Aether Engineering

Chapter 75

Entrance to Sin’s Mine

The Base of the Scar

As Myles and his dormmates fell into line with the group, he was feeling distinctly helpless. Everyone here was leagues stronger than him and his friends were. From Primrose to Ivory force to the paladin that ran alongside them, and even Dresden. Fighting together, Myles doubted he and his friends could put up much of a fight against any of them. What use did they even have here? He might have stopped running and just turned around if Primrose wasn’t sounding like she was prepared to murder Reah.

“Should we really be taking them along with us?” Dresden asked, gesturing towards Myles and his companions.

“Yes.” Primrose spoke, her voice brooking no doubt. “We’ll need every scrap of strength we can muster to deal with Paulo, and we can’t slow down. If they can drag for us, even for a little bit, it’s worth risking them.”

The Ivory Force gave a grunt of acknowledgement. “Kate’s going to be especially invaluable if we want to track down Paulo and Reah. We’re not likely to even find them otherwise.”

Myles clinched his fist at the murderer’s words. The man knew Kate’s name and was practically demanding she do something she very much had trouble doing.

“Myles, Silas, and Jane…can you three drag for us.” Primrose spoke the command with uncharacteristic gentleness.

Myles peeled to the outside of the group’s formation as he ran, starting to evoke wind mana around them. He felt his mana interacting with Silas’ and made sure to keep his own in a tighter sphere. The last thing they needed right now was for him to let go of his focus.

“Do you see that darker spot in the rocks?” Dresden asked, pointing as he ran towards one spot at the base of the enormous line of mountains they were charging towards.

Myles gave his acknowledgement. “I see it.”

“That’s the entrance to Sin’s mine.” Dresden spoke as he ran, words coming out quickly. “Fair warning before we get there, the place was refurbished a few years ago, and you’re going to find some of the decorations disturbing. Stay on your toes anyway. The place serves as a pass into the scar and its going to be filled with monsters.”

Myles nodded, but Silas had a question of his own. “If it reaches into the scar, and I’m guessing that’s where the burning tree is, why wouldn’t there be a military base there. Wouldn’t we want to keep the monsters from breaking out.”

Primrose spoke up. “There is, Silas, but…”

Before they could speak further, there was a flash of fire, and a series of what looked like huge explosions. They were too far to really see what was happening, but their view was unimpeded. The flashes lasted for about a minute before they died down.

“They lasted longer than I expected.” Dresden whispered, emotion lining his voice. “We can’t let that courage go to waste.”

Myles kept moving forward, overwhelmed by the sight that was getting clearer and clearer. The base was in ruins, buildings set aflame, and walls torn to pieces. Nearly eight minutes after the explosions, they reached its cobblestones.

There were maybe a dozen people here, and everyone Myles saw was beyond helping. Several of the soldiers were slumped over large aether constructs which were clearly intended to be pointed at the pockmarked wall that dwarfed the base but had somehow been rotated to point in the opposite direction. It was clear they had put up quite a fight, but their opponent was Paulo.

“We’re pushing through.” Primrose gave the command, and Myles ran on.

They passed into the mine, and immediately came across a horde of monsters some fifty strong—a horde of dead monsters. Each wound Myles saw was delivered directly to a vital spot. There was a minimum of carnage, and yet, every monster lay dead. The efficiency of it was startling.

“Let’s hope they slowed him down.” The paladin cried as they ran through.

They weren’t even through the carnage when Silas shouted out. “We have incoming—Ogren—at least thirty.”

“Keep them off us.” Ivory force snarled. “We can’t afford to slow down.”

Myles peeled off to the right and started feeling the ogren with his wind mana. They were approaching in small packs from just about every side tunnel he could see. Myles scowled, realizing the group wasn’t going to get clear in time.

The first pack of ogren that made it into their tunnel made straight for Dresden. Myles had to sprint at them to cut them off. Even still, some of them were just going to run around him. The moment stretched on, and Myles came upon an idea. He applied that bit of inspiration immediately, evoking a thin patch of pure mana on the ground. Without slowing down, he ran right onto that mana, leaving his commuted armor around his feet. As expected, he slid, so, when he stopped to execute a leg sweep, he didn’t stop, slipping straight into the pack and bowling them over.

Dresden and the rest didn’t stop, beating a rapid pace in pursuit of Paulo. Through his wind mana, Myles could tell that Silas and Jane were still here with him, but they were busy handling ogren on the other side of the tunnel.

Instead of righting himself from the spin, Myles pulled the shuriken construct from his harness, and executed a palm thrust—or rather a modified version of a palm thrust that plunged one of the construct’s spikes directly into an ogren. That was one monster down with another four getting back to their feet in this pack, and at least one more pack coming.

Myles changed the pattern of his commuted armor, removing the mana from the soles of his feet. The pure mana surface he had created still felt odd since it was absorbing the impact of each step instead of acting as a proper floor surface. Fortunately, the ogren had to deal with the same problem, and it slowed them from getting up right away. Myles took advantage to deliver another palm thrust, killing another of the beasts.

The three remaining monsters struck with a fury, but Myles snake stepped between and past them. Before they could recover from their charge, Myles leaped into the air, twisting tightly, and landing feet first into one of the creature’s heads. It crunched beneath his foot. Upon landing, a quick leg sweep sent the two remaining beasts to the floor again. Before he could press his advantage, the second pack arrived. Warned by his wind mana, Myles was able to awkwardly spin away and retreat, but now he had seven ogren moving to surround him.

It was at this point that Myles was forced to rely on his commuted armor. He just didn’t have a better answer for dealing with so many at once. Horns and tusks chipped away at his mana as he moved through the group. One ogren leapt at his throat and Myles evoked a tiny slip of mana to redirect it past him. He launched the arm holding his shuriken backwards and drove a spike into its neck.

The fight continued with Myles employing all of his skill and training to take as few hits as possible and deliver precise attacks in turn. The number of monsters slowly dwindled, and thankfully, others didn’t rush in to take their place. By the time Myles straightened up after delivering one last palm thrust, his pure mana well which had just finished replenishing from the fight with the bandits was down by a third.

Silas and Jane were both finishing with their opponents as well though Myles did give Jane a hand. Silas had a spear, so, he was able to kill the beasts without much difficulty, but Jane was effectively unarmed, so, she’d only been able to take down some five of the beasts.

It felt like minutes had passed since the fight began, but in reality, it had only been about thirty seconds. As the last of the ogren fell, Myles looked up, and he could see the rest of their group disappearing around the corner in the distance.

Myles, Jane, and Silas moved off in pursuit. It was grueling, the pace the group was moving at was already quite fast. Trying to catch back up after having just fought a veritable horde of ogren stretched Myles and his companion’s endurance past its limit, but they forged on, their breath coming in ragged heaves.

They didn’t come across the entire group when they rounded the next corner, but Seth and Mercy were fighting another pack of ogren and a pair of cinderwolves that had apparently found them as well.

Mercy must have been given the spear that Kate was carrying, because as they approached, she snake-stepped around a fireball from one of the cinderwolves and finished it off with a spear gleaming in her hands. For his part, Seth was showing why he was considered the most skilled of the dormmates as he fought off four ogren, a fifth already lying broken, largely without the use of a hand.

As they passed them by, Jane peeled off to provide support, but Myles and Silas just ran straight through. Another bend, and the main group still wasn’t in sight. They did see a poster though, the same variety that Myles remembered seeing as a child for teaching basic things like the alphabet. This poster wasn’t for teaching the alphabet, instead it had pictures of a child hiding from a variety of monsters with one showing a child evading a pack of monsters by climbing roots that were depicted with a familiar looking red and black flame.

In the same area, there were dozens of sleeping pallets stacked on top of each other with plentiful red stains. Surrounding all of that was a metal fence with three locks secured to it.

“Deprios,” Myles muttered as he passed.

As they maintained their sprint, they came across hundreds more pallets and Myles’ feeling of sickness increased even more. He imagined Reah, as a little girl, curling up in one of those pallets, trembling, waiting for the next time she was forced to march into the scar. Had she done everything that poster had shown, hiding from monsters here—climbing among the roots and branches of the burning tree—the very source of monsters, her only defense, her ability to hide.

Primrose had spoken of putting children out of their misery while she was covered in purple blood. With every palette, and every poster they passed, Myles grew more certain. So many children had died here, taken from their families, from where Myles had no idea. Those who died may have been the lucky ones. That goblin they had seen, Dresden had said it was human once.

Myles was gripped with anger, anger for what must have happened here, but also with the terrible fury that Reah had made it through all of this, and somehow lived. Lived, and now she was being taken back.

The fury kept Myles going, and as they rounded another bend, Kate and the rest came back into view.