Aether Engineering

Chapter 77

Ruins of the lost Capital

Beneath the limbs of the burning tree

Myles pulled away from Dresden’s body, feeling intense emotion for the second time that morning. He couldn’t put his thoughts into words, but right now, he didn’t have to. He followed his friends as they moved outside of the cavern.

As Myles left the mine, the first phrase that popped into his mind was: that’s not possible. He was torn on where to direct that phrase though. One option was the pair of fighters that dueled in the sky. Another option was the horde of at least thirty goblins that were being held at bay by two people, but Myles’ mind quickly settled on the tree.

Calling the burning tree a tree was like calling a stone a mountain. In fact, the tree was handily bigger than the mountains that stood all around it. It would have towered over them if it wasn’t burrowed down in a crater that itself probably could have fit several mountains stacked on top of each other.

It looked like the tree was tens of miles away, but overhead, branches sent the shadows around them burning and writhing. Roots burst from the ground—or rather the knee-high pile of ash that coated everything. The roots varied wildly in size; the smallest ones were as thick as Myles was tall while the larger ones were too large for Myles to fully comprehend them as the same thing he might trip over in a park.

In the unworldly shadows and light, ruined buildings of elaborate design pierced the landscape, pushed up against roots; strewn along the mountainside.

The worst were the pods, pulsating among the branches and roots of the tree like so many tumors. As Myles watched, a monster emerged from one of the pods high above, clawing and scratching its way through.

Myles stepped out, his head swiveling at the sights. That was when the pressure hit him. It came from his aether space, or rather above it, as an outside pressure pushed and crept in. The pressure was subtle and slow, but it was a type of invasive that Myles reacted to instinctively, pushing back on it with a great deal of willpower.

As they made their way down a steep slope, Myles began to see the fight in the sky more clearly. Unsurprisingly, it was Primrose and Paulo. They were surrounded by countless pieces of what looked like glass, some the size of boulders, others smaller than Myles’ fingertips. The shards swirled around Primrose, serving as both a means of defense and offense. Every second, dozens of them clashed with the stones her opponent had evoked around himself. Between the two, blasts of fire, ice, water, and a half-dozen other things clashed. Leaping around inside that entire storm of techniques, the two former auroras fought hand-to-hand, faster and more skillfully than Myles could ever have dreamed possible.

Below them and further up the slope, the paladin and Ivory Force fought back the swarm of goblins while Kate struggled to make progress through the ash, slowly plowing up the slope with Reah thrown across her back, laboriously deflecting the occasional bolt of force that made its way towards her.

Myles and his friends rushed down the slope, not to help fight of course. Even with full strength, they would have struggled to fight against one of the goblins below, and they weren’t at full strength. They would probably struggle to block a single attack even if they all worked together. Myles’ three aether wells were bone dry, not a scrap of mana in them. No, they rushed down that hillside, and helped Kate move Reah.

Every moment out in the open was a grueling affair. Myles was already bone-tired and wading through knee-deep ash while helping to carry Reah was no easy feat, but the invasive pressure was so much worse than that. With every step, it drained Myles’ willpower just to keep it away. By the time they’d pulled Reah back over the threshold of the mine, and that pressure eased, Myles collapsed to his knees.

Not far behind them, they heard the hysterical laughing of goblins mixed with the sounds of crackling fire mana, human shouts, and more than a few things Myles would struggle to describe. Even still, it took Myles a good long while before he managed to swivel his head around to take a look. When he did, he saw something large falling from the sky towards them.

It didn’t take long for Myles to identify what was flying at him. It was Primrose, moving at a pace that would kill him when she landed. As she flew, she left a trail of glass shards that knocked each of the techniques that pursued her out of the sky. Layers of pure mana began manifesting around her, slowing her descent into a controlled fall until finally, she landed on her feet, sliding backwards into their midst and evoking a titanic shield of pure mana over the entrance even as Ivory Force and the paladin made their own fighting retreat inside.

Myles made to get to his feet again, but he stumbled, his legs feeling weak and lethargic to his commands. Then something gave and Myles found himself falling towards the ground, his vision narrowing in on itself.

…

“We stand here in memory of Dresden Vangar, in the hopes that the wisdom he gained in life, and the wishes he yet carries for those of us who remain be honored. We stand here that his greatest will for each of us may become a part of us.” Sister Liza’s kind voice spoke, seeping into the small group of people in Maston’s graveyard.

Myles felt the words wash over him, a letter lying open in his hand. In his throat, a lump the size of an apple refused to be swallowed down. He hadn’t known Dresden long, but the man had been a warm, gentle hand on his back for every turn he had taken, and that hand hadn’t left when the going got tough. It had stayed, and so, quietly, Myles made the third vow of his young life. One to my father who I never got to know, one to my mother who left too young, and one to a big brother whose protection never wavered.

Myles looked down at the letter in his hand.

You may have wondered why a mercenary given the highest recognition of skill from the empire itself settled down in a backwater province. As a soldier, I wondered the same thing, and unlike those with more sense than me, I asked her. For some reason, even though the questions of others had been turned aside, mine was answered. ‘To cut down a tree’ she told me. It took years longer before I approached the tree for the first time at the minister of education’s side, but when I saw a little girl, curling up in his arms like it was her first time ever being hugged, and I saw an enormous city cast into ruins beneath its shadow, I sought Primrose out again. I never did learn why she had set a goal so misaligned with reality, but I gladly served as a blade for her to use to pry out what knowledge we could. This letter is my ‘just in case’ because all of you never agreed to be trained for what Primrose intends you to do. I made my decision, but you deserve to make your own.

Myles mouthed his vow quietly, hearing murmurs from his friends who had all read the letter too. The words were a form of respect for the man who had fought and sheltered them, but each of them had thought them over for a long time. “I vow to cut down that tree.”

End of book 1