I held tight, and he took me with him.
We appeared in a dark, windowless room, and Obliteration immediately turned off his heat. He did it so quickly, it had to be something he’d trained himself to do by reflex. Wherever we were, he couldn’t destroy this place. I let go but grabbed his glasses, ripping them free as I fell backward.
Obliteration cursed, his normally calm demeanor breaking down in his outrage at being tricked. I backed away, throwing myself against the wall of the dark room. I couldn’t make out much, though the pain of the burns he’d given me made it difficult to pay attention to anything else. I’d dropped the gun, but gripped the spectacles tightly with my other hand.
He pulled his sword from beneath his trench coat and looked toward me. Sparks! He could obviously see well enough without the glasses to find me.
“All you have done,” he said, walking toward me, “is box yourself in with me.”
“What nightmares do you have, Obliteration?” I asked, slumped against the wall. Prof’s healing powers were working very, very slowly now. Gradually the feeling in my hands was returning, first as a tingling, then as sharp pinpricks. I gasped and blinked against the pain.
Obliteration had stopped advancing on me. He lowered his sword, the tip touching the floor. “And how,” he said, “do you know of my nightmares?”
“All Epics have them,” I said. I was far from certain about this, but what did I have to lose? “Your fears drive you, Obliteration. And they reveal your weakness.”
“I dream of it because it will someday kill me,” he said softly.
“Or is it your weakness because you dream of it?” I asked. “Newton probably feared being good enough because of her family’s expectations. Sourcefield feared the stories of cults, and the poison her grandmother had tried to give her. Both had nightmares.”
“And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream,” Obliteration whispered. “And I said, Here am I.… So that is the answer.” He threw his head back and laughed.
The pain in my hands only seemed to be getting worse. I let out a whimper despite myself. I was basically an invalid.
Obliteration rushed to me, kneeling, taking me by the shoulders—which were now bare, and burned. Pain flared and I cried out.
“Thank you,” Obliteration whispered. “For the secret. Give my … regards to Regalia.”
He let go, bowed his head to me, and exploded into a flash of light and ceramic.
I blinked, then curled up on the floor and trembled. Sparks! Earlier the healing had happened so quickly that it had felt refreshing, like a cool breeze. Now it happened at the speed of a drop of rain rolling down a cold pane of glass.
It seemed like an eternity that I sat there suffering the pain, but it was probably only three or four minutes. Eventually the agony subsided and, groaning, I climbed to my feet. I flexed my fingers and squeezed them into fists. My hands worked, though my skin stung as if I had a bad sunburn. That didn’t seem to be going away. The blessing that Prof had given me was no more.
I stepped forward and kicked something with my foot. Obliteration’s sword. I picked it up, but all I found of Megan’s gun was a melted piece of slag.
She was going to kill me for that.
Well, Obliteration obviously had enough control over his powers to not melt objects he preferred to keep intact. I clutched the sword as I felt my way through the small dark room to a door. I opened it; beyond was a narrow wooden stairway, framed by banisters on both walls. From what light there was I could see that I’d been in some kind of small supply room. My clothes had basically been vaporized. All I had left was Abraham’s pendant, which still hung around my neck, one side of the chain melted. I pulled it off, worried that the melted chain would snap.
I found a length of cloth—it looked like it could have once been curtains—and wrapped it around myself. Then, holding the sword in one hand, pendant in the other, I climbed the stairs slowly, step after step. As I ascended the light grew brighter, and I began to make out odd decorations on the walls.
… Posters?
Yes, posters. Old ones, from the decades before Calamity. Bright, vibrant colors, women in ruffled skirts, sweaters that exposed a shoulder. Neon on black. The posters had faded over time, but I could see they’d been hung meticulously back in the day. I stopped beside one in that silent stairwell. It showed a pair of hands holding a glowing fruit, a band’s name emblazoned at the bottom.
Where was I?