My gaze drifts to the distant ocean. This is still the carcass of Solivagus, I gradually understand, but the white monoliths of the Seawall are all that remain of the familiar.
Between them and the beach, water simply ripples and swells, but beyond them …
beyond are waves. Dark, lumbering mountains of water.
I watch as the closest one hits the line of the Seawall.
As it passes the columns it abruptly shrinks, draining away to match the gentle undulation nearer the shore.
Where it strikes the stone pillars, though, there are violent explosions of thick, misting spray.
It barely has time to settle before the next one hits.
For those waves to be visible at this distance … I can barely guess at their height. A hundred feet? More?
I tear my eyes away. Inch closer again to the entrance’s edge, secure a handhold and tentatively peer out.
Up and down. Left and right. In every direction, the red glass walls curve out of sight almost immediately.
I hold there a moment longer in a buffeting wind, searching the dizzyingly distant, barren ground.
“My guess is that they tried to destroy it.” Caeror gives me a sympathetic smile, pulling something from his pocket as I slink back to safety. A sliver of what looks like obsidian, triangular and with several needle-thin spikes jutting from it. About the size of a coin.
“They?” I watch curiously. Just as Caeror said it would, my breathing is coming easier now.
“Ka’s side. What you’d call the Concurrence.” He scratches at his scraggly beard as he examines the triangle, then spots my blank look. “Veridius didn’t tell you about the Concurrence? Who we’re fighting? Why you’re here?”
“No. I told you, he didn’t send me. I’m a student at the Academy, and he’s the Principalis. That’s all.” Not quite the truth, but close enough.
“Oh.” Caeror studies me. “Oh.” Not quite dismayed, but definitely taken aback.
He reaches around and presses the obsidian in his hand against the base of his skull, immediately exhaling through clenched teeth and bracing himself against the wall, the motion allowing me a view of the delicate inscribed lines on the triangle’s surface.
Writing? Too small to properly make out, but it looks like a series of glyphs rather than letters.
Reminiscent of Nyripkian script, I think, but I’ve not had enough exposure to the language of the far north to be certain.
Caeror takes his hand away, back still to me. The obsidian remains embedded in place, no blood, as he straightens, ignoring my concerned look and moving to the edge. Peering downward.
“So this is probably all a bit of a shock,” he says eventually.
I cough a laugh, still a hint of pain in the use of my lungs. “Something like that.”
“What do you actually know about all this, then, Vis?” Continuing to peer over the edge.
“Not much.” He finally glances around at me. “Almost nothing.” He doesn’t say anything, just narrows his eyes. “Well, I knew there was a place called Obiteum.”
Caeror stares, then gives a soft, incredulous laugh of his own. “Then why in the gods’ graves did you run the Labyrinth? I’m going to assume it wasn’t for fun. Or by accident.” He pauses. Thoughtful. “Though, that would be one hells of a story.”
“I was trying to figure out what happened to you, actually.” He leans and gazes out toward the ground again, and I shuffle apprehensively, eyes fixed on his nape. Is it my imagination, or is the writing on the obsidian there glowing a faint green?
Abrupt movement tears me away from my inspection; a four-foot-wide circle of polished black stone appears just outside the triangular entrance, snapping into place level with our passageway.
It’s inscribed with those same Nyripkian-like glyphs, larger but no less enigmatic to me.
It emits a barely audible, rhythmic whine as it hovers.
Caeror watches it and then, apparently satisfied, gestures accommodatingly toward the floating disc. As if politely offering me to precede him through a doorway.
I look at the reflective sliver balancing a thousand feet above the ground, then back at him. “No thank you.”
“It’s safe.”
I bare my teeth in resistance, but he raises an eyebrow and points until I scowl a reluctant accession, moving grudgingly over to the new, and very small, extension to the ledge. “This isn’t a Will platform.” Caeror’s eyes have remained a calm, clear brown as he watches me.
“Not as you would think of it.” He taps the triangle on his neck. “From the war with the Concurrence. It really is safe. And just to reiterate, we don’t have an enormous amount of time,” he adds, the hint of a concerned edge to his voice.
Vek.
I crouch. The platform’s surface seems to tremble slightly under my examination. The ground I can see beyond is distressingly, breathtakingly distant.
Vek, vek, vek.
I’ve trusted Ulciscor’s brother this far, I suppose.
I place a steadying hand against the slanted doorway, then one cautious foot onto the circle before glancing back, still half hoping I’ve misunderstood.
Caeror just nods me on cheerfully. I brace myself and gradually shift my weight forward, until it’s clear that the obsidian isn’t going to move beneath it.
Heart in mouth, I step fully on.
Out from the protection of the passageway, the wind immediately threatens my sense of balance; as soon as I’m completely on the disc I carefully sit, facing away from the exit to give Caeror room, lungs burning again from the close-to-panicking breaths I’m having to take.
The surface beneath my palms is cool, uncomfortably smooth except for the furrows of the inscriptions.
A moment later, I feel Caeror’s back settling against mine as he joins me.
It’s only when I finally pluck up the courage to twist, glancing over my shoulder, that I realise we’ve already begun our descent. The shadowed pyramidal hole is twenty feet above us now. A red glass wall fills my vision, curving away, infinitely more vast than my memory of it.
“Don’t forget, Vis. The skies on your side are your responsibility.” Caeror’s voice is taut with concentration as he senses my shift.
“What am I looking for?”
“Gleaners.” He remembers who he’s talking to. “Enemies. Really, really unpleasant enemies. Who can fly. So if you see anything, even just a dot on the horizon, you let me know.”
I face forward again and fix my eyes on the blank blue expanse. “Even if it’s just a bird?”
“It won’t be.” He gives a strained chuckle. “Gods. Birds. What wouldn’t I give.”
An uneasy silence as I process that. “So what happens if I see one of these Gleaners?”
“We hope we’re still high enough that the fall kills us.” A pause, and then he grunts. “Sorry. That wasn’t very tactful. I’m just a little busy.”
I shudder and nod, though I know he can’t see it.
“So you know my brother. And you’re here because of me.
” The glassy-smooth dark stone beneath us quivers, sending a panicked jolt through me.
Caeror growls. “I … should probably focus on this. Why don’t you tell me how in the hells you got here, while we’re on the way down.
And then I can fill in the gaps of what you need to know after.
The very, very large gaps,” he mutters to himself.
I heed the tension of his voice and don’t argue, giving him the most straightforward possible outline of my past year as we descend, excruciatingly slow, toward the arid ground.
Ulciscor finding me, charging me with investigating what he believed to be Caeror’s murder at Veridius’s hands.
My discovery of the ruins, and then the Labyrinth.
Ulciscor’s insistence that I run it. It’s easy enough to tell the story without having to reveal my past—another world or not, Caeror was once as Hierarchy as they come, so there’s no reason to risk complete honesty—but I don’t otherwise try to obfuscate.
There doesn’t seem to be much need, here.
As I talk, I continue vainly scanning the horizon. The day is clear and unsettlingly empty. No movement higher than the towering, glittering waves in the distance. I don’t dare glance downward.
Our platform shivers again only once, when I first mention Lanistia.
“You knew Lani?”
I regain command of my briefly terror-locked muscles, heart pounding, as the obsidian resumes its smooth downward motion. “She trained me. I can tell you all about—”
“No.” Soft, even through the tension of what he’s doing. “Thanks, but … not right now.”
And then, finally, the grey-brown of the earth is close enough for me to touch. I slide off the glinting circle with a relieved exhalation, luxuriating in the feeling of solid ground beneath my feet. Our platform thuds to the dirt behind me.
I turn. Caeror’s still sitting on it, head bowed. His entire body is trembling. The black stone at the nape of his neck still there.
“Give me a minute,” he mutters between laboured breaths, sensing my concern.
I nod mutely, scrutiny moving on to our surrounds. We’ve descended into an enormous crater of blasted rock and dirt, at least five miles wide and completely devoid of life or landmarks. Its surrounding edges peak at least a hundred feet above us, concealing what lies beyond from view.
The great shadow at the upper edge of my vision soon drags my gaze higher, though.
Blotting out near half the sky above us—its lowest point a hundred feet in the air—hovers an impossible, gargantuan red glass sphere.
I take a half step back. It’s at least … three thousand feet in diameter? More? Nothing supporting it in the air, nothing suspending it as far as I can see. It’s staggering. Disorienting to the senses.
“You didn’t see anything?” Caeror has recovered enough to stand. Wan in the early morning light, the triangular stone still affixed to the back of his neck.
“Nothing.”