We do. The motes of light floating inside the black stone gather to the surface and to the notch. It starts to shine, and the light flows through the Gem. The Gem turns the light into a spray of colors like a rainbow, but the colors don't stay still. They shift and change places with each other, rising in a cone to play as geometrical shapes on the black ceiling.

"Great, I'm going to have another headache just watching this," Finna says, her words slurring a bit toward the end of the sentence.

That's what it feels like. Looking into the Time Gem is confusing enough even normally, but now the light intensifies the way its facets flicker, like they are changing inside the Gem.

"Beautiful," Rworg says. "…what happens now?" he adds after a moment.

Finna stands in place, gaze locked on the light shooting up to the ceiling.

"Um, Finna?" I ask, poking her with a finger.

Her hand slaps mine, but her gaze doesn't move. Her mouth is slightly open, the slight squinting and frowning the only movement on her face.

I step back a step toward Rworg and Hearn. "You think we should let her focus or try to wake her up?" I ask under my breath.

"Just shut up for a moment," Finna says, without turning around. "I can… feel it. What they did here."

"I can see just lights," Rworg says.

"No, she's right," Hearn says. "There's something in the colors, but I can't make it out. Like a dream."

I smell ozone. It wafts out from the table, distinct in the sterile air of the Monolith. I wonder why there isn't any dust here anywhere.

Finna lifts a hand, like she's trying to touch the things she's seeing. "They tried to tap into the world. Pull out its innards. They wanted it to work so much, and it never did. Nothing was ever enough."

Innards of the world? Can it mean ambronite? That would explain things. The time changing in Jonun. Perhaps the way space doesn't work right, either. Could something be moved by changing the space between where the thing is and the place you want it to come to?

Rworg twitches next to me, like he got zapped by static electricity. There's no static electricity here, just like there's no dust. It's interesting.

"Um," Hearn says. "Is the smell getting pretty thick?"

Finna waves a hand before her nose, eyes staring at the light. "This place has been here for a thousand years, yet it hasn't. It's been empty for so long, until the wizards came. That ancient guy is with them, he tastes like magic, whoa it's like he looked straight at me. I think I really am getting a headache."

Rworg steps forward and grabs Finna, lifting her into his arms. She squeaks and squirms, but he's got her pinned, all limbs bundled up. It's lucky she's so flexible. "Take the Gem," he says.

Did he speak to me or Hearn? The old jonungaard glances at me, so perhaps he meant me. I shrug and step forward. The smell of ozone is getting pretty thick. The table is maybe shooting mana through the jewels placed into the notch to show whatever it's showing. For the mana to be visible with a naked eye, there would need to be a ton of it. "That might explain things," I say, mostly for myself.

"Maybe you should take it?" Hearn says. "Or should I? Does it matter? Why did we come here?"

Rworg stomps out of the room, carrying Finna. She's struggling less than I'd expect her to. Anyway, I grab the Gem from the table. It's warm to the touch. The light cuts out. The motes of light leave the notch and spread to float evenly around the black stone of the table again.

"Well, that was interesting," I say, walking out of the room, meaning every word.

Finna is leaning against the wall of the corridor, the back of her head pressed on the stone. She has her eyes closed, lips pressed into a thin line. I shake my head, clearing it in the fresh air of the corridor. It feels like surfacing from underwater.

"Oh," I say.

"I thought I would need to come fetch you two," Rworg says.

I shrug, crouching down next to Finna. She looks pale. When she breathes out, her breath stinks of ozone. "I hope we were in time. Good thinking, Rworg."

"I did not think, only took action!" Rworg says.

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"I'm going to kill you both," Finna groans. "Why do you have to sound so proud of yourself when saying that?"

I breathe a sigh of relief. She still has her eyes closed, but the scowl on her face tells me she's fine. "Well, this time it was for the best. How are you feeling? What did you see?"

"Let's give her some space, perhaps?" Hearn says, crouching down next to her as well. His knees pop. "But I would like to hear too, it really was interesting."

Finna growls and both of us stand up, taking a step back. Rworg chuckles.

We let her get her bearings for a while. We're in no hurry. If it was decades since the last tremor, I don't think anything depends on minutes while we're down here. Rworg works off the energy he built up by working out. He asks me to sit on his back while he crawls around the corridor on all fours. I try it for a while, but it's difficult to stay on, and Finna glares at us so hard that I hop off and tell Rworg to rest and save his strength for now.

Finna nibbles on a piece of hardtack given to us in Jonun. It's different from the one we got from Tenorsbridge, gray in color and tasting like mushrooms, but equally hard. She doesn't look pleased.

"So, are you ready to tell us something?" Hearn asks.

"Yeah, ok," Finna says. "It's hard to describe. More feelings and atmosphere than anything solid, you know? It was easier when seeing it."

"Does this change the plan?" Rworg asks, glancing at the sledgehammer leaning on the wall.

Finna rubs her temples. "It might. The people in here were always really careful. Making changes with small and slow movements, and I still felt them being anxious."

"These visions really must have been something," Hearn says. "How could you feel them doing something?"

"How should I know?" Finna snaps. "It's a stupid mana dream from the past or the future, maybe. I'm not sure."

"Hmm," Hearn says.

I swallow a piece of the gray hard tack to be able to speak. "Wait, from the future?"

"Yeah, I saw us too," she says.

We all perk up at that. There's a moment of silence, broken by Rworg snapping a piece of hard tack between his fingers. I twitch at the sudden sound.

"We anticipated something. Excited but anxious. Almost where we wanted to be, but there was something horrible behind or before us, maybe both."

"Excellent!" Rworg says. "We will find the path."

"Did you hear the horrible part?" I ask.

Rworg cracks his knuckles, the muscles in his arms looking like they might pop out of his skin.

Finna rolls her eyes, sighs so deep I fear she's going to deflate and faint. "Not only that, but I was in a really bad shape. I felt my head hurt all the way here. But we had a plan. We turned a corner and the vision cut out. Just like that. None of the other glimpses did."

"Huh," I say.

"Hmm," Hearn says.

Rworg doesn't say anything, just sucks at the piece of hard tack.

"Well? Any ideas?" Finna asks after a moment.

Hearn shrugs. I scratch at my hair. What could cut out a vision? Henna told us of two options. Using the runes and finding a small piece of ambronite. "Did you saw us using the runes to clear the mana? Make it less thick?"

"Yeah, it looked pretty dumb. But we didn't do that at the end."

I wonder why not. Maybe we ran out of the runes? I have no idea how long they will last. It probably depends on how much mana there is. "Hmm," I say again.

Finna glares at me, but it's not like I can just put together a plan based on three random pieces of a fever dream.

"Do some pacing if you have to," she says. "I want to take a nap."

She does take a nap. Rworg spends the time knocking the sledgehammer on things, testing it out. It's still frozen. The sound it makes when he taps it on something is a weird, high-pitched snap.

Hearn writes in a journal. He squints and leans close to the pages in the dim light, but writes all the same.

I pace for a moment. This time, it doesn't help. There's too little to pull ideas from. A hint of ozone still trickles out of the library. I stop pacing at the doorway and smell at it. Hmm.

"I'm going to try something," I say, fingers turning around the pouch hanging from my neck. "Rworg, if I don't come out, come fetch me after a moment. But I think I'll be fine."

Rworg taps the hammer on the blade of his sword, holding each in one hand. The sword rings a long, clear note, like a bell. He lifts the sword next to his ear and nods at me, humming the same note.

I shake my head. Desert warrior poets, let him have his fun. I pull out the Time Gem as I walk into the library. The bright lights inside make the Gem sparkle. I close my fist around the Gem to hide it, to stop the reflections from dancing in my eyes.

The Gem fits the notch perfectly, almost like they were made for each other. The light gathers, rising to filter through the Gem. I sniff at the air, the smell of ozone making my head feel light immediately. If mana is needed to activate the Time Gem, why doesn't it now freeze the table, considering the amount of mana?

I flinch away, biting together my teeth and grimacing, flexing my face and neck. Focus! That was fast. Focus. Work it through.

It might be possible the runes didn't work at all. Yet, if she saw us using them, that's unlikely. Especially if it looked dumb. She wouldn't agree to that, unless it really helped. So, If Finna was hurting, and we weren't using the runes, it means we had already used up the runes we had. Maybe we were so close that we didn't need more runes or just had to press forward, but I have a feeling we were going for the ambronite shard. That would solve our problems for real. Never go so far that you don't have enough food to come back, as Lille always said. I wouldn't let us just push into the mana vapor with no plan.

But what are we going to do after that? We get the ambronite or reach some other goal, but what comes after that? I don't know. I can't guess. Perhaps if I push my face even closer, something sparks, and I can intuit some truth underneath it all. Is intuit even a word? If it is, I must have heard it—

Rworg pats me on the shoulder. He reaches over me and grabs the Time Gem from the notch, pushing it into his pocket. "It's warm," he says.

I watch him, bewildered. He wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me onto his shoulder. It's rather uncomfortable, even if his shoulder is so wide. My legs dangle down, and I consider if I should try to hold myself stiff like a plank. Would it make things easier or harder for him?

He deposits me to stand on the corridor and wafts the air off my face with his hand. I blink and cough, the ozone burning the inside of my nose and putting pressure on my eyes from below.

Finna bonks me on the head with her fist. My teeth snap together, but luckily, I pulled my tongue into my mouth just in time.

I guess I deserved that.

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