The sphere flashed, engulfing the gathered elves in a bright white light. Glissa screamed. It felt like her skin was burning, as if the light was consuming her. She fell but didn’t hit the ground. She couldn’t see anything but light and sparkling motes flying past her eyes as she fell into a white nothingness. Then she was on the ground, crumpled into a fetal ball, hugging her knees to her chest. Her eyes were closed, and there was a blessed darkness behind her eyelids.
After a time, Glissa dared to open her eyes. She expected to find black stalks where the trees had once stood. She feared there would be dozens of burnt and misshapen corpses surrounding her. She wondered whether she was truly still alive or had passed onto Gaea’s reward. Nothing she could have imagined, though, prepared the elf for what she saw when she opened her eyes.
Elves lay all around her. Most curled up as she had been. None were burnt or scarred from the flash. A few had pushed themselves up off the ground or sat and surveyed the damage to the forest. But the forest was gone. The trees, the flowers, the sun, even the black cloud had all disappeared. Glissa looked down to see bare metal beneath her. She looked up and saw great towers of twisted metal surrounding the elves. In the sky, there was nothing but stars, but even those were unfamiliar.
Glissa felt sick inside. The metal world swirled around her as she tried to get to her feet. A wave of nausea overtook the elf. She rested on her hands and knees, and closed her eyes to make the world stop spinning around her. She hoped it was all a dream that would be gone when she opened her eyes. The elf looked again, but the metal world was still there. She dropped her head down between her arms and vomited.
* * * * *
Glissa kneeled on the bottom of the diver, puking. Her chest and neck convulsed as a torrent of silver liquid erupted from her stomach and lungs. The spasms stopped a few moments after the last drops of quicksilver dribbled from her mouth and nose. She stayed there, hunched over a silver puddle, and just breathed, spitting excess quicksilver into the puddle every so often. Finally she crawled toward the front of the diver, feeling her way along the invisible metal, and sat down.
“I think that’s the last of it,” she said as she wiped her mouth and nose. “What happened?”
“You tell us, huh?” said Slobad. “Bosh dump you in diver. Think it was Bosh. Couldn’t see him. You not breathing. Not breathing at all. Human make spell and you start hacking. Spit up entire sea, huh?”
Glissa looked back at Bruenna. The mage was still concentrating on her air spell. “You saved me?” she asked.
“I put air in your body,” said Bruenna. “Bosh saved you.”
“Thank you,” said Glissa. She looked around. “Where’s Bosh?”
“Out there,” said Slobad. He pointed past Glissa. “Pulling to Lumengrid, huh? Just start pulling again like nothing happen, huh?”
Glissa looked out the front of the diver. She could see the severed ends of the ropes hanging over the sea floor, right above Bosh’s muck-covered feet, which continued to trudge through the sea.
“Any sign of eels or other monsters?” asked Glissa.
Slobad shook his head.
“We are near Lumengrid,” said Bruenna. “I feel it.”
Glissa nodded. There was nothing to do now but wait. She sat and thought about the flare she had experienced while she was … dead. It had been so intense, so real. She had seen things she’d never seen before. Had the serum opened up her mind to a different time and place? Or was it just a hallucination caused by flirting with death? With Chunth dead, her only chance to find out the truth was the Pool of Knowledge, and now she had no serum to activate it.
Her musings were cut short by a loud clang from ahead of them. Glissa looked around to see what happened, and was worried when she saw the ropes floating down to the bottom of the sea. But then she noticed the golem’s feet trudging back toward the diver. The feet banged into the side of the invisible diver, then climbed the side, leaving muddy smears behind. The elf heard Bosh’s voice boom from above her. He must have climbed up the iron tube and stuck his head through the opening.
“I am glad you have recovered, Glissa,” said the golem’s disembodied voice.
“Thank you, Bosh,” said Glissa. “I owe you my life.”
“As I owe you. I believe we have arrived. I have struck a metal wall. How shall I proceed, Bruenna?”
“Pull us around the base,” said Bruenna. “You will see a tube. Take us in there.”
“How will he be able to see the tube?” asked Glissa.
“Good question,” said the human mage. “I haven’t worked out all the problems with the diver yet.”
The two women looked at each other blankly.
“Why not use air bubble, huh?” said Slobad finally. “Like before. Saw metal monster past golem.”
Glissa nodded. “Good idea, Slobad.” She turned to Bruenna. “Can you control the size of the invisibility bubble?”
Bruenna moved her hands through their spell dance. “How much control are you talking about?”
“Collapse the invisibility bubble to just around the diver and extend the air bubble out past Bosh’s ropes. Then we can see him and he can see the fortress wall.”
“I can do that. I do not know how long I will be able to hold it, though.”
“Just do your best.”
Glissa watched as Bruenna muttered a few words and changed the pattern that her hands followed. The quicksilver rushed toward them for a moment, and Glissa gasped, then the air pressure dropped and the quicksilver washed away from them past the ends of the ropes. A silver wall appeared in the bubble, extending out past the edges and down into the mud.
Glissa heard Bosh climb off the diver then saw him appear in front of the transparent wall of the diver. He picked up the ropes and began moving around the edge of Lumengrid. Glissa watched the walls slip past them. She was amazed at the size of the place. She could only see a small part of the vedalken fortress at the edge of the bubble, but it seemed to go on forever.
She looked back at Bruenna. Bruenna’s hands were a blur. Her face had turned red and sweat dripped off her chin. Finally Glissa saw the tube Bruenna had mentioned. It was enormous. Only the bottom of the tube was visible within the air bubble. It curved up at the edges and disappeared into the silver curtain around them.
Bosh pulled them into the tube. After a short time, Glissa could feel the diver rising. She fell backward as Bosh pulled them up a ramp. Eventually they leveled out again, and the tube they were in began to get smaller. She could see the sides of the tube rise up around the diver until they met at the top, just above Bosh’s head.
Bruenna said, “Stop. We must stop here.”
Glissa turned and banged on the walls of the diver, wrenching a finger as she misjudged the distance between the two invisible objects. Bosh looked back and Glissa waved her hands, but then she realized he couldn’t see them. She grabbed her sword sheath and pointed at the top of the diver. Bosh dropped the ropes and walked back toward the diver, but he couldn’t fit between the top of the tube and the diver. Glissa looked back at Bruenna.
“What now?” she asked.
Bruenna pointed at a panel in the top of the tube, above Bosh. “We must go through there.”
Glissa waved her sheath at Bosh and pointed it up at the panel. The golem nodded his head. He grabbed the ropes and pulled the diver forward. The panel disappeared as the diver moved under it. Bruenna collapsed the invisibility sphere. The diver reappeared around Glissa. She moved to the center and looked up.