Fingers saw that final change, Avena thought, remembering Bran’s neck getting twisted about by the impact of the metal carriage.
“I’m sure Ōbhin’s alive,” Fingers added.
“He was runnin’!” Bran said. “I saw that. He’s gonna be fine. Him and Miguil and Dajouth.” The impostor’s dirty face tightened, brow furrowing. Caked dust cracked across his forehead. It had the consistency of cake frosting. “Dualayn’s probably fine, too.”
“I see,” Avena said, her emotions battling. She wanted to draw her binder and beat the thing pretending to be Bran to a pulp. Nauseated disgust rippled over her. She pushed down impulses of revenge and anger. That wouldn’t help. “Ōbhin will find me—us!—so let’s keep going.”
She focused on her mission while she struggled on what to do about “Bran.” They continued down the tunnel, Avena taking a lantern from the impostor. Emeralds gleamed on her earthen gauntlet. It was still intact. She had her binder on her belt. She wasn’t helpless.
Ideas bubbled through her mind, her rage simmering deep inside of her.
The tunnel led to a set of stairs covered in dust-laden cobwebs. Fingers just sighed and swept his hands through it as he led the way upward. The stairs were rusting metal, creaking beneath their feet. Tight and narrow, not the broad sweep they’d descended to the carriage house. With every step, Avena’s stomach lurched.
The staircase shifted.
“Pus-filled roaches and crap-eating rats!” Bran cursed at one lurch, gripping the railing so hard his knuckles whitened.
Fear? Avena wondered. Is it real? How can you fake posing as Bran so well? What are you? She was positive that foul Dje’awsa had created the impostor with magic, using crystals with blood and foul obsidian in ways that violated the natural laws of jewel machines and crystal harmonics. Ust was brute work done fast in a few hours, but this thing must have been labor. A feat that took days or weeks to create.
Fingers shouldered through a door. It squelched open, metal scraping on metal. A street lay before them, the middle buckled and sagged, massive cracks rending through the stone. The surface looked poured, like the concrete but different. It was black, almost like hardened tar. One of the jewelchine carriages lay crumpled beneath fallen debris. Some sort of arch lay over them like the street once had a ceiling for a short way. Part of it had collapsed. Red tree roots dangled down like frozen waterfalls.
“There’s a sign,” Bran said. “Can you read it, Avena?”
“Yes,” she said, voice tight. She pulled her map out of her pack and studied it. She recognized one of the names. “Hall of Assembly is that way.” She pointed off towards the darkness. The tunnel led that way for a short stretch. “That’s where we should be going if Dualayn’s map is accurate.”
Fingers grunted. “He’s a piss-drenched bastard, but he’s not often wrong.”
Bran spat, a look of disgust on his face.
Avena folded her map and led them forward; the dull throbbing in her shoulder continued. It hurt to move her arm, but she had full range of motion if she had to swing her binder or use her enhanced strength. The emeralds were dull right now, not active. They couldn’t operate for too long despite being networked together to spread the load amid the smaller emeralds.
The tunnel ended at a pile of rubble, forcing them into another building. This one appeared to have been a shop of some sort. It contained rotting shelves. The items they held were long gone, scavenged by rats or maybe the dogs. Thick strands of cobwebs ran between the aisles, and a thick layer of dust covered the floor. A vein of ruby ran through the center preserving boxes on the shelves affected. One had only partly been transmuted, the side rotting away, revealing its contents to be some sort of clumped noodles or maybe twisted yarn.
It was hard for Avena to say.
They passed through a storeroom of decayed crates and a smattering of bones. Teeth marks from small animals decorated the remains, one bone gnawed for its marrow. Avena shuddered, her fingers twitching with revulsion.
Something whispered to Avena’s right. She cocked her head, struggling to make out the sound. Was it a current of air caressing over cobwebs?
“A door’s over here,” said Bran. He grabbed it and twisted the metal knob. Metal clang and it came free in his hand, parts tinkling as they hit the floor. He threw it down and slammed his shoulder into it. The door slid a few inches outward into darkness.
thud . . . thud . . .
Avena froze. Bran whimpered. Fingers cursed.
thud . . . thud . . . Thud . . . Thud . . . THUD!
“Down,” Avena hissed at the sound of the crystalman’s approach. Was it the same one that they’d fought in the carriage house? Or were there more? Avena pondered these questions as she slid to her belly on the floor and killed her diamond lantern with a panicked thought.
Bran, crouching against the wall by the door he’d partially opened, turned his off by pushing a button on its top. The last Avena saw of him was a face full of fear. Dust filled her nose, tickling her nostrils. She clapped her hand over her mouth and nose, fighting against it. The thudding came closer, drowning out the whispering hiss.
“Elohm’s blessed Colours,” Fingers muttered nearby.
A glow filled the window. Soft. Red and green tinged with a purple hue. Fuzzy tingles rippled around Avena’s fingers. She grimaced at the alien feeling assaulting her. Her mind recoiled from her flesh, wanting to flee it. This wasn’t her any longer. She was a brain in a jar.
This is my body! screamed through her wavering thoughts as she fought against her mind’s rejection of her flesh.
Fingers and Bran whispered as the signal
