| |
Notch paced the chamber, occasionally stopping to wave at or speak to one of Chelona’s puppets – they all responded. It could have been her mark or the bracers, but he was able to command the Ilesinyans as they worked, so long as he kept his instructions short and clear.
The silvery things already knew their tasks – to transfer buckets of the sap that had been piped down into the room from the groves above. The amber went from the walls where the pipes and troughs waited, to a central column that stretched up to the darkened roof – seeming to take up half the ceiling. There, the Ilesinyans poured the amber into similar pipes upon a steel column which was, somehow, meant to trap or lure the Mother of Sea Gods.
It was quite broad where it penetrated the floor, suggesting that it continued down for some distance.
And still no idea how to stop it.
Having no actual ideas was one problem – Chelona’s ghostly minder was another. She was always floating just a few steps behind, watching him or commanding him to move to another floor.
Something clattered to the ground.
Notch turned. Halfway around the room, one of the Ilesinyans had dropped a pail. Amber sap oozed across the floor, jamming the next few steps of the two nearest the fumbling servant. It had happened a few times already, as though the slaves sometimes grew weak. Perhaps the balance of bone and sap was not quite right, or perhaps Chelona had been distracted by something and lost focus.
The reason didn’t matter – he had to move swiftly.
“Quickly, Notch,” the spectre-Chelona said, but he was already weaving through the lines of Ilesinyans and did not both to answer.
“Be still,” Notch shouted as he neared.
All movement in the chamber ceased.
Notch bent to lift the bucket and returned it to the nearest trough and its line of pipes. “You only,” he told the one who’d dropped the pail. “Start again, half a pail each time.”
It nodded and resumed walking.
To those nearest the spill, he pointed. “You three only. Collect this as best you can.”
They set to work, moving swiftly enough, and when they’d done their job they simply stopped. “Resume your work,” he said, then raised his voice. “All of you, commence.”
Chelona’s slaves started once more and he completed a circuit of the room. One of the trough’s runoff-spouts had filled a bucket, so he took it to the column and poured the warm amber within, careful not to let it touch his hands. For despite Chelona’s assurances that the strain she had developed would not harm him or her slaves, he did not want to feel the unpleasant tingle that sap nevertheless created.
To the grove now – there is a blockage.
Notch glanced over his shoulder to the floating watchdog. “Very well.”
He strode to the ancient steel room and once inside, he slid the lever then pulled it up. The doors closed and the cage began to rise, smooth as ever.
His ghostly shadow followed and he clenched his teeth. How could he escape to face Chelona? She’d kept him alive for more reasons than simply managing the sap and her workers, but why?
Her apparent attraction to him was merely manipulation, or more likely, since she didn’t actually expect him to fall for her act, to torment him. She was amusing herself until she could get what she wanted – and it might not have been the Fura Leones only.
Because if that were so, Chelona would have killed him and taken them long ago. After all, she had plenty of time to wait out the Disassociation rituals if she chose to start them, and more than enough power without the bracers.
There was something else.
Stop here.
Notch pulled the curled steel of the lever once more and the little room slowed, door soon sliding open to reveal the grove.
A warm glow lit the underside of green leaves and a sweeter-than-pine scent filled the space, open to a clear afternoon sky. Even without the pipes and troughs, it was not truly like the grove of the Braonn people, but it was similar in enough ways.
High walls protected the row upon row of trunks that spread in neat lines, tall shapes moving between them – some with shears but most hauling around buckets. Sooner or later, all her slaves headed to the walls where the pipes waited.
Notch had asked why the funnels in the grove didn’t simply lead directly to the mysterious column below, but Chelona, through her ghost, had informed him that any minor inefficiencies in the Ilesinyan structures were not as important as training her servants.
And it seemed they needed it. Not too far away, one of the angular Ilesinyans had fallen. This had in turn, jammed up another, both caught in the spilt amber. Due to the space between trees, several slaves who were trying to pass had began to walk into each other. Some, upon doing this, stopped, and some continued to press forward to no avail.
Notch sighed.
If the shells had been afforded a little more autonomy then maybe they could handle such a situation themselves but as things stood, the fools were doing only what they were told.
“Stop, everyone,” Notch commanded as he neared.
They ceased moving as the rest of the grove fell into a hush, no more clipping sounds or tread of feet upon the rigidly precise stone paths that led between the earth and roots.
He pointed to the queue. “You five. Four steps back, one at a time. Then stop.”
The Ilesinyans complied, the last few taking a little more time than the others. He gestured to those stuck within the sap... but did not speak, for new movement drew his eye. A far shorter figure approached, flitting between trunks – she was dressed in purple robes and wore a Greatmask of pale blue.
“Emisa?”
“Of course.” She stopped before him and her mask flared. Chelona’s spectre disappeared without a sound. “We have to get below, right now.”
“How did you—”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him back toward the exit. “An iternus, obviously.”
“There’s one in the city?”
“Yes. Several,” she snapped as they leapt into the steel room. A rumbling rose from the floors below. “Focus. We need to stop the Greatmask Chelona but she’s already moving – you’re going to need to use those Bracers.”
“You know what’s happening here?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll help us?”
“Yes, so long as you keep your word.”
“I will,” he replied. The awful sound of stone grinding against stone continued, even shaking the platform they rode upon. He lifted his voice. “What of your Greatmask?”
“Medina is only one force against one and a half Sea Gods, but there is also my Hanja heritage, which I hope will make a difference. Perhaps with the Fura Leones and Argeon, we can prevail.”
“You can change your surroundings?”
“That is one aspect, yes.”
“What else?”
“Things not relevant here,” she replied, then began to pace. “Can this thing move any faster?”
“No.”
She hissed a sigh, the sound somewhat muffled by her mask.
“Chelona knows you are here, right?” Notch asked. “Will she move against you directly?”
“Not while she readies the LightSpear.”
“LightSpear? That’s what I’ve been helping to fill with Amber from the Sap Gove?”
She nodded. “It is an important part of what is called the Halidriandl – a machine of terrifying power. Chelona will use the spear to trap and then Harvest the recently-awoken Mother of Sea Gods. Her blood and flesh will then power the Halidriandl.”
“Meaning?”
“I do not know. No legends speak of its purpose, only that, much like now, people and Gods banded together to stop its use.”
“Wait, which legends?” Notch asked. “And how do you know this?”
“My people have preserved some precious few records about what was considered the mythical race of Ilesinyans,” she said as she folded her arms. “We truly value knowledge, unlike the Ecsoli.”
“But there was nothing more on the Halidriandl?”
“No. Has she told you anything?”
He nodded. “She mentioned wanting to create a new empire, one that restored elements from the past to the present.”
“I see.”
“So, we just need to stop her and destroy this Halidriandl, I take it?”
“If we can.”
He lifted the bracers – the lions had now reared up upon their hind legs, claws outstretched, fangs bared in a roar. “If we stop Chelona from Harvesting the Mother, the machine won’t matter.”
“Precisely, at which point we must destroy it.”
“Can we even manage any one of those tasks? All the times I’ve faced Chelona, I have barely been able to break one limb from her Compelling.”
“You have a far deeper bond with the Fura Leones now; and we are not alone, remember?”
Notch was not too sure about her confidence but hearing that they were not alone gave him pause, he’d already forgotten. “You said the Greatmask Argeon was here.”
“Along with others of varying power; they are not known to me but you will soon see them, I’m sure.”
“So Lord Danillo is here?”
“If that is who wears Argeon, yes.”
Notch clenched a hand to a fist. That would make a difference... but it was a problem too. If Argeon and Chelona clashed, or Zasemu, wasn’t there a chance Argeon could be destroyed? He wouldn’t be the first Greatmask to perish in such clashes of gargantuan power.
And that meant no more chances to save Sofia...
“We must survive,” he said softly.
Emisa stopped her pacing. “That may not be a future all of us can afford, Notch.”
“You disagree?”
“If I have a chance to destroy the LightSpear or the Halidriandl itself, then I will take it even at the cost of my own life.”
“No,” he cried.
She shook her head then. “Is that the bracers? Because I doubt you care that much for me, Notch. And you should be thinking exactly the same thing. The survival of the entire world is at stake today.”
But that wasn’t what he feared. He needed Emisa alive... It took a moment to respond, his heart heavy with the weight of it. “I will do what must be done.”
“Good,” she said. Then the Inquisitor took a breath. “I can feel them both – let’s stop this thing.”
Notch took the lever and wrenched the doors open.