Sunless Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The gold disc pulled Ezthamic into the Hanging Towers. Great ruins floated upside down above him. Broken bridges swung between them. Golden lightning jumped from stone to stone, lighting his path. The copy was an hour ahead, no more. But Ezthamic still did not know what the man would do when they met. His own face might smile, or it might swing a blade at his throat. A blind meeting could leave one of them dead. He needed to know which of them was real before he stood in reach of his own hands. Halfway up a leaning tower, the golden energy on his skin flared like a signal. A dead thing woke to it. Solarius Ember rose from the rubble, armor fused to its bones, fire burning inside its empty skull. It had hunted anything carrying his energy for centuries. Ezthamic knew it on sight, and it knew him. It swung a chipped dagger at his face. He caught the blow on his forearm. Bone and black plate closed over his fist, and the heavy gauntlet formed, cracks of trapped sunlight glowing along its knuckles. He drove the fist into the skeleton's chest. The blow punched through armor and scattered burning ribs across the floor. The fire in its skull guttered and died. The dead Sunkeeper fell still. The disc tugged him up a sealed stair, into a room with no other door. A warning waited on the floor. A black-and-gold hourglass lay on its side, its sand falling upward, and a shard of stone propped beside it. Scratched into the stone were the words: YOU ARE NOT NUMBER SEVEN. He turned the hourglass in his hands. The copy had left it here, for him, an hour ago. Against the far wall sat a skeleton in armor he knew. The same black plate. The same torn cloak, rotted to threads. The gold disc's needle swung from the bones, to Ezthamic, and back. He knelt and lifted the cloak. Beneath it, a carved stone fragment leaned against the wall. He brushed off the grime. His own symbol stared back, and below it, one word: EZTHAMIC. On the wall above, fresh scratches read: SEVEN ALREADY DIED. He understood then. The copy had come here first. The copy had found this corpse and this mark. The man ahead of him already believed Number Seven was dead and buried in this tower. The man believed Ezthamic did not exist. He set the hourglass in the dead hand. His fear of a blind meeting was gone, replaced by a worse one. The copy would not talk. The copy would not wonder which of them was real. He would see Ezthamic's face and see a dead man walking, a thing that should not breathe. Ezthamic stood and looked north, toward the broken quarter. His own face was waiting there to kill him on sight.