“Let’s go around.” Elren grabbed his arm. “No need to watch.”
Rylan nodded but couldn’t pull his eyes away.
The whines of the dog became a wet gurgle as a big flatback lizard dragged it into the flooded ditch and stood on its throat. The black, hexagonal scales along the lizard’s spline rustled as its muscles flexed. The narrow walls of the shaded alley magnified each sound.
The dog’s pack watched, whimpered, and paced, but they knew better than to intervene. Their companion had stepped past some invisible boundary and now the city exacted its punishment.
The splashing quieted. The small, furry shape beneath the surface went still as the lizard’s front legs held it firm. The flatback turned to Rylan, its yellow tongue flicking out to taste the air, a curious look in its dead, glassy eyes.
“Come on.” Elren pulled harder this time.
Rylan released a slow breath and followed his sister out of the alley. The pack of feral dogs began howling, their despair echoing across that ancient graveyard of steel and stone.
This clutch of lizard wardens had, apparently, just claimed this stretch of the ruins – a fact that the dogs had learned the hard way. He and Elren would have to find a different path forward. Another detour, another delay.
“We’re running out of daylight,” Elren said as they hiked east through low mounds of moss-eaten stone and slag.
“I know,” Rylan replied. “Come on, should be able to get a view from up there.” Rylan pointed with his ringstave rifle to the nearest tower, a leaning edifice of twisted steel and milky glass.
They ascended its skirt of rubble, then picked through the steel roots of the structure until they found a stairwell. Ten flights up, they strode out onto a cracked balcony to survey a path forward.
The largest towers of the city clustered to the north, like half-chewed bones left out in the sun. On the street below, a river carved a branching canyon through mossy stone and rusted steel. Tall clusters of bloodgrass sprouted from the banks, glowing red in the afternoon light. Razorvines added a musical whistle as the wind gusted. And, just to add to the list of things that could kill them, another clutch of flatback lizards patrolled the glade, placid as placemats.
Rylan’s jaw muscles clenched. That whole block would be off limits now. They’d been fighting all day to reach the heart of the city, and the city had resisted them at every turn.
Elren set her ringstave against a wall, then leaned out over the drop to get a view straight down. She tucked a strand of dark, curly hair back into her hood and adjusted her breather mask. Her tinted goggles reflected the sun as it settled towards the horizon.
“Don’t see a way through,” she said. “Something’s definitely off this week. Time to cut our losses and head back.”
Rylan ignored her, searching the ruins below for another way – an overpass, a canal, anything to get them around that patrol.
“Mother will already be furious we came this far,” Elren continued. “Probably a good thing we can’t get any farther.”
While they’d all seen unusual patterns over the last few days, Rylan knew their mother’s prohibition from scavenging was another overreaction. He and Elren had traversed the ruins for years, each having earned their official dispensation from the Clerics. He was nearly eighteen and Elren was nineteen, well past time to cut the umbilical.
“We’ll try your hunch again after things settle down,” she concluded. “Let’s head back.”
“Kasran’s spiraling.” Rylan turned to face her. “We can’t wait any longer.”
“So, the last eight years feels like ‘waiting’ to you?” she asked.
Rylan’s well-tuned scowl was spoiled by his mask and goggles. “This time, I know where to look.”
“Because you had a dream this morning?” Elren did a decent job keeping obvert skepticism from her voice, but he heard it anyway.
“It wasn’t a dream.”
Rylan wished it had been that simple.
“It was a memory…or fragments of memories,” Rylan tried to explain. “But not my memories.”
And even though they lacked continuity, context, and connection with his own experiences, the clarity of the memories was undeniable. Rylan knew exactly how to find the Oracle now, as clearly as if he’d done it the day before. If only he could get there.
Elren was concerned.
“Don’t give me that look,” Rylan said.
“What look?”
“The ‘I’m worried you’re going crazy like Kasran’ look.”
Elren’s look shifted from concern to anger. “No one’s saying that.”
“I know it sounds insane.”
“No, Rylan, it’s just that the last time you followed one of these…memories that aren’t your memories, you ended up—”
“This is different,” he insisted, refusing to be baited. “I took you with me this time, right? I’ve learned a lot since then.”
Elren let out a longsuffering exhalation, puffing the filters on her breather mask. “You’re a model citizen now. Shirking escort duty, lying to mother, dragging your sister into your crazy—”
“What if it’s real?” Rylan jabbed a finger towards the heart of the city. “What if something or someone is giving me these visions? What if it’s the Oracle itself trying to be found?”
“She’s a gene loom, not some sort of god,” Elren said.
“Do we really know what that technology can and can’t do?”
Elren let out an exasperated sigh. “It doesn’t matter either way. I don’t see a safe way forward.” She waved a hand at the flatback patrol below.
“We can’t just do nothing,” Rylan said. “Kasran nearly killed you this time.”
Elren’s jaw worked beneath the straps of her mask, apparently chewing on his logic before she spat up a response. “He didn’t, though, did he?”
“Not for lack of trying.”
“I’ll worry about me.” Elren adjusted her scarf as if trying to loosen a noose. “You should worry about what Mother will do when she finds out we’re chasing another one of your not-memory memories.”
“I’ll deal with it if she finds out. You don’t need worry about me, either.”
“Great,” Elren replied. “No one’s worrying about anything.”
They stood there a while, both surly and self-righteous.
“Mother always finds out,” Elren said to break the silence.
Rylan laughed. That part was true enough.
A low rumble shook the tower beneath their feet. Rylan turned west and saw a long dust cloud rising between fractured buildings. He recognized the telltale signs and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, a bit of luck.
“That terapede’s heading downtown! Come on, there’s a stop in that clearing.” Rylan spotted an external staircase mounted along the western edge of the balcony. They leapt down from their overlook onto the rickety thing and began descending.
Rust showered down with each rattling step as they pounded down flight after flight before reaching the sloping hill of rubble that surrounded the tower. Jogging out, Rylan alternated between sliding and scrambling as the stone broke apart under his boots.
Elren leapt down after him, adding to the minor land slide rushing down the heap. They skated down to the ground, then outpaced the resulting cloud of dust as they dashed for the stop.
They reached the old, battered signpost just as the terapede came stomping into view. As long as a city block and as wide as the street, the massive creature’s countless legs undulated in a sinuous wave as they trampled past.
Rylan raised his arm, displaying a narrow silver band they’d scrounged off a corpse just that morning. The ancient artifact emitted a feeble chime and the terapede began to slow. Its spindly legs kicked up moss and gravel as it skidded against the uneven pavement.
“We’re really doing this?” she asked.
“Yep,” he replied.
“How does this happen?” Elren asked. “Why do I always let you do this?”
“Because if you didn’t go along, I’d just run off and do it on my own?”
“Ugh,” she grunted. “Now I remember.”
The terapede finally reached a standstill in front of the rusted signpost. Its sleek body was pocked with boils and scars. Rent flesh hung off in patches from the terapede’s metallic skeleton of greasy gears and pistons. The fleshy exterior was intermingled with a honeycomb of glass windows, etched, stained, and scratched until they were cloudy as wax.
“Just my luck,” Elren said in horrified recognition. “I swear this one likes you, Rylan.”
“Scabby!” Rylan patted the fleshy side of the terapede.
“You named it?”
An opening split along its exterior with a sticky, squelching sound. A tongue-like ramp extended to allow them in. Of all the terapedes still roaming the city, Scabby appeared furthest past retirement.
“I think it’s cute she’s still pluggin’ along,” he said as they strode up the pliable ramp into the humid interior.
“‘Cute’? Rotting Hell.” Elren coughed as the foul aroma blasted them. “Here. Your last one ran out of funds, remember?” Elren handed him an access bracelet from her satchel.
Rylan clicked it over his wrist and raised it overhead.
Both their bands buzzed with a chime and a tinny voice saying, “Payment withdrawn.”
The doors zippered shut again with a slurping finality. Green pustules along the floor illuminated the surreal space. Rylan quickly pulled his hood tight as two rows of orifices overhead began to cough mucus, splattering them. Flesh drew back to show gray tongues and teeth inside each.
With a rattling chorus in Old Aedelric, the terapede said, “Welc-me to LifeLine. T-is is th- green l-ine, bo-und for axis cour-t.” The mouths coughed again, spraying more fluid. “Stops one, four, eight, twelve, thirteen, eighteen, and twenty are currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please brace yourself for acceleration.”
Rylan and Elren grabbed one of the bony posts along the floor.
The terapede’s legs began pumping again, heaving them down the road. The creature’s joints screeched with effort, but it kept accelerating until the landscape outside began to sweep past.
Rylan smiled as he saw a dozen flatback lizards anxiously scramble out of the way before Scabby could trample them.
Several overhead mouths began humming a forgotten melody, some of them with more apparent skill than others. Rylan imagined that at one point it might have been relaxing.
The mouth closest to Rylan began to extrude down from its position on the wall, forming a tentacle that hovered just behind his right ear. This mouth began a private consultation with him in a gravely female voice. “Welcome back, Stella Carver. It has been…one thousand, three hundred, and ninety-four years since your last trip with LifeLine. There are several seats available, if you would prefer to sit.”
Rylan glanced behind him to eye a seat that unfurled from the wall. Half-dried mucus prevented it from opening fully, fleshy flaps trembling from the effort.
“No thanks,” Rylan replied.
The seat slapped shut with a sigh.
Across the way, the mouth closest to Elren had also extended down, whispering into his sister’s ear as she tried to slap it away.
The terapede darted down into a tunnel, shrouding them in darkness. The livid glow of the organic lights washed the space in horrid detail for a few moments before the creature galloped out of the tunnel and back into the sunlight.
Switching to a new voice, the mouth beside Rylan spoke in dull, somber tones. “Mandatory curfew begins in two hours and seventy-three minutes. Please proceed to your assigned domicile to avoid infraction. Violators will be executed without trial. There are no except—”
“That’s it!” Rylan said as he spotted a dome through the dusty glass. He raised his bracelet and tapped it frantically. “Stop! Hey, uh, can you stop here, please?”
“Stopping unauthorized in this sector,” the overhead voices said.
“Do it anyway!” Rylan said.
“Tell it there’s an emergency,” Elren suggested. “That usually works.”
“Yes, it’s an emergency!” Ryan shouted. “Stop now!”
“Brace. Brace. Brace,” the mouths chanted in a fearful chorus.
Scabby began a frantic braking maneuver, its legs burrowing deep furrows in the old street as the vehicle struggled to slow. Through the window Rylan saw several legs snapping at their joints to drag behind. He nearly lost his footing as the creature lurched to a standstill. The overhead voices petered off into painful groans and whimpers.
“Unauthorized Stop. Infraction recorded. All accounts locked. Stella Carver, report immediately to the nearest warden or master for processing.”
“Sorry, Scabby,” Rylan whispered as the doors yawned open.
He and Elren strode down the ramp. As soon as their boots hit pavement, the ramp curled back in, and the doors snapped shut like closing jaws.
The old terapede moved off at a markedly slower pace, dragging in the spot where it had lost a few legs. It’d trundle its way back to the station, where miniature fixers would graft on replacements.
Or, Rylan realized, perhaps the reason Scabby was doing so poorly was that the specific fixers in charge of her repair might be dead now. Tangled in blood grass, swallowed by the crawling sprawl, or simply eaten by a razorbeak. The guilt he felt deepened as Scabby disappeared between two leaning towers.
“You burned that access bracelet in record time,” Elren noted. “Stella’s not going to be happy about her accounts.”
“I think Stella’s more preoccupied with being dead,” Rylan said, trying to shake off his remorse.
The heart of the city surrounded them, looming towers, verdant life, with a sickening sway and pulse beneath every paving stone.
“So.” Elren glanced around. “Here we are, as deep in as you can get.”
“Thank you,” Rylan said.
Elren raised an eyebrow.
“For, you know, trusting me.”
Elren blew out a heavy breath, rattling the filters on her mask. Despite being so close in age, she shouldered far more responsibility than he did. He’d probably act a bit more careful if he knew she wasn’t always doing enough worrying for the both of them.
“Just don’t make me regret it,” she said. “Where to?”
Rylan looked around to get his bearings. He hadn’t been back to the heart of the ruins since the incident last year, mostly due to their mother’s new prohibition – but that wasn’t the only reason.
The ruins were more alive here, a beating heart within a corpse.
Horrific plants pushed through every broken surface, most breathing in and out like creatures. Thousands of spores with various shapes filled the air – each seeking a foothold in steel, stone, or flesh. Watchers formed a grid overhead, dragonfly wings buzzing as their glassy eyes stared down. The pavement undulated as they strode upon it, slimy tendons appearing between the seams.
Towers rose up all around them, some gleaming and new, some so dilapidated a hard storm might topple them. Rylan spotted a cluster of crawling fixers on one of the closest buildings, appearing at a distance like maggots crowding a kill. Of course, they were as big as horse carts, and instead of eating the old building the creatures cleared, polished, and repaired the ancient structure. Nothing could ever stay dead here.
While far richer in rare artifacts, the risk-to-reward ratio of venturing here had always proven less than worth it for Rylan’s family. There was a reason this place hadn’t been picked clean yet. A thousand reasons.
Rylan spotted a domed structure on the far side of the intersection, half buried in rubble. His new memories from that morning suddenly connected to the memories he’d had one year ago – that dome had been in both. “That’s what I saw,” he told Elren, pointing.
They made their way cautiously forward, navigating through a nasty field of needle trap plants. Then the lush and varied forms of life growing within the rubble gave way to a wide, barren field of blackened stone and metal slag. Rylan recognized the Clerics’ handiwork in the yellow poison scattered throughout the fire-purged rubble. It had been here long enough that the powder had become a thick crust from years of rain and fog. Still, he could smell a strong aroma of almonds through his breather mask.
“Must have been a big nest here,” Elren said, walking over to a fallen signpost that she flipped with her boot. The faded sign read in local Tel’Dronic script:
Forbidden. All who trespass here will be considered tainted by the Poisoned City and purged by the Clerics of the Watchwood Barrier.
Rylan glanced east to the terminus of the Black Road where a glowing column of riftspace shone into the rust-colored sky. That narrow blue channel connected this continent to the rest of the Hundred Worlds, and purging the road to and from that spot was ostensibly the only reason that the Clerics had for venturing out this far.
They’d already seen two ships enter through the rift today. Both had been big enough to burn chemical boosters to skirt over the ruins and land directly on the Watchwood Plateau. Smaller craft had to dock within the ruins and signal for an escort – which, technically, was the job he and Elren were supposed to be doing today.
“We’ve gotta be what, five, six miles from the Black Road?” Rylan guessed. “That’s too far to bother clearing out a Razorbeak nest.”
“More importantly,” Elren noted, “why warn us off, under penalty of death, if they’ve already dealt with the nest?”
Rylan began to smile as he studied the rolling mounds of blackened, poisoned rubble. She made a good point. Then the hairs rose on the back of his neck as he spotted a gaping hole about fifty paces out. A rush of adrenaline pulsed through him.
The memory that wasn’t his memory clicked into place.
“That’s it!” Rylan ran forward and slid down an embankment until the hole yawned open in front of him. A stone the size of a cart lay beside the opening. Rylan approached it slowly as Elren caught up behind him.
“Black on the bottom,” Rylan observed, crouching down to study the base. “Must have been flipped after the Cleric’s purge.” A shiver buzzed down his fingertips to his spine as he touched that big chunk of rock. It had been heavy, slick with dew at the time he’d rolled it over.
Rylan checked himself, fighting the disorientation as that out-of-place memory collided with his own. He hadn’t flipped the stone. He’d never been in this spot before. Besides, it would have taken six men with levers to have budged the thing.
“No claw marks.” Elren ran a gloved hand along the chunk of stone. “If a razorbeak or flatback moved it, we should see claw marks.”
Her words seemed distant. Even if the memories weren’t his own, he’d known this would be here. That meant he was right about the rest, too. “Come on.” Rylan dropped down into the choked passage.
“What about the thing that moved the rock?” Elren demanded as she leapt down after him.
Rylan considered that for a moment. If these weren’t his memories, was there some original owner who had already been here ahead of them? Were they still here?
“Don’t worry, nothing big could fit through here,” Rylan said, partially for his own benefit. He didn’t want to tell her that he remembered moving the stone himself, as doing so wouldn’t alleviate her worries so much as redirect them
“Fair enough,” she said, pulling out her lighter from her belt pouch. Like a large silver beetle, the artifact unfolded onto three legs and crawled to her wrist to sit on her access bracelet. Its triangular face illuminated, cutting through the shadows. “Payment withdrawn,” it chimed.
Rylan activated his as well, comforted as the small device took position on his shoulder. The mechanism tracked his gaze, lighting wherever he looked with only a momentary lag. Unlike Elren’s lighter, Rylan’s didn’t need payment every time it activated. Good thing, too, since he’d gotten Stella’s accounts frozen.
“You…saw all this?” Elren asked as they scanned the narrow passage.
“Yeah,” he said, ignoring the skepticism as he pressed forward. “This leads all the way down to her chamber. After this there’s a bunch of … uh, glowy root things.” They moved between dusty shafts of afternoon light, pressed between huge slabs of rough stone and jagged steel.
“Glowy root things?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
“Visions or not, we still don’t know this isn’t a razorbeak nest,” Elren said. “We should be careful.”
“If it’s a nest,” Rylan argued, “the Clerics’ poison has had plenty of time to leech down a hundred feet. Everything down here is long dead.”
A stone clattered and fell behind them. Rylan whirled around, but the corridor remained still.
After a few moments of tense silence, Elren whispered, “We aren’t the only scavengers in the ruins.”
“Yeah, but we’re the only ones crazy enough to go underground.”
Elren chuckled. “Good point.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Elren muttered something under her breath in a language Rylan didn’t know – an obnoxious habit she’d picked up lately. After another minute of observing nothing in pursuit, she sighed and turned forward. “Well, we’re in the pudding now. Might as well eat our fill.”
They continued downward until a gap in the rubble showed a chamber beneath. They dropped down onto polished marble flooring.
Decorative carvings covered every wall, beautiful creatures of every type all posed in an interlocking dance. Translucent fibers grew across the carvings, worming between cracks in the stone. Rylan’s foot crunched one of the fibers and a glowing blue dot shot along the root deeper into the complex. He drew his foot back with a jerk, then laughed nervously.
“Glowing root things.” Elren brushed her hand along the fibers. About half of them were shriveled and dead, but each of the living ones illuminated at her touch. The light traced downward along the branching roots, a tiny glow that illuminated the length of the corridor before disappearing. “I’m uh…starting to believe you weren’t just dreaming,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Rylan said, terrified at the implications.
“So,” she said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. “We’re close?”
Rylan nodded and pressed onward onto the roots. At each footfall, a burst of glowing lights danced ahead, guiding them into the darkness.
The translucent roots got thicker and thicker the farther they went, a slick carpet that shifted and pulsed underfoot. After descending a second flight of stairs, the roots became so abundant as to obscure any sign of the structure beneath. The waxy tubes slowly contracted and relaxed in rhythm, forming a wave that rolled towards the heart of the complex. The air here was warm and moist, fetid with decay.
It felt like they’d entered some leviathan’s digestive tract.
Both Rylan’s and Elren’s lighters began to glow brighter as they passed into a vast, shadowy chamber. The beams highlighted a ring of monolithic sculptures standing in a circle around the room, posed as if they held the ceiling in place. A few inches of water made a mirror across the chamber’s floor, reflecting idyllic figures painted across the domed ceiling, posed as if ascending towards the dome’s apex.
A shock of memory hit Rylan as their lights swept across the chamber. He knew every detail in this space. He’d seen the shallow, still water on the floor. He’d known how the ceiling had caved in on the far side even before his light swept across the rubble.
He’d seen it. He’d been here. And yet he couldn’t have.
His mind spun in that impossible loop.
Where in all addled Aedelra had the memories come from? How’d they end up rattling around inside his skull?
“Rotting Hell.” Elren grabbed his arm, pulling him from his thoughts. “You did it. You actually found it.”