Opportunities, as it turned out, means a whole lot of breaking and entering.

At least it did until they finally realized how useless you were.

Kael hands you what feels like the fiftieth item, a brass cube with a single symbol on it that you can’t recognize despite your degrees. You sigh and reach for the warmth that she assures you is there and once again feel nothing. You look at her and shrug helplessly.

“It has power!” She half shouts at you before snatching it back, “I can see it and so can any idiot in a half block radius”

You were far on the outskirts of the city now, in a small building that reminds you more of a shed than a safehouse and the rack of tools on the wall does nothing to change that notion. A layer of dust covers everything, informing you that it doesn’t get used often. Apparently Kael is being extra cautious with her new Artificer.

This far from civilization, it is safe enough to take out a few items and try them out on you. With an Eater around, you sure don’t feel safe. It’s hard to focus and besides, you have no idea what you are even looking for.

Kael has had a steady loss of patience with each failure until you wish that you were in a place with more witnesses. And Opal doesn’t count.

“Are you sure?” you ask timidly, finally voicing the doubts that have plagued you since the beginning.

Kael snarls at you wordlessly before pulling her attention back to the cube. She goes utterly still for a moment then her eyes slowly begin to glow. The exposed skin on her hands falls into shadow even though they should be illuminated by the meager lighting. Wisps of smoke curl around the corners of her eyes.

“This object is fully charged with the power of the Dragon Ley,” She says in a voice slightly deeper than normal. Her nostrils flare as she looks closer and closer, closing her hand on the cube as if savoring its warmth as you do.

Across the room, Opal clears her throat significantly and stares at Kael with hard eyes. Kael shakes her head and backs away from the cube, eyes rapidly returning to normal.

“That’s all I can see,” she says tightly. Then puts the cube down and stands up, finally going for that drink.

“The Dragon Ley?” you ask after a moment, unsure of what happened just then, but not curious enough to risk asking.

“The original sites of power were referred to as Leys. Many cultures have different names for them,” Opal answers, still watching Kael with measured eyes. “Most of these sites don’t exist anymore, the power is all dried up.”

The implication of Eaters hangs in the air. Though if Opal is to be believed it means that the Ley line postulates were actually correct just following outdated information. The earth is constantly changing, it is unsurprising that investigations of the Ley line have turned up nothing. Especially if the Eaters consumed them or they just simply moved.

The revelation makes you fall back into your seat. The wayward branch of archaeology, the pseudo-archaeologists, were right all along, just centuries too late. It is no wonder different cultures have deep-seated cultural traditions along ley lines, they truly existed at one point.

Suddenly a thought strikes you and your head snaps up. “Kael,” you ask, “what is your ring charged with?”

She puts down the bottle, sloshing some wine onto the counter, but ignores it and touches her ring. “The Blood Ley,” she says, eyes a thousand miles away.

“Mayan?” you guess.

She looks at you then, eyes narrowing but doesn’t bring up the fact that you never mentioned going to Mexico before.

“I have a theory,” you say, standing like you are once again lecturing a class, “That I can only interact with items from a ley line that I have personally experienced. Given that I can feel my items, and the ring, but nothing that you show me, it feels like a valid theory.”

“It doesn’t work that way for Oracles,” Kael argues.

“Well I’m not an Oracle,” you respond, always ready for a good debate. You aren’t even convinced you’re an Artificer either but that seems a tough point to argue.

“It makes sense,” Opal says grudgingly, “That would explain why Apollo stays here. He can’t use the power from anywhere else.”

“Who is Apollo?” you ask, hoping that Kael will finally answer, but she ignores you, lost in thought.

“That would mean that Dr…”

“Knight,” you supply, only then realizing that they had never asked, just like how farmers refuse to name their pigs before sending them to the butcher.

“Dr. Knight is completely useless to us unless we can find the Wisdom Ley, which,” she says once again reaching for the bottle, and pointing it at you accusingly, “is pointless because all the magic is all dried up.”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Not all of it,” you say cautiously, pulling out the map from your case.

Kael freezes with the bottle halfway to her lips as you remove the protective tube and spread out the map carpet weighing down the corners with the four tree stones. The room is filled with a golden glow, lending soft shadows to the shocked faces next to you. One dot glows brighter than the rest and you touch it to expand it into a shadowy, moss covered room mostly filled with water. A single carving of an Owl glows green in the half light next to a shadowy blue trident.

Kael’s face is as white as snow as she stares at the images on the map, nostrils flared as if catching a familiar scent.

“Holy shit I know where that is.”

And that’s when the breaking and entering started.

____

The Ley turned out to be a place that you were familiar with, even if it was one of the least visited sites in the city. Kerameikos, the ancient cemetery of Athens.

It is one of the greenest areas inAthens, second only to the wooded areas around the Acropolis, but those were closed to the public. Trees grow between the old stone walls, small and wizened as mediterranean trees always are. Grass sprouts in lush rectangles, outlining lowered areas that were once paths and walkways.

Stubs of old pillars poke up like teeth of a giant beast, ringing the footprint of the ancient structure. It has a certain planning to it that is obvious even millenia later. It is not as impressive as the Acropolis, nor as famous as the temple of Poseidon, but there is a quiet beauty to it.

The familiar love for ancient mysteries wells inside you and you are about to start stating facts about the site when, to your surprise, Kael beats you to it. She lists ages of certain outbuildings and what they were primarily used for with the ease of a trained tour guide. Several facts even you are surprised to learn. You look at her, then Opal, but Opal just rolls her eyes like this is a common thing and keeps walking.

You follow, trailing your fingers along the stone, warm from the sun and allow yourself to relax slightly. This is your element. The fish have the sea, the birds have the air, you have the crumbling ruins of before time.

You stop at a statue of a marble bull that seems to be impaled on the stump of a tree. Several cats lounge on the rocks, warming themselves as you did. Kael walks behind it and begins feeling around on the ground. She tugs at something and there is a dull grinding noise as a section of stone walkway slides out of sight.

Your breath catches, but there is no time to appreciate the adrenaline cracking through your veins as both Kael and Opal duck onto the set of stone stairs and out of sight. You glance around, but the cemetery is empty. There is no one to witness the most significant find of the city in the last twenty years. You follow, sliding the door back behind you.

Kael has a flashlight out, its pale beam illuminating nothing but wet stone walls and a grit covered floor. It’s tight, only two people can walk side by side. Opal walks ahead, scouting with her own flashlight so you fall in step with Kael.

“How did you know this was here?” you ask, still in awe.

“The German institute is in charge of the excavation,” she replies as if that explains everything. “This wasn’t public because, well, you’ll see.” She glances at your case. “You should have left that at the safehouse,” she says abruptly then pushes on ahead, leaving you with more questions than you know what to do with.

The air is warm and humid and you are starting to sweat by the time the path abruptly ends with a wall of stone. A single hollow section that forms a sort of shelf in its face. Deep gouges disfigure the walls like swipes from the talons of a great beast. Above the shelf is one word in Ancient Greek. Death.

“After what happened with the Egyptian tomb curses, no one wanted to go public with this,” Kael says, “It was just a dead end, so no one really cared but now…”

Opal and Kael both take a deep breath, noses in the air like bloodhounds and nod their heads in unison. They look at you expectantly.

“It’s a wall,” you say, completely nonplussed, taking off your jacket and folding it over your arm obstinately.

“There is magic here,” Opal says, pulling her jacket tighter, “very faint, but it smells just like the place on the map.”

“You can’t smell the map,” you mumble, but grudgingly feel the wall in front of you. It’s warm, as if the water dripping down it came from a hot spring, though no such spring exists in the city. You close your eyes, but feel nothing like the calming heat that comes from the items in your case. Nothing like the volatility of the feather.

You cross your arms. “There is nothing here.”

Kael frowns, “How did you learn to feel the Blood Ley?”

“By almost being killed.”

“I can arrange that for you,” Opal says, grinning like a shark.

Kael ignores her. “Just relax and focus.”

“Both times I was at the site, I was in the power,” you say, frustrated. “Not standing on the doorstep knocking like a beggar.”

But that wasn’t true. There had been nothing in the Steps to Heaven until you had bled and begged. You coaxed sparks out of the barest wisps of history until it was a roaring, uncontrollable inferno. This was the Wisdom Ley, and if there was anything in your life that you pursued, it was wisdom.

“Kael,” you say haltingly, taking a seat right there on the floor like a student in class. “Tell me about your research.”

She gives you a searching look, then launches into an explanation of her theories on human civilization and philosophy. It is stumbling at first, like she hasn’t considered it in a long time, but it rapidly becomes coherent, then sophisticated. You pepper her with advanced questions, and she answers them with ease. Any hole that you poke in her theory is met with a slew of facts and an arsenal of supporting evidence. You change tact, playing devil's advocate, but she defends herself like a trained fencer. You haven’t had to fight this hard since you defended your first doctoral thesis and you relish in the challenge.

At some point you close your eyes and feel the swells of evidence more than listen to them, instinctively seeing the generalizations and attacking them viciously. Kael delivers a glib reply then hammers it home with a paper that has only been read by maybe twenty people that perfectly encapsulates her point.

Then suddenly you understand. The wisp of power that sat on the edge of your perception is thrown fully into the light. It is not the calming heat of the power of the blue rose, nor the sharpness of the Blood Ley. No, it is a steady stream of undiluted information that is waiting to be categorized, waiting to inhabit those that will search to the ends of the earth for knowledge and then jump over the cliff to prove their point.

You open your eyes, stand up, and pull on the thread of power as it brushes against the wall.

The wall vanishes.