Aether Engineering

Chapter 76

Sin’s Mine

The Base of the Ravine

A roar, deeper and more intense than anything Myles had heard before shook the stone overhead as Myles and Silas finally pulled even with the main group.

“We’re about halfway through.” Primrose commented. “We have to keep pushing. We must get to Reah before Paulo gets her to the tree. If he does, it will be too late.”

“They’re still in the mine I think.” Kate said against clenched teeth. “Reah’s hurting. She’s hurting in a way I’ve never felt before.”

Nobody spoke on that, just continuing to rush forward. Heavy breathing was coming from the entire group now, and Myles had a stitch in his side that was hurting with every step. That was just compounded by the burn on his stomach, and his other minor injuries. He tried to put all of that out of mind and just put one foot in front of the other.

At one point, a single ogren ran at them, hissing ruthlessly, and Myles had to step aside and deal with it. It was telling about his condition that the effort to catch back up was the bigger concern rather than the brief fight.

On and on they ran, and Myles’ feet began to ache from repeatedly smacking into the smooth, carved stone. Silas peeled off to deal with a monster on the other side. They rounded bend after bend, and the roar they had started hearing only grew.

“If I’m not wrong, then that’s an Urfernal.” Primrose spoke smoothly, apparently barely short on breath. “Dresden if it comes to it…”

“I’ll split off and deal with it.” Dresden said, his own voice interwoven with some light strain.

Myles didn’t have to wonder what an Urfernal was for long. As they turned another bend, they came into a large cavern with daylight on the other side—or at least what Myles took for daylight. What actually came through was corrupted. Sure, it was light, but that light was tinted a dark red and sometimes it curled unexpectedly into shadows.

In the middle of the cavern was the biggest monster Myles had ever seen. It had the look of a bear, but its muscles were proportionally far bigger than they should have been. Its dark fur was covered in what looked like some pale oil with globs of it condensing into spheres at random points. Its eyes were shaded in fire and lit by shadow in a pattern that reminded Myles very heavily of the roots he had seen eternally burning beneath Hydrabridge.

On its right flank, by its foreleg, a green hand ending in long, clawed fingers swirled around the fur. Myles tracked the claw back, looking at the purple—not tattoos, but designs, or maybe veins, since they were beneath the skin—that glowed, refracting against the floor. The stylized veins extended up its arms, beneath its plain shirt, and then out to the base of the goblin’s neck. From there Myles’ eyes moved up to the young face—it was a girl around his own age. Everything about her face was human except for the eyes which matched the behemoth beside her closely.

“You…seek…to...interfere…as…usual.” The girl—no goblin said, pure mana moving out and around her in a pattern distinctly like commuted armor. The commutation didn’t quite work as it should though with some of the mana tearing away from her, bursting into sparks of flame that shriveled into shadow. “Humanity…is…ever…obstinate. Always…forgetful…that…you…live…for…our benefit. Your…friend…will…be…an…emissary…of…peace.” The goblin coughed into its hand producing blood, the muscles in its throat writhed, seemingly repairing themselves.

A second passed before the Urfenal moved, opening its massive maw. “THE BETTER…TO…EXERT…MY…WILL. MY…GROWTH.”

A drop of sweat rolled down Myles’ spine, and he realized he and Silas were the only ones who had stopped moving. Primrose, Ivory Force, the paladin, Dresden, and Kate, with Primrose’s hand pulling her along, had all charged straight ahead, ignoring the two-headed monologue.

As he watched, the entire group became invisible. The Urfernal moved with terrifying agility, blinking back to cover the mine’s exit and swinging a massive paw in front of it. The paw hit something invisible, and one of those pale spheres burst into flames that Myles could feel across the cavern. The paw rebounded off of whatever it had hit—Myles couldn’t tell with his wind mana—crashing into the wall with an explosion, sending shrapnel everywhere.

A burst of force mana went off under the goblin’s feet, and its fist moved forward towards the empty air with a flash of flame-riven shadow. It impacted against something, and a moment later, the light mana bled off Dresden’s form as he became visible again, bent around the goblin’s fist. Fortunately, Myles could see plenty of pure mana between the fist and Dresden.

Myles took one of his two remaining batteries from his bandolier, loading it into the shuriken construct. As he did, he ran forward, circling around to the right side of the cavern.

Dresden’s leg came up, trailing a heap of force mana, and the goblin leaned back, bending at the hip until her hands touched the ground. Dresden’s attack missed and the goblin returned fire with more force mana, and a kick of her own that took her somersaulting backwards. Dresden raised his arms in a guard, commuting a ton of pure mana into them that absorbed the kick. He was still pushed back by the impact—right into the path of the urfernal’s descending maw.

As the urfernal’s jaws started closing, Myles squeezed on the handle of the construct, ejecting the battery onto the ground, and rotating the handle to activate the commutation function.

Dresden pushed his arms out with a blast of force mana, resisting the closing jaws for a brief moment before blasting himself clear of the behemoth’s descending bulk with yet more force mana. As the beast slammed into the ground, some of the pale spheres along its stomach burst with fiery explosions that shook the whole cavern. More shrapnel exploded out as the stone floor was blown to pieces.

Myles shifted the handle of the shuriken construct into a set of nocks without a function and loaded his last battery in. His only shot for contributing to the fight had to be the goblin. Myles motioned to Silas who nodded, ready with spear in hand.

As Dresden flew away, the bulk of the Urfernal blocked him from the goblin’s view. He threw a hand up mid-flight and evoked what looked like two boxes of force mana, stitched together with a thin layer of pure mana, clearly a technique of some kind.

The two boxes soared over the Urfernal until one of the boxes bored through the pure mana, hitting the other box. The two boxes sharply changed direction, forming into one big bolt of force mana that rammed into the goblin from overhead, catching her unawares. Myles saw it break right through her pure mana, slamming into her shoulder. Myles let out a silent cheer.

With the amount of force mana in that bolt, Myles knew his shoulder would have been blown into pieces along with most of his body, but the goblin was clearly made from something else, its shoulder merely vibrated from the impact, popping loose from its socket.

Still, it went to the ground in pain, focusing its efforts on putting its shoulder back into place. Dresden was busy dodging blows from the Urefernal as it threw its bulk at him however it could, but Myles saw an opening. Rotating the handle of the shuriken to the stun function, evoking a line of pure mana, and throwing with everything he had.

Myles threw the shuriken from the goblin’s blind spot, but she must have been evoking wind mana around herself because she spun around, bringing her good arm around awkwardly to swat the shuriken out of the air with a burst of force mana. It wasn’t enough though. The force mana tore the pure mana apart, but there was a lot of pure mana. The commuted armor covering the construct came from a battery charged with more mana in it than Myles’ entire aether well held.

The shuriken continued on, its course unbothered by the huge blow it had taken. It careened right at the goblin’s head before exploding with sound mana that turned into ice mana. Just like the bandits, the goblin’s commuted armor dropped the moment it lost its focus from the thunderous sound, leaving it defenseless as the mana turned into ice. The goblin dropped back down to one knee. Its muscles tried to move but faced with a sudden drastic change in body temperature, the muscles just seized up instead.

Silas was there just as the goblin fell to her knees, thrusting his spear forward right into her chest. He used the same footwork they had drilled time and time again for the palm thrust. As the spear pierced the goblin’s skin, Silas activated it, unleashing a massive fireball. As he did, Myles evoked all of his lightning mana, sending it right at the goblin’s head. He felt it strike home.

Rest in peace, he thought, feeling more sadness than accomplishment. You deserved better.

Myles turned back to the Urfernal which was still pursuing Dresden as he focused all his efforts on escaping its grasp. Even as Myles watched, Dresden evoked a series of the same technique he had used on the goblin, each blasting away from him. As he threw himself backward to barely clear a swing from the beast’s arms, all of the techniques changed direction at the same time, crashing into the monster’s thick neck from six or seven different directions.

The urfernal dropped, blue and black blood coming from its mouth. This time, Myles didn’t keep his cheer to himself.

The cry was hardly out of Myles’ mouth before he felt three things happen with his wind mana. The first was three figures breaking through the edge of his wind mana as Jane, Mercy, and Seth all ran into the cavern. The second was the goblin standing up with a quarter of her torso missing. Strands of muscle moved around, rapidly reattaching themselves. “Aghighighihihihiiii” The goblin laughed, her eyes burning, and her voice dripping with hysterical pain. The third was the urfenal.

It propped itself up with its forelegs, pushing its maw wide, and breathing a firestorm. The flames rotated around the cavern, and Myles moved into the iron turtle, evoking massive amounts of pure mana to defend himself. The fire mana evaporated his defenses, and Myles hastily evoked more and more.

By the time the fire let up, the whole cavern was aflame, Myles’ pure mana well was sitting below a third full, the goblin had blasted herself at Mercy with force mana, and all of the pale oil that was in the Urfernal’s fur was now burning with intense flame, turning the massive monster into a moving fireball, a moving fireball that had grabbed Dresden in its jaws.

The goblin reached Mercy while Myles was still recovering. Mercy reacted well, dropping into the iron turtle, but the goblin wasn’t aiming for her. She swiped out with a hand surrounded by force mana. All of the tremendous force smacked into the haft of the spear Mercy was holding. Unlike the shuriken construct, Myles and Jane hadn’t thought to add a commutation function to the spear, so all of that force smashed into the construct.

The spear construct flew from Mercy’s hands, flying across the cavern. Myles watched it go, saw it bend on itself from the force of the blow. Will it still work? The question ran through Myles’ head as the spear clattered against the cavern wall. He wasn’t sure. He thought it would. Most of the evocation functions were in the head of the spear not the haft, but the whole spear was warped, the boxes of influence from each rune might not be pointing at the right place anymore. Even if it did work, Myles knew, the construct would be junk afterwords.

All of that ran through Myles’ head as he charged at the massive flaming behemoth. It was a simple calculation. He might die right here and now from running at the thing. The entire remainder of his pure mana would barely be able to survive the intense blaze that surrounded it, a single hit, even a glancing blow from one of its paws would spell a very grisly death for him. On the other hand, every one of them was guaranteed to die if they couldn’t save Dresden.

Dresden struggled in the beast’s jaws, using force mana to push back, manipulating the flames it tried to breathe on him, so they spewed out its nose instead. The fire that burned around the beast chewed into his pure mana with every passing moment though. Dresden couldn’t manipulate that because it wasn’t fire mana, it was actual fire fueled by that pale oil in its fur.

Myles raced forward, and Silas came by his side. Before Myles could even think of a plan, Silas’ commuted armor grew thinner and thinner, until it was gone. What are you doing, Myles thought in a panic. Oh right. A moment later, commuted mana ran along Silas’ skin again, but it wasn’t pure mana, it was water mana.

The commuted mana was much thinner around Silas than it had been before. The reason for that wasn’t hard to grasp. Normally, Silas wouldn’t have had enough water mana to even pull this much off, but he had taken the contents of his pure mana aether well, including his commuted armor, passed them through the channel he had delved through his aether space, and through the converter there. There would be loss there, Myles knew, but unlike his own lightning mana, water mana was a direct subtype of pure mana, meaning for every two units of pure mana he sacrificed, he would get one unit of water mana in return.

Myles pulled to a stop just beyond the reach of the blaze that surrounded the urfernal. It was at that point that he stopped evoking wind mana. It was a tough choice to make. Wind mana gave him an invaluable extra sense, but right now, Myles needed all of the pure mana he could get, and like water mana, wind mana was also a direct subtype of pure mana.

Even with the decent ratio of two to one, and a wind mana well that was still about half full, only a trickle of pure mana came through the connected channel and into his pure mana aether well. His wind well was simply much smaller than his pure mana well, a fact that he cursed.

The urfernal, like most monsters, had little concept of strategy or restraint, so, instead of retreating, it moved forward. A massive paw swung towards Silas as he rushed in. The water mana that was commuted around him worked wonders as a defense against flame, but it was next to useless as a defense against anything else.

Myles had nowhere near enough pure mana to block the urfernal’s blow, but he did have enough to redirect it, just enough for Silas to slip through. Myles evoked a massive slip of pure mana, sending it not at the paw, but at the joint in the beast’s foreleg. It was the same technique as Myles had spent hours training, the first part of the slip cutter, the tenth step of the core arcaner’s way of the fist, just on a much larger scale. Unfortunately, that scale came with a much bigger cost, Myles’ pure mana plummeted to below a tenth of his total, leaving him with dregs, but Silas was through.

He bounded up to the behemoth’s jaw, using footholds of pure mana, scraps he must have saved for this very purpose. The water mana around him boiled from the intense heat, but it was a highly efficient defense from the flames. As Silas reached Dresden, his commuted mana thinned slightly, and with a palm thrust upward, Silas evoked water mana right into the behemoth’s nose.

The beast cried out, its jaw loosening slightly. Dresden took full advantage of the change, pushing his way from the monster’s jaws with a burst of force mana. He flew backward from the impact, grabbing Silas from the air as he flew.

The urfernal roared its defiance, bodily throwing itself at Dresden. Silas scrambled away, his mana all but depleted. From his side, Dresden drew his curved blade, and as he did, a wall of force mana solidified in its wake. Solidified, not just appeared.

Myles had no idea how that worked, but he was certain the mana came from the sword, not Dresden himself, meaning it was a construct, and one whose function Myles couldn’t even begin to puzzle out. The urfernal’s charge stopped cold, its enormous head slamming into the wall of force mana and rebounding back. Dresden began evoking more of that force mana technique he had used before.

Myles turned away from the fight. There was nothing else he could do. Either Dresden would take out the urfernal, or they would all die. Myles and all of his friends together simply didn’t have the firepower to even wound the thing.

Near the entrance to the cavern, Jane, Mercy, and Seth were fighting for their lives. Force bolts spun out from the goblin, seeking their targets only to be stopped or redirected by one of Myles’ friends evoking pure mana. His friends were being battered with no real offensive options available to them.

Jane evoked a shield of pure mana over Seth, but a moment later it was broken through by the swing of a green arm. Seth dropped to the ground under the punch, landing his hands firmly behind his head with a grimace, and heaving himself back into the air. His legs locked around the gobin’s neck, and he pulled through, using the muscles in his core to throw.

The goblin ignored him, letting herself be thrown while flinging out force bolts. Most of the bolts were again redirected, but one found its way to Mercy’s leg, and she fell to the ground with a cry.

Myles clenched his teeth and pounded his way across the cavern towards where the shuriken construct was still laying on the ground, a thin veil of pure mana still moving around it. When he was steps away, he heard a warning from Jane. “Myles duck!”

Myles dropped to the ground, and a force bolt shaved across his back. He moved to keep running, but between him and the shuriken, there now stood a green figure, illuminated from inside by purple energy, eyes aglow with flames with a sad, almost pleading look on her face.

Myles faced down the goblin with nothing but the dregs of his pure mana, and he did the only thing he could think of, evoking a long, thin sheet of pure mana, and leaping onto it, knees first. It had only been a few days ago when he had slid at Silas like this, and they had both wound up tumbling into walls face first. Since then, though, Myles had been through fight after fight and gained more combat experience than he had ever hoped for. Just a few minutes ago, he’d used this odd characteristic of pure mana to slide through a pack of ogren, surely, he could—Myles flipped onto his back as he reached for the shuriken construct.

The world tilted upside down, then sideways, then well, Myles wasn’t sure what direction at that point. He ignored all that, focusing on his arm, and the hand extended. He desperately grabbed out, and by some good fortune, his fingers found a wooden handle.

Myles recovered, bounding up, construct in hand. A fist was flying at his face, force mana and sparks of black and red flying off of it. In the span of no time at all, Myles saw Reah running beside him on his first trip through the voidlands. He saw Kate returning to a wagon, her face an expression of pain, showing him the bundle of herbs that meant he would survive. He saw Silas beneath Hydrabridge, jumping in front of a massive monster, willingly putting his life at risk, knowing how much carnage it would cause to those living and working above. He saw Jane working beside him, building the construct that had saved his life more than once, a smile on her face, and he saw Dresden—wait no. He actually saw Dresden in front of him, his sword moving, and blocking the punch.

A moment later, he was gone, leaving a wall of force mana to block off a flaming hulk of muscles while manipulating half a dozen bolts of force away from him, and evoking focused shields of pure mana to block a flurry of punches. With each step, he sent more techniques into the air, and they formed a thick ceiling of their own, hovering over the fight ominously.

Myles evoked the last of his mana into a thin cord of pure mana, and threw the shuriken, not at the goblin, or even at the Urfernal, but at his partner. Jane gave a start as she felt the shuriken flying towards her, but she didn’t flinch. It still had pure mana around it, so, it wasn’t like she would be impaled if she fumbled the catch. He didn’t have to worry about that though. She caught it in her hand, popping in a battery as she did.

The construct was already set to stun, so, Jane whipped it right back around, evoking another line tying it to the goblin who was still fighting Dresden.

Before it could reach is destination, Dresden finally ran out of mana, instead of being redirected, force bolts pounded at his commuted armor. It held under the onslaught, and Dresden’s techniques fell to earth, pounding the urfernal in one spot on its back until one of the bolts broke through, digging a hole right into the behemoth, and destroying its core in an explosion of mana. The goblin wasn’t spared either, taking blow after blow that must have shattered the bones in its body.

It blasted itself forwards with force mana though, one clawed hand curled with strength. Dresden evoked pure mana, but it was torn through. He moved his remaining commuted armor into a precise defense, but that too was torn through. And the clawed hand went straight through his chest.

Not a moment after Dresden fell to his knees, the shuriken construct went off, and the goblin, her arm still being pulled from his chest froze motionless. From nowhere, Silas rushed forward, bent spear in his hands and rammed the twisted construct into the goblin’s torso, unleashing another massive fireball. Mercy, Jane, and Seth all attacked with a fervor, unleashing mana at her.

A tense moment passed, but the goblin didn’t get back to her feet, and neither did Dresden. Myles rushed to his side along with everyone else there.

“Do me a favor.” The man grunted, blood coming from his mouth. “When you get Reah back, when you get back...read this.” He reached into his jacket pocket, producing a letter. With that, Dresden collapsed to the floor. His hands were cold.