Aethertide (Chapter 16)
Straining her ears for any signs of movement, Raisa crept along the cold stone tunnel. Where a doorway opened up she stopped dead, Olivia colliding with her back.
“Sorry,” Olivia whispered.
“I don’t think they’re here,” Raisa said, ducking through the doorway to find the kitchen area neatly tidied away and still. “They must be off burning people.”
“I hope not. Although I’m glad they’re not here either.”
They moved as one from the kitchen to a small chamber with where a single lantern lit a bed, a desk and a chest. Olivia looked around the stark and stale walls and floor. She had expected something more lavish, if she was honest with herself. Glowing power crystals, vibrant tapestries, wood panelled walls like the magical equivalent of the gentleman’s clubs she’d heard about. But the Magi’s lair put her more in mind of a smuggler’s hideaway. As she searched around the room, noting that her own bed had more blankets than Styr’s, how the desk was little more than driftwood and nails, she found a small lacquered box on the desktop. The lid snapped open to reveal three small aether crystals laid out on a cushion. She took all three in her hand, feeling the faint crackle of static between them, and watched as they clicked together, magnetised. She marvelled at them, pulling one away only to let go and watch it snap back to its siblings again. Realisation dawned on her as Raisa came to peer over her shoulder.
“What have you found?”
“These are crystals from the Magi’s amulets aren’t they?” Olivia asked more of herself than Raisa. “Cut like gems to just the right size. Just enough power to transport one person.” She held one up to her eye to watch the swirling aether gathered inside. “And then they recharge. Because the crystals themselves are magnetic. They draw aether into them even if they don’t pass through the extra planar space.”
“If you say so.” Raisa wandered away but Oliva barely noticed.
Checking the control module on her wrist, Oliva flicked the small glass battery out of its housing. A tiny glass cell with brass ends that had cost her sleepless nights and many an empty stomach. Picking one of the crystals, she settled it in the empty housing and applied pressure. It clicked into place with a satisfying thunk.
“The perfect amount of aether for one person,” she said with a chuckle. “The mathematics I had to do to figure that out.”
Raisa’s voice drifted back into the room. “If you like those, I think you might want to see this.”
Pocketing the other crystals, Olivia followed Raisa’s voice out of the room and down the corridor where she found her companion bathed in aetheric light as she stared through the doorway into another room. Stepping up beside her, Olivia was also bathed in the scrying crystal’s light.
“What are these madmen doing up here?” Raisa asked as images swam in the aetheric crystal.
Olivia stepped closer, squinting at the images, feeling the pulsating vacuum of energy entering the crystal as it gave off a faint whummm-whummm-whummm.
“I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”
Mrs Mian laid with her head on the floorboards of Olivia’s lab. Staring at the odd purple gas that poured into the room, a tear trickled down her cheek as she thought back to her home. She had seen this all before. The banks of the river where she met her Munish ran red with her people’s blood and his ran with them. All because someone from beyond the sea would not give up what they had stolen. She had escaped those madmen only to find herself at the foot of another. She thought there would be no war in England. Surely a country so focussed on taking the homelands of others would be safe from the inside. And yet, there she laid with blood trickling down her face. She looked at Aki’s back as he raised his arms in silhouette against the crystal focus’ glow, muttering to himself. Just one more madman. Not with bombs or guns, but a box of magic. Still, it was all the same. Maybe it was time for her to meet her Munish. They had been apart for far too long.
Aki’s voice sang with glee as he stared into the aether. “The cascade is nearly at critical point. Just a little longer and then I’ll go.” He looked back at Styr laid unconscious behind him. “But I want to relish in this moment just a little longer. This belongs to me, now, old man.” Stooping down, Aki ripped Styr’s amulet from around his neck and sneered at the old man all the words he’d longed to say. “Oh, the things I’ll do to An’Mor once this place is dealt with. I’ll tear your feeble rules to tatters and rule over the natives instead. And the Council will listen, because I will control their only source of aetheric crystals. They’ll make me a Magi or lose everything.” He coughed and looked around at the gathering aether. “Let’s clear the air a little. I’d hate for you to suffocate before I have the chance to burn you alive.” Closing his eyes and his fingers around the amulet, Aki concentrated and the aether moved to his will, clearing a small area of fresh air around himself and his victims. “Ha! Do you see!? The power you denied me was rightfully mine all along.”
Outside Olivia’s building, aether billowed out through the window frames and vents. In a world of grey and brown, it took seconds for the people of Canning Town to spot the leak. The other tenants of Olivia’s building burst out of the door, coughing against the aether. Someone in the crowd yelled “if there’s a spark the place will blow up”. Someone else added “it’ll take half of London with it”. And that was enough to start the panic proper. Some yelled, some started to run, and soon there was a stampede. They would have run all the faster if they knew of the madman in the laboratory above who danced a jig around the unconscious body of his master, the aether gas swirling with his robes.
Aki danced his way to the window and grinned down at the chaos. “Look at them run. It’s already too late. Surely, they know that.” He spoke to his master although the old Magi didn’t hear. “It seems fitting that you would die here with these short-sighted peasants. My only regret is that I won’t get to watch you burn.”