Anxious Gretchen: Space Archaeologist Part 3
“Oh, damn, damn, damn,” I groaned as Shockley and Bautista’s voices grew closer to where we stood, frozen. What a disaster. We had taken the Myax staircase specifically to avoid this situation. For some inexplicable reason, I felt betrayed by the temple. I knocked my elbow against Azo’lah’s hip and asked, “What’s the plan?”
Azo’lah’s stance widened, and her knees bent as she said, “Fulyiti, assume the position.”
Fleetwood Mercury casually stretched one long leg overhead into a perfect standing split. “Chester, my saucy boy, we doth be fuck-ed,” she informed him as a wicked-looking dagger with an ornate handle fell from her boot. She caught it easily, spinning it deftly in her palm as she returned her foot to the ground and took up a defensive stance.
Azo’lah shifted in front of me, the movement accompanied by the sound of Chester’s voice whispering into the darkness. “Already?” he asked.
“Schematics scan,” Azo’lah commanded.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” I interjected.
“I was asking myself the same thing,” Shockley said as he rounded the corner into our hallway. He paused for a moment, framed in a sudden burst of light that burnished his inky hair gold and emphasized his silhouette in a way that I would’ve appreciated more if my life was not in danger.
“Shockley,” I greeted lamely.
“You,” he returned, frowning.
“Yo, it’s Gretchen the enemy archaeologist and alien friends.” Bautista materialized from the shadows at Shockley’s back. “What’s up, my dudes?” He raised the small, powerful light strapped to his wrist higher, immediately ruining the drama of Shockley’s entrance. Shockley looked a bit put out by this in the second before Bautista’s light was directed at my face. I flinched as it blinded me.
“Your new pet seems rather jumpy, Fulyiti.” Nyc’arra’s white hair was a beacon in the semi-darkness. She hovered at Shockey’s shoulder, statue-still. “Perhaps it is because she knows of what Azo’lah is capable.”
“Making you wear your derriere as a decorative headpiece?” Fleetwood countered brightly. “She has been capable of that since we were crawling.”
“What?” Shockley said.
“She said Azo’lah could make you wear your asses for hats,” I translated.
Bautista hollered gleefully. “Sick burn.”
“Thank you,” Fleetwood Mercury said. She flipped her knife, quickly catching it in the opposite grip. “Azo’lah?”
“Yes, Fulyiti,” Azo’lah responded.
There was an infinite moment of suspension—like watching a hairline fissure spread across a pane of glass—then, with some signal unknown to me, it shattered. I was pushed to the side with a sweep of Azo’lah’s long arm. Unprepared, I caught myself on the temple wall with my face. My cheek and chin burned with fresh grazes. Azo’lah and Fleetwood launched forward.
There was an electric sizzle. Magenta light flared the length of Azo’lah’s arms from the jeweled bands she wore across her left bicep and right wrist. The light solidified into a luminescent, neon-pink javelin in her right hand. Her left arm sported a matching, glowing vambrace-shield hybrid that she rammed toward Shockley’s face. Shockley ducked, but Bautista wasn’t fast enough to miss the onslaught. He dropped into a heap of windmilling limbs.
Gun drawn, Shockley shot at Azo’lah, but the round, sparkling bolt was easily deflected by her shield. The bolt hit the nearby wall and ricocheted. Shockley rolled to avoid the small avalanche of pebbles and dust.
I hit my wristband while Nyc’arra landed a well-placed hit to Fleetwood’s ribs before she reached for her gun. “Not cool!” Fleetwood chastised, slashing downward with her dagger.
Nyc’arra jerked back, but not quickly enough to completely avoid Fleetwood’s blade, her gun falling to the floor. Azo’lah kicked it away as Bautista, nose gushing blood, re-entered the fray.
“Chester!” I yelled into my wrist as I crawled in pursuit of Nyc’arra’s gun. I was uncertain how I would even use it once I got it, but keeping it out of our enemies’ hands was my only objective.
“No need to shout,” I could hear the wince in Chester’s voice as Azo’lah knocked Shockley’s gun from his grasp and sent it sailing down the shadowed corridor, “I can hear everything as if I’m there.”
“We need directions out of here!” The glowing pink javelin flew past my head, lodging itself in the center of a glyph behind me. I seized the gun and hopped to my feet.
“Azo’lah! Watch the walls!” I screamed, dismayed at the destruction of such an ancient site.
“Watch yourself,” Shockley huffed, flying at my legs. We hit the floor in a clatter, Nyc’arra’s gun discharging as my forearm collided with the stone. The electrical bolt bounced off the glyph-lined wall and into Bautista, who collapsed into a twitching heap, yelling, “Not a-fucking-gain!”
I kicked my legs erratically, freeing myself from Shockley’s grip long enough to roll over and level the gun at his dark eyes, which crossed. We were so close, the barrel of the weapon touched his nose, and the handle bumped against my scraped chin.
“Ch-Chester,” I stammered, my heart hammering against my eardrums. “Directions, please!”
“Go down the hallway and take the rightmost door out of the three there. That should take you to the stairs,” Chester’s voice rose from my wrist above the continued fighting. “I’ll direct you from there once you’re out of earshot!”
“Get off of me!” I ordered Shockley as Fleetwood ran toward me. She kicked him aside with a stylized, “Hyah! Catch, cuz!” She tossed her blade into Azo’lah’s waiting hand, where it didn’t even pause before descending in a deadly arc that Nyc’arra skillfully avoided. Fleetwood threaded my still-looped arms around her neck, careful not to bump against the gun clutched in my grip. She lifted me effortlessly, bridal-style, and sprinted down the hall, screaming, “The wheels on the bus go!”
I craned my neck over Fleetwood’s shoulder, and, though it pained my archaeologist’s heart, I aimed the gun at the wall closest to Nyc’arra and fired.
I had intended to distract Nyc’arra long enough to allow for Azo’lah’s escape, but my aim, unsurprisingly, was off. The bolt hit Nyc’arra’s left shoulder. She snarled as electricity sparked down her arm, causing it to spasm uncontrollably. Where my shot had landed was a singed crater of muddy green on her otherwise flawless lavender skin.
“Shit, sorry!” I cried as Fleetwood Mercury carried me into the darkness of the rightmost doorway at the end of the hall. The blue light clipped to her belt illuminated our way in strobing shadows. I was relieved when the corridor brightened further. Flickering pink mixed with the blue of Fleetwood’s light, heralding Azo’lah’s return. Like an avenging goddess, she was still illuminated by her brilliant, impossible armor and recovered javelin.
We emerged through the third doorway, not into the promised staircase, but into a corridor that looked eerily familiar.
“Fuck the what?” Fleetwood Mercury muttered. I was set gently on my feet as Azo’lah secured the door behind us. I unclipped the light from my belt, raising it to the glyphs glistening just above my eye-line. “The Archives,” Fleetwood Mercury confirmed. Her arm drew me back, as if afraid to let me get too close to the wall.
“Did we just make a circle?” I asked in a trembling whisper. “How?”
“Chester, are you certain you read the schematics correctly?” Azo’lah’s voice was forcibly calm, but her expression told a different story.
“Yes,” Chester confirmed. “Are you alright? That sounded—”
“Scan again,” Azo’lah ordered quietly. “Please, Chester.”
“Did the ancient Destyrians build duplicate chambers? Dummy rooms to fool intruders and discourage those who would disturb the Auhtula’s tomb?” I was desperately trying to find a logical explanation for how we repeatedly ended up on the opposite side of the temple from where we intended to be. “Perhaps the map we saw was incorrect? A similar, but different temple?” I reasoned.
“Um, I swear I read it correctly, but comparing my most recent scan to the tapestry Fleetwood photographed, it’s not even close to the same. The configuration of the rooms is completely different. The Myax stairway no longer connects to the Myax chamber alone, but services all floors of the temple along with the centrally located stairwell.”
“It’s the Ancients,” Fleetwood Mercury said into the ensuing silence. I stilled immediately at the awe in her voice. “Like the tales Mother used to tell…” Her arms, which had yet to leave my waist, tightened around me. I wasn’t sure which one of us she was comforting.
“What did the stories say?” I asked, disliking the answer even though I had yet to hear it.
Azo’lah’s armor and javelin retracted into her bands as she placed her hand against the wall and sighed. “That the temples were alive.”
Fleetwood Mercury plopped herself on the dust-laden floor.
“Erm, could you not...” I aborted my request to mind the wall as she leaned wearily against it. Her buns swept up dirt from the elaborate designs behind her head.
We had sought shelter in the expansive Archive Room after the concealed door had given way beneath Azo’lah’s probing touch. I hadn’t even been given a chance to find a handle or hinges with my brushes.
We were ensconced amidst carved shelves inlaid with jewels. Like much in the temple, they formed dramatic, interweaving spirals. As we waited for Chester’s diagnostic scans to complete, I thirstily scanned the shelves. Instead of books, each meticulously labeled notch contained a single, burnt orange sphere like a large polished peach. Seated on the ground between two shelves, my fingers drummed a rhythmless beat against my thigh. I desperately wanted to inspect one.
“Are you well, Myaxi?” Azo’lah asked, crouching beside me. My pants were ripped and bloody at the knee, my shirt was sliced down one side, and my face felt like I had gone a few rounds with a meat tenderizer. We were trapped on an alien planet, in an ancient temple whose layout was changing sporadically. I was decidedly not well.
To top it all off, I was extremely annoyed that Azo’lah was still as spry and graceful as a woodland elf, while I felt like (and probably resembled) a bruised potato after my tussle with Shockley.
“Have you seen yourself?” I attempted to joke, gesturing to her dirty skin covered in vine-like trickles of yellow blood, flowering with brown and green bruises.
“Azo’lah will have to commence the training montage before our next mission,” Fleetwood Mercury said, patting my thigh companionably.
“There won’t be a next mission,” I replied automatically. My stomach dropped guiltily as Fleetwood’s encouraging smile fell. I added, “Let’s just figure out this one first, okay?”
Azo’lah rose. “Chester, update.”
“I’ve run three diagnostics on the structure and no changes so far. I’m still waiting on my electromagnetic radar readings, ” Chester responded over the link.
“Thank you.” Azo’lah hummed thoughtfully then reached beside my ear, her fingers snatching up a sphere.
“Don’t!” I cried, flinging myself feebly toward her. I only managed to bring myself to my knees, hissing as my rather impressive scrapes met the rough stone floor. I gripped her bicep. “Those are artifacts! They’re priceless history!”
Azo’lah stilled, staring at me curiously. “You do not even know what they are. Their history is not even your own.”
I shifted back to a more comfortable seated position. “I don’t care if it’s not my history, it should be treasured. And it’s an Archive Room, so they’re obviously records of some kind. There must be a way to access the contents. Be careful, please.”
Azo’lah grabbed my hand and, despite my protests that I wasn’t appropriately equipped with gloves, deposited the orb into it. “The oils on my skin could damage—”
“Work gloves are in the bottom zippered pocket of your belt,” Chester said. His tone of amusement petered off into a groan. “New diagnostic schematic shows a shift in the temple. Good news is that while the order of the rooms is changing, their contents are not.”
“Yet,” Fleetwood murmured. “But, our loins should be girded for the possibility.” Her uncharacteristically serious tone caused me to pause, supple leather-like gloves only halfway on.
“How can an inanimate object be alive?” I asked.
“You got me,” Chester said. “The only life signs I’m getting are you three and the crew of The Danger Zone. Plus, a whole bunch of rodents and insects native to the planet.”
“Would you use this? Please,” I pleaded, interrupting Azo’lah’s rather brusque dusting of a nearby shelf. I held out a broad brush from my belt. She accepted it with a petulant sneer.
“Myaxi,” she began, but I ignored her gaze, instead turning to Fleetwood.
“You know the language of the Ancients, right? Can you read anything here? Anything that might be able to help us?”
Fleetwood leaped to her feet and saluted me. “With pleasure, Gret’chen.” She turned to study the walls with a single-minded focus that I had only seen her exercise while consuming Froot Loops.
I gently dusted the orb in my palm with a brush, slowly turning it to see if there were any visible seams, grooves, or glyphs that might suggest how to access the information it contained.
Fleetwood Mercury eyed the label etched into the shelf vacated by the orb I was inspecting. “A list of acolytes from...the time period is hagged out.”
Chester’s laughter at Fleetwood’s poor use of slang echoed from our wrists, startling me. I clenched my fingers around the sphere. “Damn it, Chester! I almost dropped an artifact!”
“My bad,” he apologized, still chuckling.
Fleetwood moved down the shelves, humming softly as she surveyed the labels in their various states of legibility.
“Gretchen,” Azo’lah’s soft summons carried across the chamber. I scurried along the swirled shelves towards an angular plinth at their epicenter. Emerging from it was a long metal cylinder. Azo’lah extended her light over it, illuminating a curved indentation cut in half by a slit.
“Oh my freaking ancient alien gods,” I breathed. For once, my heart pounded with excitement instead of fear.
I placed the sphere into the indentation. There was a whirring, followed by a painful wailing noise like nails on a chalkboard. I grabbed Azo’lah’s arm for stability as the orb-lined shelves smoothly slid from their original positions to slot between one another, forming a crescent.
“Fulyiti!” Azo’lah cried into the ringing silence.
“What just happened?” Chester called down our comms.
I swallowed around the stone lodged in my throat. “We—we placed the orb in a cylinder and the shelves—”
Azo’lah yelled, “Fulyiti, answer me.”
“I’m here!” Fleetwood announced, her head popping out from behind the furthest shelf.
“Were you hurt?” Azo’lah asked, her eyes narrowed in concerned appraisal as Fleetwood skipped to us.
“No,” she replied, as the whirring sound began again. Azo’lah, Fleetwood, and I backed away. The orange color of the orb warmed as though lit from the inside. A thin beam of light arced from it to the wall behind us. We spun to watch glyphs form, projected in a wavering, sunset-colored light. There must have been a mechanism in the cylinder that rotated the orb, for the information slowly paraded across the wall in a sideways version of a sci-fi film crawl.
“Holy shiznit,” Fleetwood murmured.
Chester asked, “What?”
Azo’lah said, “The orb, it’s—”
“Chester—this is—” I gaped.
“Orgasmic?” he provided good-naturedly. “Get yourself a partner who reacts to you the way Gretchen reacts to... What are you looking at?”
“Technology!” I said, “Chester, the Ancients had technology! Like serious technology. Fleetwood Mercury, can you read…” I turned to find her and Azo’lah staring, not at the contents of the records sphere that so fascinated me, but at the ceiling. It shimmered like a tapestry woven from duplicates of Fleetwood Mercury’s rhinestoned Queen shirts. Ancient Destyrian characters in slashing eddies, wove themselves into the silver hair of the woman depicted. Her silver eyes penetrated the gloom. Across her pale lilac forehead rested a circlet of seven jewels in a fractal design.
“The first Auhtula,” Azo’lah breathed admiringly.
“Okay, what is going on to get even Azo’lah sounding like that?” Chester sounded equal parts intrigued and annoyed. “FleetMerc—”
“Pics or it did not occur,” she agreed, already lifting her wristband over her head. “Sending now.”
“Can you read what it says?” I asked.
“I think, yes. But the Ancients relied on context for meaning—some symbols have multiple meanings.” Fleetwood pointed to the first glyph, gesturing to help us follow the pattern as she read. “Like the planets obey the summons of the lightbringers, and the darkness turns—no, yields—to the strength of the Myax, so the stones kneel before their Auhtula.” Fleetwood hesitated. “Sing to the temple, Rightful One, and lead it in the dance.”
She shrugged. It was clear that the sentence made as much sense to Fleetwood as it did to me. I removed the small sketchpad and pencil from the pouch on my belt and asked her to repeat the line until I was satisfied that I had copied it down precisely. I tapped the end of the pencil against the page, staring at the paper. “Do either of you understand this reference to singing to the temple? Are we sure that’s what it means?”
“Music has always been an important part of our culture,” Azo’lah replied. “We recalled our histories in set dances and songs before we developed the means to do otherwise. Some are still performed today...but I don’t recall anything about the Auhtula singing to the temple. Chester?”
“Already on it.” There was a short pause then Chester continued. “There’s an ancient myth, in some epic songy-poem thing I cannot pronounce, about the first Auhtula. She was kidnapped and taken as a hostage bride to the leader of an enemy clan who wanted her power. She asked to sing at the center of the rival clan’s holy site, a temple of some kind. While she sang, she placed her hands on the stone. Her song was so powerful it caused the temple to crumble, killing her captors. She was saved by a servant who became the first Myax. But that’s it. The next part of the ballad recounts how they fell in love, and wooo,” Chester’s delighted laughter brought a smile to my face, “my friends, this is some filthy poetry.”
I snorted. “I bet I know of some Earth cultures who could rival it.”
“Dramatic reading on the way back to Thal,” Chester announced. “But, anyway, that’s the only bit about singing.”
“Do you think we missed something at the top of the temple? A map of the right way to go?” I asked Azo’lah.
She was still gazing at the first Auhtula on the ceiling. The orange glow highlighting her furrowed brow, giving her sharp features an even fiercer expression than normal. “Perhaps. If the temple is indeed moving, then returning to the top level to see any such map will be difficult. It does not seem that we have any choice, however.”
“Chester, rewind and take it back,” Fleetwood said sagely.
Chester, apparently understanding this nonsensical instruction, said, “That’s a good idea. If you go back exactly the way you came, perhaps the temple will move in the same manner. That is if Shockley’s team doesn’t fuck it up for us. Give me a second, and I’ll send the route to your Ran’dyls.”
We waited a few moments before the devices on our arms dinged, signaling Chester’s success. Azo’lah studied the three-dimensional schematic from every available angle. After a moment, she deactivated it and pulled her gun from its holster.
“I will proceed first,” Azo’lah told us. “Fulyiti, you follow Gretchen and stay alert. Shockley’s team doesn’t appear near. However, we don’t know if that will remain the case.”
“Let’s do the hokey pokey,” Fleetwood said, drawing her dagger.
Gingerly, I removed my stolen gun from my bandolier. “Is there a safety on this thing?” I whispered as Azo’lah peeked around the edge of the thick stone door.
“Do not pull the trigger, and you will be safe,” Azo’lah answered unhelpfully.
“You’re such a troll,” Chester commented.
“Her hair is not big enough,” Fleetwood refuted.
“Quiet!” Azo’lah commanded, silencing our bantering. We edged into the hallway. Our shadows stretched like reflections in funhouse mirrors as we retraced our steps. We stopped at the end of the corridor to find it dead-ended.
“This done be jacked up,” Fleetwood said.
I had to agree with her. Already, the temple had changed. Instead of the three doors, we had initially passed being in a row, one door had shifted across the corridor, making it impossible to determine what passage we needed to retrace our steps through.
“Chester,” Azo’lah called down our comms for directions.
“Let’s see what’s behind door number one?” I cringed at the lameness of my joke, and immediately ducked my head to hide my blush.
It turned out to be my undoing as I missed the sudden appearance of a new doorway to our right.
From out of nowhere, Shockley’s deep voice retorted, “I’d rather pick door number four!”
Azo’lah and Fleetwood shouted my name in warning, but they were too late.
I found myself tackled to the floor of a pitch-black room, my light source eclipsed by the body on top of mine. I screamed as my hand hit the floor, and the gun fired. The bolt hit the opposite wall as a crunch-thud followed by absolute silence announced the sealing of the door and my complete separation from my friends.
“Jesus,” Shockley said, his voice muffled by my abdomen. “Why didn’t you put the safety on?”
Shockley dropped to the floor, a cloud of dust twisting up around him. He leaned his head against a shelf full of priceless alien artifacts and wheezed, “What an absolute clusterfuck.”
I paced the length of the room. It was an operating theater of sorts with stadium seating set up in a corkscrew pattern that led down to a central platform shaped like an inverted pear. The platform’s base was covered in a series of jagged crystals. Most importantly, there was no way out.
I tucked Nyc’arra’s gun into my ammo belt again as I listened to Fleetwood, Azo’lah, and Chester’s frantic conversation over the comms.
“What are you going to do? Kick a stone wall in?” Chester asked scathingly.
“Do you have a better suggestion of getting to Gretchen?” Azo’lah returned hotly.
“Gret’chen, I am coming,” Fleetwood promised.
“Guys, I’m fine,” I interjected only to be cut off.
“Fulyiti!” Azo’lah’s voice skyrocketed in volume. My heart dropped at the worry in her tone. “Fulyiti Fleetwood, get back here right—”
“Fleetwood, what are you doing?” I asked.
“Stop running! Come back!” Azo’lah bellowed.
“Fulyiti Fleetwood Mercury, if you don’t go back to Azo’lah, I swear,” Chester threatened futilely.
Fleetwood’s voice was full of wonder as she said, “Hot diggity dog.”
My eyes met Shockley’s across the chamber as my blue light flickered ominously. I said, “Fleetwood, whatever you’re doing, don’t. I’m fine—”
But I was too late. Azo’lah’s scream of outrage rang across our comms. “Fulyiti! No!” I could hear flesh pound against stone as she called for Fleetwood.
“What happened?” I asked. “Fleetwood!”
“She went through a door that has immediately sealed itself against re-entry,” Azo’lah answered.
Fleetwood interrupted cheerfully, “Fear not, my loves. I’m just swell.”
“Fleetwood, what are you doing?” Chester demanded.
“I am saving Gret’chen!” she replied. “Though, it appears I have fallen down the rabbit hole. My light shines on walls of alabaster and honey,” Fleetwood explained dreamily, “and the Auhtula smiles down upon—oh, greetings, Nyc’arra! Isn’t the Auhtula lovely?”
Azo’lah barked, “Fleetwood, do not engage Nyc’arra!”
Chester said, “Azo’lah, get to her otherwise she’ll—”
“Oh, so you wanna dance, bitch?” Fleetwood drawled. All three of us groaned.
I inhaled deeply, and it was surprisingly difficult. The stress of the last few days, combined with being abruptly and forcibly separated from my companions and trapped in a room with my newly acquired nemesis, was hitting me with the force of several Killer Qu’eens.
I dropped into a crouch, cradling my head in my hands. “What’s happening—Is Fleetwood alright?”
The only response from my wrist was a loud, screeching, “KEEEEEE-YAHHHHHHH!”
I fell to my ass, my arms and legs sprawled wide. I felt like someone was squeezing my torso, attempting to make bone marrow jelly out of me. My breathing shortened against my will. What if Fleetwood died attempting to find me? My vision blurred.
“Hey, you doing okay, Name Police?” Shockley asked, kicking at my ankle.
I squeezed my eyes shut and applied pressure to my temples. “I need to help them. Fleetwood’s in trouble and Azo’lah’s going to—”
“Say volume control, thirty percent capacity.”
“What?”
Shockley grabbed my arm, surprisingly gentle, and held it in front of my face. “You’re freaking out and over-stimulated. Say volume control, thirty percent,” he ordered. I opened my eyes to find him leaning over me. “You don’t want to cut off comms with your team, I get it, but your comms are operating at max volume. You gotta turn it down.”
“Vol-volume control,” I stammered. “Thirty percent capacity.”
The voices immediately dampened, almost wholly eliminating Fleetwood’s overzealous battle-cries.
I pulled myself into a seated position, grabbed my pills from my pants pocket, unstoppered my canteen, and took one.
Shockley asked, “Better?”
“Much,” I admitted, tucking my pills safely away and taking another swig of water.
“Let me show you something,” he offered, his hand wrapping around mine and directing my finger along my wristband. The noise emitting from it dampened even further. “There you go, you just put your comms on hiatus, give yourself a bit of a break.”
My eyes tightened at the corners as I asked, “How’d you know how to do that?”
Lifting a knuckle, he nudged his thick hair from his forehead. There, resting near his temple, was an emerald implant. “You're not the first archaeologist the Destyrians brought up to the ass-end of the universe.” He tapped a blunt-nailed finger against my wristband. “I had one of those for a few years. Mine was the old Rus’sel model.”
“Russell? Wait, you’re an archaeologist?”
His cheeks took on a rosy tint, even in the dim blue warmth of my lights. “Not quite. Never finished undergrad.” He shrugged blithely. “ But I had taken most of my credits by the time the old Auhtula of the western continent green-beamed me up so…”
“So you aren’t an archaeologist,” I filled in.
“More like I’m as good as an archaeologist.”
“Bullshit.”
He had the gall to look offended. “Excuse me, I’m an arch—”
“You’re a space mercenary!”
Shockley snorted. “I don’t know how you say that like it isn’t the coolest occupation of all time, but okay.”
“You’re a space mercenary who steals priceless, historic, alien artifacts for money!” I slapped the back of my hand against his shoulder, annoyed by how solid he felt beneath his jacket. “You’re basically an intergalactic graverobber.”
Shockley rolled his eyes petulantly. “You sound awfully judgmental for someone trapped in the same temple, looking for the same ancient alien shit to steal as me.”
I recoiled at his implication. “I’m not doing this for money! And—and I’m not taking anything for myself! The artifacts will be with their rightful culture. Plus, it’s not like I’m going to pillage the Auhtula’s tomb.”
Shockley’s thick brows articulated a V of disbelief. “You’re telling me this place isn’t hitting your archaeology G spot with some serious precision? I mean, have you even studied the glyphs? The written language of the Ancients looks closest to Pali—”
“Right!” I said, unable to stop myself from being impressed that he knew what Pali was.
He continued, “Nyc’arra spent the entire ride over here making fun of me for demanding we stop in the Auhtula’s burial chamber so that I could take a look. She hates whenever I talk about anything related to archaeology. Wait until you get in there, the relief paintings would make the Ancient Greeks weep. And the sarcophagus—”
I held up both of my hands. “Don’t tell me, you’ll ruin it!”
Shockley’s grin was brighter than his belt-light. “See, Myaxi, we aren’t so different.”
“My name is Gretchen Borowicz,” I corrected. “Not Myaxi.”
“I remember,” he murmured softly, “but you shouldn’t brush off the Myaxi title so quickly. It’s an honor.”
“I’m not brushing it off,” I argued. Shockley’s momentary tolerableness was easily forgotten as irritation took hold of me. “And you and I are nothing alike.”
His laugh echoed through the hollow chamber, making it briefly sound like I was trapped with an army of Shockley clones. It would be a distressingly handsome but unbearable contingent. Shockley’s smile was sharp as he said, “If I weren’t so secure in myself, I’d take umbrage with how insulted you are by being likened to me.”
“For one,” I said, clambering to my feet and commencing a more thorough inspection of our prison, “you are far too calm and overconfident for someone trapped inside a piece of apparently sentient alien architecture.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Shockley said evenly. He stepped next to me, adding his light to mine. I ran my hands along the glyph-coated wall and side-eyed him incredulously. He quickly amended, “I mean, I’ve never been in a building that fought back, but shit always goes sideways on jobs. Adaptability is key. Freaking out doesn’t help anyone.”
“I’m not freaking out, you absolute bag of dicks,” I snapped, “I have social anxiety disorder. I was brought up here to help, and I can’t do that if I’m trapped in here with you! I don’t want them to think I’m not trying.”
“I get it, Myaxi,” he continued, “and considering your situation, you’re doing a commendable job of not melting down. But you have to trust yourself, your team certainly trusts you. You call me overconfident, I say I’m just the right amount. I know my team and what we’re capable of. I trust them to get the job done.”
“Whatever,” I replied maturely. I slowly tread the perimeter of the room, searching the walls for clues on how to escape. After I made a complete circuit, I asked, “Are you just as self-assured in your ability to get us out of this room? Whatever this room is.”
“It’s an old-school Destyrian Healing Chamber.”
I spun to glare at him. “How in the hell do you know that?”
“I actually studied the temple map,” Shockley replied. “And to answer your question: Hell yeah, I can get us outta here.” He unclipped something from his belt and held it up in front of my face. It was a black metal sphere the size of a tennis ball. “If the temple doesn’t want to cooperate, then we’ll make it cooperate.”
“No!” I shook my head viciously, his meaning clear. “You can’t blast your way out of here. You’ll damage everything.” The very idea of the irreparable destruction he would wreak upon thousands of artifacts with that single, reckless act made my stomach clench with rage.
“Honestly, I’m more concerned with the damage to us if we don’t get out of here.”
I strode angrily back to his side. “I thought you trusted yourself—”
“I do trust myself,” he shook the grenade, “to blow a hole in the wall big enough to get the hell outta here.”
“Don’t be a dumbass.” I shoved at his stupidly broad chest in aggravation. “What about the structural integrity of the temple? The damage it received during the solar flares was never measured, what if your explosion sends the whole thing tumbling?”
“Controlled explosive,” he corrected, as though that mattered. “And that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“I’m not!” I shouted. “What if the temple fights back, huh? What if you set off your ‘controlled explosive’ and you make an exit big enough to escape, but the temple just keeps rotating like a fucking Rubix cube, turning us around and around until we’re all just lost and trapped, permanently? I don’t know how, but this temple,” I pressed my palm hard against the wall, “knows we’re here. I don’t know why it’s messing with us, but I don’t think it means us harm. Yet. If you blow a hole in it the size of Greenland, then I think it will start trying to actually hurt us.”
Shockley’s mouth was turned down in a scowl, but his eyes were narrowed in begrudging respect. He clipped the grenade back onto his belt and gestured grandly. “Alright, Borowicz, what do you suggest? How do you want to get us out of this room?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “ Just give me a chance to figure it out.”
“You have ten minutes,” Shockley declared, tapping his fingers against the wristwatch strapped above what I assumed was his comms band as he synced them. For a moment, I felt dazed; in space, surrounded by aliens and advanced technology, and he still wore a battered analog watch. “If you haven’t gotten us out with the powers of degree-sanctioned archaeology by then,” his jaw clenching threateningly, “I’m blasting us out. Deal?”
I clenched my jaw, my typically dormant competitive side rudely awakened. “Deal.”
I fiddled with my bandolier until I procured two more lights. I clipped one to my wrist band and the other to the cuff of my shirt. When I raised my hands, it appeared as though the lights shone out of my palms, turning me into a socially anxious prophet of archaeology. I could see to the ceiling which was twenty feet up, and as unadorned as the ceiling in the Archives room. Well, as unadorned as the ceiling of the Archives room until—
I inhaled sharply. “Shockley, look to see if there’s a cylinder!”
Shockley grinned snidely, unimpressed. “I love the impressive technical jargon you real archaeologists use.”
“It’s a—” I gestured, mimicking the rough size and shape of the metal tube from the Archives room.
“A cylinder, yeah, I got that,” Shockley said, but his sharp eyes were examining the walls. “I’ll take right, you take left, meet in the middle?”
I raced along the left side of the room in search of the same indented technology that had illuminated the Auhtula of the Archives room. There were shelves of crystals of every size, shape, and color as well as dusty medical equipment that looked more likely to rip a body apart than help heal it, but no cylinder and no orbs. I met Shockley beside a particularly vicious looking implement with metal teeth and blades on either end.
“Nothing,” Shockley said.
I gnawed at my thumb nail. “I thought for sure...”
My wrist light reflected off the crystals of the central pedestal. A rainbow of glyphs arced across the furthest wall. “Shut up,” I gasped, racing to the platform, all of my lights directed at the crystals. Their refractions twirled around us, a phosphorescent waltz of fuchsia, lavender, and cerulean.
I galloped down the staggered steps to the plinth and circled it, finding the indented cylinder buried amidst the protruding crystals.
Shockley skidded to my side, his boots kicking up a small dust cyclone. “Well, I’ll be damned, Borowicz.”
I eyed the outline of the cylinder’s notch. I dropped into a crouch and dusted the indentation with one of my brushes. It was not shallow and round, instead deep, narrow, and jagged—an orb would not be the key to this room’s secrets.
I pointed to the cylinder. “We need whatever fits in here. In the archives, it was an orb reader, but here it looks to be more—”
“Phallic?”
“I was going to say oblong,” I squinted towards the distant shelves, “but yeah, roughly phallic, but I can’t imagine…” I took off for the crystal-filled shelves.
“You can’t imagine what?” Shockley prodded, coming up behind me as I quickly and carefully grabbed every crystal within reach.
“I can’t imagine an actual penis is meant for the cylinder. I doubt the Healing Chamber was also a sacrificial chamber for the Destyrians,” I continued. “But then again, for a great number of Earth cultures, sex acts were integral to worship and sacrificial proceedings, and taking everything I’ve learned the last few days into account, it stands to reason that those practices are not limited to humans. So maybe it is meant for a penis?” I stopped to inspect a clear crystal. “I’m also still a bit unclear on Destyrian anatomy. Their genitalia may be completely different from—”
“It’s not,” Shockley said, dumping half a dozen crystals to my stockpile. “Completely different, that is. From humans,” he clarified. “In fact, they’re one of the closest species to us anatomically that I’ve encountered.”
I placed a hand on his forearm. “Wait, how many alien species have you encountered?”
“Dozens. Hell, probably over a hundred?”
“How many alien species are there?”
Shockley shrugged, holding up two crystals for comparison. “Who knows? Hundreds, thousands. It’s a big universe, Myaxi.”
I was momentarily paralyzed, astonished by my own stupidity. In all of the anxiety, confusion, and anger at being brought to space against my will, I hadn’t thought to ask about other alien species beyond Destyrians. Of course, there were more planets and worlds, more cultures to discover and explore. The thought excited and terrified me in equal measure.
“Do you think this is enough to start with?” Shockley asked, redirecting me to the task at hand.
“Erm, yes. Let’s start,” I said, scooping half of our hoard into my arms. Shockley hefted up the rest and followed me back down to the plinth. “Alright, we should start with the smaller ones and work our way up to—”
Shockley picked up the nearest crystal, a thin, opaque, pink piece with rounded edges, and jammed it into the cylinder.
“Or we could just have no system at all,” I finished lamely as the crystal slid into the notch. “That works too.”
There was a rising whirring sound like a helicopter’s blades beginning to spin, then the central plinth’s crystals flashed with the power of a small sun. Shockley and I flung ourselves backward, throwing our arms over our faces to protect our eyes.
“Holy shitballs,” Shockley breathed into my ear. I realized belatedly that we were clinging to each other in excitement.
Flat on our backs, we gazed open-mouthed as glyphs of every size and color flickered and floated along the walls and shelves like fish among a reef, gaining their multi-colored luminescence from the crystals of the central plinth. From above, the first Auhtula smiled at us in shades of silver and purple, her arms spread wide and welcoming. Stars of red and orange twinkled around her, and her jeweled crown glimmered blue and amber.
Shockley pulled himself up, his voice full of awe as he said, “Look at that.” He pointed at the wall where a series of glyphs surrounded an image of a cut-open Destyrian torso. A large heart lay between extremely long lungs, everything else was organ soup to my untrained eyes.
Amazement crinkled the edges of Shockley’s words as he said, “It’s a surgical procedure.”
I grabbed my notepad and pencil and began sketching immediately. Shockley stopped my scrawling hand as it traced the curve of the lungs. “Borowicz, just take a picture.”
Just take a picture. How had I forgotten that my wristband was more than just a communication device? I held my Ran’dyl up and then remembered. “I don’t know how.”
“Chester didn’t show you how to use this thing properly before giving it to you?” Shockley asked. “Amateur.”
“Chester is not an amateur!” I defended my new friend, hotly.
But Shockley did not care as he thumbed his wristband and demonstrated. “Here,” he said, scrolling across the smooth surface and activating the photography mechanism.
I mirrored him, both of our wrists held high, as we took a dozen photos from multiple angles. “Thank you,” I whispered as I wrenched the crystal from the notch and replaced it with another.
Then another. Then another.
A tonsillectomy. A femur resetting. Blood transfusion. Foot surgery, vocal cord surgery, and what Shockley identified as a list of herbal remedies for common illnesses.
As I picked up a lime green crystal, Shockley’s watch and wristband beeped in tandem.
My heart plummeted. My ten minutes were up, and I had gotten distracted. Though the Destyrian surgery pictographs were fascinating, none of them was an exit route. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about leaving this room since the first crystal. “Shockley, I—”
“Relax, Borowicz.” He stopped the timer. “We both got side-tracked.”
I beamed at him gratefully as I fitted a lime green crystal into the crevasse. A diagram for a tongue replacement surgery appeared. It was as gross as it was fascinating.
“I wonder why the cylinder key in the archives room was an orb, and here it’s a crystal,” I mused.
“The orbs were what ancient Destyrians used to store information, right? So it makes sense that the cylinder reader was made for an orb in the Archive room full of orbs. Since ancient Destyrians were really big into crystal healing, it stands to reason the cylinder reader thingy would be customized to crystals in the Healing Chamber.” My fingers slipped from the crystal as I gaped at him. He frowned. “What? I read stuff.”
I shook off my astonishment at Shockley, actually contributing intellectually to a conversation and said, “That’s—that makes sense.”
“Don’t look so surprised, Borowicz.” Shockley patted my cheek mockingly. “It’s insulting.”
I bit back the urge to stick my tongue out at him and instead turned my attention up to the Auhtula. I produced my notebook and flipped to the page I had jotted everything down on from the Archives room. “‘Sing to the temple, Rightful One, and lead it in the dance.’”
“The temple wants us to do karaoke?” Shockley joked. “Why didn’t you say that earlier? I have a very carefully curated collection of slow jams always prepared for such occasions.”
“Shut up, Shockley,” I instructed, studying the Auhtula’s arms. In the Archives, they had been curved as though gesturing us to come closer, to be embraced. Here, they were extended, like she was—
“Pointing. She’s pointing!” I exclaimed.
Shockley followed the Auhtula’s right arm, his long legs carrying him easily up the stepped platform. “This is where we came in,” he said, directing his light on the ground. “Here are our outlines, like a filthy murder scene.”
“Then, that means…” I wheezed my way up the steps to the opposite side of the room and practically nose-dived into the wall with Fleetwood Mercury levels of enthusiasm. “That means this is the way out.”
I took a step back, my hands caressing a very familiar formation of glyphs. I touched the largest, center-most one. “Myax,” I whispered.
To my utter astonishment, the wall beneath my fingers trembled. An outline of a door materialized, as though it had been waiting the last nine thousand years for me to summon it. The door slid to the side. A flood of blue light poured into the Healing Chamber.
“Oh my God,” I murmured as Shockley sprinted across the room.
“Borowicz,” he stumbled into me, his hands gripping my shoulders to stop us from toppling over again, “you did it! How in the ever-loving hell did you figure that out?”
“I’m not really sure,” I admitted, stepping out into the hallway, “I just touched the wall and ta-da!”
“You touched the wall? That’s it?” Shockley laughed. It abruptly no longer held the warmth it had moments ago. It was as though the moment the door opened, Shockley had closed off. Any understanding that had graced the sharp lines of his face retreated into the shadows, leaving only an arrogant smirk that I wanted to punch.
A devious idea wriggled to the forefront of my mind.
I leaned forward and returned Shockley’s douchey smile. “Yeah, I touched the wall. You should try it.”
I shoved him with all of my strength. Shockley stumbled backward through the doorway with a strangled scream. To my astonishment, the temple complied with my unspoken wish and the door slid closed, effectively sealing Shockley in the room once more.
I clapped my hands over my mouth, shocked at my actions.
Holy. Shit. I had just locked another human being in a near impossible-to-escape room.
Holy. Shit. I had just successfully navigated part of an alien temple on my own. Holy shit, I needed to contact my friends.
I brought the volume back up on my comms just as Chester was saying, “Azo’lah, get in there and get Gretchen, we haven’t heard from her in too long. I don’t care if you have to—”
“I’m out, I’m out!” I cut in. “I found a way out!”
“Myaxi!” Azo’lah exclaimed.
“Oh, sweet Lord, girl, do not do that to me. I may be young, but my heart cannot take that level of stress.” Chester sighed heavily. “Are you good?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Really good.” I was surprised to find that it was the truth. My heart wasn’t thundering, and my palms weren’t sweating. I wasn’t nauseated or dizzy or anywhere near panic. I was good. “I got out of the Healing Chamber, and I’m standing in a hallway.” I looked at my surroundings, chronicling a few doors and glyph-lined walls. “I have no idea where I am. I’d pull up my copy of the schematic but—”
“Who knows if it’s still good,” Chester finished for me. “Give me a minute to run a scan.”
“Where’s Shockley?” Azo’lah asked.
“Oh, he’s, uh, still in the Healing Chamber,” I stammered, rubbing the back of my sweat-drenched neck. On cue, a stone-muffled shout of frustration reached my ears.
Chester asked, “He didn’t make it out in time?”
“No, he did. I just shoved him back in, and the temple shut the door on him,” I replied.
Azo’lah let out a bark of laughter as Chester hissed, “Savage. I like it.”
My cheeks warmed with pleased embarrassment at their celebratory reactions. “How’s Fleetwood?”
“I am well, Gret’chen!” Fleetwood was breathing heavily but sounded overjoyed. “I am kicking names and taking assemblies!”
“Kicking ass and taking names,” Chester corrected.
“That’s what I said,” Fleetwood huffed.
“Not even close, but, ah-ha!” A series of rapid keyboard clicks carried over the comms and then, “Gretchen, you came out the opposite side of the Healing Chamber, yeah? Then that puts you in the Hallway of Sacred Silence. Which means you are now on the second floor.”
“If the Hallway of Sacred Silence is on the second floor, how did Myaxi reach it by entering the Healing Chamber?” Azo’lah asked.
“It’s the Ancients!” Fleetwood replied before shouting gleefully, “Is that all you got, Nyc’arra? You are getting crusty in your old age.”
Azo’lah sighed. “Do not goad her, Fulyiti.”
Another garbled shout from the Healing Chamber reached my ears. This one an impressively long string of curses. Smiling victoriously, I leaned against the wall I had recently exited through. “How is the temple moving us around like this?”
“Not sure. But I’m getting some off the charts potential electric energy spikes from all over it,” Chester said. “We may not get answers on how the temple performs its room moving voodoo, but you guys need to get out of their ASAP.”
“Agreed,” Azo’lah said decisively. “Fulyiti, can you keep Nyc’arra distracted a little while longer?”
“Oui, mon Capitaine,” Fleetwood huffed. I could see her flamboyantly saluting Azo’lah in my mind’s eye.
Azo’lah continued, “Myaxi, you and I will acquire the relics and meet Fleetwood at the top of the temple. Chester, where is the best place for Myaxi and me to meet?”
More typing as Chester assessed routes for us. “The Tomb of the First Auhtula appears to be the most stable,” Chester replied. “It’s one of the only rooms that hasn’t changed locations. Gretchen, you’ll need to go down the hallway to your left about a hundred meters and take the central staircase down. Fourth floor, first door on the left once you get off the steps. Azo’lah, your path is a bit more convoluted.”
“That’s fine,” Azo’lah said, crisply. “Myaxi, do you have any questions?”
“No, no, I think,” I turned to my left and gulped, “I think I got it.”
“Chester, send my route to me,” Azo’lah requested. “Everyone remain on comms. I shall see you shortly, Myaxi.”
My journey through the Hallway of Sacred Silence was anything but silent. Shockley’s colorful, if heavily dampened by the temple walls, cursing of my parentage followed me all the way to the stairs that would take me to the Authula’s burial chamber. I moved as quickly as I dared down the steep steps. My lights were still attached to my wrists, Nyc’arra’s gun held tight in my quivering grip. I felt like the universe’s most pathetic SWAT team member.
“Breathe, Gretchen,” Azo’lah’s uncharacteristically gentle voice wove through the background hum of Fleetwood’s neverending fight with Nyc’arra. I forced myself to follow Azo’lah’s directive, measuring my breaths by my footsteps. I stepped off the stairs, crossing into a cavernous atrium.
Before me was a mammoth set of double doors, unlike the other doors in the temple, these appeared permanent and were elaborate works of art. Donning my gloves, I traced the gentle curves and graceful gouges that told a story I could not understand in a mix of pictographs and glyphs. It was astoundingly beautiful.
I stepped back and took half a dozen pictures with my wristband before I remembered my true purpose. I pressed a gloved hand to the door, and, though I didn’t expect it to work, I pushed. The doors refused to budge. On a hunch, I whispered, “Myax.”
Something shimmered, but the doors did not open. Great, dislike of me didn’t end with humans and aliens, but extended to ancient, sentient temples. I hit my forehead against the stone so hard I was sure there was an indent of a glyph in my skin.
Why did one part of the temple like me and another didn’t? I wasn’t any different than I had been when I opened the Healing Chamber…
Wait. I wasn’t different, but what I was wearing was. I removed my glove and placed my hand in the center of the doors. “Myax,” I repeated.
“I’m coming, Gret’chen,” Azo’lah replied sharply into the comms, mistaking it as a call to her. I didn’t answer her, too distracted by what was happening before me.
There was a series of sparks, as if fireflies had been slumbering, encased within the stone, and I had disturbed their rest. A static crackle sent me jumping back as the doors slid slowly open to reveal—
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“Not right now, dearest,” Fleetwood panted absentmindedly into the comms followed immediately by Azo’lah’s chastisement to focus.
Laughing in quiet amazement, I entered the chamber. The walls glittered with exquisitely detailed, jewel-accented, relief paintings that traced the first Auhtula’s legendary life from infancy through ascension to serene old age, and the peaceful transfer of power to her successor. The paintings were framed by pearlescent tiles, freckled with darker shades of blue, amethyst, and amber that formed a series of glyphs that swept along the walls. The blue light cast by my pods lent the murals a transient, watery quality.
Something on the floor caught my eye, trenches of rising silver liquid, cascading in artistic spirals from a centrally located plinth that I now expected to find in every room. Upon the platform rested a stone statue of the first Auhtula, seated on her throne. Her meticulously carved silver eyes glittered with an eternal smile. I moved closer, adjusting my grip on the gun to better light the statue, and sighed in sheer delight. The Auhtula had been carved so that her face, like the walls, aged from one side to the other. Seated on the plinth beside her—one hand intertwined with the dead queen’s, the other resting casually on the hilt of a stiletto dagger exactly like Azo’lah’s—was another Destyrian identical to a figure who appeared in the pictorial timeline of the first Auhtula’s life.
“Your Myax love,” I breathed, unable to squash my glee at the craftsmanship of the sarcophagi. Only a continuous slender seam revealed that it wasn’t merely a statue. There was a slight discoloration and joint-like vein on the Auhtula’s right arm, which indicated it had been adjusted later to fit into the hold of the sarcophagal figure of her lover.
I tilted my chin up to the first First Myax. “Shouldn’t you be buried in the Myax Chamber?”
And then, it came to me. If the temple was alive, could the sarcophagi somehow be too? Was I about to witness an alien-zombie apocalypse and, worse, the destruction of the two most beautiful relics I had ever laid eyes on?
“Chester,” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer, “do you happen to know anything about whether or not ancient Destyrians practiced embalming?”
“Is it not odd for you of all people to be scared of skeletons?” A voice asked, directly behind me.
I screamed, flailing, and dropping my gun to the floor where it went off. Without thinking, I threw myself in front of the irreplaceable sarcophagi to protect it from my errant shot, my arm thrown over my head to block the impending impact.
The force of the blast was much more potent, but somehow much less painful than I had anticipated. I blinked and found myself sprawled across the sarcophagus’ lap, staring upward into the immaculately chiseled jaw of the first Auhtula. Damn the Destyrians and their lack of chin fat, I thought vaguely.
“Myaxi!”
I turned my dazed gaze toward the noise and realized that Azo’lah was on top of me, her glowing shield held up over her back. An acrid stench tinged the stale air.
“I told you I should have put the safety on,” I said stupidly. She stared at me for a moment, her dark blue eyes wide.
“Gretchen, you were hit,” she said finally. Her shield retracted into the band on her left bicep. She inclined forward, grabbing my wrist.
“Ow,” I complained when her long-fingered hand drew mine up for inspection. There was a penny-sized burn already blistering on my forearm. “So that’s what smells. Did you get hit?”
“No, and neither would you have, had you a modicum of thought.” I wondered how pissed she must be to have the translator using a word like modicum.
“I had to protect the Auhtula,” I protested, as Azo’lah, still hunched protectively over me, rummaged through the zippered pockets located at the bottom of my utility belt, the long fingers of her other hand still touching my skin where my shirt had ridden up. I batted at her palm, blushing.
“The Auhtula is dead,” Azo’lah said matter-of-factly, withdrawing first aid supplies from my belt. “You, however, are not.”
“Ummm,” Chester said over the comms, “I heard something that sounded suspiciously like a weapon discharging, and now we’re talking about dying. Is everyone okay?”
“Gretchen is wounded.”
“I’m fine!” I lied, struggling to move the Destyrian above me. “Could you, maybe, get off of me? Please?” I added when Azo’lah seemed too busy staring at a small vial of salve.
“Azo’lah,” Chester said, sounding scandalized, “am I going to have to tell Fleetwood you’re moving in on her new favorite lady-friend?”
“Chester, do not insult me,” Azo’lah replied dryly.
“Thanks so much,” I drawled.
Chester asked, “How bad’s the wound?”
“It’s just a small burn. Azo’lah deflected the rest of it. My weak human back would appreciate being allowed to sit up,” I bit out aggressively. Azo’lah turned her head away from where she had been pouring glossy, blessedly cool, goo onto the burn. Her eyes widened as, for the first time, the real intimacy of our position dawned on her. I could feel my blush seeping up my face from the base of my neck.
“Is this normal?” she tilted her chin toward my cheek, bringing her face even closer to mine, her tone worried. “The distorted coloration of your skin, is it a secondary symptom of your injury?
“It’s what happens when I’m—it’s not a symptom of injury, but yes, it’s normal for humans,” I said hastily.
“Odd,” Azo’lah said. However, she stood, allowing me to sit up awkwardly while she applied a sterile white strip of woven material around my forearm. “That should do until we are finished with our task here.” She offered me her free hand to pull me to my feet. I stumbled a few steps down the plinth to the floor, almost tripping into one of the artful trenches and spraying the mysterious silver liquid everywhere. “Chester, we will need new directions.”
“Don’t know what good my directions are doing, but give me a hot second,” he replied. I ignored Azo’lah’s appraising stare while I retrieved my problematic gun from where it had fallen to the floor.
“Must you insist on making my job so difficult?” Azo’lah demanded.
I ignored the very adult urge to let the gun accidentally go off again, this time in Azo’lah’s general direction. “I’m sorry I’m a little out of my depth here and fucking up your artifact retrieval mission! My archaeological experience is from tame, sanctioned digs, not running amok in deteriorating temples.”
Azo’lah’s face twisted into a familiar frustrated expression. I saw it on nearly everyone I encountered who, sooner or later, reached their breaking point of Gretchen endurance. “I meant protecting you,” she corrected. “That is my duty.”
“I thought your duty was to save your people from war and protect your princess.”
Azo’lah opened her mouth to respond—
“HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, MUTHALICKAAAAHHHS!”
I yelped—but miraculously kept the gun grasped firmly in my grip—startled as Fleetwood Mercury’s shrill cry over the comms link was increased tenfold as one gleaming tiled wall of the Auhtula’s tomb split in half and vomited her and Nyc’arra into the chamber. They were still locked in an unhalting battle royale.
I was roughly shoved behind Azo’lah and her reactivated glowing shield.
She needn’t have bothered. Neither combatant seemed to notice us. Fleetwood pinned Nyc’arra by her throat to the wall. “Not the reliefs!” I cried as Fleetwood raised her knife to strike. Both battling Destyrians looked at me in shock.
A smile bloomed across Fleetwood’s sweaty, scratched face. “Gret—” but the rest of my name faded into silence as the wall they leaned against promptly swallowed the duo.
“I think the Fulyiti requires my protection less than you do,” Azo’lah observed mildly.
“Is this a good time for directions?” Chester inquired hesitantly. “I’m sending them to you now. It looks like the relic room is where it was when we arrived on the planet. Shit. It wasn’t like that two minutes ago. What the hell?”
“Can we take the stairs up?” I asked.
“Yeah, the stairs are still centrally located, but who knows for how much longer.”
“Very well,” Azo’lah said over the sound of Chester’s furious sotto voce ranting about Fleetwood. “We will do our best. Come, Myaxi.” She wrapped her fingers around my wrist and tugged me toward the exit, but I refused to move.
“Wait—can we take a picture of this?” I gestured toward the sarcophagus of the first Auhtula and her First Myax.
Azo’lah groaned, “Now is not the time to placate the Fulyiti’s human predilection for attempting to capture every moment.”
“No, I… some of these characters,” I tugged my tiny notebook out of its designated pocket, flipping the page to be sure, “they match ones I’ve seen in every room with a depiction of the first Auhtula.” I reached out and traced one. For one infinitesimal second, I felt like the carving responded.
I looked up to find the first Auhtula staring down at me. My heart somersaulted into my stomach. “D—did her eyes just move?”
“Of course not,” Azo’lah said immediately, but her confidence sounded forced. “Do not let the Fulyiti’s fanciful imagination influence you to see things that are not possible.”
“I’m finding that line very blurred today,” I replied. “Can you read what this says?” Azo’lah met my eyes. “No.”
Though I barely knew Azo’lah, my gut panged with the absolute certainty that she was lying to me.
She turned sharply toward the door, and I trotted after her. I glanced over my shoulder and bit back a scream. The first Auhtula had turned to gaze at us, her jeweled crown suddenly aglow and projecting a galaxy of ancient Destyrian glyphs across Azo’lah’s back.