Aethertide (Chapter 7)

“Good and generous people of An’Mor. I, Archmagi Styr, have come to oversee the enactment of justice,” the old Magi yelled from his podium in the village square with the firelight reflecting from his bald head and small, dark eyes. “You, of all the peoples of all the worlds to which the Magi travel, are our favourites. We show our favour by gifting you the benefits of our wisdom. Tell me, people of the favoured plane, what are the three things that we ask in return?”

The crowd of An’Morian people, all huddled together in the firelight, began to chant like children who learned a lesson by repetition:

“None shall wilfully harm the Magi,” they recited. “None shall stray into the mountains. None shall touch the crystals.”

Styr smiled and the firelight glistened from his teeth.

“Yes!” he yelled. “To keep us all safe. Do not harm your benevolent friends. Do not entice the evil creatures that live in the mountains. Do not misuse the crystals that grow here in An’Mor, which are dangerous to any without the Magi training. And so, we must bring justice for those who defy our simple laws, laws that keep us all safe. Light the pyre.”

The villager with the torch released it. It hit the oil and a streak of flame ripped across the square, lighting the pyre with a whumph.

Olivia whimpered, her mind made blank by fear, sweat pouring down her back as if she could already feel the fire’s heat.

“That was a short speech,” Raisia muttered, monotone. “He usually drones on for a while. Lucky us.”

But Olivia wasn’t listening. She shook her head as if she might wipe away the night, the village, the flames, like a bad dream.

“I can’t believe I’m going to die,” she said. “All I wanted was for the old blaggards in the Institute to say I was a real scientist. That was all.”

There was a faint sound of ignition and more of the pyre leapt to life. She could feel the first warmth, now, like a welcome fireplace after a winter stroll.

Raise strained her neck to look at Olivia and said: “Are those going to be your last words? They’re not very good ones. Mine are going to be…” and she raised her voice in defiance of the night and all that it held for them both. “!@&% you, Styr, you dried up old !&*%!”

Raisa laughed as she swore with words that Olivia couldn’t understand but felt the tone of.

Ping

The sound was so faint that Olivia almost didn’t hear it, such a tiny chime that the blood rushing in her ears almost drowned it out. She couldn’t place it at first, and then she hoped that it was her alarm clock waking her up, taking her back to a warm bed, safe and sound.

Ping

The sound came again and Olivia finally realised what it was. She struggled to rotate around the pole, to see the aetherdrive’s control module that was still on her wrist.

“The timer!” she gasped.

“What are you talking about?” Raisa snapped.

“I totally forgot. My aetherdrive was set to…”

Pooph

A purple cough of aether and Olivia was gone. Raisa stared at the spot where Olivia had once been in awe. She looked out over the rising flames, the faces of the other villagers staring up at her in silence, and the glistening head of Styr in the distance.

“Huh. Figures,” she said.

Aki leaned forward, almost toppling over the podium where both Magi and apprentice stood.

“An Allander!?” he said. “But how?”

Archmagi Styr sneered by his side as he said: “It appears that competition has arrived in An’Mor.”

A pooph of aether and Olivia hit the floorboards of her laboratory with a grunt. She laid for a moment, taking in the stale smells of her room, staring at the spiderwebby corners, blinking in the daylight that remained.

Propping herself up, she looked around for signs that she had been dreaming, for some clue that it had all been a fantasy. But her suit was ripped, her helmet long gone, and the boots of her suit were caked in mud and grass.

“Where in the blazes was I?” she asked the silent room. But there was no answer.

Realisation dawned as she looked down at the control module on her wrist, the battery once more charged from passing through the aether plane.

“Another world beyond this one. The other side of the aether. Plants and creatures and people and…” she paused as her head finally cleared. “Poor Raisa.”

Jumping up, she darted across the room to her workbench, scrambling for her notebook. Flicking through the pages she found what she was looking for, her power equations. She knew so much more now, she knew that she had overpowered the aetherdrive. Of course, she hadn’t known that there was something beyond it, but now she did, and she had her readings to prove it. Grabbing a pencil she began to correct the equations, adjusting, recalculating.

“That’s it,” she said, but there was no smile, only grim determination on her face.

Stripping off her now-useless suit, she was left in her braces and blouse with the control module on her arm, deciding to keep the sturdy boots and thick leather glove beneath the module for protection. Grabbing some welding goggles from the bench, she tugged them down over her hair and onto her eyes.

“Alright,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. She scratched her head as she dialled in new settings to the control module. “If I use the readings from both trips and triangulate my lab, where I arrived and where I left…”

And as she talked her way through the process, it was done.

“Hang on, Raisa,” she said. “I really hope I’ve got this ri…”

Pooph