Chapter 24
Beyond known rocks and trees
An even stronger earthquake trembles throughout the crater city three weeks after the Night of Chimeras.
Citizens feel just a little shiver, because the greater power of the untethered array is caught in the mitigation dome set in place by expert geo-designer Helica Silkhair.
The dome lights up in ecstatic sparks, which rain down onto the stone of the garden.
A cactus catches fire but is quickly doused.
Helica Silkhair is not pleased. Though technically her design worked, she and Mirea sir Unrich, the city planner from Sharp-Shin, estimate the energy released by the array anchor will increase exponentially over the next several months if it is not neutralized or otherwise settled.
Already the mitigation dome cannot contain the excess, though the worst part is they cannot tell where the trigger mechanism is, or if there is one at all, or two or three or sixteen.
They are eager to present their findings to the Moon-Eater today, alongside the Chimera city planner who has been working from the edges inward, the commander-philosopher of the College of Intrinsic Foundation who specializes in meta-arrays, and the cardinal of the College of Lightning Revelation who has apparently been casting star charts forward and backward in an attempt to connect the anomaly star with…
anything, frankly. A dark star might explain where the energy comes from, Mirea said off-handedly to Helica during one of their lunch breaks.
Helica is skeptical, because while she appreciates the complex design and mathematics required to study heavenly bodies, it is those very complexities that keep her from believing that forces from such heavenly bodies are capable of interacting with or even influencing forces here.
Then again, Helica witnessed the light of the anomaly star, and it did appear directly above the center of the untethered array.
And those strange people come from somewhere.
The foreign design expert will be at the presentation, too, and Helica looks forward to grilling her on the mysteries she’s thus far managed to keep secret.
When Helica and Mirea arrive a few moments early to the Undersea Garden where the meeting is to take place, they’re faced with the Moon-Eater in the shape of a giant half-snake, his torso, head, and arms human, while the long scaled tail coils up off the smooth black floor.
He’s got the foreign designer in his arms, holding her up so she can stick her hand in the oceanic ceiling.
Water spills down over her and she shrieks with laughter.
“Good that someone can be amused when the entire city might crumble by midsummer,” Helica murmurs, and Mirea snorts.
She says, “Good the Moon-Eater has a new toy. Hope this sunderer is stronger-willed than the Adept Hand.”
The two designers share a look, then glance away guiltily as they find seats around the low, round table.
The ceiling of the Undersea Garden is exactly why the Moon-Eater insisted on bringing Iriset early.
“You’ll love it,” he said, tugging her hand eagerly.
They nearly stumble down the private staircase leading underground, into a cavern.
The darkness smells wet, but pleasantly so, like wind after a cooling rain.
The Moon-Eater presses his hand to an array carved into the edge of the hidden doorway, and jagged stripes of bright blue-white crawl along the striated stone walls, lighting the whole cave.
That’s brilliant enough, but oh, was Shade correct about the ceiling.
It’s a dome of shimmering dark green-blue, and inside it swim glowing fish.
Iriset cranes her neck so dramatically her spine aches, but it looks like real water and real fish, except for how their fins radiate neon yellow and shimmery blue.
Some are tiny enough to fit in a pocket, others long and curling like river eels.
“Get me closer,” Iriset demands to the Moon-Eater’s expectant, smug grin, and then grins herself as his legs transform into the thickly muscled body of a massive red snake.
He grabs her in naked arms, mirané-brown skin matching the scales perfectly, and Iriset loops her arms around his neck as they rise.
The water design isn’t quite enough to distract her from the strength in Shade’s body.
He holds her under her thighs in one arm, and his abdominal muscles are hard and tense against her hip.
Iriset manages not to play her fingers in the loose hair at his nape, leaning into him like he’s just a very powerful chair, not something turning her on.
With his free hand, Shade points at one of the eels. “That’s from the real ocean,” he says.
“The rest aren’t?”
“Some of the little sharks. But the rest are designed and redesigned from river and lake fish. The one with the pink whiskers came from catfish.”
The Moon-Eater’s words are soft, his breath warm on Iriset’s neck.
She glances down at him to find he’s watching her, not the glowing fish.
He squeezes her thighs with an amused little smile.
Iriset looks away, up at the water again, at the fish.
It’s intimate up here, quads of paces off the smooth black floor, and the dome of water curves comfortingly around them.
Iriset feels like they’re deep underwater, just the two of them, and it’s more disorienting than flight, than time travel, for just a moment.
Too easy to breathe beneath the weight of all that water.
“How is it done?” she asks, reaching up.
“You can’t see the lines of force?” Shade wonders, rippling the long snake muscles to raise them close enough for Iriset to touch.
“I don’t have that iris cap refined yet,” Iriset mutters, wishing she did.
Her opal eye has improved much in the past quad, fully integrated with her mind as best she can tell.
Sometimes when she wakes up or blinks, her focus struggles to realign, and her depth perception has been hilariously off to the detriment of her already-lacking grace.
It dries out faster than her flesh eye, and she hasn’t gone to bed at night without a headache since it happened.
But mostly, Iriset would never know this wasn’t the eye she was born with.
“Well, I’ll bring you back when you do,” Shade promises. “If you do it fast, because I don’t think this room will survive the outcome of this meeting for very long.”
Iriset grimaces. “There aren’t rooms like this in the future, that’s certain.”
“Samishi is the designer maintaining it. I’ve had this place for a century or so, but always assign one of the fortress designers to hold it.”
“I don’t think I’ve met them.” Iriset licks her lips, but this near the Moon-Eater, his complex force signature is overwhelming and she can’t sense any of the eddies no doubt coming off the false ocean.
Finally, she skims her fingers against the surface: Water splashes down on them, and Iriset shrieks in surprise.
The rumble of the Moon-Eater’s laugh turns hers to laughter, too, and she’s squeezing her eyes closed because it’s salt water and it fucking stings. “Red moon,” she snaps, still laughing, patting her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. They slowly sink down.
“What did you think would happen when you disrupted the field?” Shade chides.
Iriset licks her wet fingers. “Is this really ocean water?”
“Partly, originally,” Shade says, setting her on her feet.
He turns himself into his preferred teenager form, almost shorter than her but for the high tail of fluffy black hair.
“I had tanks of it brought here, and the sharks and eel, and a few hundreds of various fish for my designers to play with.”
“Just for extravagance? There’s a lot of ocean theme in your fortress.”
Shade’s moon-red eyes lower, and for a moment Iriset thinks he won’t answer.
But then, “Never left me for the sea,” he says, and Iriset feels the anger tucked behind the words, little ecstatic pops and rising fire, but the Moon-Eater flashes a grin.
“I wonder if it saw those islands your lover was from.”
Yes, there Shade is, Iriset thinks, needling and unwilling to be the only person in the room who’s hurt. She sighs. “I suppose we can ask the next time it shows up. But you might not like what it has to say about its travels.”
“Doubtless,” Shade murmurs, then takes her shoulders to turn her to face the round table where people have already gathered.
(Iriset does not want to be here. She looked at the information gathered that was sent to her by Amado Chimera, and immediately knew what to do.
But she doesn’t want to explain the way to fix this array is by setting Holy Design steeples into place.
She doesn’t want to let anybody know that unraveling the Moon-Eater is part of the solution to ending the imminent danger the untethered array causes.
She can’t imagine trying to explain the nature of the time-spiral mechanism, inasmuch as she thinks she understands it.
She doesn’t want to say the words to set the end of the Apostate Age in motion—and make no mistake, that is exactly what’s happening here!
Sure it will save lives in the crater, but!
The consequences! Iriset can’t believe the Moon-Eater is making her.)