MAEWYS

Maewys estimates that unloading the train’s cargo will take over a day. She’s proven right when the port authority detached the passenger cars from the cargo and sent it to the unloading platform. From there Maewys exited the train, using the stacks of crates and barrels as cover while sneaking further and further away from her point of entry. Soon, she’s out in the open air of the Nuaranth train yard, looking very much like someone with criminal intent.

But the sheer scale of the surrounding city is mind-boggling. The city walls which tower overhead, and the structures of Nuaranth’s Upper City dwarf yet even those. Fulgent towers reach skyward like broken teeth, pearly white and glistering with a Bright Caster’s glimmer. They drip downward like rain, a trick of the light making them seem motile and poised to sink into the top of the cliff. Aerial walkways and roads chain the towers together, and entire pavilions stand suspended in the air by flying buttresses and triangular wall braces. Helical roadways spiral through the Upper City, feeding into the lower districts that remain out of sight. A mere glimpse of Nuaranth, like a sliver of moonlight on a cloudy night. Suddenly, Maewys’s mission seems an unfathomable impossibility.

She grits her teeth and slaps her cheeks, letting out a sharp breath. Lemlat was not too dissimilar from Nuaranth, wide and sprawling across the flat plain of its territory. Nuaranth is ancient and confined to the cliff. It has no choice but to build upward. That’s what Maewys tells herself, at any rate.

The Nuaranth train yard spills out into Midtown, the central district of the greater city. It’s all narrow streets and corridor passages, the sky overhead blotted out by the eminence of the Upper City and the enrapturing walls. If one were to look straight up, they would see only a wedge of lazuli sky.

Narrow residences push up against each other, built around businesses that feed off them. Hole-in-the-wall eateries hand out quick meals to passing customers, filling the air with the titillating scent of salt and hot oil. Maewys feels a tightness in her stomach as the smells cloud her mind. Hot honey can only do so much for her travel provisions, and she’s been eating food of that ilk since Lemlat. She reaches into her bag, and Ephel spits a few silver coins into her palm, approaching a street-side kitchen occupying the space of a full-sized bed.

The man working the wicker steam basket wipes sweat from his forehead. He nods at the Elemnist, dumping a batch of steamed buns onto a display tray.

“Five marks for a bun, friend,” he says.

“All I have are Lemlati trines,” Maewys says, holding out the coins.

“Lemlati, eh?” The man stops his work to examine the coins. “How goes the war?” Maewys blinks. It surprises her that someone outside Lemlat knows about the conflict.

“Poorly,” she says. It’s been a stalemate between Lemlat and Raishen’s army since before Ordo Melikinara intervened, yet momentum didn’t pick up.

“Ten trines,” the man says, shrugging before he turning back his work. Maewys deposits twenty coins and takes two steamed buns, each larger than her fist, the dough pillowy in her hands. She takes a large bite out of the first one, eyes closing as the subtle meat juices flood her mouth. It’s chewy and toothsome and Maewys is glad she opted to buy two.

“You’re on a mission, not a food tour,” Ephel says, peeking out of the Elemnist’s pack. Maewys grumbles her agreement, all the while shoving the orb back into cover.

Unless the Garrison shelled the building into oblivion, the Ordo Labrythyne sanctuary should still stand in Nuaranth’s Midtown. The deeper Maewys traverses into Nuaranth, the wider the streets become, arterial roadways funneling populace and commerce into the hearts of the city.

Nuaranth Plaza, with its ban on high-rise structures, is one of a few open windows peering out into the sky. During the Inferno Crisis, also known as the Nuaranthian Doom, fifty years ago, the city council cleared out the space. A dock fire the council allowed to spread into the city caused it. Patricians didn’t plan for it to reach deep into Nuaranth, only to destroy the docks, but fire rarely does as it’s told.

A domed structure, the Ordo Labrythyne sanctuary sits on the center edge of the plaza, multicolored flags hanging from the spindly spires at the four corners of the square base. Shrubby green spaces and fine sand pits break up cement and gray flagstones that pave over the plaza. A rectangular fountain stands in the center, a long and narrow basin with multiple fonts jetting water into the air. Nuaranthian denizens toss coins into the burbling water, a traditional offering of fortune and merit. Nothing about the fountain grants wishes, but unseen forces always sweep the coins up during the night unseen.

Approaching her people’s sanctuary, Maewys notices the encroachment of the Nuaranth Garrison. Tall, broad men stand by cordons and iron barricades, equipped with dark combat armor. Unfriendly helmets enclose their heads, faceplates like monstrous animal skulls, and no light from the eyes. An officer stands at their head, light armor beneath his flapped open long jacket, a cream-colored armband on his right upper arm. He tips his military cap, a wedge-shaped cone of a thing that’s all black and red, but his angular face hardens as the Elemnist continues approaching.

He holds up a thick gloved hand, glowing with the faint twinkling of crystalline lights. “That’s close enough, citizen. This is a restricted area.”

Maewys bites her tongue. Of course, it’s not that easy. Instead, she plays the part of obedience by nodding her head and walking away. Ephel pokes out of her pack again.

“There are secret ways into the sanctuary, but most of them require stone Elemnistry,” the Espreth says.

“So show me one that doesn’t,” Maewys says, brows furrowed and voice terse. “Why would you even bring up the ones I can’t do?”

“The possibility remains that you’ll meet someone who can,” Ephel says, even voice unchanging. “And I want to avoid situations where you accuse me of not bringing up critical information earlier.”

Maewys sighs. Ephel has always been thorough, even by Espreth standards. She supposes it comes with age. Reports indicate Ephel is over three millennia in age.

The closest secret entrance of Ordo Labrythyne is in an alleyway, one block west of Nuaranth Plaza. It consists of two manhole entrances into the sewer system, constructed by Elemnist hands when Nuaranth expanded beyond the trenches and cesspits. Future-proofing the city’s growth, the entrance tunnel plunges into the rock below until the daylight overhead becomes a pinprick that illuminates a sliver of the landing at the end. Ephel rises out of Maewys’s bag and illuminates the sewer tunnel, their unadulterated luster casting a faint glow on the opposite wall.

“Follow me,” Ephel says, drifting down the proper path. Maewys wrinkles her nose, keeping her mouth shut lest she taste the air. The sewage scent isn’t overwhelming and fecal, more earthy than anything else, but the strong metallic taint belies its rancid nature. The walls are smooth stone the whole way, shaped by powerful Elemnistry. Maewys stares at this perfection of stone. She senses the forceful impact, a crease in the walls where the stone halted and where the Elemnists proceeded on foot.

They reach an incline and ascend, reaching a massive central cistern for the neighborhood. They arc around the perimeter, crossing a sewage channel with a narrow catwalk, and continue down another tunnel. Ephel stops in-front of a drainage pipe about half the height of Maewys, molten core staring deep into its depths.

“This way,” the Espreth says.

Maewys recoils away from the opening, a disgusted look wrought on her face. “I am not going in there!” Her voice echoes off the smooth stone walls. In there, in there, in there…

“It is the only way,” Ephel says. Maewys scrunches up her face and turns away. “It is a drainage pipe for water, not waste. It’s meant to help flush out the sewage of this tunnel.”

“There’s mold inside!” Maewys points out the slime dripping from the entrance and clinging to the stone. “And algae! And maybe some kind of nest.”

“It is the only way.” Ephel stares at Maewys in silence before floating into the pipe. The Espreth’s light becomes a single beam of concentrated light, leaving much of Maewys in oppressive darkness.

“Alright, fine.” Maewys heaves herself into the drainage pipe, squatting down to not hit her head. “But I’m going to complain the entire time.”

“Discretion is the better part of valor,” Ephel replies.

“That doesn’t apply to this situation!”

Maewys follows the orb for a time, pressing a hand against the slimy wall to brace herself, lips curling in a grimace. A trickle of clear, but not clean, water rushes past the toes of her boots. As she shuffles along, Maewys kicks up sludge and algae with every slight extension of her cramped legs.

Ephel stops, then vanishes upward into the stone, leaving only a shaft of light shooting into the floor as a sign of their presence. Maewys sighs with relief, able to extend herself up straight, even if it’s into an upward arching tunnel that scrapes against her shoulders. It’s a tight squeeze. Standing the wrong way would sandwich the Elemnist’s bag, back, and breasts between the walls, leaving her trapped. Standing the right way—which still scrapes her arms and shoulders—presses her bag flat against her back. Thankfully, it’s made of sturdy stuff that is not liable to rip and tear, although the leather will scuff. Ruined, as some might say.

With caution, Maewys searches for a ladder or hand holds. Finding shallow imprints in the stone, she starts the laborious and treacherous prospect of scaling a near-vertical incline.

“Ruination,” she says under her breath. “Just who is this shaft made for?” Her hips scrape against the walls as she raises her legs, feet finding footholds.

“Espreths and children,” Ephel replies. “Your bag isn’t helping matters, either.”

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“Well, I can’t let you float out in the open, can I?” Maewys sniffs.

After much fussing and scraping, Maewys enters a more open, vestibular room. It’s a cramped, closet-ish space, small by design and easy to keep hidden and Maewys isn’t at all surprised that it opens out into a bookshelf. Scattered books, torn off their shelving and trampled over in search of this hidden entrance, litter the floor. The rest of the room is in shambles, a children’s dormitory with shattered wooden toes and overturned bunks. Thick spider nests occupy the corners and high spaces, stagnant dust clinging to abandoned webs. Ephel’s light cast eerie shadows, long and malformed, sending the hairs on the back of Maewys’s neck to stand upright.

She can almost hear them, the ghosts echoing laughter as clumsy, knobby-kneed youths play amongst themselves and converse about the day’s lessons. They are gone, every one of them. Cruel hands destroyed the room, yet no blood stains the surfaces. For Maewys, that makes things worse.

The floor creaks under her tender footsteps, groaning and bemoaning its tragic existence. It’s, by design, to keep the kids from sneaking out after curfew unnoticed. It feels strange with the dormitory in this condition. Furniture and personal items were smashed on the floor, the detritus almost reaching the foundations.

The door lay tossed aside, frame splintered and broken, blown off its hinges by whoever wanted inside, not caring about anything other than that end. Maewys crosses into the hallway, stepping over the much noisier floorboard outside the door on instinct. She spent many a night beyond the dorms of the Ordo Elemnata up on the roof of the sanctuary, discussing the nighttime stars with Zacaer and their friends. She wondered if the sky differed in other parts of the world. The dormitories do.

Paintings of city officials and Ordo Masters once hanging on the hallway walls, artistic sculptures gifted to the sanctuary standing on display at the intersections. Now, only empty frames lay bent and battered on the floor, canvas torn to shreds, marble sculptures beaten to gravel and powder. Maewys crosses the building toward the Master’s chambers. It’s in the same location across every Ordo, for easy transitioning between sects. The heavy door here remains intact, reinforced and barricaded against the invaders, though it hangs limp on defeated hinges. It falls with a thundering thud as Maewys brushes by, startling the Elemnist, teasing out a strangled noise from the depths of her throat.

“Do you think anyone heard that?” she asks, turning to the silent glass sphere beside her.

“Someone most definitely heard that,” Ephel states. “I would say you have less than five minutes before discovery. Unless the Garrison searches every room prior to this one.” Maewys’s heart pounds in her chest, but she steels herself before taking in the ransacked office.

An obscene amount of dry, flaky blood coats the room. The walls are black with blood, the epicenter a darker splatter on the floor. Without a corpse, it will be difficult for Maewys to piece together what happened. But blood is blood, and the Elemnist crouches down and connects with the dried stain with her Elemnistry.

Sharp pains wrack her body, light like crystal spears piercing her every which way. She falls over, paralyzed, body held up in twisted ways by the light mangling her broken form, head pressing against the floor. The pressure builds against her skull, cracking and bursting until a final explosive pain floods her eyes. Maewys’s eyes shoot open and she pulls her hand back from the bloodstain, panting and gasping for breath. A cold sweat drenches her forehead and back, shivers running up her spine.

Ephel hovers close by, dim and dour. “Master Lynwellyn…”

“The other masters often spoke of him during the Renewal Festival,” Maewys says. She’s still trembling, staring down at her jittery hands. “He pushed for pacifism across the entire Ordo Elemnata.” She stares down at the greasy spot on the floor. “It seemed a noble idea to me then.” And then, Lemlat happened. But perhaps it never would have happened if Elemnists remained passive and docile.

Ephel drifts over to the former Master’s broken desk, thick marble surface cracked in half and wood splintered, sagging inward with neglect and decay. Yellowed sheaves of broadside paper lay curled and scattered on the floor, smeared with grease and blood and midnight ink. Maewys joins the Espreth, picking up a loose leaf and unfurling it wide. Beneath the smudges lies a chaotic mix of characters and scribbled script; gibberish to the uninitiated. Maewys knows just enough to recognize the code, but she can’t discern the cipher and holds it up to the Espreth.

“Studying the page,” Ephel remarks, “Someone destroyed a significant portion of the script and the cipher is not one I recognize. It seems Master Lynwellyn made it on the spot and couldn’t tell the Ordo.”

“Can you decipher it?” Maewys says, lowering the paper.

Ephel looks around at the mess of Lynwellyn’s chambers. “It might prove more prudent to have the Ordo Corvinet handle this task.”

Maewys nods, conceding the point, and rolls up the sheet in her hand before inserting it into Ephel’s center. The scroll enters without resistance, crossing the event horizon at the Espreth’s core and disappearing all together. Maewys knows some Espreth attached to Ordo Corvinet is going to spit it out again. She can’t help but smile, thinking of the hapless fresh recruit who will be spending many long-candle nights pulling their hair out over this. For Ordo Melikinara, Maewys had to shovel latrine pits for the first six months.

Maewys rolls up each broadside and inserts it into Ephel, but stomping footsteps stop her. She looks over her shoulder at the approaching dark forms of Nuaranth Garrison guards, encased in black and blue plate armor from head to toe. The trio’s leader wears a helmet adorned with a silver inlay, running from the visor to the forehead and curving towards the back. Keening blades extend from the tops of their forearms, ephemeral light coalescing into crystalline spears. Maewys recognizes them from the blood-memory as the same weapons used to murder Lynwellyn. Her time elapsed, Maewys shovels the coded papers into Ephel with both hands.

“I’m going to need some dust in fifteen seconds,” Maewys says, crumpling sheets by the handful and shoving them through Ephel’s glass skin. She glances at the approaching Garrison guards, almost at the door frame. “Make that now. Now is ‌good.”

Ephel explodes in a thick cloud of dust, becoming a faint orb in the brown-gray haze. Maewys grabs two fistfuls of dust and hurls them at the approaching guards, her Elemnistry keeping the particles chained together in a pseudo-solid rope. The dust connects, seeping through the gaps in their armor and the slots in their helmets, bridging a physical connection Maewys can use against their blood and bones. An electric feedback slams into her chest, knocking her off balance, and the Elemnatic connection is severed.

“They blocked me,” Maewys says aloud, voice straining and cracking, her fingers numb and her feet tingling. “I don’t know how, but they blocked me.”

“Impossible,” Ephel states, with their voice in its usual even candor.

“Apparently not.” Maewys shakes the feeling back into her hands. The leader stands in the doorway, unseen eyes leering. “They feel human, but there’s something else going on under that armor. Ephel, do you have any ideas?”

“I do not,” Ephel says. Maewys swallows a lump in her throat. She’s heard no Espreth say those words, least of all Ephel. Heavy feet trample the rubble as they encircle.

“Wood!” Maewys shouts. A gnarled, knotted tree branch sprouts from Ephel’s core and Maewys grabs hold of it with both hands. She rips out a sizable length, enough to clear the room, and uses her Elemnistry to further grow and enhance the tree branch. Fibrous roots anchor themselves in her forearm and the main branch body explodes in size, tripling in girth and heft. Filigree branches shoot out every which way, slamming into her assailants and pushing them into the walls. Maewys extracts herself from the roots, planting them in the wall behind her before dashing out of the room, the wood creaking as the new-formed tree continues to grow. The growth stops once she leaves the room. No longer maintaining her Elemnatic connection, Maewys glances back and sees the trapped soldiers break free. Implacable, they make quick work of the filigree tree, splintering the hardwood as they cross the floor.

Maewys sprints through the ruined hall, her mind spinning at dizzying speeds. She evens out her breathing, taking stock of what she’s learned so far. Master Lynwellyn of the Ordo Labrythyne is dead, murdered by the Nuaranth Garrison, and his Elemnists vanished, spirited away to parts unknown. The Nuaranth Garrison‌ has done something unspeakable to the men in full armor. Unless she rounds the next corner and enters an atrium full of butchered bodies and blood, Maewys remains optimistic as to their fate.

Maewys rounds the corner and enters an atrium occupied by more black armored guards. She skids to a halt and glances behind her, the ones she left behind closing the distance. The officer she encountered earlier steps out from behind the taller, bulkier men, his arms folded behind his back.

“So you are no citizen, after all,” he says, scowling at Maewys. “But no Elemnist can elude my Praetors for long.” With a casual gesture from his hand, the Praetors close in on her. Maewys grits her teeth and clenches her fists, adopting a melee stance.

“Ephel, it’s time to bring out the lightning,” she seethes through tight grit and grinding teeth.

“That is an inadvisable course of action, Maewys,” Ephel says, yet starts sparking with electric arcs of white-hot lightning. Maewys raises a hand, the lightning arcing into her waiting fingertips and pooling in a crackling ball in her loosened palm. Her autumnal hair stands on end, thin tendrils of electricity bridging the spaces between the loose strands and running the entire length from roots to tips. The air buzzes with electricity, and spidery bolts snapping against black armor and worn stone. Maewys loses all feeling in her right hand and right foot.

She whirls around and fires a bolt of lightning into the chest of the silver-marked Praetor, blasting him and the two beside him with the force of the resulting explosion. The numbness has spread to Maewys’s shoulder, and she discharges the rest of Ephel’s lightning toward the Garrison officer. She stumbles forward with her right leg asleep and fuzzy before finding her stride. Maewys leaps over the downed Praetors, the silver-marked leader flat on his back. She blew a smoking hole in his chest plate, ragged and torn edges like knife-edge mountain peaks reaching skyward. His fingers twitch.

The feeling in her right arm returns as Maewys approaches the grand hall of the sanctuary. Her vision narrows in on the front entrance, a large slab wood door just begging to be blown off its hinges. Maewys tunes out all unnecessary senses, using her Elemnistry to heighten her flight or fight response beyond a human degree. Her breathing and heartbeat roar in her ears, her extremities frigid and pale, as the world around her blurs into a single focal point that is the door. Maewys knows that she’s being followed, but soon that won’t matter. The moment her fingertips graze the door, she refocuses her Elemnistry into the wood, shredding it fiber by fiber.

Maewys exits out into the open air of Nuaranth plaza. Her feet carry her deeper toward the center, breath devolving into ragged gulps. Her foot and hand are still numb. Praetors still follow her from behind, spreading out to better encircle her.

She looks to Ephel, her eyes wide and lips peeled back in a snarl. “Dust! As much dust as you can handle!”

Ephel complies, spewing out thick clouds of sand and dust, engulfing a chunk of the plaza in a veritable sandstorm. Maewys steadies her breathing and shoots out chunks of compressed dust at random, making dust facsimiles of herself to confuse her pursuers. She grabs Ephel and crams the orb into her bag. With a final push, digging into her reserve energy, Maewys uses dust to hurtle herself through the air.

From on high, much of the Nuaranthian sprawl lays open before her. The city cuts into the cliff, the slope steep enough to divide the city into three distinct sections, but not so steep that it’s vertical. The Upper City still towers above her, growing along the cliff’s edge and into the sky, the remainder seeming to “drip” into Midtown as crystalline stalactites. Helical roads bridge the two, fulgent glass turning to brick and mortar as the Commons sprawl down the cliff face. Lower City lies below, intertwined with docks in a chaotic mix. It seems a cancerous growth of cheap tenements, rooted to the water’s edge and encroaching against Midtown and the towering city walls. The walls themself aren’t safe from the squalor, scaffolding and tenements growing up the whitewashed surface as if attempting to escape. Ironically, the highest parts of the Lower City are as high up as the lowest parts of the Upper City.

Maewys crests in her arc, leaving a dusty trail behind her as she descends. She aims for the Lower City, close to the docks, shooting out disks of duct to act as buffers to slow her descent. Undershooting her target, a religious-looking steepled building, Maewys rolls onto the rooftop of a squat tenement building, landing in a heap. The tarred roof is rough against her tumbling body and she ends up sprawled on her stomach, wheezing. Once she feels Ephel extricating themself from her bag, she rolls over onto her back and stares at the pale blue sky overhead, framed by taller buildings and rooftop cisterns.

Maewys closes her eyes and languishes in her fatigue. “Welcome to Nuaranth.”