Yosko’s hands trembled as they clung to the small, rounded disc clasped within while he snuck away from the Master’s house, towards the backwoods. The sun was setting, and the work for the day was done, so he didn’t fear reprisal for leaving – but the object he clutched, if Master knew he had it…
The dense forestry began abruptly, marking a clear border with the plantation, a man-made demarcation. Yosko’s work may have been done for the day, but the fields of the plantation were still full of men and women, laboring under the watchful eye of armed men. They were a constant reminder not to go against the rulers of this land, and Yosko was grateful every day he wasn’t one of the pitiable farm slaves.
As he crossed into the shaded woods, Yosko breathed out in relief as he broke out into a run, glee welling up in his chest as he bounded up a mountainous slope, treacherous from the rocks and roots jutting out underfoot.
He opened his hands, a shiver running down his spine as he gazed in disbelief at his newest possession. Staring back up at him was a spread pair of scaled wings, stamped into a round, silver coin. Then he snapped his fist shut again, terrified of dropping the precious object as the ground below him quickly became more difficult to navigate.
But the young man had traveled this path countless times already, always to the same destination. He came to that place now, a small secluded cove nestled between tall trees and thick vegetation. Yosko had to fight through the underbrush to get into his sacred hiding hole, crouching low to the ground by a freshly upturned pile of dirt and rocks.
He flung these to the side, coming up with a small, dirt-covered pouch with innards that clinked lightly as he pulled it from the ground. He gingerly untied a string holding the bag shut, pouring its contents into his hand. Several more silver discs stamped with an identical pair of scaled wings tumbled into his hand, filling his palm with a glittering pile.
With his other hand, Yosko picked through the coins, counting them one-by-one – he knew exactly how many he held, but still just had to number them off.
“Ten!” he exclaimed quietly as he touched the last of his coins.
How many days had he gone hungry to save up this much? He was only paid a few coppers every day, just enough to feed himself. But he had to put some aside no matter the cost, no matter the beatings when his hunger left him too weak to work. And now, after years and years, Yosko has finally saved up ten silver coins!
“Goodbye, stupid Master! Goodbye, stupid firelilies! I’m going to Inuvik Academy to become a mage!”
That night, Yosko wouldn’t return to his bed. He could tell the worst of the summer’s heat had passed, and that could mean only one thing – the entrance exam would be soon.
***
Looking down at Yosko, hidden in the leafy treetops, sat a lone metal bird. Its artificial eyes and ears took in the sights and sounds of this young man, transmitting them across miles to another young man’s Y-Link, letting him gaze upon Yosko as though he were there in the trees himself.
In reality, Levin sat outside a cave hidden at the foot of a mountain, holding his knees close to his chest as the setting sun brought with it a slight chill, made worse in the shade of the forest. He looked down into the cave, half expecting to still be able to see Mei’s massive form descending into its darkness.
“Inuvik Academy…” Levin said quietly to himself.
It was a name he had heard several times already during the days he had spent traveling with Mei. They were on an endless march north, traveling parallel to the plains to their east in a sea of duplicate mountains and trees.
Levin spent the time using Cho to explore the rolling plains and the multitude of small farming communities, eavesdropping on those within. He had seen others besides the young Yosko traveling north to this place, all bearing the same dream on their lips – becoming a mage.
“An Academy that trains people to use supernatural power…” Levin thought to himself. “Did the people who attacked us come from there?”
“Levin!”
Mei’s voice reached Levin from the depths of the cave, jolting him to his feet.
“What is it!” Levin shouted back, but no response came. He wasn’t sure his voice could even carry all the way to Mei.
He hesitated, waiting at the entrance, staring into the inky black depths. Eventually, her voice floated up to him again.
“Come see this!”
“See what!” he shouted back.
But when no further responses came, Levin walked forward a few steps tentatively, stopping and shivering as the blackness enveloped him on all sides. He shuffled forward slowly, engaging his Y-Link as he did, feeding it the sounds of his own steps. As he did, a virtual outline of the cave played in his mind’s eye, computer-aided echolocation letting him navigate in the darkness.
“How did Mei see down here?” Levin thought, feeling out each step as he advanced slowly.
Levin descended through a wide and gently sloping path, finding more confidence in each step as he pushed farther down. And yet, something seemed odd – the cave felt too uniform, more artificial than naturally formed. But what did he know? Levin had never been in a cave before. But the smooth walls and straight tunnel felt man-made.
He tried to push his doubts down, focusing on finding Mei in the blackness. She could probably tell. But Levin very soon found an answer to his doubts, something that had unmistakably been formed by human hands. Doors.
They lay on the floor, broken off amidst shattered pieces of the stone they had been set in, blasted out of their hinges. But more remarkable was that Levin didn’t need the aid of his Y-Link to see them, not with the light spilling from beyond the threshold, emitted by small stones set in a white marbled floor. They cast only a dim light, but it was more than bright enough for Levin’s dark-adjusted eyes to make out the fine, polished metal in the two doors on the ground.
“Were those doors already broken, or did Mei do this?” Levin thought as he examined them.
Even with the light, Levin kept his Y-Link echolocation engaged as he stepped forward into the frame of the door, curious about what lay beyond the gates to this underground palace. But a gasp escaped his lips as he looked around, at the destruction within the elegant construction.
Skeletons lay scattered about in the room before him, spread to every inch of the room, piled especially high closer to the entrance. “Or maybe this is the exit,” Levin thought with a hint of dread. Not a single one of the skeletons were complete – each one had been violently destroyed somewhere, from missing arms and legs to even shattered torsos and skulls.
Levin shuddered as he crept through the center, trying not to look at them as he made his way towards a hall in the rear. He picked a path with the fewest corpses, but still had to carefully watch his step to avoid treading any bones underfoot, and Levin’s disgusted grimace deepened with each movement. At least there wasn’t much of a smell. This place must be incredibly ancient.
“Mei! Where are you!” Levin shouted.
But no response came. Levin’s sense of dread deepened, and as he reached the hallway, he quickened his steps, heading deeper within. Fortunately, the bodies began to thin out the farther he went, but there was still no sign of Mei.
The passageway sloped down slightly, twisting and curving beyond Levin’s view just ahead of him as he descended into its depths. The soft light of the glowing stones set in the floor, walls, and ceiling created an eerie, shadowless environment that made Levin’s hair stand on end as he crept through.
“Dammit Mei! Answer me!” Levin shouted, voice shaky.
Levin rounded another corner in the snaking passageway as he called for Mei, finding an open door set in the wall. Levin stopped, looking inside, but that was a mistake – Levin was instantly entranced. Because inside, there were books.
Levin could see shelves full of them, a small library hidden deep under the ground, surely hiding a treasure trove of information. Just imagining the secrets within was enough for Levin to forget everything else. He wanted to add them to his collection immediately, but Mei’s voice pulled him back from the edge.
“Levin! Back here!”
Levin pried his eyes away from the books with great reluctance, reminding himself they weren’t going anywhere. Instead, Levin hurried along down the passageway in the direction of Mei’s voice. She still sounded far.
Along the way, he found more rooms branching off from the central tunnel, containing a variety of fixtures. He saw labs full of glass tubes and vials, a storage room filled with items he couldn’t recognize, and several basic living accommodations full of rotted furniture. Fortunately, there were barely any skeletons littering the floor this deep in.
And finally, Levin arrived at the end of the passageway, which opened into one final room.
“Mei! There you are,” Levin said, breathing a sigh of relief as he entered the room.
Mei’s silhouette, backdropped by the same dimly lit stones, was stooped over something in the back. Levin walked towards her, wondering what she was looking at – until something in the periphery of the room caught his eye. It caught the light as he moved by, drawing Levin’s attention.
“Woah,” he said, turning and crouching to the ground for a better look.
There, piled on the cold stone floor, were hundreds of silver-white, glittering scales, brilliant even in the low light. Levin poked at one, feeling the smooth, hard surface, freezing cold to the touch. He shivered, pulling his hand away from the biting cold that seemed to invade his very skin, chilling him to the bone.
At the sudden motion, the pile shifted, scales clattering noisily as they fell over each other to the ground. Levin yelped and leapt back, startled by what appeared beneath the glitter – another skeleton. And surprisingly, the bones belonged to a human, despite the layering of reptile-like scales that appeared to have once adorned the body.
“I think the bones out there were slaughtered by these guys,” Mei said.
“‘Guys?’ There’s more than one?” Levin thought, looking around. And indeed, two other identical piles of scales lay about the room, with their own matching skeletons peeking out beneath.
Mei came over to Levin, brushing aside the loose scales from the corpse and examining the bones. Levin averted his gaze, instead trading positions with Mei and examining the strange structure she had been looking at.
There were not one but three of them, short rounded pods with a hollow interior and a glass top that sat on top, a hinge connecting it in the back. The walls of the structure were made of one continuous sheet of thick metal, and the inside was big enough to fit a person sitting down. Levin peeked inside, and saw the inner wall was engraved with intricate, dense patterns. This time, he didn’t try to touch it.
“The bones in the hands of these… things, they’re more like claws. They’re consistent with the damage done to the bodies outside,” Mei said.
“I didn’t know you were good at forensics,” Levin said.
Mei snorted. “What, you think I tracked criminals back home with my magic nose?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Levin fell silent, looking around the room some more. In the far back, he noticed a small shelf, carved into the very stone itself, the murky contents shrouded in shadow hidden within their recess. He walked over, examining the shape that looked barely large enough to be a book or two.
But instead, Levin found a pile of thin strips of wood, each about the size of his hand and a couple inches thick. Drawn in by curiosity, he carefully pulled off the top one, touching it gingerly a few times first. In his hands, it felt like nothing more than a simple piece of wood, but as he looked closer in the faint light, Levin could see another set of carvings upon the wood, similar to the ones he had seen on the strange pods in the center of the room.
“What is this place?” Levin asked.
Mei shrugged. “Some kind of research lab, I’d guess. Either way, it’ll make a great shelter for us.”
“Shelter? You want to live here?” Levin exclaimed, tossing the wooden strip away. “No way! I want to record the books into my Y-Link, and then get out of here.”
Mei glared at Levin, standing up from the scaled corpse and rising to her full, towering height. Levin gulped, but held her eyes.
“And I suppose you just want to keep running in a random direction forever? Easy for you to say, since you haven’t done a damn thing since we got here!”
Levin fought the urge to turn away, to stare at his feet and curl into a ball. She was right, after all. But Mei had also been right the other day – Andrew thought, no, knew he was better than that.
So Levin held her eyes. “I want to go to Inuvik Academy. That’s where we’ll find the power to go back home.”
Mei narrowed her eyes at him. “All these villages you’ve seen on our way here haven’t even had electricity, and even Pandorium had electricity. Do you really think going back is possible?”
“Weren’t you the one telling me to try? Now you don’t think it’s possible?” Levin said.
“I was trying to cheer you up, for both our sakes. But Levin, we need to focus on surviving right now. Finding a way home comes later, after we’re secure. And after we’ve gotten our revenge.”
Levin fought back tears, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. He clenched his fists, fingernails digging into the skin, but still he stared Mei down, neck craned up.
“Just to make me feel better, huh? Fine. I don’t care if you think it’s impossible to get back home. But do you know what Andrew’s final words were?”
Mei stayed silent.
“He told me to leave them with nothing! And I intend to take everything, even their magic! Maybe I can’t find a way home, but if I go to Inuvik Academy I can learn how to kill Azaadi. And if it was Inuvik who attacked us, I’ll tear them down from the inside.”
“You think I don’t want to kill them? You think I don’t want to slaughter them all right now? Trust me, Levin, we will make them pay! But hidden away, with your bird in the skies – that’s a sure path to revenge. Isn’t that what you want?”
Isn’t that what you want. The words stabbed into Levin far more than he expected. What was it he really wanted from Inuvik Academy? What was it he really wanted in life?
“Of course I want revenge…” Levin said. “But Mei, don’t you want to know how they do it? Don’t you want to discover the secrets of a new dimension? And if not, why did you even come with us?”
Then, Levin began mentally kicking himself. Of course he knew why she didn’t want to leave this cave. Of course she wouldn’t want to head to a place with other people. It was such a simple reason, he couldn’t believe he didn’t realize immediately.
“It’s because of the earbuds, isn’t it?”
Mei snorted, crossing her arms and turning away from Levin.
“You don’t want to go to the city because you won’t be able to communicate with anyone.”
Levin paused, looking at her back. That was a serious problem for Mei, one he had been too distracted to fully consider. The loss of her universal translator earbuds would have been trivial to resolve on Earth, but there would be no replacing that advanced technology here.
And they were clearly going to be stuck in this unfamiliar land for a long time, even if it was possible to get back home. Mei was going to have to integrate, or Levin would be the only human she could talk to, likely for the rest of her life. But how would they get a teacher for her? Levin wouldn’t be able to, not when he relied on automatic translation software.
“Mei,” Levin said. “You’re going to need to study the language. I can – “
“Shut up!” she shouted.
“I was right,” Levin thought with a grimace. “Mei, if you let me help y– “
“Leave!” she roared, spinning back around.
She swung her arm at the same time, fast enough Levin could barely see her releasing something from her hand at lightning speed. A rush of wind blasted Levin in the face as the meteor hurtled inches past his face, colliding with the wall behind in an earth-shaking boom.
He ducked and cowered instinctively, but it would have been far too late if Mei had been seriously aiming for him. Levin glanced behind him, looking at the shattered remnants of an old bone embedded in the wall, leaking a fine dust mixed of stone and calcium onto the ground.
“If that had hit me…” Levin thought with a shudder.
He didn’t need any further persuasion. Straightening up on trembling legs, Levin made his way towards the exit of the room, back into the long, spiraling hall and up towards the room he had seen earlier. The upwards slope, gradual though it may be, drained Levin of any strength he might have had left.
“What’s going to happen to us…?” Levin thought as he forced himself to take one step after another.
Maybe he should do as Mei says. She would be used to things like this, hunting and being hunted. Who was Levin to say what was best for them to do? How could he know that these mages he wanted to learn from wouldn’t kill him immediately? After all, they still had no idea why they were attacked in the first place.
But even weighed down by doubt and fatigue, Levin didn’t stop as he trudged back through the long tunnel. The dead bodies littered around him didn’t bother him as much through his numbed emotions, and as Levin continued to place one step after another he felt increasingly like an outside spectator, watching his body be pulled along by some unknown force.
There was nothing left except his destination. And when he arrived, finally stepping into the room, staring at rows and rows of books preserved within the dry, cool underground construction, Levin couldn’t help but feel a sense of excited anticipation bubbling through his broken interior, the same sensation as when Andrew first invited him to explore a new dimension. With it came a pang of guilt, guilt that he could still feel that way when Andrew was now gone forever.
But no longer he felt like a stranger in his own mind. Mei had asked him what he wanted, and as he picked up his first volume from a shelf of the subterranean library, he couldn’t deny what it really was. To learn, to understand, to sink oneself into a reality as yet unmapped. To expand his collection.
He opened the precious tome cautiously, letting the aged parchment gently fall apart, and Levin felt like he could have been back in his house on Earth, at least just a little. As one of the rare children born to a saturated Earth, full of humans that could live hundreds of years, there had been precious few people his own age or immaturity he could connect to. Instead, his earliest memories were of textbooks and tutors, the sort of unparalleled personalized education only
afforded to the most privileged living in the center of humanity’s galactic empire.
And then, years spent in university, pursuing his inspiration for a melding of mind and machine. He had felt exactly like this back then, too, as though he were an explorer uncovering secrets that had been locked away. It had been difficult, arduous work, but this time around Levin had his Y-Link – no ordinary scholar would be able to match him anymore.
However, his excitement quickly deflated as he looked at the first page of the tome. Text covered the rough parchment, hand-written with neat and orderly penmanship that had been preserved in excellent quality despite being abandoned in this lost cave for who knows how long. And Levin couldn’t understand a word of it.
By listening in with Cho, he had managed to absorb enough data for his translator module to formulate the spoken language, but he had seen next to no written text during his days here. The villages he had seen during the time traveling with Mei had been exceedingly simple; there were likely very few people even literate, if the overall technology here was anything to go on.
Levin slapped his forehead, in disbelief that he had overlooked something so simple. The translator devices found all across his galaxy relied on context to decode new languages, by starting with interpreting basic phrases and building from there.
But a book wouldn’t gesture or express emotion, it wouldn’t interact with its surroundings while speaking, and it didn’t have eyes to track to deduce what the topic might be about. There was no starting point for his universal translator to work with. So he was stuck. All Levin could do was hope for a picture book somewhere in the library.
But even without the ability to understand, Levin could still record. Everything he saw would be stored digitally in the memory banks of his Y-Link, always available for him to review later. And so Levin began flipping through the pages as quickly as he could without damaging them, forming a personal copy of the document.
But then, only a third of the way through the book, he stopped. Levin had gotten his wish, in part. There were no words here, only a sketch that stretched over both pages, filling them with a simple but unmistakable diagram of a creature Levin recognized all too well.
A dragon. With spread wings atop a lizard-like torso and reptilian scales recognizable even in the unrefined sketch, this was undeniably a drawing of a creature Levin believed didn’t exist.
“How can mythology from my culture be here?” Levin thought to himself, closing his eyes. “For humans to be in both this dimension and my home, some group must have been able to cross dimensions long before us. But when? And how? Earth has a detailed fossil record, and we can trace our species’ history of evolution quite clearly. How would that be possible if humans arrived on Earth from a different dimension?
“Maybe humanity has, by some incalculable stroke of cosmic luck, evolved into the same form in both these dimensions completely independently, similar to how crustaceans often evolve similar crab-like features. But then how would dragon mythology be here too? Even the same humans living together on Earth developed wildly different ideas of mythical beings!”
Levin shook his head, frustrated. Maybe when he could read these books would help unlock the secrets of this world, but all they did now was raise more questions. Levin turned the page, trying to suppress the painfully burning question that had been on all their lips since the beginning: How was any of this possible?
“I still can’t even read. There’s no point wasting my time thinking up theories now,” Levin thought, returning his focus to the book and turning the parchment.
He found another sketch on the next two pages, of another dragon. But this one presented a different angle, from directly above, presenting something of an anatomical cross-section very unlike the artistic depiction he had just seen. And even though he couldn’t read the text, the labeled straight lines drawn alongside the body parts of the drawn dragon were unmistakable – measurements.
“I made another foolish assumption,” Levin thought to himself, flipping through the next few pages to see several more sketches, each with their own unique perspective and measurements. “The dragons here are no mythology! They were real, and these sketches are so detailed that whoever created this book clearly had the body of one to study. Maybe these are the true source of dragons in my dimension’s mythology!”
Then Levin shuddered, as he remembered where he was, as he connected the dots between this library and the rest of this lab, destroyed as it was. The three pods each large enough to fit a human, the three human skeletons covered in scales, the animalistic wrath unleashed upon the denizens…
“Were the researchers here trying to turn people into dragons?” Levin thought with horror. “And does all this destruction mean they failed… or succeeded?”
The book would yield no answers. Levin knew this, but continued to flip through, recording the data, anticipating the day he would be able to uncover its secrets. And when he finished with one, a task that took only a minute, he moved on to the next, book-by-book making his way through the small room.
Unsettled dust and shifted tomes were left in Levin’s wake as he contemplated what little could be gleaned from the few images scattered throughout. Most were incomprehensible, vaguely circular in shape but containing intricate and complicated geometric patterns within – or perhaps just scribbles. A few held more dragon sketches, but nothing as detailed or numerous as his first book, and Levin quickly set these aside.
“If only I could get to Inuvik Academy, I could learn to read these… I’ll have to try to convince Mei again later,” Levin thought, placing the final book back on its shelf.
He turned to leave, but jolted in surprise as he looked at the entrance and Mei looked back. Her massive frame was hunched over to fit in the doorway, where Mei was standing and staring at Levin.
“How long have you been there?” Levin asked after composing himself.
“A bit. You looked pretty into it,” Mei said.
Levin blushed slightly, hoping the dim light would hide his embarrassment at being watched. But Mei could probably tell.
“I’ll take you to that Academy,” she said.
“Really?” Levin asked, his voice cracking.
“Sure. But then we split up, and you’ll use that bird to keep in touch with me,” Mei said.
“Makes sense she wouldn’t want to stay, I guess,” Levin thought, and he decided not to push her to come. “Okay.”
“You’ll want this,” Mei said, and she tossed something towards Levin.
It landed in a metallic jangle in front of Levin, and he picked it up. It was a leather pouch tied at the top, and when Levin pulled it open, he found a pile of blue and gold metal discs, stamped with a pair of wings on both sides.
His eyes bulged. Levin was rich.
“How did you get this!?”
“I pulled it from Tulimak,” she said. “He also had a waterskin, but I’m keeping that.”
“Thank you, Mei,” Levin said. This money was sure to be useful. But he still had one question, especially considering Mei’s earlier reaction.
“What made you change your mind?”
Mei snorted, pulling back into the hall. “I just did. We’ll leave tomorrow,” she said, walking off.