Chapter Five

Previously: Ivan brought Maxwell to the RITD's restricted workshop, as only a seer can turn on the field generator. But something goes wrong, and the generator breaks, putting the Third Company garrison in more danger.

Chapter 5 - The Wards Will Fall

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IVAN REMAINED where he’d been kneeling, his hands fallen from his mouth to the ground. He slowly met Maxwell’s gaze.

“How?” Ivan whispered.

Ivan didn’t know, couldn’t see that Maxwell’s spirit was being ripped away from the generator. All he’d seen was the light of the field. To him it had looked like it had been working. Maxwell just needed to explain.

Maxwell tried to speak but only a hoarse croak escaped his numb lips. Just breathing hurt. His throat was so dry. The tremors worsened up his arms until he was positively vibrating. Ivan wavered double in his vision, obscured by the dark.

“It was killing me,” Maxwell managed.

A light touch against his shoulder and Ivan’s face came into focus, tears wet on his cheeks. He met Maxwell’s eyes and offered a forced smile. It was a small comfort, but Maxwell took it anyway.

Ivan pressed a canteen into Maxwell’s hands. “I should have—Well.” He was silent as Maxwell took a shaking sip. Stale and warm, but the water soothed Maxwell’s throat and he drank half the canteen before pausing.

“It was stealing my spirit,” Maxwell continued. “I managed to break the connection.”

“Managed to break the connection,” Ivan repeated. He wiped at his face with a shaking hand. “I didn’t think—”

Maxwell waited for Ivan to continue, but the theurgist seemed to be done speaking.

“It was only a prototype,” Maxwell offered.

Ivan made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I’m intimately familiar with its construction and use.”

Didn’t know it well enough to know that the machine might try to cannibalize its user, but Maxwell would keep that thought to himself. Ivan was in obvious distress in a way Maxwell hadn’t seen before. No use making their already dire situation worse than it already was.

The spindle was too close for comfort. The brass gleamed with a residual glow of magic—no, the remnants of Maxwell’s spirit. He staggered upright and leaned against one of the workbenches, away from the henotic remnants.

“It’s from Lathuel,” Ivan said unprompted. He picked up the spindle and the last remnants of magic went out of it, leaving the brass dark and dull in his hands. Ivan’s next words were driven by some sort of inner urgency Maxwell couldn’t quite place, as if Ivan felt the need to distance himself from the whole situation. But why Ivan would need to do so was not something Maxwell understood. This wasn’t Ivan’s fault. “Lathuel provided the schematics to us. They wanted to help us with our hyssil problem.”

The ceiling lights flickered once and came back to life, half the bulbs still dead.

Lathuel, the country which emerged after the Rending and promptly disappeared like the South Peaks in the fog. Lathuel, half myth, wrapped in a barrier of inexplicable living magic and utter solitude.

The schematics might as well have been handed down by Ivan’s Goddess-in-Three. That almost would make more sense. But if Lathuel had broken its centuries of silence to provide help to Talmany, then it stood to reason the RITD had bungled the construction of a device that ran on magic no one understood any longer.

Maxwell breathed in deeply when a wave of dizziness sent the world tilting around him. None of it mattered anyway. Not if they were all going to be dead by morning.

Ivan set the spindle down among the wreckage of the field generator and rubbed his hand absently over the shaved side of his head. “I need to let Davis know it failed,” he said and headed for the transceiver in the corner of the room.

Well, that was certainly a conversation Maxwell didn’t want to be a part of. Or listen to. No doubt it would all be Maxwell’s fault to the theurgical officer.

“I’m going to grab some air,” Maxwell said.

The windowed doors opened smoothly onto a wide balcony that wrapped around the RITD’s workshop. The tower was positioned right above the bridgeway at the edge of the steep vertical wall of the pass. An alarm signaled, three short bursts followed by a long wail. That would mean the wards he’d crossed, the ones that had saved the truck, had been breached.

Flare wards sailed up into the air, their drifting motes of light creating a massive theurgical ward in the night sky above the garrison. In the courtyard on the other side of the bridgeway theurgists would be joining together for a massive theurgical working, their hands linked as they spoke the words of power.

The pass was alive with hyssil, shadowy masses swarming like stinging ants after a heavy rain. A theurgical ward went dark in a shower of golden sparks and smoke and another section of the pass was swallowed in oily darkness.

Maxwell sucked in a deep breath, swallowing back nausea. He dug his fingers into the metal railing and fought against the dizziness of spirit damage. His wardblade was hardly a comfort now at his hip. He’d have more luck threatening the ocean with a hot fireplace poker for the amount of good it would do him against hyssil in those numbers.

If they were lucky they’d be able to stall the hyssil here until morning. The floodwaters would help. That would give Eteln one more day to prepare instead of a few hours in the night.

Wards, water and walls. Eteln had all three in abundance and the RITD’s best theurgists and seers. His family would be safe in the capital city. They’d have to be.

A muffled thump resounded in the distance and the balcony trembled.

Maxwell squinted further up the pass, where the light didn’t reach. His Sight would tell him more, but with a shredded spirit attempting to call on it was guaranteed to worsen his symptoms. If he could activate it at all.

Another thump, closer this time.

The hair raised on the back of his neck. A warm breeze picked up from the mountains, cutting through the late autumn chill and carrying with it the scent of fresh earth and spring growth.

Something large was coming down the pass, enormous enough to shake the ground as it approached.

He should run. Shelter inside at the very least. Grab Ivan and pretend like hiding under the workbench would accomplish anything.

Another thump like a distant detonation that sent the balcony shivering and Maxwell along with it. A hyssil resolved from the darkness, towering over the others.

The ethereal skin rippled and shifted taunt over shadowy muscled forearms. The spirits below screeched and made way for the large being, swarming around its hands.

Maxwell craned his neck up, taking in the long thick neck, the curiously wedged head maned by a cloud of waving light-tipped tentacles and crowned by a ring of dark horns. It’s mouth opened, exposing long serrated teeth. The shrieking roar that followed reverberated through the metal railing.

Maxwell staggered back, ears ringing. The dizziness overtook him and he fell to the ground.

The wards along the pass were already dark, destroyed in the magical surge from the henotic device. Hyssil surged down the unprotected pass, pouring past the garrison and heading north towards Eteln.

The massive hyssil closed its mouth. The wedge-shaped head tilted upward and it continued onward until it perched underneath the bridgeway. A single great eye cracked open, a crackling electric blue veined with gold. There was no pupil to the hyssil’s eye, but Maxwell knew it saw him. He held his breath and his heart skipped a beat as the head swiveled closer on its long neck, but he didn’t run—couldn’t run. His legs wouldn’t obey him.

Hot breath tumbled the hat from his head. An intoxicating scent like the first warm winds of a new year drifted in the air, wrapping him in lassitudes of drifting peace. The eye grew larger and larger in his view—enveloping, smothering. It stopped his breath, slowed his heart.

Every nerve in Maxwell’s body lit up, burning. A piercing pain cut deep through his chest, a needle stitching bright threads of fire into his ribcage. He fell to the ground, thrashing and gasping for air.

Maxwell blinked.

The world clicked back into place. The pass was completely empty. The theurgical defenses dark and spent. The writhing mass of spirits gone. And the massive hyssil was nowhere to be seen.

He sat up tentatively and touched his chest. The pain was nothing more than that of his damaged spirit.

The door flew open. Maxwell startled, but it was only Ivan.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Ivan said. He offered a hand and Maxwell wobbled back to his feet.

“Did you see it?”

Ivan frowned in confusion until Maxwell pointed down into the pass. His eyes widened. “All the wards are already dead.”

“There was a giant monster. It trashed the wards and then it looked at me and then it—” The words tumbled from Maxwell before he could really think about them. “—disappeared,” he finished. No, this sounded absolutely ludicrous.

“The hyssil in the pass. There were so many.”

Ivan frowned and grabbed Maxwell’s hands, examining the warding tattoos there. They still shone with the muted golden energy of the theurgy infused in the ink. Warding tattoos didn’t provide much protection against a strong hyssil, but the moment they went dark was a warning.

“I’m not possessed,” Maxwell protested. “I wasn’t whispered. They’re intact.”

Ivan shook his head. “You’ve been through a bit,” Ivan said. “Let’s get you inside. I heard the siren. It’s not going to be safe for long.”

Maxwell rubbed his head and allowed himself to be led inside. Maybe it had been a side effect of spirit damage. The textbooks even talked of hallucinations. That had to be it. Hyssil didn’t get to such massive size. And they certainly didn’t speak.

He touched his chest over his heart when a sliver of pain thrummed deep. But it quickly receded and was just as quickly forgotten as if it had never been.

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