Void Wyrm: The Magitech Chronicles Book 2

by Chris Fox

  “He has a point,” Aran added. “If this thing wasn’t on the level, and if there really is a goddess here, couldn’t she snuff us out with a thought if she wanted to?”

  Nara stifled a yawn. “If they want us dead, there isn’t anything we can do to protect ourselves. We may as well get some sleep, and hope they’re not going to eat us.”

  “And on that comforting note,” Voria said, “I am going to bed.” She walked into the first room and flung herself on the bed without even bothering to remove her boots.

  Sleep overtook her in moments.

  35

  POWERLESS

  Voria awoke groggily, raising her face from a wet spot on the pillow. “Eww.”

  She crawled from the mounds of pillows and blankets, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she ambled back into the sitting room. There was no sign of the others, but the rooms where they should be staying were dark. She briefly considered checking on them. It seemed dangerous to assume they were okay without verifying it.

  Yet what could she do if they weren’t? Nothing.

  She had to accept that she was virtually powerless here; she could either wallow in it or focus on something else. Passivity galled her, in any form, and besides she was tired of waiting. Why not give in to the temptation to learn? If this really was the first library, she could learn…anything. And wasn’t that what the augury had intended for her?

  Voria headed out into the library. Several custodians, each indistinguishable from the one they’d met, moved among the stacks. They still unnerved her, but whatever discomfort she experienced was overrode by the knowledge they guarded.

  She approached the closest one. “Excuse me.”

  The creature turned eight eyes on her.

  “I spoke with a custodian earlier. Are you…him?”

  The spider’s jaws quivered. “I am not, but I can serve you just as ably. What do you require? Is something amiss in your chambers?”

  “Quite the contrary. The accommodations are brilliant. I’m hoping to avail myself of the knowledge here. Is that permitted?” She didn’t know if it was a gross breach of etiquette to ask, but the risk seemed worth it.

  “Hmm. Certain parts of the library are available to you. You may see the past, with some stipulations—and the present, with a few more. But I cannot allow you to see any futures, especially any possibility touching your own thread.” The custodian raised two bristly limbs and rubbed them together. “What do you wish to study?”

  That was the real question, wasn’t it? She had the chance to learn, theoretically, the beginning of all things. She could see the universe being born. Or, if this thing was correct, maybe even the instant when the last star snuffed out, billions of years from now.

  “Can you track a specific person’s life?” Voria asked, an idea forming. If this worked, maybe she could finally steal a metaphorical march on her enemy. Maybe she could be the hunter, instead of the hunted.

  The custodian cocked its bulbous head. “Of course. Is there a thread you wish to examine?”

  “Yes. I know her as Nebiat, though it may not be her true name. She is a dragon. A Void Wyrm, and child of Krox.”

  “What type of data do you wish regarding this individual?”

  “We were attacked by Khalahk, and I know that was part of the possibility needed to get us here. But how did Khalahk know we were going to be there at that exact instant? Why attack us?” Voria knew it was a lot of supposition, but the move had Nebiat’s claw marks all over it. “Was Nebiat involved? If so, I will have followup questions.”

  “Come.” The custodian scuttled between rows of shelves, moving unerringly through the library. Other custodians eyed their passage with great interest, though none spoke to her or her guide.

  Any one could have been the creature she’d dealt with the day before. How could she know? It only made the spiders more unsettling.

  They finally stopped at a shelf along the far wall. The custodian plucked a scarlet scale from the shelf. It studied it with those bulbous eyes for several long moments. The scale pulsed with magic, and a wispy image rose from it.

  The light reflected off the spider’s eyes. “I believe this is the information you seek.”

  Nebiat and Khalahk swam around each other in the infernal glow of a star. The titanic dragons conversed for some time, then departed without fighting. There was no use of magic, so whatever Nebiat had done didn’t appear to have bound Khalahk. Either he’d long been her slave, or she’d somehow convinced him to attack Voria of his own accord.

  Why would a dragon outside the Krox want to see her dead? She’d saved Drakkon from enslavement, and had never attacked Khalahk.

  “Do you have another question?” the custodian asked. Its face might be grotesque, but the words were cultured, hinting at this creature’s intelligence.

  “Can you show me what she is doing at this very instant?”

  “Of course.” The custodian breathed across the top of the scale, and another wisp puffed up.

  This one showed a small, sleek corvette. The starship had been burned into her mind over the course of decades. The Swift Arrow—her father’s ship—currently docked at the sixth branch, at what appeared to be a resort. The wisp followed a person’s perspective as they snuck aboard the ship.

  Voria reached out and seized one of the spider’s bristly limbs. “Is there a way we can warn my father? Please, we have to stop this!”

  The custodian looked down at her hand curiously. “This is why we are loathe to show the present, or the future. Observers always seek to change, to alter. This would inflict catastrophic and often unpredictable consequences. Slow down. Think. Consider the ramifications if we were to act. What would you do? And what effect would that action have?”

  Voria licked her lips, thinking frantically. What could she say to convince this creature to help her? An honest answer to its question was a good beginning. “It would require some sort of communication spell. A missive.”

  “And?”

  “And this missive would have to travel through the Umbral Depths until it reached my father.” She still didn’t see where the creature was leading her.

  “Spells leaves a residual signature. Missives travel in a straight line. Your own magical abilities are primitive, but even you must understand that.” The custodian added no animosity to the words. It was a simple statement of fact.

  “So sending such a spell would leave a trail back to this world,” she realized aloud. “Warning my father could expose this place.”

  “More, it would expose you and your companions to immediate danger. Khalahk lurks somewhere on this world, watching. Hunting. If he were to see a spell depart this place, he would unerringly track it here.”

  Voria exhaled a long, slow breath. The images played above the scale as Nebiat made her way inside a spacious suite, weaving a path toward the master bedroom. The dreadlord paused just outside , peering cautiously inside. Her father was sprawled across his wide bed, naked and unarmed. Several empty wine bottles lay scattered around the nightstand.

  Erika rose from the bed, and moved to stand protectively in front of Nebiat. Her father took up his weapon, but failed to cast a spell. He was quickly overwhelmed, and all Voria could do was watch as Nebiat took the man who’d raised her to near adulthood.

  If Voria knew anything about Nebiat, it was that the binder left nothing to chance. Those women were plants, and the wine had almost certainly been drugged. She’d set a trap, and clearly Erika had been part of that trap.

  “I know you can’t risk exposing this world, but can you at least show me the future? What will she make my father do? Knowing that could influence my own actions. I could return to help, somehow.”

  “Your audience with Neith approaches.” The spider raised a long leg and pointed at a tunnel leading off the main library. It was easily thirty meters tall, far larger than any of the others. “Go there, through those doors. They will open of their own accord when the goddess is ready for your audience.�
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  36

  NEITH

  Voria arrived at a pair of titanic golden doors. Every millimeter was covered in dragon scales, each containing a vast repository of magical energy. Sigils dotted every last one, allowing the scales to be configured as the user desired.

  She couldn’t begin to guess what the enchantment was used for. The complexity was staggering, and she doubted even a lifetime would be enough to decipher a single door.

  The doors swung silently inward, exposing a short hallway that emptied into a cavernous room. Voria steeled herself. The first step was the hardest, but after she got moving she was able to keep going, plunging into the darkness.

  The doors swung silently shut behind her, a faint whoosh of air washing over her. A moment later a rush of hot, fetid wind engulfed her as something colossal moved in the darkness.

  “When you gaze upon me, you will be filled with terrible wonder.” The voice echoed through the room like thunder, and Voria’s hands shot to her ears. “Awe. Fear. Madness. Be prepared, mortal.”

  A bright flame sprang into existence high above, banishing the darkness in a pool around Voria. It didn’t fully expose the monstrosity in the corner, but she had the impression of giant leathery wings and long, segmented legs. An arachnidrake, like the one Aran had clashed with.

  “Not an arachnidrake,” the goddess whispered. “The Arachnidrake. The mother of my entire species.”

  Even the whisper was enough to draw blood from Voria’s ears. She gritted her teeth against the pain, and forced herself to look upon the goddess. Something about the deity tore at her mind, prying open a new sense she hadn’t realized she possessed.

  “Yes, you begin to see. To truly see for the first time.”

  “What are you doing to me?” Voria yelled, her voice small against the darkness.

  “I am awakening you, vessel. Showing you the true universe, not the static single moment most of your kind dwell within.”

  Voria’s grip tightened over her ears as the pain increased.

  “Imagine an ant walking along the forest floor, never looking up. It doesn’t know the sun, or the stars. It doesn’t know the mountains, or valleys, or the creatures that dwell within. Such is how your perceptions compare to mine. Look up, little ant. Look up and see.”

  Voria fell to her knees, cradling her head against the pain. Nausea roiled up, and she heaved bile onto the stone before her. She trembled violently, unable to control her body as unfamiliar magical energies washed over her.

  “My work is done, vessel. This portion, at least.”

  “W-who are you?” Voria rasped over the shards of glassy pain in her throat.

  An orb of flame sprang to life in each of the eight eyes. “I am the first witness, the seer of all things. Flame-reading is a paltry attempt to understand the universe as it truly is, but it is a rough approximation for the change I have imbued you with.”

  “You’re the one who invented divination,” Voria realized. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat, little flashes of light flaring in her vision with each one. She wouldn’t waste this opportunity. Pain could be borne.

  “Invented? No. Discovered, perhaps. Divination simply is, though I taught many of the first gods how they could utilize it.” The spider-goddess’s jaws wiggled in a most disturbing way as she scuttled closer to the light. “In the library you asked a question. What will Nebiat do next? Do you still wish the answer to that question?”

  “More than anything, but if I am only allowed to ask one, I have to make it about the war with the Krox. What is my role in it?” Voria demanded—as politely as the agony made possible, anyway. “What do you expect me to do?”

  “There is no need to hurry our conversation,” the goddess rumbled. “I will answer all pertinent questions until I feel you are prepared for your purpose. You are meant to stop Krox from being resurrected. It remains unclear whether you will succeed in this task, though your presence here means the possibility, however remote, still exists. What do I expect you to do? I expect nothing. I have foreseen the possibility that you may achieve this, nothing more.”

  “Okay…” Voria thought furiously. What should she be asking? Damn it, she was putting herself first for once. “Can you tell me what Nebiat seeks on Shaya, and what role my father plays in it?”

  “I can, but you will not enjoy seeing this possibility. Are you certain you wish to know?” The goddess loomed closer. A musky smell suddenly pervaded the cavern—her breath, perhaps?

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “Very well. I foresee the possibility that Nebiat will kill Tender Aurelia. Even now, the possibilities narrow. Soon, they will narrow to a fixed point.” The goddess’s eyes flared, and Voria saw a sorcerous battle between two women: Aurelia, and a white-haired beauty with black skin. Nebiat’s human form, exposed at long last. “As for your father, see for yourself.”

  Possibilities danced endlessly before Voria; she could see down each, like a thousand, thousand corridors. Her father dead at the hands of Ducius. Her father standing over Ducius’s corpse. Her father attacking Shaya itself.

  That last possibility was stronger than the others, available on many paths. She studied it, following the corridor to see where it would lead.

  Her father stood near Shaya’s heart, inside the tree itself. The wood around him, one of the oldest parts of the tree, was dry and desiccated—the part nearest the wound that had felled the goddess. He guarded a robed mage, who assembled some sort of magitech device, something of Inuran construction.

  The view shifted outward and looked down at Shaya from above. The second burl shattered suddenly, raining millions of tons of wood and stone on the drifter city below. An entire city rested on the burl. Both the drifters and the Shayan nobles died in a catastrophic explosion of wood and debris. Thousands upon thousands dead in an instant.

  “No,” she whispered, her hands falling from her ears. Each palm was sticky with blood. She looked up defiantly. “There must be a way to stop it.”

  “There is almost always a way. You now possess the observational tools to locate the correct possibility. When you leave this place, you will retain the ability to perceive futures. With time and study, you will possess the same advantage that already guides your opponents.” The spider’s eyes dulled, the flames going cold.

  “May I ask more questions?”

  “A few, mortal.” The spider moved back into the shadows.

  “Why is this world hidden here? Why don’t you return to our sector, and help stop Krox directly? You’re a living god. He’s dead.”

  “Because Krox is not the only threat in the sector, or in the galaxy, or in this universe.” The goddess’s eyes lit again, briefly. “Once, Nefarius stalked this sector. A dark, terrible goddess of incredible strength. She subjugated the weak, and killed the strong. Before her coming, we lived in relative peace, each god ruling his or her own world. After her coming, we soon realized that if we did not band together, she would kill us all.”

  “The godswar,” Voria breathed in awe.

  “A small part of it, yes. We gathered our full might, under the leadership of Xal and his consort Marid.” The eyes showed images. Memories of a terrible cosmic battle. “Over half our host died, but in the end we killed Nefarius. His heart is still in this sector, clutched within the Fist of Trakalon. Yet our victory was merely the prelude to a greater defeat.

  “By the time we realized what Krox had done, it was too late. Krox had manipulated the war, arranging for those who could have opposed him to be killed. The rest were quietly subverted in a plan stretching for dozens of millennia.” The spider’s eyes showed a final conflict, a few dozen gods coming together to kill Krox. “Because of Marid’s planning, we were able to kill Krox, scattering his magic across several sectors. His children have been slowly gathering that energy, and if not stopped they will bring the return of their dark father.”

  “I think I understand why you brought this world here.”

  “Yes. Yo
u see now. In this place we are safe. There is no possibility of our discovery. I will not allow it. The darkness in your augury? My spell, to keep enemies from finding this world. Yet adhering to this vigilance severely limits my active involvement in the war against Krox, and Nefarius.” The spider’s clawed feet dug furrows in the cavern floor. “I must rely on tools, vessels to carry forth my will. Vessels like you.”

  Voria wanted to ask more questions, but the pain had grown too acute. Each time the goddess spoke, Voria’s vision doubled, and her center of gravity lurched as one of her eardrums tore with an agonizing pop.

  She cried out, panting for several moments before she could manage words. “How can we get off this world, to return to the fight?”

  “Climb the stairs on the opposite side of the cavern, and you will find your salvation.”

  The flame lighting the room winked out, plunging the room into sudden darkness.

  37

  RESHAPED

  Aran awoke to the sound of a soft chiming. He flipped out of bed, yanking his spellblade from its scabbard and turning a slow circle around the room. His chest heaved, but his thundering heart began to slow when he remembered where he was.

  The adrenaline dissipated quickly. He stifled a yawn, picking up his helmet from the nightstand. None of them had taken off their armor. This place seemed benign enough, but Aran wanted to be ready to bug out, just in case.

  Pickus poked his head into the room. “Oh, hey, you’re awake.” He gave a sheepish smile, pushing some of his hair out of his eyes. “They brought us breakfast a little while ago. This green pudding stuff. It’s pretty good.”

  The knot of tension between Aran’s shoulders eased. “It’s good to see you on your feet. You had us a little worried.”

  “Hey, I’m fine with being knocked out. I have no idea how we got from the crash site to here, and I’d just as soon not remember any of it.”