*
The world melted in Avena’s dreams.
Disharmony burst through the notes, assaulting Avena’s ears. She tried to pull back from the diamond right before her. It resonated with a single tone, singing against the shattering chaos that exploded all around them.
She glanced at fear at her dream lover. He screamed but she couldn’t hear the sounds he made. The obsidian gem bubbled and flowed, spilling over his hand. Across the walls of the pristine room, cracks appeared. Rents of darkness that split apart reality.
The screeching, off-tune note cracked through the air. The other seven gems blazed with their light. Seven stars shining against the black chaos surging all around them. The ground shook beneath their feet, a mighty shattering bursting through the room. Wires connecting the gems sizzled and snapped.
The black rents didn’t rip the walls apart, but the very fabric of the world. She could see something alien on the other side, segmented eyes, chitinous bodies. Mandibles twitched. Avena tried to pull her hand free of the diamond and reach her lover. The obsidian ran over his arm like oily water.
He howled while her diamond grew brighter and brighter. Its note surrounded her, resonating with truth and light. It swept about her as the world shattered around them. She could see beyond this room as the walls split apart physically now, destroyed by the umbral cracks. People fled from the spreading chaos. Some were touched, their skin blackening into obsidian, hardening them in place. The roof exploded outward, revealing the sky above.
Stars twinkled and whirled. The cracks burst upward, soaring high up into the sky, reaching for the heavens. Something hung over the world, a shadowy orb blocking out the stars around it. She could see a faint outline of it, almost shiny, like looking at obsidian in a dark room.
A black moon?
Her lover fell to the ground, engulfed by the molten obsidian. It coated him and flowed for her. It hit the light of her diamond and sizzled, smoking away. The diamond glow protected her from the cataclysm. She didn’t understand what she witnessed.
The humming from the diamond buzzed through her bones. She gasped as her skeleton harmonized with the gem. She rang with that same tone. She could feel all two hundred and six bones in her body vibrating. Her flesh screamed in agony. The shaking threatened to melt her flesh, to tear her sinew apart at the most basic level.
The black moon above exploded in a burst of dark fire. She didn’t hear a sound, but she could see the pieces spilling off of the massive shape and streaking across the sky. Rising on the horizon, Honesty appeared; only her white face was pristine. It lacked the crater-like valleys Avena had seen every other time she’d gazed upon the white moon’s face.
The diamond hummed louder as the cracks tearing apart the world widened. The things she glimpsed thrust sharp limbs through, black-armored flesh covered in hard, bristling hairs. They pulled themselves through into her reality.
Avena screamed in horror, trapped in a cocoon of liquid truth.
*
Ōbhin kicked the door and shouted, “Dualayn! Open up right now! Dualayn!” He kicked the door harder, rattling the solid oak. He distantly felt pain throbbing through his big toe. “Come on! It’s Avena!”
“Dualayn!” bellowed Fingers, his tone almost frantic. The big man came up alongside Ōbhin and pounded a balled fist on the stout door, rattling hinges. “Elohm’s Colours, open the door. She’s dying!”
Dread struck Ōbhin. She couldn’t be dying. She’d just fainted, but those words set a panic. A frantic fear he needed to master and couldn’t. He kicked the door again. It held. But Dualayn should hear them. The lab was a converted dining hall. It wasn’t that large.
“Take her!” growled Ōbhin, thrusting Avena into Fingers’s arms.
He took her with a gentleness, cradling Avena’s limp form.
“Why isn’t he answering?” Jolene asked, her voice tight.
Ōbhin shook his head as he drew his resonance blade. The tulwar whisked out of its sheath. He pressed the button on the hilt. The emerald flared green, the sword humming, blurring the edge. With a series of quick slashes, he cut around the lock, slicing through the door and the stone frame. He slammed his shoulder into the door and burst it open, the locked knob clattering to the floor.
Ōbhin swept into the lab and cast his gaze around. A bloodstained sheet was draped over the large, central table. Discarded bandages lay about the floor. A few gems were strewn on counters and the workbench. The vault, where Dualayn kept all his jewels, was unlocked and open, the shelves lined with the precious stones, many bound in wires.
“Niszeh’s Black Tone,” Ōbhin muttered as he deactivated his sword. “Where is he? The door was locked. He has the sign out.”
“I’ll go look through the house,” said Jolene. “Maybe he’s in the kitchen getting food.”
Her footsteps pattered off as Ōbhin moved through the room, wondering if the old man had collapsed on the other side of the table or in the vault. His eyes scanned the floor. His brow furrowed as he realized something else was missing.
“Where are the two patients?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Fingers said. “Never thought it’d be so drafty in here.”
Cool air ruffled across Ōbhin’s face, teasing a few locks of his black hair. He glanced at the vault. Its rear wall had swung inward, revealing a staircase descending downward. Ōbhin swallowed at the dark gullet.
“Did you know there was a basement?” Ōbhin asked.
“No,” Fingers said. “He must be down there.”
Those words animated Ōbhin. He pulled Avena from Fingers’s arms and rushed ahead without thought. Without even fear of descending into the black. He hadn’t allowed himself to be underground in two years. No dread of repeating his harrowing afternoon in the mines beneath Gunya would
