Sac'a'rith

by Vincent Trigili

  “Yes, but how does it answer my question?” I asked.

  “The Sac’a’rith are magi, but we can do something no other magus can do: we tap the life force of nature around us. The weave is what gave life to the plants and to us; just as you can tap the weave, you can tap these plants. Think of them like batteries. The bolt you cast came because you instinctively conducted the power of life into your spell, the life surrounding you here.”

  “Then when I’m not around life, I can’t cast?” I asked.

  “No, you can cast even in the cargo bay. You can tap the weave directly like all other magi, but you’re much stronger and everything is much easier when you’re surrounded by life.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Raquel wanted me to stay in hydroponics until casting both spells became as easy as breathing. She said that once I could cast as well as she did, I’d be ready to try it in the cargo bay. It was much easier to cast in hydroponics, and after a week of practice I could at least cast both spells from memory without help, but Raquel’s speed and smoothness was beyond imitation. In spite of my protests, she insisted that one day I’d have that too.

  I doubted it would ever happen.

  “Zah’rak, we are about a day from our last jump. This would be the best time to use the gate,” commented Raquel.

  “What time is it there?” I asked.

  “Nearly nightfall. If we hurry, we should be able to get clear of the first gate and gate to the fortress before darkness.”

  I contacted Shira on the comm. and told her to change into her wilderness gear and meet us at the gate. Quickly, I suited up. We met in the room, Raquel opened the gate and we rushed through.

  It felt good to be outdoors again. The trees, birds and other life around me were invigorating. I was disappointed that we would be gating directly to the fortress instead of walking this time. “Raquel, that first night we came, why didn’t we simply gate to the fortress?”

  “I was too weak, and Shira couldn’t do it yet,” she said aloud, but privately she sent, “Shira needed that time in natural surroundings to begin to heal. When we get more time, we must spend more training sessions here so she can unlock her true potential.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That makes sense.”

  I wondered why the gate wasn’t inside the fortress. Raquel said, “Looks like twilight is almost upon us. We’d better not delay.”

  Shira nodded and opened a gate to the fortress. Once we’d arrived, there was evidence of greater change than before. It had been a little less than two weeks since our last visit, but a lot of work had been done to the place.

  “Odd,” said Raquel.

  “Yeah; it seems the place is still growing,” I said.

  “Well, yes, but look at the layout,” she said.

  I did but I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. There were now thick walls, towers and buildings. An area had been cleared and leveled nearby, suitable for landing small craft. Another area seemed to have been cleared for gardens. The castle was really starting to take shape around us. I was amazed at the speed with which it was coming to life.

  “The design is different,” said Shira with a gasp.

  They ran over to where we’d camped out last time and had drawn a map of the castle. I followed along to see what they were up to. At the campsite, we found that the drawing in the ground was gone and had been replaced by a scale model of our design. Suddenly the new castle features took on a familiar aspect: Shira’s gardens, the landing pad for the Night Wisp and our other ideas had all been worked on. I gestured to the scale model of our design. “Someone is building this!”

  “Apparently,” said Raquel. She was lost in thought, looking at a particular building which had remained unchanged since our first visit, one of the few pieces left from the original castle. It wasn’t much of a building; just a few walls and a slanted roof that might double as a door. I couldn’t work out what it was that drew her attention.

  The shadows lengthened around us and the wailing began from the forest as night fell. Wraiths gathered overhead and those great skeletal flying beasts circled, while the full moon gave an eerie grey glow to all.

  “It seems more dangerous than the last time we were here,” I said.

  “Definitely. Whoever is behind the reconstruction has roused up the neighbors,” said Raquel.

  “What should we do?” asked Shira.

  “Let’s get back up onto the central tower where you made your stand last time,” said Raquel. She led the way over to the tower; it was thicker and surely also taller than it had been. Looking towards the top of the tower, I saw it now had a roof and what might be windows. It matched the central control tower which I had added to our design. In my design, there had been a single door at the base leading to a large room with a single central staircase. I jogged over to the tower and found a door right where I had envisioned it.

  “Perhaps we should take the stairs?” I asked.

  “That should be interesting at least,” said Raquel.

  I reached for the door but as I drew close it opened by itself, like the doors on a spacecraft. I looked back at Shira and Raquel, who shrugged. So much power now flowed through the fortress that everything appeared to be enchanted. Even without focusing on using my Sight, I could see the power.

  When the three of us had walked through the door, it slid shut behind us. The room we entered was vast. The ceiling was at least seven meters high, and the walls appeared to be made of polished marble. The floor was stone, perhaps slate, and also smooth and polished. The soles of our boots were padded, but our muted footfalls echoed throughout the chamber. In the center was a large spiral staircase which went both up and down.

  “See any way to lock it?” I asked, looking back at the door.

  Shira looked around and said, “Yeah, I think this latch here.” She lowered a latch and there was a satisfying click. We checked to make sure we couldn’t open it with the latch in place, then turned and headed up a staircase in the center of the room.

  “Up, I suppose,” I said. When we were envisaging our castle on the last trip, I had added a vast underground tunnel system. I thought that the stairs descending from this room led to a central hub, but I couldn’t remember the precise layout we had come up with.

  As we climbed the central stair, we passed many empty rooms. They looked freshly hewn from the stone and seemed to be designed in such a way as to use all the space in the tower. The walls themselves glowed softly in the visible light spectrum, illuminating everything with a cool omnidirectional light. I could feel the power of life all around me.

  It took some time to climb to the top of the stairs. The tower had grown taller than it had been when we’d fought on top of it. We passed more empty rooms than I could count. Raquel felt that it would make an easy target if the fortress ever came under attack from the air; but if my design had been followed to the letter, it was much larger underground than above.

  I heard Shira gasp as we entered the top room. The room itself was large, taking up the entire width of the tower, with windows on all sides. Unlike the others, this room wasn’t empty. Three thrones made of stone were arranged along the outside edge of the room. They were spaced apart at equal distances, and situated so that there was no place in the room where all three of them were not staring at you.

  On each throne was a figure. These were incredibly detailed and lifelike, dressed in regal robes, each with a crown on its head. They pulsed with life and power, but thankfully didn’t move as we came into the room. Each seemed to be grown from a single block of stone, as there were no visible joints nor any marking that would indicate any kind of tool was used to craft them.

  I swallowed hard as I looked at them. There was no mistaking their features, and nothing could have prepared me for what I was seeing.

  “It’s us,” said Shira quietly.

  I turned to Raquel, who was staring at her own statue. “Raquel, what in the Emperor’s name
is going on here?”

  She turned to me and said quietly, “You awoke the fortress and it has accepted us as the Founders.”

  “The what?” asked Shira.

  “The Founders: the first generation of the Sac’a’rith. We had a room like this, with seven thrones dedicated to them. It was the most holy spot on the grounds.” She was visibly shaken.

  “So you’re saying the castle is building itself for us?” I wasn’t even sure how to phrase my question. My mind was a jumble of thoughts that refused to untangle themselves.

  “Yes, and it’s no wonder the undead are so anxious. This,” she said, waving her hands around the room, “represents the return of life.”

  “Where are they?” asked Shira.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The builders. Someone must be doing all this work,” she explained.

  Raquel looked out the window and pointed to the one building that had not changed in all our trips. “There. That’s where the caretakers lived … live.”

  “But how could they know what we look like?” I asked.

  “Zah’rak, I really have no idea. As far as I knew, all this was impossible,” she said. She looked at her statue with tears in her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said almost inaudibly.

  I was about to suggest we check the builder’s house when Shira asked, “Raquel, what do we need to do for you tonight?”

  The reason we’d come here in the first place had been completely forgotten. Raquel regained her composure and walked over to Shira. “It’ll be much easier now. The walls are strong enough to keep out danger, and I’m nowhere near as weak as I was. I should be able to recharge safely up here, and we can leave in the morning.”

  I decided I’d keep a watch on the caretaker’s building while they worked it out. I wanted to see who was building this place and it kept me from having to see the massive statue of myself. I could feel it staring at my back and it made me uneasy, but that was less uncomfortable than facing it would have been.

  As the full moon climbed into the night sky, the eerie grey hue seemed to deepen. This added to the creepy effect of the screams and wails from the undead, trying to breach the fortress walls but afraid to get too close. Overhead, the sky filled with foul flying creatures, most of which I couldn’t identify; I was probably better off not knowing.

  The night passed without any sign of the caretakers. Raquel collapsed again at midnight, but this time Shira knew what to do and Raquel was revived to her full strength by the end of the first hour.

  The following morning, I went out to have another look at the scale model. In the long night hours I’d decided on some changes in the design of the fortress, and I wanted to update the model to see if things would be different the next time we returned.

  Once that was done, I was planning to visit the caretaker’s building but Raquel said, “We’d better go back and get some rest. We still have a battle to fight.”

  I sighed, knowing she was right. “Okay, gate us out of here; but when this is over, I want to come back and meet our sculptors.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Raquel had taken Zah’rak and Shira somewhere and once again left Ragnar in charge. I couldn’t figure Ragnar out. He was obviously the weakest member of the team and the least knowledgeable, but everyone including Raquel respected him and his opinions on any subject. I would have to learn what part he played in all of this, but I had another task to complete first.

  “Ragnar?” I said.

  “Yes, Marcus?”

  “Will you be okay up here? I’m going to jack in and run some maintenance before our final jump,” I said.

  “Yeah, go on. I’ll call Crivreen or Purwryn if I have any trouble,” he said.

  “Thanks.” It was nice to be among people from whom I didn’t have to hide what I was.

  I left the bridge and went straight to the cargo bay. I wanted to crash Purwryn and Crivreen’s practice session before turning in. They met around this time every day to work on their skills. I knew that the others practiced regularly also, but my relationship with Purwryn should allow me the freedom to pry deeper.

  Since coming on board I hadn’t had a chance to learn much about how they worked their magic, and there was nothing helpful in the ship’s computers. The computer records described what it looked like externally, and what motions to take, but gave no indication of how it all worked. I needed to talk to a magus to find that out, it seemed.

  I slipped into the back of the cargo bay, careful not to disturb them. They were facing each other and focusing on something, but I couldn’t tell what.

  “Ready!” said Purwryn.

  Crivreen nodded and moved his hands while chanting. His back was to me so I couldn’t see much of what he was doing, but there was no question that his hands and body were moving in a pattern with a degree of precision I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in a primitive. The movements were identical to one of the spells I had studied in the ship’s database, and so perfectly matched I would have thought only a Cyborg could pull it off; but unlike a Cyborg’s perfect but terse movements, these flowed naturally. There was no hint of working at perfection; it looked more as if he was moving his arms around randomly and they just happened to be in perfect sync with the pattern in the database.

  As he completed the spell, a bolt of electricity arced from Crivreen’s outstretched hand and struck Purwryn, who grimaced but held his ground. After a moment, Crivreen clenched his fist and stopped the flow of power.

  A Cyborg with the proper implants could toss lightning like that, but it would quickly drain a power pack. A bolt like I’d just witnessed would probably eat up half its power, and I knew that they had already been down here practicing for hours. My study of the ship’s library told me that magi had the ability to tap an energy store that they called ‘the Weave’. It was that connection I wished to understand. At the very least, I wanted to find a way to block it and turn magi into primitives. Ultimately, the Great Core wanted the ability to tap this power for itself, but from what I had learned so far it seemed that only pure organics could do that. Magi refused implants of all kinds so that they wouldn’t hinder their connection. This didn’t seem to bode well for the Great Core’s plans.

  Purwryn, amazingly, didn’t seem harmed by the lightning attack. I couldn’t work out why that was, since there’d been enough power in that bolt to kill a primitive and seriously damage any unshielded implants. At the very least, he should have collapsed as the electricity overloaded his nervous system.

  “Hey, Marcus! Think fast!” called Purwryn.

  I turned towards him, and as soon as my eyes made contact with his he threw something at me. My automatic systems went into overdrive trying to understand the threat, but they were too slow. For the first time since becoming enhanced, someone had been able to get a jump on me.

  Purwryn’s fireball stopped a few centimeters from my face, just beyond the tip of my nose. I could feel the heat radiating from it and knew it was hot enough to have done serious damage to my organic systems had it landed.

  It dissipated and Purwryn smiled at me. “You’re going to have to be faster than that.”

  I replayed the memory of the fireball’s flight and checked the timing. It wasn’t good. “I would have needed half a second more to dodge that.”

  “You should have had that,” he chided. “I know you have perfect memory. Replay the scene and look for the warning signs.”

  I did as he suggested and then saw it. Just before the fireball appeared, his hands had come together and mimed a push towards me. “You’re right. I’ll update my programming.”

  “Marcus, we’re probably going to face sorcerers at this next encounter,” he said. “You need to be ready. An attack like Crivreen’s lightning bolts travels at the speed of light, but you should be able to dodge other attacks such as my fireball and the much slower earth bolt.”

  I didn’t like being instructed like this by an unenh
anced being, not one bit. “Try it again.”

  He cast, and as he did I noticed two things. The first was the laser-light focus of his eyes. No matter what his body did, his focus didn’t waver. Secondly, he was casting slower than before and that angered me; he was going easy on me.

  I saw the telltale cue and this time moved to dodge the fireball, but turned right into the path of a second one. It slammed into my armored chest and dispersed without breaking through. Once again he’d showed me up, and I wasn’t happy. It took all of my programming to prevent myself from reacting.

  “Marcus, are you okay?” asked Crivreen.

  “Yeah, the armor held up well,” I said. “Purwryn, what are you trying to prove? That you’re better than me?”

  “No,” he said with genuine shock in his voice. “You’re faster and stronger without a doubt, but you don’t know our targets. You need to learn so you can use your advantages to overcome them.”

  I took a deep breath as I realized he was giving me what I’d come here to find out: a way to fight the magi. “Okay, sorry.”

  “I know you’re a fast study, so what weaknesses did you spot in my two attacks?” asked Purwryn.

  “Your eyes betrayed your target, and your hands betrayed your timing. Cast again,” I said.

  Purwryn nodded and cast. This time, a mere instant before his final gesture I moved with my Cyborg speed and dove behind a box, breaking his line of sight. The fireball whizzed by harmlessly.

  Before he could say or do anything else I was moving again. This time I sprang up over the box and came down on him. I calculated the impact so he wouldn’t get hurt, but I hoped it would shake his confidence.