Mere threads of magic aren’t enough to stop stone eaters. The earth’s winding rivers of the stuff are all you have to hand. Reaching for one feels like plunging your awareness into a lava tube, and for an instant you’re distracted by wondering whether this is what it will feel like if Hoa lets go – a flash of terrible heat and pain, and then oblivion. You push that aside. A memory comes to you. Meov. Driving a wedge of ice into a cliff face, shearing it off at just the precise time to smash a ship full of Guardians —
You shape your will into a wedge and splint it into the nearest magic torrent, a great crackling, wending coil of a thing. It works, but your aim is wild; magic sprays everywhere, and Hoa must dodge again, this time from your efforts. Fuck! You try again, concentrating this time, letting your thoughts loosen. You’re already in the earth, red and hot instead of dark and warm, but how is this any different? You’re still in the crucible, just literally instead of a symbolic mosaic. You need to drive your wedge in here and aim it there as another flash of person-shaped mountain starts to pace you and darts in for the kill —
— just as you shunt a stream of purest, brightest silver directly into its path. It doesn’t hit. You’re still not good at aiming. You glimpse the stone eater stop short, however, as the magic all but blazes past its nose. Here in the deep red it is impossible to see expressions, but you imagine that the creature is surprised, maybe even alarmed. You hope it is.
“Next one’s for you, bastard cannibalson ruster!” you try to shout, but you are no longer in a purely physical space. Sound and air are extraneous. You imagine the words, then, and hope the ruster in question gets the gist.
You do not imagine, however, the fact that the flitting, fleeting glimpses of stone eaters stop. Hoa keeps going, but there are no more attacks. Well, then. It’s good to be of some use.
He’s rising faster now that he is unimpeded. Your sessapinae start to perceive depth as a rational, calculable thing again. The deep red turns deep brown, then cools to deep black. And then —
Air. Light. Solidity. You become real again, flesh and blood unadulterated by other matter, upon a road between strange, smooth buildings, tall as obelisks beneath a night sky. The return of sensation is stunning, profound – but nothing compared to the absolute shock you feel when you look up.
Because you have spent the past two years beneath a sky of variable ash, and until now you had no idea that the Moon had come.
It is an icewhite eye against the black, an ill omen writ vast and terrifying upon the tapestry of stars. You can see what it is, even without sessing it – a giant round rock. Deceptively small against the expanse of the sky; you think you’ll need the obelisks to sess it completely, but you can see on its surface things that might be craters. You’ve traveled across craters. The craters on the Moon are big enough to see from here, big enough to take years to cross on foot, and that tells you the whole thing is incomprehensibly huge.
“Fuck,” says Danel, which makes you drag your eyes from the sky. She’s on her hands and knees, as if clinging to the ground and grateful for its solidity. Maybe she’s regretting her choice of duty now, or maybe she just didn’t understand before this that being a lorist could be fully as awful and dangerous as being a general. “Fuck! Fuck.”
“That’s it, then.” Tonkee. She’s staring up at the Moon, too.
You turn to see Lerna’s reaction, and —
Lerna. The space beside you, where he held on to you, is empty.
“I didn’t expect the attack,” Hoa says. You can’t turn to him. Can’t turn away from the empty space where Lerna should be. Hoa’s voice is its usual inflectionless, hollow tenor – but is he shaken? Shocked? You don’t want him to be shocked. You want him to say something like, But of course I was able to keep everyone safe, Lerna is just over there, don’t worry.
Instead he says, “I should have guessed. The factions that don’t want peace…” He trails off. Falls silent, just like an ordinary person who is at a loss for words.
“Lerna.” That last jolt. The one you thought was a near miss.
It isn’t what should have happened. You’re the one nobly sacrificing yourself for the future of the world. He was supposed to survive this.
“What about him?” That’s Hjarka, who’s standing but bent over with hands on her knees, as if she’s thinking about throwing up. Tonkee’s rubbing the small of her back as if this will somehow help, but Hjarka’s attention is on you. She’s frowning, and you see the moment when she realizes what you’re talking about, and her expression melts into shock.
You feel… numb. Not the usual non-feeling that comes of you being halfway to a statue. This is different. This is —
“I didn’t even think I loved him,” you murmur.
Hjarka winces, but then makes herself straighten and take a deep breath. “All of us knew this might be a one-way trip.”
You shake your head in… confusion? “He’s… he was… so much younger than me.” You expected him to outlive you. That’s how it was supposed to work. You’re supposed to die feeling guilty for leaving him behind and killing his unborn child. He’s supposed to —
“Hey.” Hjarka’s voice sharpens. You know that look on her face now, though. It’s a Leadership look, or one reminding you that you are the leader here. But that’s right, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s running this little expedition. You’re the one who didn’t make Lerna, or any of them, stay home. You’re the one who didn’t have the courage to do this by yourself the way you damn well should have, if you really didn’t want them hurt. Lerna’s death is on you, not Hoa.
You look away from them and involuntarily reach for the stump of your arm. This is irrational. You’re expecting battle wounds, scorch marks, something else to show that Lerna was lost. But it’s fine. You’re fine. You look back at the others; they’re all fine, too, because battles with stone eaters aren’t things that anyone walks away from with mere flesh wounds.
“It’s prewar.” While you stand there bereft, Tonkee has half turned away from Hjarka, which is a problem because Hjarka’s currently leaning on her. Hjarka grumbles and hooks an arm around Tonkee’s neck to keep her in place. Tonkee doesn’t seem to notice, so wide are her eyes as she looks around. “Evil, eating Earth, look at this place. Completely intact! Not hidden at all, no defensive structuring or camouflage, but then not nearly enough green space to make this place self-sufficient…” She blinks. “They would’ve needed regular supply shipments to survive. The place isn’t built for survival. That means it’s from before the Enemy!” She blinks. “The people here must have come from the Stillness. Maybe there’s some means of transportation around here that we haven’t seen yet.” She subsides into thought, muttering to herself as she crouches to finger the substance of the ground.
You don’t care. But you don’t have time to mourn Lerna or hate yourself, not now. Hjarka’s right. You have a job to do.
And you’ve seen the other things in the sky besides the Moon – the dozens of obelisks that hover so close, so low, their energy pent and not a single one of them acknowledging your touch when you reach for them. They aren’t yours. But although they’ve been primed and readied, yoked to one another in a way that you immediately recognize as Bad News, they’re not doing anything. Something’s put them on hold.
Focus. You clear your throat. “Hoa, where is she?”
When you glance at him, you see he’s adopted a new stance: expression blank, body facing slightly south and east. You follow his gaze, and see something that at first awes you: a bank of buildings, six or seven stories high that you can see, wedge-shaped and blank of feature. It’s easy to tell that they form a ring, and it’s easy to guess what’s at the heart of that ring, even though you can’t see it because of the angle of the buildings. Alabaster told you, though, didn’t he? The city exists to contain the hole.
Your throat locks your breath.
“No,” Hoa says. Okay. You make yourself breathe. She’s not in the hole.