A/N: In which Iskra is competent, and someone finally gets Ral to shut up for once.
Chapter Seven
Clinging to the edge of the pit, Iskra stared in horror as a wave of pearly grey swept from Zarek's feet to his head, and in less than a second, the lightning mage's form stiffened into immobility, one hand frozen about his limp shoulder. Iskra heard a soft little squeak of terror issue from her own mouth, and she shut her eyes instantly. There was a gorgon in the passage.
Iskra flattened herself against the rim of the pit, her breathing suddenly too loud in her ears. She'd heard so many horror stories about gorgons, huddled around the campfire with the rest of the cubs as one of the older children told stories of being stalked through the forest by something you couldn't see because if you opened your eyes—and someone always opened their eyes—you'd be turned to stone.
She had to fight the urge to press her ears to her head, because she needed to be able to hear. She needed to know what was happening. Zarek had been in pain—she'd heard it in his breathing. He was so worried about his lover, Iskra thought. He had been so worried. Now he was—
Someone—it had to be the gorgon—was moving lightly across the bottom of the pit, feet rustling amongst the dead leaves. "So," said a quiet voice. "And who are you? The solution to our mystery perhaps?"
Iskra stuffed her hands across her mouth, terrified that a noisy breath would leak out and the gorgon would know she was there. Her tail was quivering, and she forced her head against her arms so hard that she could see strange, colored patterns swirling in front of her eyes. The rustling below seemed to fade, going tinny in her ears, as the bursts of color intensified, and for an instant, the world inverted and peeled back, as if she were stripping the bark from a tree.
Beyond it, all she could see were colors. And through the colors, the sharp peak of a temple rising above a forest made of metal. The curl of an immense tail caught her eye, and the sunlight glinted off sharp, red scales. One golden eye caught Iskra's, and she felt the pressure of an immense mind on hers. For a moment, she retreated in front of it, and then something inside her rebelled. Her people did not bow to gods; why should she bow before an overgrown lizard? She shook his mind away, and the world solidified around her again, and she was on the edge of the pit, breathing in the smell of ozone and dark earth. Nothing had changed except that inside Iskra there was—a tiny spark.
If she wouldn't bow to a dragon, she wouldn't bow to a gorgon either. No one else knew where Zarek was, which meant it was up to her to save the day. Her teeth were still chattering, but she forced her eyes open and looked very carefully over the edge.
There three gorgons now. Two of them stood beside Zarek's stony form, while the third bent over the enormous snake that had attacked him. Iskra could hear that she was murmuring something, but could not make out the words; no matter how much she strained her ears forward, the liquid syllables would not form into something coherent.
She felt something before she saw it, an intensification of the power in the pit, the feeling of something growing before her. It wasn't until she realized that she could make out the individual scales and the dark, singed spots around the serpent's nostrils and mouth that she saw that there was an almost imperceptible green glow lying like a mist across the bottom and sides of the pit. The tang of ozone in the air lessened as the rich smell of old earth and deep forest took its place. Iskra dug her claws into the side and concentrated on not letting her tail lash as the forked tongue of the snake flickered out into the air, and the limp coils shuddered and began to move once more.
It shook its head once, and then slithered across the pit and opened its vast mouth in front of the statue of Zarek. Iskra tensed, searching in panic for the spark inside her, and it answered, but before she could aim at the snake, it opened its mouth and picked the statue up in its jaws. Air surged into Iskra's lungs, expanding and contracting them, and she realized she had stopped breathing for an instant, lungs frozen. She let the tiny spark in her hand dissipate again. It wouldn't have been much use against the snake anyway, considering that it had been able to stand up to Zarek's most powerful attack.
Much as Iskra wanted to scream and shout and throw lightning everywhere, it didn't seem like the appropriate response at this point. Instead, she waited, trembling (and she wasn't sure if it was fear or anger anymore) as the three gorgons and the snake headed back through the doorway they had come out of. It closed behind them, but Iskra could still see its faint outline in the slowly fading glow of the magic they had left behind.
As soon as they disappeared, she slithered over the edge of the pit and down the side. Picking her way carefully across the bottom, she paused in front of the side, studying it until she found the thin cracks that showed her where the door was. A low hissing sound started as she dug her claws into the crack, but she was able to lever the door open and squeeze inside before attracting any worse attention.
Pulling the door shut behind her, she waited for a moment for her eyes to adjust, and then saw a dimly-lit earthen corridor stretching out before her. Glowing green fungus adorned the walls, and she could see the flicker of a torch from around a bend ahead of her.
She set off lightly, following the torchlight and the whisper of sibilant voices ahead of her, pausing carefully before each twist and turn in the corridor to peer around it and ensure that none of the gorgons were looking her way, but they never did. Eventually, the corridor ended in a round, stone chamber with a high roof. From the entrance, Iskra could hear the sound of labored breathing. Peering inside, she saw that the gorgons were clustered around a limp figure lying on a slab in the center, and the trailing blue material spilling down the slab's side told her who it had to be.
What were they going to do to Zarek's companion? Iskra felt a wave of trembling surge up her limbs, but she shut her eyes, stepped forward, and called the lightning.
"D-don't touch him!" she said, her voice coming out high and squeaky. "I'll fry you all!" That sounded like something Zarek would say, and maybe they would believe she could do it. Her fur had gone up and there were sparks shooting off it and crackling away into the air around her.
"And who are you, little cub?" asked an amused female voice.
"I am Iskra of Oreskos, and these men are under the protection of Brimaz! You cannot harm them!"
"Child, we have no intention of harming them. This one burns with a poison I doubt the leonin could cure, and we seek to alleviate it."
"You turned Zarek to stone!"
"He killed a number of our servants and harmed our greatest ally."
"He was j-just trying to protect his friend."
"As are we." Iskra heard footsteps moving across the room, and she backed into the wall.
"Don't touch me!"
"As you wish," murmured the voice. "However, to allay your fears, we must question the stone intruder because he may have knowledge of the poison used against this man. And I do not believe he would have been easy to calm and question had we left him the use of his magic—or his lungs."
Iskra felt her hackles subsiding slightly at the conciliatory tone, but she did not retract her claws. "How are you going to question him if you've turned him to stone?" she asked harshly.
"By turning him to flesh, of course. You ask silly questions, kitten."
"You can do that?" Iskra's eyes sprang open despite herself, her whiskers quivering with interest. The three gorgons in the room were all looking in her direction, and she felt her heart leap into her throat for one horrible instant, before she realized that they all wore large, golden helmets whose visors were pulled down over their eyes.
"We are the chosen of Pharika. What we can hurt, we can heal."
"But everyone says a gorgon's curse is irreversible! How do you reverse it?" She crept closer.
"Perhaps if you watch closely, you'll know," said one of the gorgons. "I doubt it, though. Pharika's touch is not on you, and you do not seem to have much affinity for healing, even for a leonin."
Stung, Iskra's tail lashed, but she was silent as the three gorgons surrounded Zarek. A faint, soft hissing rose into the air, and the ground parted around Zarek's feet as a number of vines rose up, glimmering with green light, to twine around his frozen form. Stripes of pink began to run along the grey stone, like the veins of a piece of marble, but they thickened as they ran. Iskra's sharp ears caught the sound of a faltering heartbeat that came out of nowhere, and Zarek suddenly sucked in a long-arrested breath.
The air turned dry as the tang of ozone rose, but the gorgons stepped aside to reveal to Zarek the limp figure of his companion on the slab, and the crackling eased slightly. "What the fuck?" grunted the lightning mage, straining against the entangling vines. He had to stop, with a hissing noise of pain, clutching at his left arm.
"If you would be so kind as to refrain from calling about Keranos' power," said the first of the gorgons, "we have brought you here because the one that Iskra refers to as your companion has been poisoned, and the power you wield is of the same design as that which poisons him. If he is a man you care about, you will tell us how to safely heal him."
"What?" asked Zarek, sounding confused. "Poisoned? Jace is poisoned?"
"There is a stone within his chest that burns with unearthly fire. We fear to touch it, lest we are burned or poisoned ourselves, but it must be removed, or he will die."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Zarek snarled. "He has a rock lodged in his chest? Let me see." Spitting gravel from his mouth, he lurched across the room. The vines hindered his movement, but no longer anchored him to the spot, as he bent over the still form on the stone slab. Iskra hurried to his side, barely tall enough to see.
Zarek's companion was breathing shallowly, his eyes shut, face covered in a sheen of sweat. His shirt was open to show a thin chest that rose and fell with effort, in the center of which was a knot of swollen, inflamed tissue leaking a clear fluid. "You're saying there's something in there?" Zarek asked, stabbing a finger toward it.
"Yes," replied the gorgons. "A stone about as large as a thumbnail, that we dare not touch."
"And you're saying the power I wield—you mean the lightning?"
"No. The fire."
"The mizzium charge?" Zarek's face creased in a puzzled frown. "That does have an unstable—" he paused. "—are you saying someone put a thermogenic manastone in his chest?" There was a long, confused silence. Zarek growled wordlessly, and pulled an item off his belt, shaking it to dislodge a few stray pebbles. Touching it on the side, he raised into the air and held it over the unconscious man on the table. It began to click, slowly at first, but growing in rapidity. "Holy fuck," growled Zarek. "Why didn't he say anything? Mother of rains, how is he even still alive?"
Iskra's ear twitched slightly. 'Mother of rains?' That was no curse she'd ever heard.
"Get it out of him and put it into a box made of lead. And then don't open the box." Zarek leaned back. "Get it out of him now."
"Lead will restrict its burning properties?"
"Yes," Zarek said tersely. "I'm serious. Get it out, or I'll—"
"Be stone with you," murmured the gorgon, raising her visor. Iskra squawked in alarmed protest as the grey coloration spread once again across Zarek's skin, freezing him with his arm outstretched and a concerned expression on his face.
"Let him go!" she demanded angrily.
"Once his friend is healed, we will restore him as well," said the gorgon. "But he would only impede our work."
"You'd better," muttered Iskra, her tail lashing angrily.
"Do you wish to be stone as well, kitten? Do not interrupt us in our work."
The twinge of fear Iskra felt was mostly overridden by the anger, but she fell silent.
The gorgons moved Zarek's stony form backwards a few feet and clustered around Zarek's companion. Each one carefully removed her visor, and, linking hands, they began to chant, a low, sibilant utterance. Iskra felt the earth beneath her feet rumble gently, and the man on the table moaned, sharp and low. The soft chanting blurred into a murmurming hiss, as snakes rose from the ground around them.
Iskra squeaked softly in alarm, drawing her tail up and backing against the frozen Zarek, but the snakes paid no attention to her. The reptilian tide flowed swiftly but surely up to the daïs in the center of the room, slithering up the stone as if it were horizontal and rippling across the figure on the slab. For a moment, there was silence, except for the ubiquitous, soft hissing. Then the man on the slab screamed, a raw, high-pitched animal noise, and Iskra flattened her ears to her head in dismay.
The mound of snakes thrashed—or the person beneath them thrashed, it was impossible to tell. "What's happening to him?" Iskra managed to say through a fearful, choked-up throat, but the gorgons did not respond. Instead, all three raised their arms, and the mound jerked up again. Something small and bright flew upward, and all three gorgons snapped their faces up toward it. Growing dull and grey, the little rock floated slowly down into the outstretched hand of the first gorgon. The snakes began to slither away down the daïs, like a receding tide.
Curiosity overcoming her terror, Iskra poked her nose out from behind Zarek. "What did you do?" she asked in an awed tone of voice.
"There was blood covering the stone," said one of the gorgons, voice almost amused. "We turned it to lead." Another bent over the figure of Zarek's companion.
"His breathing is easier," she reported. "The fire is gone. The healing will take some hours yet, but he will heal."