Matabar

Book II. Chapter 46 - Weeping

The wind was a tireless thing, lashing at his face with the persistence of a devoted woman. Ardan had never had such a thing happen to him personally, but he remembered the comparison from his grandfather’s stories. Those tales, however, had never spoken of how a storm could swell, how the sky and water could weave themselves into a single, leaden tapestry in the misty distance, a celestial force marching slowly, inexorably, to do battle with the land. They’d never mentioned how the winds, like flocks of wild birds, would tear themselves from the horizon, rustling through the dark clouds and shattering the air into sharp, whistling gusts. How the waves—tall and heavy, their white crests like foamy crowns—could rise like the walls of a fortress. Nor had anyone ever told Ardi how they would roll in with a great groan, crashing against the rocky shore in a tireless, if fruitless, attempt to break the stone with their primordial fury.

He watched as the stones trembled under the onslaught, and the spray leaped high, showering everything in a sharp, almost glass-like, salty rain.

From the depths of the bay, a low, ever-growing hum began to sound, like the voice of the ocean itself, calling its countless legions to take up arms.

The storm raged on, and Ardan stood before it, nearly forgetting how to breathe. The wind hammered at his chest, tearing words and thoughts from his lips, and it seemed as if the next gust might burst directly into his heart, ripping all peace from it by the root. The air, thick with salt and moisture, felt denser than sand. Each breath was a fire kindled by the swirling chaos, and still, Ardan could not look away.

The waves were enormous beasts throwing themselves at the cliffs with a hoarse roar and then breaking against them in dazzling explosions of foam. And each new assault echoed in his body like the tolling bell of the monastery, which had shrunk to a small, gray speck in the whirlwind of blackening hues.

The earth trembled under the feet of two armies locked in a mortal struggle, and he, insignificant and fragile as he was, felt their power so clearly that his blood ran cold in his veins.

And yet, along with the primal fear, another feeling arose—a quiet admiration. There was something extraordinary in this untamed fury. Something different. It was as if nature itself had thrown its soul wide open, stripping away its final veils. Look upon me and take a piece, if you dare. It felt like he only had to reach out a hand, take a single step forward, and he would no longer be lost in the endless torrent of living darkness above and below, but would instead find himself in a place beyond what the eye could see or the ear could hear.

The booming roar of the ocean slowly turned into a song as lightning cut through the clouds with silver fangs. And in each new moment, amidst the explosion of waves and the thunder of the blazing sky, between fear and awe, he felt like he was not in the center of the kind of madness that sent men and Firstborn scurrying into their small, insignificant havens of imagined peace and equally-illusory safety. No, he was somewhere else. A place that could not be expressed in the words of mortals.

The storm did not ask, did not pity, did not spare. It simply was. It existed. Vast, alive, merciless, and beautiful. And Ardan, trembling beneath its simultaneously fierce and impartial breath…

“Corporal!” Sestrova’s cry, breaking through the roar of the elements for a moment, tore Ardi from the edge of the world’s reverse side, where he had unconsciously found himself.

The young man, barefoot and wearing only his underclothes, stood at the very edge of a rocky ledge. A boulder weighing several dozen kilograms, which he had dragged there earlier, lay beside him. He held his staff in his hand, and his grimoire swung at his belt (he could only pray to the Sleeping Spirits that he had not paid a small fortune for it for nothing), along with several vials secured in tightly-drawn loops. His spare accumulators were there as well. The main ones shone in his rings.

The sheriff, shielding her face with her hand, was bent at the waist at nearly a right angle. It looked as though the next gust of wind would surely knock her off her feet and send her rolling down the slope.

“Eternal Angels, Corporal! If all the mages in the capital look like you under their regalia, then I know where I’m going when this is all over!”

“A quarter of an hour!” Ardan shouted back, trying to be heard over the storm’s roar. “Start the fire in a quarter of an hour!”

“Alright! But how are you…”

She was yelling something. It seemed like she was asking how exactly Ard planned to get to the bottom, or something of that sort. But he was no longer listening to her.

Turning his face toward the glass-like shards of the shattered water’s surface, he pulled one vial after another from their loops. First, he threw back a draught meant to strengthen bones. It usually tasted like meat broth, but instead, the thick flavor of rotting meat clawed at his throat. And instead of a feeling of warmth spreading through his body, a spasm shot through Ardan.

Atta’nha had been right three times over when she’d warned him of the danger of incantations used with potions. Even the most experienced of Aean’Hane did their best to never resort to them, leaving such things to village healers and desperate emergencies.

Ardan didn’t even know how long the effect would last, or if it would be even half as potent as a true Stone Bones draught.

Next, he drank the Toad’s Breath, barely stopping himself from reflexively spitting out the stale water that began to bubble in his stomach. And finally, he forced himself to swallow something with the sharp smell of ammonia—a Night Vision concoction.

Trying to keep the vile cocktail down and not allow it to return the way it had entered his body, Ardan lowered his eyelids, tensed the muscles around his eye sockets, and then snapped his eyes open. The world around him was now veiled in a slightly hazy film, but strangely, his vision had improved thanks to his new third eyelid, and he no longer had to squint.

Shifting his staff to his left hand, Ardan, who, unlike Sestrova, had been standing with his back straight this whole time, crouched down. He wrapped his right hand around the boulder and, tensing the muscles of his torso and chest, heaved it onto his shoulder. Rising to his feet, Ardan took a few steps back, and then, just as Guta had taught him, he ran. At the last second, right at the edge of the cliff, he arched his back and, pushing off with his feet, shot his body forward like a coiled spring.

For a moment, the world around him stood still. It froze in the midst of a battle as eternal as it was senseless. The sky, which had resembled smoke thickening over factories, now looked more like swirls of painted wind. And the ocean, which a moment before had raged with foamy crests, now beckoned him into the dark green depths of its liquid emerald.

And Ardan did not refuse the invitation. The wind sliced at his ears with a whistle, and a moment later, he plunged into what might as well have been solid ground. If Ardi had not tensed the muscles of his back, abdomen and legs, his spine could have been snapped in half.

Despite the hot summer, the water seized its uninvited guest in an icy embrace. Waves the size of a stagecoach instantly crashed over his head, threatening to spin him like a child’s toy and then smash him against the sharp rocks, but the stone on Ardan’s shoulder did its work.

The air in the young man’s lungs, pulling him toward the surface where the main battle of the two elements was unfolding, could not overcome the additional weight.

The stone pulled him to the bottom, and in any other situation, this would have been a dire outcome, but with every passing moment, as he sank deeper, the world around him stilled. It grew dark and solidified, becoming almost like stone. It felt to Ard like he was being squeezed from all sides by steel arms. Perhaps they were not yet as mighty as Guta’s, but while he knew there were those in the world who could break Guta’s grip, in this case…

Nothing in nature could overcome the ocean that pressed down on him. It had captivated an entire world, hiding endless lands beneath its dark veils, and it paid no mind to a tiny insect who had thought too much of himself. Resist or not, the ocean did not care. It would not notice, just as a person sometimes fails to notice the tiny gnat trying to sting them.

And so Ardan did not try. As Guta had taught him, he calmed his thoughts and evened the rhythm of his heart. He did not move and tried to think of nothing, allowing the chilling hands of the black waters to lower him to the bottom with inexorable insistence.

At some point, it became so dark that even the Night Vision draught could only show him murky, gray outlines of… emptiness. A smoky, viscous, dense emptiness. And so it remained until Ard’s feet touched the sandy bottom.

No matter how much he peered ahead, no matter how he tried to distinguish anything at all, all his eyes could see was a fading strip of gray sand at the border of a black shroud. He wondered if this was how Elani’atie had felt when she had been lost in that darkness where the Fae who had lost their way were usually stuck for eternity.

The stone on Ard’s shoulders suddenly seemed so light and insignificant that he could probably juggle several of them. Amazing…

Trying not to waste the oxygen stored in his body thanks to the Toad’s Breath, Ard turned and trudged toward where the water met the sharp rocks of the cliff, which bristled like a porcupine.

Each step was as difficult as walking in a dream, when the mind understands that it is all a vision and far from reality, but is still unable to control what is happening. Even so, Ardan seemed to be moving, and yet, at the same time, with each step that lifted him slightly from the sandy floor, he was merely surrendering to the mercy of the element. And as long as it did not notice him, as long as it did not decide to swat away the annoying fly with a sharp movement, everything would keep working for Ardi.

Soon, he was at the foot of the cliff and… he did not see the grate he was looking for. No, he had not lost his way or come to the wrong place. The drain, as stated in the documents, was indeed there. Only not near the bottom, but higher. Much higher. Five meters up, perhaps even seven and a half. The workers must have miscalculated the angle while digging the channel.

Professor Convel often mentioned that even the most brilliant blueprint often depended on the straightness of the contractor’s hands.

Ardi hadn’t thought that this also applied to structures that were several centuries old!

His lungs gradually began to burn. A frozen mass of water pressed down on him, ready to crush this presumptuous insect, while inside him, a bitter fire, clawing at his chest and throat, was slowly kindling. He had been underwater for about three minutes now—a minute longer than he could hold his breath on his own, and the Toad’s Breath would grant him nearly a quarter of an hour before he had to inhale. But that was how a true Ley-draught worked, not a counterfeit made with a small incantation.

Ard, with an immense effort of will, kept his heart from speeding up. Guta had taught him that, during underwater hunting, the most important thing was keeping a cool head and an even cooler heart, because they were what consumed the most strength and air.

Ardan released the stone and… nothing happened. For the first time in many years, mathematics was not on Ardi’s side. An equation flashed through his mind like lightning. At eighteen meters, the pressure was almost three times higher than at the surface, which meant his body had negative buoyancy.

Sleeping Spirits…

His chest burned. His oxygen was running out at the same pace as his time. But without expending effort, Ardan would not be able to get to the grate, and at some point, he would no longer be able to suppress his instincts and, against his own will, he would take a breath, and then…

Ardan closed his eyes.

He could not allow himself to panic. There was always a way out of any situation, so…

Ardan snapped his eyes open and, without wasting another moment, struck the cliff with his staff. Forming a seal as tons of stormy ocean pressed down on his shoulders, a bitter fire of lacking oxygen blazed in his chest, and a distant grate loomed above his head, with an unknown number of meters beyond it to an air pocket… was not easy. But it was no harder than when enemy bullets, spells, claws, fangs, and everything the Metropolis so often threw at him were trying to reach Ardan.

An Ice Wall formed beneath the young man’s feet, drawing in streams of cold water. It was the standard variation, but because it was surrounded by its kindred element, it ended up being larger than normal. It was not big enough to lift him directly to the grate, but enough for Ardi to reach the hinge with relative ease.

Please, let this not be a repeat of the airship,

Ardan prayed silently, remembering how his attempt to burn through the air duct grate had failed back then.He would have only one attempt at this. Everything now depended on whether he had calculated things correctly, prepared well for the venture, and… whether the ever-capricious Lady Luck was on his side today.

Pulling a leather ball from the fastening on his belt, Ardan clenched it in his free hand and, with a single stroke, feeling as if he were swimming not underwater but through liquid stone, he pushed himself upward. At the same time, his entire body was engulfed in fire from within. His muscles were racked with spasms and his throat fought to take a breath. A pounding began in his temples. Ardan was barely aware of what he was doing.

He placed the makeshift bag between the hinge and the rock, then, holding onto the edge of the grate with one hand, he lightly poked the clever knot with his staff. It came undone, and the saltwater touched the quicklime. For a moment, nothing happened, and Ardan was about to bolt for the surface—not even thinking about what the storm waves and razor-sharp rocks of the cliff would do to him—when a thick, white smoke started streaming from the bag, scarlet sparks burst out, and a hot current washed over the young man’s face.

His whole body twitching now, holding back an almost unbearable fire in his chest, Ard yanked the grate toward him. Then he did it again and again, his struggles frantic and desperate. Finally, the iron structure gave way and slowly drifted toward the bottom, while the youth himself slipped inside. True Sand Fire would have eaten through not only the hinge, but part of the rock as well, while the incantation-enabled counterfeit had only managed to damage the hinge. Ardan would likely not be able to get past a second proper grate…

But he was no longer thinking about anything like that. He just swam, cutting his skin on the sharp stone. And, for the first time in over a year, Ardan was glad for the existence of corruption and negligent contractors.

The second grate, unlike the main one, had been made not to last, but just to pass an inspection. After over two centuries, it had not only rusted through completely, but had also fallen out of its mountings and was lying sideways, all but useless now.

Ardan, who was struggling to not let his body take a breath before it was safe to do so, pushed on with a sharp stroke, another, then another, and finally, his hand was met with air, and Ardi inhaled noisily after he surfaced.

But the fire in his chest did not go out. His whole body burned even more intensely, and Ardan turned onto his back. As he was lying inside the stone pocket, he frantically fumbled at his belt. His body was rapidly weakening, his joints were breaking and twisting, and small, scarlet blisters were appearing across his skin. His legs were gradually going numb, and Ardan could barely feel his left hand, which was still clutching his staff.

The young man could not feel it directly, but he knew that nitrogen bubbles, which had not had time to escape through his lungs, were currently forming in his blood and tissues.

Finally, he managed to wrench the last vial from its fastening and, tearing the cap off with his teeth, he emptied the contents into his mouth. A second passed, then another, and his breathing evened out, and the weakness and pain receded.

“Sleep-p-ping S-spirits,” Ard rasped just to hear his own voice, his teeth chattering.

He raised his wrist and looked at the dial. His father’s watch had withstood the test of the deep. The minute hand showed him that Ardan had spent five and a half minutes underwater.

“N-never… again… with incant-t-tations,” Ardan promised himself.

Atta’nha had been right. But that was not the issue right now. Ardan took a deep breath, then, as Guta had taught him, an equally deep exhale, and, filling his empty lungs with air, he turned back onto his stomach and dove again into the cold water.

Stroke by stroke, pull by pull, Ard ascended the channel, which sometimes narrowed and sometimes widened. In places, he noticed marks on the stones left by pickaxes and sledgehammers. How much strength and how many years had human workers and soldiers spent to carve this channel in the rock, and now, centuries later, Ardan was swimming through it.

The Toad’s Breath was still working, though almost imperceptibly, because the next time Ardi surfaced, he did not feel a particular lack of oxygen. Or maybe it was the pressure—there was no time to figure it out.

Ardan found himself in a relatively narrow well. It was most likely used both as a way to avoid flooding (thanks to the air pocket) and as an escape route in case of a fire.

Holding his staff in his left hand, Ardan pressed his back against the damp, sloping stones, and his feet against the opposite side of the masonry.

It was painful. So painful that, at times, he wanted to give up and jump back into the water. But Ardi, time and again, climbed higher and higher, until finally, he scrambled over the parapet and, with a bloodied back, fell to the floor. Since he’d been scraped almost to the bone, it seared him worse than boiling water.

Most other mages would have immediately used a healing spell, but not Ardan. Looking around and finding himself in a closed, cramped room with shelves full of tin boxes, wooden crates on the floor, and a dozen assorted mops and brooms, he crawled to the side and listened to his senses.

While his Matabar blood healed his shredded back, stopping the bleeding and knitting the skin together, Ard sniffed the air. The distinct smells of saltwater, wet stone and burnt oil hit his nose. Sestrova had not been mistaken. The underground passages of the old fort truly held not only fragments of history, but also living witnesses of a new era.

And it was their smells, mostly sweat and strong tea, that hung in the air. Ardan flared and closed his nostrils, gathering, as Shali had taught him, all the information he could. From what he could smell, at least three people lived here. There was a man who was between twenty and thirty-five years old. He often used hair wax and most likely suffered from a shameful illness, which added the smell of urine to the scent of sweat.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He also detected a woman about Sestrova’s age, but she visited the underground passages rarely, no more than a couple of times a month. And the only evidence in the smells that Ard could find was her lunar cycle.

But, far more often than both of them, an old man came here. An old man whose scent Ardi had encountered before. He had even remembered it.

He recalled…

“Grandpa Driba, Grandpa Driba, will you tell us a story today?”

It was that stooped, gap-toothed, wrinkled old man in cheap, baggy clothes that had been mended many times because he refused to throw them away. When Ardan had come to give his donation to the orphanage, the old man had been sweeping the yard and smiling sweetly at the children scurrying around him. He had not aroused the slightest bit of suspicion in Ard, though he should have.

He should have…

Because in the entire monastery, including the orphanage, out of all the lay sisters and brothers, Driba was the only elderly man. Which meant that he had likely not come to the monastery recently. He had been living there for a long time and had become something of a fixture. Completely unnoticeable. A shadow on the wall. A shadow that Ardi, in his search for the light source, had completely overlooked.

“There are no hunters who don’t make mistakes, but there are hunters who don’t learn from them.” Ardi remembered Ergar’s lesson about how one must not dwell on one’s mistakes and instead use them to grow.

There were still a few minutes left before Sestrova’s diversion, so Ardan, crouching down, ran his hand over the sandy floor. He listened to the darkness that hid here from the outside world.

It was old and tired, and it wished to be left alone in its silence and tranquility, alone with its faithful critters. These were the spiders and the rare beetles that crawled through the cracks. They brought the darkness news of what was happening out there, where its numerous sisters and aunts lived.

Ardan was able to see not so much a map, but rather, a half-forgotten memory of passages, hidden corners, turns, and potholes where the darkness held sway. But, alas, the critters knew nothing of complex equipment—anything that rattled or hummed, they avoided as much as they avoided people. And so Ardan learned the approximate floor plan of the truly vast catacombs.

But Ard listened further. He listened to the darkness’ complaints that it was not left in peace and that, at times, its slumber was disturbed by the light of oil lamps, and then it had to hide in the well, where it listened to the sound of the waves and had quiet conversations with the son of the ocean.

Ardan became a part of these conversations. He wrapped himself in them, and along with them, the cloak of darkness fell upon his shoulders. Like a smoky mantle, it enveloped his chest, descended down his legs, and then rushed upwards until it completed the embrace of shadows above his head. The world around him, which had only recently acquired outlines, once again became gray. It was as if everything around him had been filled with smoke.

Hiding under the Veil, Ard watched the minute hand, and when it passed the required mark, he gently pushed the door open. It did not even have a lock. Whoever worked in the catacombs understood perfectly well that neither the children nor the Sisters of Light could get down here, so there was no need for extra keys or regular oiling of locks.

Carefully closing the door behind him, Ard felt the slightly damp cobblestones with his feet. After centuries of being trod upon, they had come to resemble pebbles, slippery and smooth. The corridors themselves, broken and crooked, sometimes with high ceilings, sometimes with low ones, widening and narrowing in turn, flickered in the dim light of the sparse lamps. First he saw oil ones, and then Ley-lamps.

Ardi peered around another corner after sniffing the air and listening for the beating of other hearts. But beyond the corner, where the Ley-lamps flickered, everything was clear. Apparently, the unknown man and woman, just like Driba, were also part of the monastery’s daily life. However, Ardan had not encountered them personally, unlike the old man.

As soon as a lamp that was connected to carefully-bundled wiring clicked on, the Veil was blown off Ardan. The young man felt a wave of Ley energy pass through his body, and his little Speaker’s trick was simply torn apart by the concentrated “dead Ley.”

In truth, it was all about the difference in potentials, but Ardan had no time to dwell on that. Pressing his back to the wall, he moved through the maze of passages built not to house the laboratories of mad mages in their depths, but to be difficult to capture. So, just as in the monastery itself, he had to constantly descend or ascend narrow stairs with low ceilings.

Ardan navigated using both the Ley-wiring and the memories of the spiders and beetles. He was looking for the largest and most buzzing room. Maybe he would find Zirka—Lusha’s sister who had disappeared very recently—there.

And finally, Ard found what he was looking for. It was a massive door of red wood that had nearly a dozen cables of varying diameters converging toward it along the ceiling molding.

Ardan, opening his grimoire to the page that had the modification of the Misty Helper he needed, formed the seal and waited for it to record the entire list of parameters of the stationary shield. He had no doubt it was there, not only because of the insistent tingling in his fingertips, but also because any self-respecting engineer would have taken care that the heart of their research was not disturbed.

Ardan was not mistaken. The door was indeed covered by nothing less than a Yellow Star shield!

What in the world is this?! Ardan exclaimed mentally, examining the list of parameters, main nodes, and runic connections. Everything was so complex, intertwined and connected by a hundred transitions and bridges that the shield looked more like a single living organism than a stationary creation.

Breaking such a thing without possessing at least five rays in the Blue Star was not possible, but, fortunately, it was not required here.

Ardan flipped through a dozen pages of his grimoire (it was still whole and unharmed, which more than justified the exes he’d spent on it) and, armed with a blank for the lockpick, inscribed the necessary parameters into it. A moment later, a rat woven from crimson mist formed in the air. Simultaneously, a red accumulator in Ardi’s ring crumbled, which the youth immediately replaced with a spare.

A few moments later, a breach appeared in the golden net covering the door. It was large enough for Ardan to push off from the wall and leap at the door. Tearing it from its hinges, he found himself on the other side of the shield, and when he turned around, the spell had already managed to restore its integrity. In order to go back outside, he would have to disable the generator that powered the shield, which would not go unnoticed by the Puppeteers’ minions, but that was a thought for tomorrow.

Getting to his feet, Ardan looked around again. Then he swore under his breath, closed his eyes, and snapped them open again, retracting his third eyelid. The world around him regained its sharpness, and the flickering of the Ley-lamps drowned the enormous room in a soft golden light.

Some auxiliary barracks and a supply room had most likely been located here once. All in case of a prolonged siege, when it would be impossible to bring in provisions and ammunition from either the sea or land.

The high ceiling shimmered with a blue hue overhead, massive wooden beams jutted out from the pilasters, and below, long rows of granite slabs lined the walls. Gales, and later the young Empire, always built things to last. Or maybe it was a self-fulling prophecy, and only the truly monumental structures had managed to withstand the war of humans and the Firstborn, and later the civil war of the Dark Lord.

Looking around, he didn’t see any supplies or spare cannonballs and gunpowder, but endless rows of Ley-equipment. Industrial generators lined the walls. Ardan had not sensed them before precisely because of the granite and several meters of rock shielding them. All of it served as a perfect natural screen, reliably concealing the madness happening below.

And madness it was, for it could be called nothing else. Along the wall opposite the generators stood a long line of tables. Next to them, on metal casters, three wooden chairs with soft cushions awaited their owners.

Everything was so comfortable, so very… professional. Cables were bundled and laid along strict, calibrated routes. Documents were stacked in folders, which, in turn, lay in neat piles. Some of them had most likely been moved to the towering filing cabinet already, which almost reached the ceiling and shone with fresh varnish in the middle of the row of tables. There were also labels on everything and a modest ladder leaning against the side of the huge cabinet.

This room could easily be mistaken for any good laboratory or a study hall at the Grand University, if not for… If not for the details. On the shelves stood jars of formalin. They gleamed, reflecting the light of the lamps, and, unlike the ones in Alice Rovnev’s office, they did not smell at all. And inside them, within the murky liquid, floated…

Ardan turned away. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, trying not to let his fangs grow longer, or let his nails turn into the sharp claws of a snow leopard.

Slimy will come, Slimy will take you, and everyone will forget you. You were, then you weren’t, only Slimy knows where to look…

Ardan also knew where to look now. Slimy did not take anyone far. He dragged them here, into these catacombs, and then hid them in his numerous jars. They’d be dissected, have their organs removed, and sometimes end up grotesquely fused with something disgusting and horrifying that resembled parts of anomalies and… Homeless Fae.

And all of this was so carefully sorted, so neatly displayed for all to see. Some had labels attached, some could even boast of cables connected to them…

“Ahgrat,” Ardan whispered, barely audible.

He had hoped to hear a sob, a faint cry, and a scream of “Help!” but his ears were met with a deafening silence broken only by the familiar hum of vibrating generators. Zirka was not here. Not anymore…

And instead of the girl, there was only a bed, neatly made and with white sheets, like a mockery of everything around it. It stood at the end of the room, surrounded by complex instruments and several shelves that were filled with implements whose purpose one could only guess at.

To the left, along the wall, stood a double glass chamber. Cylindrical in shape, it had two compartments. The upper, tall one, was hiding a long metal rod beneath it. The lower one resembled a drum. It was to this compartment, in fact, that the majority of cables were connected.

And above the bed itself was suspended… something. Something that was also cylindrical in shape, but with an insane number of levers, sensors, several chambers (also made of glass) attached at the top and bottom to steel discs, and surrounded by rods for stability. At the bottom of the device, directly above the bed, was a nozzle resembling the exhaust pipe of a car. And along its perimeter were several smaller nozzles alternating with small lamps.

The device was powered by a dozen thin cables, some of which were for some reason connected to the steel base of the bed, but the main source of Ley energy came, surprisingly, from the ceiling.

The odd device was attached to an iron hook and hung from a chain, and thick cables wound along that chain. They’d each been brought into the room through holes in the rock. Ardan moved closer to get a better look, but then recoiled.

The stone ceiling hummed, and a moment later, white sparks… of lightning ran along the cables. They merged into a single, hot stream, and then disappeared inside the glass chamber, where… they transformed into liquid. How exactly this worked, Ardan had no idea. He just stared at the transparent drops that were adding to a sort of fluid that had filled the chamber a fifth of the way.

How much energy do these monsters require, Ardan thought, following the web of cables with his eyes. If they’ve only collected a fifth of the full volume since the storm began, then that means…

The young man spun on his heel and pointed his staff toward the door.

The soapy film of a Universal Shield flickered to life around him, and the translucent discs of Orlovsky’s Shield, glinting like steel, began to circle him as well. Ardan had no idea what he was about to face, so he was not going to take any chances.

The seal of the Ice Artillery (a modification of the Ice Bullet based on the recursion of elasticity, the same spell with which Ardan had demolished part of the Crimson Lady’s building), the most lethal spell in Ardan’s arsenal, was already ready to flare up under his feet. He did not summon it only because he was not completely sure that he could focus on three active spells at once.

And so he’d acted according to Edward’s instructions. He’d taken care of his defense before anything else because “a dead mage cannot cast spells.”

The door opened and Driba appeared on the threshold. He was still stooped, still covered in wrinkles, and dressed in old, worn-out clothes. He looked neither surprised nor indignant. The staff in his right hand, carved with seals that Ardi had never seen before, and the open grimoire in his left, transparently hinted at the fact that Driba was ready for him.

But so was Ardan. He was the first to strike his staff against the ground, and an icy sphere shot out from the head of his faithful companion. For a moment, it vibrated at such an incredible speed that it seemed as if Ardan was launching not one projectile, but a dozen. Less than a second later, the sphere, causing the floor and walls around them to be covered in frost and shattering the floor over which it flew, tearing papers from the tables and shredding them along the way, crashed into Driba.

Ardan, without wasting any time, shook the ring with the green accumulator and inserted a new crystal into it.

This modification, whose name Ardan had changed to “Artillery” to reflect its nature, was almost three times bigger, faster and more powerful than the one he had used against the Crimson Lady. Its sheer power, which was fueled by four Red Star rays and seven Green Star ones, would indeed have been enough to demolish a small brick building.

But Driba merely tapped his staff lightly on the floor, and the space in front of the old mage warped into the murky surface of a dirty puddle. A puddle that swirled into a vortex, and into which the Artillery instantly disappeared along with all its destructive energy. Ardan had no idea what he had just witnessed, but he’d managed to distinguish some nodes characteristic of Yellow Star seals within the outlines of the seal that had flashed under Driba’s feet.

Sleeping Spirits… a four-Star mage! He and Milar had suspected that there might be a researcher stationed in Larand, but they’d thought that such a person would be no more than a Green Star Mage because it was unlikely that the Puppeteers attached much importance to experiments on children.

All these months, the partners had believed that the Puppeteers were simply developing Lea Morimer’s idea, but… they had been mistaken. It was the other way around. Lea Morimer, a pawn just like Lorlov, had only been a part of the experiments. Nothing more.

“Mr. Egobar,” Driba took a step forward and Ardan instinctively recoiled, his back hitting the bed. “I admit, I didn’t believe the Magister about you actually being something to look out for.”

Ardan struck his staff against the ground again. The Ice Flowers bloomed around Driba. Their shattered buds released dozens of sharp, icy petals. Some of them even managed to fly close to Driba, but they immediately melted in flashes of red flame created by a dozen fiery sparrows that obediently soared around the mage. This was an active elemental defense capable of simultaneously tracking many parameters of an attacking spell and…

No, none of that mattered.

If Ardan spent time thinking about the engineering principles of others’ seals, he would not live to see the dawn.

Driba took a step forward, and Ardan was almost overjoyed at his lack of caution. A few petals that had not joined the earlier attack touched the walls of the combustion chambers of two Blue Star generators. They sliced through them as easily as a knife through butter, and sparks erupted from the hole in the iron. Ardan dove behind the bed and, with an effort of will, forced the Orlovsky discs to line up, but… The explosion never came.

“Not bad, Mr. Egobar,” Driba said, his praise sounding sincere. “I’m not surprised that Darton never managed to deal with you. Nor Tradiy. A pity. He was a good chimeraologist, though he placed too much stock in werewolves and their metamorphic abilities. I don’t understand how you dealt with our lover of blood and the night sky, but I think we’ll have time to discuss all that. I’m especially interested in how you found us. The local branch of the Cloaks is not aware of anyone coming to visit us.”

Driba knew about Darton, the Selkado mercenary, and about the chimeraologist Ardan had fought in the Night Folk Quarter.

Sleeping Spirits!

That was too much information for a simple pawn to have. No, this was a far more important figure than that. Without realizing it, he had jumped headlong into one of the Puppeteers’ burrows.

Ardan rose from behind the bed and looked at the old man, whose fiery sparrows had… simply incinerated the damaged generators, turning them into hissing piles of crimson metal. It was not hard to imagine that they could have done the same to Ard if not for the Ice Flowers.

“It’s good that we ran into each other now, Mr. Egobar,” Driba calmly walked through the laboratory, feeling completely safe. “I was informed that your immunity has been lifted and your life is now at our disposal. I suppose you are no longer young enough to fit the criteria of my experiments, but I think your intellectual abilities might compensate for your age. Yes, undoubtedly, you will make good research material.”

Driba had already raised his staff when Ardan sharply asked:

“Where is Zirka?”

He needed to buy time. Not much. A little less than a minute.

Driba froze.

“Zirka?” he repeated. “Ah, you mean experimental sample seventy-nine slash three? Alas, you are too late by… two days?”

Driba hesitated. He did so purely because he was unsure of when the girl had died exactly, not out of any sense of guilt.

Lusha… Zirka…

79/3… How many, how many of these small, innocent souls…

“The girl withstood the initial stages well, but, alas, she broke in the middle of the process,” Driba gestured with his staff toward one of the jars of formalin, and Ardan turned away. “As you can see, Zirka did not survive having her pituitary gland crossed with that of an Iron Ape. A pity. I had high hopes for her. Even more than usual. But why does she interest you so much, Mr. Egobar? You are not connected to her in any way.”

Ardan needed to stall, and Driba was busy reveling in his sense of superiority.

“Lusha,” Ardi breathed quietly. “Her brother. Was he possessed?”

Driba raised his thinning eyebrows slightly.

“Possessed? How could that be…” And then the old man swore sharply. “Tradiy. That insolent pup! He thought he could steal my method?! Well… He was lucky that you dealt with him and not me, because I would have made sure he died slowly.”

Driba swore again and shook his head.

“You came up with a good plan to distract us, but I think that my students will soon be done with the fire set by the sheriff, and we will be done by then as well,” Driba ran a finger along the shaft of his staff, and one of the seals on the strange, almost bloodstained wood lit up. “You can, of course, resist, but even if you were Aversky’s student thrice over, that would not change the fact that you don’t have even an ounce of his natural gifts. I suppose the Magister won’t care how you die, so…”

“We will find you.”

“What?” Driba flinched.

“We will find all of you, old man,” Ardan repeated.

“That sounds threatening, young man, but you are not in a position to-”

“I am in the perfect position.”

Ardan slapped his hand against the wall and absorbed the centuries that the granite slabs had spent with only one purpose—to hold back the tireless and endless onslaught of the rock behind them. The granite was strong. And it became even stronger. And with it, Ard became stronger, too. His skin was covered with stony protrusions.

Driba had already swung his staff, but he was old. And Ardan was young, and therefore faster.

Ard’s staff, now also covered in a stone mantle, struck the glass device at the exact moment when white lightning danced along the ceiling.

“Idiot!” Driba roared, slamming his staff against the floor and igniting a completely different seal. “We’ll both die!”

The old man wanted to live. And Ardan took advantage of that. The lightning ignited the strange liquid that had flowed out from the broken apparatus, and Ardan, even with his cloak of Stone Skin, knew that every moment he spent in the epicenter of the vortex of white flame risked being his last.

Leaping over the bed, Ardan ran toward the exit. Driba remained behind, standing in the midst of spatial distortions and drawing the unceasing white flame inward. The old man could not even move out of fear that doing so would break his concentration and cause his shield to falter.

All he could do was hiss through clenched teeth:

“Bastard… fucking half-blood… My research… I’ll devour you!”

But Ardan was already racing through the corridors toward the door leading to the basement. Along the way, he threw out some spells behind him. These were small spheres of ice and much weaker than the one that hadn’t affected Driba at all. They crashed into the walls, judging by the sounds they made. Ardan wasn’t even trying to hit the old man who was most likely still fighting the raging fire. No, he had a completely different goal.

Ramming his shoulder into the door leading to the basement, Ardan—parting with his second-to-last red and green accumulators—conjured another spell and finally heard the long-awaited crack. The floor under his feet began to shake, and the young man, kicking down another door, burst out into the street.

The rain once again pricked his face and shoulders, a thunderous roar struck his ears, and all around him, people were bustling. The Sisters of Light, lined up in rows interspersed with richly-dressed gentlemen and their companions, were passing buckets to each other. The male laborers, who were standing near the burning buildings, were throwing sand from those same buckets onto them. The fire had apparently spread from the hay storage to the neighboring buildings.

Sleeping Spirits… If not for the downpour, half the monastery would probably be on fire by now.

“Corporal!” someone called out from behind him.

Ardan turned and saw Sestrova running toward him. The sheriff, who was soaked to the bone and who’d lost her hat somewhere, looked very, very alarmed.

“Not just hay, was it?”

“What?” The breathless, red-faced woman asked.

“There was more than just hay stored there,” Ardan stated rather than asked. How else could one explain such a fire?

“Yes, you’re right,” Sestrova pointed with her thumb behind her, where the remains of the barn were smoking, and a ravine several meters in diameter now marred the earth. “It went off like I’d lit a powder magazine… Good thing the Sisters and orphans were in the refectory with the guests. It’s far from here. How about you? Any good news?”

“We’ll find out in just a second.”

Ardan turned to the building he had just run out of. The stones under his feet vibrated, and then part of the buildings sank into the ground. Kicking up clouds of smoke, with a crack and a groan that easily drowned out the celestial roar of the summer storm, they shattered into pieces and fell into the black maw that had opened up beneath them.

Ardi, even if he’d been the hero of one of his grandfather’s stories, could’ve done nothing against a Yellow Star Mage. And so, all he’d had left was to hope that the raging flames, followed by the hopefully exploding generators, and after that, the collapsing stone of the catacombs, would bury old Driba.

“Quickly!”

“Sand! Bring more sand!”

“Get back in line!”

The people who’d been startled by the sudden earthquake soon returned to their previous task. But Ardan did not take his eyes off the spot where one of the buildings had once stood.

“I guess it’s…”

A pillar of fire soared into the sky, twisting into the shape of a gigantic, seven-meter serpent. It scattered the stone debris, devoured the wooden beams and planks, reducing them to ashes, and in its center, standing on the charred earth, was Driba.

He was even more stooped now and clearly wounded, with his left arm torn clean off (his grimoire now hung helplessly on its chains), a mutilated, burned face, and covered in soot and cuts… but he was still alive. Alive and immeasurably angry.

“…bad news after all,” Ardan finished his thought.