Beyond All Expectations (Emerilia Book 8)

by Michael Chatfield

  “Seems that in these places, my Mana recovery is a quarter of what it usually is,” Deia said.

  “Without the ‘natural’ ley lines of Emerilia, there’s a lot less natural Mana running around,” Anna said.

  The Nalheim continued to move forward. They quickly left the plains and entered the mountains. Here the wind died down slightly. The Nalheim led toward the mountain side. They called out in their language before continuing forward.

  A massive gate could be seen, built into the mountain. Around this there were multiple fires that could be seen illuminating guard positions and windows.

  The Nalheim called out again. The doors opened slowly.

  Behind them, war lizards provided the strength to open the fifty-meter tall and forty-meter wide doors. They opened only enough to fit the group in, immediately closing behind them.

  They passed through smaller gates, which were quickly sealed behind them. As they proceeded forward, the temperature rose quickly. They reached a large cavern that had been carved out from the rock. Nalheim stopped what they were doing and looked up at the stairs that led into their city, their eyes wide in shock at the races that they had never seen before in their life.

  One of the generals roared out in the Nalheim’s language; the Nalheim gathered closer, more coming from deeper in the city.

  Dave looked to Deia and the rest of Party Zero.

  “I’ll translate. You two go set up the interspatial express,” Steve said.

  “That’s not even close to being right,” Dave said. He and Deia moved away from the group and moved down one of the side stairwells that led into the city.

  They activated stealth, Dave sensing the Nalheim as Deia carved a path through Nalheim, her stealth skills much higher than his. Finally they reached a secluded spot that didn’t seem to get much traffic.

  Dave checked with his Touch of the Land spell again. “We’re clear,” Dave said over party chat with Deia and pressed his hands to the rock wall.

  Quickly the rock started to be destroyed; a cave formed beyond. As soon as there was enough room, Dave and Deia moved inside.

  Dave quickly pulled out pre-made soul gem constructs and put them around the doorway. From the outside, the cave disappeared; if someone was to use their sensing spells, it would be nearly impossible to detect the cave entrance.

  Neither Dave nor Deia talked as they worked. Deia checked on the soul gem construct and Mana well, making sure it was operational before she started to pull out miners. The miners activated and then started to burrow into the farthest wall.

  Both Dave and Deia had powerful sight that could easily cut through the darkness. With the soul gem construct that was spreading across the room, Deia was able to clearly see what Dave was working on.

  Dave assembled panels with quick and precise movements. There were eight panels that connected to an octagon base plate. They were made from ebony-coded plates that had been infused with soul gems and had silver traced into them. This allowed the power to easily flow through the various components.

  Dave pulled out an octagonal pillar, placing it down on the main base plate. The soul gem constructs of the different triangular panels that also connected to the base plate connected to this pillar that was covered in fins that were meant to disperse heat.

  Dave checked over the different panels, then the base and the attached pillars. Satisfied, he pulled out a large ball from his bag of holding. It wasn’t actually a perfect sphere but a soul gem ebony and silver construct that had so many faces on it that it was almost spherical.

  Dave placed this on the top of the pillar.

  There was a clicking noise as the different parts of the construct started to light up. Lines looking like the kind that you would find on computer chips lit up with power. These were soul gem and silver constructs that had been heavily coded. A person with a carver wouldn’t have been able to carve the complex coding that made up these lines that moved in straight lines.

  They flowed up from the bottom triangular panels, splitting as they moved higher before reaching the top of the pillar. The air around those heat-dispersing fans started to distort as heat started to flow away from the central pillar.

  The multi-faced nearly sphere on top of the pillar glowed with an internal light. Lines of code like the kind that was traveling up the side of the pillar spread out from the center of the multi-faceted gem.

  These lines were only as thick as a hair but they intersected and connected to one another, looking like hundreds of neurons within the brain lighting up all at once. The heat given off by the device only increased as Dave checked everything.

  Dave pulled out a large Mirror of Communication and put it off to the side of the room. He pulled out a handheld Mirror of Communication and sent a message through it. It linked to the larger Mirror of Communication, using its much larger range in order to transmit the message.

  Dave received a message back.

  He took the rectangular mirror that was no bigger than a phone and placed it in a recess between the heat-dissipating fans on the body of the device.

  The mirror was filled with lines of runes and information as coded lines reached, descended from the gem above, and spread around the Mirror of Communication.

  Dave stepped backward and looked at the device.

  “Come on, you can do it,” Dave said, slightly bent over as he looked at the device, apprehension in his eyes.

  “Dave, what is that?” Deia looked at the device that was giving off waves of energy.

  “A portal anchor,” Dave said with a nervous smile.

  Deia’s eye went wide. After all, she had expected that they would transport a portal to Nal through the supplies or wagons like they had done with the portal they’d gifted to the Aleph. “This…” Deia said. No words came to her mind.

  “It’s basically the same thing that we used on the moonbase, which was styled off of the drop plates. However, this is a hell of a lot more powerful and exact as we’re not moving a portal around a planet or onto a moon of a planet nearby. We’re attempting to move a portal from Emerilia directly to Nal,” Dave said.

  With that, Deia could understand just how hard this would be.

  ***

  Bob was running from control panel to control panel.

  A new panel had been added. This had a Mirror of Communication with glowing lines of code spreading out from it and into the console before spreading out around the room.

  “Damn this science experiment!” Bob yelled as he checked the power outputs and the heat that was building within the various coded banks around the teleportation array.

  In the middle of the room, there was a portal ready and waiting. Around it, the walls with their magically coded formations were moving and changing according to the information that they were receiving through the Mirror of Communication.

  “Power levels are good, though it’s going to take one hell of a bite out of the stored up power. I’m scared that these heat levels are going to just melt the coded plates in here.” Bob nervously tapped on the console, trying to change things around in order to give the teleportation the best chances.

  Heat built in the room as Mana filled the air.

  Bob rushed out of the room.

  “Where are they? Come on—disrupting tech, power enhancers, spatial items of holding,” Bob muttered to himself as he ran through the laboratory, moving from table to table that was filled with various items.

  “Gotcha! Heat exchangers!” Bob grabbed armfuls of the heat exchangers. “And Dave’s duct tape.” He grabbed a gray roll of duct tape as he rushed back to the room.

  He was sweating as he grabbed a vault soul gem on the way. There were metal bands around the soul gem. He attuned the heat exchangers with the soul gem. Dropping the soul gem off by the consoles, he ran in with the heat exchangers.

  The heat from the room started to decrease as the heat exchangers’ coding activated and they started to convert that heat into Mana.

  Bob hastily
used the duct tape to stick the heat exchangers to places where the heat was the worst and where they wouldn’t be in the way for the teleportation array when it was activated. It didn’t take him long to put the different heat exchangers across the walls.

  He rushed back to the consoles, sliding to a stop, using the consoles to stop himself as he looked to the Mirror of Communication console.

  “Ninety percent,” Bob said. Different sections of the teleportation array had locked into place as supercooled gases were released into the room in order to try to cool the area more.

  Bob wiped sweat away as he checked his various settings.

  The entire room hummed with power. The fusion plant had even picked up in pace, directly powering the teleportation array. Bob looked to his various screens that were telling him all manner of information on the teleportation array. Even as he rushed from console to console, his heart in his throat, he was filled with a sense of excitement.

  He had been alive for hundreds of years. He had missed this sense of excitement. Dave had created this teleportation array, teaching Bob about the mysteries contained within it.

  Now Bob stood there with his finger on the button, ready to push Dave’s creation to the limit. This was the test—this was what science was about! Unraveling the mysteries of the universe and coming to understand it!

  “One hundred percent.” Bob smiled as finally the various components that made up the teleportation array were mostly in place. A few different items were constantly moving, keeping the teleportation array and the anchor that Dave had placed down in Nal synced up with each other.

  A loud humming filled the room; there was an explosion of light. Bob ducked, the light burning into his eyes. He couldn’t see a thing but he could hear the machinery within the room started to slow down.

  He stood up slowly, using the console to help him keep his balance, blinking to try to get rid of the light spots. Slowly, his sight started to come back to him.

  “It worked!” Dave’s excited voice came over the party chat connected via the Mirror of Communication network.

  Bob jumped in joy and let out an excited yell as he saw that there was no longer a portal within the teleportation array.

  Still blinking heavily and half-blind, he grabbed the small Mirror of Communication that was no longer showing streaming runes but rather showing a room with a growing soul gem construct across the roof and walls.

  Bob ran to the portals that were within the hub at the rear of the laboratory.

  He was nearly hit by three different carts that were moving materials between the different connected areas. He made it past them all and reached the newest of the portals. Each of the portals rested on their own pedestal, with one side being the “entrance” to the portal and the other being the “exit.” Each of these portals had clamps attached to their rings as well as a console on either side.

  This console allowed them to power up and down the portals, as well as change which portal they would connect to and use the Mana shield that had been added to them all.

  The last portal was already whirring with noise as the millions of runes that were arrayed within the rings were moving. Another portal was trying to establish a connection with it. It took some time before the different parts of the portal stopped turning around and locked into position.

  Bob looked at the console as the portal activated.

  “Looking good on our side. The portal is all dialed up,” Dave said as the portal finished the last adjustments and connected to the one in Nal.

  “I’m getting your signal nice and clear.” Bob checked the information on the console. Power surged through the area; the soul gem dimmed slightly with the power that was used to connect the portals.

  The portal activated with another flash of light.

  “Wish these things wouldn’t go off like a damn flash spell every time,” Bob muttered to himself before he looked up.

  “Hey, dude.” Dave waved from the other side of the portal.

  “Hey, Dave.” Bob couldn’t help but laugh as he deactivated the Mana shield. He moved around the console and moved to the portal.

  It’s been centuries since I’ve even seen a planet other than Emerilia. Bob took a shaky breath, a sad smile appearing on his face. He stepped through the portal without thinking of it and entered a dark room where Dave and Deia looked at Bob with large smiles. “Well, looks like it works. Seems that we’ve got a star system to colonize now.” Bob grinned.

  “We’ve got to get back to the rest of the party. You okay to take over the rest?” Dave asked.

  “No worries. You guys have fun. I’ll just manage a planet, a moonbase, and now a planetary base in another star system. Oh, and would you like me to set up a teleportation network across the star system as well?” Bob asked.

  “That would be perfect. If you could start in the asteroid belt, we need some raw resources first of all. You know where the sensor units are, right?” Dave asked.

  Bob let out a suffering sigh. “This is what I get for having a bleeder who’s a damn rocket engineer.” Bob shook his head.

  Dave laughed. “Don’t have all the fun without me. We’ll be back soon enough.”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it!” Bob had a whole new star system that was open to play with. It was time to build!

  BAE Chapter 22: Quiet, Too Quiet

  Josh, Lucy, and Koza, the leader of the Aleph security forces and their scouts, sat in Josh’s office.

  “We haven’t been able to find any of the new spawn points,” Koza said, a troubled look on his face.

  “I haven’t been able to find out anything through our different networks either,” Lucy said. Both of them looked to Josh, who sat on the opposite couch with a frown on his face.

  “Where the hell did they go? This can’t be the last of the beings that came out of the prison,” Josh thought out loud.

  “We don’t have a clear answer for that, but there is something odd going on.” Lucy paused. Her eyebrows pinched together. She didn’t like mysteries any more than the other two in the room. “It seems that while we haven’t been able to find any spawn points that a number of quests have been appearing all over Emerilia of different kinds. Different towns and cities have been finding that they are having minor issues. When looking at just a few towns of elven kingdoms, then it doesn’t seem to be too bad. However, when looking at all of Emerilia, there has been a sudden and large spike in odd issues coming up. I think that these different creatures and people who were imprisoned are being released in a totally random order. The frequency of these events has increased in number. I think that multiple spawn points are unleashing different prisoners across Emerilia.”

  “It is clear that the Jukal can activate the spawn points whenever they want to. They’ve only been putting the timer on them for interest. It wouldn’t be hard for them to teleport people into Emerilia in sparse groups but all over the place. It would lead to multiple small confrontations. Reduce our numbers but make us stronger for the coming of the later groups,” Koza said.

  Josh sat forward in his seat, interlinking his fingers. “So our choices are to hold the Terra Alliance forces here, ready to react to something that might or might not come, or we let them go free for a bit to try to deal with all of these small quests?” Josh looked to the two who were the information leaders of the Terra Alliance.

  “We’ve shown that in a fight we can pull together in a hurry. With all of these small issues, it’s pulling people away from helping out the alliance and being ready for whatever might come next. If we let the guilds and the different people in the alliance go and deal with these quests, then they can help to reduce the pressure on the people of Emerilia,” Lucy said.

  Josh looked to his hands for a few minutes before he reached a decision.

  “Okay, let the guilds run free and point them in the direction of the quests that deal with the biggest disturbances within Emerilia. All of this large war fighting hasn’t allowed us to work i
n smaller party groups for some time. Will be good to have them do something different so that they’re fresh when we have to fight larger groups,” Josh said.

  “I will have my people look into the different quests and we can see what we can do,” Lucy promised.

  “Good.” Josh paused as a message appeared on his notifications. “Seems that Dave and Malsour are ready to spin up the second section of Terra. Want to go watch?”

  “I have a lot of work to do,” Lucy started.

  “Look, we’ve been wrapped up in fights, planning, and getting all of this ready for months. What’s five minutes to watch our little city grow a little bigger?” Josh asked.

  Koza laughed. “When you put it that way, I would love to watch.”

  Lucy sighed and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how I get any work done around here. Sure, let’s go and watch.”

  They headed out of the tower and toward where the second section of the city had been constructed.

  “You going to see the second section?” Kim asked, seeing them along the way.

  “Yeah. Cassie and Dwayne are there already with the rest of Party Zero and a bunch of others.” Josh’s smile came back as he was filled with excitement.

  “It’s really surprising how quickly you’ve been able to finish this second section of Terra,” Koza said.

  “Dave told me that the third section is going to be done even faster than the second,” Kim added. “I’m stunned myself.”

  “Well, when we started on the second section, we had a lot more diggers and repair bots than we did with the first section. And we were also only starting to work with soul gem constructs. It’s really a hybrid of Aleph ways of making a city and Dave’s craziness matched with the soul gem constructs that have been turned into the different parts needed for the city. The third section will be much more simple, with soul gem constructs that go through the multiple outer layers of the rotating city. They will also take care of the different infrastructure needed within the city. We will have material supports to create the framework for them, but then they will grow over this superstructure to create towers, apartments, shops, gardens, power stations, and refineries. All of which will be capable of holding onto Mana. The entire city will be one massive battery,” Lucy said.