“I’ve already declined.”
“And you can find your own damned way back to the Labyrinth!”
She could not be allowed to simply leave. I turned, extending a fist, reaching for her with an invisible hand of power, and the sunlight had a peculiar quality here, brighter and warmer than I’d ever experienced on-in-Esper, as well as displaying a distinctly more golden color. Bant, perhaps? I had not yet had the leisure to acquaint myself with the finer details of our newly conjoined planes…
I thought, Wait a minute…
Shortly the bones themselves began to move, lifting and twisting and fusing themselves into a web-work archway that anchored itself upon a ring fused of the remaining bone. In the very instant it was complete, an eldritch reality whorl distorted the view through the arch.
This isn’t right, I thought-but I wasn’t sure why. “Doc?” I said hoarsely. “Is there something wrong about this?”
“You mean other than the zombie gate and the fires and Baltrice not responding?”
“Baltrice…” I remembered something else about Baltrice, or thought I did, but I couldn’t quite bring it into mental focus. “Baltrice.”
“Tezzeret, what happened? Are you hit? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. It’s all right. Zombies stink.”
“Well sure they do, but-”
“Imagine swimming in nyxathid vomit.”
“Ooo. Damn, do I have to?”
“I have a fix. One moment.” I was able to mentally retrace my armor’s link to her ear-and-eyepiece, and adjust her anti-sand field as I had my own; she couldn’t be much use to me if she’s retching too hard to breathe. “That should cover you. Now it’s your turn to cover me.”
“I’m on it.”
That feeling of wrongness only increased. “Baltrice, change of plan. I might be under attack, and it could be Renn, and-I don’t know. I have a feeling that I can’t explain. Be on your guard.”
There was no response.
“Baltrice? Baltrice!”
When designing on the fly, it’s generally best to start from the middle, and work one’s way outward from there. Also, the cuirass and cuisses would be simplest to create, requiring no more than an approximate fit. All the jointing and lapped plating would come later. I held a hand above my etherium sled, and its dorsal surface began to ripple and bulge as I drew forth the metal for my first pieces of armor.
Doc said, “Eugh. What’s that smell?”
I ignored him. The rim of the Netherglass was some three miles away and downwind. Though zombies are rightfully notorious for their odor, I strongly doubted we could smell them from here.
Roughly five pounds of etherium poured upward toward my hand, pulling free from the sled in an inverted teardrop. Using both of my hands to aid in the focusing of my will, I softened the metal and spun it like dough for flatbread to form it into a disk of uniform thickness… and I smelled the odor Doc had been talking about. It wasn’t zombies.
It was blood.
The smell is unmistakable, but considerable blood must be spilled before the scent is obvious to an ordinary human nose, especially outdoors. And this odor was accompanied by a distinct undernote of sulfur, as well as a hint of the proteinaceous soot that arises from charred meat.
I had a thought that Baltrice might, conceivably, be cooking something on her sled behind me… but an animal she had freshly killed? In the middle of the Glass Desert? It was so improbable that I paused a moment, struck by an overpowering conviction that I had done this before. And that what came next would be bad.
“Just like deja vu all over again, isn’t it?”
I froze. If I live a thousand years, I will never mistake that voice, the blend of upsloper condescension and petulantly malignant mockery.
The etherium dropped into my hand, and I left it there. “Renn.”
“This is the part where you turn and attack, Tezzeret.” He sounded like he was looking forward to it. “Come on, don’t be shy.”
“Or turn and run,” Doc buzzed in my left ear.
I told both of them, “No.”
“You will, you know,” Renn said. “And soon. For all the good it’ll do you.”
“I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Oh, it won’t be a fight, Tezzeret. You attack, then take a nap. Hardly qualifies as combat.”
“Are you sure he’s wrong?” Doc said nervously.
“Nobody needs to get hurt,” I said.
Renn snorted a contemptuous chuckle. “That pyromancer of yours didn’t agree,” he said. “Kind of a hothead, isn’t she?”
In his mind, that had probably sounded funny. “Where is she? Is she alive?”
“Guess.”
“Renn-”
“You can try to beat it out of me.”
“Some other time.”
“He took out Baltrice?” Doc sounded appalled. “Just now? While we were standing here?”
“No,” I murmured. “He’s going to take her out after I leave. He won’t even get here until we’re in the middle of the zombies.”
“Then how can-why is he-I mean, what?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh, really?”
“The armor was a great idea,” Renn said conversationally. “I’ve always admired your ingenuity. You’ll never know how many times you beat me. I should say, time lines where you beat me.”
Doc said, “Something tells me this isn’t one of those time lines.”
“Shh.”
“Finally, I just got aggravated enough with losing that I decided we should have our chat before you make any. This way, we skip the whole fight and get straight to the part where I torture you. A lot.”
Finally I turned. Renn leaned casually on Baltrice’s gravity sled, its etherium dulled by a thick coating of fresh-looking blood. The area around it was drenched until the powdered glass was wholly black. The scent of charred meat rose from his clothing-but it wasn’t his flesh that had burned.
“You don’t have to torture me, and you have no reason to harm Baltrice,” I said.
Renn snorted. “I don’t have to eat,” he said, gesturing with his etherium arms to his etherium chest, in which the sole remaining organ was his etherium heart. “But I eat anyway.”
“I’ll tell you what you need,” I said.
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“It’s why I came here. Specifically. To share what I know.”
“You always were tiresome,” Renn said. He pushed himself off the gravity sled, to stand balanced on the sand. His personal shields crackled and spit as they disintegrated the powdered glass on the wind. “Listen to me, Tezzeret. You’ve already told me everything you know. I’ve been torturing you for several days-recreational torture, really. Just for fun. To pass the time. I’ll get so bored after I torture Baltrice to death. You told me everything before I even touched her.”
“Does he know he’s not actually making sense?” Doc whispered.
“He is making sense,” I muttered, “just not to us. Get ready.”
“For what?”
“Then why are you here, Renn?” I spread my hands. “You know everything I know-why talk to me at all?”
“I don’t know everything,” he said, walking toward me. The golden haze of his shields intensified, and blazing white mana gathered itself around his fists. “I’m still trying to figure out how you escaped.”
