The last few cubits, Ōbhin had to travel lying on his left side, his feet struggling to hold his position as he scooted along. The collapsed ceiling brushed his right shoulder. His chest tightened. If that plinth collapsed, the massive stone would pin him. He’d be trapped for what remained of his life, howling in pain. Worse, Avena would be caught up in it. And his friends, too.
The floor leveled out the last cubit. He slid onto his belly and crawled forward. He shoved his arms through the doorway and hauled himself through into a small antechamber of some sort. The ceiling here had panels set in it, some missing. The tiles appeared to be made of talcum stone and had periodic recesses for lights that were spaced among them. Shards of glass lay shattered amid the layer of dust coating the floor.
He took a step forward.
SNAP!
He flinched back to see a rib bone shattered beneath his foot. More lay scattered through the room, peeking through the dust. The rounded joint of a femur. The smooth plate of a skull. A few finger bones piled in the corner. It looked like a scavenger’s kill site, the body pulled apart and feasted upon thousands of years ago then left to lie here undisturbed until now.
“Elohm’s Colours,” Avena said. She joined him, staring around. “Fingers was right.”
“They’ve been dead a long time,” Ōbhin said.
“A dead city,” Dualayn said. Dust streaked his rotund face. He wiped it off with his heavy cotton shirt then slapped at the canvas pants covering his thighs. Clouds of gray burst from him. “I think the city was still inhabited when the darklings came and the Warding was sealed. The event appeared to have been . . . cataclysmic.”
*
Cataclysmic . . .
The dream Avena had witnessed the last time she’d lost all control over her body filled her mind as she and the others stepped out of the library through a wider portal. The memory of the world melting away, walls torn apart by darkness. The strange demons reaching through from a black void. The darklings who had spilled through the world.
I really witnessed the Shattering, Avena thought. I dreamed about it. The moment it happened. Something in that room, what they were doing with the gems, invited it. Did they sin against Elohm? Did they accidentally awaken the Black? They had been using forbidden obsidian.
She shuddered, feeling that cursed jewel in her mind. What did that mean for her? She would live the rest of her life with an obsidian mind, a proxy for her brain they’d left behind in her tent. It was too fragile to bring on their exploration. She gripped her lantern tight in her left hand, the bite of the metal handle digging into her palm. She clenched until it almost hurt.
She could still sense it. She was still in control of her body.
“I think the top of a building’s fallen over us,” Ōbhin said, holding his lantern up.
She lifted her gaze. The facade of a red building, its walls made of bricks mortared together, not poured cement, ran at an angle over their heads from its base ten or so cubits before them. Some of the windows set in it were still intact, the glass smeared in dust.
In one, a skull grinned, peering out at them.
“The rest of the street’s collapsed,” said Fingers. He stood to her right before a wall of crumbled brick. “We need to go this way, right?”
“Regrettably,” said Dualayn. “I was afraid of this. I do not know how far we can get into the city via this method but excavating to find the Hall of Communications could take years.”
Avena shivered. She didn’t want to spend years worrying about when she’d next lose control of her body. How could she live? She could never go out alone. Never do anything dangerous. If she were to ride a horse and pass out, she could break her neck from the fall. To fix her, she was risking all their lives. Ōbhin, Fingers, Bran, Miguil, Dajouth, and even Dualayn. The collapsed buildings and crushed rubble around them reminded her of the danger. She shuddered, feeling the weight of the forest above them. There were twenty or thirty cubits of soil burying the city.
“There’s a door into the building,” Ōbhin said. “Let’s see where it goes. Maybe we can get out on the other side.”
“The building’s collapsed,” Avena said. “Is it safe?”
“Nothing we’ll do down here will be safe,” he said. He grabbed the mangled edge of the metal door, bent and warped in its rusting frame. He grunted and pulled. The steel squealed as he dragged it a cubit open, revealing black beyond.
“Maybe I should go on alone,” Avena said. “I can find the . . .” Her words trailed off as Ōbhin stared at her. Warmth flushed her cheeks. “Right. I’d be a hypocrite to ask you to go back and stay safe. Still, I don’t want anyone to get hurt trying to help me.”
“No one does,” Ōbhin said. “You can’t control people. Trying to do that only destroys them. It’s like telling a miner, who knows his earth and rocks better than you, where to dig. You can guide him, advise him, but if you try to dictate where he drives his shaft, he’ll run into weak rocks, fault lines, and unstable caverns. That could collapse the entire mine, creating sinkholes above. The devastation can ripple.”
“He might still find that bad rock on his own,” Avena said.
Ōbhin nodded. “Then you just need to be there to help dig him out.” He took her hand. “You’re not changing where we’re driving our mine shaft.”
“We’re here to make you as right as possible,” Fingers said, his voice a deep rumble. It reverberated through the confined space.
