Aethertide (Chapter 11)

Styr stood before a monolithic structure covered in a heavy purple shroud from under which a tell-tale purple glow lit the floor. The cave had been carved to accommodate the structure’s height at its centre and to allow enough space for the Magi to walk all the way around. Three smaller crystals stood around it, beams of aetheric purple light shining between them like a cordon rope, keeping the larger structure trapped between them.

“Align the crystal, Aki,” Sty muttered. “We will observe the eddies in the Aethertide and discover the Allander’s native realm.”

Aki went to work, ducking beneath the beams to pull back the curtain on the monolith. Purple light flooded the room as a mighty aetheric crystal was revealed, its sides carefully worked to mirror smoothness with billowing aether inside. Aki began turning the lesser crystals on their tripods, aligning their beams with the central crystal, never allowing himself to be hit by them.

“If we could just follow her trail this way, why don’t we just go there? Why all this fuss, Archmagi?” he asked as he worked.

“Impulse leads to injury, young Aki,” his master replied. “What if we were to arrive in some bunker locked beneath the earth? Or in a fiery crater left by an experiment gone awry? What if the Allander has precautions set against incursions from other aetheric travellers?”

Aki humphed as he aligned the final crystal and the aether inside the monolith began to coalesce around the points where the light beams hit it.

“All appears to be in order,” Sty said, the closest to a compliment that Aki was likely to get. He stepped forward and closed his eyes, lightly touching the amulet that hung against his robes. “Where did you come from, Allander?”

Styr finally opened his eyes. They seemed unfocused, glassy, but Aki knew that his master was staring at a plane far beyond the room in which they were standing.

Aki stepped up behind his master, looking from the amulet to the monolith but seeing nothing of what his master did.

“What do you see, Archmagi?”

“The vast interplanar expanse that connects this world to innumerable others. The insulation between universes. That which allows those with the singular force of will to travel between these motes of existence on the tides of aether,” Sty replied in a measured tone.

Aki rolled his eyes, knowing that his master couldn’t see him. “I know that, Archmagi. I’ve read the books. But what does it look like?”

Sty sighed heavily before replying. “There’s a lot of purple. When your training is done, you will see as well, Aki. But your mind is too cluttered. There is too much anger in you. Calm yourself, and you will see as I do. Now let me concentrate.”

Aki skulked away to lean against the wall, arms folded and a heavy sulk on his face.

The purple light from the monolith shifted, drawing in, creating heavy shadows at the edges of the room and focussing in a single beam of light on the old Archmagi. Bathed in the aether light, Styr began to search back and forth in the air as images coalesced out of the monolith’s aetheric fog. A flying machine hung under a balloon, a huge tower topped by a clock, and people in some strange, ornate garb that focussed on sweeping robes for the women and tall hats for the men. Styr saw them in all angles and emotions, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone

“Ah yes,” Styr said. “There. I see the eddies that her device has left in the Aethertide. Crude. Yet effective.”

Styr’s eyes refocused and he looked around the room, searching for his apprentice who sulked in the shadows behind him.

“Prepare the foci for transport, Aki,” he said. When Aki didn’t immediately move continued: “Now, apprentice. We have another realm to visit.”

“Yes, Archmagi,” Aki said, shoving himself off the wall as if it were the most effort he’d ever had to put into anything in his entire life.

“Why so sullen?” Styr asked. “Visiting new places always excites you. Really, Aki, your emotional instability will be the downfall of your ascension to Magi. Prepare the equipment. Let’s see what the Allander’s home has to offer us.”

“And so,” Olivia panted, out of breath, “I have my inventions registered under a man’s name. It’s the way of my world, I’m afraid.”

The mountain pass climbed ever higher, the valley and the jungle below dropping away to a pastel green memory beyond the coiling mist that hung around the mountain.

Raisa stopped, less for herself and more for Olivia to catch her breath.

“We would never let someone take credit for another’s work,” she replied. “That’s not the way in An’Mor. Songs are sung in your name, no matter the quirks of your birth.”

Olivia stretched her back, hands on hips, and took a few deep breaths. She had heard of how air could be thinner high up in the mountains but she had never experienced it before. She decided to blame altitude rather than a lack of fitness for her panting.

“You’d make a fine suffragette,” she managed, her breath coming back to her.

“What’s that?” Raisa asked as she scanned the trail and sky.

“Umm.” Olivia smiled. “A kind of warrior.”

Raisa nodded in agreement. “Then I probably would.”

She turned her head sharp enough to startle Olivia, looking up the trail ahead of them.

“Wait. Do you hear that?” Raisa asked.

“No. What is it?”

Raisa waved for Olivia to follow and began creeping ahead to where the track took a turn around the mountainside. She stopped, peering around the edge of the rock, and Olivia drew up behind.

“What can you see?” she whispered.

In answer, Raisa pointed ahead and Olivia stepped up beside her.

There, on the path, was a huge gorilla-like creature coated with white fur. Where its fur met skin there were blue-green scales, especially evident around the temples and where its huge hands met its hairy wrists. Half mammal, half reptile, as Olivia had come to expect from the An’Morian creatures. It roared, shaking the stones under their feet and pounded the mountain wall with one hand. It yanked at something with its other hand, roaring again, and Olivia could finally see that its hand was inside the cliff face, disappearing into a large crack.

“Is that one of the monsters that the Magi warned you about?” Oliva whispered.

“It looks that way.”

“It looks angry.”

Raisa humphed. “We’re going to have to get past it if we’re to keep climbing. I want to know why the magi won’t let us come here. Come on.”

Raisa stepped out onto the path, creeping toward the ape with Olivia in tow. In its rage to escape the wall, the creature hadn’t spotted them. They crept closer, keeping toward the edge of the path where the sheer drop descended to a misty river far below. Oliva reached forward to hold onto Raisa and found that her companion’s hand was already reaching back for her.

Closer still, they held their breath as they passed within a few feet of the ape’s straining back.

Raisa’s hand grabbed Olivia’s as she slipped, spilling gravel over the cliff edge. They froze, exchanging looks. The ape-like creature turned slowly, the scowl in its heavy brow growing deeper, its huge teeth bared. Its hand lashed out, the thick fingers with their ragged nails grasping for them

Olivia fell to one side as Raisa shoved her out of the way, but the force pushed Raisa even further toward the path’s uncertain edge and she stumbled, toppling backwards off the cliff.

Olivia screamed her friend’s name but it was lost in the ape’s roar.