The Fenimeldiyaan: Origins - Chapter 8
Morgan followed Andreas as they hurried through the corridors. It was definitely a workout that Morgan did not want, but he kept following the man. Those visions he’d been shown … they were a peaceful life that he desperately wanted, yet knew the odds were high that he’d never get. The easy life would never be his and Apollo’s. They’d been forced to accept that fact years ago, when they had fled Zor.
“There.” Andreas’s voice broke through Morgan’s train of thought, pointing. There was a torch on the wall, and just behind it, Morgan could see one of the darkened crystals.
“And another,” Morgan said, indicating further down the hallway, behind a plant. “I’ll get that one, you get the fiery one.” The mage hurried the way he’d indicated, already huffing with a lack of oxygen as he went.
Once he’d reached it, he snatched it out of the wall and crushed it in his hand. It was a surprisingly satisfying action, and he turned to see Andreas doing the same thing. “How many?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Andreas answered reluctantly. “We will find out. Come on, pilgrim, we got to keep going.”
Morgan froze as he listened. “Guards coming … a lot of them. This isn’t good …”
“We have to fight them,” Andreas said.
“No,” Morgan said. “I have to fight them. You need to keep looking for these things.” He indicated the powder on the floor. “I can do it, you need to protect everyone.”
Flames lit up Morgan’s arms. “Go! I’ll hold them off until you’re ready!”
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River watched Andreas with wide eyes as he landed beside her. He squeezed her arm gently before continuing on, and the little girl followed him. He had rescued her from Ciracea; she felt very attached to him already. He was far nicer than anybody else she’d met in her whole life.
The two of them continued through the halls when a loud rumble nearly knocked them over. River stumbled, while Andreas looked around with a frown. He swung around when he heard a thud as River’s book dropped to the floor. The little girl was falling through a crack, grabbing on to the side, yelling desperately but with no words coming out.
Andreas dove for her and grabbed her wrists, pulling her to safety. His foot caught her book before it could fall, and the crack sealed again. The child buried her face in his shirt as he embraced her. “Easy, me dear,” he said quietly. “Ye be safe now. Twill all be the right size, ye shall see.”
River sobbed into him and didn’t give much of a response. She’d seen the boiling lava beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed on the hapless fortress. And she’d nearly fallen into it.
She felt anything but safe.
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Gerald groaned as the little man continued towing him around like a sack of food. It seemed to jar every injury in his body, and he squeezed his eyes shut, wishing it would go away. Even when he’d broken his leg jumping out the window, the pain had never been quite so bad. Still, he supposed being dead would be worse.
Andreas laid him down and scrambled up a wall to retrieve a crystal, crushing it in his grasp before scuttling back down to Gerald. “Here be another one,” he said, dropping the dust for the mercenary to see.
Gerald grimaced as he was hoisted back onto Andreas’s shoulders. “Why did ye pose as a priest when ye first arrived?” he asked.
“Tis always best to gather information afore taking action,” Andreas said. “And a priest be a handy disguise for reaching out to prisoners with no hope of being saved, would ye not agree?”
“Reckon ye be right,” Gerald admitted. “Though not many would risk their lives to save prisoners they don’t even know.”
“I ain’t most people,” Andreas answered.
“So I can see,” Gerald muttered.
The two men continued in relative silence for a few minutes, before Gerald ventured into another conversation. “How long d’ye think we have, afore this whole place blows?” he asked.
“Dunno. Up to how long Mazia can keep Ciracea busy,” Andreas responded, snatching a crystal from above a door and crushing it. “Hopefully long enough.”
“And if she be unable to keep her busy any longer?” Gerald pressed.
“Then we all blow,” Andreas said.
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“Here be one,” one of the children reported as they and Apollo went into the kitchens. It was over the cooking stove, and one of the agile boys scrambled up and crushed it.
Apollo felt the waves of darkness come off the crystal as it was destroyed. “There are still some left,” he said.
“We keep looking, then,” the child answered, and they spread out throughout the kitchen.
Apollo placed his staff against the floor and closed his eyes, concentrating. He could see the entire fortress, could see the darkness emanating off the crystals. “There are two more in here,” he told the children. “And five guards coming, so we need to work fast!”
The children obeyed, splitting up to search the spacious kitchens for the elusive crystals. Apollo kept his eyes closed, surrounding them with golden light to keep the cracks at bay. The longer they took, the longer it took for the cracks to be resealed.
He could only hope it would be enough.
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In a small bare stone chamber within the massive Vyrdsphere complex, a sorcerer with dark hair, pale skin and green eyes used one of the rare spying crystals to observe the interior of the Broken Hill Fortress. He paid particular attention to the temporal duel taking place between Mazia and Ciracea. Mazia appeared to be tiring, due to the effort of slowing down time and maintaining the many child-versions of herself and Andreas.
“Mazia, dearest, let me help” the man pleaded. “Let me lend my strength”.
An image of Mazia shaking her head projected back at him. “Don’t be an idiot, Jude. The moment ye link with me, Ciracea will recognise yer mind signature and follow yer pathways back to the Vyrdsphere. We can’t risk her taking it over. She be dangerous enough already without the added power that she’ll be able to drain from the sphere. She might even use it as her base of operations. A mobilised armed time-travelling Ciracea could control the entire multiverse”.
“Then I shall come in person”. The tall sorcerer banished the images from his spying crystal and got up from his cross-legged meditation position. “And I’ll be sure to put the Vyrdsphere on lockdown and activate stealth mode before I leave. See you soon, beloved”.
---------------------------------
The buzzing vibration of an incoming translocation startled Ciracea, causing her to lose concentration for a second or two. Mazia took advantage of the interruption and turned time backwards, calming the boiling lava pools beneath the fortress and gaining a few precious extra minutes for the people hunting down the remaining crystals.
“Judaas Fendor, how dare you show yourself in front of me!” Ciracea snarled, unleashing a vicious energy strike at the newcomer. “You deceived me with your kind words and warm caresses, knowing all along that the Gods intended to destroy me. Well, your diabolical scheme failed, for here I stand, stronger than ever!”
“Keep telling yourself that” Judaas mocked. “You might eventually convince yourself, but by then, twill be too late. Insane power hungry maniacs like you never know when to quit”.
His words had the desired effect. Ciracea turned her full attention on him, firing off strike after strike. He allowed some of them to hit him, the expended energy dissipating when it came into contact with the multi-phased shielding built into the fabric of his black silk robes.
Grateful for the respite, Mazia drew equations in the air with her finger, altering time-indices and unmaking several of Ciracea’s power crystals. Another connection hovered at the edge of her awareness, vague and insubstantial. After several abortive attempts at following the shifting pathways, she gave up and returned to her work on the crystals. “Not all of them be in this dimension” she whispered. “Must tell Grandpa”.
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“River, me dear” Andreas announced. “I’ve got a special mission for us. We have to skip over into another dimension. Ciracea has hidden more crystals there, thinking we wouldn’t find them. Ye be ready?”
The girl nodded, although she had no idea what she was agreeing to. She held hands with Andreas and felt the tingle of unfamiliar energies like a blast of cold air coming in from an open window.
Their location remained unchanged, still the same dreary grey stone corridor with flickering torches set into niches in the walls at intervals. Up ahead she saw what looked like a glittering barrier made of some dark shiny material.
When they got closer to the barrier, it turned out to be a wall of dark crystals laced together with strands of temporal webbing.
“Encrypted of course” Andreas remarked, using his enhanced senses to scan the network of time-filaments. He shook his head. “Something seems wrong about this. Tis exactly the sort of encryption I’d use — seven layers of fluid-time equations and one layer of solid-time algorithms. Tis a set up, a trap made especially for me”.
River stared at him, knowing something was wrong. His cheerful demeanour had gone, replaced by a state of gnawing anxiety so strong that she could feel it as if it were her own.
He reached out across the dimensions, attempting to make contact with at least one version of Mazia. Finding a child-version in the kitchens, he gave a rapid explanation of the dilemma he faced.
Child-Mazia frowned. “A chance to destroy twenty seven crystals but a risk of trapping yerself and River Meer in an alternative version of reality. Damned if ye do and damned if ye don’t. We need another view”. She cut off the connection.
“There.” Andreas’s voice broke through Morgan’s train of thought, pointing. There was a torch on the wall, and just behind it, Morgan could see one of the darkened crystals.
“And another,” Morgan said, indicating further down the hallway, behind a plant. “I’ll get that one, you get the fiery one.” The mage hurried the way he’d indicated, already huffing with a lack of oxygen as he went.
Once he’d reached it, he snatched it out of the wall and crushed it in his hand. It was a surprisingly satisfying action, and he turned to see Andreas doing the same thing. “How many?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Andreas answered reluctantly. “We will find out. Come on, pilgrim, we got to keep going.”
Morgan froze as he listened. “Guards coming … a lot of them. This isn’t good …”
“We have to fight them,” Andreas said.
“No,” Morgan said. “I have to fight them. You need to keep looking for these things.” He indicated the powder on the floor. “I can do it, you need to protect everyone.”
Flames lit up Morgan’s arms. “Go! I’ll hold them off until you’re ready!”
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River watched Andreas with wide eyes as he landed beside her. He squeezed her arm gently before continuing on, and the little girl followed him. He had rescued her from Ciracea; she felt very attached to him already. He was far nicer than anybody else she’d met in her whole life.
The two of them continued through the halls when a loud rumble nearly knocked them over. River stumbled, while Andreas looked around with a frown. He swung around when he heard a thud as River’s book dropped to the floor. The little girl was falling through a crack, grabbing on to the side, yelling desperately but with no words coming out.
Andreas dove for her and grabbed her wrists, pulling her to safety. His foot caught her book before it could fall, and the crack sealed again. The child buried her face in his shirt as he embraced her. “Easy, me dear,” he said quietly. “Ye be safe now. Twill all be the right size, ye shall see.”
River sobbed into him and didn’t give much of a response. She’d seen the boiling lava beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed on the hapless fortress. And she’d nearly fallen into it.
She felt anything but safe.
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Gerald groaned as the little man continued towing him around like a sack of food. It seemed to jar every injury in his body, and he squeezed his eyes shut, wishing it would go away. Even when he’d broken his leg jumping out the window, the pain had never been quite so bad. Still, he supposed being dead would be worse.
Andreas laid him down and scrambled up a wall to retrieve a crystal, crushing it in his grasp before scuttling back down to Gerald. “Here be another one,” he said, dropping the dust for the mercenary to see.
Gerald grimaced as he was hoisted back onto Andreas’s shoulders. “Why did ye pose as a priest when ye first arrived?” he asked.
“Tis always best to gather information afore taking action,” Andreas said. “And a priest be a handy disguise for reaching out to prisoners with no hope of being saved, would ye not agree?”
“Reckon ye be right,” Gerald admitted. “Though not many would risk their lives to save prisoners they don’t even know.”
“I ain’t most people,” Andreas answered.
“So I can see,” Gerald muttered.
The two men continued in relative silence for a few minutes, before Gerald ventured into another conversation. “How long d’ye think we have, afore this whole place blows?” he asked.
“Dunno. Up to how long Mazia can keep Ciracea busy,” Andreas responded, snatching a crystal from above a door and crushing it. “Hopefully long enough.”
“And if she be unable to keep her busy any longer?” Gerald pressed.
“Then we all blow,” Andreas said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Here be one,” one of the children reported as they and Apollo went into the kitchens. It was over the cooking stove, and one of the agile boys scrambled up and crushed it.
Apollo felt the waves of darkness come off the crystal as it was destroyed. “There are still some left,” he said.
“We keep looking, then,” the child answered, and they spread out throughout the kitchen.
Apollo placed his staff against the floor and closed his eyes, concentrating. He could see the entire fortress, could see the darkness emanating off the crystals. “There are two more in here,” he told the children. “And five guards coming, so we need to work fast!”
The children obeyed, splitting up to search the spacious kitchens for the elusive crystals. Apollo kept his eyes closed, surrounding them with golden light to keep the cracks at bay. The longer they took, the longer it took for the cracks to be resealed.
He could only hope it would be enough.
-----------------------------------
In a small bare stone chamber within the massive Vyrdsphere complex, a sorcerer with dark hair, pale skin and green eyes used one of the rare spying crystals to observe the interior of the Broken Hill Fortress. He paid particular attention to the temporal duel taking place between Mazia and Ciracea. Mazia appeared to be tiring, due to the effort of slowing down time and maintaining the many child-versions of herself and Andreas.
“Mazia, dearest, let me help” the man pleaded. “Let me lend my strength”.
An image of Mazia shaking her head projected back at him. “Don’t be an idiot, Jude. The moment ye link with me, Ciracea will recognise yer mind signature and follow yer pathways back to the Vyrdsphere. We can’t risk her taking it over. She be dangerous enough already without the added power that she’ll be able to drain from the sphere. She might even use it as her base of operations. A mobilised armed time-travelling Ciracea could control the entire multiverse”.
“Then I shall come in person”. The tall sorcerer banished the images from his spying crystal and got up from his cross-legged meditation position. “And I’ll be sure to put the Vyrdsphere on lockdown and activate stealth mode before I leave. See you soon, beloved”.
---------------------------------
The buzzing vibration of an incoming translocation startled Ciracea, causing her to lose concentration for a second or two. Mazia took advantage of the interruption and turned time backwards, calming the boiling lava pools beneath the fortress and gaining a few precious extra minutes for the people hunting down the remaining crystals.
“Judaas Fendor, how dare you show yourself in front of me!” Ciracea snarled, unleashing a vicious energy strike at the newcomer. “You deceived me with your kind words and warm caresses, knowing all along that the Gods intended to destroy me. Well, your diabolical scheme failed, for here I stand, stronger than ever!”
“Keep telling yourself that” Judaas mocked. “You might eventually convince yourself, but by then, twill be too late. Insane power hungry maniacs like you never know when to quit”.
His words had the desired effect. Ciracea turned her full attention on him, firing off strike after strike. He allowed some of them to hit him, the expended energy dissipating when it came into contact with the multi-phased shielding built into the fabric of his black silk robes.
Grateful for the respite, Mazia drew equations in the air with her finger, altering time-indices and unmaking several of Ciracea’s power crystals. Another connection hovered at the edge of her awareness, vague and insubstantial. After several abortive attempts at following the shifting pathways, she gave up and returned to her work on the crystals. “Not all of them be in this dimension” she whispered. “Must tell Grandpa”.
----------------------------------
“River, me dear” Andreas announced. “I’ve got a special mission for us. We have to skip over into another dimension. Ciracea has hidden more crystals there, thinking we wouldn’t find them. Ye be ready?”
The girl nodded, although she had no idea what she was agreeing to. She held hands with Andreas and felt the tingle of unfamiliar energies like a blast of cold air coming in from an open window.
Their location remained unchanged, still the same dreary grey stone corridor with flickering torches set into niches in the walls at intervals. Up ahead she saw what looked like a glittering barrier made of some dark shiny material.
When they got closer to the barrier, it turned out to be a wall of dark crystals laced together with strands of temporal webbing.
“Encrypted of course” Andreas remarked, using his enhanced senses to scan the network of time-filaments. He shook his head. “Something seems wrong about this. Tis exactly the sort of encryption I’d use — seven layers of fluid-time equations and one layer of solid-time algorithms. Tis a set up, a trap made especially for me”.
River stared at him, knowing something was wrong. His cheerful demeanour had gone, replaced by a state of gnawing anxiety so strong that she could feel it as if it were her own.
He reached out across the dimensions, attempting to make contact with at least one version of Mazia. Finding a child-version in the kitchens, he gave a rapid explanation of the dilemma he faced.
Child-Mazia frowned. “A chance to destroy twenty seven crystals but a risk of trapping yerself and River Meer in an alternative version of reality. Damned if ye do and damned if ye don’t. We need another view”. She cut off the connection.
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