grabbed it by the legs. Wielding it almost like a mace, I swung it around aggressively, slamming the squid creature into two others of its kind before forcefully smashing it to the floor in a maneuver that would shatter it completely.
Finding myself with a small reprieve, I quickly swept the room with a gaze and noted that an intense battle was going on all around me, with the statues rabidly attacking the Incarnates. That said, there was an incredibly eerie quality to the conflict, and it took me a second to figure out what it was: unlike in the movies, where people are always screaming battle cries during skirmishes, none of the combatants were making any noise.
The statues, of course, were…well, statues; it wasn’t surprising that they were rather muted. However, the Incarnates also battled in silence, saying nothing as they fought the stone figures. But, despite the lack of war cries, the fight was no less intense.
Mariner wielded a watery sword that, oddly enough, seemed to be bathed in flames. Whenever he touched an attacker with it, the statue would immediately be blasted apart as water violently erupted from a score of places along its frame. (It put me in mind of a balloon being rapidly filled with water until it bursts.)
Pinion didn’t have a weapon, but the gear that had previously circled the brim of his hat was now on the floor and had grown to a size I pegged at six feet in diameter. It rolled around the room with the force of a locomotive (and seemingly at Pinion’s direction), purposefully crushing and grinding anything in its path (which, thankfully, was limited to the attacking statues).
All of the other Incarnates were engaged in the fight as well, but before I could get a more specific idea of what they were doing, the entire room suddenly shook like an earthquake had struck as a fulminant and agonizingly shrill noise rang throughout the place. It was like nails on a chalkboard — if the nails were replaced with daggers and the chalkboard was your brain — magnified a million times over.
But it wasn’t just a physical sound that I heard; I also perceived it in my head — in a way that had nothing to do with my physical senses, making me realize that the sound was reverberating across all possible levels: mental, physical, metaphysical, and more.
Most significant of all, however, was the fact that the noise was, across the board, indescribably painful — even though I was still phased. Physically, it felt as though someone had taken a jagged blade and sliced every inch of my flesh down to the bone. Mentally, it rattled around in my skull, trying to jar my brain loose from its moorings. The resulting headache it caused was both immediate and massive, as well as blinding.
Groaning loudly, I doubled over in pain, blinking almost spasmodically as I tried to clear my vision, while all around me I detected a sharp clattering, like a bunch of rocks being dumped out of a wheelbarrow.
I got the impression of motion somewhere near me, then heard Rune ask, “You all right?”
Nodding, I clamped down on my pain receptors and slowly straightened up as the agony receded. With the physical discomfort gone, my vision returned and I looked around the room, noting with some surprise that the floor was covered with rubble. It was as though someone had taken a jackhammer to the floor and broken it all up. Without being told, I understood that — whatever had happened — it had destroyed the rest of our statuary assailants.
“Why’d you do that?” I heard Mariner ask. Turning in the direction of his voice, I saw him addressing Reverb. “I was having fun.”
Looking at Mariner, I couldn’t help but think that he had a very different definition of “fun” than I did: there was the handle off a blade sticking out of his right eye.
On his part, Reverb didn’t respond. Instead, he pressed a hand firmly against his left jaw and sort of pushed in, reminiscent of a guy massaging a sore spot after taking a punch in the chops. I didn’t know if Reverb had a similar definition of fun as Mariner, but I did notice that he had three arrows sticking out of his chest.
Curious as to whether the other Incarnates had suffered injury as well, I was about to do a quick tally when, without warning, the room began to shake. No, it wasn’t the room; it was the shards on the floor — the remnants of the statues. They were vibrating en masse, and a moment later, they began to emit a soft red glow.
I was still staring at
them, trying to figure out what was going on, when I unexpectedly found myself back in the living room of our suite, along with Rune. A moment later, a sound like a gigantic, muffled cough echoed through the castle, accompanied by a rumble that shook the floor and walls.
I looked at Rune and asked, “What just happened?”
Chapter 20
Rune refused to answer any of my questions until he looked me over and confirmed for himself that I was okay. Thankfully, that didn’t take long (although it required me becoming substantial again), at which point I once more asked, “So what just happened?”
“If you’re talking about the noise we heard after we arrived back here in the suite, that was an explosion,” he explained.
“An explosion?” I muttered in surprise. “What kind of explosion?”
“What kind of explosion? A cute one, with rabbit ears and a big fluffy tail,” he deadpanned. “What do you mean, what kind of explosion?”
“I mean, what caused it?”
“I’d have thought that was obvious: the killer.”
“So now he’s just trying to murder us all?” I asked, using the term “he” to encompass both genders since we didn’t know if the killer was male or female.
“With an effort like that?” Rune said derisively. “Unlikely. That was just to destroy clues.”
“Huh?” I muttered, frowning. “Okay, maybe you just need to start at the beginning.”
“Fair enough,” he said with a nod. “I got the initial idea after you mentioned us going back in time to look at Gamma’s murder. As was explained before, we couldn’t do that, but it occurred to me that we could do something almost as good: reverse engineer the crime scene.”
“The Incarnate Bomb Squad,” I chimed in. Rune frowned, obviously not comprehending, so I explained the reference.
“That’s actually a pretty good analogy,” he said when I was done. “I probably would have compared it to arson investigation myself, but they ultimately involve the same thing: analysis of a crime scene in order to determine what happened.”
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