Chương 48: Archetype

I tried to take her hand again, putting my fingers beneath hers as though I could keep them from disappearing if I held them properly. The flames burned across my palm. I pulled back before I meant to, and her hand remained where it was, resting against the damaged armour. Less of it was visible now. I rubbed my thumb against the place I had touched her, annoyed with myself for checking whether it hurt when I already had the answer.

"By the nine unburied fathers, lad, must ye test everything with your fingers?"

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

"Aye. Keep the fingers." I reached for the camera beside my knee. Its strap had folded underneath it, and I wasted a moment pulling the loop free before remembering that I had no reason to put it around my neck. Mimir continued speaking while I turned the device over. Something about temple fools and a god who had mistaken his own funeral pyre for a bath.

I missed the end because her shoulder was showing through the opening in her armour, and there was less holding that shoulder together than there had been when I put the camera down. The first picture had captured her. I had checked it. The image remained while the woman in front of me continued disappearing, which was a thoroughly human interpretation of preservation and had been no use whatsoever. Livia had given me an object I still did not understand.

I pressed my thumb against the housing and searched for somewhere to put mana.

"Carlos, what are ye doing?"

"Trying something."

"An answer fit for an inscription on a tomb." Mana Circulation answered before I finished settling my grip. I drew the flow down my arm and held it inside the camera, using the sustained pressure I had learned through Channel Investment. Too much at once could break an ordinary object. I had broken enough ordinary objects to have a reasonable sense of the resistance, but this offered so little that my first adjustment sent considerably more mana through it than I intended. The small mirror inside shifted.

I stopped moving my hand. The image continued turning anyway. A section of the floor bent upward through her reflection, passing through the place where her chest should have been, and my stomach contracted hard enough that I had to close my mouth. I had eaten nothing that would account for the effort my body was making. The camera tilted with my wrist, and I brought it level again.

"Whatever ye have opened, stop looking directly into it."

"I need to aim."

"Then aim with a little less devotion." Her knee was outside the frame. I moved back to include it, scraped my heel against a piece of armour, and nearly dropped the camera when the distorted image rolled in the opposite direction. There was nowhere sensible to rest my eyes. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Even the edge of the housing seemed to shift when I concentrated on it. I tightened the circulation and tried again.

If I reached the top of the tower, I might never stand in front of her again. The thought had been inconvenient enough during the fight that I had put it aside. Now her fingers were thinning while I held a human invention at the wrong angle, and there was no later attempt I could reasonably promise myself. I could lose the ability to regress. I could finish what I had come here to do and have no reason to return. Either way, she would remain on this floor until there was nothing left to remain.

Her sword forms would survive in my hands. I had spent thousands of attempts making certain of that. I knew the placement of her feet better than I knew the streets of places I had lived, and I could repeat movements she had used against me once, centuries ago. That did very little for the woman whose face I was struggling to keep inside the frame. Someone this competent could help me climb. She knew things about the tower that I had never managed to extract from it.

There would be opponents beyond this floor against whom her sword would be useful, and I had resources she could use as well.

'She can serve me.' I adjusted my grip. My thumb kept sliding toward the button.

'I can use her.' The mana moved more quickly through my wrist. I eased the pressure and waited for the image to settle enough that I could distinguish her from the floor behind her.

'She can use me.' I left that thought where it was. It was sufficient to continue. [Medusa's Pocket Mirror: Activating.] [Relic Rank: 1] The letters appeared at the edge of my sight. I read them twice, keeping the camera pointed toward her while Mimir made a sound that stopped halfway into a word.

"Medusa," he said.

"Of course. Give a lad a mirror, and he goes looking for the one woman in the old tales whose admirers needed chisels."

"You recognise it."

"I recognise a reason to mind where ye point it."

"Then tell me how to use it."

"Preferably from somewhere I am not attached to ye." I turned the camera a fraction. Her face passed through the centre of the image, briefly whole, and the distortion caught the edge of her mouth. I had almost nothing left of her expression to work with. She might have been looking at me. Her head had remained raised since I started, but I could no longer tell whether she was holding it there herself. I had carried this thing without properly considering it. Preserving the present had seemed unnecessary.

Whatever happened, I would eventually live through the past again. I could return to a room, repeat a conversation, stand in a place until every detail became irritatingly familiar. An image had seemed a poor substitute for being there. That assumption had left me kneeling in front of her, learning where to put my fingers.

"Keep still," I told her. Mimir lowered his voice.

"She is." I knew that. The movement was in my hands. I settled one elbow against my knee and pressed the button. It resisted beneath my finger, or my finger had become too weak to move it. Mana pulled through my arm in a sustained draw that I could no longer comfortably regulate. My shoulders folded forward. I tried to straighten them and had to use the same effort I would have needed to lift something much heavier than the camera.

[RESOURCES] [Health: 1 / 310] [Mana: 13 / 300] [Stamina: 1 / 100] There was a small mark beside the button. I kept looking at it. Some human manufacturer had put it there for a reason, probably an obvious one, and I could not work out whether it indicated the direction I was supposed to press. My finger was already pressing. The joints in my hand hurt.

"Carlos, release the flow." I bore down with my thumb. The camera clicked, and her flames stopped moving. For a moment I kept feeding mana into it because stopping seemed more dangerous than continuing. The light around her shoulders dimmed. Pale stone formed across the damaged armour, following its edges until the openings had closed, and the hand I had failed to hold became solid against her knee.

"It took," I said, though I could barely get the words out. Something pale covered my fingertips. I tried to lift my thumb off the button. It stayed bent. The colour spread across the back of my hand, and I turned my wrist far enough to see that the change had already reached the other one.

"Drop it, lad."

"I'm trying."

"Carlos, your hands. Open your hands!" The camera remained between them. I could no longer distinguish the weight of it from the weight of my fingers, and when I tried to shift forward, the floor disappeared before I reached it. I opened my eyes in darkness. There was no camera in front of me, no visible floor beneath it, and no Mimir answering when I tried to call him. I attempted to move my lips. Nothing responded. I could still see, which encouraged me to keep trying things for several useless moments.

A figure stood ahead, leaning on a sword. A cape hung from one shoulder. Burning hair lay against its collar, bright enough to show the angle of a lowered head. She looked younger, though I could not have said how much of that came from the way she stood. The sword seemed awkwardly long beside her. The darkness changed before I could approach. She was kneeling now, with the weapon laid at her side. Another blade rested above her shoulder. A mouth moved beyond her, but the words did not reach me.

I had seen humans conduct ceremonies with swords before. They made a great deal of kneeling when awarding someone the right to stand in front of other people. A knight, then. I tried to look at the face of the person declaring it. The scene went away before I managed.