“Or it was done by that scaly demon we saw,” Ōbhin said. He pulled off his glove and touched the transition from crumbling stone to smooth ruby. Hard, slick.
“Elohm’s blessed Colours,” breathed Dajouth. “There’s a piece of a person here. A foot that ends at a sheer line. It’s in a shoe. All ruby.” He held it up in his left hand. The orange glow of his healer bled through the bandages of his splint. “He must have been running when this happened.”
“Poor bastard,” Miguil muttered. He drew the four points of the prism before him.
“Let’s keep going,” Ōbhin said.
“Yes, yes,” said Dualayn, rising. “I hope this effect hasn’t struck the Hall of Communication.”
A new fear added to Ōbhin’s worry for Avena.
As they pressed on, they found more transmuted structures until it grew so thick, everything was ruby. They emerged from a building onto a street crowded with statues. They were packed in, all fleeing in the same direction, running from the effect.
Chimes rang. White light sprang on.
Ōbhin cursed and threw himself back into the building, pushing Miguil with him. They all pressed against the walls as the crystalman plodded closer. Ōbhin’s face tightened. Has it been standing stationary? Niszeh’s Black Tone, did we activate it?
His stomach churned with bitter acids, but the automaton stomped by without stopping. It marched up the street and then its sounds retreated as it moved farther away. Ōbhin swallowed, mouth dry. He shook as he stepped out onto the road, Miguil muttering behind him.
Dualayn led them across the street, through the frozen people running in terror, and down an alley. The collapsed debris above their heads was held up by the tops of transformed buildings and streetlamps. The transmutation made things easier to move around.
On the other side, they opened onto a vast lawn, perhaps a park. The jeweled blades of grass twinkled in their diamond lanterns. In the center of it where there were no supports, the debris had buried the park, but along the edges was a line of some sort of broad-leaf trees holding up the rubble.
Another crystalman rumbled down a side street. They couldn’t tell if it was a new one or one they’d seen. They crouched behind a wall of low hedges trimmed to form a boxy barrier. They waited with bated breath in the dark.
When it lumbered away, they crept down to another street. They could hear faint thuds echoing in the distance, reverberating through the place. They peered down the street. A large building lay reduced to ruby rubble. What remained of it was still standing, shattered pillars with stubby and broken arms like trees shorn of their branches, and had been transmuted into gleaming jewels. People seemed to be fleeing from it, caught up in the explosion.
“That’s the Wave Resonance Beacon,” said Dualayn as he paused to read a sign. The letters could just be made out in the diamond lamplight. They were slightly raised from the surface. “Perhaps the epicenter of this calamity.”
“What does that mean?” Miguil asked. “Wave Resonance Beacon?”
“I am not rightly sure,” admitted Dualayn. “I think it was a means of strengthening the Tones. Of enhancing their effects. Perhaps with so many jewelchine engines in one place, they absorbed so much harmonic resonance that it weakened its strength in this area. Jewel engineers have always thought of it as a resource you could never deplete, but that is not how the laws of entropy work. Energy, you see, is just the potential to do work. It is never lost, just changes into different forms.”
“What?” Ōbhin asked, frowning.
“The jewels store potential energy in them. When turned into machines by the application of wires, they unleash that energy in different forms: thermal, kinetic, restorative, conjuration. It only makes sense that the universal Tones are generated by something and it is putting out a steady amount of potential work. The more jewelchines taking that potential, the less there is at any given time. So if you could generate your own potential work, much like we can make a fire to generate heat and light, that would be a boon.”
“So it overloaded or something?” said Ōbhin, shaking his head. “And killed all these people?”
“And probably unleashed the demons on the survivors,” Miguil muttered. “I haven’t seen any scaly things frozen.”
Dualayn nodded.
“Let’s keep going,” Ōbhin said and limped forward. The soothing love from the topaz faded. The soreness in his ankle swelled as he walked. His boots crunched on the dust and detritus covering the ruby road. His limp worsened.
“Perhaps we should camp,” Dualayn suggested. “We’re all tired. We can take a few hours rest and push on. I think we are still some distance away if we are near the Wave Resonance Beacon.”
Ōbhin paused. Avena was out there, alone with the impostor. She might be hurt. Dying. She needed him to find her, but he had no idea how to do that. How could he locate her in this maze? He could only keep pressing on to the Hall of Communication and pray that she’d found her way there.
“I think he’s right,” Miguil said. “My feet are throbbing and my legs feel like lead. Your limp is worsening, Ōbhin. It’s not smart to keep pressing on.” The groom clapped a hand on Ōbhin’s shoulder, pulling him up short. “If we’re tired, we’ll miss things. Set off a cave-in. Maybe blunder into one of those crystalmen.”
Ōbhin stiffened. Fatigue nibbled at his thoughts. He could feel the effect of its drain on him. He wanted to keep pressing on; he did. He wanted to find Avena and hold her in his arms, but he was never going to do that if they got themselves killed.
“Fine,” he said, a bitter taste staining the back of his mouth. Failure and fear. He
