“I don’t know!” Mercury stared at him. “You’re the one who wanted to go.”
Kami shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Well, I can’t do it by myself. I have to have a direction. There has to be a person leading. You have to have done it. I can’t do it! I’m just the?—”
He sat down with a thump, his legs giving out. It was damp and moldy and icky and he didn’t want to be here.
“Well, let’s go home.”
“Fine, but you’re going to have to give me a minute. This is hard.”
Kami started pacing. “Okay. Okay, right. You’re right. You’re totally right. It’s hard, okay. Where the fuck are we, and why the fuck did we get here? Have you ever seen this place?”
Mercury looked around, and then he thought he was going to be sick. “I have. I have seen this place. This is the place that Biram brought me. Why did you bring me here?”
Kami shook his head. “I saw a stone, and I was coming to tell you that we needed to go find the stone. That’s all.”
It didn’t make any sense. “One way or the other, it’s gonna take a minute for me to be able to do it again, to go home, so find the stone. If that’s why we’re here, we should get it, but hurry up. I don’t like it here, and it’s scary.”
Kami snorted, dismissing him. “It’s just an old place.”
“No.” Mercury shook his head.
“It is. It’s just an old, dead, deserted place.”
“It’s not deserted.” Mercury knew that like he knew his own name. He could sense it, things moving toward them.
Kami glanced around, shoulders hunching up around his ears. “What do you mean it’s not deserted?”
“I can hear things, Kami. Just under the noise level of this goosh.” He tried not to scratch his arms like he did when he was nervous. It wouldn’t do him any good, and it might get ick into his scratches.
“What the hell is goosh?”
Mercury scowled up at Kami, waving a hand in the air. “This goo. All of this nasty icky goo around us, the mold and the dirt and the wetness and the moss.”
“And it’s making noise?” Kami kicked at a ball of moss on the ground, and it squished.
“Yes, can you not hear the stripping water and the slithering sounds?”
Kami rubbed his own arms as if we’re to go off a chill. “I’m trying really hard not to. Will you get up?” He held down a hand to Mercury. “You can help me find the stone while conserving your magical energy at the same time.”
“Fine.” He grabbed Kami’s hand and stood because he didn’t really want to be in the goosh , as he called it. He glanced around. “What does this stone look like? Is it cut? Is it natural?”
“It’s a cut stone. It’s in a box. At least that’s what the song is saying.”
Mercury nodded. “So that means it’s worth something to somebody or it was. It’s going to be inside one of the buildings.”
Kami squinted at the tall keep buildings in front of them, tilting his head and appearing doubtful. “Do you think it’s actually structurally sound in there?”
All he could do was shrug. “I mean, it looks like it’s made of stone. I’m sure there’s some infrastructure that’s made of woodand it might be rotting, but could we not think about that and just go find this rock?”
Of course. Kami kept a hold of his hand though, gripping it tightly. “Can you hear Talon?”
“No.” No, he couldn’t hear his braaken and he hated that. That meant they were too far away. The mental communication game was not precise, necessarily, and their bond was still relatively new. “You can’t hear Reno?”
“I thought I heard him roar not too long ago. But he wasn’t roaring here, he was roaring there. Does that make sense?”
“Too much sense,” he muttered. “Come on, let’s find that stone.”
