by Eric Vall
“We’re going to need a bigger village,” I said with a grin. “We better keep up the pace, or they’ll produce more tracks than we have time to place.”
“Haragh hadn’t heard about your little conversation with Wyresus yet,” Aurora added, as a slight smile curved on her luscious lips, “so I guess the gossip hasn’t spread too far. Of course, it’s only been a day, and you know those mages in the research room will talk. Unless Daibusu has had a word with Wyresus about the benefit of the project.”
I frowned. I wanted to know more about this powerful mage Aurora seemed to know about, but I let it slide for now. “I’d want to be in the room if anyone’s talking about the railroad.”
“I think it might be a while before you’re in a room anywhere near Wyresus,” Aurora replied with a smirk.
“Well, that suits me fine,” I laughed.
I could see in the distance we were about a mile away from another bend in the Asris River with a series of short waterfalls, but I could also see a road and a bridge. This would be tricky. I had sought to avoid any intersections with existing roads for safety reasons.
I signaled for Aurora to cut the engine, and when the train had crawled to a halt, I jumped out. The mages followed me as I took it all in.
“We need to go south-east without going right through the road,” I explained as I dropped to one knee and put my hand to the earth to commune with the ground beneath us.
“What if we built a bridge over the bridge?” Pindor suggested thoughtfully.
I couldn’t help but think of all the tangled webs of highway intersections back in my former life on Earth. It wasn’t a pretty picture, and I couldn’t do that to Illaria.
“Good idea, but no,” I replied after a moment’s pause. Then an idea struck me. “We’re going under.”
The Terra Mages joined me and knelt on the ground, their hands in the grass, soil, and rock. I focused the group mind and power toward the vision I had. We were far enough from the river that we could open up a tunnel without too steep of an incline and still be several feet below the waterbed. The tunnel would go for about a mile and a half and then rise up on the other side of the road and the river.
At our command, the ground in front of the locomotive sloughed aside to create a valley with a gentle three percent decline. We pushed it out toward the river for a thousand feet until there was a fifty-foot space below the surface. This was the start of a tunnel.
“Let’s start moving,” I said as I led the mages back aboard the train. “This is going to take some careful coordination. Terra Mages, I’m going to need you to keep digging and reinforcing the tunnel on the train. I know for me it’s easier when I touch the ground, but just keep the connection between yourself and the rock, and you should be okay. I’m going to count on you while I’m putting down the rails. Aurora and Bagnera, I need you to keep the engine running, but we’ll also need light when we’re in the tunnel.”
“Do you want me to do the engine or the light?” Bagnera asked Aurora.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said to Bagnera as gently as I could, “but if you’re controlling the engine and you send out a spark just a little too strong, then we’re crashing hard into solid rock.”
The white-haired Ignis Mage grimaced. She remembered her occasional lack of control as well as I did. It couldn’t be an easy thing to control a steady stream of flame with the tiniest adjustment to control speed. With Aurora’s talents, it seemed to come easy, but I felt like I was asking Bagnera to become a surgeon overnight.
“If the Terra Mages can join their powers in a circuit, why can’t we?” Aurora suggested, a sparkle in her emerald eyes at the thought. “We can both fuel the engine and light the tunnel together.”
I considered the thought. It was a good idea. Aurora could focus and guide Bagnera’s power with her own, and it might help teach her how to do it on her own.
I nodded, and as a group, we took a deep collective breath. The air inside the train felt charged with energy. I smelled the familiar evergreen scent of Aurora’s power as it focused, and the electric pulse as my own Terra powers were joined to the other mages of my element. All nine of us fell silent in concentration as the engine came to life and we began to roll forward.
I pushed my metal magery to drop rails in our path as the tunnel opened up like a mouth to swallow us up. Balls of fire whirled around the Ignis Mages before they danced out ahead of us to light the way in the darkness of the tunnel. While the Terra Mages dug the gentle incline down, they sent up more layers of hard stone to reinforce the ceiling above.
It was a strange sensation as I felt both of my powers at work simultaneously. There was my affinity for metal as I levitated the rails into position and subtly bent them to follow the path, while at the same time, I was connected to the stone that surrounded us. The five Terra Mages connected to me actually controlled the magic, but I led the focus, and I could feel the structure and strength of the granite. I had to concentrate on the rails and ties as I knew only I could manipulate them, but it was difficult not to be distracted as part of the circuit of magic.
It was also incredibly draining, and I could already feel sweat trickling down my neck and into my shirt. I gritted my teeth and did my best to ignore the fatigue I could already feel settling in along my shoulders.
After I guessed we had dug at least a mile of tunnel, I said, “Okay, stop for a moment. Let’s see where we are.”
Aurora and Bagnera kept the lights but brought the engine to a rolling halt, and I stopped with the tracks. The Terra Mages focused our power in a wave around us and felt the strength and thickness of the stone above and ahead of us. The last thing I wanted to do was get too close to the riverbed and make it spring a leak. I could see the whole thing collapse and all of us drowned.
The stone sang back to us, and I was relieved to find we were more than fifty feet under the bed of the river. As long as we reinforced the tunnel as we went, it would be solid for generations to come.
“Everyone’s doing a great job,” I said to the group. “Let’s go about another mile flat, and then start a slow incline up until we hit the surface.”
The Ignis Mages relit the engine, and as we chugged forward, I laid out tracks just behind the tunnel that opened before us. It was a slow process, but there was no way to rush it.
The hardest part once we found our rhythm happened when we were nearly finished. We had begun the gentle incline upward, and as we ascended past the hearty granite to the more eroded dirt surface, we had to slow down and spend more time reinforcing the sides and ceiling of the tunnel. Finally, we broke through, and dim filtered sunlight streamed into the tunnel. I almost let out a cheer myself, when a tree we had unrooted crashed down just a few feet ahead of us.
“How are we going to move that?” Pindor exclaimed. “There’s no such thing as plant magecraft, is there?”
“No need,” said Aurora and Bagnera at the same time.
The Ignis Mages lifted up their hands and sent forth a blast of flame that reduced the tree to cinders in mere seconds. Pindor stared at them in wonderment, but I just laughed.
“Come on, everyone!” I shouted. “Last few feet and then we can take a short break!”
The mages all refocused their efforts as we rose out of the tunnel and then proceeded up a gentle ramp until we had reached ground level.
We were in a dense forest covered in a thick canopy above. All around was the chorus of birds and woodland creatures, and the smell of damp earth and old fallen leaves. Aurora and Bagnera let the engine die, and we ground to a halt.
“Okay, let’s take five,” I said to the mages as I wiped the sweat from my face with a slightly trembling hand.
“What shall we take five of, dear?” asked Bagnera.
“He means let’s relax for five minutes, have a snack, stretch your legs, whatever,” Aurora explained as she shot me an amused look.
I took the half-elf’s hand as the rest of the mages had their break aroun
d the train. We walked only a few yards deeper into the lush forest, but it was so thick with vegetation, we could have been on another planet.
“What do they call this place?” I asked.
“Darfell Wood,” Aurora replied with a smile. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It stretches all the way from the sea to the western border of Cedis.”
“It is beautiful,” I agreed. “We will have to figure out how to set the tracks through it with minimum damage. How close are we to Rajeene?”
Aurora looked around while she considered my question.
“I can’t say for sure,” Aurora responded carefully, “but there’s an old ruined fortress called Tor Morvum we should pass, and Rajeene will be about a day’s journey south. I mean, by horse.”
“So by train, from Tor Morvum,” I gave Aurora a grin, “it’s about half an hour when we don’t have go so slowly. We’ll hopefully get there by night.”
“I need to ask you about Rajeene,” Aurora said seriously. “What are we going to be facing and how do you know?”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you earlier,” I said apologetically. “I saw Nemris last night, and all she said was to send for Haragh because we would need him when we left Rajeene. That’s all I know.”
The half-elf blinked in shock at the mention of the goddess.
“It has to be something important,” Aurora murmured with a frown. “The last time she came to you was to show you how to defeat the Bandit Boss. The goddess wouldn’t bother if it weren’t life and death.”
“That’s why I sent Cayla to bring him here right away,” I explained.
“We need to tell the other mages that there’s danger ahead,” Aurora said, concern in her emerald eyes, “even if we don’t understand it yet.”
I nodded. “I agree, especially after they trusted me to dig a tunnel under a river.” I shook my head with a chuckle. “Seems they’re all as crazy as I am.”
“Not by half,” Aurora chuckled, but then her face softened with a small smile. “They just trust you, Mason.”
I didn’t know how exactly to respond to that, so I just rubbed sheepishly at the back of my neck.
The two of us climbed back out of the forest to find the mages where we had left them. I thought they might have needed a longer break, but as soon as they saw us, everyone straightened up and got to their feet, ready to go.
“We’ve taken more than five,” Pindor grinned.
“We just wanted to have a word with you before we moved on,” I said as I looked each mage in the eye. “You deserve to know that we have reason to believe we might run into trouble after we’ve been through Rajeene.”
“What kind of trouble?” asked Churchwell, one of the Terra Mages, with a frown. He was a generally quiet short guy with a balding head of brown hair and a gray goatee, which he absentmindedly picked at when concerned, as he was right now.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “All I can tell you is that the man, mage, or elf responsible for all the strange creature attacks in recent months knows about our project and is eager to stop it. I assume he’s the source of the danger ahead of us, but I can’t be sure even about that.”
“All we know,” Aurora said carefully, “is that we need Haragh with us when we leave Rajeene.”
“So, you’re basically saying, be prepared for anything?” Bagnera asked.
“How do you do that?” Pinder replied, worried.
“Well, the best you can do is not overexert yourself,” I said seriously. “We’re going to need you at full strength for whatever we’re going to face.”
The mages took this in and returned nods of understanding. They had become sober and serious, but from the look in their eyes, still ready to go.
“Let’s do it,” Aurora said as she climbed aboard the train, and the rest of us followed her.
“Now that I’ve told you not to burn yourself out,” I said as Aurora started up the engine, “here’s the reality. This is going to be tough terrain to cross. Ignis Mages, I need you to burn the trees in our direct path but keep it focused so that we don’t start a forest fire. Terra Mages, as you flatten the path ahead, you’ll need to crush any remaining roots so that they don’t grow back. So, that’s a lot to do, but pace yourself. You got it?”
The mages all agreed and got into position. I felt the now familiar tingle of the Terra Mages as they formed their bond and smelled the scent of evergreen that told me the Ignis Mages had formed a similar circuit.
Bagnera acted as a conduit for the Ignis Mages as she let flames fly from her hands, which vaporized each tree in our path. While I levitated tracks and ties into place, the Terra Mages ground down the rock, stone, and vegetation into a smooth powder beneath. We took it slow.
Hours and miles went by as we chugged deeper into the forest. Trees and underbrush filled our view until I saw up ahead a stone spiral that peeked over the top of the canopy. As we drew nearer, I could see the remains of an ancient wall, reduced to irregular columns of black stone covered with moss and vines.
“Is that Tor Morvum?” I asked as I caught Aurora’s eye.
Aurora nodded. “That’s Tor Morvum. It was a stronghold for a clan of mage warlords called the Morvum, long before the dynasty that now rules Illaria. According to legend, they were very powerful and lived to conquer and rule. They amassed a great treasure, but all their riches weren’t enough compared to their love of power. Finally, they committed the ultimate blasphemy and took their war to the gods themselves.”
“I can see it didn’t end well for them.” I grinned, but Aurora didn’t share my smile.
“It didn’t end well for anyone,” Aurora replied with a frown. “For fifty years, the land was laid waste, and the people suffered greatly. In the end, the gods destroyed the Morvum and cursed the magic they used so it would never be exploited again.”
I began to see more of the ruins in the distance through the trees. More vine-covered towers, a great hall, a dome caved in on itself. They must have been powerful indeed, these mage warlords whose lust for power destroyed them.
“On the plus side,” Aurora added, her voice now light, “we’re only four hours to Rajeene. We might get there before sunset.”
I looked at the beautiful half-elf and couldn’t suppress a smile any longer. There would be challenges ahead no doubt, but we were getting closer to our goal, inch by inch, mile by mile.
With the ruins of Tor Morvum behind us, our push through the forest continued until the density of the tree growth began to grow thinner, and we found we were passing on the outskirts of a small village to the north. It was nothing more than a dozen wooden buildings arranged around a central well, but it was good to see signs of people, and even better when the villagers saw or heard our approach and ran to watch us go by.
As the sun hung in the west, the village turned to farmland, and the farmland was followed by a larger town of merchants, taverns, mills, and workshops. At the highest part of a hill was a well-fortified chalk white palace with a black slate roof.
“That’s Rajeene Castle,” Aurora said.
“Where should we build the depot?” I wondered aloud. “It’s hard to tell where the main business quarter is from this angle … ”
“Look!” said Pindor as he pointed toward the palace. “They’re building something!”
The boy was right. As we got closer, I could see that a group of a dozen wagons had parked just outside the walls of Rajeene Castle, and a hundred or more workmen were gathered around a large wood and stone platform. They raised their heads at the sound of our approach, and I signaled to Aurora and Bagnera to cut the engine as I laid the last tracks.
When the locomotive had come to a stop, the mages and I disembarked, and together we walked the last hundred yards through the village to the workmen and their project. It became more and more apparent that the project was a train platform, and my eyebrows raised toward my hairline.
An older mountain of a man who seemed to be in charge stepped for
ward and offered his hand.
“You must be the Metal Mage, Defender Flynt,” the foreman said with a grin. “Welcome to Rajeene. We’ve been expecting you. You just got here a little earlier than we thought you’d be.”
I shook the man’s hand, but I was thoroughly confused, and I wasn’t the only one.
“Wait, who told you we were arriving?” asked Aurora as her emerald eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Why, I told him,” came a woman’s cool, low voice.
We turned and saw, at first, nothing but shadows at the castle gate. As one of the shadows moved closer, I realized it wasn’t a shadow at all, but a three-dimensional woman who was nearly entirely black. Deep black. Her long silken hair, her slim fitting gown, and every inch of exposed skin was the color of ink. When she was only a few feet away, I could make out that she had fine, aristocratic features to her face, and while her right eye was as black as the rest of her, her left eye was white with a light gray pupil.
Instantly, I was reminded of the conversation Aurora and I had when I first arrived in Illaria, and she told me about the six kinds of mages, each of whom controlled a different element of air, water, earth, fire, light, and darkness. The traitorous head of the Order of Elementa Abrus had been a Lux Mage, a master of light, marked by his one white eye. As this memory came back to me, I understood instantly what this woman before me was.
A mage of darkness.
“You’re a Tenebrae Mage?” I asked though it wasn’t really a question.
“I am,” the dark woman said as her shining black lips curved into a smile and she held out her smooth ebony hand. “I am also Baroness Batonova of Rajeene. I have heard about you for quite some time, and it is a great pleasure to finally meet you.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I said as I kissed her hand.
I don’t know what possessed me to do that, other than it seemed the thing to do. From her smile, it evidently was.
“How could you have heard about the train from here?” Aurora asked as she kept her narrowed eyes on Baroness Batonova.