City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [106]
The jagged lines were painted in startlingly bright pigments, yellow and red, the workings of a culture tens of thousands of years old. The notion was absurd, because the writing seemed so fresh.
‘Vectors,’ Rika whispered. ‘Geometric patterns, algebra. Integration ... And yet the graffiti scribbled around it all seem like ...’
‘The scrawls of madmen,’ Randur mumbled, studying the ragged scripts. Vaguely, one set of symbols spelled out:
To Randur it resembled ‘HELP US’ and he was hardly surprised they had gone mad because of all the mathematics ...
‘So is this what eventually happened to that great civilization, then?’ Eir suggested. ‘I always thought it was crop failure that wiped them out. Surely they couldn’t just simply vanish underground while chasing treasure.’
There was a noise nearby, an inhalation of breath, and Randur peered towards the dark exits beyond. Sets of orbs began faintly glowing blue, two, four, then an almost exponential rate of appearance.
‘They won’t come at us - not with that torch.’ Randur glanced to Rika, as if to ask How long will it last?
‘I’ve plenty of sulphur and lime, and matches if it runs out,’ she said. ‘We’re quite safe.’
They returned their gaze to the hoard and the script, independently investigating their discoveries. For some time they patrolled the area to investigate.
There was a weird and distant howl, like a fractured incantation. The group glanced at each other and readied themselves for a fight, but nothing followed. A tension persisted in the air, though, as if someone had triggered a relic. Sounds began to act abnormally, voices hanging disturbingly in the gloom. Reverberations of their footsteps became suddenly muted.
Then there was the clink-clink-clink of metal.
Coins skimmed back and forth across the floor, rolling over each other, rupturing the surface of the water. Of their own accord, the countless metallic discs began to aggregate and spool, to form a figure.
They massed, stacked and banked up, forming a torso and arms and legs, which then pushed themselves up from the mirror-pool. Resting on top of a vague metal head was a semi-shattered rust-crown.
A coin golem?
The four scrambled back up the stairway as the metal entity strode out of the pool, its legs and feet buckling rustily as it gained control of its own movements. Randur hovered at the rear, now feeling utterly useless, because it would take much more than a couple of sword strokes to bring this bastard down. Stretching upwards, the thing’s head nearly scraped the roof of the cavern, sending individual discs slipping away from it like drops of water.
It began to lumber after them, vast and awkward, and making a hell of a racket.
They ran.
‘Stick together and aim for narrow passageways!’ Randur shouted. ‘I doubt it can fit through many of them.’
‘Nor do I,’ Munio called back.
Light from the torch dipped as they entered pockets of stale air, retracing their route. The occasional enforced darkness made for an unlikely escape. The path narrowed, opened up again. Randur desperately wanted to pause to check on the state of the golem following them. He could still hear the rattle of metal against stone as its body clipped the outcrops of rock, spilling metal-flesh each time. It was in pursuit, but what he wanted to see was how much of it was left.
The air became fresher and colder as the outside world beckoned them again.
A burst of the glade, the stars above, the glow of snow – and they bundled out, breathlessly slipping and sliding down the slope. Behind them, the coin golem was nowhere to be seen.
Randur felt his heart slapping inside him, and he crouched on his hands and knees until he regained his composure.
‘Next time,’ Munio growled, ‘don’t let’s go getting any stupid ideas about following things into dark places, right?’
‘We had to rescue Eir,’ Randur reminded him. ‘Anyway,