Page 71 of Destroyer

She wondered, not for the first time, whether she ought to tell Fen and her friends about the way the stone spoke to her. What harm could the knowledge do? With their minds at work alongside hers, maybe they could come to understand the connection more quickly. But if word got out, if the Children found out… There were too many what-ifs, and too much at stake.

The chatter of voices and footsteps on the stone steps announced the arrival of Archie and Gwyneth, with a tray of coffee and pastries carried between them.

“We missed you two at breakfast,” said Gwyn, her golden hair shining like honey against a blue woolen dress. “We thought you might need sustenance.”

“You’re the heroes we needed this morning,” said Ru, their happy moods contagious. Knowing she’d need the energy, she reached for a sticky cinnamon roll.

Archie set down the tray and poured two steaming mugs of coffee, handing one to Ru with long-fingered hands. She saw in his easy smile, in his interactions with Fen, that any lingering wounds between them had been healed. “What do you say, Ru. Is today the day? Are we finally going to get a look at the thing we’re supposed to be studying?”

“All will be revealed soon,” she said laughingly, “but first, I want to go over my plan of action. I’ve divided our research into three steps, each of which must be completed before we can move to the next. The goals, as we all know, are to identify the nature of the object, to identify the purpose of the object, and to prove that it is a magical object. I’d like to start by focusing on its physical traits. What chemicals is it composed of? Is it a known mineral, for example? If so, where does the mineral come from? And so on. That’s step one.”

The group was listening intently, chewing their breakfast and sipping steaming coffee, nodding along as Ru spoke. She felt her confidence grow as she explained the process, all due to the attention of her friends — the way they hung on her words, even taking notes as she spoke. This was the first large-scale research project she had been in charge of, ever. She had conducted experiments with one or two other academics for various subjects of study, but never once had she had full reign over something like this.

The sense of pride made her skin tingle, and her heart beat quicker. Her voice was almost breathless as she spoke. Fen’s gaze didn’t leave her once, and for a brief moment, Ru almost felt as if they were breathing in sync.

“Remember,” she said when she came to the end of her speech, before any of them could cut in with questions. “The artifact will, by necessity, be moved and lifted, especially during the first phase of our studies. We can’t possibly determine its physical properties otherwise. In all cases, we should take the precaution of using these oven mitts to handle it. If an exception must be made, clear it with me first. Questions?”

Fen, Archie, and Gwyneth all looked at each other, but nobody spoke or raised a hand.

“Nothing?” Ru said, a bit surprised.

“You were very thorough,” said Gwyneth. The others nodded in agreement.

“Well then,” said Ru, “let’s get started.”

Everyone watched with bated breath as Ru turned to unwrap the artifact. No one but she and Fen had seen it, and even though Ru had already described it to them in as much detail as she could, there was no comparison with the object itself. Ru wondered suddenly, if anyone else might react to the artifact as she had, if Archie or Gwyneth would begin to hear it, to feel it, once it was revealed to them.

A pang of jealousy shot through her at the thought. The intimacy of her connection to the stone, the sense that she had been chosen in some way, gave everything — the horrors she’d seen — a sort of meaning.

Ru stopped this line of thinking in its tracks. Of course her friends wouldn’t feel it like she did. Her imagination was running wild, spurred by excitement and nerves.

As she pulled the blanket away from the artifact, she was struck once again by its beauty. It had been so long since she had seen its curves, the depth of its black sheen. It was smaller than she remembered, small enough to fit perfectly in the palm of a hand. Every curve of it, every slight oddity in shape, the way its dark surface caught the light and pulled it in like a deep well… it was perfect.

“Ru?”

She started, the voice jerking her out of her thoughts, and straightened. The artifact was fully uncovered now, lying on the blanket in the middle of its table. “Yes, what?”

She turned to see Archie and Gwyneth exchanging a look. “You were standing there staring at it,” said Gwyneth. “For a long time.”

“How long?” asked Ru, heart racing. Had she done it again? Had she gone comatose for what felt like seconds to her but was really minutes?

“Not long,” said Fen, his tone reassuring despite the tense set of his jaw. “A few seconds.”

“Well, you were acting strangely,” persisted Gwyneth. She tucked a curl behind her ear, her eyes large with worry. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? Studying this, I mean. The things you’ve been through…”

“I’ll be fine,” Ru said, as much to convince her friends as herself. She would just have to be more careful around the artifact from now on, consciously shut it out — or try to. She hadn’t realized how obvious it was, the effect it had on her.

The morning flew by, and Ru’s reaction to the artifact was almost immediately forgotten. Ru assigned specific tasks to each member of her team, which they were to perform at their dedicated workstations. She would bring the artifact around to everyone, allowing them to take a measurement or weigh it or look at it through a magnification lens.

At one point, Archie asked if she could shave part of it off for him to study under the microscope, a request that filled Ru and the artifact with a twinge of horror, but he was sternly dissuaded. The artifact was to remain completely intact, no matter what. They had no way of predicting what would happen if they tried to alter its structure in any way.

Despite several hours of work and discussion, the progress they made that morning was tantamount to nothing. They measured the artifact's weight and ability to refract light, and began a series of trials that would — in theory — reveal its density. But everything had to be done with the aid of Ru’s hands clumsily swathed in oven mitts, which added further time and frustration to tests that should have been completed in a matter of moments.

The arrival of the Children at midday ground everything to a momentary halt.

The three white-robed figures entered the room so quietly that no one noticed they were there until one of them cleared their throat.

At the sound, the research team froze in what they were doing. The artifact safely on its table for the moment, Ru slid off her mitts and set them on her workstation, moving to greet the three Children. She didn’t want them there; she disliked the idea of such oversight. But rudeness wouldn’t help anything.

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