Tartila Mine
a novel
by Vasily Mahanenko
THE ALCHEMIST
Book 5
Magic Dome Books
Tartila Mine
The Alchemist, Book # 5
Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2021
Cover Art © Ivan Khivrenko 2021
Cover Design © V. Manyukhin 2021
English translation copyright © Jared Firth 2021
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2021
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-7619-304-8
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental..
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Table of Contents:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
This is Lavr Nalin. If you’re reading this message, you figured out how to decode it. Oh, how I hope you’re not a mage. If you are, die, you monster! But for anyone else, the container of dragon’s blood is under the right-hand column in the control unit for the wildlings’ workshop. I’m giving you the coordinates if that isn’t enough. Whoever you are, good luck!
THANKS TO THE LIBRARIAN’S GIFT, the ancient coordinate grid overlaid on top of the modern one, and Tailyn Vlashich, a twelve-year-old boy and one of the two heads of the free city of Mean Truk, found himself staring at his updated map. His lips tightened. As the pit in his stomach bore witness, he was all too familiar with the point he was looking at.
Mission update: Search for Coordinates. Description: you discovered the coordinates of the spot where the dragon’s blood is hidden—the control unit for the workshop in Tartila Mine where the experiments were created. Get your hands on the ancient artifact and use it as you see fit.
“Tailyn, is everything okay?” twelve-year-old Valia Levor, second head of Mean Truk, daughter of the Duke of Carlian, and Tailyn’s betrothed, asked, her expression worried. And when she heard is response, she could only sigh. It was as she’d suspected from the very beginning—a mission from the ancients was never going to be easy.
“Are we going to be waiting much longer for you? Everyone’s already here!” The door opened, and Valanil Revolt rushed unceremoniously into the room. Once a thirty-nine-year-old woman, her resurrection had gifted her the body of a seventeen-year-old girl, something that led to no end of confusion. Nobody expected nastiness from someone that young and attractive. But nastiness there was, as the experienced woman was a graduate of the mage assassin school, she’d completed a year at the mage academy, she’d spent twenty years working as an herbalist in a border town, and she had a bone to pick with all and sundry. Not only that, but it had just recently been revealed that Valanil was Valia’s sister and the heir to the Carlian clan, one of the five most influential houses in the Third Empire. All that made for a volatile mix.
By “everyone,” Valanil had a very specific list in mind. First of all, there was Forian Tarn, Mean Truk treasurer, Tailyn’s first mentor, and the person who had pulled the boy out of the border town. The second was Ka-Do-Gir, advisor to the leader of the green lixes in the city and someone who had freely chosen to become and never regretted becoming Tailyn’s servant. Third, there was Bar Truk, shaman of the green lixes. He’d been freed and made to swear an oath of fealty to Tailyn, his new leader. The fourth was Mu-Ro-Din, the red lixes’ most powerful shaman and one always out to get whatever he could for himself. While he was working for the city for the time being, nobody harbored any illusions about the fact that he would whisk himself off the moment the tide turned. That was just who he was. And nobody could do anything about it. Finally, there was the fifth member of the city council: Motar Lus, the head of security. He’d managed to wrest control of the guards—the city’s enormous spherical protectors—from Valanil, boosting his stature in the eyes of both the council and those under his command. Before finding himself serving Tailyn, Motar had been the head of the guard for the backwoods border town named Culmart that Tailyn was from.
But there was also a guest in the council’s room. Next to the table stood Sadil, the academy’s former head of security and Forian Tarn’s grandfather, though he was bound tightly.
“Before we begin, we need to understand where Sadil stands. Tailyn, could you explain why you gave orders for him to be arrested?” The treasurer had no interest in beating around the bush. But even though he was irked by the initiative Tailyn had shown, the respect for the chain of command that had been beaten into him kept him from freeing his grandfather.
“Because I don’t know whose side he’s on. First, I thought he was for the academy, but then I thought he was with you. Only that was before I heard this and lost any idea I may have had. Tell me what you think.”
Tailyn sent everyone the logs for his trip to the academy, Valanil made a few changes, and the magic card dean’s voice suddenly filled the room as it warned Sadil to make a break for it.
...Good luck, my friend! I’ll reach out as soon as it’s clear which way the wind is blowing. The mages will see their former glory returned!
“Sadil?” Forian gazed questioningly at his grandfather, brushing away unpleasant thoughts of his former life as he did. What he’d always considered personal achievements had turned out to be nothing more than the result of machinations engineered by his grandfather and the dean. He’d been groomed to take Sadil’s place as the ancient creature’s lapdog.
“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Sadil said ruefully. Still, he wasn’t perturbed by his predicament in the least, almost as if it was everyone else bound by a coil of rope. “Another ten or twenty years, and you would have been ready for the truth. You could have carried on our house’s work.”
“Our house’s work?” Forian was having a hard time choking back his rage. “What are you talking about? What former glory?”
“Three thousand years ago, humanity lost the ability to use real magic. The cards turned out to be a mockery of the real thing, the heritage of the first ones. The ones like the dean. Back in the days of the founders, the Tarn family began secretly serving the first ones, helping them find dragon’s blood. Losing it was what led the god to curse us and strip us of our magic. But it's time to restore justice and cho
ose our own path—whoever finds the dragon’s blood will stand on par with the god!”
“Don’t blaspheme!” Forian muttered through clenched teeth.
“Let me change that,” Sadil replied immediately. “They’ll stand on par with the emperor, perhaps be even stronger. Your dean is head of an immense order of searchers that includes many of our world’s leading figures.”
“Just not the provost, am I right?” Tailyn asked with a grunt.
For a moment, Sadil was taken aback. Could the boy have really found out something he wasn’t aware of?
“You’re correct—the dean didn’t keep him in the loop, and everyone in the order takes an oath to never, under any circumstances, tell the provost why they’re really searching.”
“There’s a good reason for that,” Tailyn said. “From what I can tell, it’s a terrible secret, but the magic card dean must have his suspicions. Twelve hours ago, I visited the provost’s office and—”
“That’s impossible!” Sadil exclaimed. “Even if he himself wasn’t there, his assistant would never have let you in.”
“And so, I had to destroy her,” Tailyn said with a shrug as he thought back to the minor scuffle. “It took longer to deal with the battle magic dean.”
“What?!” The shocked reply made it clear to the boy that the group wasn’t aware of what had transpired at the academy.
“If you’re going to keep interrupting me, I’m just not going to tell you,” Tailyn said as he motioned for everyone to be quiet. “Yes, that’s what happened. I kill the dean of the battle magic department, and then I took out the provost’s secretary, who was actually an ancient destroyer. After that, I grabbed fifty-seven books, a globe, and this chair.”
While Tailyn didn’t bother to materialize the books, he went ahead and pulled the massive chair out of his inventory. His eyes closed momentarily as he sank down into it and felt the pleasant vibrations wash over his body. He never would have thought a massage could feel so good.
The long silence was broken by Sadil’s stunned hiss.
“That’s his chair! Tailyn is telling the truth...”
The mere fact that emotions were playing across the face of the head of security, not to mention that they were akin to surprise, pointed to his humanity, though Tailyn wasn’t about to give in. As long as the conversation has something to do with the dragon’s blood, and the god hadn’t given the boy permission to share his mission the way it had with Valia and Ka-Do-Gir, there was no way he was going to spill the beans to the rest of the group. Whether the problem was everyone else or just one of them didn’t matter. Secrets were secrets.
“Going back to why the proctor isn’t part of the hunt for the dragon’s blood, the person who used to sit in this chair isn’t the one who founded the academy. He captured it. The real provost is in the next room, where he’ll be asleep for another five days. I even have a mission to take care of him. And the one we know as the provost is an imposter once named Isr Kale. Yes, you heard that right. The founder of the mage assassin school has been head of the mage academy for three thousand years, although, come to think of it, I’m starting to suspect he didn’t found Crobar, either.”
“Logs... I need your logs!” Sadil cried as he jerked toward Tailyn. The ropes held.
“Don’t we all?” Tailyn shot back, his tone mature beyond his years. “In three months, the combined imperial armies, Halas, and Crobar will all come crashing down on us, and the city is doomed unless we think of something. And the last thing I want to be worrying about is Sadil wandering around Mean Truk dreaming about how to help the dean in his search.”
“And what would you like instead?” the old man grunted. He couldn’t help but chuckle as he listened to the boy’s grownup speech. Kids like Tailyn were supposed to be sitting around in sandboxes playing and picking their noses, not managing cities.
“An oath of fealty to Mean Truk or you’re banished. If Forian wants you to stay here, I need a guarantee that you won’t betray us the moment it’s convenient for you. We have Mu-Ro-Din for that.”
“Hey, what are you talking about, Head? I’m on your side!” the lix shot back, his face a picture of indignation. Nobody paid him the least bit of attention.
“Let him be—he’ll come in handy,” a voice suddenly rustled. There was a reptiloid leaning on a chair by the door.
“How are you awake?” Tailyn leaped to his feet and shuffled through his cards. The first provost’s appearance was an unpleasant surprise, which was why the boy prepared to attack at the first sign of hostility.
“Are you talking about the weeklong mission?” the reptiloid asked as he slid the chair closer, still leaning heavily on it like some kind of helpless old man. “As you can see, it’s still going strong. I’m weak and helpless, which is why the game took the time to make sure I’m protected. It was only about a day that I spent unconscious.”
“That’s not what you said.”
The reptiloid ignored that comment and made his way over to the vacated trophy chair. Settling into it with a sigh of relief, the unwanted guest closed his eyes in delight. His body shook. Once again, the massage function was doing its job.
“You made the right decision bringing my baby back with you,” the reptiloid said without opening his eyes. Tailyn was shocked by the impunity, but he was stopped before he could say anything—Valrus’ tail slid perfectly into the round opening between the seat and back. Having guessed what the opening was for, the boy found he’d been right on the money.
“Tailyn, would you care to introduce your friend? I’ve never heard of someone called Valrus Bur, although I’m intrigued by his age and race,” Valanil said. Anyone who knew her well enough could see her nerves and the way she was hiding them behind a façade of bravado.
“I’ll handle that myself, resurrected noa,” the reptiloid said, opening one eye and gazing around at the group. “My name is Valrus Bur, and I arrived on this planet three thousand years ago with the goal of completely annihilating it. But nothing went according to plan. Instead, I was forced to found the academy to teach mages how to use their own power, after which my student, Isr Kale, betrayed me and turned me into a battery.”
“A what?” Tailyn asked. That wasn’t a word he knew.
“A source of mana,” the reptiloid replied. “Not the best death one might wish for, believe me. If I hadn’t been able to split my consciousness... But enough about the past—there’ll be time for it later. The game offered me new life, a chance to start from scratch, so long as I help Tailyn survive. That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you have a weapon powerful enough to destroy innumerable armies?” the Mean Truk head asked hopefully.
“No weapon, no power, no attributes. Though I do have something even better: knowledge.”
“What’s the point of that if there won’t be anything left of the city three months from now?”
“What makes you think that? Allow me to show you something. Okay... You’re the head, so this rule doesn’t apply to you. Valanil, from the looks of you, you’re a Crobar graduate, so you know how to take a life. Kill me. Right now.”
The herbalist didn’t have to be asked twice. Before Tailyn could even gasp, something flashed through the air—the girl had hurled her stiletto right at the reptiloid’s head. There was a dull thud, and the slender blade clattered to the ground without hurting the ancient creature.
“I’m surprised you didn’t think to check that,” Valrus said as though nothing had happened. With just a wave of his tail, he flicked the stiletto back to the herbalist. “Mean Truk is a safe zone. For as long as that’s the case, it’s impossible to kill any of its citizens inside it.”
“You aren’t a citizen,” Valanil grumbled as she picked her stiletto back up.
“I’m a guest, and an official one at that,” the reptiloid replied. “That comes with the same status. Although, I should clarify one point since you have some of the changed among you. Humans can’t be hurt inside the city. Lixes, as
you call the changed, aren’t subject to that rule, and the same goes for the city heads. But one way or another, the imperial armies can’t touch Mean Truk. And as long as the reason it was made a safe zone holds true, it will stay a safe zone. Guards, how are things?”
“Halas joined forces with the empires,” Tailyn said, ignoring the reptiloid’s question. “And he’s a lix. His forces can kill inside the city, right?”
“Yes,” Valrus replied with an intrigued glance cast in Ka-Do-Gir’s direction, “though we should check that. Have your changed kill a citizen you don’t need. Anyone you’re fine losing?”
“You,” Valanil said harshly. “We’re not about to kill anyone else.”
“That’s the only way to find out. Accidentally hurting someone doesn’t break the safe zone rules—you have to try to kill them. The game won’t let that happen. But okay, I get it. We’re going to have to come up with something to deal with the changed. So, we’re in Mean Truk... If memory serves, there was an experimental lab not far from here run by the wildlings which is what we called the scientists who rejected magic. They’re the ones who invented the guards, the destroyers, and even my student’s secretary, speaking of which. Over the last three thousand years, of course, much could have changed, though they did good work, which means something must be left. If we take control of the workshop, there’s a lot we could get our hands on.”
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 1