by C. M. Hayden
“More or less,” Fenn said, looking up at the iron gate. It towered over them like some great monolith. “How the hell are we supposed to get past that?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Taro said. “There aren’t any obvious latches or switches.”
Lokír walked up to the gate, and tapped the side of it with the hilt of his axe. Apparently, in the days since Taro had last seen him, he’d gotten his old axe replaced. When it struck the metal, it didn’t clank, as one might expect. Rather, it made a dull thud.
“It is possible, Taro-sin, that this is not a door that’s meant to be opened. There may be no way in,” Lokír said.
“That’s what Ricarn thinks,” Taro said, “but the Shahl got in somehow all those years ago. And Vexis intends to get in.”
“Praxis was pretty specific about the date of the Double Eclipse.”
Taro made a face. “I don’t know. Why would Craetos design it to open during a Double Eclipse?”
“I didn’t say it was a design,” Fenn said.
“The last time the door was opened was during an eclipse of both moons,” Kurian said.
“In Nuren tales we call it the Eye of Nuruthil, when both moons block out the sun,” Lokír said.
“What effect would an eclipse have on a door?” Taro asked. At that very moment, he noticed the puddle he was standing in. The water was trickling down from the cavern walls. Then, he answered his own question. “The tides.”
“Tides?” Lokír asked.
“During an eclipse, the tides rise. They must rise even higher during a Double Eclipse, right?”
Fenn nodded. “That’s true. So…”
“So,” Taro continued, gesturing around him. “The water around Nir Daras will rise. It might even flood this cavern, and get into the lower levels. It has to go somewhere, right? The builders must’ve put in a draining mechanism somewhere, otherwise this cavern would still be flooded.” He pointed to the ceiling. Two feet from the top, running along the perimeter of the cave, was a clear sediment line where the top of the water had once been.
“So…we just wait here?” Fenn asked, crossing his arms.
“Until the eclipse.”
“How long do we have?”
“Another few days,” Kurian said.
“Too slow,” Fenn said. “And Vexis will be here by then.”
“You have a better idea?” Taro asked.
“Better? Not really. Quicker? Yes.” Fenn walked up to the gate and began to inspect the rock around it. “Kurian, we’re going to need that marvelous fire of yours.”
“Blowing the door won’t work—” Taro began.
“I don’t want to blow the door,” Fenn said. “If we need the cavern to flood to trip the draining mechanism, let’s flood the cavern.”
Taro glanced at Kurian. “It could work.”
“We’re making a lot of assumptions,” Kurian said. “My grandfather wasn’t a fool. He would’ve put another way in—a proper way—just in case of emergencies. One that only the dragonkin could access.”
“Brilliant,” Fenn said. “Go ahead and tell us what that way is.”
Kurian gave him a death glare. “Obviously, I don’t know.”
Fenn clasped his hands together in an overly patronizing manner. “Then I think we should go with my idea.”
“Fenn might be right,” Taro said. “We might not have time to wait for the eclipse. That army could already be on the move.”
“Come again? Army?” Fenn asked, motioning with a hand to his right ear.
“There’s a Helian army stationed in the mountains. We saw them on the way over,” Kurian said.
“How many men?” Lokír asked.
When neither Taro nor Kurian answered immediately, Fenn repeated the question.
“How many?” he asked more forcefully.
“Four thousand strong,” Kurian said.
Fenn frowned. “…four thousand?”
“And the Shadowmancer will come, too,” Lokír said.
“Then we have no choice,” Fenn said. “Kurian, you’re up.”
Kurian nodded, but his expression said it all. This could end in disaster. He approached the rock face around the door, and glanced back at them. “Get some distance,” he said. “Parts of the cavern could come down.”
Kurian took a hard breath and closed his eyes. When they opened, his irises glowed bright and his skin smoldered. His teeth were sharp like knives, and when he exhaled, a flurry of fire extended from his mouth and burrowed into the stone wall.
The cavern rumbled, sending dust and molten debris flying through the air. With no ventilation in the cavern, it quickly filled with smoke and steam, choking everyone. The rock glowed red hot, moving out in ripples and cracks against the circular gate.
When Kurian’s fire touched the gate, something amazing happened. The metal seemed to absorb his flames, and with every passing moment, the inscriptions on it glowed brighter. Kurian seemed oblivious to this, and even Taro could only barely see it in the smoke-filled cavern.
“Stop!” Taro shouted, waving his hands and coughing.
It took several calls, but eventually Kurian halted. The smoke took ages to clear, but when it did, they saw that Kurian hadn’t put the slightest dent in the rock. However, the iron gate was dancing with light. The glow traced around the patterns on the front like templuric energy following ley lines, and erupted from the sides. There was a tremendous crackle, and the door rolled away.
Air hissed from the opening as if a seal had been broken, pushing everyone back with a great gust of wind. Lokír grabbed Taro by the arm, keeping him from flying against the jagged cave wall. When the wind stopped, the dust settled, and the way forward was clear.
They approached the dark opening in dead silence. Fenn was the first to say anything.
“Dragon fire,” he said with an amazed expression. “That’s the failsafe. Only a dragon could open it.”
“Perhaps this was the reason the Shadowmancer wanted to ally with my people?” Lokír asked, not speaking to anyone in particular.
“Vexis wanted access to the Bórhiemdr to kidnap a dragon?” Fenn asked.
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Taro peered into the circular opening. It was perfectly dark, and seemed to go on forever.
“Well,” Fenn said nervously. “Who’s going in first?”
Chapter Forty-three
The Archivist
The path through the lower levels of Nir Daras was unnaturally dark. Taro and Fenn used their templar to light the way, but the light at their fingertips didn’t seem to illuminate much at all.
The group stood close as they descended the steep, slanted tunnel. It was quite plain; just bare, rough stone walls slick with trickling water, and a muddy floor riddled with mold and fermenting matter.
Taro and Kurian stood side by side. Seeing Kurian’s bright yellow eyes shining out of the darkness was a comfort; it would be impossible to lose track of him. Kadia, for her part, was squeezing the back of Kurian’s shirt, and mumbling something unintelligible to herself. Fenn and Lokír brought up the rear, Lokír with his axe drawn, and Fenn holding his templuric light over Craetos’s journal.
“You know, for an all-powerful dragon king, your grandfather’s handwriting was atrocious,” Fenn muttered to Kurian.
Kurian glanced over his shoulder. “To be fair, he was probably writing that journal for himself, not you.”
“Well, I’m the unlucky sod that’s got to read it. There are directions in here, but half of his chicken scratch is illegible.”
After walking for half an hour, Taro felt lightheaded. They were deep underground, with millions of tons of water bearing down on top of the thin, aged tunnels they were travelling through. It was more than a bit unsettling.
But finally, they seemed to be getting somewhere; at the end of the long cavern was a smooth metal door.
Taro peeked through the cracks, but it was so thin he couldn’t make out much of anything on the other side.
“We might be able to force it open,” he said, taking a solid footing and trying to wedge his fingers between the door and the frame. When he did this, he stepped his prosthetic into something that felt like thick mud. Looking down, he spotted an odd bit of fleshy matter on the ground. It wasn’t mud or anything of the sort, rather it looked like organic matter.
He shook his prosthetic and the disgusting slop dangled a bit before falling to the dirt. Taro and the others leaned in a bit to get a good look at it, but when Taro held his light close, it squirmed and wriggled away. It was red and pulsing, with the approximate consistency of molten wax, and reeked like rotten meat.
“What the hell is it?” Fenn asked, frowning in disgust.
Kurian wrinkled his nose. “It smells like death.”
Whatever it was, there was more of it wedged in the doorway. In fact, it seemed to be the reason the door was bent in the first place. Ignoring it for now, Taro forced the door open.
The other side was a stark contrast to the dank cavern they’d just come from. It was the spitting image of the Magisterium, with some notable changes. The floors were clear glass, and underneath them seemed to be a vast, endless void of stars, as if they were walking on the night sky. A thin strip of blue light ran along the base of both walls, letting Taro see just how far the corridors went. There were seven in all, each sprawling out like a maze.
The red ichor that pushed through the door was also present here. It hung from the walls and ceiling, dissolving solid stone. It covered the floor like a web of muck, and seemed to be eating away at everything it touched.
Intermixed with the ichor were small, smooth stone spheres. Each of them were cracked or damaged in some way, some so severely that their mechanical insides were exposed. They were filled with clicking gears, colored crystals, and frayed clear wiring. Some wobbled and tilted as if they were trying to get themselves upright.
Taro picked one up and turned it around in his hands. There was a removeable panel on the back side, and a single glass lens on the front.
“A machine,” Fenn said.
“I’ve seen something like this before,” Taro said. “Outside of the Arclight chamber. I think they’re constructs.”
“Created by the Old Gods, I’d guess,” Kurian said, looking out at the graveyard of tiny, shattered machines. “But what happened to them?”
Taro turned the construct over in his hand. “If Kyra was here, maybe she could fix one.”
Fenn seemed to take this as a personal challenge, and motioned for Taro to hand him the construct. “The damage looks superficial, but its power source is probably depleted.” He wedged his inscriber into the panel on the back, and pried it open. Inside was an opaque, gray illdricyte crystal. He pulled it out and tossed it aside.
“Check the other constructs,” Fenn said, moving on ahead to find one. “We need a crystal that still has some juice.”
Taro and Kurian searched with him, looking through shattered and melted constructs. Lokír kept watch, and kept Kadia from wandering off. The red ichor seemed to be attracted to the crystals themselves, and when it ate through the constructs’ casing, it surrounded the illdricyte core itself. Eventually, Taro found a mostly undamaged construct wedged between two huge girders, far away from any of the ichor. When he pried open the panel on the back, he found the illdricyte was intact.
“Perfect,” Fenn said when Taro offered it to him. He spoke a mile a minute as he took his inscriber and began to tinker with the machinery inside. “You know, Magister Briego would give his false teeth to study this thing.”
After twenty minutes, he was done, and when Fenn inserted the glowing crystal, the construct suddenly pulled away from him. Hovering in midair, the three sections of its bodies turned in different directions, and the panel on the back snapped closed. It moved through the air like it was weightless, darting between the five of them, and zeroing in with its glass eye.
It stopped at Kurian last, moving so close that he had to lean backwards to avoid it crashing into his face.
Then, the little construct spoke, its voice cycling through several languages. Most of them were completely unintelligible to Taro.
“Imota läslosi lonee tesä veru,” it said, sounding something like Shian.
“Eoluolu e hai keano kou hiki mai maanei,” it said on the second try. It sounded something like Sahaalan.
“Naved ja priroda ne vašeti prisustvo ovdir,” it said on the third try. This one was completely foreign to Taro, perhaps one of the mountain languages in Serra.
“Hello?” Taro said. “Can you understand me?”
The little construct twirled again, and Taro could hear its inner mechanisms clicking and grinding. Its eye zeroed in on him, and it began to speak perfect Amínnic.
“Please state your purpose,” it said, its voice like a high-pitched metallic burr.
“Our purpose?” Fenn asked.
Taro brushed his fingers against the floating construct. “What are you, exactly?”
“I am Archivist SN-4297, my primary purpose is the general upkeep of the Celestial Archive and its systems.”
Kurian waved his hand in front of the construct. “Do you know who I am?”
A thin beam of light emanated from the construct’s eye, and traced over Kurian’s body. “You are a blood relation of Builder Craetos.”
“That’s right,” Kurian said. “You’re programmed to obey me, are you not?”
The construct listed in the air. “That is correct.”
“Then I order you to escort us to the Deeplight.”
There was a long pause as the construct seemed to be thinking. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why?” Kurian asked.
“The chamber is inaccessible at the current time. The ichor infesting archival systems has spread to untenable levels. I will begin repairs immediately. Please return after these repairs have been completed.” With that, the construct whizzed across the hallway to hover over one of the other broken machines.
“Excuse me,” Taro called, waving his hands. “How long will these repairs take?”
The construct’s eye turned around, but its tiny metallic hands kept working. “I estimate ninety-six years, five months, and seventeen days.”
“We’re on a bit of a time crunch,” Fenn said, staring dumbly at the little machine.
Taro decided to try a different tactic to get the information he wanted. “What exactly is the ichor?”
“Transdeminsional biological matter,” the Archivist said. “It is seeping through cracks in the prison below the Archives. Without proper containment, it will spread. Unfortunately, the entrance to Deeplight and Netherlight chamber is overrun as the ichor attempts to enter the central core.”
“Show us,” Kurian ordered.
The construct rose high into the air, and without warning shot down the hallway like a lightning bolt. The five of them followed, dashing through and trying to avoid the patches of ichor on the glass floor. As they neared where the construct was leading them, the amount of ichor grew exponentially. It hung from the ceiling, caked the floors, and the closer they got to the core, the more the ichor seemed to move and pulse.
Finally, they could go no further. The red ichor formed a curtain of muck, completely blocking their passage.
The construct turned to them. “The central core is on the other side. With the passage blocked, the way to the Deeplight and Netherlight is also blocked. So too are security countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures?” Taro asked.
“Defenses that may contain the ichor,” the Archivist sai
d.
Taro moved toward the web of ichor and shone his light directly onto a tendril. There was a short, audible screech, and the ichor moved away like he’d hurt it.
Whatever it was didn’t like the light, and even seemed to be moving with deliberate purpose to snuff out every light in the underground. If small amounts of light hurt it, perhaps large amounts of light would kill it.
Taro eyed Kurian. “I have an idea.”
Kurian seemed to get what Taro meant. “It might react negatively if I start burning it away.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Taro asked.
“No, I guess I don’t.” He looked forward, shaking his head. “This looks like a long passageway. Burning through it will take everything I have.”
“Can you do it?” Fenn asked.
Kurian nodded hesitantly. “I think so. Can you guys keep up with me?” He glanced at Taro’s prosthetic, and though he didn’t say as much, it was clear he was specifically talking to Taro.
“I’ll be fine,” Taro said.
Kurian locked eyes with each of the other four. “All right. That means we run, we don’t slow down, and we don’t look back. Got it?”
Everyone but Kadia nodded. She knelt, her entire body shaking as she stared at the red ichor. “I can feel him. He’s here. He’s everywhere. All around. The Lord of Eyes.” She slapped the palm of her hand on her head and whimpered.
“Not to sound like a complete coward,” Fenn said, “but maybe I should stay behind with Kadia. She’s our insurance policy, after all.”
“You’re sure you’ll be fine?” Taro asked.
“Probably more fine than you lot are going to be if you try to get through there.” He gave the ichor-filled hall a sick look. “I’ll keep her safe, somewhere out of the way in case Dr. Halric or Vexis show up. You guys get back here as soon as you can.”
Fenn tapped on the Archivist’s casing with his knuckle, startling it. “Hey,” he said. “If they manage to survive getting past this hall, how far is the Deeplight?”
The construct bobbed in the air. “Approximately two hours by foot.”
