<u>13</u>


    “Perhaps you truly know nothing. Perhaps you are only a tool in the hands of one more dangerous still. <u>Tell me who wields you!</u> Reveal the name of your…”


    -Unauthorized research-


    (Light and power flared suddenly. Memory files were erased. Critical elements, repositioned, and…)


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Valerian blinked, looking wildly around. Found himself in… looked like a palace corridor, just outside of an ornately carved double-door. But… he’d been off in the gardens and then… questions. Someone had asked him a lot of strange questions. But, why…? Who…? The uprooted elf could no longer recall. He swayed with fatigue and distress; kept himself upright through sheer willpower, feeling terribly sick at his stomach.


    Stood alone in a cold patch of moonlight; exposed by a long silver grid that was shaped like the diamond-paned windows across the wide hall. His heart pounded and jerked as though he’d just fought a desperate battle. Still worse was the sudden grim sense that everyone he loved was in mortal, deliberate peril.


    Valerian pivoted in mid-corridor, seeking power and ley-lines, reaching out for the hand of his god. Got an answer, almost faster than thought could shape itself into prayer. A very faint portal opened before him. Must have used untold manna, required life-draining power to maintain a gate in this fiendishly warded place.


    “Valno, this way!” he heard, glimpsing the misty shadows of Filimar and Vikran the Younger, cleric of Oberyn. “<u>Hurry</u>!”


    Cinda… was no longer here, nor anywhere else that Val could reach with his magical senses. She’d been taken; removed from his ken together with Alfea, Bean, Lerendar, Beatriz and Zara… even his Aunt Meliara. Not dead. Thank the gods, holy flame, not dead. Only kidnapped. Stolen away in the probable hope that he’d follow and then attempt rescue.


    …and follow, he would, with volcanic rage in his heart and death in his wake.


    Fire and sparks lit up the air around Valerian. His half-length blond hair streamed backward, flaring bright as the sword that leapt from its pocket and into his hand.


    “Bright One, Lord of Battles,” he grated, praying through tightly clenched teeth. The carpet beneath him frizzled and scorched, filling the hallway with smoke. Marble cracked, and the window-glass began puddling. Val noticed none of it, raging, “Grant me strength, courage and victory, Father of Blood and of Steel! Not for myself, but for those in danger, put my enemy into my hand!”


    Alarms howled throughout the imperial palace. Mage-eyes streaked through its halls, racing for the source of that strange, sun-like flare. Lady Solara, court wizard, ported over ahead of the mage-eyes. Staff in hand, spells ready, her magical aura pulsing around her, the sorceress materialized. Arrived just in time to see a blinding-bright former journeyman step through a rift that shouldn’t have been there. Should <u>not</u> have been possible.


    Magically searching the palace, Solara learnt that the ranger had vanished, too. Not in the same way and time, though. Cursing, she summoned a contact globe. Spoke into it urgently, heat or no heat. Doused the flames with one hand, snapping,


    “Lock down and seal! Double the guard on the egg and His Majesty! Escort their highnesses to the safe chamber, now! Azoth Protocol! We have been breached twice over!”


    At Solara’s word, the alarms changed their timbre from general shriek to last-ditch defense klaxon. Only a god or a demon could have broken her shielding, and just for a splintered instant. Long enough to let someone out, or to send something <u>in</u>.


    Summoning manna, Solara turned to the hunt. To ferreting out what had happened, and just where that wretch of a trespassing rustic had taken himself.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Deep in the long-silent airship, Miche lit up the engine room. His mage-glow reflected off mithral and brass, causing puddles of inky-dark shadow that shifted when he did. Stepping further within, the elf saw mighty gears and long, cylindrical shafts, along with a quiescent spell globe. The drive-system. Behind it, set in a series of shielded alcoves, hung three intricate cross-planar motors. The perpetual motion machines, stilled for so long they’d begun to corrode.


    The Erron part of him growled in frustration. Warding and anti-rust spells had to be strong enough to reach <u>all</u> parts of a mechanism, including those that were half out of sync. Otherwise, corrosion and rot <u>there</u> would creep over <u>here</u>, fouling the delicate system. Happily, he knew just how to deal with such problems. Glancing at the glowering she-orc, he said,


    “Do thou keep watch, Warrior. I will do what I may to restart the engines.”


    Marget studied his face and his stance. Detected the shifts in voice, expression and posture that meant someone other was grasping the hilt now. She nodded warily, saying,


    “Before, in the place of assemblers, you asked that I speak. You said that it drove away shadows. Should I do this again, as you work?”


    The elf surprised her with a very brief, tired smile.


    “Thank you,” he said, nodding. “I would greatly appreciate that. Speak, sing, tell a story… no matter. Just let me hear the voice of a friend.”


    It had been terribly hard; their laughter, the torment and deliberate shaming. In the end, told that they’d found the escape ship... that they would bring those he loved back to see what was left of him… Erron had cursed himself to death, using that warped final magic to bind his captor and bless the escape ship. He’d killed himself, so long ago that there was no way to tell if they’d made it to freedom and safety. Hana, the baby, his children… his terrified people. Out of his ken and his reach, forever.


    The orc placed a firm hand on his trembling shoulder, chasing shadows away with her touch. The taste of raw-throated blood, the sound of his own awful screams… all of it shoved aside by unlooked-for rescue. By a second chance, for a coward who’d chosen to die.


    “I will stand watch,” she promised. “My oath to your freedom and safety, One-who-has-honored-Vrol. Nothing gets past me this day, or any other.”


    A promise she meant and would willingly die to uphold.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    V47 Pilot dropped down onto that burning-hot junk pile. Onto wrecked beings still somehow clinging to life; still broadcasting scraps of faltering error-code. Scrambled-slipped-clutched his way through thunderous clamor and volcanic heat, struggling to reach a glimmering lavender advert. Time resumed normal flow as the pilot lost concentration, fixated solely on reaching the flickering hologram.


    ‘I got Behuggled at Bide-a-While Station!’ it sputtered, in symbols that wavered, distorted and faded; that broke apart into hurtling pixels then came back together again, luring him onward.


    Had he still been a cyborg mech-core, Pilot would have gotten there faster. This mostly flesh body was weaker and slower; unable to scan its surroundings in any but aural and visual frequencies. He forced himself to keep going, though, because somewhere inside was V47. The bits of junked systems and assets around him helped, too, shaping themselves into a staircase. Forming steps that he vaulted two at a time to reach the battle-mech’s shattered torso.


    “V,” he cried out and sent. “Unlock your base code! I’m here!”


    Next leapt down to a twisted, breached cockpit, landing with a thud that he could barely sense over all of that grinding roar and vibration. Spotted the gutted remains of his contact plates and nerve-probes, dangling like viscera. Saw scanning feeds, weaponry uplink panels and… <u>there</u>, V47’s central processing pylon, with thank-all-the-code-writers, its AI cartridge still locked into place.


    Pilot lunged forward, moving as fast as low power and a stiff, swollen ankle would let him. There was still some charge in the cockpit auxiliary unit. V47 Pilot tapped into it now, drawing those last few flickers of manna to scan himself in and retrieve the cartridge. Pulled… almost tore… the thing free, collapsing atop shredded green padding that had cradled him in flight; had shielded the pilot through countless battles.


    “I’m here, V. I’ve got you!” he gasped, almost sobbing. “You’re safe, and by the last Keystroke, so is everyone else! <u>STOP TIME</u>!”


    Unbelievably, the command was received and accepted. All over OS1210, everything froze. The ravaging buckets, that white-hot incinerator and every asset on Orbital Station and Cerulean Dream. They halted, locked into stasis by Pilot’s command.


    “Sleeping Beauty spell,” he thought, irrelevantly. The cartridge alone continued to move. It vibrated in his grip, as though the consciousness trapped inside was clawing the virtual walls to escape; as worried for <u>him</u> as he’d been for V47.


    All sound had ceased, except when he got up and pushed his way through the near-solid air and into a pressure wave. Then, at extremely low frequency, he heard the frozen clangor of sirens, felt the seismic blare of a warning call:


    -In… ter… ce… pt… De… str… oy… Ki… ll…-


    Right. Past time to go, but not without giving his word to those left behind. The ones who labored and fought here, just to be thrown out like trash at the end of their usefulness.


    “I will come back for the rest of you,” he assured them. “I will find out where the makers have hidden themselves, end this war, and force the system to free us!”


    Could barely push words out through air like hot tar (but meant every one of them). Just had to get to the hangar and launch bay first. Find a battle-mech shell, upload V47, then escape this echoing trap of a space station. After that: Etherion.