"Log, PF plus sixteen Tellurian days. Lieutenant Seward reporting in.

"I think we found the source of the poison in the river. Upstream a couple of miles, there's a lake in the pass between the mountains. The river goes straight through it.

"There's something weird about the lake, though. It glows blue. I bet if there wasn't a jungle in the way, you'd be able to see it for miles after nightfall.

"Farther upstream of the lake, the water is less polluted. Forget the terraformer; I'm taking a party up there temporarily. If we can purify the upstream water, we can fix the genotype seeder and terraform at our leisure.

"God. There's too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it all."

--Recording recovered from Site Resh, reconstructed 1887 CE (restricted access)

---

14 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Deep in Vallus

The heaving breaths of a lungboat drew Senrii's attention upward. It was so hard to see through the trees, through the haze of spores above the canopy, past the craggy outcrops of this jungle wasteland.

Cities were so much nicer. How people like Aoife could bear living in the wild expanses of land between the cities, Senrii would never understand.

"That's it," Tvorh called from up ahead, just behind Aoife, who had spent the past week guiding them after the Chimeras' spoor. He pointed upward, his finger trailing the path of the flying biomobile by a good margin. It was fairly high, and echoes of the heaving breaths from the rock probably made it hard for him to see. "That's my boat!"

So the Last Era princess had finally caught up with them. Say this about the Thunderhammer's drop pods: uncomfortable though they were, they could cover a lot of the continent in a short span. Thiyyatt probably would have gotten here faster in a skywhale; they weren't as speedy as lungboats, but they didn't need to rest.

Senrii growled and bounded up a couple of outcroppings after them, then turned to help Piotr up. "Let's get some payback."

Piotr nodded. His arm had healed, but he was such a big guy and his shortsphere backpack was so huge that climbing was harder on him than on the rest of them. Plus, he didn't have a SOPHIOS to strengthen his muscles or bones, and he had subdermal bone armor plating weighing him down.

Aoife climbed a few steps to the peak of the crag they'd been climbing and raised her rifle's scope to her eye. "I see it," she said. "Uh. Do you have any idea why she'd want to crash?"

"Crash?" Tvorh, Eztli, and Senrii asked as one.

"Coming down fast...Adon, she's going to hit the..." Her voice became an awed whisper. "Oh, Yesh bless and keep us."

The sound of forgebone smashing trees and dirt echoed over the hill.

"That crash, I guess," Tvorh said.

Aoife looked back at him, shock plain on her face. She hitched the rifle up in her right hand and stretched out her left. "Take my hand, Tvorh."

"We're almost on top of Thiyyatt, and you pick now to climb on top of Aoife?" Senrii joked as she crested the hill to come to stand alongside them.

"Nervous system entanglement," Tvorh said. His hand was already in Aoife's.

"You're supposed to laugh at my jokes. Or chortle. Or at least--" Senrii cut herself off before she said, roll your eyes.

Aoife raised the rifle and peered down the scope.

"Oh, wow," Tvorh said. "Ductrix Eztli, you'd better see this."

Eztli? Senrii was supposed to be in charge here! She looked down into the valley sloping below them. A distant golden glint, almost obscured by steaming water and haze, rose and fell over miles of jungle.

Senrii enhanced her eyesight, ignoring the manic chatter of her Symbiont. She'd been running it nonstop for a week and had grown used to the inarticulate whispers of the wide-awake Wisdom. Spinning it down was going to be a nightmare.

Double magnification, triple--

Golden spheres came into focus. No, buildings. Just like what you'd see if you looked out over a city made of amber.

"Yeah, Eztli, you'd better see this," Senrii agreed. "Hey, where did Thiyyatt hit? We need to--"

The world distanced itself from Senrii.

Sound, sight, and color became muted. Darkness enveloped her. Darkness, save for the brief glimpse of her mother.

Dream-logic took Senrii's mind in unexpected directions. She forgot Thiyyatt entirely. "Mom?"

"My darling."

"Mom? Is that you?"

"I love you, Senrii. Never forget that."

"Mom?" Senrii called. "Mom!"

The world rushed back to Senrii. Quite literally.

Thankfully, Tvorh caught her before she smacked the stone with her face. Unfortunately, her knees hit hard. That would sting.

Senrii's ears didn't work right. Everything was fuzzy. She shook her head as if clearing water from her ears, and her hearing returned.

"--need some help," Tvorh was saying as he eased Senrii onto the ground.

Aoife slid to Senrii's side. "Are you all right, Ductrix? What happened? Another jungle plant bite?"

Senrii shuddered to remember the hour that she'd spent in agony after a misstep into a carnivorous plant's dirt-covered maw. The Symbiont had purged the natural poison, but it hadn't been fun. She waved a hand. "All right," she croaked.

Piotr hung about past Tvorh and Aoife, looking concerned. Blasted man, why didn't he come check on her himself? Eztli had taken up security a few feet away.

"I saw Mom," Senrii said. "It felt like Synapsis." But if Synapsis was flying, this experience had been like falling without wings or a wingsuit. "Except even drop pods have belts until they break up."

"Huh?" Aoife asked. "Belts?"

Senrii shook her head. "Never mind. I--"

I love you, Senrii. Never forget that. Why had Mom said that?

Why was Senrii certain something terrible was about to happen? Or worse, maybe had already happened?

Eztli scanned the valley. "It was never the Golden City after all. It was amber.."

There was no more time to think about what she'd seen. She could worry about Mom later. "What are you talking about?" Senrii winced and pushed herself up to a sitting position, then caught her breath.

"I thought they were just stories." Eztli turned. "Tales of a hidden Last Era city of gold in the center of Vallus, where the Chimera hives are thickest and most dangerous. Does Gens Nethress not have such tales?"

"Don't think so," Senrii said.

"Most inquirers long ago dismissed the stories. The favored explanation was mirages from the spore layer. A reasonable enough explanation; in late afternoon, the haze is golden from above." Eztli shook her head. "But it's real, and it's where our regia puella was headed after all."

"And the tracks of the Chimera army you saw lead here, too, Ductrix Eztli," Aoife said. "To think, Thiyyatt's been in league with the Chimeras all this time! She's probably been talking with them secretly, planning out Imperium right under our noses." Aoife sounded positively giddy. What a weird girl. "It's like a crazy vidality."

"Chimeras don't have a league," Senrii said. Why were her arms so weak? They didn't want to push her off the ground. "Crazy, yeah, but they're no better organized than bacteria."

"Moles," Tvorh said. "They have nests."

"No," Eztli said quietly. "They are much more than that."

They might be allies of convenience on this adventure, but Senrii still had no patience for Eztli's tendency to hide stuff. "Care to fill us in?"

Eztli motioned for Senrii to join her. It took Senrii a couple of tries to stand up. Maybe she should have accepted help? But Piotr was still hovering on the other side of Aoife, so he wasn't helping her, and--was Senrii really only willing to accept help from him?

Blood, bones, and bile. Senrii had a crush on him. The thought made her blush.

She finally managed to heave herself to her feet.

"The nests are thick here in the heart of Vallus, just as the stories, and our scouts, say," Eztli said.

"No kidding," Senrii said. "We never would have gotten here if it weren't for the Blue Bitch blood."

"But they aren't disorganized. Perhaps they were before I awoke the Tool, but no longer." Eztli gestured toward the valley, and Senrii took another look.

A long, hard look.

At hundreds of Chimera nesting sites arranged in orderly rows through the jungle in the valley outside the walls of the Amber City. Beneath copses of trees, on rocky outcroppings, beside small jungle pools, monsters waited, stalked, and wrestled in groups.

They were encamped. Like soldiers.

An army of suddenly organized Chimeras. Just what they needed. Senrii groaned. "I hope Blue Bitch's pheromones keep working, because we have to get down there and find her."

"She crashed just outside the walls," Aoife said. "I was trying to tell you when you had your little..." She made a vibrating motion with her hands and head as if having a seizure. "Thiyyatt went into the city."

Blood, bones, and bile.

***

The Golden City--or, more properly, the Amber City--was a myth, but Eztli knew now that myths sometimes had basis in fact. Talking creatures, for example, were not so different from talking Chimeras. Neither was supposed to exist.

Yet Eztli had twice conversed with Chimeras, and here the city was. And here she was, doing her duty by chasing down the mad Last Era princess whom her uncle had charged her to watch over, and spying on Nethress every second as she did so.

The beetle between her shoulder blades made her shudder. Even now, the inquirers on the other side of the Synaptic connection would be feeling the crunch of crumbling slate as she made her way down the hill toward the monstrous army, smelling the fetid air, seeing the city glittering dimly in the distance through the leaves and the haze.

Watching Senrii. Watching Thiyyatt. Being Eztli.

"Hey." Senrii made a grabbing gesture back at Eztli. "Better paint us up."

Eztli daubed some of Thiyyatt's blood on everyone's forehead. Hopefully it would still work. The last time Eztli had strode into an amber-encased Chimera nest, it had worked until it hadn't.

Good men had died.

As they passed the first of the Chimera camps, however, the monsters only turned to look at them with curiosity. Two of them followed the party toward the next camp, but promptly lost interest and wandered back. Eztli breathed a sigh of relief and almost choked on the sulfurous fumes rising from the steaming pool to their left, which several dozen Chimeras had gathered around.

"Why is she here?" Senrii muttered to herself. "What's here?"

"The past," Eztli replied.

"Always with the cryptic comments. Could you give us a straight answer, for once?"

"It's an honest answer, Ductrix."

Aoife coughed loudly. It sounded a lot like the word "cryptic."

"It's true, Ductrix Eztli," Tvorh said. "You talk as if you have some idea what's going on, but you're not really overflowing with information."

"I know nothing that you don't," Eztli said. Yet Thiyyatt had been the one to send Eztli to the first amber site. An outpost containing an adjunct Tool to whichever one lived, or had lived, here, more than a hundred miles away? "Merely a hunch. Perhaps this was an important city in Thiyyatt's day. That would explain how she knows about it. We are not privy to her reasons for coming here, but only because her world is as alien to us as ours is to her. The past brings her here."

"Ooookay," Aoife allowed. "I guess that could make sense. Though you've got to admit, the way she ran away from Acerbia, she's probably not here to bake us Last Era cookies in a Last Era oven."

As they pushed through the jungle and passed more sulfurous hot springs, the Chimeras still ignored them. Even so, Senrii remained close to Piotr the ebony giant. Was she thinking what Eztli was thinking, that it was too much to hope that they would make it through without a fight?

Or was this closeness a different sort of animal instinct?

The wreckage of Thiyyatt's lungboat gurgled its death rattles to their right. Thiyyatt had wrapped it around a wide-trunked tree, and it was bleeding out onto the slate.

Tvorh looked like he was about to cry, even without eyes. Senrii noticed it, too. "Hey, kid. It's all right. We'll get you another one."

The young Erus shook his head. Whatever was bothering him, it was more than the lungboat.

This close to the city, it was plain that it didn't have walls, precisely. It seemed more like it was a series of stories-high amber bubbles rising out of the ground, each one overlapping the others, so that the whole space of the city was encapsulated.

Mostly. Unlike the last amber building Eztli had been in, this sprawling arcology had obvious entrances. One of them, a five-story-high gate leading into darkness, was just a short jog down the walls. "That's where she went," Aoife said, pointing.

Eztli rolled her shoulders, making the beetle crackle unpleasantly. She looked at Senrii. "Shall we, Generosa?"

Senrii wrinkled her nose, looking at the entrance. "Yeah, I guess we shall. Generosa."

***

For once, Tvorh was glad he didn't have eyes to get in the way. While everyone else complained about the darkness in the curving tunnel beyond the gate, he strode right through without a care.

Well, Aoife and Eztli weren't complaining; they had STIGMOS for low-light vision. And Piotr was pretty quiet in general. But Aoife--she could complain with the best of them.

"I swear, I could stumble into a bear trap and have no clue it was there," she grumbled behind Tvorh. "You should have warned me about that dead biomobile back there. Hey. Tvorh. Give me your hand."

Tvorh smiled. "Why? So that you can blind me with your unseeing eyes?" Despite his fear for what was going to happen to his sisters if he didn't fix what he'd broken, despite the awful stink of sulfur which only grew worse as they proceeded into the city, despite the eerie echoes that caused him to see phantoms, there was something about Aoife that could make him smile. Even when his boat had been destroyed and his family was about to give him the boot and she was complaining.

"No, doofus. So that I can use your echolocation. Honestly." Aoife's sweaty palm grabbed Tvorh's and gave his hand a little shake. "Come on. Do the let's-become-one thing."

"Not in public, you randy little vixen," Senrii said behind them. "I swear, you Sodalitatis..."

"Not that let's-become-one thing."

Tvorh linked nerves with her, and he felt her sigh as if it was his own body. "Finally," she said. "I can--are those bones?"

The sides of the tunnel, which was a road wide enough for ten biomobiles, were walkways offset a couple of feet off the ground, with railings. Tvorh hadn't thought to mention that the remains of uncountable creatures were piled so deeply on the walkways that they'd become makeshift catacombs.

"Yeah," Senrii said. "But don't worry. Most of them are bone-dry."

"Har har," Aoife said.

"No, seriously. A lot of things have died over a lot of time in this place. Not that you'd be able to smell any rotting ones over the sulfur. Bile, there are a lot of Chimeras here."

Tvorh heard Piotr put a hand on Senrii's shoulder.

"Well, at least I won't trip over a bone Chimera now," Aoife said.

"What's a bone Chimera?" Senrii asked.

"It's a Chimera made of bone. Ooh! Resurrected from corpses! Given unnatural life by mad inquirers. Lightning and thunder, and then..." Aoife blinked. "Is it just me, or is it getting brighter in here?"

Tvorh looked out her eyes. He could barely make out walls rising in an inverted halfpipe and the white of bone on the walkways. "How dark was it before?"

"Imagine that there was no light. That's how dark it was."

"Then I guess it is brighter," Tvorh allowed.

The light continued to increase, shining through amber walls and painting the tunnel in gold. Tvorh noticed a growing breeze a few seconds later. It came from the city, blowing toward the jungle.

"The city is awakening," Eztli said. "Look."

Above a door marked "Maintenance Tunnel" in High Exarchian, a slender vine crawled out of a fist-wide pipe. Now that Tvorh was looking for them, he noticed such pipes up and down the tunnel. Vines sprouted from each one, crawling over the walls and ceiling, taking in foul air, breathing out pure oxygen.

"Like a municipal Tool is waking up," Senrii said. Her voice held a note of awe.

Eztli stood up straight as if someone had slapped her.

Senrii slapped Piotr's chest with the back of her hand. "Come on, silent. You've barely said a word. What do you think?"

Now Senrii was talking like she was stepping out with Piotr enjoying a night on the town, the way she was trying to get him to talk to her. What was with her?

A chittering echoed down the tunnel behind them. Tvorh heard the shape of its source immediately. "The Chimeras," he said. "They're--"

"Coming," Eztli finished.

"But we've got Thiyyatt's blood," Aoife said. "We'll be safe, won't we?"

"If a municipal Tool has awakened because of her blood, I would not count on it." Eztli looked forward down the tunnel. "I suggest we run."

A roar passed them like a shockwave from behind.

"Now!" Eztli shouted.

They ran.

The army flooded into the tunnels far behind them. Tvorh heard the positions of their scraping talons, the slaps of their padded paws, and every snort and snuffle.

Maybe the Chimeras were here for Thiyyatt. It didn't matter. The five of them would have to be ready to fight either way.

"Light up ahead!" Piotr shouted. He'd taken point; his built-in armor made him the most capable of holding ground against the Chimeras, and his mass made him the most like a bowling ball, able to knock down monsters like pins.

Not that all five of them together would be able to knock down the Chimera that was straddling the exit they were sprinting toward. It was hiding on the other side of the outlet, so big that its torso was hidden entirely above the top of the tunnel, so big that its legs weren't even visible from inside.

Nobody else would be able to see it. Nobody but Tvorh, whose echolocation didn't need direct line of sight. "Massive Chimera," he shouted as they rushed toward the opening.

"Where?" everyone else shouted.

"There!" he gestured wildly. Then, lungs burning, he called on his SOPHIOS to draw down what little fat he had to build muscle and bone and put on a burst of speed.

He pulled past Piotr just as he burst out into the great interior of the domed amber city.

An enormous hand reached down to snatch Tvorh up. Hearing it descend, he crouched and twisted, lunging upward with his knife.

The hand closed around him; the knife bit flesh. He felt a tremor of pain.

Pain like the suffering from a bee sting. Not good.

Blood seeped from the injury, smearing over Tvorh in the cramped space as the giant monster lifted him into the air. He couldn't hear any shapes outside the Chimera's grip as it tightened--

Distant pops granted him flashes of vision. The Chimera rumbled and its hand opened.

In a flash, Tvorh caught sight of--

Senrii, Eztli, and Aoife in the street below, their guns raised, bullets cracking as they loosed at the thing's head--

Four legs below, four arms above, a flat horizontal torso, and a head jutting out in the middle of the torso's long side, with one eye spilling ichor where bullets had pierced it--

Spikes and tumors like small hills across its flesh--

A spot in the top of its jutting head where three subdermal armor plates didn't quite fit together perfectly.

A moment's impression, and Tvorh knew where he had to go. He stabbed the knife into the palm to keep from falling, swept his feet up to find leverage on the monster's flesh, then leapt up toward the wrist, pulling the knife out as he went.

"What on Tellus does that thing eat in here?" Aoife screamed as she loosed.

Grabbing spikes and extrusions, Tvorh scrambled up the monster's arm and onto its horizontal back. He rushed toward its head, riding the heaving flesh as he went.

The moment he grabbed a spike on the head, the Chimera tried to buck him off. Tvorh stabbed it a few times to get it to settle down, pulled himself on top of the head, jammed his hand on the weak spot between the three imperfectly-interlocking armor plates, and called on his SOPHIOS. Thickets.

The Wisdom flared to full waking. A brambly branch plunged out of Tvorh's palm, through his skinsuit, and into the monster's head, disappearing between the armor plates.

The STIGMOS ate the Chimera's body in order to grow the thicket. Briars poked up here and there across the skin of the head as the STIGMOS sought a path to the creature's brain.

Tvorh couldn't have missed the moment that it found that path, because the Chimera shuddered like it had been struck by lightning.

Wings, gossamer! Tvorh leapt free as the enormous abomination crashed to the ground, partially blocking the exit tunnel.

Aoife shot again and again toward the tunnel, killing the Chimeras that had just reached it and were trying to climb over the thorny corpse.

There were more Chimeras in the city, prowling through the streets and between bubbling buildings of amber to flank the humans. "Behind you!" Tvorh called out as he angled toward an ocelot-eagle flanking his friends from an alley.

Senrii and Eztli spun.

Piotr took one look down the street into the city and flicked his telescoping halberd out.

Tvorh hit the ground.

They all struck their targets at the same time. Ocelot-eagle went down with Tvorh's dagger in its eye. The spike on Piotr's halberd cracked an alligator-monkey's head open. Bullets flew, wounds opened.

The Chimeras inside the city were still gathering, and the road toward the center of the city was clear. "Let's move," Tvorh said, flicking his knife down the street.

The women didn't need to be told twice. There was something about Aoife, the way she turned, her braided ponytail fluttering behind her, her face a mask of concentration as she ran toward Tvorh...

And beyond her, the Chimeras squeezing out of the tunnel past the enormous corpse, getting impaled by new briars sprouting from the monster...

Now wasn't the time to enjoy the sounds.

Tvorh fell in with the rest of them, kicking aside long-dead bones, sprinting down amber streets past domed resin buildings, running alongside fences of pure steel and drainage ditches that sounded like gold, outracing orderly vines, newly grown, that crawled along trellises and into open balconies.

An enormous resin dome miles wide loomed above them, and the artificial wind did help cover up the sulfur smell.

What did it look like, Tvorh wondered?

"What's that?" Aoife gasped as they ran.

"Palace," Senrii replied, sounding much less winded.

"Palace?" Aoife asked.

"Palace," Senrii confirmed.

"Gonna check," Tvorh said. "Cover your ears."

Aoife and Piotr clapped their hands over their ears. Senrii and Eztli took no visible action, but they had Wisdoms, and they weren't stupid.

Tvorh drew from deep within himself, building up internal energy, and then loosed a powerful shout.

Other than the first time in Acerbia, when he'd called on all of the might of his impossibly strong vocal chords to scream Aoife's name, he only did this sort of thing when he had to. When he was mapping the Labyrinth, say. It always left his throat sore for hours.

Emergencies qualified as "he had to."

Tvorh's scream rebounded throughout the dome. Sound waves bounced off amber walls and chased each other through buildings of resin. As the waves returned to him, he felt the shapes and movements of every object in the dome through them.

The palace looming past the plaza at the end of the street was huge. Not just a Ducal palace--an Imperator's palace. Onionlike minarets merged with the resin dome high above. Windows galore looked down a pillar-lined avenue toward the plaza.

Not past the plaza, though. The entire palace was blocked off by an amber wall, like a three dimensional moat or a miniature dome, and the only way in was through a gate in the courtyard at the end of the avenue. If the gate had been closed, Tvorh wouldn't have been able to hear the palace.

So it was a good thing it was open, then. Maybe.

The five of them stumbled into the circular plaza next to the gate, which had eight streets radiating out from it like sunrays. "Wait!" Aoife said, throwing up a hand and staggering to a halt.

"No time to rest, missy," Senrii said. She took Aoife by the arm. "Come on!"

"Traps," Aoife gasped, shaking herself free.

"The bones?" Senrii said. It was true, they littered the courtyard. "No different than the rest of the city."

"Different." Aoife heaved deep breaths and pointed to the ground. "Little holes. Plaza. Gas?" She indicated the barely-audible gap between the blocks of the plaza's circumference. "Raise a dome, trap you inside. Gas means dead," she reiterated. She pointed to the walls next to the gate; they sounded like flesh. Eel flesh. "Differential traps. Electric shocks."

Suddenly the bones seemed to say a lot more about the plaza they were standing on. Tvorh lifted a foot cautiously.

He could still breathe. Good.

The sounds of Chimeras approached from all sides, down every street.

"We can't fight them off," Eztli said.

Senrii snorted. "Speak for yourself."

"Don't be a fool, Ductrix. Your ego is not worth the lives of your friends."

"Yeah, maybe it'll be worth yours," Senrii grumbled.

As Tvorh listened, the Chimeras changed from a mostly undifferentiated mass to a group of individuals. "They're getting close."

Nowhere to go. If Tvorh died here, what would happen to Hrega and Bilr? What would happen to Mother?

Just past the gate to the palace avenue, something moved. Tvorh heard it and spun. "Chimera!"

It stood in the gateway, paw outstretched. Its face was apelike, its legs those of a wolf (one twisted as if it had been broken and healed wrong,) and an extra mouth leered on its scaled lizardlike chest.

Aoife raised her rifle.

"No kill," the Chimera rasped.

In High Post-Exarchian.

That got everybody's attention.

"No kill. Open. Come. Eaters will not follow. Afraid of death-place. Many years of death, many years of fear. No death now, but instincts remain. Come!" It gestured with its paw urgently in an animalistic parody of a "hurry-along" gesture.

"Um," Aoife said.

"Do as it says," Eztli said quickly.

"But--"

"Now!"

The five of them backed into the plaza as Chimeras appeared down all eight streets.

They were surrounded down every path but one.

The Chimeras snarled and hissed, approaching the edge of the plaza. None of them crossed it, though.

Tvorh felt a block in the street depress beneath his feet and click. Trap!

Nothing happened.

"Come!" the talking Chimera urged again.

Even without eyes, Tvorh could sense the glances that the five of them passed around.

"Well," Senrii said, "I'd rather maybe live than definitely die."

"Yeah," Tvorh said.

"Agreed," Eztli said.

"Uh-huh." Aoife nodded vigorously.

Piotr just looked at Senrii. Everybody knew he'd do whatever she told him to.

"Okay." Surrounded by snarling monsters, Senrii turned to the speaking Chimera standing in the avenue gate. "Take us to your leader. Or whatever it is you have."

The Chimera smiled, a ghastly sight. "She is here. Not my leader. But would be." It turned and with a limping gait led the way toward the palace.

As they followed the monster, Tvorh caught a whiff of a familiar scent. There was a blotch in the shape of a handprint on the wall next to the gate, with a tiny needle sticking out of the blotch in the middle of the palm.

"Is that from Thiyyatt?" Tvorh asked, pointing.

"Handprint sensor," Senrii said.

"And it's undoubtedly her blood," Eztli said.

A whole army of Chimeras was snarling on the other side of the gate, so why was Tvorh worried that an even worse monster was waiting for them in the palace?