by Ryan Tang
STRENGTH OF A THOUSAND
Book One of the Science and Sorcery Series
© 2020 by Ryan Tang
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Strength of a Thousand
CHAPTER 1: THE READER
CHAPTER 2: GUARDIAN OF THE SPIRE
CHAPTER 3: THE PEACEFUL ENGINEER
CHAPTER 4: THE INNER CIRCLE ELITE
CHAPTER 5: PREY
CHAPTER 6: THE BOY KING
CHAPTER 7: EVERY BLUE
CHAPTER 8: THE BEWILDERED SURVIVOR
CHAPTER 9: THE PEACEFUL ENGINEER, PART 2
CHAPTER 10: THE PRAGMATIC RULER
CHAPTER 11: DISASTER MANAGER
CHAPTER 12: THE RENEGADE PILOT
CHAPTER 13: THE GHOST IN THE SPIRE
CHAPTER 14: THE KING IN TRAINING
CHAPTER 15: THE BRILLIANT DEALMAKER
CHAPTER 16: THE HANDS PARAGON
CHAPTER 17: THE PRISONER
CHAPTER 18: THE POLITICIAN
CHAPTER 19: TEACHER
CHAPTER 20: JUST A LIBRARIAN
CHAPTER 21: THE LONELY BOY
CHAPTER 22: THE GIRL FROM THE CHEAP ARCADE
CHAPTER 23: THE COMPANY MAN
CHAPTER 24: THE GIRL FROM THE CHEAP ARCADE, PART 2
CHAPTER 25: THE HANDS PARAGON, PART 2
CHAPTER 26: BROTHER
CHAPTER 27: THE GHOST IN THE SPIRE, PART 2
CHAPTER 28: THE SACRIFICE
CHAPTER 29: GUARDIAN OF THE SPIRE, PART 2
CHAPTER 30: THE PEACEFUL ENGINEER, PART 3
CHAPTER 31: EVERY BLUE, PART 2
CHAPTER 32: ONE OF THOUSANDS
Credits
CHAPTER 1: THE READER
"THEY LIED TO US ALL. I reached into the forge, searing my bloodstained hands. The misshapen lump of metal was colder than ice, colder than anything I'd ever felt before. As soon as I touched it, I no longer felt the flames at all. I hastily pulled my hands back before they painlessly burned to cinders. I turned the lump of Eternium around in my hands. The allegedly sacred metal was as black as the sins I committed in forging it. I frowned. It should have been red. Why wasn't it red?"
Alex had already read the words before, but she still felt the author's guilt and confusion as keenly as a knife in her heart. She could never read a story without feeling fully involved in it, without melding the author's emotions with her own. But feeling a story and communicating that feeling to others were two very different things.
Alex glanced up from the page to see how she was doing.
She breathed a little sigh of relief and grinned a little to herself, her pride and relief forcing its way through the gloom of the story.
She was doing well.
Her wide-eyed students stared back at her, captivated by every word. Some of the parents looked more excited than their kids. A balding man in the second row stared excitedly at her podium. His knuckles were stark white against his chair. Stories about Paragons, the legendary humanoid machines of Old Earth, always had that effect on people.
She hadn't met the excited before, but it was apparent he was Alice's dad. His face was very strong in her.
Alex had hosted her reading sessions for over two years now to introduce her listeners to the old texts and legends that were the few surviving scraps of the Paragon era. When she could, she read what she considered fresh content – new stories she found scouring the library's countless forgotten shelves and abandoned floors. Others came from the hidden passageways she and Emile called the book-corridors.
Even finding a seemingly boring catalog of Paragon parts and ammunition was a miracle that might breathe a spark onto humanity's longstanding quest to bring back to great humanoid machines.
This book contained so much more.
Three weeks ago, she and Emile discovered a collection of Paragon stories deep in the twisting and turning 20th-floor book-corridor. Like most of the books she found, the texts had been in very poor condition. Some of the pages had ink poured all over them. Others were completely blank, stark white as if words had never been printed on them. Most frustrating of all were the pages that had simply been torn out. Sometimes it seemed the most exciting books were always the ones damaged beyond repair.
But not this one.
Like most of the stories found in the book-corridors, the book was shoddy and incomplete. The last chapter had been drenched with a deluge of ink so thick the back cover was all sticky and black. But the words she could read were exciting enough.
It purported to be an autobiography written by the woman who stole the secrets of Eternium from the Mad Nobles, the almighty tyrants who'd ruled humanity with an iron fist. Eternium had been the Mad Nobles' greatest secret behind only their mysterious companions, the strange creatures they called their Familiars.
A young boy shifted uncomfortably in front of her, vibrating so rapidly he broke her immersion in the story.
Alex blinked in surprise. She'd been so absorbed that the boy had sat right in front of her without drawing her attention.
He sat at the very front of the room, far away from everyone else, and almost directly beneath her podium.
She felt an instinctive pang of guilt. Mrs. T and Emile always told her to focus on the listeners who were enjoying themselves and to avoid taking the worst reactions to heart, but Alex had never seen someone so upset before.
The boy leaned sharply forwards, cradling his face in his hands. He was trembling in place and muttering harshly beneath his breath, speaking so quickly Alex couldn't catch a single word he said.
His appearance was even stranger than his behavior.
He had on a pitch-black robe with a heavy hood that covered almost his entire face, revealing only a few flashes of ludicrously pallid sickly yellow skin. His arms and legs were painfully thin, little more than sticks. Stringy strands of bleached gold hair drooped down to his chest.
Alex stammered for a moment, unsure of what to say.
She stepped off the podium and approached the boy as he continued his ceaseless muttering. He didn't seem to realize that she'd stopped reading or that the entire room was now staring at him. She touched him lightly on his jittering shoulder.
The boy's head jerked up, and Alex gasped in surprise as the hood slid back to reveal a pinched and starving face, little more than a skull with skin. His strange yellow skin had an almost radioactive pallor that made it seem like he'd never gone outside before. His hair was thin as a baby's. His eyes were the most shocking of all. Disproportionately large in his thin face, they were pure gold and brighter than even Plenty's false sun.
Tears swam in his eyes and dripped down his cheeks as he stared at her with feverish intensity.
"Where did you learn that story?"
His tone was imperious in a way she couldn't quite describe. Alex had dealt with her fair share of obnoxious Southern Robotics executives who swaggered into the library and expected her to serve them before anyone else.
But this boy was different.
Yet after hearing his question, Alex found herself smiling despite her confusion.
She could get along with just about anyone if they wanted to talk about books.
"I was reading it out of this book I found. It's on the podium right now if you want to take a look."
He just stared back at her, shock and confusion etched on his face,
"As you can see, there are a lot of books here. I read about the Paragons twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays."
If the boy came back, Alex would see if Margaret could cook him a nice meal. He was so thin.
The strange boy let out a peculiar relieved laugh, then leaned in uncomfortably close and whispered in her ear, the command in his voice twisted into
contempt.
"Don't touch me again, Ignorant."
He spoke the word in a weird way. His voice had sort of curdled as he said it, and he'd emphasized it like a proper noun.
Then he pushed her aside. Despite his thin arms, he was astonishingly strong. It was just a light push, but Alex slipped and crashed hard to the floor. The boy stood and left without sparing her or anyone else in the room a second glance.
____
The crowd murmured in confusion.
"What the hell?"
"What did he say to you?"
"What was that kid's deal?"
A few of her guests rushed forward to help her back to her feet, but Alex waved them off.
The librarian turned his words over in her mind for just a moment longer. The boy had practically spat the word "Ignorant" into her ear. Then she took a deep breath and shook her head.
Alex took a deep breath and turned briefly to the librarian's table. They'd all had to deal with disagreeable guests and angry hecklers before. Her best friend Emile, a fierce woman with a mane of long brown hair, made an impatient gesture with her hand, as she encouraged Alex to get going again.
Nothing ever bothered Emile. She'd done everything in her power to make sure that Alex was happy and welcome not just in the Spire, but on Plenty as a whole. But nobody was stricter behind the reader's podium. Most of her kids - and even some of their parents - were scared of her.
Alex could almost read Emile's thoughts. She knew exactly what her friend would say.
"Weird stuff happens all the time. Everyone else is super excited. Get going before you lose them."
A second hand started waving Alex forward.
It was obvious where Emile had gotten her fire. Mrs. T was the senior librarian and Emile's grandmother. She was the oldest person on Plenty, but she was somehow much more energetic than Alex herself.
Alex grinned.
Her class was far from over. She had to focus on the guests who were enjoying themselves.
As always, the sight of her friends gave her just the push of strength she needed to go on reading. This incident was exceptionally bizarre, but she'd dealt with much worse before.
The librarian stammered on the next couple of words but soon found herself back inside the world of this mysterious story without even a title.
"My bloodstained hands were drying. A slight vein ran through the stone, the familiar burnt red cutting through a black as dark as space. My eyes widened. Cautiously, then frantically, I began rolling the cool knob of metal around my hands. Before long, my hands were clean, and the lump of Eternium ran burnt red from edge to edge, the same color as our lying ruler's machines. I blinked. It was only then that I understood how thoroughly Eternium was stained with blood."
The audience gasped.
She and Emile had felt the same way when they first read those shocking words. Eternium was the miraculous metal. It was the invention that'd led to the rise of the Paragons and the space colonies humanity now lived on. Eternium was the only reason humanity survived the downfall of their home planet. For as long as they'd been exiled in space, humanity only had two simple goals. Rediscover Eternium and use it to reclaim Old Earth.
"Ever since I was a young girl, I sat there as foolish teachers and lying mentors told me that Eternium, the timeless alloy, could not be created by ordinary minds. They said only geniuses could forge it. I looked back at my hands, clean on the surface but stained forever in my mind. Genius was quite the euphemism for murder. Disgusted, I tossed the Eternium back into the fire. It would still be there when it was time for my vengeance. I had to be careful. I needed to find loyal friends and build my own Paragons. But the pieces were in place for my revolution. On that blistering summer day in my lonely forge, the fall of the Mad Nobles began."
The next page was all black. Even after so many years, parts of the ink were still sticky.
Alex looked around at her students and blinked, slightly dazed. It always took her a moment to return to reality after finishing an emotional reading.
The librarian tilted her head back and stared up at the Spire. Level after level, the books were packed tightly together from floor to ceiling, twisting and winding along with the Spire's jagged walls. The books looked like they went on forever. Thick books and thin ones, plain covers and bright ones. The majority were torn and damaged, but they'd been able to acquire a handful of new works. Mrs. T and Emile had even bound a few books themselves. The higher her eyes climbed, the dustier the books got. They did not have nearly enough people to manage all 200 floors.
The sight of the endless books was more beautiful than anything Alex had ever seen.
It was more beautiful than the treasured pictures of Old Earth. It was more beautiful than the photographs of Paragons, the great machines that glowed eternally bright with their weapons posed heroically towards the skies.
It'd been years, but sometimes she still couldn't believe that this place, this wonderful miraculous place, was her home.
The crowd groaned as she closed the book and spoke the by now familiar but still dreaded words.
"Unfortunately, that is the last chapter we've discovered."
The crowd grumbled in frustration, but she knew it wasn't directed at her. By now, even her younger listeners were familiar with being left on cliffhangers. It was something you had to get used to when every interesting book was damaged or incomplete. They knew she would return to the story as soon as she found new information. The thought of her listeners motivated Alex more than anything else when she was trawling the dark book-corridors in the middle of the night, long after the false sun had dimmed and the entire colony had gone to bed.
As she expected, Jared bounded out of his chair, catching the crowd before they could leave. Alex grimaced. She'd known this would happen as soon as she saw him step into her classroom. She liked Jared a lot, but she knew what he was about to say. As soon as he stood up, all eyes turned towards him. His lead position at Southern Robotics was well-known, and his father was one of the highest-ranking men in the entire company.
"Southern Robotics is going to bring back the Paragons, and we aren't going to need any of this creepy bloodstain stuff. With Director Stock's talent and our vast resources, we're going to create painless Eternium that anyone can use!"
The effect was immediate. Within moments Alex and her story were completely forgotten as the rest of the adults hastened to agree with Jared. They were almost robotic in their good sentiment as they filed out of the room.
"We need to get back to work!"
"Southern Robotics is the pride of Plenty!"
"I'm sure Director Stock will come up with something brilliant!"
Alex smiled ruefully as she followed them out of the room. It was common knowledge that at Southern Robotics, flattery was the fastest way to secure a promotion.
____
Alex sat at the front desk, doodling absentmindedly on her arm as she kept one eye on the door. As always, she'd opened the well-loved and ancient book of Old Earth's animals to the section on sea creatures. The Old Earth's Sea, with its infinite depths and shimmering blue beauty, had captivated Alex from the first time she saw a picture. The sea was so deep that humanity hadn't even finished exploring it before they were forced to flee to space. And the sea was the original home of the Mad Nobles' mysterious companions.
If there was one thing that interested Alex more than the Paragons, it was the legends about the strange Familiars that were said to have accompanied the Mad Nobles wherever they went. Sometimes they were merely described as pets. Her favorite book growing up was The Familiars, a story about a brave little boy who piloted a Paragon alongside a talking fish. But other times, they were described as dark and malevolent gods.
Alex stared at the creatures on the page and giggled a little as she shivered. The octopus looked like it was staring right back at her. She carefully traced its winding tentacles on her arm, dotting her felt pen to make suction cups. When she finished, she turn
ed to the next page and followed it up with her favorite kind of the shark, a hammerhead. She drew it swimming upwards with all its teeth showing. Then she brought her pen up to the back of her hand and started sketching one of the strange flat staring creatures the book called a sunfish.
Alex was always drawing scenes from Old Earth's seas on her arms. Sometimes she added pirate flags or islands to accompany her animals. Every time Emile saw her drawing, she'd laugh and say Alex should just get tattoos. But to Alex, the most exciting part of all was changing the design every day.
As the librarian doodled, she wondered if she'd ever see an animal with her own eyes. When humanity fled Old Earth, they'd left the life that shared the planet with them behind.
Jared stomped by her desk, followed by a crowd of Southern Robotics employees carefully hanging on to his every word.
"Hey, sorry none of us have been free recently. I'm hoping we'll be free tomorrow! We've got a big test tonight, and if we get it done..."
He trailed off and made a hopeful face.
"Things will be a lot better after tonight's test."
Alex had met Jared through the Paragon piloting simulators. He was a sturdy and reliable pilot, and his constant jokes, even in the thick of a challenging battle, made him a lot of fun to fight alongside. They usually played together every weekend on a team with his fellow Southern Robotics employees, but they hadn't had the chance to play in almost a month and a half.
"That's fine. I'm exploring tonight anyways. But tomorrow sounds good!"
Jared grinned.
"Alright! I'm going to need you to save my ass again."
Alex laughed. She was easily the best pilot on their team. As a child, Alex was obsessed with the Paragon simulators. When she first moved to Plenty, she quickly rediscovered her love of them. Back then, she'd been too frightened to explore the tower by herself and even more afraid of trying to make new friends. By the time Emile finally forced her way into Alex's life, she'd already spent untold hours grinding away in the pod-shaped simulators, recapturing her childhood skills and then far more.
And Jared hadn't just been kind enough to add her to his team. He even let her use the spare pod at his house whenever she wanted. Alex could never hope to afford one of the expensive simulator pods on her own. Counting from her days as a girl on Diligence, she'd already spent an obscene amount of money on rentals.
