15. Gravity Crystals and Iron Horn

The alcoves were quiet and unresponsive. There was a chance they’d come back online, but not anytime soon. Nox turned back to the remains of the airship, disappointed that she hadn’t found out more about the famous Fureva-Yung. Aligning the fuselage with the seats in the centre, she dragged what was left into some semblance of what would make sense for a flying machine. Jaden soon joined her, and the seed of a flying machine took root in her mind.
 
“You know, if we can find the rest of this contraption, find something to get the motor running, then I think we can build our own flying machines,” She said to Nox, who looked down on the bent and hacked at parts in front of them.
“I’d like to see this one fly out of here,” Nox lamented, looking out the wide window out onto the open sky, “Wouldn’t it be nice to fly away from this awful place instead of trudging back across that rickety bridge?”
 
Nox didn’t find out what Jaden thought as the rest of the party turned to the flight of steps and prepared for a fight. Fureva-Yung bellowed into her chain, making it vibrate in resonance. Jaden pulled iotum out of Bellyache, ready to react to whatever the next floor offered. Marius led the way, his short sword drawn.
 
A flickering green light replaced the more natural white light from the level below as the group made their way up the stairs. Turning the corner, a margr loomed out at them, groaning and thrashing. It took a moment for them to realise that the margr was pinned to the wall by a shard of green crystal through its chest. The margr gasped, slumping forward into unconsciousness before gasping back to consciousness with a groan.
 
Urgh…I think he’s being kept alive by the crystal, Nox swallowed, hiding her face against the smooth metal surface of Guardian.
With his hands glowing with a golden light, Marius took the creature by the shoulders and dragged it off the crystal. It slumped to the floor, sighed and lay still. The green crystal stayed firmly affixed through the wall. Stepping over the now dead margr, Marius could see a large room dominated by another crystal cylinder. This one was broken. Pieces of five-centimetre thick crystal walls scattered all over the room. A huge clump of green crystal grew from the centre of the cylinder, overflowing the broken edges, sending huge crystal points metres out in all directions.
 
“Fureva-Yung, could you please throw the margr in front of the crystal?” Nox asked, a curious expression on her face replacing the horrified. Fureva-Yung did as she was asked and effortlessly tossed the body across the room, arching in front of the crystal. The crystal did nothing, but the body stopped before hitting the ground and was flung against a wall where it hung lifeless.
 
“That crystal seems pretty repulsive,” Marius punned
“I thought maybe the crystal would throw shards at us like it did the margr,” Nox said in surprise, “but instead, the gravity is wrong. I wonder what makes it so? The crystal?”
Jaden started pulling pieces of cave crystal out of Bellyache to test the theory. She threw out a few in the same direction as the margr. Anything past a certain point was plucked out of the air mid-arch and slammed into the wall. She then tried throwing crystal in another direction. Again, past a certain random-seeming point, the crystals were flung up into the roof, where they pierced the ceiling panel.
 
Jaden investigated the green crystal clump nearest a path with normal gravity. On that side, the crystal growth was unbalanced. Something had come through and broken large shards off. Now they knew what they were looking at, the broken crystal shards could were on the wall and roof where the gravity was affected.
“I’d say go that way,” Jaden suggested, pointing past the broken section.
 
Fureva-Yung nodded and stepped forward. With her chain swinging above her head, she stepped forward. Jaden and Nox on Guardian started following. As expected, when she reached a gravity affected area, her chain was pulled taught. The pull force dragged her across the floor until she was in the field and being pushed away from the others. With a heavy smack, Fureva-Yung fell face-first into the fabricated metal wall opposite. The others stopped in their tracks.
She stood, planting her feet against the wall and looked up at the others with a toothy grin. Blood streaked her face from a nose bleed. She walked up the wall finding a very flat desiccated body of a margr on the ceiling above her, only its head was whole and discernably margr. As she climbed, the natural gravity reasserted itself, and she started sliding back again, unable to keep purchase on the smooth wall. Meanwhile, Jaden continued to throw crystals. One was caught in the same gravity as Fureva-Yung and looked to be heading straight for her. Fureva-Yung stepped to one side, and the crystal ricocheted off the wall back into the room where it was thrown up, embedding the ceiling.
 
Marius, too was busy with his experiments. He pulled out some thin stiff tubing from his medical kit and used that to probe the gravity ahead of him. When he got to where Jaden’s crystal was wedged into the wall, he reached out with a glowing hand to push against the force. A large ghostly green hand reached out through the wall at him. Quicker than ghost-Yung, Marius leaped backwards and out of her way. Nox, who had silently watched all her companion’s experimentation, was able to send Guardian in, getting between Marius and the hand. Guardian’s claws raked the wall where the hand was, and a muffled scream like Fureva-Yung’s own echoed around the chamber. It seemed the attack by Guardian had preemptively forced the ghost-Yung to expend her scream, wasting it.
 
Marius didn’t waste his chance. He leaped for the wall as the gravity threw him in that direction. He landed on his feet and ran around the room until the gravity normalised again, and he flipped off the wall to and on the floor opposite Jaden and Nox.
“Okay, just do what I did!” He said, gesturing to the wall.
“I can’t!” Nox cried, knocking on Guardian’s dome, “Guardian can’t do that!”
From her position on the wall, Fureva-Yung yelled her Thunderbeam across the room at the ghost-Yung climbing through the hole in the wall. The ghost flickered weakly as it too swung out its chain at Nox and Guardian. Guardian turned and sidestepped the chain as it flew past Nox’s head harmlessly.
 
A movement from within the crystal clump caught Jaden’s attention. From hundreds of facets within the cluster, the ghostly green image of ghost-Jaden could be seen. Ghost-Jaden screamed, setting the green crystal vibrating. The crystal clump shattered with a sound like an explosion, sending thousands of small shards out into the room. The shards, propelled by the pseudo-gravities, travelled in all directions, some hitting Marius and Nox. The crystals sizzled against their flesh as thin green smoke started forming.
 
“You’ll not get away this time,” Jaden called and snapped her iotum. A blasting ray of force hit the crystal clump, once more sending shards flying. Even as the shards hit Fureva-Yung and Jaden herself, she could see the ghost within the crystal flicker weakly. Both Marius and Nox picked shards out of their skin, Marius throwing a large piece back at the ghost-Jaden within the crystal. As she pulled out the last of the crystals, the ghostly chain of ghost-Jung smacked into Nox, nearly knocking her off her seat on Guardian. Fureva-Yung thunder beamed the ghost-Yung once again as ghost-Jaden seemed to focus on the crystal clump. The whole cluster started turning. Gravity shifted. Guardian was unable to support itself, and it fell into the wall pinning Nox in place. Jaden was picked up and flung towards the ceiling. Realising in time, she flipped her feet under her and was able to stand on the ceiling. Fureva-Yung thought even faster as she sensed the shift in gravity towards the crystal itself. Quickly she placed the floor panel she’d been using as a shield in front of her, edge-on to the crystal. She let herself be drawn across the room as she brought her feet up, standing on the back edge of the now thin blade careening across the space. For a fraction of a second, Fureva-Yung could see ghost-Jaden’s translucent face wide with surprise before the shield hit the clump and smashed through the last remaining crystals.
 
The margr head fell from the roof, and Guardian was free to stand back on his clawed feet, releasing Nox to slide down the wall. Marius, who had flipped around onto the wall as it was his natural place, leaped back down gracefully. Jaden and Marius drove their weapons into the ghostly Yung. Marius struck true, and the green form evaporated into nothing.
 
The room was quiet. It was now that Jaden realised that a large shard of green crystal poked out of her shoulder, slowly steaming. She tried reaching for the shard, but it was firmly wedged in the bone. Even reaching across was agony, and to Nox’s horror, she slowly slipped to the floor.
“Let me help. I will push it through,” Fureva-Yung suggested stomping across the space only to face Nox on top of Guardian.
Don’t you hurt my Jaden! Came Nox’s voice straight to Fureva-Yung’s mind, short, sharp and powerful. Fureva-Yung backed off and Marius, with a gentler hand, helped extract the shard.
 
The group took a break, healing up and trying to make sense of the green crystals. That they were related to the green goop the group had followed throughout the pyramid seemed obvious. What was less obvious was how they affected gravity. Fureva-Yung played around with a crystal, noticing how there always seemed to be a breeze around it when held in her hand. Marius found chunks of the diamond cylinder around the room and started collecting them for trading tokens in the hope they ever found civilisation again. Both Nox and Fureva-Yung found smaller pieces of the cylinder. One the size of a chain link to add to Fureva-Yung’s chain and one the size of a handheld convex mirror for Nox. Fureva-Yung contemplated a larger chunk for a wrap-around body shield, but the piece was too heavy even for her to carry around, and it was left behind.
 
Once Marius had finished scavenging for shinies amongst the broken crystal, he joined them in their short rest. He meditated while the others patched wounds and restored their energy. Giggling from Marius’ quarter drew the group's attention. He certainly looked odd, blotchy and discoloured, a little like he had down in the caverns. As they watched, he suddenly flushed red and gasped. His eyes flicked open to see all three of his companions watching him curiously.
“Umm… well, I’m feeling great. Ready to go?” He said, looking embarrassed. He leaped to his feet, confirming his state of fitness and returned the other gazes with his expectant one.
 
Nox had been scanning crystals in an attempt to understand their gravity changing properties. Without a thought, she turned to Marius and scanned. It was not something she’d done without permission before. But her abilities had grown to the extent that the deeper look at things that scanning provided had become just another one of her senses. She reached out.
 
At first, she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. Marius was certainly not ordinary. He’d been painting his exposed skin and hair with make-up and dye. With the exertion of the fight, some of the colour had streaked, accounting for his splotchy complexion. Even more surprising were the three cyphers embedded into his torso and legs.
 
Slowly Nox started putting a few questions about Marius and his behaviour together. Why he would always take himself off alone in dangerous places? How he could do all amazing things like his glowing shield hands or levitate? She remembered the group finding the cyphers that now hid under Marius’s skin. She realised that in doing so, the cyphers seemed to work better or for far longer. Things like the blue steam had just been convenient covers for his secret nature.
 
“Hey, what’s on your mind?” She heard a voice ask her. She blinked, and Marius was standing above her, seemingly polishing Guardian’s metallic dome. She almost asked him what was happening with him? She almost asked out loud why he felt the need to hide? She felt and heard her jaw snap shut.
“Nothing. Ready to go,” She nodded and climbed back up on Guardian.
 
They climbed the last set of stairs that led to the pyramid's point. Here the lighting seemed to give up, and the whole space was filled with the green light of the goop. In the large square chamber, two small glass cylinders of green gas swirled within a scaffold of scrap and refashioned pieces from all over the pyramid. Nox looked up and saw a piece of the wing welded into the structure above their heads, forming something of a catwalk. Between the two cylinders sat an ancient, twisted margr with only one horn. Bound into a mechanical exoskeleton as makeshift as the scaffolding around it, the margr was connected to the cylinders, the green goop running through tubing like veins. Sitting before the margr, two massive metal arms with grasping claws sat lifeless, for the present.
 
Fureva-Yung looked around the room for other enemies ready to spring a trap as soon as they made their move. Across the way, the ghostly forms of goat-men statues loomed out of the darkened corners, one modified to have only one horn. To one side, a margr lay dead, crushed by what looked like one of the massive metal claws.
 
“Can you see any weak spots, possibly an off switch for that thing?” Jaden said quietly as the group had seemingly no disturbed Ironhorn as yet.
“I will sneak. I will find it if there's one,” Nox said and, sliding off of Guardian’s back, virtually disappearing.
“What? No! Where did she go?” Jaden grabbed for Nox, where she’d last seen her, but nothing was there. Marius didn’t waste another second. He rushed straight into the room, targeting the first of the two cylinders. Under the heavy blow from his short sword, the cylinder broke where it connected to the suit and slopped green goop all over him. Across the other side of the margr, a large arm swung out, connecting with a soft shadow nearby.
“OOmp!” The shadow said, and Nox tumbled to the ground. Marius could feel something tugging at his very soul. A ghostly green cloud slowly rose from him.
“Jaden, burn me!” He said, turning to face her. She snapped another iotum, and a gout of flame washed over Marius. The cloud burned away, as did much of Marius’ exposed skin. Burned black, he looked up just in time to see his ghostly green face dissolve into the air.
 
Fureva-Yung stepped in, her chain swinging. The chain failed to connect as a giant claw rose and blocked it. Surprised by the arm’s speed, Nox felt her fear of violence welling up. She crawled away, crying silently for Guardian to protect her. The robot didn’t hesitate. Large claws reached out to claw Iron Horn but found no purchase on the exoskeleton.
 
Unable to find her weak point from a distance, Jaden also ran in and saw what she was looking for. Like an ulnar nerve cluster, a conjunction of wiring on one of the exoskeleton arms looked loose. If she could just grab it, she’d be able to disable that arm, at least for a little while. She dived in under the arm but had to duck out again before the claw took her head off. She stepped back and waited her moment to strike. The large clawed arm nearest Marius swung up, sending Marius leaping back. Iron Horn was well able to defend himself. Guardian and Fureva-Yung tried smashing down on the old goat, but neither found him as he stepped back out of the way.
 
Dodging the metal limb, Marius bounced back into the attack seeking out the softer, mortal parts of the augmented margr. The short sword bit into the old goat’s dry hide with a hiss of green gas.
“Ha! I hit the old goat in his goaty bit!”
 
The strike forced Ironhorn to protect his fleshy body. At that moment, Jaden saw her chance and tore the wire cluster away from the frame. The arm went dead, giving Iron Horn something to repair, distracting them further. Nox cowered from the huge bulk of Iron Horn in his exoskeleton. She sent messages to Guardian to kill it, but without her reflexes guiding its strikes, Guardian missed repeatedly. Fureva-Yung, on the other hand, had finally found her mark as her chain swung in and clanged off the exoskeleton. It buckled and twisted, no longer moving as expected. The dented but still functional arm tried once more for Marius, but he dodged it easily. He could see the attack on the cylinder had done the trick, and Iron Horn looked exhausted.
 
The margr seemed almost unable to lift the working claw now as Guardian, Fureva-Yung and Marius struck. As Marius cut the old goat across the throat, green gas seeped out into the air. Suddenly the whole exoskeleton rig slumped lifeless. The shrivelled remains of old Iron Horn held in place within its frame. Pushing the rig over, Fureva-Yung put her large foot on the margr and grabbed the remaining horn. With a sickening tear, the old margr’s head came off.
“I only wanted the horn,” Fureva-Yung said almost apologetically.
“I don’t think you should eat that!” Marius replied.
“Urgh…Marius!”
 
Sickened by the old goat head and embarrassed by her behaviour, Nox went to slink away before remembering the wing hanging above their head.
“Fureva-Yung, could you please carefully take down that piece of the structure?” She asked, and Fureva-Yung was happy to oblige.
“I’m sorry I acted so…stupid in the fight.” Nox said, beating herself up over her weakness.
“It wasn’t your fight,” Marius replied blithely, now happily searching through the room for shinies, “Don’t worry, you more than pull your weight.”
“She does not have much weight to pull,” Fureva-Yung added as she easily tucked the aircraft wing under her arm.
“She carries your weight at times, “ Marius countered and held up two more cyphers and a collection of iotum for Jaden’s collection.
“I have much weight, “ Fureva-Yung agreed.
 
Marius handed over the two cyphers for Nox to identify. One was an explosive device to throw. The other increased an individual’s strength.
“I think you would like this one,” She handed the strength cypher to Marius before handing the explosive, “ Fureva-Yung would like this .”
“Hey yeah,” Marius eyed the cypher before handing it back to Nox, “But I can’t carry any more cyphers at the moment. Can you carry it for me?”
 
And so there is a limit to how many you can incorporate into yourself, Nox nodded silently and slipped the cypher safely into her bag.