“Power over you?”Tucker asked.
“They wanted it all,” the third said.
“All of what?”
“Everything.”
“Were they scared of you?”Tucker asked.
Just looking at them told me our ancestors were probably petrified of these beasts, andthat’swhy they were trapped here.Apparently, it wasn’t as obvious to Tucker.
“They had no reason to be afraid of us,” the third said.
“Did they know that?”Tucker inquired.
“These things are really talking to us,” Ianto’s voice was filled with awe.
“Shh,” Tucker hushed with a wave of his hand.“Did they know they didn’t have to fear you?”
“Yes,” the third answered; he was the dominant one of the two.“We’d lived in harmony for millennia until they turned on us.”
“And when they turned on you, you killed them,” Ryker stated.
“NO!”
The word rebounded around the cavern as the gargoyles shouted it at us.I cringed as it echoed all around us and hammered at my skull.
“We killed no one,” the third continued.“They killed themselves.”
“How?”Tucker asked.
Only the wind, pattering rain, and that strange hollow noise could be heard in the cavern.As I studied the silent watchers, which were far more than what they seemed, I wondered if they could telecommunicate.
Are they talking to each other and trying to decide how much to reveal?I hadn’t thought the chill encasing me could get any worse.I was wrong.
“Greed,” the third finally answered.
How much had it considered telling us before deciding on that one word?
“The amsirah who killed themselves, are they from that town at the other end of the tunnel?”Ryker asked.“Are you talking about the dead amsirah there?”
There was another stretch of silence before the third answered.“What’s at the other end of the tunnel?”
“There’s a sunken town with vibrantly colored homes trapped beneath the earth.”
“The town was once the center of Tempest and was aboveground,” the third gargoyle said.
“So, what’s it doing underground?”
The gargoyles didn’t speak for a minute, but finally the third replied.“There was another cavern there.We used the tunnel and the exits there to join the amsirah aboveground.”
“There aren’t any exits now,” I said.
“They probably collapsed.”
“If it all collapsed, why isn’t the town buried beneath rubble?”Tucker asked.
“The stone would have protected itself.What remains of the town?”
