by Chris Fox
I forced a calming breath, and clasped my hands behind my back in what I hoped was a regal way. My bed-head hair probably wrecked that image.
“Where does that leave us? Do we still owe the Inurans?”
Ramachan rose from her desk and began to pace. Her hands shook, and her agitation was palpable.
“They’ve asked for arbitration,” the minster said. She stopped her pacing, and her face hardened even further, almost brittle now. “They admit that Jolene attacked unlawfully, but not that she is responsible for the destruction of our planet.”
“Bortel will testify that she is.” I folded my arms and ignored the gurgling from my stomach. “Scrying will provide any evidence we don’t have.”
“Maybe.” The minster finally dropped into her chair again, as if she lacked the strength to stand. “But the Inurans claim we still need to provide the commerce we promised or the cancellation fee. They may be willing to negotiate the price, but that hardly matters. We don’t have the money to buy them off.”
“Then we play for time.” Now it was my turn to pace. “We call in the Confederacy officially. That buys us time to try to find something valuable enough to sell.”
“And there was nothing aboard the Flame of Knowledge?” Her hope rose, and it killed me to dash it. There was no way I was telling her about the Web of Divinity.
“Nothing.” I shook my head sadly. “We found knowledge scales, but nothing close to the amount of money you’d need. The ship is overrun with monsters, and not suitable to be sold. We might be able to investigate one of the others, though. If you can keep the Inurans busy, then I might be able to find something. There are five more ships out there. One of them has to have something to sell.”
“I can buy you time.” She leaned back in her chair, and eyed my shrewdly. “In the meantime I think it’s time for you to pay us a visit. As I understand it your mother needs you here in person in order for you to turn over command.”
And there it was…the entire purpose for the call. She wanted this dealt with, before I found a way to wiggle out of it. Did I want to do that? Did I still trust my mother? I noticed she was nowhere to be seen, which suggested the minister wanted us kept apart. That seemed odd.
Last time she’d included my mother as extra leverage. What had changed?
“I can be there for breakfast,” I allowed. “Where is my mother?”
“She, ah…” the minister glanced off screen, and her mask finally cracked, revealing the scared person underneath. “The truth is I’m a bit worried about her. She took leaving the system hard, especially since she feared the worst for you. She believed you lived, because if you died she’d have become captain, but she didn’t know if you’d been captured by the Inurans. I’m glad I can reassure her now.”
The minister left out that my mother had served a term as the headmistress of the academy. She loved the school, and Highspire, but mostly she loved the students. It must have killed her to run away, and I wondered what kind of scars that had left.
“I’ll get cleaned up and head over to your ship.”
“Of course. See you soon.” She inclined her head, and the missive dissolved back into a blank wall.
Now what? Did I turn over the captaincy? And what did I do about Vee? There were so many questions. So much to think about. I still hadn’t had time to properly honor my father, or to even think about where I stood in regards to his death.
I sat on my bed again.
The entryway chimed.
“Come in,” I called. I’m not going to lie. I hoped it was Vee.
Briff’s scaly head poked through the doorway. “Hey, we ran a tourney yesterday and had a great time. We’re about to start another one since we have the day off and all. You want to join in? I figured you could use some downtime.”
I thought about that. The responsible thing to do was go to the minster’s ship, and turn over the captaincy.
But you know what? I’d earned a day off.
“Yeah, man, I’m in.” I stifled a yawn. “Just let me get some breakfast.”
“Awesome! You’re gonna have so much fun.” Briff charged off, the deck shaking as he ran.
I considered changing, or putting on my armor, but instead padded barefoot out of my quarters. I was among friends, and besides, in that moment I was far too lazy to try putting on gear.
The mess was mostly empty by the time I arrived. Vee sat by herself, and glanced up as I came in. Her auburn hair shone under the soft lights, and the way they caught her eyes made it tough to look away.
I led with the smoothest thing I could think of. “Hey, I worked all night on this hair. The least you could do is compliment me.”
She rolled her eyes, but patted the chair next to her. “You know we have a forge now. I can make you a brush.”
“I just need eggs. And maybe some ham.” I headed to the console of my foundry, on my ship, and ordered eggs, which I took to sit with the woman I very much hoped would one day be my lady. “I have a feeling the hardest stuff is behind us.”
You can already guess how that turned out.
Interlude VIII
Every molecule of Inura’s body, his magic, and his very soul screamed out that the ship was wrong the instant he translocated into a remote corner of a trivial cargo bay aboard the Inura’s Grace.
The Great Ship had been his crowning achievement during the final age of the dragonflights, during the last epoch when they’d worked together, all eight of them.
Setting aside their bickering had allowed them to conquer a galaxy, and to shape the destiny of thousands of worlds. There had been power and plenty for all, and this vessel had been built by the version of Inura who knew only blind optimism.
It had been a refuge for his children, an ark capable of carrying them to distant stars, where they could spread his light and improve the lives of all they touched. It had been a vessel of knowledge. Of invention. The Inura’s Grace had spearheaded magical development for centuries, and many of their most impressive relics had been created here.
But the ship had changed.
Those changes weren’t yet visible to the naked eye, at least not in this part of the ship. A glance at the cargo bay showed that while it was not in use that it had been maintained and kept in good repair. There were no spots of rust, and the magical lighting had been freshly enchanted no more than a decade ago.
No, the changes were subtler than that. The energy that hummed through the ship, that animated it and made it the forge that it was, had changed. The song of life had been replaced with its mournful cousin…spirit.
That made no sense. One did not simply reshape a vessel as large or potent as this, and even if so, his children were of life. Even the metal that comprised the bulkheads and corridors was infused with life.
Yet the wrongness persisted. It defied his disbelief, flaunting the twisted nature of his crowning achievement. Somehow the ten millennia of isolation had murdered the soul of his vessel. That terrified him. Such sacrifices were not accidental. Someone had willfully killed the ship and transmuted the magic.
It was the only possibility that made any sense.
Inura found the strength to leave the corner where he’d been hiding, though he’d wrapped himself in layers of cloaked spells that rendered him undetectable on every possible level. He was invisible, inaudible, and immune to attention. Eyes would slide past him without seeing anything.
He glided up the corridor, and made his way toward the heart of the ship. During his journey he encountered no one, which disturbed him further. Who’d been caring for the ship? Where had they gone?
The answer came near the ship’s heart.
All corridors led toward the center of the primary level, just as he’d intended. Inura drifted up the golden corridors, where the first clue presented itself. Golden walls gave way to an unwholesome silver in the process of losing its luster.
Inura fluffed his wings behind him in agitation. Corrupting the heart of a Great Ship was no simp
le feat, nor one that could be accomplished quickly. Whatever had been happening here had been going on for centuries, or longer.
As he approached, silver gave way to a sickly white, the worst of the corruption. He followed it down a corridor, and finally reached the outer ring of the amphitheater itself.
Unlike the other Great Ships, the Inura’s Grace had been designed to welcome and embrace. The heart of the ship was a giant floating sun, but one that shed clean, wholesome light that did not harm the eyes or skin as a star would.
For many millennia scholars had filled the rings of seats ascending up from the center of the amphitheater. A stage had been built precisely at the center, a silver disk that moved as the bearer wished, and ensured that their voice was heard by all.
All that had changed.
The seats near the center were occupied by bipedal figures, but the wrongness emanated from each and every one. They basked in the glow of an unholy sun, the clean life energy somehow replaced by wretched spirit, the insidious corruption that allowed corpses to continue on past their allotted life span, and that shackled souls for their twisted uses.
Inura froze. He’d seen this before. The mages on the lowest level were the most powerful, so powerful that he could parse each individual aura in spite of the density of the cluster.
Their auras made it clear that they were unliving. Their bodies were ancient husks, but their magics had shackled their own souls to that desiccated flesh. They would do anything to prevent being woven back into the Great Cycle.
He’d seen power mad necromancers before, and had eradicated many sects in his time. This was different. These were his children, yet somehow they’d abandoned their reverence for life. It made no sense. How had they fallen? Why mortgage away their immortality for this unnatural imprisonment?
Many of the mages in the back rows still drew breath, though their flesh was sickly and pallid. Necromancers, every one, drawing upon the souls of others to fuel themselves. The dark reflection of his own soulcatchers.
A procession of white-robed figures began marching into the heart from a corridor opposite his location. In their center floated a shackled woman, who thrashed wildly at her bonds.
Another procession came from a second corridor, then a third, and so on, until twenty groups of robed figures brought their prisoners down to the light.
Inura had often longed for his draconic form since his…lessening. Never so much as now. He was not a war god, but his dragon form could have laid waste to everyone in the amphitheater with a single breath. Now though? It would be a magical battle, and those rarely ended well for a lone caster, god or no.
The procession finally halted when it reached the sickly sun, the perversion of life that had somehow overcome one of his most beloved creations.
One of the figures in the lowest row floated into the air over the processions, up near the wan sun. She stretched both hands high into the air over her, and bathed in the glow of that unwholesome star. When she spoke the words were crisp, but the accent was strange.
“The cycle has turned again, and once more we honor the Maker’s memory. His death cries out for vengeance.” The high priestess, a soulcatcher he would guess, extended a hand toward the score of prisoners, and in that moment dread gripped Inura’s very core. A faint light pulsed in her hand, then in the sun above. “We offer these souls to strengthen the Maker’s Wrath. Once, you were our father’s grace. Now, you are the terrible instrument of his vengeance. Our father is gone, but his memory remains.”
A sickly wisp of smoke puffed up from the priestess’s palm, and flowed rapidly toward the first victim. Inura forced his wings erect, and stood tall. He would witness their deaths, even if he couldn’t prevent them.
Inura knew the greater paths of magic better than all but a few gods, and an understanding of what he was about to witness was already growing. Necrotech had been banned during the reign of the dragonflights, thrown aside in favor of magitech.
At the time Inura had opposed the move. It made little sense to ignore so potent a weapon. Spirit and bone had intrigued the artificer in him, though even as a youth the idea of using souls to power tech had been disquieting.
Never more so than now.
The smoke emanating from the priestess’s palm divided into twenty flows, which each stalked a victim. They flowed through the air like snakes, then pounced on their helpless prey, flowing up noses and through mouths opened to scream.
The flesh paled immediately, the victims a mix of drifters and humans, and a lone Inuran. The life left their eyes, and their chests ceased to rise, but the spell was only half done.
The smoke burst out of its victims, and flowed back to the priestess’s outstretched palm. She raised her other hand, and an ivory ceramic urn floated up to meet her. The smoke flowed into the urn’s mouth, and Inura knew he wasn’t imagining the screams as the priestess corked the vessel.
“The bodies of the defilers are yours to do with as you wish, our gift to you.” She waved at the processions, who offered a single unified bow, as if they’d been practicing together for a lifetime. Each began marching back the way they’d come, and the woman didn’t speak again until the last had exited to the room.
She set the urn next to the bench where she’d been sitting, but remained hovering in the air, clearly ready to address her flock once those she deemed unworthy had departed.
“Lesser business is concluded,” she intoned. All eyes were fixed upon her, and Inura could feel the strength in her, enhanced as it was by ingesting some of the spiritual energy she’d just taken. “Now to the greater. Kemet is no more. The lurker sheep are few in number, but they will heed our war cry. The time has come to take revenge on our enemies. The Inurans have revealed themselves, and they have no idea that the Maker’s Wrath is active. The time has come—”
Inura’s attention was diverted by a tug on his soul. The kind of tug that hadn’t occurred in ten millennia. One of his faithful had just prayed for, and received, a miracle.
How? Who?
Everyone with that kind of connection had been exterminated millennia ago, hunted down systematically by Nefarius’s agents. They’d been wiped out, because she knew it would hurt him. Had she missed one somehow?
He retreated into the corridor, and sketched a scrying spell. As the opaque surface of his magical mirror liquified into the paladin’s location a subtle numbness crept through him.
The vision showed a paladin in the old style. One using armor and shield that had not been worn since the dragonflights had been unified. One that he’d not seen since the world that had borne his name had been obliterated by Nefarius.
Beside the paladin stood a figure in Heka Aten armor. Fully bonded Heka Aten armor. It could only be the captain of the Word of Xal.
What did it mean? It couldn’t be coincidence that he’d discovered these necromancers at the precise moment where awarding his faithful with that knowledge might save countless lives.
Someone had manipulated events. A god, or a powerful mage, but someone. The question was…who? And when? Was this some prophecy orchestrated by a long dead deity as a last gasp of their power? Or was someone manipulating him into revealing himself?
Inura glanced back into the heart chamber at the unholy sun. This ship had become a threat to every living being in the sector, and it sounded as if they were ready to start taking action.
They had to be stopped. That was his responsibility. They were his children. The time for running had ended.
It was time to warn this paladin and the captain of the Word of Xal.
Note to the Reader
If you enjoyed Hatchling, we have a complete seven-book prequel series with an ending already available, and it leads seamlessly into the book you just read.
We’re also working on a pen & paper RPG and the Kickstarter went live right around the same time this book came out. You can learn more by signing up to the mailing list, or visit magitechchronicles.com and our Magitech Chronicles World Anvi
l page.
We’ve got maps, lore, character sheets, and a free set of rules you can use to generate your own character, plus a Facebook group where we geek out about this stuff.
I hope you enjoy and we can’t wait to meet you!
-Chris