by Peach, Hanna
She spluttered, “For strategic purposes. Less material in the way.”
“Sure. If that’s what you want to tell yourself.”
Alyx growled in exasperation.
“Would you prefer that I wait until you aren’t looking to look? I don’t mind. I’m sure the view from the back is just as marvelous as from the front.”
It took Alyx a moment to realize her mouth was gaping open and closed like a fish. “You’re… just… impossible.” She pulled the back of her shorts down. Why hadn’t she worn full-legged tights instead?
He grinned. “Let’s go. We have one more stop before we get to Urielos.”
This “one more stop” turned out to be a knife and hunting store in the outskirts of Saint Joseph. Alyx pressed her fingers against the storefront, gazing longingly at all the glinting steel behind the glass.
“Oh, Jordan,” she breathed, “you take me to all the nice places.”
Jordan grinned at her. The door handle turned in his hand and he opened the door wide to let her in first. “Only the best for you, my dear.”
Inside, the warning hum of an alarm waking up could be heard. But Jordan walked confidently to a small panel by the door, and with a press of three buttons the alarm was sated. Everything became quiet.
Alyx frowned at Jordan. “How did—?”
“I’m, um… friends with one of the girls who works here.” He grinned.
“Friends?”
“Yup.”
“And she just gave you the security code to the store.”
“What can I say, I’m a terribly charming guy.”
Alyx rolled her eyes and stalked over to one of the cases containing various sized knives and stared at them. She wasn’t even sure why she was pissed off.
Jordan appeared silently at her side and appeared to be studying these weapons as well. He leaned down to her. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering if anything in here would be big enough to burst your inflated ego.”
He laughed. “I meant about the knives. Which ones do you want?”
She shrugged. “This case will do.”
Jordan produced a small key which, unsurprisingly, fit perfectly into the back of the case. Alyx scowled when she saw it and he, at least, appeared to look a tad embarrassed. They were both silent for a few moments while they refilled their boots and sheaths from the case. Brushing her fingers along her new sharp and shiny knives made her feel a little better.
In her periphery she could see Jordan watching her with a serious face. He looked like he was gearing up to say something. Well, whatever damned excuse or justification or whatever he was preparing to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
“Alyx, I—”
“So you never did tell me what you wanted to show me in the Eden chamber,” she interrupted.
She looked up to see Jordan’s face harden so fast that it scared her.
“The structure…” Jordan began. “Michael called it his Tree of Knowledge… the red globes at the ends of the branches…”
He ran his hand through his hair, a sure sign that he was agitated. It mussed up his ponytail, causing some strands to fall out about his face. “I looked inside one of them. There were cuffs – neck, head, wrists, legs, all designed to keep someone strapped into place. Whoever was going in there would be going in against their will. As far as I could tell, all the globes were like that.”
Alyx’s face felt drained of blood. What the hell was the Tree of Knowledge for? What was Michael doing to unwilling Seraphim? She thought of Mini in the Hollows. It may not even be for the Seraphim. It could be demons… or mortals.
* * *
Alyx and Jordan crept along the cliffs towards the southern spit of Urielos. The waves that crashed along the rock face played their thunderous symphony. She could see the southern watchtower rising up from the spit that was jutting out from the main cliff line, a silent guardian to this forbidden city. She pushed aside the creeping feeling that the tower was scowling at her and clung closer to the rock, scraping her knees and forearms every time a gust of wind battered her against it.
At the top of the cliff, Alyx paused, listening. But she couldn’t hear anything over the crashing waves. Slowly, she slid her eyes up over the grassy lip. A little way in the distance the city buildings rose up like large mussels growing across the cliffs. The outsides of the buildings were rough and uneven, dotted by large slatted wooden sliding doors all the way up. If opened, the doors would stretch out across almost the length of the building. At this time of the night all the doors were shut and no light shone from the slats.
Alyx spotted the two warriors on patrole first appearing from the eastern side of the city buildings. She made hand signals to Jordan, warrior hand signals which she had taught him on the flight to Urielos. Enemy beyond. Hold position.
They watched as the two guards made their way along the patrole line and out of sight.
Jordan signaled that it was all clear, and they sprinted across the short distance to the cover of the buildings. They flew up an outer wall, hugging the corner tightly, then slid onto the roof.
Staying flat to the roof they moved across and peered over the edge of the other side of the building towards the belly of the city. There were two inner-city patrole guards making their way through the gaps between buildings. Two female warriors. Alyx kept her breath steady as she watched them round the corner, out of sight. Jordan tapped her arm and signaled to move. Silently, they leapt from rooftop to rooftop, pausing at every edge to watch for guards.
Alyx had just leapt across one flat-topped roof onto a shingled and sloped roof when she felt Jordan grab her by the shoulder and pull her roughly to the slant of the roof. She knew better than to protest or make a noise. She just widened her eyes at him in a question.
Jordan pointed across the roofs to their left. Alyx could see the silhouettes of two figures. The way they moved across the roof in the night, precise and controlled, told her that they were patrole guards.
Hold position, Jordan signed to her. She nodded. They wanted to sneak in as discreetly as possible, inflicting the least amount of harm possible, but if the warriors moved their way, they would have to take them out. Alyx cast her mind over the limited DreamWalker-infused blades they had left. Dead bodies weren’t very discreet.
Luck was on their side. After a few terse minutes, the warriors had moved far enough across the building away from them that they felt it safe to keep going. They continued their progress across the roofs of Urielos.
Finally, they reached the Archives. Peering over the edge Alyx could see the tops of two warriors’ heads below. Jordan signaled to her, allocating one guard to each of them. Then with his fingers counted down, 3, 2, 1…
They dropped, silent and graceful, daggers unsheathed behind the guards. In a silent choreography they both clamped one hand over their guard’s mouth, the other hand cutting the guards flesh with their DreamWalker-infused daggers. There was a second of struggle as the magic spread across them, then both guards fell silent.
At the door of the Archives, Alyx placed Tobias’ pick to the door. This shield wasn’t as strong as the shield to the chamber of Eden. It retracted almost fully. They slipped inside, dragging the sleeping guards and depositing them up on the small platform just inside the doorway so they would be out of sight.
Despite the darkness, Alyx could see the curved stacks of Threadcases curling around the center pole like a shell, just like in the Elder’s DreamScape. She moved further into the room to the grey stone pillar where the carved face of Uriel glared down at her. She stared at the hollow charm carved onto his chest, segmented into its three sections. She then carefully eyed the curling vine design from each section to the corresponding chamber covered with glass, one at the throat, one at his stomach and the last at his right shoulder.
“You know how to open this thing?” Jordan said to her.
“Not exactly.”
“So… how do we get in?”
Alyx stared at Uriel’s carved chest. “Well,” she began, her voice brusque with focus, “we know that we have to fill the charm with the contents of the chamber. And since Uriel was an Alchemist, we know that we have to do it using Alchemist magic.”
She touched the fingers of her right hand to Tobias’ Alchemist blood tattoo on her left forearm.
Three chambers… fill the charm… Alchemist magic...
Something occurred to her. She touched the chamber at Uriel’s shoulder and let out a little bit of Alchemist magic from her fingers.
“This is solid gold, which is why it can’t travel down the tube. We need to turn this metal into a liquid… what if…” Alyx remembered the Announcement Fair when Ferrum so casually turned wine to iron, then into gold. No doubt he would easily be able to turn gold back into iron back into wine. She shook her head and grumbled, “I can’t do something as complicated as turn gold into wine.”
“Wine? You need a drink?” Jordan sounded slightly amused.
“Or water. Or anything as far from the similar molecular structure of gold. I have only done enough Alchemist training to change basic elements. Like metal to metal.” Alyx turned back to the gold chamber that seemed to glint at her with scorn. “If only I had enough Fire to melt the damn thing…”
“What about mercury?” Jordan said.
Alyx raised her eyebrows at Jordan. His head was in the stars again. “What has that planet got anything to do with getting inside this chamber?”
“I’m talking about the metal, mercury. It’s liquid at room temperature.”
Alyx felt a smile break out over her face. “Perfect.”
She touched her hand to the chamber holding the gold. Slowly she let out the Alchemist from her fingers and coaxed the gold material into mercury. The gold morphed into what looked like melted silver and began to trickle through the tube towards the charm.
“It’s working,” she heard Jordan say in a hush, but she didn’t break her concentration.
Soon one section of the charm was filled with the liquid mercury. Alyx took her fingers off the empty chamber and breathed a soft sigh. One down, two to go. She stared at the chamber on Uriel’s stomach, then touched it briefly with Alchemist.
“This one is… silver.” Alyx scrunched up her nose as she tried to remember the basic elements that she was taught when training for her Alchemist mark, one she hadn’t actually been awarded yet. She traced her finger up along the curling vine.
“Turning this into mercury won’t work. We need this material to go up not down.” Alyx scrunched her forehead in thought. How the hell would she make it go up? It’d have to be lighter than air.
That’s it.
“We need to turn this one into a basic element that is a gas at room temperature. Something lighter than air.”
“Lighter than air,” said Jordan. “Like helium?”
Alyx nodded and placed her fingers against the silver. The grey material began to dissolve and soon all traces of it were gone. Alyx then touched her fingers to the middle section of Uriel’s charm and tested it with Alchemist. She nodded. “You can’t see the helium, but it’s there.”
“What about this last one then?”
Alyx stared at the last chamber at Uriel’s throat. It seemed to be empty but looks could be deceiving. She placed her fingers on it and sensed it with her Alchemist bloodink.
“There’s hydrogen in this one, also a gas that’s lighter than air. I guess the point is to turn the hydrogen into something more solid so it falls down into the chamber.”
Alyx placed her fingers on the last chamber and felt the magic move through her again.
The final grains of bronze solidified in the chamber and fell down the tube like sand falling through an hourglass. She felt the statue start to shake at her fingertips. She jumped back grabbing Jordan’s arm as she did. The entire center pole was twisting in place, the carvings on it turning in a muted carousel.
“It worked.” Jordan said.
Yes, it did, thought Alyx. But as she eyed the darkened doorway that was revealed as the outer section turned around she couldn’t help the feeling of dread that filled her body.
She stepped towards the doorway. The air that rose from the gap was stale and musty. Little flecks of grey stone dust fell from the frame. She wondered how long it had been since anyone had entered. Or had come back out.
“You ready?” she heard Jordan say.
Alyx unsheathed her sword. “I was born ready.”
Activating the halolight around her neck she dropped into the chasm.
Chapter 21
Alyx felt the ground under her feet and she dropped into a crouch to soften her landing. She gazed around her as she stood and stepped forward. Where was she?
Wherever it was, it was dark. Even when she lifted her halolight up over her head, the light extended out in a limp dome around her, the edges of the light fading to a complete blackness, as if the blackness was a beast that swallowed light.
She heard Jordan land softly on the ground next to her, his halolight bringing little relief to the darkness here. She heard a grinding of stone and looked up just in time to see the tunnel they had just fallen through close up. Well… that took away their turn-back-before-it’s-too-late option.
“What now?” she heard him say.
“I guess we look around. But don’t go too far.”
But before she could even move, a burst of light came from in front of her. Alyx flinched away from the light and threw her arm up to help shield her eyes. She was tackled backwards by Jordan and she felt her breath slam out of her as she hit the ground under him.
She braced for pain. But none came. Over his shoulder she could see that the light was shining from a doorway. Sapphire and diamond sparks flew from a point above the door across the room and lit torches around the room that had all but been dead pieces of wood and iron. They erupted to life with unearthly pale blue and silver fire.
Jordan was still holding her, his weight pressing her into the ground. Their eyes met.
“You threw yourself in front of me,” she said, not being able to contain the surprise in her voice.
His eyes widened in his own surprise. Then he frowned, and what seemed like anger pinched his lips. “Trust me,” he muttered, “it wasn’t an intentional thought.”
Alyx felt a small stab of hurt which she ignored. He pulled himself off her and she got herself up.
Alyx looked around her. They were in a round room with walls of uninterrupted rough-cut stone except for the doorway. The bright light shining from this doorway dimmed until it shone only from a patchwork of runes across the stone door.
“What are they?” asked Alyx as she approached the door.
“They look like runes.”
Alyx gave him a questioning look.
“What, aren’t you up on your pre-Latin alphabets?”
Alyx rolled her eyes. “No. Are you?”
Jordan pointed at a rune that looked like an arrow pointed to the left. “That’s ‘k’.” Then he pointed to one that looked like a trident. “That’s ‘z’. Looks like I found some use for those stupid Castus lectures after all.”
“Okay, so it’s an alphabet. What does it mean? What do we have to do with it?”
“My best guess? I’d say it’s some sort of pin code. We need to know what runes to press to open that door to the chamber.”
Alyx cursed. “The Elder didn’t give me a pin code.”
“I doubt that Uriel gave that out freely.”
“You don’t think that he scratched the pin code in the stone somewhere around here, do you? Just in case he forgot it?” Alyx sighed when Jordan gave her an “are you kidding me?” look. “Yeah, didn’t think so. So what do we do now?”
Jordan glanced up. “We can’t get out the way we came. We’re just going to have to figure this out.” He stared back at the door tapping his chin with his finger.
Alyx moved closer to his side. “What are you thinking?”
“The Elder said that Uriel created this chamber. Now… I’ve heard stories about the kind of guy Uriel was from Vix – arrogant, twisted, narcissistic, holds himself above all others when it comes to his intellect. I imagine that his pin code is something he chose deliberately. A word, to make it easy to remember, but it’d be a word that means something to him. Something personal. Or something that represents him…”
“Monkey’s ass?”
“That’s two words.”
“How about just ‘ass’?”
Jordan snorted. “Be serious, Alyx.”
She let out an exaggerated sighed. “You’re no fun.” She turned back to the runes and studied them. The clusters of lines glowed back at her as if taunting her with their secrets. An alphabet, eh?
If I were an arrogant, narcissistic ass, what would I chose as my pin code?
“What about ‘Chief’ or ‘Elder’?” she said.
Jordan shook his head. “No, he would see himself as having transcended even that. Something unique. Something to be awed and worshiped and respected.”
Alyx pressed her lips together. The only thing above an Elder was… “What about… ‘God’?”
Jordan paused. It was only a minute’s pause, but it was enough to let her know that he thought she was right.
“Would he actually be that arrogant?” Jordan considered this for another moment then spoke, “I can’t come up with anything better. Can you?”
She shook her head.
“Shall we just try it?”
“Wait,” Alyx called out as he reached out his hand towards the runes. “What if we get it wrong?”
Jordan peered up and behind him. Alyx followed his gaze. He was staring at the hole that they both dropped through, now closed off completely.
Alyx sighed. “Okay. Just do it.”
Jordan pushed a rune shaped as an X. “G,” he said. The light changed from blue to white. Then he pressed a rune that looked like a boxy-looking fish pointing up. “O.” Then finally, a rune shaped like two triangles on their sides with their tips touching. “D.” This too changed to white.