Avena stopped fighting against Fingers.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Idiot!” she snarled at herself as she and Fingers ran back down the alley.
The booming steps of the crystalman thundered behind them. The alarm screeched and echoed through the ruins. Something groaned above. Her shoulders crawled, realizing the ceiling was shifting. It could collapse on them.
The light from their lanterns swung wildly, dancing and painting the alley with splashes of illumination and patches of night. They had to find some way to outrun it. To lose it in the maze of buildings and half-collapsed tunnels.
If they made the wrong turn and were cornered . . .
She threw a look over her shoulder. It had reached the mouth of the alley and marched down it with the implacable force of a flash flood. Nothing could stand in the way of a boiling torrent of water surging down a river, destroying docks and bridges, devouring the banks and spilling into towns.
“Door!” Fingers shouted and threw himself to the right. He slammed into a rusted slab of iron and bounced off. “Black-filled roaches!” He threw himself into it again, the metal groaning. Flakes of orange-red drifted off.
The crystalman thudded closer.
“Out of the way!” she shouted, clenching her right fist to activate her earthen gauntlet.
Emerald spilled across Fingers’s frightened features. He threw himself back. Her shoulder ached, still injured from yesterday, but she could move it enough. She thrust her hand, palm open, at the door. The metal groaned as she pressed on it. The emeralds surged strength into her, resonating with the Colour of Forgiveness.
Or the Tone of Earth, as Ōbhin would put it.
Metal flexed, moaned. Patches of rust sloughed off like the winter coat of a yak. The crystalman’s alarm rang in her ears. She could feel the automaton almost on top of them. Fingers screamed. Her shoulder burned, the pain a shouted warning at her. She felt the ball of her humerus grinding in the socket close to dislocation.
She roared and pushed hard.
Something snapped. Metal clattered to the ground on the other side. The door swung open, and she charged through it into a hallway covered in a thick layer of dust. Clouds burst around her feet as she rushed forward. Fingers followed, his boots stomping behind her.
“Elohm’s bright Colours illuminate our souls! It’s right behind us, Avena! Run!”
The entire building shook. A mighty crash of bricks were collapsing. The walls around her flexed and warped. She knew the automaton had battered through the wall to chase after them, destroying vital structural supports of this building. It held up more than just its own weight, but all that earth and the Upfing Forest above them.
She turned in an open door and darted into an apartment, passing rotten furniture she hardly had time to notice. Something yelped and darted out of her way. She plunged into another room and gasped at the debris choking the windows, blocking any escape that way.
The crystalman crashed onward in a wave of shattering masonry.
“There,” Fingers pointed. “Stairs!”
She had no idea if that was a good idea. She had no time to think. Her feet were already racing for them. Her lantern danced in her hand, swinging light before her. She raced up the stairs two at a time. Sweat spilled down her face. All those mornings running laps around the manor with the rest of the guards gave her the stamina to reach the top with her breath.
She found herself in a hallway. It led the length of the building. The far end was lost to the gloom, but she thought it looked open. A dark portal through which her light couldn’t reach. A way out of here and away from the crystalman smashing below.
“It’s on the stairs!” growled Fingers. “Go, go!”
Avena sprinted down the hallway. Something heavy crashed below. She threw a look behind her. Dust billowed up the staircase. It flowed around Fingers, swallowing him for a moment in a dusty haze of brown illuminated by his lantern.
“Did the stairs collapse?” she shouted.
“Think so!”
She slowed as she reached the window. It was clear. Below, she could see rubble piled around the building’s foundation, debris from the collapsed ceiling. There was a trough of dirt carved up into the earth above them. The top of his building and the next held up the rest of it. She could see tree roots thrusting through the collapsed ground. The tendrils seemed to be holding the soil together, keeping more of it from collapsing down on them.
Across the alley, another window loomed. Its glass had long since broken out, leaving only a few sharp teeth thrusting up, all covered in a thick layer of grime. She bit her lip and looked down at the debris. They were higher up than they should be, or the ground here had collapsed over the eons.
“Should we climb down?” she asked. “It’s about twenty cubits down.” At that height, they risked breaking an ankle.
“It might batter through the wall while we’re doing that.” Fingers looked behind him. It hadn’t followed them. She could hear it crashing through the house below.
“We can go up maybe another level.” Avena thrust her head out the window, peering up. Then she looked left and right. The alley on both sides seemed to end in walls of collapsed rubble. “We have to get across to the other building.”
“Too far to jump,” Fingers said. “Close, but I couldn’t make that.”
Avena shook her head. The other window was so tantalizingly close. “Let’s climb down and then up the—”
A crystal fist burst through the floor a cubit from her foot. Broken concrete rained down on the automaton. It rang like wind chimes. Another fist smashed upward, erupting closer to them. The floor groaned beneath them, cracks
