Countdown to Freedom

  "A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy." - Unknown, pre-unravelling origin, found written in small notebook placed inside a ceramic mask, with properties including [REDACTED]

  The Peacekeeper pivoted on the spot, the weapon vanishing underneath his robes of office, and spritely hopped back into the half-repaired carriage. The passengers, those who were able to disembark at least, stood stock still, all staring at the thin scorched circle on the ground, where once there had been a man.

  The dwarven girl, Greta, looked nauseous, but after a moment of staring at the ground she departed, passing her father with a shared sharp look, and boarded the carriage, with a seamless hop-and-mantle, betraying years of practice.

  After a few seconds of silence, Kellin followed after, and then Eryn, after making the sign of Mir’feie. Which left Bryn standing alone, clutching his sheathed longsword, still taking in the scorchmark. He made no attempt to move in that moment, but there was still a slight sway in his stance, as though he might blow away if the breeze happened upon the right angle.

  Then he turned around, a harsh, tense expression furrowed deeply on his heavy brow as he faced the carriage. He returned to the vehicle in stony silence, sitting in the spot Kellin had once occupied at the foot of the seats, still clutching his sword even after laying it across his lap in a rehearsed, precise motion.

  It had seemed cold to Kellin, bitterness infecting his body language.

  “You can deal with the clean-up, can you not?” The Peacekeeper gestured back to the repair-dwarf at the scorchmark as he set the carriage in motion once more, leaning back and tilting his head down, eyes closed in rest. They rumbled off, missing their recently acquired clanking noise, but the mechanic didn’t respond, instead calling out to his daughter.

  “Stone and Sky, dotir.”

  She leaned back to face him over the carriage’s side.

  “Stone and Sky, vata.” she responded in a similar ritualised monotone and turned back to face straight ahead, not lingering as Kel had upon her departing home.

  For a few minutes nothing was said in the carriage, the stifling tension of Oshin’s obliteration still on the minds of the passengers. Then Greta, who had been surreptitiously eying her temporary new travelling companions, jabbed a thumb towards Simon, who was still restrained and gagged, and asked of the group;

  “So what’s his deal?” she asked, her voice clear and sonorous, a slightly lower pitch than a human woman’s.

  There was another moment of harsh silence, as though waiting for the Peacekeeper to swoop in once more with another casual display of murder. When it was clearly not forthcoming, as he didn’t deign to respond, the gloomy tension lifted somewhat, and Kellin responded.

  “He… um…” Kel eyes flicked over to the Peacekeeper, wondering how risky the truth was in this scenario, “He joined the Recruitment transport under violent circumstances, and is restrained for the safety of himself and others.”

  Kellin could have sworn he saw the corner of the elf’s mouth curl.

  Looking back at his new journey-mate to see if she had understood the limited language he was attempting to communicate with, he noticed further details than he had at first glance.

  Her overalls were a deep charcoal grey, patched in a multitude of spots with a gleaming metallic thread, identical in colour to the multiple piercings adorning her ears. Her hands, shod in fingerless gloves, displayed dozens of scar lines and abrasions on her fingers alone, a burnt tapestry to her mechanical experience.

  The arms they were attached to were thickly muscled, runic tattoos tracing up the knotted flesh and disappearing under the short sleeved black top she wore under the overalls.

  Similar burn marks pocked her face, on her cheeks and forehead, but a region around her dark hazel eyes had been untouched, regularly protected by the worn brass-coloured goggles that hung around her neck. The slightest fuzzy edge could be seen on her jaw, a spot missed in a recent shave.

  She nodded slowly after he spoke, understanding the assignment.

  “So he’s enrolling then?” she questioned.

  “That’s the policy.” Kel replied.

  She began to respond, but was interrupted by Eryn, sat to her side, having run out of patience at not being the center of attention anymore, her previously eager audience since being blown out of existence;

  “Don’t worry about him, he might’ve been spared this time but he’ll be for the noose sooner or later. Once a criminal, always a criminal. The breeding shows true. I’m Eryn by the way, we were interrupted earlier-”

  ‘No hesitation, not even a hitch in her voice, just an ‘interruption’’ Kellin thought as she continued to speak.

  “So we didn’t get to do proper introductions. It’s actually my first time here in Blackpool, but I’m sure you can tell, my clothes are probably not in fashion at all. Are ratty overalls the in thing? That’s so interesting, out in Duroyed I only ever wore, like, new undamaged stuff? But I probably won’t get to try the style out, I’ve heard that Mirf’eie’s clergy have to wear these, like, special robes? I was actually called to serve myself, if you can believe it, the-”

  Kellin tuned out the monologue he had heard Eryn give perhaps a hundred times, the contents unchanged but for the backhanded remarks, which always had some fresh target.

  The city center sprawled ahead of them as the carriage drove on, buildings of metal and wood and stone and other more bizarre things, in a myriad of styles, some decrepit old castles next to modern brickwork, monolithic shapes of gnommish architecture beside towering half-shattered glass structures with massive trees grown up within them, supporting the buildings like the metal frame of a stained-glass window.

  In the midst of all this were thousands of people heading in all different directions, all in different ways, like an endless sandstorm of marching and driving and riding.

  And what people there were, humans and dwarves and the odd elf making up a significant majority, but there were beings far stranger still all making their way too and fro. Kellin had no way to distinguish them, some, like a large bull-headed man, must have been humans with strange weirmarks, or perhaps a demonborn?

  Was that a Water Elemental or a Merman, or just someone caught up in a weather wizard’s horrible experiments? At one point they all blurred together, with a few stand-outs, like the troll which had ambled past the carriage, taller than three men stacked atop one another.

  'Your head is fried, man. Too much shit happened today. I swear I just saw the same guy for like the third time, dressed entirely differently. Maybe take in the City later, you’ve still got stuff to do.'

  There was a long, stone-lined trench carved into the middle of the city, which they had been riding alongside for some time now, bridges crossing the large chasm visible all the way along it, stretching into the distance to the base of the large black mounds in the distance.

  They crossed one, and began heading south, turning away from the looming city center, and the towering spike that had been growing larger as they approached.

  “I thought dwarves had beards?” Bryn’s voice echoed out as Eryn momentarily paused her monologue to take a breath. A look of consternation crossed Greta’s face as she replied;

  “We do. I shave.”

  “Oh, that’s smart.” Eryn commented, having caught her breath. “You’ll have such an easier time fitting in with regular people, without a stupid unkept beard like your father has. Honestly he should take better care, there’s a standard of professionalism you know, and besides, how are any guys at the academy going to think you’re pretty with a beard, it’s really for the best. I hope you find a nice human guy, your people should really try to integrate more with-”

  “FIRST,” Greta barked, interrupting Eryn with enough force that she was temporarily struck dumb.

  “First,” she repeated, “of all, I don’t shave to ‘fit in’ with your idiotic standards of human beauty. Second, my vata’s ‘stupid unkept beard’ is a grief-knot, which he has worn since my moter died, and will keep wearing until the knot vanishes entirely, you ignorant bitch. And you’re right, there is a standard of professionalism, which is why almost everyone goes to him, because he’s the best Technosmith and mechanic in the city."

  "Here, you want proof? That’s his mark, right there. He built this cart,” she finished with a sharp hand-flick towards a sigil carved into the floor of the carriage, and then thumbed an identical one sewn into the shoulder of her short-sleeved shirt.

  ‘Huh, I didn’t know the knots meant something’ Kellin thought, remembering the animated metallic dwarven face which had shaken its head after that unlucky bandit had tried to break through the wards. ‘Now there’s a way you could pass on some information the time. She clearly deserves the effort, the tongue lashing she’s giving Eryn just made her my personal hero.’

  “Finally,” she remarked, “if integrating with humans means dealing with idiots like you, then no thanks, I’m good, I’ve got better things to do than suffer self-centered stuck-ups. I genuinely pity these fellas, I’ve been on this transport all of five minutes and I already can’t stand you.”

  Eryn’s mouth opened and closed on a loop, like a stranded fish gulping for air.

  “Don’t talk about my sister like that you subhume trash,” Bryn growled, having sat further upright as she spoke, tension building in his body.

  Greta rolled her eyes.

  “What about you?” she said, facing Kellin, “You got any issue with me over this hunda? She your sister as well, or your lover, or some other nonsense human thing that makes it your life’s one true calling to defend her from the big bad dwarf lady?”

  Kel sniffed, and looked off to the horizon for a moment, as though considering.

  “Nope. Matter of fact, I happen to agree with you, I’d shoot myself if I wasn’t quite convinced that I’ll never see her again after we arrive at the Academy.” he replied with an exaggerated grimace.

  The fist that came flying at his face was well worth it, given the sardonic smile he had a moment to appreciate as it graced the outspoken dwarf’s face, before his vision was sent reeling.

  'Bryn always did pack a mean left.' He thought.

  Picking himself up from his sprawled position across Simon, Kellin turned to face Eryn’s enraged brother with a grim smile, blood pooling in his teeth. Before he could speak however, Greta interjected; “What did you hit him for, too afraid to hit me?”

  Bryn, chest still heaving in aggravation, replied haltingly, “...I don’t hit girls. Even half-sized ones.”

  “Really? Good to know.” she commented, cracking her knuckles, but just as she had squared her shoulders and raised her fists, the Peacekeeper hmm-ed in a disapproving tone, and suddenly the carriage was cast in silence once again.

  “I never knew the knots in a beard could mean something.” Kellin commented a minute or two later, after Bryn had returned to his internal brooding, “When the wards were up earlier, there was this picture of a dwarf’s face with an odd braid in its beard, any idea what that one’s for?” he asked Greta.

  “Oh yeah? What did the braid look like?”

  Kellin considered using his light focus, but since there wasn’t an active magical threat it would be in aid of remedying, and he didn’t know whether that would constitute a break in Protocol, so he decided against it.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Especially with the Peacekeepers… enigmatic attitude and Oshin’s unforeseen death. So he traced the pattern, or what he could remember of it, in the air with his index finger. She paused for a moment, copying the pattern he had made, and raised her eyes in thought.

  “Sorry, I probably didn’t do that good a job of-” he began.

  “No, I know which one you mean, it’s the translation I’m a bit iffy on. It’s like… unwelcome? Or maybe ‘Not Allowed’? Honestly, how you humans get anything of value said in Glish is beyond me. So the wards were active earlier, that explains a couple of things.” she said, eying the still-restrained Simon.

  'She got the message then, good enough. Now what the fuck is a Glish?'

  “What’s Glish? I never heard of it,” Kel asked curiously.

  Then the Peacekeeper spoke up for the first time since departing the mechanic’s shop;

  “It was an archaic form of Common, spoken by humans in the earliest days after the Reservation, a hold-over from your original homeworld. You may need to study it in your human academy, but it hasn’t been spoken in generations. Dwarves are particularly slow to adapt to that kind of change. Isn’t that right, young lady?” he asked, pointedly looking at Greta.

  “Oh yeah,” she replied, stiffly, “Real conservatives, us mountain-kin.”

  After that, they rode on in a quiet stillness, turning at last off a large thoroughfare, past a low blackstone wall and an obscuring tree-line, slightly out of place within the urban sprawl, and behind it lay the Voidstone Academy.

  At least twenty buildings of various shapes and sizes made up the large campus, and there were scores of similar carriages in front of them, as well as a few trailing behind, each one parking at a loading area which seemed specially designed to receive the high-elevation carriages.

  Off to one end of the carriage-dock loomed the closest building to them, a tall, wide, curved building with a domed roof, at the edge of a large, artificial lake.

  They pulled into one of the slots in the station, the edge of the platform matching the height of the carriage walls. As the automatic conveyance slotted flush into the recessed dock, the restraints on Simon retracted with a series of mechanical clicks.

  He rubbed his wrists and neck for a moment, but stayed silent.

  “Academy stop. Those enrolling in arcane studies should disembark now.” the Peacekeeper intoned, and Kellin, Greta and Simon all stood. Using the seats as steps, they clambered out of the carriage onto the platform. They stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do, and as the carriage began to pull away once more, the elf finished his duties in the same dull tone, calling out to the lemmings standing awkwardly at the platform’s edge.

  “In Perennity’s shade you have been preserved, in your Protocols have you been kept safe, I discharge you from my ward without malice or benevolence to your place of learning, with nothing binding us in the hereafter.”

  'Come on, come on, almost…'

  After that he returned to his regular seat, dismissing the group with no more pomp. As soon as he had, Bryn stood in the rolling carriage, and pointed straight at Kellin as they rode away, shouting out to him;

  “Don’t fuck this up Oakhonour! You’d better not give Duroyed a bad name!” He stayed standing for another minute, still visibly staring even as he receded into the distance.

  “Well that was nice,” a scratchy, hoarse voice rang out from Kel’s side, surprising him. Simon had spoken for the first time since his capture. He was still rubbing his wrists, the metal restraints were not the most comfortable of things, as Kellin well knew.

  Greta snorted, and turned to face the wide building beside them.

  “Like hells it was, don’t you know how the import system works?” she questioned.

  Simon looked her up and down for a moment, and then turned to face the same direction.

  “No? I grew up in… It doesn’t actually matter, why, what’s the ‘import system’?” he replied.

  Kellin finally turned as well, all three of them looking to the large building, which a trickle of other aspirants were making their way towards, in constant drips and drops as more carriages pulled into the station.

  “Basically,” he began, “the better us ‘imports’ do on our education tracks, if I qualify as a mage, if Bryn gets an officer posting, if, or rather when Eryn is inducted as a member of Mirf’eie’s clergy, a certain amount of merit is assigned to Duroyed, and the village can spend that merit for certain incentives, like expansion or construction permits, that kinda stuff. And naturally the reverse is true. If we fuck up, well then…”

  “That’s fucked up.” Simon replied, continuing as he gestured towards the building;

  “Shall we, by the way? I don’t know if you want to go in to-”

  “We shall.” Greta announced, and the three started walking across a grey tiled path through a well-maintained flower-dotted lawn. “Listen,” she continued, “if you think that’s fucked, you clearly don’t know that the same merit system applies on a personal basis in the city. You still need money, don’t get me wrong, but if you want to get access to magical materials, restricted knowledge, license to cast a spell, Relics, a building permit, even a rental agreement, it’s all gated behind merit, which is tracked. There’s a big gnommish contraption that calculates it somewhere in the city, but nobody knows where, for obvious reasons.”

  Simon had stopped in his tracks, a momentary hitch in his stride, before hurriedly catching up to the other two. “What so… if I don’t pass a test I can’t get a place to live?” he asked, anxiously.

  “No, don’t be ridiculous,” she replied, as they approached a large square entryway in the monolithic, blackstone building’s face. “You can get somewhere to live, you just can’t live anywhere nice.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.” Kellin remarked, as they joined the throng of aspirants passing through the square entryway, which led into a long, dark hall. “We’ve got more important things to deal with.”

  “Excuse me, I for one happen to think-” Simon began, but trailed off as they quickly bustled out of the other end of the shadowy hall.

  The cramped hallway opened into a bright cavernous auditorium, with a huge, slanted circular hole cut out of its back side and part of the roof. It reached from the very lowest level of the auditorium, almost at water level, almost to halfway across the dome-shaped roof. Unnoticeable from the entrance’s perspective, it gave the occupants a view of the mage-made lake behind it as well as the spherical nimbus overhead.

  There were at least a thousand people in the open-air building, some still finding seats, others sat stock still, staring at the raised circular stone dais which was as yet unoccupied, waiting for whatever was coming.

  Looking behind him, Kellin saw the stepped rows extended up past the entryway, almost to the domed half-roof overhead. The trio looked at one another wordlessly, and before the spew of newcomers could push them apart, they climbed in unison to a free seat three-quarters of the way up the massive auditorium.

  As they sat down, still silent, taking in the susurrus of whispers and light conversation that filled the space, Kellin let out a breath it felt like he had been holding for days. He felt calm in the crowd, something about the mass of people leaving him less tensely alert.

  'Finally no more damn censoring your thoughts, holy shit was that stressful. You’re here, so that’s one hurdle passed, you’re safe. Check that one off the Plan. Now comes the next one, make yourself valuable to these people, and I guess, get some merits. Simon’s right, it’s a shite system, and you might not have known it applied personally too, but it doesn’t matter. The Plan is adaptable.'

  'Speaking of no more censoring…’

  Kellin closed his eyes for a moment, and reached out in that direction which only existed in his mind.

  Green-lit swirls filled his perception, and he very carefully ‘felt’ for his neck. There were pockets of Flux trapped within his skin, the metal restraints having been too antithetical to the energy constantly spinning through his spirit, causing an unfortunate, if not unusual reaction.

  He mentally massaged the chaotic energy, breaking apart the clusters where the Flux passing through his body had seared against the highly-ordered metal, and the painful boils on his neck began to recede.

  “Hey, what did the Peacekeeper mean by the ‘slow to change’ comment?” Simon asked, curiously tilting his head, as the last of the prospective students settled into their seats.

  However, before Greta could answer, a wall of silence passed over the auditorium in a great wave, emanating from the front row back and upwards.

  Looking around, Kel noticed that as the silence fell, more and more faces were angled to stare at one spot in particular, through the hole in the building’s face, across the mage-made lake, it’s shoreline abutting the bottom edge of the sheared off section.

  A thick band of mist hissed up from the lake, almost like a road stretching out before them, and in the distance, rapidly swelling into view, was a small island with a squat, two-storey tower built of the same blackstone as the auditorium.

  Oriented towards the auditorium was a small pier which the band of mist terminated at, built of that same inky monolith, a lone figure stood upon its far end, who had begun walking its length.

  Difficult to make out at first, but as the mist wafted into the air, much like the elven Rootway, the space between the island and the water-front auditorium seemed to shrink, the figure and the pier he was strolling down grew, until the pier’s end hit the auditorium wall’s lowest edge, perfectly level with it, and the sharply dressed mage had bloomed into definition.

  Some of the thick mist had risen from the lake’s edge, and streamed around the man as he strode forward, forming a thin halo of lightly glowing vapour around him as he moved.

  When he reached the seam between the pier’s end and the auditorium’s cut-away wall, the misty halo burnt away in a crackle of purple and black flaring light as he stepped across it.

  At the same moment, like a rubber band snapping back after being stretched, the pier, and the island it was attached to, shot away into the distance, retreating to wherever it had been in the first place, out of view. If he strained his eyes Kellin could just about make out the silhouette of the not-very-tall tower, but how far away it truly was he couldn’t say.

  Returning his gaze to the clearly powerful mage, who had halted his leisurely jaunt after casually warping space single-handedly with nary a ruffled hair, and stood surveying the assembled audience in tense silence. Though it was hard to make out too many details, Kel thought there might have been a small smile on the man’s face, briefly reminding him of the carriage ride he was already doing his best to forget.

  After surveying the assembly for at least half a minute, with nary a whisper from the gathered aspirants, he began moving again, continuing his stride as though it had been unbroken.

  For a moment, it looked as though he were going to fall, as he stepped out into open air unconcerned with the declining steps of the auditorium walls, but instead a rush of water flowed from the lake over the wall’s lip, forming a thick sheet of water that stretched from the dais’ edge to the low wall he had just stepped off.

  A red-tinged glow outlined the watery sheet, and it froze solid just as his foot made contact.

  He continued his even-paced march, unfazed by the din of amazement that had followed the masterful display of water magic, the still-glowing icy slab melting all at once back into water as he stepped onto the dais, which dropped onto the heads of a few unfortunates who had sat on the few low-down rows between the lake edge and the raised circular platform.

  He stopped once more, after reaching the center of the auditorium, every eye in the house on him, his hands clasped behind his slightly hunched back, a habitat that was shared with several of the elders, and Elders, of Duroyed.

  He was finely dressed, not in the expected robes of whatever high office he must hold, but in a formal dark-grey jacket and pants with purple-stitch work, a coal-black tie and a purple shirt just barely visible at Kel’s elevated position.

  Salt had long since beaten pepper in his mostly grey hair, and large, round spectacles framed a worn, elderly face, but there was something there Kellin couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  A… strength, he supposed, a sharpness, which had sent a shiver down his spine when the mage’s gaze had passed over him, surely without actually meeting his eyes, though Kel wouldn’t bet a single copper pence on that.

  “Welcome.”

  The word reverberated through the air, sounding no louder than a conversational volume, yet perfectly audible to Kel, as if the distinguished figure had been sat beside him.

  “Welcome,” he repeated, “one and all, to the Voidstone Academy of the Arcane Arts.”

  A cheer passed through the crowd, and the grandfatherly figure did nothing to quell it, resuming after the eager audience quieted.

  “Some of you,” he intoned, conversationally, “are here to continue generations of family legacy,” a cheer went up from several clusters of robed figures, “some are here to investigate great mysteries, and others to change the way we live. Some are here to discover power that lies within, or seek out power from beyond. But…”

  His voice had swelled further as he spoke, not in volume exactly, but in tone.

  “But all of us, every man and woman, every human and non-human, is here to share in one goal, the goal that drives all of us in this sheltered hideaway of a kingdom. To reclaim our homeworld.”

  Roughly a third of the audience started laughing, only to be cut off by an arch look from the elder. 'What the hell are they laughing at?' Kellin wondered.

  “Yes, laugh, confident in the knowledge that places you above your peers. But let me ask you all one thing, before you so quickly judge my words, is our goal not to reclaim our homeworld, however that may come to pass? All of us, here today, are seeking the mysteries of magic, so that once mastered, Old Earth isn’t so far a dream for our peo-”

  A commotion swept the audience as a young man garbed in a thick black cloak leapt up with a gleeful, animalistic snarl, pushing his coverings aside to reveal four glistening crystals wired to his chest, a cord connecting them to some kind of device in his hand. In the air around his chest, after sweeping the heavy cloak aside, small glimmers of multicoloured light wisped and bubbled in and out of existence.

  “OLIN TRENT, YOUR TIME HAS CO-” and then there was a whine and a squelch.

  The mage still standing upon the dais had raised a hand and pointed at the aggressive figure, and a shrieking sound had ripped through the auditorium, Kellin had just about noticed what looked like a ripple travelling through the air, before it reached the crazed man’s head.

  The squelch had been the sound of his head bursting like an overripe melon.

  The mage on the stage lowered his pointing hand, tiny stars of ice forming in the air around it and then dropping to the ground on repeat, which went uncommented upon as he continued speaking;

  “That’s Archmage Olin Trent, thank you very much,” he shook his head, turning away from the now steaming pile of head-matter as though truly disappointed.

  “I swear, there’s one every year.”

  'So maybe not entirely safe then. Oh well, add it back onto the Plan.'

  Where the briefly-threatening novice had fallen, the glowing wisplights surrounding the crystals strapped to his chest pulsed and swelled with colour, drawing the attention of the entire auditorium. And then pulsed again. And then again, faster.

  'No, not entirely safe at all.'