4.70 Eye to Eye

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Connections and realizations whirled around in his mind, as if its untended coals had been suddenly prodded to release a shower of sparks. In one surge of insight Glim understood so much: why plying algidon had been so hard. Why he felt so empty, so restless, and always wanted to consume new ideas instead of lore and logic.

Glim gulped for breath and gripped his head between his hands, trying to stave off the onslaught of realizations.

Why he always found the smokiest seat. He’d never been able to dodge the flame—because the flame had been drawn to him.

You’re a Cinder.

He pressed harder against his skull, trying to distract himself, but it didn’t work.

No wonder Master Willow wanted to keep him in the cold! Plying phyr would give Glim so much more leverage over the man. A chaotic spatter of imagery came to him, of what could have been. Different lessons. More joy. Less pain. No writhing on the ground like a bug, his screams silenced, while his bones bent.

“Stop!” he yelled out loud, hearing the echoes of his own voice, but they were nothing but raindrops in a storm.

Maybe the side effects ran deeper. Maybe, as Ryn had suggested, his ability to cast ice would disappear.

Glim panicked and attempted to toss an icicle into the air. To his relief, he did so.

Flame and ice cannot coexist!

He’d been told that his entire life. Yet here Glim stood, plying both. How did his body not rip itself apart?

Glim sank to the ground in a daze, pounding at his temples with his palms. The euphoria had not left him, nor the intensity of the connections still forming in his mind. Yet disquiet blossomed. Fear, to be more precise. Fear of cost, and consequences.

His body might not have ripped itself apart, but his mind had started to. Glim felt his thoughts spiraling out of control, with fear, anger, and joy bashing his brain into gruel.

Recalling Master Willow’s advice, Glim summoned as large a pile of ice as he could manage and plunged his face into it. Cold stung his brow and chafed his cheeks. Warm skin became numb. His breathing slowed. His mind settled.

He’d thought he had a grasp on how essentiæ worked. What the polarities meant for him. But now, everything he knew had been cast out of the window, and he didn’t know what would happen once his old understanding shattered on the rocks below.

Essentiæ. The bane of his existence, with its constant tug-of-war between frustration and satisfaction. Shame and overconfidence. Boredom and exhilaration.

Glim stuck his face into the snow again until calm took hold once more.

“What are you going to do now?” he said. The vibration of air in his lungs as he spoke the words gave him a small sense of control over the situation. “Think, Glim. Think!”

He knew one thing for certain: this is why the vine had drawn him here.

No you don’t know, you whit! Nothing is certain.

That thought, at last, took hold above all others. Why had the vine guided him here? What was the vine, anyway? What agenda did its summoner have for him?

The gardeners wouldn’t have resorted to such theatrics. Minerva would have simply found an excuse to take him here. Checking the tanks or some such. Master Willow had absolutely nothing to gain from this, either.

Who was the portrait of? What sort of creature? Who had painted it?

And how the hell had looking at a painting on a cave wall awakened the flame?

Stop, he told himself. Focus. Find out what is happening here.

Glim stood shakily and headed back to the junction. He took the second fork of the tunnel.

It sloped upwards, then opened into a warren of tunnels. He walked partway down each. Some branched further. Some ended, with scattered shards of clay pots in the corners.

One led to a massive cavern, which arched far above his head to meet a slash of sky. Rocky columns and stalagmites formed into a maw like a beast’s. White stone and reddish clay formed a dappled maze of contrast his eye had trouble adjusting to. The cavern seemed natural for the most part, but for sections of glossy black wall. Glim looked closer and saw a tower near one such wall, all the way across from him, as if guarding the expanse of floor below it.

He started to walk towards the tower, but noticed something that stopped him. To his left, what he’d at first mistaken for a massive stalagmite turned out to be another Elderkin device. Bright silver and smooth, it emerged from the floor and rose above his head like a spire. It seemed untarnished, as though it had just been formed. Concentric bands circled its tip.

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Glim looked to his right and saw another. In fact, an entire circle of them, like fence posts, encircled the cavern. He’d seen similar devices before, in Master Willow’s training chamber. The devices that lit up with silver light in response to essentiæ. Yet these dwarfed any he’d ever seen; almost towers themselves.

Glim studied the cavern again, with incongruous details catching at his mind. The floor seemed particularly odd. Immensely wide, and perfectly flat. It felt strange beneath his feet, like a thin layer of soil over granite, and it seeped the warmth from him. Ice, most likely. Perhaps this had once been a lake, now frozen over.

But why surround it with towers? This place had obviously been of great importance to the Elderkin. Perhaps a reservoir of essentiæ? That would make sense, given the vine and Glim’s sudden gift of flame. Maybe the rules bent here.

He set off for the tower. He shivered as he crossed the expanse of floor, and jogged to keep himself warm. When he’d reached the center he stopped ad turned, looking around the spires. They formed a perfect circle. Nothing about this place had randomness to it, but a strict, precise unity.

Glim started to jog again but he slipped on the ice. He grunted in frustration and slapped his hand on the ground, releasing a burst of actual flame along with his ire.

The sudden fire startled Glim. He stared at his hand.

I’ll need to be more careful from now on.

The flame flickered at the base of the dust piled up from his misstep. It vanished for a second, until red embers curled away from the burn. The dust caught fire.

Glim scrambled to his feet and watched in fascination as the flame spread. His brain caught up and Glim ran to stay ahead of the sweeping arc of flame. He looked over his shoulder and saw the orange-red embers spreading, like a trickle of syrup that had spilled on a table. Not particularly fast, but definitely out of his control.

Reaching the tower, he saw a platform he recognized. Glim hopped onto it and hit the button on the control panel. Nothing happened, so he took the ladder nearby and hauled himself up the side of the tower as quickly as he could.

By the time he reached a patio partway up the tower, the flame had worked its way from the center in a ragged oval most of the way across the floor. Glim gasped at what he saw uncovered by the charred-away dust that had covered it.

The portrait on the wall had, in a very real sense, sent his mind reeling. Not only for its beauty, and the obvious love that had gone into it; but an actual essentiæl transformation in himself.

It seemed like a child’s scribbling in the dirt compared to the portrait below.

Beneath a sheet of ice that shimmered like glass, Glim saw an exquisitely detailed painting of a giant. Its closed eyes and serene pose suggested death, or sleep. Details emerged from a murky backdrop: the grim set of the giant's mouth, its blunt nose, and wrinkled brow suggested a stern disposition. Black horns curled away from its temples and white hair tangled into strands the size of trees.

Glim could not believe the realism of the piece, nor why it had been painted. He only knew that this artwork surpassed the craftsmanship of any he’d ever seen. He’d been impressed by the Eldkerkin before. He now felt a profound reverence bordering on zeal.

He studied the painting for a long time. The oval of flame had mostly died out, leaving the giant framed in a ragged line of black and red char. It reminded him of getting warm, and Glim wondered if he could get inside the tower. Perhaps light a fire. He turned to take the ladder, visions of warmth raising his—

BRRRRRRRRMMMMMMM!

The world shimmered in his sight and the ladder rang beneath his hands as a braying hum resonated through the cavern. The silver spire nearest Glim vibrated, like a beetle testing its wings. He ducked as an incandescent swirl of energy flew right past his face. Glim’s hair stood on end and he felt an answering surge deep inside him.

…bbbbRRRRMMMMMMmm!

It sounded again, this time from a different spire, and silver light erupted from it, writhing through the air like a mass of worms. Each tower responded with a call, then alighted like torches. Essentiæ shimmered from one tower to the next. The circle of light slowly formed below him. As panicked as he was, Glim could not tear himself away. He watched in mingled fascination and trepidation as the spires wove their circle.

Yet not all of them sounded their signals. Some failed to ignite. Tarnished and silent, they failed to complete the circle.

The lightstorm stalled. The spires vibrated with a rising whine, until, one after the other, they sputtered and grew dim. The hum that had resonated through the cavern subsided along with the light. Glim blinked, his eyes trying to adjust to the dim. The sudden silence seemed ominous.

He watched for a long time as the afternoon light slanted across the ice. As long as he could tolerate it, for Glim had to get warm. Nothing else happened, and his hands and face ached with numbing cold. He needed to get into the tower, or make a fire somewhere.

Glim resumed his climb. He sensed movement from the corner of his eyes as he scaled the tower. He stopped and studied the cavern, but saw nothing. He climbed once more, and sensed movement again. At last he realized the movement was merely a trick of distance. Every time a ladder rung passed his line of sight to the painting, it seemed to shift.

But why?

Glim bobbed his head up and down, moving his eyes over and under a ladder rung, watching the angles of the painting shift. That’s when he finally understood: the form below had depth. The hairs and horns and massive arms cast shadows beneath them. Not painted, but cast. Whatever he looked at had form, frozen in a massive lake of perfectly clear water.

His hairs stood on end and Glim abandoned his quest to enter the tower. He felt a sudden urge to get away. To not tarry here and discover too late what those lights had been about. Glim stared at the giant as he shimmied down the ladder. An actual giant. Alabaster skin over rippling muscle, and veins the size of rivers throbbing in its case of ice.

Throbbing? He looked closer.

No. Oh, no.

The giant lived. Hibernating in its frozen burrow.

Glim scrambled down the metallic tower as quickly as he could and ran across the cavern. The floor of ice cracked somewhere in the distance. He felt it, just barely, through his boots. He looked ahead and saw it. The crack moved slowly, as though stuck in syrup, then raced quickly, only to slow again. By the time he reached the middle, the crack had split across the giant's face. Its monolithic features reflected the sunlight wavering through the ice. Glim stood on the hill of one cheekbone and looked down at the bushy brow over the giant's eyelid. He could see the tiny veins fluttering with a pulse. Then a twitch, the eyelid opening, as the massive orb beneath rolled into place.

The cavern floor trembled. The ice shifted.

Glim watched the massive eye open. Silver like his own, with a black pupil large enough to swallow him whole.