The Wyrms of &alon

"You could take out a small army with these powers of yours," Tk'tk'tk said.

I shook my head. "Hardly." Even though I had plenty of juice left to spend, I still felt a half-physical, half-mental tiredness take root in me. It was tiny, but the more I pushed myself, the more it would grow. Thankfully, my recent training had done a good job of growing my magical stamina. I glanced at my arms, "I think I should be good for a good while yet."

"Alright," Lark said, looking around, "where to next?"

Dzrtk let out an unexpected yell. "Wait!"

I whipped my flower around. "What? What?!"

The Vvz'zsh warrior spread zyr legs and brandished zyr blades.

"Someone's coming…" Ze said, stabbing zyr stinger at one of the tunnels.

I skittered up alongside zym, gathering frost magic around my hands.

"Wait, Dr. Howle! It's us! It's us!"

I let my power peter out. "Nina?"

A moment later, Nina and Suisei skittered out from the tunnel. The spiracles on their abdomens were prominently opening and closing.

I guess that meant they were short of breath.

Dzrtk relaxed zyr stance. "How did you find us?" ze asked.

"We made it into these rooms through an underground entrance."

"It was basically a sewer," Nina complained, "though, thankfully, a dry one."

Suisei pointed at me. "I was afraid we were going to get lost in here when I caught sight of Genneth's pataphysics."

Lark crossed her arms. "Well, you're a couple minutes late." She glanced at the dead T'dzd'ch guards, whose bodies were slowly beginning to thaw. "We could have used your help."

"I handled it just fine," I said.

"Better safe than sorry," Lark quipped.

Nina stomped one of her feet. "Stop it, already!" She glanced at us. "Have you found the Key or whatever?"

Suddenly, Tk'tk'tk, who had been skittering around the room, checking the various hallways, scampered back through the arch to the room beyond. "I've found it," ze said. Ze pointed up at the ceiling of the room on the other side of the arch. "It's right up here."

Following Tk'tk'tk's lead, we climbed up the tree-columns of the adjacent room and passed through the hole in the ceiling.

"Here it is," Tk'tk'tk said.

Instead of another large room filled with Szrg and bookcases and entries to various hallways, this one was much smaller, maybe living-room-sized at best. A single hallway led out from the side of the room, opposite which there stood a door.

"Whoa…" Nina said.

It was the kind of door the average door dreamed of becoming.

The door was hexagonal expanse inlaid within a massive disk sunken into the wall, as if pressed there by eternity's handy. It was the sound of a great stone rolling into place, rendered in physical form. Rings of rune-etched tiles covered the hexagon like a convergence of clocktower faces. It was beautiful and enigmatic. The mystery seemed to taunt us, daring us to try to break in, all while its many runes glowed with malign intentions.

We all stared at it for a while.

"I thought you were going to get us to the fricken' Key," Lark said, breaking the silence. "So… now what? Or has this just all been a wild goose chase?"

"A wild kzz chase?" Tk'tk'tk asked.

I stuck out one of my arms. "Where's the Key?"

Tk'tk'tk pointed at the door. "Inside the Treasury."

"Yes, but… how do we get through the door?" I asked.

Tk'tk'tl took several nervous steps back.

Dzrtk crept forward, flicking zyr stinger in anger. "What have you done?" Ze reached for zyr scissorblades.

Tk'tk'tk stuck up zyr hands. "I don't know how to open the door, okay?" A fearful flutter shook zyr flower.

"What?"

I hadn't been expecting this!

Darn it, I was being hoisted on my own petard all over again! Another betrayal. I should have seen it coming!

I stomped my legs in anger. My bidented toes tapped on the stone floor like ice picks.

"I…" Tk'tk'tk's tail drooped limply. "…honestly," ze said, "I didn't think we'd make it this far. And, if by some miracle, we did, I'd be happy with whatever happened next, because at least I'd have gotten what I wanted."

"Which was?" I asked.

Setting zyr bag on the floor, Tk'tk'tk spread zyr limbs wide, as if to claw at the air. "I wanted the Dominion to pay. They made my kin into puppets. That's… that's why I was sent to work in the Treasury." Ze glanced at the bag. "I had nothing left. No skills to offer, no means to support myself." Ze looked down in shame. "I thought that the Vvz'zsh would be able to avenge my kin and take down T'dzd'ch."

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Dzrtk drew zyr blades, ready to strike, but I intervened, summoning forcefields all around zym, blocking zyr path. Enraged, Dzrtk slashed at the barrier, but to no avail.

"Was any of what you told the Vvz'zsh true?" I asked.

Make no mistake, I had half a mind to dismember Tk'tk'tk right then and there!

"Yes, yes, it was all true!" Tk'tk'tk stuck out zyr arms and bent zyr legs to lower zyr abdomen to the corridor's floor. "I saw the Hierarch soulbreak into another D'zd's body. I wouldn't have bothered doing any of this otherwise."

"But what about the Key?" Dzrtk asked.

"It should be in the Treasury," Tk'tk'tk said.

At that moment, I dearly wished I had some knucklebones that I could crack.

Ah well.

"Alright," I said, "everybody step back."

"What?" Tk'tk'tk said.

"I'm going to melt the door."

"Won't that kill us?" Lark asked. "Like… all of us?"

I nodded; the movements played with the way my flower's stamens received its signals. "That's why we should step back."

I led the group around the room, to the mouth of the hallway on the wall opposite the door. Then, sticking out my arms, I focused on the lower half of the door-disk. The magic's threads spun into being in my mind's eye, and glistened as I shaped them into the contours of the quick-n-easy "boil them alive" spell I'd practiced with Nina. The problem was, it was too risky to use that particular feat of magic in close quarters. What good would blasting the door open do if it meant bringing the rest of the Palace down on our heads in the process?

I needed to tamp it down. Mezzo-piano, not forté.

"Maybe I should do it, Genneth?" Suisei asked.

I shook my head. "No, it's alright," I said. "I can do this. Besides," I glanced at him. His spiracles were still working on overdrive, as were Nina's. "You two should conserve your energy, in case we get into a fight."

Puckering my petals in concentration, I squeezed my wispy magic into a compact, knurled ball. I let the threads loosen and soften, as if they were being soaked in water.

Water. That was a good image.

I pictured a pot of water on a stovetop, above a steadily burning flame. Power and restraint; duration and concentration.

Then, breathing out light, I let the power flow.

"I'm doing it," I said, softly.

Heat gathered at the door. It was slight at first, but grew stronger. It wasn't long until the heat building on that spot on the door had percolated through the air to us, blowing into our flowers like exhaust from an aerostat engine. My legs twitched; Dzrtk skittered back.

"It's melting…" Tk'tk'tk muttered.

Initially, the effect wasn't all that impressive, little more than a distortion caused by a bit of sagging. But, soon, the whole lower half of the door liquesced. The clock-face patterns of symbols melted, reduced to pieces of molten slag accumulating on the floor, their mysteries undone. It took several precious minutes before the heat fully penetrated the thick stone and opened a mouthlike aperture. The hole was puckered at first, like my flower, as if staring at us in disbelief, but it quickly widened as it realized this was the end.

"There," Tk'tk'tk said, "that's enough." Ze stuck a limb in front of me to point at the cracks the hot slag was starting to open in the floor.

I released the energies from their bindings. Their presence evaporated from my mind.

If only my depression could be banished that easily.

"Now, we just wait until it cools," I said, though that was far easier said than done.

Every second counted.

We approached the doorway in stages, creeping forward a couple steps at a time, then stopping the instant any of us felt the radiating heat rasp us with its tongues. Every step of the way, I had to fight the urge to look over my shoulder, for fear I'd see T'dzd'ch soldiers running toward us.

But, somehow, our luck held out. We walked through the hole without any trouble.

The room had all the warmth and comfort of a worm-licked skull. It was a cryptic space in every sense of the word. The walls and ceilings were made from disks of dark stone. There were shallow rings carved into the disks, inset with regularly shaped pieces of polished tile inscribed with runic symbols. The runes' light made an almost funebrial sound, one that was nearly drowned out by the light emanating from the crystal disks set at the rings' centers.

"Look at all the storystones…" Tk'tk'tk said. Zyr bag had nearly slipped out zyr hand in zyr shock.

There were deep, crescent-shaped shelves carved into the walls, filled to the brim with storystones. Thirteen podiums stood in an arc directly ahead of us. Each podium was topped by a singular storystone, each of which was visibly different from the others, as well the storystones on the shelves—either here, or in Krr'kt'zz's room. The thirteen were covered in clusters of lines and circles, and among them, ten glowed with a radiance that fluctuated like a heartbeat.

Three, however, were dim; smoldering, even.

More podiums dotted the center and far sides of the room, each bearing a storystone of its own, though, from what I could tell, none of them were as distinguished as the arc of thirteen.

"I can't believe this," Tk'tk'tk said, astonished. "To think, there were this many storystones. It's a miracle." Ze glanced at us and our bags. "We're going to need more bags."

"That can be arranged," Dzrtk said.

Tk'tk'tk turned to the thirteen. "And these ones here…" Ze skittered forward, reaching toward the storystones. "I don't even recognize the designs. Even the shapes are unprecedented."

"What does that mean?" Lark asked.

"I don't know," Tk'tk'tk said. "But… for there to be this many hidden away, it… this changes everything." The D'zd's limbs twitched with excitement and disbelief. "So much of our people's past is lost and forgotten. Just think of what we could learn from these storystones!"

But any thoughts of storystones were banished from my mind the instant I saw the stiff, horrified motions of Dzrtk's body as ze stepped toward the far wall. Ze had zyr flower tilted upward, transfixed by our surroundings.

"It doesn't make sense," ze said. "How can this be here? It's impossible."

"Dzrtk, what's wrong?" I asked.

Ze gestured at the far wall.

We skittered between the rows of podiums to get a closer look. Tk'tk'tk stayed behind, however, enrapt by the thirteen storystones.

The disk wall at the far end of the room lacked the central crystal inlay that the others had. Instead, in its place was a rough-surfaced stone disk, pale brown and finely grained. It was a complete mismatch with the surrounding architecture, and was covered in murals that reminded me of the ones I'd seen in the feasting hall of Zd'tk'chrr, only older; much, much older. The pigments scarcely glistened.

Dzrtk ran zyr hand along the rough stone. "This is a Vvz'zsh shrine," ze said, "and a very old one at that." Ze pointed out several of the figures.

I recognized them.

"That's… that's the Bzhrtlord, isn't it?" I said.

I saw the Stormsong, and the Fenrunner, as well.

"Yes," Dzrtk said, pulling zyr arm away from the wall. "But, these here," ze pointed, "I don't recognize them."

"Wait wait wait," Nina said, spreading out the words. She gestured in the mural's general direction. "Are you saying this is some kind of Vvz'zsh religious thing?"

"I mean, they called a shrine," Lark said.

Nina shook her head. "I don't understand. Why would it be here?"

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

I backed up, moving toward the entrance, though without looking away. "Guys…" I said. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Nina was right, it shouldn't have been here. Why would the Dominion's leaders keep Vvz'zsh religious paraphernalia in their impenetrable vault?

Suisei, however, was not deterred. He pressed onward, walking down the aisle and glancing over them one after the other. Then, like a hunting dog catching the scene of its prey, he turned, leaned forward, and pointed down one of the aisles. "Genneth, look…" he said.

Lark scuttled forward and stared. "What the hell is that?"