All actions have consequences, seen and unforeseen, and we have to accept them as they come.
The familiars I’d set on the rampage cleared the way to the entrance of the Forest. The creatures were still smart enough not to cross the enchanted gate, and had dispersed after the last of the mages that had retreated through it. They were completely unprepared for us to come through and mop them up, and with the final obstacle removed we had time to catch our collective breaths.
The way to the Academy was likely to be one giant slog through the streets of Ethenia, fighting through legions of combat mages. We’ll never make it. If we don’t come up with a different plan, we’ll be surrounded in no time. The journey from the Forest was thankfully brief, and we didn’t encounter any other mages on our way.
Moving into the city itself disproved my thought, however. The outskirts were completely devoid of any opposition. Maybe they fell back? If Albrecht is smart enough to predict Sheena’s motives, he might have positioned his forces at the Academy instead. If he did, we’re sunk. We can’t fight that many mages head on, even with those nullification runes.
Alverd practically read my mind as he stopped in the middle of the street, his shield and sword at the ready. “Where is everyone? I have a bad feeling about this.” The four of us carefully made our way down the street, and the more we saw the more it unsettled me.
Doors to homes swung open haphazardly. Windows weren’t shut. Baskets and debris were strewn everywhere. It was as though everyone had simply started running toward the city center and abandoned everything in the attempt. It wasn’t until we turned a corner that we saw where everyone was.
The length of the entire cobblestone street was littered with bodies. There was no sign of any exterior injury or trauma; every person, soldier or civilian, looked like they had simply laid down and died of natural causes. Each person had glassy, milky eyes, and mouths hanging open in what looked chillingly like silent screams. A woman had fallen in the middle of the street hugging her young child to her chest and I thanked the gods I couldn’t see their face.
I’ve seen too many dead children as it is. I don’t need another one burned into my memory for the rest of my life.
There were so many bodies we had to weave through them for fear of tripping. Alicia had a pensive look on her face, as though she wasn’t sure whether she should be angry, disgusted, or afraid. Maybe all three. This is a lot of death, and I doubt she’s used to seeing it like this. She turned her head away when she passed the dead mother and her son.
Sheena nearly stumbled over a dead combat mage, and Alverd reached out to steady her. “I don’t understand. What happened to all these people?” I looked around, trying to make sense of the situation. Based on the positioning of the bodies, I quickly reached a tentative conclusion.
“I think the mages were herding these people.” I pointed with my staff to accentuate my observations. “This one over here, he’s the one who gave the order, and his men carried it out. They started moving these people towards the inner part of the city, but something killed them while they were en-route.”
Alicia valiantly choked down an attempt to throw up as she passed yet another child, a girl of maybe ten years old in a plain white robe, who would’ve looked like she was asleep if not for the look on her face just like the others. “What could do something like this? Is there even magic that can do this?”
Sheena bent down and laid her hand on the shoulder of a dead combat mage, a middle-aged woman with the pointed ears of an elf and dirty blonde hair. “I don’t sense any magic in her. Which is terrifying.” She stood back up. “All living beings have magical energy in their bodies, and the ability to use magic is just the training of the mind to utilize that energy and harness it. But this corpse doesn’t have any residual magic in it.”
On a hunch, I leaned down and placed my hand on the neck of one of the civilians, a young beast man with broad shoulders and horse-like features. There is no spark in him. In a corpse, the magic leftover would be like a candle burning down, close to guttering out. There’s nothing. It’s like something just sucked the magic out of him.
Alverd stood up from examining another corpse. “The bodies are fresh. No stiffness to any of them. Whatever killed them happened within the last hour or so.”
Alicia made it to the end of the lane and paused to catch her breath, which she had let out in a shaky sigh. “This is wrong. Something is really wrong about this. It’s like they all just lost their will to live right in the middle of the street.”
Something came to me then: Zajj’s words. About the Calamity we were on the way to the Academy to commandeer. I remembered the glee in his voice, the anticipation as he told me his suspicions. The conversation played itself out in my memory, reaching the crucial piece of information I needed to recall.
The power has to come from somewhere.
“Sheena, you know what’s happening, don’t you?” I addressed her without looking in her direction. The redheaded witch froze in her tracks. “You know why these people died the way they did, and what’s about to happen, and you don’t think we should know?”
All eyes turned to her. She fidgeted for a moment before clearing her throat. “I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. But given what we’re seeing, I don’t think there’s any other explanation. I think the Magisters are trying to activate the Calamity, and they’re siphoning magic from any and all available sources to do it.”
She continued, “The Calamities need enormous amounts of magical energy to function. The easiest way to acquire it is to steal it from living beings. Even those not proficient in the use of magic still can be used, although a mage who can control magic is a better source.” She nudged her boot against one of the dead combat mages. “I don’t know how, but the Magisters must have figured out how to activate the Calamities when even I couldn’t. I thought there was some secret ritual or special process, but if all that’s required is a large amount of magical power then they have all the supply they could need right here.” I could hear the hate bubbling in her voice, although whether it was aimed more at the Magisters or the Calamity I wasn’t sure.
Alicia crossed over to where she was standing and put her hand on the taller girl’s shoulder. “Are you gonna be okay?”
Sheena gave her an icy stare. “Of course. I’m not going to fall apart now. We should get going.”
When she tried to turn away, Alicia’s hand slipped down and grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Let me rephrase. Are you sure you’re gonna be okay confronting your uncle?”
She made a short, stifled sound that made me think she had almost started sobbing, but caught herself at the last second. “My uncle has made his choice, and I must make mine.” Alicia let her arm go. Sheena began to walk towards the Academy, its towering edifice still visible in the distance. “His decision proves this country’s cancer goes deeper than I thought. As a queen, I’d like to say that bringing his plan to ruin is my duty, but that’s not why I’m doing this.”
She turned and her face was streaked with tears, but twisted into a determined snarl. “As his goddaughter, and someone who loved him like a father, I want to hurt him in any way I can.” I was taken aback at how angry she looked, but then realized that it was only natural. In her position, I would want the same. Only I wouldn’t be so eloquent about it.
Alicia shouldered her maul. “Well then, what are we still doing here? Shouldn’t we be hurrying on to the Academy?” I got the feeling that she wasn’t fully satisfied with Sheena’s show of bravado, but she did have a point: we were burning daylight when we could be burning down some traitorous bastards.
The number of bodies increased the further we advanced into the district. The area was mostly commercial, so there was a staggering number of civilians lying out in the open who likely perished with no idea what was happening to them. Sheena ran past them without a second thought. She has to be conflicted. Based on what she said before, these are likely all people who didn’t care about her the way she hoped they would.
Hard to see the other shoe drop, but again, I can’t blame her.
The rumbling of the ground came on so suddenly that we were completely caught off guard by it. Before we knew it, we were struggling to keep our feet; the earth beneath our feet shook so violently that I expected the cobblestones to crack, but after a few seconds the quake stopped.
“That can’t be a good sign,” I said. “I think Alicia’s right. If we don’t get a move on, the Magisters might find a way to unearth that monster.”
We broke into a full run, and I thanked the gods the Academy was so close. I couldn’t hope to keep up the pace for a marathon with my short legs and weak stamina.
As we ran, Alverd brought up a burning question. “Based on what Kuro told us, Zajj implied you were likely the ultimate power source for the Calamity. We might be playing straight into Albrecht’s hands by going to the Academy now.”
Alicia was the one to answer, with a surprising amount of insight. “If we don’t destroy the Calamity, Albrecht turns it against Ishmar and starts a full-blown war between the two most powerful nations on Selarune. Without Sheena, he’ll have to keep it powered by sacrificing hundreds of people to it.”
Sheena, her long legs allowing her to keep pace with Alicia, nodded. “Exactly. We’re most assuredly walking into a trap, but it’s my responsibility to put an end to this.” Her eyes became steely. “Not because I am queen. Because I let my feelings blind me. Albrecht got away with everything because I wasn’t willing to suspect him of treachery. If anyone is responsible for taking him down, it’s me.” We arrived at the front door of the Academy, the tall doors giving way under a fierce kick from Alicia.
The orrery room was filled with corpses. Dozens of researchers, instructors and students were strewn about, each with the same expression as the civilians on the city outskirts. I cringed in sympathy. “Gods. They didn’t even have time to figure out what was happening to them.” I saw a pair of students who had been sitting at a desk, both of them now slumped face-down in the books they’d been studying. “This is horrific.”
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “Didn’t you say Albrecht was researching how to activate the Calamities?”
Sheena’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. He took charge of figuring out how, seeing as how the secret is passed down only from royal to royal. He said my parents had a manual from their predecessors that contained the secrets of the golems, and that it had been damaged in the assassination attempt.” She growled. “The attempt I now know he was behind.”
I waved my arm at the corpses. “Something doesn’t make sense to me. If you were the last thing he needed to activate the Calamities, then why not sacrifice you as a baby? If his end goal was to start a war, why not kill the entire royal family to remove the Magisters’ only obstacle to full power over the country and then hand you over to them to fuel their ultimate weapon?”
Alverd stopped abruptly. “Kuro, while I appreciate that you’ve made an intriguing point, we don’t have time to stop and ponder it.”
I stomped my foot impatiently. “No, I mean it. We’re missing something here. There’s a thread hanging just out of my reach and it’s bugging the hell out of me that I can’t reach it.”
Alverd came over and grabbed my arm. “Kuro, please. We can find out when we find Albrecht.”
I hate that he’s right. At this point the “why” is less important than “how”, but I can’t help but feel like knowing his motive is the key to unraveling this whole conspiracy. “Well fine. How do we find the Calamity? I doubt there’s a sign or something that will point the way.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Sheena wandered around the orrery, her gaze fixed on the blazing orb that represented the sun at the center of the projection. “He said underneath the Academy, right?” Her eyes went to the plaque at the base of the orrery, and when she waved her hand over it, a series of glowing runes appeared over it. “The only thing beneath the Academy to my knowledge is the machinery that powers the orrery. We purchased a great deal of it from Margloom, and it required a dedicated space to house it where the average person couldn’t meddle with it.”
The ground began to shake again, but instead of a quake the floor slid open to reveal a revolving stairwell that curved around the base of the orrery. “If there is another space beneath that machinery, that’s where this Calamity must be.” There was a hollowness to Sheena’s voice that was very unsettling, as if she were leaving out something important.
Alicia hesitated, then spoke. “Everyone in this building was going to die anyway, weren’t they?”
Sheena slowly nodded her head. “Yes. When the Calamity emerged, it would’ve taken out the entire foundation of the building. The whole structure would have collapsed in on itself with little warning. People might have been pinned beneath rubble to die slow, miserable deaths. At least this way, their deaths were relatively quick.” She started to step down the stairs.
Alverd caught her from behind, wrapping his arms around her. “You don’t have to try so hard to act like it doesn’t affect you.” She stopped dead in her tracks. “Regardless of how they treated you, a part of you knows this isn’t their fault. And you must feel a little guilty that they had to die for a plot that involved your death.” She squirmed in his grasp.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care what happens to them.”
You’re not fooling anyone, especially Alverd. The quavering in her voice was obvious. She sounded like she wanted to cry, to curl up into a ball and feel sorry for herself. He’s right. These people didn’t deserve it, and even if you don’t feel responsible for them as their queen, you feel guilty for them as a person. Sheena’s arm reached up to try and pry herself free of Alverd, but he simply grasped her hand tightly, causing a choked sob to escape her.
“I never wanted this for anyone. I just wanted to live normally. But everyone always wanted me to be something I wasn’t ready to be.” Tears began to run down her face. “A queen. A leader. A warmonger. Strong, brave, fearless. I didn’t want to be those things. I wanted to just be me. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do and instead I had a whole country of people demanding I only be what they wanted me to be.” She broke into a full sob. “It’s not my fault. It shouldn’t have to be. I didn’t want this, I didn’t want this…”
Alverd hugged Sheena tighter. “Too few people ever get what they deserve, good or bad. For now, we can focus on making sure Albrecht gets what’s coming to him.” He finally let her go, and she turned around to look at him. “We’re with you, milady. Once Albrecht and the Magisters are dealt with, you’ll finally get to decide what you want to do with your life.”
She wiped her eyes. “Yes, you’re right. Goodness, I’ve really come apart at the seams.” She sniffled. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Alverd shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s hard to pretend to be something you’re not for the sake of others. Believe it or not, I know what that’s like.” Her eyes widened in surprise.
Don’t I know it. Guess Sheena gets to find out even knights in shining armor don’t have all the answers. Lucky for her this one still intends on rescuing her from her crappy situation.
Readying his sword, Alverd started down the stairwell, his shield held up in front of him. Once we had descended about two stories, light from the room above was no longer able to reach us. Standing behind Alverd, I held up the ball of light from my illumination spell to guide him. The further down we went, the less polished the stone of the stairwell became until it was roughly hewn and no longer even at all.
Without a clear frame of reference for calculating distance, I lost track of how far we had gone down sometime after the fourth story. Seems awfully strange to put a room for maintaining the orrery this far down. Eventually, the staircase ended in front of a metal door with several runes in place of a doorknob. Sheena waved her hand over the runes and the door swiveled open.
Inside the room was a massive boiler, pipes feeding into the circular center of the stairwell and up to the orrery above. Piles of firewood for maintaining the boiler were heaped to the side. The majority of the room itself was taken up by pipes and valves, and a central mechanism that gave complicated readouts from magically powered gauges about the boiler’s temperature, projected fuel consumption rate, and steam accumulation, as well as other information. I couldn’t make sense of all of it, but given that most of the readings were in the green I could guess that everything was operating smoothly at present.
It was the slightly ajar door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only” that was suspicious as all hell. What should have been a secure, locked entrance was now hanging open as if begging us to tempt fate. Alverd moved to the door and nudged it open all the way, and when nothing came screaming out to try and explode our heads he moved through the opening with his shield raised.
On the other side of the door was a metal platform with a cage mesh and a sliding door, suspended in place by four chains attached to the platform at the four corners. An elevator. Inside the elevator room was a lever with several stops highlighted on its track. Currently it sat at “4: Boiler Room”. I moved into the elevator to read the other stops. “3: Holding Pens”, “2: Acquisitions”, and “1: Special Project” were the other choices.
Alicia shuddered. “Anyone else a little weirded out by what the mages might have down here?”
Sheena strode into the elevator and placed her hand on the lever. “We’ve come too far to give up. Whatever the Magisters are doing, it gets buried with the Calamity when I destroy it.” With a yank, she pulled the lever to the first position, and the elevator’s mechanism whirred to life. Alverd and Alicia got in just as the door slid closed, and the ramshackle metal box began its descent.
Passing through the floor, we entered the third basement, the holding pens. It was a wide open, cavernous space that looked like it had been hollowed out by years of excavation. Looking out through the mesh, I saw dozens of small pens below, sorted into rows and columns. As we descended further, I saw what was in them. Alicia gasped, as did I.
Dragons. Of the same size as the ones typically ridden by Ishmarian warriors, the pens were being used to contain dozens of them. Upon closer inspection, however, I could see that these dragons had scales and flesh falling off their own bodies, eyes glowing with baleful green fire, and in many cases visibly protruding bones. A truly foul odor wafted up to meet us, that of rotting meat and decay, and I had to fight back the urge to vomit.
Alicia stared in horror as the elevator made its way down. “This is wrong. This is so wrong. How can this even happen? What did the mages do to them?”
Sheena, her face buried in her sleeve, coughed before she answered. “Necromancy. This is Lady Laspa’s handiwork. It’s one thing to understand the art, but another to practice it to such a degree. What she’s done here is utilize necromancy with the intent to weaponize it for war. That’s a clear violation of the laws signed in the wake of the War of the Five Kings. If the Theocracy of Shardin found out we were violating those laws it would invade us, and be justified in doing so.”
We passed a docking station for the pens, sinking through the floor to the next, “Acquisitions”. Somehow I don’t think what they’ve got here is going to be any better. I was disappointed to discover I had been right when we were greeted by the sight of similar holding pens filled not with dragons, but people.
Or to be more clear, what remained of people. Shuffling around in the pens were the battered, decaying remains of Ishmarian soldiers, many of them still in damaged armor, some missing limbs or with extensive signs of battle damage on their now necromantically reanimated flesh. Their eyes also blazed with the same unearthly green fire as the dragons, and a low chorus of damned moans reverberated off the cavern walls as the zombies wandered aimlessly in their enclosures.
The cavern itself was even larger than the dragon pens, with the length of it going on for so long I couldn’t see that far in the darkness. “They’ve been doing this for a long time. Probably have an entire army down here. They must have been scavenging the bodies off border raids for years to have this many.” A chilling thought came to mind. “Or maybe this is what happens to all the prisoners they take. Drain them for the Calamity and then send the bodies here so they ca-”
“Kuro. Stop talking.” Alicia snapped at me. She was hyperventilating slightly, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tried to maintain control of her no-doubt intensifying anger. For once, I’ll indulge her. Last thing I want to do is be stuck in a tiny metal cage with someone who can rip my arms out of their sockets. Pressing up against the mesh, I tried to make a guess at how long some of the “acquisitions” had been here.
I was no medical expert, but based on the sheer decay of some of the zombies they had to be at least several years old. What remained of their skin had turned a pallid gray and their movements were jerky and uneven, clear signs of rigor mortis. I’ve seen a lot of disturbing stuff in my time as a mercenary but this takes the cake. The Magisters are willing to incur the wrath of the entire world just to snuff out the Ishmarians once and for all.
Alverd, the only one making no effort to cover his face, growled. “Just another injustice that has to be corrected with all haste. Albrecht has a lot to answer for, as do the Magisters.” When the elevator passed the docking station and slid through the floor into the next cavern, we got to see the Calamity itself.
The room below the zombie enclosure had to be the most extensive one yet. Over one hundred feet tall, the entirety of the chamber was dominated by the enormous gleaming golem in its center, dozens of platforms reaching out of support structures alongside it to allow researchers access to its sensitive internal workings. The skin of the golem was a glassy copper with a perfect sheen, so pristine I would bet I could see my reflection in it. The head was carved in the likeness of a wizard, a rigid beard and crown topped with several orbs of magical origin, its most prominent features.
Three layers of conjoined bracelets on each of the golem’s wrists had several embedded sapphire gemstones bigger than a fully grown human in them. Focusing armlets. The golem probably attacks by amplifying magical energy and channeling it through those armlets, then expelling the energy towards its foes. With that much power it could probably shoot a dragon out of the sky like it was swatting a fly.
As the elevator made its way to the ground floor, the researchers looked up from their stations to watch us descend. Guards started to hustle down to the docking station. Great, a welcoming party. Well, we knew we were heading into the belly of the beast so it’s not like we didn’t anticipate this. I held the Staff of Farewells tight to my chest. When the elevator stopped, the door slid open.
Alverd came out first, already placing himself squarely between us and the half dozen combat mages who had formed a line not twenty feet away. The mages were holding position with their staves pointed at us, and when Alverd stepped forward each of them ignited glasslike blades of translucent energy, red and hissing like snakes. I came out next, the Staff of Farewells in both hands, and put myself behind Alverd.
Alicia took a stance next to Alverd, the nullification runes tied to her maul still flickering in different colors. When Sheena left the elevator, she spoke without any hesitation in her voice. “Where is he? I want to look him in the eye when he dares to justify this to me.” The mages did not move, either to acknowledge her or attack.
Behind them, maybe about twenty more feet was a set of machinery similar to the boiler we had seen above. This machinery was far more intricate, with a boxlike structure anchored to the ground by redundant planks of metal secured with thick bolts driven into the stone. Pipes fed from the box structure into the cave walls, valves gave readouts on things I couldn’t make out at this distance, and seven mage researchers were trying to make sense of it all. They were standing around a pod with an open glass door, large enough for a person to fit in. Countless tubes and pipes fed into the pod, and there were thick leather restraints built into the interior that were probably there for a singular purpose.
The pod looked like it could accommodate a person that was probably around Sheena’s build, I noted. Almost as if it had been intended that way.
Several of the Magister Lords were milling about, observing the researchers. When Sheena announced herself, they turned to face us. I recognized Mattigen, Laspa, and Kertouli. The demon summoner, the necromancer and the puppeteer. Couldn’t have picked a worse trio of magic users to make up the members of an evil plot. They didn’t come any closer, but then again they didn’t need to.
Albrecht came skulking out of the shadows, clad in something that resembled more like what an Ishmarian would wear; reinforced leather armor with deflection gauntlets, bandoliers filled with knives and throwing hatchets, and in his right hand was his rune-enchanted sword. Damn. If he’s carrying something like that then he can probably fight and use magic at the same time. Things keep getting more complicated.
Albrecht came to a stop behind the line of his combat mages, taking enough time to look at each of us. “There’s no justification for any of this. Nothing excuses what I have and am about to do. Even if I could continue to pull the wool over your eyes, Sheena, you would never forgive me for any of it.” He seemed almost melancholy as he said those words. “And I would never forgive myself for letting it go on for as long as I have.”
Sheena leveled her bladed staff. “I’m sick of this, Uncle. I’m sick of playing your games and dancing to your tune. I’m sick of your lies, Uncle!”
Albrecht gave a long, tired sigh. “And I am sick of lying. Almost thirty straight years I’ve been lying, to your parents, to the people of Algrustos, to the Magisters, to you. And to myself. No more lies. Now, we shall have the truth.”
Then there was a sound like an uncoiling spring, and with a thrust of his left arm Albrecht slid his concealed sleeve blade across the throat of one of the combat mages standing in front of him. The entire side of the mage’s neck exploded in a jet of crimson, showering the man next to him with blood, and he went down with a gurgle. All eyes turned to Albrecht as he flourished his glowing rune-blade, his sleeve dagger retracting slowly back into its holster.
“Now, we shall finally have blood.”