Chapter 12: Chapter 12 – CONTROL

The Gargoyle flew past me in a flash, putting its full weight into the second spider to stop its approach. I was startled enough to move the flashlight and the first spider instantly darted forward. I caught it again with my beam.

“You could have avoided this mess by running away as soon as you realized you were here,” Huang snapped at me, apparently still having the energy to tell me off. “Why did you put me in this situation? If you weren’t here, I could probably escape.”

I did hear the unspoken words, which was that he wasn’t about to abandon me to the spiders alone. Still, this was far from an ideal situation. “Huang,” I said, my voice going calm again, “I was betting on the fact that you can do the shiny thing. I’m, like, ninety percent sure that you can do it.”

“What a vote of confidence,” he said derisively, through the flurry of a fight happening behind me.  “I promise you, I am trying.”

“In my dream,” I said, the circle of light on the first spider’s face slowly burning into my vision, “The being that talked to me said you didn’t understand that form, that you didn’t know how to use it.”

“That seems increasingly clear!”

“Listen, just… try and focus. You figured out how to fly that thing somehow, didn’t you?”

“I instinctively knew how to fly,” Huang said, then let out a huff of air when the spider’s leg knocked heavily into his shoulder.

“So, don’t you instinctively know how to shine?” I demanded. The second spider was quickly beginning to overtake Huang; he was giving ground to avoid being crushed.

“If I had a moment to think—”

“There’s no time for thinking, dumbass! Just do it!” I commanded.

A bright light burst behind me, washing everything in the tunnel in stark white. The spiders staggered back.

The bright light faded and I watched Huang with my sense as he suddenly drew himself up and flared his wings out, causing an even brighter light to fill the space. The spiders instantly retreated, digging up into the ceiling and out of sensing range.

“Are you serious, all you needed was for me to yell at you!?” I demanded, dropping the flashlight to my side in relief. The earth made a few settling noises above us, and then was silent.

“Shut up! It just didn’t click until then!” Huang limped back toward me, glow returned to its normal level. “I had to let go and stop trying to make it happen, if that makes sense… You realize what a close call that was, right?”

“Please, let’s just go to the Waterfront before something worse happens,” I pleaded. Huang was quick to agree.

We resumed our previous course and followed the pipes in the ceiling, keeping careful watch above us in case the spiders gave us another shot. But we’d either hurt them pretty severely or they were too scared to try again, because we reached the next area without a problem.

The next area was a wide hallway with its ceiling lined with pipes of different sizes. The air was dense and humid. The hall soon opened up even wider into a circular room, which extended upward into a tall cylinder ringed with stairs. The stairs had no guardrail on the inside edge, which seemed very unsafe, and the walls of the room were made of moisture-streaked concrete.

Huang stood up on his back legs and flared his wings, briefly covering the whole area in light. With that, we could just barely see a landing at the very top, a few lumpy shapes beyond.

“Well. Catch a ride?” Huang asked.

I groaned. In an ideal world, I’d never need to have Huang carry me again, but I was even less fond of the idea of climbing those awful stairs. “Okay, but be careful. We don’t know what’s up there.”

Like he had at the tower, Huang scooped me up in his front talons, but this time he had a rougher take-off given the enclosed space. He jumped to a dizzying height and pumped his wings a few times, basically running vertically up the wall with his back legs. The concrete wall flashed past me, seemingly only a few feet away, and I prayed to God he wasn’t about to drop me.

But Huang knew what he was doing, or else the Gargoyle’s instincts told him what to do. It only took a few moments to reach the top of the cylinder and climb over its edge, where he deposited me in a small room.

The ceiling was low enough that the Gargoyle wouldn’t be able to stand up on its hind legs. It looked like the inside of an empty shed. The lumpy shapes I’d spotted from way down below were hunks of metal that stood around the circular opening into the cylinder below.

“Alright, let’s get out of here,” I said once I caught my breath, seeing that there was a wide door ahead. Huang hesitated.

“We don’t really know what’s out there, so stay on guard. The Gargoyle’s damaged. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do if we run into trouble.”

“You can continue, though?” I asked.

“It’s not like I have much choice… if you don’t move anywhere at all, the Grey City can’t send you home,” Huang pointed out. “But yes, I should be fine, if we don’t run into too many demons.”

“You’ve been injured as the Gargoyle before, right?” I asked as I moved toward the exit.

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“Yeah, when I was confused and stupid,” Huang said. “I would usually go to the Sanctuary to recover. I’m not completely sure, but I think the Gargoyle heals faster in there.”

It didn’t feel good pressing forward when he was injured, but as I ran over the options, I realized there wasn’t much else to do. Go back into the Underground and walk around with the spiders until we (maybe) emerge back in Toronto? No thanks.

We emerged onto an island of black stone and soil. There was nothing else on it aside from the lopsided building we’d exited from. Still, dark water stretched in all directions, overlaid by a thick fog.

I stretched out my spatial sense as far as it would go and sensed nothing more than what I saw. Huang, too, seemed to be scanning the area.

“I don’t sense anything nearby,” he reported. “You should check out the water.”

I hesitantly moved toward the shore. The water was still, appearing inky and thick, but when I plunged a hand in, it seemed like a normal lake. There was a strange sensation of knowing the water was freezing cold, but not being made uncomfortable by it.

The bell-tone I’d sensed before did not reveal itself. I stretched my sense into the deep, scanning the endless expanse for anything to give me a clue. The lake was very, very deep; I could somehow tell by the quality of the water. Though the surface was still, currents ran far beneath it, and as soon as I noticed them, I was utterly fascinated.

It’s hard to explain, but it was like some knowledge I’d forgotten years ago suddenly appeared in my brain. These currents—I knew what they were, somehow, how they flowed and interacted. They followed a complex set of rules I didn’t know, but I could instinctually understand them anyway.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by all the data that was flowing to me through my sense. The speed, temperature, direction, intensity, size, acidity, and a hundred other measurements that I didn’t even understand. The currents each had a unique presence, almost a personality, and somehow they were fundamental to the Grey City, like its veins. They didn’t just move through space, but through… other planes, forming a connective tissue that didn’t make any sense to my logical brain.

They were just like the tubes we’d discovered on the map of the Grey City, but the flecks that flowed between them were actually an incredible amount of data.

“Uh, Camilo?” The Gargoyle jostled me rather rudely.

I pointed out over the water. “We need to go that way.”

“You can sense the tone?” Huang asked.

“Kind of. It’s… hard to explain. There are these currents under the water…” I was briefly absorbed by all the information I’d received from scanning them and had to pull myself out of it. “I just know it’s that way.”

“Okay. Seeing as there’s no boat around…” The Gargoyle hesitantly waded into the water and started to paddle, folding its wings up high on its back like a swan. “Not so bad. Climb on?”

“You gonna be able to carry me?” I asked, frowning.

“No idea, honestly,” Huang replied. I sighed, then hopped onto the Gargoyle’s back, landing around the shoulder blades.

I wobbled, almost losing my balance, but managed to catch myself and lower into a seated position, legs crossed. The water lapped almost to my knees, but the Gargoyle was able to stay afloat, paddling in the direction I’d pointed.

I kept my sense extended, following the currents. I knew that, if we stayed our current course, we would arrive at the area of the Waterfront where I’d sensed the bell-tone, almost like following a scent. Like the rest of the Grey City, this place didn’t have an actual, physical layout. The currents, somehow, were the key to navigation.

It barely seemed to take any time at all to near the opposite side of the shore. Though I could not yet sense the tone itself, the currents told me that we were getting close. “Huang. Turn down the lights, we’re almost there.”

The Gargoyle obeyed, its ambient glow reducing to the slightest iridescence. We moved forward silently except for the quiet splashing of the water. I leaned forward, searching.

It was foggy. In the far distance, there were looming shapes that could have been buildings. That meant we were getting pretty close to the shore and the demons that guarded its edge. I should have been nervous, but my attention was fully absorbed by the water and what it was telling me. It was calling to me, and this time, I would have to let myself answer.

“Okay,” Huang spoke up, “once you do this, you’re going to feel disoriented. It’s a strange sensation. But the other form has instincts to protect its life and move around, so it’s not like you’ll be helpless. It will feel natural.”

I took a few deep breaths. I could now sense the bell-tone at the edge of my range, and soon we would be almost on top of it. It was like a pure, steady note of music, ringing faintly. “Okay. Got it.”

“After you’ve transformed, meet back up with me and we’ll retreat the way we came. I doubt even both of us together can take out all the demons on the shore.”

“U-understood,” I said. It was happening so fast, I only had a few seconds to think about something I should have considered before: what was this going to do to me, as a human being?

“Don’t think about it, just go,” Huang said. “You do this now or we die in here later, understand?”

I did, so I wordlessly slipped off the dragon’s back and into the cold water. What I was seeking was not here at the surface, it was down below.

I wasn’t exactly a frequent swimmer, but that didn’t matter in the Grey City. I felt no fear at all of the dark, cold expanse beneath me; it had started to feel natural, even comforting. I took a deep breath and dove, closing my eyes and letting my sense show me the way.

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