Chapter 41 #2
Iriset digs it out of the piles on the side table.
It’s one very basic layer of the multilayered metadesign, and Iriset needs to lock it down soon, because laying the array itself in the proper order and even with in-place guardian caps to push back at entropy will take an estimated fourteen days. She hands Eliri the schematic.
After a moment, Eliri nods. “This looks right, but there is no diagram for the transformation itself. It is sundering? Not redesign aesthetic?”
“Correct. I can do it, I can make it work.”
“Iriset is certain? Has Iriset experimented?”
“Hard without volunteers. But the healing in the Rising Smoke collapse was related, and I know it’s possible.”
Eliri holds Iriset’s gaze for a long moment. The chimera is hollow-cheeked, but not more than usual, Iriset thinks. These past days must have been difficult for Eliri, if she’s conflicted between supporting River and working with Shade.
“Use this one,” Eliri says, sinking slowly to her knees, head lowered so her blunt-cut hair sways forward.
“Huh?”
“Try to channel blowback into transforming Eliri. Prove the potential of the theory.”
“But…” Iriset bites her lip, thinking. Her gut doesn’t want to, but she needs a better reason. “Eliri’s bones are different from most bones, so it’s not a one-to-one experiment.”
“Try, Iriset,” Eliri demands, as firmly as Iriset has heard. She’s a bit taken aback, honestly. Eliri adds, “Start simple instead of making this one into whatever Iriset is making them. Make Eliri not chimera. Use blowback forces to fix quartz into human bone. Then go from there.”
It’s not a bad idea, and Iriset has never seen or heard the chimera so impassioned. Still, she hesitates.
Eliri grasps Iriset’s hands. “Do it for Eliri. For River. Eliri is a complex chimera, and if Eliri does not change, Eliri will leave the crater city, and then what will River do?” There are tears in those big gray eyes, her face pulled so tight it’s like despair.
“Oh, Eliri,” Iriset murmurs.
“River is grieving,” Eliri whispers. “So torn up, River has integrity most people cannot fathom. Help Eliri be here for an. Please. Please.”
“Yes,” Iriset says, turning her hands over to hold on to Eliri’s. “All right, Eliri. I promise. I’ll try.”
They set up the experiment in Eliri’s suite in Rivermouth fortress.
Iriset is nervous, which pisses her off.
But this is different from using sex to strip away and break up cancer clinging to Lyric’s internal design.
This is transforming functioning bones into differently functioning bones.
But it’s a much, much better proxy for what Iriset intends to do with the sixty-four channels.
Eliri doesn’t seem concerned. Her only hint of anxiety presented as a missing pinkie finger.
When Iriset eyed it, Eliri murmured she would keep one crystal bone for remembrance.
But Iriset recalls the fresh wound she saw at the base of that missing finger the night they smoked together.
This is something Eliri has done before, maybe a release valve of her own.
Now Eliri’s calmly fixing balancing anchors in the corners of the workroom behind her bedroom suite, with the ethereal grace Iriset is used to seeing from the chimera.
Together they build a quick pagoda cap and take turns imbuing it with different forces in purposeful misalignment.
They need it to be unwieldy and easy to break, so that when they’re ready, Iriset can nudge it into shattering.
That will provide the blowback for her to transform Eliri’s quartz into bone. Simple.
Eliri stands in the center of the array, then cocks her head at Iriset and lies down. “Eliri’s parents used building blocks of human bone to change Eliri’s bones to this quartz-like substance, so Iriset mustn’t will away all the silicon.”
“Eliri will have to show me the notes later,” Iriset says, then begins her slow breathing as she removes her outer layers until she’s in only a simple breast halter and loincloth.
She winds her hair up into a big knot and slides on a copper-and-silk ring to help her believe she can catch the blowback forces with her bare hand.
Last, Iriset pinches the north node of her arousal array.
As everything hums to life against her skin, Iriset closes her eyes to feel the eddies of each force and how they mingle and shift together.
Then she activates the pagoda they hung from the ceiling.
It’s a version of something designers here use to levitate lanterns or water balls, and it begins to tug at rising and flow, gathering them closer and closer into a spiral that goes from lazy to overly fast in an instant.
Iriset cups her hands together as if gathering forces between her palms. Just as the hair at the nape of her neck rises, she lifts one hand up toward the pagoda and with the other touches just the tips of her fingers to Eliri’s quartz claws.
Eliri murmurs something, sounding at ease, and then the pagoda snaps.
Forces writhe and unfurl, and Iriset uses the force-ring on her right hand to attract the hard wave of blowback.
The forces surge into her, and she immediately directs them through her chest and down her other arm, pulling flow and popping her lips for extra ecstatic effort.
The forces leap to Eliri, seeking her quartz claws, her bones, and Iriset thinks, Twist, and lets rivation unwind in her belly. The threads of force in the array beneath Eliri fall apart, sundered, and there is a shock of release. It shoves through Iriset and Eliri, and Eliri screams.
Iriset grasps the chimera’s hand, eyes blinking open. With her opal eye she sees crackling power running up and down Eliri, Eliri’s spine bent up as she arches onto her shoulders and feet, head angled sharply.
Then the energy dissipates; Iriset feels it like the soft waking up at the end of a sex dream.
Eliri collapses back to the floor, panting. Her hands clutch at her chest, at her ribs, and her mouth is open. Her teeth are white. Still sharper than most blunt human teeth, but bone.
Iriset shuffles forward on her knees and covers Eliri’s hand. She needs to work a thread into the design to diminish pain. Eliri’s claws are still claws, but thicker than human nails. Because they’re bone, too. Oops. Iriset laughs breathlessly. “Eliri?”
The chimera catches her breath, wincing, then lolls her head toward Iriset. Her hands relax. “It’s strange. Worked, though.”
“How do you feel?”
Eliri starts to sit up but immediately lies back down. “Oooo,” she says. She takes a deep breath, slightly stuttered.
“Tell me what’s going on, so I can help,” Iriset says, hoping this is only its own kind of blowback—emotional or physical.
“Heart palpitations. Uneven. Hurts to breathe.”
“Still hurts?” Iriset sticks her fingers against Eliri’s jugular. The pulse is hard and arrhythmic.
“Thought this might happen,” Eliri confesses.
Iriset frowns. “What, exactly?”
The workshop door rattles with rough knocking. “Eliri?” River calls.
“Come in,” Iriset yells back. Eliri’s eyes drift shut, and for a long moment she stops breathing. “Eliri!” Iriset snaps, slapping her lightly against the cheek. “Talk to me. Where’s your diagnostic mesh?”
River shoves the door open and rushes over. An drops to ans knees and doesn’t hesitate before gathering Eliri across ans lap. “Eliri,” an says with hushed fear.
“Fine…” Eliri murmurs. “Not sur—surprised.”
“Where’s the healer? Or the diagnostic mesh?” Iriset demands. “I don’t know what’s wrong. Eliri won’t say.”
Someone who came in behind River turns and rushes back out. Good.
Eliri suddenly gasps a breath. “River,” she says, and a smile pulls at half her mouth. “Look, look.” The chimera lifts her hand, fingers splayed, lacking one. “Bones. My—my—”
Sweat pops along Eliri’s upper lip and her hairline.
She’s struggling to breathe. Gasping, almost choking as if they’re surrounded by poisonous smoke.
But it’s only air! Iriset gets up, stumbles back.
She can find the fucking mesh. Or no—she should get back down there and just try to fix it.
But how can she go in without knowing the problem?
This isn’t how her opal eye works. She can see the residual design forces in and around Eliri, below her from the array, but they seem fine.
Good, even! “Eliri, what is wrong?” Iriset demands, fear sizzling ecstatically up and down her body.
But Eliri raises her hand and puts it on River’s face, where tears drop fast down ans cheeks. “River, River,” Eliri whispers. Her lips are turning blue. “Is Eliri lighter now? Can River let go?”
River cups her hand to ans jaw and says, “Eliri was never too heavy for River to hold.”
And that’s it. Eliri the Adept Hand doesn’t breathe again.