Elonwy looked PISSED. Which was understandable, and also very bad for Janet. She seemed to know it too, because she whirled on her heel and tried to bolt for the stairs, and Elonwy didn’t even blink. My friend flicked her fingers, and the other woman froze in place. Janet squirmed and jerked, and rather than stick her in place, the effect let her slowly pull free…and then snapped her immediately back to her starting point.
Each attempt left a sort of echo stuck in the air where she’d snapped back. Elonwy walked over to the nearest one, extended the nail on her pinky…and slashed its throat.
The echo exploded into golden motes of sand, all of them flowing along the distorted space Janet had traveled to reach that point, and when it slammed into the scorpion woman, her eyes went wide and she let out a choked scream. Blood fountained from her mouth, and she hung there in the air for a moment, choking on it.
Eventually the effect stopped. But Elonwy just moved on. One by one she executed the images of her roommate, and one by one Janet suffered a sort of diluted version of those deaths while suffering seemingly no damage.
I swallowed. “Remind me never to piss you off,” I said shakily.
“Oh?” she asked mildly. “Do you think you’re likely to need a reminder after watching all that?” She smiled sweetly and I tried to suppress a shudder. “I didn’t think so.”
“Right…” I said slowly. “Anyway, are you ok? That looked…rough.”
She groaned, rolling her neck. “I don’t even know where she GOT a Drayven Subjugation Collar. Those are banned almost everywhere I’ve ever even heard of. You can’t even use them on animals. Little asshole cozied up to me until I thought we were friends and got me in my sleep. She was conditioning me whenever I was home and letting me out during the day. She suppressed my memories with the collar.”
“That’s awful,” I grimaced. “Did she…was she involved in the mess with the party?”
“She was,” she winced. “And it was my fault. She learned about the lantern shield from me. Must have told her bosses about it. As for who those are, we’ll have to see. I assume you don’t mind if I take her to the Prof for questioning. If you think THAT was unpleasant, you don’t want to know what he’s going to do. She’ll tell him things she didn’t even know she remembered. Literally, I’ve seen him pull confessions from parallel timelines beyond the knowledge of the subject.”
I nodded. “Of course, but do you mind if I ask her a few things first? I need to know something and I think she can tell me.”
“Well, you saved my life, so I can probably swing that,” she said dryly. “And thanks for that, by the way. Seriously. I owe you in a big way. If you need anything I can accomplish all you have to do is ask.” At my obvious delight, she cautioned me. “That’s a much smaller list than you might think. I’m still a student and employee. I can’t bypass school rules or spot you credits beyond what I already have. Speaking of, don’t you have a class with the Dean today?”
I cursed, checking the time on my ring. “I do. In an hour. I spent most of my day looking for your house. Can you give me a ride back to Moment City when you’re dropping her off?”
“No problem, now, you have questions for her, you said?” her eyes hardened as she turned back to her roommate, and Janet wilted under her glare. “Questions she’s going to answer in detail, isn’t she?” The other woman nodded frantically.
Janet’s previous bravado was gone. Her pale, thin face, previously cast in a sort of hungry malevolence, was twisted in an oddly fragile expression of naked fear. Having seen what she was doing earlier, I remained unmoved. “ You said you were all called by the Void Child. How many of the others have you met?”
She might have been scared, but she wasn’t sorry. Her eyes flickered with seething hatred, but cowardice won out. “Only a few,” she said slowly. “The Lord keeps us separate. He knows the faculty have many tricks. Compartmentalizing limits our exposure.”
“A few isn’t none,” I said bluntly. “Have you met a man named Deveskane?”
Deveskane was a god. Emphasis on WAS. The limitations of this place, namely that one must lack a complete Chronicle, meant a fully fledged god wouldn't be able to come in. The only possibility was that he’d used the Chasm to seal himself so he wouldn’t recover.
How long had he been planning this? What had that Void Child shown him? Thinking about all the things that had lined up for events to turn out this way…but no, that was a trap. He didn’t need ME to free him. He needed SOMEONE to free him. The Hermetic Hall was built to unseal the tower, and had been operating for who knew how long. Atlas and I got pulled into the breakthrough, but that didn’t mean we’d stepped into his trap. He just needed a push over the finish line.
If it hadn’t been us it would have been someone else. The Chasm was a trap set for Deveskane’s enemies. There were multiple outcomes that would favor him. Still, he’d known some things about the Chasm the rest of us hadn’t clearly. How much was up for debate, but whatever he’d been taught he’d used to infiltrate this place.
Janet’s face went pale. “What? No! I don’t know who that is! I’ve never heard of him!”
“Wow,” I said dryly. “You’re a REALLY bad liar. I expected more from a sleeper agent. So you know him then? Good, then you ca-”
My speech cut off as Janet threw her head back and SCREAMED, her mouth erupting with an eerie blue flame reminiscent of the eyes of Void spawn. She went up like an oil soaked rag, immolating to ash in seconds, and the flame even burned through Elonwy’s restraints.
“No!” shouted my friend, darting forward to try to save her roommate. By the time she arrived all she could do was scoop up handfuls of cooling ash. “Damn it!” she snapped, ash covered hands tightening into fists. “I wasn’t DONE with you!” She screamed, smashing her hands into the concrete floor of her basement, sending clouds of ash into the hair as she pummeled the rock into dust.
I cursed. “Damn it,” I said as I knelt next to her. “Sorry. Can you…can your power undo that?”
“No,” she said grimly. “Her soul was consumed. Not just her soul, her potentiality. That flame consumed her existence. That was temporal fire.”
“Wait, that wasn’t the Void Child?” I asked as I stared at the pile of ash. The color had me convinced it had been the Overgod that killed her, but it wouldn’t use temporal energy. That implied someone from our major. Worse, if they burned through Elonwy’s restraints that easily, it implied a god.
Elonwy nodded at my worried silence. “Yeah, I think this was probably a faculty member. They turned one of ours.”
Which was bad. Because it meant we couldn’t trust the faculty. I was pretty sure it wasn't the Professor, because I’d be dead if he thought I was a threat, and Janet had needed to work around him to subdue Elonwy. The Dean was obviously out too, but other than him…who knew? Which meant we couldn’t afford to run our mouths about this.
Actually, thinking back, maybe the Professor had even known. He hadn’t mentioned talking to other faculty about it. I was pretty sure he told the Dean, but that seemed like a safe choice. If he was keeping quiet, I kind of wish he’d shared that with us, but I guessed that wasn’t really his style.
I reached down and offered Elonwy my hand, pulling her to her feet. “I’m sorry,” I told her sincerely. “This was on me. If I hadn’t questioned her, whatever killed her might not have triggered. The Professor probably could have gotten more.”
“Not your fault,” she said with a sad smile. “Mortals are all helpless before the whims of gods. Even S-rankers aren’t an exception.”
I knew at least one who was, but it didn’t seem like a good time to nitpick. “So…what do we do?” I said worriedly. “I mean, I came here to investigate the red door, but does it even have any significance? Or was it just some kind of code they used to denote places where they conducted experiments?”
Frowning, she turned and headed up the steps to the door frame at the top. Kneeling, she touched the base of the red door. “I think…it’s a cloaking device of some kind? Maybe Void infused. This must be how they were able to try to subvert me without the Professor noticing. Doing it here and hiding the traces are one thing, but blocking the perception of a powerful god isn’t that easy.”
“That tracks,” I grimaced. “The Void excels at stealth and isolation.” I frowned at the frame. “Does this mean there could be a bunch more of these in people’s houses, with captives behind them being brainwashed?”
Elonwy’s eyes hardened. “There may be. I don’t…” she shuddered. “I can’t describe what it was like. I don’t remember it all. I don’t want to. But even the flashes that crawl through my brain, the little flickers that dance behind my eyes when I close them. It was awful. Thank you, Shane. Really. Thank you so very much for saving me.”
“I think your memory might still be on the fritz,” I said dryly. “Because I seem to remember YOU saving ME. My ass was grass if you hadn’t woken up. All I did was jam up the collar. It was your will that let you force it the rest of the way open and break out.”
She smiled warmly at me. I could tell she was amused by my insistence on downplaying my role in things. “You know, most people would just agree if a powerful S-ranker said she owed them a favor.”
“Favors are nice,” I said gently. “Friends are better. I don’t have so many of the latter that I’m willing to trade one for the other.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “How are you a B-ranker with that kind of idealism?”
“I married up,” I said with a grin. “My wife keeps me honest.” And it was true. Callie was a true hero, and always had been. I was always more light grey than anything, but she’d been keeping me on a brighter path since we’d met. Without her, I wasn’t sure who I would be, but it definitely wouldn’t be anything like I was now.
“That’s so cute,” she cooed. “And I’m almost positive it’s going to get SO annoying after a pretty short time. You two really are sickeningly in love.”
I laughed, the familiar banter (even with someone a bit less familiar), washing away some of my unease. It wasn’t gone, but talking about Callie warmed me enough that I could put things out of my head, at least.
We climbed the rest of the steps, emerging out into the hallway. Elonwy’s face twisted in horror. “Dear gods,” she wailed. “What did that lunatic do to my HOUSE? It looks like a pig sty in here.”
“Don’t be silly,” I told her sympathetically. “Pigs live in much better conditions than this.”
“Just because I owe you doesn’t mean I won’t smack you if you deserve it,” she threatened in what I was pretty sure was a joking tone. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter for now. I promised you a ride. Don’t want you late for your first class with the Dean. Let’s get going.” My eyes widened and I bolted for the door. I really hoped we would make it in time.