by S. R. Witt
What did it mean?
Indira grabbed my arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Bastion pried her hand off me. “Leave him be.”
The elf snarled, and blue fire erupted around her hands.
That was it.
Fire. It had to be fire.
I raced to the first lantern and ripped it out of its alcove. Something about it bothered me. There was no dust on it, and the flue was partly unscrewed from its base. What the hell?
I finished unscrewing the top and splashed the oil onto the door. The iridescent fluid flowed into the fine lines etched into the wall’s surface. The carving drew the oil in and channeled it through a complex, contorted pattern across the wall.
“Let me go!” Indira shouted at my brother. The fire around her fingertips rose inches into the air.
“Come here,” I snapped, grabbing Indira’s other hand. Before she could stop me, I shoved her burning fingers into the oil.
She killed the spell, but not before I got what I wanted. The oil ignited, and threads of fire raced across the wall’s surface. The carvings holding the oil flared brightly, and a resounding crack echoed through the tunnel.
We all froze and stared at the wall. The flames burning in the pattern were much brighter than the oil could account for.
The fire burned through a series of concentric rings and intersecting lines. One by one, arcs of light rose from the surface of the wall and rotated around one another. Their orbits revealed a thin seam in the stone, and light poured from it like the rising sun.
The stone wall cracked from floor to ceiling, and its halves swung toward us.
“Holy shit,” Indira whispered, eyes wide with shock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The parting stone barrier revealed a high-ceilinged room with copper walls. The channel in the floor ran to the chamber’s center where it circled around an enormous black throne.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, echoing Indira’s exclamation. “Hold up, just a second. I want to be sure there’s nothing dangerous here.”
And, I wanted a chance to look at the throne up close before the rest of them started crowding around it.
My Thief’s Eyes showed me no traps, which made sense. Once someone got this far, the builders must have assumed they were supposed to be here. Accidentally killing the throne’s owner with a poorly placed trap would’ve been in bad form.
The throne itself was far too large for a human. It was as wide as I was tall and I could only touch the seat’s front edge by standing on tiptoes and stretching my arms above my head. The whole thing must’ve been 30 feet tall.
It was carved from a single slab of flawless obsidian, and the gleaming black glass glowed with a throbbing inner light. It was warm to the touch, like a living thing.
“Who built this?” Indira whispered. All the bluster and anger had leaked out of her when she was faced with the reality of the Burning Throne. “Who could’ve done this?”
“They’re all dead now.” It seemed hard to believe, looking at what they’d created, that they were all gone.
Indira shivered and hugged herself. “Who?”
Part of me wanted to keep her in suspense. Two minutes before, she’d been all dire threats and bitchy attitude.
But a bigger part of me wanted her on my side. I’d seen what she could do. Whatever came next, I’d be a lot happier working with her than having her as an enemy. “The dragons. They built this. Before they all died.”
The intricate carvings on the wall outside were reflected by similar etchings in the copper plates on the walls surrounding the Burning Throne. The designs were dizzying in their complexity, but they all converged on the Throne. The etchings flowed down to merge into thick seams in the floor, which radiated around the Throne at regular intervals. It took me a moment to make sense of it all, but once the pattern emerged, it was obvious.
The green channel brought power to the throne from the outside world. It must have marked the location of the lines of force the Grandfather had told me about.
The Throne sent that power racing through all of the designs in this room, powering the magic they held in place. It was easy to imagine what it would look like when it was up and running, a blazing symbol of power that claimed Dominion over Frosthold and its surroundings.
This wasn’t meant for mankind. This was meant for grander creatures, beings of primal power and unstoppable might.
This was meant for creatures who wouldn’t fuck everything up if someone handed them the keys to the family car.
And the lines were dark. The network was dead, which explained why the nightspawn were surging out of their territories and looking to annex our frosty little corner of hell. And if they took over Frosthold, if they stole its Dominion and re-activated the Dragon Web, then they would have an unassailable fortress as a base from which to wage their war against the rest of us.
“What’s this?” Mercy called from the far side of the room.
I joined her near the wall opposite the entry and tried to keep my eyes from popping out of their sockets when I saw what she held.
“Sonofabitch.” We’d come all this way, I’d figured out how to open the wall, Indira was finally coming around, and none of it mattered.
Mercy held up a glossy black feather and sniffed at it. “This belong to anyone you know?”
“The monsters were here. They beat us.”
Bastion cursed, and Indira grumbled. When I finally caught up with her, I was going to ring Corvus’ neck with my bare hands.
Mercy pointed to a blank stone spot on the wall. “Looks like they took something, too.”
I didn’t need this. How had she gotten so far ahead of us? She didn’t have a copy of the Burning Codex, did she?
It didn’t make any sense.
“Why would she pry off one of the copper plates?” Indira asked. “And why just one?”
It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer. The engraved copper plates were all different, as far as I could see, and they all had a dizzying number of indentations on their surfaces. There were like circuit diagrams, or maybe road maps.
“Oh,” I said, realizing what had happened.
All eyes were on me, it took me a few moments to put my thoughts in order.
These carvings weren’t just carvings. The Throne wasn’t just the throne. Power flowed into the throne, and then into the designs worked into the faces of the copper plates. The carvings weren’t just arcane symbols, they were a map of the Dragon Web. They traced the rivers of mana flowing from one throne to the next and showed how all the Dominions were tied together.
“It’s a map, the piece they stole is part of a map.” I reached out to touch the naked revealed by the missing copper plate. It was soft limestone, like the stone in the tunnel outside. They’d polished it smooth before installing the thin copper sheets. We might not be entirely screwed.
“I need paper.” I looked at Indira. If anyone was going to have a sheet of paper, it was her. Magi always carried crap like that so they could scribble down magic spells or whatever it was they needed to work their mojo. “And some charcoal, or a pencil, or something.”
The elf stared at me quizzically but didn’t question my request. It was a refreshing change of pace. Indira rooted around in the myriad pouches dangling from her wide belt and came up with what I needed.
I smoothed this sheet of paper into the rectangular gap in the copper plates and pressed it flat against the limestone. I held my breath and gently scrubbed the stick of charcoal across the paper.
The paper turned black under my scrubbing, starting at the upper left-hand corner. It wasn’t working. My breath lodged in my throat, and I kept at it. This had to work. It was our only chance to catch the monsters.
The first line appeared a third of the way through my scribbling. Then more lines appeared, pale and white against the dark background. They’d engraved the copper plates after they were installed on the walls of the Burning Throne room.
The tools they’d used had pressed the designs into the limestone. It wasn’t clear to the eye, but rubbing charcoal over the paper made them stand out in clear, white lines against the black.
I finished and carefully removed the paper from the wall. I blew the black dust off it to avoid smudging the lines and showed the rest of the group my handiwork. “Voila.”
The expected applause never materialized. Finally, Bastion cleared his throat and asked, “That looks cool, and all, but what are we seeing?”
Philistines. Ingrates.
I took a good long look at what I’d created and prepared to illustrate just how awesome it was. It was a map. Couldn’t they see that? It was so obvious…
All right. It wasn’t obvious. It didn’t even look like a map. It was a collection of lines and circles and dots, and I honestly had no idea what we were going to do with it.
But I wasn’t going to let them know that. “It’s a map. We’re going to use it to save the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Indira and I parted ways not long after she tricked me into the Life Oath. We made a valiant effort to try figuring out the map, but after her subterfuge, we both felt awkward and made our excuses to call it quits. She offered me another sheet of paper to keep the map from smudging, and I rolled them together and tucked them away into my inventory.
I was glad we weren’t fighting anymore, but this shift in the dynamics of our relationship was troubling. I had no idea how, or even if, I was going to let Bastion in on what happened.
Not only did I feel like a chump for letting a magus pull a fast one on me, but I’d given Indira the right to choose the best treasure to keep for herself.
I’m an idiot.
Indira logged out, and I followed her lead. Spending so much time in-Game left me feeling strung out and confused. I scrubbed my neck clean, checked on my mother, and made myself a peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich to pass the time while I waited for Karl to rejoin the land of the living.
I hoped he’d have some good news. Maybe he and Mercy had figured out where to get a map that made more sense than the scrawled mess I’d hacked together.
The sandwich was as gross as ever, but it filled my belly. With mealtime over, I checked on my mom again. The machine chugged along with quiet efficiency, and the status lights on the tablet above her headboard glowed a reassuring green. The new meds would keep her out cold until her body adjusted to them. Her body and mind needed rest from their struggles to survive.
I hated to admit it, but mom’s time was running out. Unless there was some breakthrough in treatment, or we came up with a lot more money to upgrade her support system, we were losing her.
The chair next to her bed looked so inviting I couldn’t help but curl up in it. I couldn’t tell Karl how I really felt, couldn’t bring myself to confess how confused and afraid I was, how much the game was changing me, changing us. The only person I could talk to, whether she could hear me or not, was my mother.
“I’m so tired, mom.” It was a weak and stupid thing to say to someone fighting for her life every minute of every day. What did I know about tired?
But it wasn’t any less true for me than it was for her. I was burning out. When I wasn’t scrambling for money in-Game, I was trying to stay alive. Sure, it was a game, but the stakes were very real for Karl and me. Killing our characters would kill our livelihoods, and that would kill our mom. The stress of survival wore on me in-Game and back in the World.
In a way, I was glad the Hoaldites were pissed at me. The fact that they knew I’d stolen from them gave me a reason to avoid the temple. It didn’t remove the danger of the blackmail they were holding over my head, but it tempered the threat. If they were offering a huge reward, rather than just telling the guard what I’d done and leaving it up to the authorities to haul me in, it meant the Hoaldites wanted to catch me for their own nefarious purposes.
They weren’t going to turn me in as a thief, at least not yet.
“Can you get me a drink?” My mother asked, surprising me. She tried to smile, but a flash of pain twisted her expression into a grimace.
I poured some water from the pitcher on her nightstand into her sippy cup. She reached for the spillproof cup with both shaking hands, scowling at me when I tried to lift the drink to her mouth. She wanted to do it for herself.
“Okay, mom,” I said, and helped her grip the cup.
Watching her struggle to take a drink while her traitorous hands quivered and jerked made my heart ache. Somewhere along the line, she’d gone from being the person who took care of me to someone who relied on me to care for her.
I didn’t mind, because how could I? She’d done so much for me, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. But it bothered me.
It bothered me to see her robbed of the strength she’d been so proud of when we were growing up.
It bothered me to see her dependent on anyone. Even me.
“Need anything else?” I asked.
She eased the cup back onto the nightstand and stretched her hand out toward me. I took it and massaged her swollen knuckles through the paper-thin skin covering them. “To see you smile, baby.”
Growing up, I’d hated when she called me baby. Now it felt comfortable, like an old shoe, or a favorite hat that had become slick and shiny from wearing it too much. I smiled for her, but I knew it was weak.
“What’s the problem?” She eased herself up onto her pillows and looked almost like her old self for a moment. “Karl picking on you?”
My brother and I had always fought, that was nothing new. But our arguments now were about things that mattered, and even simple disagreements held more weight. Still, I felt closer to Karl now than I had for as long as I could remember. We had a common goal, we were working together toward something bigger than ourselves.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like we were brothers.
I’d find out later Karl didn’t feel quite the same.
“No,” I said. “I’m just worn out. Too much work.”
She snorted and waved her free hand dismissively. “Work? You mean that game you and Karl play?”
My mother had never quite recovered from Karl’s disgraced exit from the pro gaming circuit. Our family had thrived while he was bringing in those fat prize checks, but no one had planned for the day when they’d stop coming.
After Karl’s troubles, when he couldn’t find a team to take him on, the money had dried up. Karl spent his days trying to sharpen his skills enough to find a tournament slot.
But that never happened, and everything fell apart.
My father’s drinking, never really under control, spiraled into a black tornado that threatened to suck us all into its toxic atmosphere.
My mother worked harder, longer hours, and left Karl and me alone for what felt like weeks at a time.
She’d never trusted gaming after that.
“It’s the only way to pay the bills, mom.”
“My bills, you mean.”
The pain in her voice was like acid poured into my eyes. “That’s not what I said, mom.”
Another spasm racked her thin frame and left her wrung out and limp when it passed. She couldn’t even raise her head to look at me when she spoke. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
That kind of talk filled me with a blind panic. When people said things like that, they were admitting the end of the rope was close.
“Don’t talk like that. We’ll beat this.”
“I’m tired, too. That last time, I thought…”
I’d figured she was gone, too. Holding her against my chest on the subway, I’d watched every breath and prayed it wouldn’t be her last. The erratic, rapid rattle of her heart was the rhythm of terror, and when it ended, I knew nothing would ever be the same. “No, you can’t go. We still need you.”
Even like this, even with her life stretched out thin and threadbare behind her, my mother was the glue that held the wreckage of our family together. I couldn’t let her
go. I needed her too much.
A single tear crawled from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. I brushed it away from her face before it could drip into her ear. Even something as minor as a single tear could lead to an ear infection. And because of all the other medicines she was on, she couldn’t take antibiotics. Something stupid, an infection anyone else would shrug off, would be enough to kill my mother.
“Don’t cry, mom. Please don’t cry.”
We sat in silence until her eyes fluttered and the weight of her pain dragged my mom down into sleep.
I slipped off to dream not long after.
When Karl woke me up, my neck ached from sleeping in the chair, and my legs were dead asleep. His eyes were wide and bright, a smile plastered across his face.
“We found it,” he whispered, careful not to wake our mother. “We found the map.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The four of us stood across the street from our target and watched Frosthold’s foot traffic stream past. Mercy huddled against Indira to ward off the worst of the winter’s chill. Bastion leaned back against the wall of a tailor’s shop, arms crossed over his chest, a wry smile tweaking the corners of his lips.
“This plan is such bullshit, you guys,” I said from the dark shadows behind them all.
The building wasn’t large, just 15 feet or so on a side, pressed right up against the wall surrounding Frosthold near the East gate. There was only one door I could see, a simple wooden barrier on the left side of the wall facing us. It was two stories tall, with widely spaced windows on the second floor.
Oh, did I mention it was also a guardhouse?
No? No one mentioned that to me until we got there, either.
Bastion said, “This'll be a piece of cake for someone with your skills. It’s right where I saw it the last time I was here, on the ground floor next to the front door.”
He’d remembered the map from his visit to see the guard captain when he hadn’t received the reward we so justly deserved for dealing with the goblin invasion. Stealing the map seemed like a well-deserved bit of revenge.
