Dying World

by Chris Fox

  Dying World

  Chris Fox

  Chris Fox Writes LLC

  Copyright © 2019 Chris Fox

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  The Magitech Chronicles

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Interlude I

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Interlude II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Interlude III

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Interlude IV

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Interlude V

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Interlude VI

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  Note to the Reader

  The Magitech Chronicles

  Buckle up, because you’re about to enter The Magitech Chronicles. If you like Dying World, we have a complete seven-book prequel series with an ending already available.

  We’re also working on a pen & paper RPG and the Kickstarter is going live right around the same time this book came out. You can learn more at magitechchronicles.com or our Magitech Chronicles World Anvil page.

  We’ve got maps, lore, character sheets, and a free set of rules you can use to generate your own character.

  I hope you enjoy!

  -Chris

  1

  What would you risk for a chance at immortality? What dangers would you brave, if literal godhood were on the line? Most people will do damned near anything for a taste of that kind of power.

  Our whole culture is built around lust for it. An entire planet of mercenaries, each clawing their way past the rest to get to the precious and infinitely rare magic, and the glory it brings.

  Most won’t admit, or don’t even know, what that magic is. The tiny percentage who actually find the magic they seek are pillaging the corpses of gods. Deities who ruled this sector long before our ancestors came down out of the trees on whatever world gave us birth.

  I can’t ignore that fact. It’s my job to understand those gods, and their ruins, and the battles they fought. That was the reason I was hired to come to this derelict deathtrap in the first place.

  I’m an archeologist, though that isn’t sexy enough for today’s holodrama crowd. They’d much prefer I call myself a relic hunter, which is an apt enough description, I guess.

  I signed up to rob tombs, but found myself scavenging the dead hulks of ancient vessels long since picked clean by better men, and doing it alongside people who might not notice if my O2 tank ran dry.

  That was how I found myself in near darkness, prowling the claustrophobic air ducts aboard a colossus-class vessel constructed a hundred millennia ago. These ancient hulks orbit the extreme edges of the system, at the site of the barely remembered war that had marooned our people on the world of Kemet.

  We’d come to pry whatever valuable parts or schematics still clung to her frigid bones, something that the people I’d signed on with were supposed to be very good at. They’d been at it for three years, if their spec-sheet was accurate, and were still flying, which seemed promising.

  “Jerek, do you have a visual on the target?” A hard feminine voice crackled over the comm attached to my collar, causing me to jump.

  That would be Sapphire. She was the hot one. I was still learning names, though Sapphire had warned me not to bother as I probably wouldn’t survive. That was just hazing, or I hoped so anyway.

  “If, uh, the target is the armory door, then yes,” I whispered back as I shimmied to the edge of the duct. The grate was filled with triangular holes, just big enough to peer through at the blast door below. “Give me a minute to study it, and I’ll confirm our intel.”

  “Is it the armory or not? And is it intact?” Sapphire hissed over the comm. “Just because we didn’t see lurkers doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Why do you think they’re called lurkers? They lurk. We need to get in, and get right back out again.”

  I didn’t bother to answer, as I couldn’t from my current location. The duct was above and to the side of the door, and I couldn’t quite make out the runes along the rusty surface. They glowed with faint white-blue magic, the weak telltale remnant of a lingering enchantment just before it failed.

  I paused to inspect the grate blocking my exit, which had no obvious fastenings. Of course, neither had the grate I’d entered through. The metal wasn’t thick, but it was as strong as feathersteel, though a good deal heavier.

  It had been built for utility, and not defense, thankfully. I reached for the holster attached to my flight suit along the right thigh, and withdrew my spellpistol.

  Ariela, the name my father had given the sleek black weapon, was a fully developed eldimagus. A living magic item passed through our family for generations, maybe all the way back to planetfall. She could fire conventional rounds, sure. But she could also channel spells, if I supplied the magic.

  I pressed the thick barrel against the corner of the grate, and caressed the trigger. The weapon instantly connected to me in a primal way well beyond sight, and tore a piece of fire magic from the reservoir in my chest. The magic built in the barrel for a split second, then a narrow beam of orange-white flame melted the metal into glowing rivulets even as the barrel of my weapon heated.

  I repeated the process at each of the four corners, then holstered Ariela’s still warm form. I wasn’t looking forward to this next part, but at least no one was around to see me struggle.

  It took several awkward moments to squirm around until my boots were planted against what remained of the grate. In an action holo it would have come loose on the first kick. Depths, in real life it should have too.

  But I’m kind of a weakling. And when I say kind of, I mean I have never picked up anything heavier than a tablet, and that my, uh, physique reflects that. I mean, can you blame me? My job is reading and research, and if I’m ever in the field it’s supposed to be standing behind a burly tech mage in full spellarmor.

  That’s what they promised back at the academy, anyway.

  I kicked as hard as I could manage, and the grate groaned. I kicked again and it bent slightly. Nine exhausting kicks later the grate clattered into the corridor beneath me.

  I paused to catch my breath, then gently lowered myself through the opening, down to the deck. I might not be strong, but I am pretty damned agile. Just good enough to get frustrated when someone really good shows me up.

  The rusted door glowed before me, the runes flickering unevenly under a thick layer of dark grime. The dialect was familiar, though the style was more archaic than what I was used to. I tapped the comm affixed to my collar. “Sapphire, I’ve got confirmation. This is definitely a storage locker, though I can’t say for sure if it’s an armory.”

  I sincerely hoped it was. Nothing was as valuable as weapons, not even lost knowledge, and every library on Kemet had a bounty on ancient books or knowledge scales.

  “Can you get the door open or not?” Sapphire came back, not bothering to mask her impatience. I could hear the high-pitched whine of a laser torch behind her, and wondered what she was trying to open
.

  “Probably,” I offered, though I wasn’t in any way certain I could do what I was promising. “I’ll get to work on it.”

  It went without saying that I wouldn’t be able to carry whatever I found. I mean, I did have the infuse strength spell, so I could make myself stronger. But my strong was someone else’s normal, and if there were rockets or other ordnance I wasn’t going to be able to carry them alone.

  The rest of the squad had each been given similar assignments throughout this level of the ship, the idea being that one of us would find something. Maybe more than one. Then we’d focus our efforts wherever the payoff was.

  I bent to inspect the runes, which were straightforward enough. The lock was maintained by a separate spell, and the keypad basically counter spelled the lock when the correct combination was entered.

  In theory, at least.

  In practice, half the runes had faded to illegibility, which meant many of the input options were inoperable. If I was going to get inside, not only would I have to repair the panel, but I’d also have to somehow determine the locker’s combination.

  Normally that would be impossible, and we’d have to turn around and go home. Thank the lady for the magic I’d inherited from my mother.

  I extended a finger, and concentrated. A thin sliver of dream crept up my arm, tingling as it reached the end of my finger. Dream magic is ephemeral, exactly as you’d expect.

  Repairing the keypad required air magic, but dream would allow me to mimic air. As far as the console was concerned…it had exactly what it needed. Now I just needed to repair the missing runes.

  That was going to be trickier. Most holodramas make it sound absurdly easy to pick a lock, but the truth is that you need a laser-torch and a whole lot of time to get into a vault like this. You can’t just puzzle out a code by putting your ear against the wall.

  Unless you happen to be an academy-trained flame reader.

  I willed fire to move down my other arm, hot and urgent, and commanding release. I cupped my hand before my face, and a blue flame sprang up over my palm.

  The flame undulated and danced, its rhythm a counterpoint to my heartbeat. I focused on this location, this place, which I was already familiar with, since I was literally standing in it.

  Time became fluid. The clock ticked backward, in the flames at least. The image flickered wildly as years rolled backward into decades, and then a full century, but I didn’t see any difference.

  I jumped back a full thousand years, a significant length of time, in my opinion, and was mildly surprised to see most of the damage was still there.

  A few of the runes were brighter, but several had already burnt out. This damage was older than I’d thought. Much older.

  I pulled more fire, and a bit more dream, and willed my little flame to show me this same room ten millennia ago. The panel was bright now, though a few of the glyphs had begun to fade, heralding the damage I’d seen in the present.

  A knot began to grow between my temples, the first throes of the migraine I’d earned for pushing my limits like this.

  I took several deep breaths and allowed time to roll back slowly, a month at a time. It took three more jumps before I found what I was seeking.

  A woman in a dark blue uniform with gold trim clutched at her side as she hobbled up to the armory door. A deep pool of scarlet bled through her uniform over the gut, and her teeth were gritted in pain. She raised a trembling, bloody hand to the console and meticulously tapped a series of six sigils.

  I watched them with rapt attention, memorizing each one as she pressed it, both the location on the pad and the appearance of the sigil. I’d need both to pull this off.

  I rewound the timeline back to the beginning and watched it again, despite the cost in pain. Deep throbbing occupied the space behind my eyes, but it was worth it. I was positive I had it.

  “Sapphire, this is Jerek,” I mumbled into the comm. “I’ve got the sequence. I still need to repair the panel, but I might be able to get this thing open. Stand by.”

  “Really?” She sounded surprised. “Let me know how it plays out.”

  I bent to the panel, and extended a gloved hand, just as the woman had done all those millennia ago. Instead of touching the darkened sigil, I pulled at the reservoir of dream in my chest, just a sliver.

  The magic lit the tip of my finger, and I sketched the sigils exactly as I’d remembered them. Traces of the earlier sigils remained to confirm my memory, and sigil by painstaking sigil I repaired time’s ravages.

  At last, an eternity and one backache later, I finished the last sigil. The panel lit up, and I couldn’t help but grin.

  I carefully typed in the sequence the woman had used, holding my breath as I did it. I had no idea how long had passed between the time the woman had opened the door, and the battle that had orphaned my ancestors. They could have changed the door code any number of times.

  I was gambling they hadn’t. People tend to follow the path of least resistance, and that meant not changing an obscure armory code unless they absolutely had to.

  K—thunk.

  The door popped open with a hiss of stale air, exposing a room no one had seen since before my ancestors had made planetfall.

  2

  I leaned into the armory door, and was shocked by how heavy it was. Forcing it open enough to slip inside took almost thirty seconds of grunting and sweating. When I saw how thick the metal was, some sort of unfamiliar alloy, I understood why. A meter of dense metal could probably stop anything short of capital weapons or targeted explosives.

  Inside the armory lay a modest room filled with some of the most valuable cargo in the sector. Two racks of spellrifles lined one wall, while a shelf full of fist-sized grenades ran underneath the rifles.

  The opposite wall contained six suits of body armor constructed from an unfamiliar polymer. It resembled muscle, the texture at least, and was a deep charcoal in color. The suits lacked helmets, which seemed an odd oversight.

  I moved to the armor first, and leaned closer to peer behind it. The armor wasn’t bolted to the wall. It was held aloft through faint gravity magic, which had somehow survived all this time.

  I wrapped both hands around the armor and pulled it loose, then nearly toppled under the weight. It was scout-class armor, and the material wasn’t especially heavy, but I still struggled with it.

  You might be asking yourself why it was worth the trouble if I’m such a wimp. Well, scavengers added a standard clause to all contracts centuries ago.

  Anything you find that you can both use and carry belongs to you.

  Find a pistol? Or a rifle? Or some armor? If you can use it, and carry it, then it’s yours. The law was put into effect because mercs had effectively been forced into slavery, renting their own gear, and keeping nothing they found.

  The back of the armor parted of its own accord, making it easy to pull over my flight suit. I did so, and wrestled awkwardly into the thing until all four limbs were where they were supposed to be. I felt like an idiot, and every step took a lot of effort.

  I could deal with it. Long enough to get back to Kemet and sell it anyway. I looked around the armory, and tried to find anything else I might be able to carry. It would have to be small, or there was no way I’d be able to handle the hike back to the ship.

  There was a rack of pistols under the rifles. I knelt next to it and inspected them. They were about the same size as Ariela, but where my pistol had a thicker bore with two muzzles, these were a bit slimmer with just one.

  “Looks like it’s designed solely with spells in mind,” I muttered as I withdrew a spellpistol from the rack and belted it around the armor’s thigh. I tucked my pistol into a belt on the other side, which made me look like a six-year-old’s rendition of a gunslinger. A six-year-old on acid.

  I considered taking some explosives too, but that was pushing it. The rest of this stuff would keep until I could make it back.

  I leaned my chin down to activate the comm. �
��Sapphire, I’ve made it inside the vault.”

  “Don’t enter until I get there,” came back immediately.

  “A little late for that.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “There’s plenty for everyone. More than we can carry. Small arms and suits of body armor, all pristine.”

  “Nice work.” The words were grudging, and I knew she’d be deeply annoyed when she saw what I’d taken. Sapphire wouldn’t let go of a single credit, once she’d set her sights on it. And I was about to walk away with several thousand more than she’d expected. “I’ll be there in ten. In the meantime—”

  A high-pitched squealing came over the comm, and I winced as it tore through my temples. My last thought before I lost consciousness was that the timing couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I don’t know how many seconds passed, but as I blinked away shards, I realized Sapphire should have said something by now. There was nothing. Was her comm damaged?

  “Kid? Captain is gone. Lurkers.” Wilson’s gravelly voice came over the comm, soft as death. “If you can hear me get someplace dark and quiet. You’re about to have incoming. At least four on the ground. Probably a lot more.”

  “Oh, crap,” I growled, pacing through the armory as I tried to figure out what to do. Should I risk answering? I decided it was worth it, and pressed my chin against the comm to activate it. “I’m here, Wilson. I can lock myself in the armory. There’s no way they’ll get through that door.”