***
Brilla had a charm that quickly began to grow on me. She began to feel familiar to me, like the daughter I'd never had. My eyes kept straying to her reddish hair, and some sweet memory kept trying to stir. I quickly took to feeling protective toward her. Even Fasban seemed taken in by her charm and positive attitude. I still doubted she could help us, but I focused less on my neglected duties and more on making sure she stayed safe.
Gariana clamped her hands over Brilla's ears to protect them from the screeching gears. We made our way through several tunnels filled with various torture devices. The three of us sacrificed our bodies--enduring pain and misery--to defend Brilla, until at last we stood in a chamber filled with jeweled levers, switches, and dials. The jewels were embedded in bronze.
The room was perfectly round, with only a circular tunnel mouth leading in or out. The bronze walls were flawlessly smooth. At the room's center was a cluster of jeweled levers, like a spiny growth of metal and crystal shards.
Brilla gazed at the levers in awe. "Fascinating," she said. "This might be the core of the machine, and I have no doubt this is a control panel. From what I've learned so far, I believe this is one giant timepiece--a clock, if you will." She turned and gazed at me piercingly.
My hand crept into my pocket and I withdrew the jeweled clock. "What do you make of this?"
Her eyes narrowed. "It is beautiful indeed. Extraordinary. May I hold it?"
Reluctantly, I handed her the clock. I hated to part with it for even a moment, but she seemed to know what she was doing. She caressed it and turned away. I gazed at her curly red locks, and my hand twitched. I envisioned striking her from behind and taking back what was rightfully mine. Her soft laughter reached my ears.
"Go on and strike me, Hatch," she said. "You know you want to."
"Who are you really?" I said. "How do you know my name?"
"She has been partially absorbed," said Fasban, pointing at her hand. "So the machine has given her knowledge. That may work to our advantage."
"Can you make sense of this, my dear Brilla?" Gariana asked her.
"Yes, I can," Brilla said. "The real control panel is this tiny clock. It commands the machine. These levers are simply here to give hope, to make fools believe the machine can be controlled from within." She grabbed a lever and yanked it. A rumbling sound arose in the walls. "Nice sound effect, isn't it? It really makes one believe that something just happened."
"I knew it," I said, a cold feeling gripping my heart. "That clock was the key all along. It could have freed us. Isn't that right, Brilla? If that's what your name actually is."
"That is my name," she said, "and yes, it could have. But it would have taken a genius to unlock its secrets, Hatch--which you clearly are not."
Fasban glanced at Gariana in confusion. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hands trembled. "That tiny clock? I can't believe it!"
"I can't either," said Gariana. "Are you sure you know what you're talking about?"
"Indeed," she said, and again she laughed. "Hatch knows the truth."
"I'm beginning to know it," I said. I stepped closer to her. One solid blow to the back of her head, and the clock would be mine again. But the violence was gone from my soul, my mind burned pale and passive from all the suffering, and I found I could not strike her.
"You've grown feeble, Hatch," she said. "What has happened to your manhood?"
"Tell me your full name," I said.
"Brilla Teagan, of course," she said. "But you already knew that."
Fasban and Gariana glanced at me in shock.
I leaned close and sniffed her, and I thought I could faintly smell her perfume. I had never seen the Lady Teagan's face, because her back had been turned to me when I struck her down. Yet I had known instinctively she was beautiful, and a thrill had warmed my belly as I drove my fist into her skull. The power of life and death over a young beauty had been mine to command.
But the thrill was gone now, replaced by dull shame. "Why have you come here, Brilla?" I asked. "What will you do to us?"
Brilla laughed. "I was always here with you. I got sucked into the machine the same moment the three of you did. I hid in the labyrinth, allowing the machine to carry out its purpose and grow stronger. The reason you were never absorbed is because you were the first to enter, and the machine used you for a different purpose. The duties you performed were designed to enhance the machine and give it the ability to mold time. It has grown into a behemoth, its reach crossing the barriers between worlds."
Brilla turned and smiled. Her eyes were round and shining like gold coins. "But the machine is just an extension of this tiny clock that came from the heavens. To destroy this is to destroy the machine. And it's such a fragile device. But who would want to shatter something so precious?"
"Destroy it!" Fasban shouted at her.
"Destroy it!" Gariana echoed.
Brilla grinned. "I think not. I was already bonding with the machine before you struck me down, Hatch. I am a goddess here. The rest of you are no longer needed. You will now be absorbed."
With a sneer, she turned her back to me. "You could end this, Hatch. Except that I know you really can't. Not anymore. It's so simple. All you have to do is--"
I drove my fist against her head, and she collapsed to the floor. I stood over her, my hands shaking. The blow had been a stout one, and Brilla was out cold.
"She didn't believe I had it in me," I said. "And neither did I."
The others stared in disbelief.
"She didn't believe," I said, lifting the clock. "She was so confident that...that the colors had all been burned away. But a seed of aggression lingered. It always does."
"All those years she waited," said Gariana, kneeling and running her fingers through Brilla's hair. "Her greatest moment was at hand, and she dared to turn her back on you. It must have been a burning need within her--to prove that you had become too weak to do what you did so long ago."
"I could not have done it," said Fasban, bowing his head.
"Yes, you could have," I said. "You just don't realize it, and neither did she." I hurled the clock against the wall and everything went dark.