Aether Engineering

Chapter 13

The Grand Cathedral

700 Miles from Maston in the Heart of the Triton Province

A great slab of solid marble stretched uninterrupted across an otherwise barren land. The slab seemed to have taken command of the world around it. Monsters that roamed the lands beyond it turned away despite sensing a gathering of humans. Where the cracked land around them had fallen apart, plunging ancient homes to the depths, the land faithfully remained intact beneath the great marble slab, not daring to let it fall.

The slab was perfectly flat, perfectly empty, except for one building at its very center. A great cathedral with buttresses that soared towards the sky, but despite its majesty, it paled in comparison to what lay within. A great figure, itself encased in marble stood nearly tall enough to reach the rafters.

Standing in front of the figure, a man spread his arms wide as he opened himself up to the guidance of the titan. “The will of the titan remains unfazed.” The man spread his sense to the audience before him. He didn’t bother moving his eyes. His connection to the building allowed him to feel the slight tremors they made by shifting about in their seats. “I ask if your faith remains unfazed as well.”

A cry arose from the building, moving the hearts of all present except for one, a young apprentice that made his way along a third-floor balcony. Countless other boys just like him walked among the faithful, handing out chips of marble. Rites they were called, commandments from the titan itself.

There was one rite in particular that was consuming all of the apprentice’s attention. All of the rites had a fragment of the titan’s will. It allowed them to give the rite to an appropriate member of the faithful gathering. This particular chip though contained more than a whisper of will. It was practically blinding the apprentice with its strength.

Guiding the apprentice so strongly, it didn’t take long for the chip to make its way to an unassuming man dressed in the traditional garb of a pilgrim. The man silently took the rite from the apprentice’s shaking hands and read its inscription silently.

Kill number 14 and return to me that which he has stolen.

The man’s face remained passive as he tucked the rite deeply inside his robes and returned his attention to the service.

Much later, a man in garb that spoke of an entirely different set of interests than those of a pilgrim made his way across the cracked earth, pondering the marble chip that weighed down his pocket. To him, the chip was as much weapon as it was an order.

The man was glad to have the weapon for insurance. Going against one of the organization’s enforcers was always a risky prospect. Enforcer number 14, the Ivory Force. It would be a challenge to track him down seeing as nobody knew his true identity. Still, it was common knowledge that the Ivory Force lived somewhere in the Rord province. The man seemed to recall one of his associates mentioning something about several rumored sightings in the Candis East district.

There was something else to deal with first though. The man looked out across the marble slab where a figure slowly but unerringly walked directly at him. Weapons were strictly prohibited on the great marble slab, holy land that it was. Even the mercenary had left his weapons elsewhere. Doing otherwise would be a death sentence. Despite that though, the approaching figure brazenly held out a great halberd.

The mercenary had no doubt as to the man’s intentions and began pulling earth mana from one of his deepest aether wells. The mana traveled in a current through his aether space before reaching a particularly complex looking set of interconnected channels. As the mana was shaped into place within the technique, the mercenary emitted the result. A blade of stone slid seamlessly into his hand. The mercenary was never unarmed.

As soon as the sword finished forming, the two men rushed at each other, both hoping to end the fight quickly. The mercenary gushed force mana from another of his aether wells. It was one of his smallest wells, but when guided through a simple technique he had burned into his aether space, he could shoot the force from the soles of his feet, multiplying his speed and momentum many times over. In a prolonged fight, the mercenary knew their force mana would quickly dwindle, so, they began the process of converting pure mana into force even as they gushed that same pure mana through the first connector. In the moments before the two men clashed, the pure mana roiled out over the mercenary, turning his ever-present coating of pure mana into a visible distortion around him.

The mercenary’s reactions proved to be unnecessary though. His opponent used no techniques. Likely he was just an ordinary man, not even an arcaner. The mercenary struck him down, nonetheless. It was impossible to tell the difference between a normal person and an arcaner until they started using mana.

The conflict was over in an instant, but something was off. The mercenary’s instincts screamed at him, telling him he had made a fatal mistake. If the mercenary had time to consider his situation, he would have noticed the tattoo on the dead man’s forehead. The number 3. Even if he had though, he wouldn’t have remembered what it meant. As it was though, a horribly grotesque black arm emerged from the dead man’s stomach with a brutal punch that shattered the mercenary’s coating of pure mana through sheer force, caving in the mercenary’s chest and sending him flying back through the air.

The creature that pulled itself from the dead man’s corpse silently walked over to where it had flung the mercenary’s corpse and grabbed a fragment of marble. The creature paused for a moment. Having finished its intended objective, its will went abruptly silent. As it happened though, clutched in the creature’s hand was another piece of will, and so, it abruptly ran off into the night.

…

Candis East Highway

The Voidlands outside Maston

Kate knelt down beside a set of tracks. “Ogren tracks. Three of them.”

Myles remembered Ogren. They were the half-wolf, half-boor monsters that Mr. Habe had set loose on him just a month ago. According to Kate, they were also some of the weakest monsters in the voidlands.

Myles, Silas, and Kate had woken up at the crack of dawn and set a vicious pace, one that would have had them on their hands and knees if not for the brutal combat training they had endured the past month.

They had been on the road for hours now without a sighting of monsters. Their luck was no coincidence though. Kate had beaten her strategy into their heads the night before. When traversing the voidlands, it was prudent to follow the weakest monsters as they tended to avoid the larger, more dangerous monsters.

Silas had initially balked at the idea. It was hard to blame him. Willingly following monster tracks of any kind just seemed like an awful idea. Still, it was a small relief to at least know what they were following, what they were getting into.

The three set out again, racing over the shallow hills. The terrain was unnerving. At a glance it seemed flat, but in actuality the small dips and hills prevented seeing far in front of you. On occasion, they would see signs of monsters, small ones that left tracks that subtly crossed the trail they followed, and larger ones that had left destroyed terrain in their wake. After the first hour, Myles asked Kate to stop telling him what made the destruction. The information was more worrying than useful.

There was still a distinct tension among the group. Silas was doing his best to keep his personal feelings from coming into their exam, but Myles could tell his friend’s anger was simmering. Myles had trouble not taking his friend’s side. Silas, Jane, and even Mercy had all given Kate fairly overt hints and chances to apologize for her comments on their first day of class. The initial comment Kate had made about yellow bands had only been mildly offensive—except to Mercy—but her blatant refusal to apologize was too much.

Just as he was thinking, Kate glanced backward from on top of the next rise. “What are you guys doing? Get a move on!”

Silas gave a low grumble of irritation before following. Myles jogged up to the rise, only stopping briefly when Kate’s stance suddenly changed.

“Behind you!”

Myles looked behind him to find a whole pack of Ogren sprinting down the hill behind them. Myles moved to take position by Kate and Silas, taking up a loose natural stance just like Primrose had taught them to take when they needed to move into their combat stances quickly. Myles closed his eyes for an instant, checking his aether well. He saw that it was full and stood at roughly 150 units of mana.

It was time to see if he was ready to face a monster.