4 Chapter 4: False Idols, Part 2

A pair of objects appeared on the scanner as flat planes within the ridge's wall. Travis was not sure what they were at first, but as he got closer, he saw that they were gates. Each side was ten feet high, and twenty feet wide. What he took initially to be wrought iron filigree was in fact a network of twisted vines. He pulled at them. They were as hard as steel. He put his gloves where the two monstrous gates joined, and pushed with all of his strength. They refused to budge.

He stepped back, and examined the interwoven design. He decided that it might be possible to cut a hole large enough to crawl through. He ignited his knife.

The vines lashed out the moment the fire touched them. Travis jerked back, dropping his knife to the road, but he was not fast enough. They whipped around the fingertips of his right hand, and constricted. He screamed as the bones in his middle, ring, and index fingertips snapped, popping in rapid succession like firecrackers. He yanked back his mutilated hand, but the vines squeezed harder. With a wrenching twist, they tore off his fingertips.

Agony exploded up Travis's arm. He fell back to the ground, dimly aware of the whoosh of escaping oxygen. There was a new pain now as the suit clamped around his fingers at their first joints. He felt a prick in his wrist, and his hand went blessedly numb. White fire flared around his knuckles, and he watched as the remaining halves of his three torn fingers plopped one by one to the crystalline road. The glove twisted itself tight at the end of his stubs, like sausage casing. The whooshing noise stopped.

"Attention," a pleasant female voice said in his ear. "Your Aurelian-Award environment suit has detected a breach, and possible biological contaminants. Contaminated digits have been amputated, and the relevant breaches sealed. Please seek immediate medical assistance. Aurelian-Award apologizes for any inconvenience."

Travis lay sprawled on the ground, staring at what was left of his hand. The vines still clutched his fingertips, and the torn silver swatches of his glove. The bioluminescent fog descended upon the discarded digits. There was a sound like the drone of angry hornets, and then the glowing wisps dissipated.

What were once his fingertips were now amber crystals streaked with flaws the color of cinnamon. Every detail had been transformed. He could make out the whorls on their undersides, the cracked nails, the hardened veins sticking out like yellow, glistening wires amidst the torn joints, and even the bones underneath.

The vines tossed his crystallized fingers and their silvery wrappings to the ground. They reached for him, extending two feet out of their filigree. Travis scuttled in the dust, pushing himself to his feet with his one good hand. The vines stretched as far as they could in his direction. Then, with a creaking groan, the gates inched apart.

Travis darted back, clamping his mutilated hand underneath his armpit. The gates screeched outward, the vines swirling toward him like snakes. He watched as the gap widened to a foot, then two, and then three.

He ran.

The razor-sharp tip of a vine scraped a furrow across his faceplate as he passed between them. The hinges screeched as the gate fought its own momentum, and switched directions. He continued running, his feet pounding on the hardened clay. He turned his head to see the gate swing shut behind him with a reverberating clang. His foot caught on a rock, and he sprawled forward.

He lifted his head. It was not a rock, it was a root. He reached out for the tree, and pulled himself to his feet. Then he realized it was not a tree, and what he had tripped over was not a root.

It was a tentacle.

The statue was seven feet high. Its face, if Travis could call it that, was a mass of segmented eyes at its center. It was fashioned from the same crystal as the road and his amputated fingers, but it had a bluish hue, as if carved from a cloudy sapphire. Its seven tentacles each ended in a maw lined with needles. Circling the eyes were three rows of overlapping ridges. Beneath the ridges, Travis could make out a silvery hose that led to some mechanism deep within its chest.

Travis stared at the sculpture, his breath coming in long, hard gasps. He swallowed back nausea. Three fingers. He had lost three fingers because of James's stupidity, on his right hand, no less. Praise Invictus he had not lost his pinky. He wiggled his remaining digits. They obeyed. His hand no longer felt numb and it did not hurt, but holy shit, did it itch. He rubbed his stumps with the thumb of his left glove. "Warning," the suit's voice said in his ear, "please do not agitate the emergency seal, or temporary grafting epoxy. Seek immediate medical attention. Aurelian-Award apologizes for any inconvenience."

Travis cried out in frustration and rage. It would have been worth it if he could have saved Catherine.

At the foot of the statue was an obsidian table, about two feet high, in the shape of an ankh. Runes adorned every inch of its surface. The round head was shaped like a shallow bowl. The depression was riddled with holes, as if it had been jackhammered with a spike. Each of the three spokes bore nests of vines. Travis stepped back from them. There was a brackish residue along the center of the cross's arms and length. The luminescent wisps floating about Travis's head made something shiny glint at the center of the depression. He picked it up.

It was hard, clear, and irregular, like bubbled glass. It was curved, a shard of a sphere, with a spiderweb crack radiating from its center. A stringy, opaque, green and gold material clung to its surface, dangling a network of what looked like veins and nerves. Travis held it up to the horizon. He could make out the pillar of smoke through it, barely visible through the fog.