Keiran

Querit and I walked through the petrified forest together. He brushed a hand across the stone trunks, still textured like bark years later. “Amazing,” he said.

“I can’t take all the credit. I figured out how to make it work, but it was someone else’s idea initially.”

“Merging living stone and draw stone together to create…” Querit trailed off and gestured around at the forest. “All of this, in a matter of only a few years. This is a momentous achievement.”

“Yes, well, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. You wanted some trust.”

“I’m glad you decided I was worth investing in,” the golem said. “I know that we don’t know each other all that well yet, but I won’t let you down.”

“I’m not out anything yet,” I said, only partially lying. I was out a lot of mana already, but it would be worth it if Querit could help me stop Ammun’s plan.

“We both know that’s not true. But let’s talk about something else. You’re trying to reach stage seven, but you need to find a mana resonance point.”

“Yes, except I don’t think there are any left in the world.”

“From what you’ve told me, I would say that’s probably a good guess,” Querit said. “It’s hard to have a resonance without any mana in the first place. A place like this could form one naturally, but it would take decades at least, and not at all as long as you’re claiming it as your demesne.”

“Could we fabricate an artificial one here?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t be an issue to have it inside your demesne. If anything, it might be better.” The golem looked thoughtful as he considered that idea. “Greater control over the mana would eliminate the need for at least a few assistants.”

“Finding capable assistants could be a problem. I don’t know a single mage past stage two who isn’t hostile toward me.”

Though perhaps I could rope a few brakvaw into helping. They might not be technically proficient in advanced- or master-tier spells, but they were used to handling huge amounts of mana for extended time frames. Then again, other than Grandfather – who couldn’t leave Eyrie Peak – only their elders were good at any sort of spell work. And they all hated me, mostly because I’d killed a bunch of them.

“It may not be an issue at all,” Querit said. “You’ll see once I draw up the spell form. It’s… a lot for one person, but for an archmage… I think we could probably manage it with just the two of us.”

“Walk me through the principles. I don’t think anyone ever researched artificial mana resonance points back in my previous life. We just had some well-documented naturally formed ones to use when needed, which wasn’t all that often.”

“No, I can’t imagine too many mages reached stage seven, even during the Age of Wonders. Or, I guess, before the Age of Wonders.”

“You’re making me feel old,” I groused.

“You are old.”

“Older, then.”

Querit snorted and stopped walking. “I guess I’m also old now. A thousand years. It still doesn’t feel real.”

“Took me a while to wrap my head around it, too. I didn’t want to believe it at first. How could my magic have gone so wrong? But the proof just kept mounting up until it became inescapable.”

“I wonder how many other people have been cast adrift through time,” he mused.

“There’s Ammun,” I pointed out. “He managed to live for half a millennium, transformed himself into a lich for another half, then went into hibernation for another thousand years after that.”

“Given what he’s responsible for, I don’t think I could conduct myself in a civil manner if we ever came face to face.”

“I would pay to see that fight,” I said.

“Give me my mage-breaker frame, and it’d be worth the money.”

“I don’t think we’re likely to find too many more. You’ll be building your next one from scratch.”

Querit nodded glumly. “So much has been lost.”

We started walking again, not heading in any particular direction, just touring the valley. Petrifying the forest had destroyed the ecosystem here. Without anything green and alive, all of the animals had quickly abandoned the place, which left things eerily quiet. It was wholly depressing when I compared it to my memories of the Night Vale, but I was centuries away from recreating a place like that, if I ever did.

While we walked, Querit outlined the broad strokes of how he planned to create an artificial mana resonance point. Or rather, he outlined how he planned to have me do it. Essentially, it involved a series of highly technical divinations designed specifically to peer into the Astral Realm to get a template of the mana pattern there followed by a massive group ritual to massage the ambient mana back in our world into the same shape.

It sounded simple, in theory, but the spells Querit was describing weren’t any I’d ever heard of. They didn’t feel like they were beyond my reach, individually, but there was a reason dozens of mages combined their efforts to perform the ritual as the golem described it. There was no way I’d be able to do it all by myself. Querit could help, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

“We’re going to have to fabricate a lot of tools in a very short time span,” I said.

“Yes. I have the scripts recorded in my core. I’ll show you how to make the blanks. We can imprint the specific patterns on them once we have the template designed.”

“The way you described it, I suspect each mage used no more than one or two pieces to anchor the part of the template they were responsible for maintaining. We’re talking about fifty or more, all of which need to be calibrated fast enough to perform the ritual before the Astral Realm shifts and renders the template inviable.”

“Which, if we’re lucky, we’ll have at most six hours to complete,” Querit said. “And that’s including the time for the ritual itself.”

“I don’t think we can make it work – not like this. We’d need to find some way to lock down the section of the Astral Realm to give us time to work.”

“An enchantment on the Astral Realm itself?” Querit asked. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“No, it is. I’ve done it before, but not on this scale. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my workshop,” I said. “This is going to require some careful planning.”

* * *

As tempting as it was to push everything else to the side to focus on my own advancement to stage seven, I couldn’t afford to ignore Ammun any longer than I had to. While Querit worked on adapting the designs for a ritual that required three dozen people to something that could be performed by two, I finished putting the rest of the golems together.

There were eight of them, as I’d planned. Each one was heavily enchanted for both stealth and ward penetration. I’d put the majority of my effort into those enchantments, all of which were wrapped around a single pulsing black stone installed in each of the lizard-golems’ chest cavities. A thin plate of copper was placed overtop of that.

“Done,” I announced.

Querit looked up from the desk I’d provided him and examined my handiwork. “You’re sure the range on these is going to be enough? It’s a lot of miles.”

“I’m sure. Put the resonance project on hold for the night so you can get some practice operating four golems at once. I need to finish charging the spatial distortion fields before tonight.”

“We’re going in so soon?”

“No reason to wait,” I told him. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to other things.”

“Right. It just feels sudden, is all.”

“We’ve delayed long enough setting everything up,” I said. “Too many distractions. This is a priority and it needs to get done immediately.”

“Got it. I’ll go grab the controller frame and get it ready. When are we leaving?”

“Two hours, at most. I’ll have the spells fully powered in the next twenty minutes, then I’ve got to check over the beacons I’ve placed and make sure nothing’s changed since my last scouting session.”

* * *

It took a full hour to get everything into position, mostly because I had to teleport each golem to an individual location and confirm with Querit that everything was working on his end. We had a set of small scrying mirrors to keep in contact, but we were limited to essential communications only. I didn’t think Ammun’s divination squad would catch us unless we got spectacularly unlucky, but this was no time to take unnecessary risks.

We both started piloting our assigned golems remotely, slipping them through the wards protecting the facilities with slow caution. This was going to be what was simultaneously the least difficult and most risky part. Either I’d designed the ward-cracking enchantments correctly, or I hadn’t. There’d been no way to field test that part without running the risk of alerting the facility, so we were about to find out if I’d pulled it off.

I held my breath as the golem slipped through the unloading bay wards and into the facility. It passed through the ground, courtesy of a modified phantasmal step spell that definitely wouldn’t have worked if the golem had been flesh and blood. As it was, it put a ton of strain on its metal shell, so much so that I was briefly concerned I’d underestimated the distance the spell would have to travel. Three of my golems made it through with nothing but some stress fractures, but the fourth had a leg joint get mangled partway down.

It could still function on three legs, thankfully. The mission wasn’t sunk just yet. I’d just need to focus more heavily on that one to ensure it made it to its destination undetected. Fortunately, the layouts of all eight facilities were identical. At this point, we only needed to worry about the randomness of the human element. It hadn’t been feasible to spy on eight different locations to try to find a pattern that would allow us to sneak the bomb golems through, so we’d be improvising our approach.

I got two golems in without any issues. They clung to the top of the machines, nestled into crannies between the unfinished sections and waiting for my final order to deliver their payload. The other two had more problems, one because it was damaged and moving slower, and the other because when I got to the assembly room, there were eight people in there working to process some new parts that had apparently just come in.

“All four in place,” Querit’s voice whispered out from the mirror sitting next to me.

“Two in, two to go,” I replied. “One damaged during infiltration. One encountered a late shift working on the machine.”

“Understood. Standing by.”

I worked in tense silence for another few minutes, eventually guiding the damaged golem to where I needed it to be. For the fourth and final one, however, I couldn’t get a good opening. Too many people were coming in and out of the room or were working on the machine directly. In the end, I decided to have the golem scale the walls and crawl across the ceiling under its camouflaging magic. Once it was in position directly overtop of the machine, I readied the other three to drop their spatial bombs.

“Ready to go,” I said into the mirror.

“Confirmed. Ready as well,” Querit said back.

“Going in three… two… one.”

I ordered the golem to drop when I reached two, and all four to blow as soon as I said one. At precisely the same time, Querit’s panicked voice came to me. “Someone’s here! They know where I am!”

“Blow the golems and trigger your recall,” I ordered harshly as my own golems ripped apart Ammun’s machines.

There was no reply through the mirror.