His feet pounded down the stairs. They were wide, running straight to a floor two stories beneath. The stone walls and steps were cut from bedrock. A chill bled from them. His bare arms prickled with goose-pimples. The steady glow of diamond light spilled across the bottom landing.
He reached the bottom and stepped through a doorway into a storeroom. Jars lined the shelves, sealed like fruit preserves. Many had topaz jewelchines inserted into their lids and were half-covered in wax.
Their contents horrified Ōbhin.
Organs.
Lungs. Livers. Kidneys. Stomachs. Hearts. Brains. Eyes. Bits of flesh he didn’t know the name of. He held Avena tight to him as he stared at them. Each had a label on them written in the clear script of Dualayn. Names and dates.
Some were almost a decade old.
Fingers retched behind Ōbhin. Everywhere he looked in this terrible room were body parts taken from someone and stored in liquid. Some of the bottles bubbled, sapphires and topazes glowing in the brine. A lung in one seemed to contract and expand like it breathed, a yellow heliodor shining on its surface.
One jar had its own shelf with nothing near it. It held a brain in amber brine wrinkled in the same manner as Avena’s. There were four topaz healers placed directly onto the surface, attached to it by wires of black. The forbidden metal.
Black iron.
Cursed iron.
It was said to come from only a few spots in the world. Places of terrible destruction. Leftovers of the cataclysmic Shattering three thousand years or more ago. It was the only wire you could use with obsidian, or so it was said.
Dualayn had used obsidian with this specimen. He could see the glass-like material thrust out of the wax-sealed lid of the jar. It was shaped into a thin spire as long as the span from Ōbhin’s outstretched thumb to his little finger. Inside the jar, a network of black wires descended from the bottom of the spire and thrust into the wrinkled crevasses of the brain.
The name on the label froze Ōbhin’s heart: Avena, extracted the Forty-Third Day of Forgiveness, 755 EU.
He glanced down at the girl he held limp in his arms. He remembered the surgery, the sight of her mind exposed. Wrinkled like the brain in the jar. Ōbhin shook his head. He couldn’t believe this. It made no sense. If her brain was in this jar, then how was she alive? How could she control her body?
Fingers’s retching grew louder. Fury filled Ōbhin. He needed answers. He shifted Avena so he could seize the jar in a tight grip. Its heat bled through the leathers he wore. A small ruby jewelchine lay at the bottom, little bubbles rising from it. A sapphire lay next to it, both glowing as they did something to the liquid.
The storeroom had a second doorway, the source of the diamond light. He carried Avena through it, his blood boiling. It opened into a room larger than Dualayn’s laboratory upstairs. There of the walls appeared directly cut out of the bedrock of the mansion was built upon. Only the lakeside wall was different. It appeared to be fused together into a smooth surface. Three tables covered in white cloth dominated the center, two holding bodies.
Dualayn worked on one, his back to Ōbhin. The furious Qothian could see the man’s chest splayed open, ribs cracked back while Dualayn performed his grisly work. The second figure lay naked, a glowing healer resting on her stomach, reknitting a cut across her belly. Her breasts rose and fell with steady breaths.
Ōbhin needed answers. Demanded answers. If he wasn’t holding something precious in his arms, something delicate and vulnerable, he would have already flown across the room in a rage. With care, he set Avena down on a chair by the doorway. It lay by a stretcher studded with heliodor jewelchines.
He marched forward, jar in hand, and roared, “Dualayn, what is this?”
Chapter Thirteen
Dualayn gasped and whirled around, his round face bursting with surprise. He clutched a bloody hand to the heavy apron he wore, smearing crimson across the yellowing linen. His jowls shook as he let out an explosive breath.
“Ōbhin, what are you doing down here?” he said, gathering himself. “I’m working. Did you not see the sign?”
“Working?” demanded Ōbhin. He looked around the room. Several diamond jewelchines hanging from the ceiling spread an even light across the room. The walls were covered in diagrams drawn upon large sheets of parchment. They depicted human bodies splayed open in various ways, documenting muscles, bones, viscera. The one nearest Ōbhin’s right had the face of a man he recognized from the hospital.
A patient who’d died a few weeks ago.
“What are you doing here?” growled Ōbhin.
“Research. To find new ways to save those who are badly sick or injured. You know that. I am trying to save this man’s life, but . . .” He shook his head. “I fear I won’t be successful. I do not quite understand what is wrong with him. I have been vivisecting him all day and can’t find the cause. I cannot apply the resonating topazes directly without locating what is killing him.” He glanced at the other patient. “Now, she’ll live. I found a large tumor in her stomach, removed it, and she is regenerating nicely.”
“And what is this?” Ōbhin demanded, branding the jar holding Avena’s brain in the scholar’s face.
“Gentle with that!” Dualayn gasped. “That’s her mind. If you dislodge those wires, her body will stop functioning.”
*
“Stop functioning!” roared a familiar voice.
The dream of the cataclysmic destruction and alien creature ripping through a rent in reality faded from Avena. Her awareness sank into her body again. She flexed her hands and fluttered open her eyes. She moaned, feeling grounded in her flesh again. No fuzziness at her
