Boundary Break

 

“Those lenses should help,” Lyra Zann said as she rummaged about in a far corner of the room, waving a hand vaguely toward a pair of glasses sitting atop the desk.

The hidden library within the Chernlock Grand Archives had changed since the last time Darius saw it. The desk he had once used was now covered in books, as were the surrounding shelves and even the floor. Books weren’t exactly a strange sight in a library, but they hadn’t been here before.

Darius Vrox pulled a pair of tomes off a shelf. They were ancient. Beyond old. It was a testament to the care with which Lyra Zann maintained her collection that they didn’t fall apart in his hands. Unfortunately, as was the case with most tomes older than a few hundred years, they were utterly unreadable. The language within bore similarities to that of the modern day, but that only made the odd word that he did recognize all the more confusing.

Donning a pair of glasses provided by Lyra, everything changed.

The letters on the pages transformed before his eyes, rearranging themselves into coherent words and sentences. The tomes contained detailed accounts of ancient rituals and incantations, knowledge that had been lost to time. Every once in a while, an odd word or sentence stuck out, forcing him to parse the line manually, but as a whole, it was a wonder.

Lyra dropped another two tomes on his desk, partially leaning against them with a weary sigh.

“These should be everything,” she said. “All the records of what we did to enact our barrier between the realms.”

Darius looked up from the text, about to respond until he noticed Lyra through the enchanted glasses. He stared in confusion at the worry written on her face. Faint, glowing symbols were etched into her skin, flickering and changing with every small movement of the muscles in her face. The slight pinch of her lips read as irritation and the narrowing of her eyes meant annoyance. There was more to Lyra than just emotions. Beauty and care and effort. It was as if he were reading a book outlining her daily routine, from the lotion she used on her face to the meager exercise she performed to how much sleep she got lately—not much.

There were other symbols as well, more mystical symbols, the likes of which would be found in rituals. They weren’t translated, either because of the inherent necessity of the symbology of the shapes or because they were already familiar to him, he couldn’t say. Her eyes, especially, were utterly alien.

Lyra noticed his stare. Her lips quirked into amusement, temporarily pushing away some of her worries and fears. “Yes, yes. Those lenses do more than just see. I dare say that you are seeing more of me than I’d care for anyone to know.”

Darius quickly slid the glasses off, noting with some relief the way he saw nothing more than Lyra’s dark red hair and faintly luminescent silver eyes. “Sorry,” he said.

“It isn’t like I gave them to you with the expectation that you never see me, but I draw the line at staring.” She rested her hands on the stack of books on his desk, moving on before he could say anything. “As I was saying, these are the… well, they are the Calamity. Everything we did to enact it. I need you to go through them and identify all the portions my golden counterpart was responsible for. In addition, note down any parts that seem like they might come in handy for a god of construction and fabrication.”

Darius sighed as he looked around. There were stacks of books on the desk, some on the floor piled up as high as the desk, and more on shelves surrounding him. He hadn’t counted them. He didn’t really want to count. “I know my way around a library,” he said slowly, “but some of the archivists, curators, and other librarians here would surely be better suited for such a task. Not to mention more people would make for faster work.”

“Trying to shirk your duties onto others, Vrox?” Lyra said with a disappointed tut of her tongue. The silver in her eyes intensified for a brief moment before fading. “You are the only one here who knows of my true nature or the hidden library within the greater archives. I would prefer if it stayed that way. Besides, this does not need to be done today.”

Darius sighed, looking over the hundreds of tomes stacked up around him. He slowly donned the glasses once more and was swiftly assaulted by a wealth of information that he didn’t need to know.

“Now, now. It won’t be that bad. Just a little light reading,” Lyra said, laughing. “I’ll leave it to you.”

“Hold on… You aren’t joining me?”

Lyra paused in her retreat, looking back to Darius with pity in her alien eyes. “Not now. Perhaps later, if my other subject falls through. This is busy work, a mundane task that just about anyone can handle.”

“What will you be doing?” Darius couldn’t help but ask. He had grown a little closer to the avatar. Close enough that he had a bead on her personality even without the glasses letting him read her like a book. She wasn’t going to fry him without due cause and a question, even in indignation, wasn’t cause enough.

“You are carrying out the backup plan. If all else fails, you, Darius Vrox, will save the world through your efforts. But Arkk has an alternate solution.”

“Of course he does,” Darius said with a frown. “Something insane, I presume?”

“Oh yes. Quite.” Lyra grinned wide. “Fascinating, but insane. I’ll be investigating the plausibility along with his quasi-avatar of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Zullie, I believe is her name.”

Darius narrowed his eyes in distaste. Her again. What a menace.

“I know that look,” Lyra said, somehow smiling wider. “She isn’t anything you need to concern yourself with. You focus on those books.”

Darius sighed as Lyra walked away, looking around him once more. He sat down, pulled the nearest tome closer, and dipped a pen in a pot of ink.

He barely read a single page when a stray thought came to him.

“I miss field work.”

“I must reiterate, restate, and repeat that I am doing this under protest.”

“So you’ve said,” Arkk, exasperated, said with a sigh. “I’m surprised. I thought this would be something you would find fascinating.”

“Fascinating, yes,” Zullie said, folding her arms over her chest. “I can admit that. But that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, regardless of what you think of me after those recent… miscalculations. There are things even I know not to mess with and punching a permanent hole into Hell is certainly one of those things.”

A bright, bubbly voice came from the basin in the room, shining with silvery light as Lyra Zann spoke. “That is where I come in. Obviously, no one wants a tide of unbound demons to come flooding into our world. The goal isn’t to open a portal to Hell. No, no, no. We wish to prevent physical matter from moving between planes while allowing magic to flow freely.”

“I started to bring it up with you before,” Arkk said. They had gotten interrupted by all the war problems. Even now, he only had a few minutes to spare before he had to see to the defenses and offensive once again. “Speaking with Lyra only confirmed my suspicions. The demons killing their god is what caused the events leading to the Calamity. The god ate magic, or in some way disposed of it. The demons, in killing their god, took on this role.”

“Whether through ignorance, intentional avoidance of responsibility, or through the flow of magic breaking with the demon god’s death,” Lyra continued, “this mechanic of reality broke, leading to the steady accumulation and build-up of magic in other realms.”

“Long story short, we need to force magic down their throats whether they like it or not.”

“Possibly,” Lyra amended. “This is a theory. Not even, actually. Not quite a hypothesis. A guess. Logical and reasoned through experience and knowledge, true, but still just a guess at how the world works. Arkk, an interview with your demon might assist.”

Arkk scowled. “It is probably still at Elmshadow, snacking on the Evestani army.”

“See what you can do,” Lyra said. “In the meantime, Zullie, while Arkk confirms his guess, we need to discuss combining our abilities—and possibly those of Purifier Agnete—to create a new solution. The validity of whether or not the solution of breaking these boundaries is possible.”

Arkk paused, noting the continued scowl on Zullie’s face. Normally, she would have been upset until she started thinking for a few moments. Then her face would shift to one of interest before she threw herself into her work. Not this time.

“This doesn’t need to be done soon,” Arkk said. “I’m talking multiple years. There will be time to check over our work thoroughly.”

Zullie huffed, glancing aside. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “Just that, when the world is overrun by demons, I claim no responsibility.”

“I doubt many people will be alive to care,” Arkk said, shaking his head. Warning bells from the fortress stopped him from saying anything more. “I’ve got to go. Try not to kill each other while I’m busy.”

“I’ll try not to drown in the shallow basin,” Zullie said with irritated sarcasm.

“Good luck. We’re all counting on you.”

Drek, the young gremlin on the scrying team, hopped in place when Arkk appeared in front of him.

Arkk felt a bit bad for startling him, but he had been the one to pull on the link. He really should have expected a sudden appearance.

“Problem?” Arkk said, already leaning over the crystal ball. He must have been flicking through images as Arkk didn’t see anything particularly alarming, just the wide and desolate Cursed Forest.

“Two things,” Drek said, smoothing down the front of his tunic, which had ruffled when he jumped. “First, our uninvited guests are a short distance from Smilesville.”

“Did the evacuation finish in time?” Arkk asked, fearing the worst.

“Yes. With our aid, about half made it to Langleey Village and the other half are at Stone Hearth Burg.”

“Good.” That was a small relief. When they had first realized the enemy army would be approaching from the north via the river and that Smilesville was right in their way, Arkk had been in the Maze. Even warning them of the approaching danger had been a trial, organizing a few of Richter’s men to escort them had to wait until Arkk returned.

That had left them with precious little time to move them, but he did have tunnels and ritual teleportation circles set up around Fortress Al-Mir. The burg hadn’t held too many people and this was hopefully a temporary evacuation.

Langleey certainly lacked the resources to support too many additions. Stone Hearth was better off, but not by enough.

“If the enemy army makes no attempt at staging, they will enter our territory in roughly seven minutes at their current pace. They just entered the range of bombardment spells.”

A quick peek through his domain had Arkk frowning. Lelith had certainly taken his orders to heart. She was still flattening the crashed whale ship. The highlands portal had been reconfigured to connect to the Underworld once again, allowing those in his employ on the other world to return, bringing charged glowstones with them. Still, he should probably put a stop to her efforts now.

Not that bombardment had held up well when targeting the Eternal Empire’s army outside Al-Lavik. Fortress Al-Mir also lacked a few of the more esoteric bombardment rituals, the few that had worked.

An idea popped into his mind.

Their armor was enchanted. Magically enchanted.

And for the last hour, Fortress Al-Mir had been bombarded by magic-consuming eggs that grew worm-like monstrosities that also ate magic.

“Hold your second thought,” Arkk said, holding up a finger for a bare instant before he teleported himself across Fortress Al-Mir. He performed a quick examination of the entire fortress and, in short order, selected a target.

He and Agnete appeared side by side.

Quite a mistake as heat washed over him. Like he jumped over a bonfire. A follow-up teleport sent them to opposite sides of the room where, it seemed, Agnete noticed his presence and quickly dialed back on her temperature. A haze of heat still swirled around her, warping and bending the air.

She raised a hand toward the egg in the center of the room.

“Wait!” Arkk called out, teleporting her in place to face her toward the wall. Arkk made it just in time to watch a swirl of flames travel up her arms, coalesce in the palm of her hand, and fly forward in a tight line.

Agnete cut it off quickly enough once she realized she wasn’t aiming the way she had been aiming. It did leave a deep gouge in the wall, but given the state of the fortress as a whole, he wasn’t too worried about a little minor damage.

Arkk teleported back to her, relieved that he didn’t singe the hairs on his arm from proximity alone. “I need you to not destroy this one,” he said, earning himself a frown and a furrowed brow. “Keep it from causing problems, yes. Destroy the tentacles, yes. Leave the egg itself as intact as possible.”

“Reasoning?”

“I think we can use it. I saw what it has done to the Black Knight armor. That stuff is nearly indestructible and these things—and the worms they spawn—eat right through it.”

“Ah. I see,” she said, slowly looking toward the egg. A thinner line of flames severed two of the tentacles, both of which had been burrowed into the floor of the room. “They don’t seem smart enough to tell friend from foe. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Eggsactly.”

Agnete turned to him, eyebrows crammed together as she gave him a look.

“I… Sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he said, taking a wary step back. “Sorry. Keep it under control. I’ll be back shortly.”

Teleporting away in utter embarrassment, he reappeared in front of Agnete’s mechanical counterpart.

“Who,” he said. “I have another job for you.”

A long, thin whistle noise came accompanied Who’s turn. A sigh? Or was it excitement? It had a slight up-tilt at the end that made him think it was a positive noise.

“Were the targeting seats faulty?”

“No. Not at all. One airship is down. We’ll take down the other two shortly. But first… you have seen the worms from the eggs, yes?”

“I have.”

“Is there any way you can construct a non-magical way to contain them? Maybe a hollow metal sphere, if they can’t eat through it, or even a bucket with a lid.”

“A bucket,” Who said, tone flat and unimpressed. “You come to me for a bucket.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want on occasion. If it were up to me, you’d have nothing but interesting projects to work on. This is war, we all have to make sacrifices…” Arkk frowned, then continued. “If you want this to be a little more interesting, come up with a safe way to extract the worms from the eggs and put them into your container.”

Who tilted her head, gears turning behind some of her casing. “I shall need to examine a subject,” she said with hesitant interest.

“Agnete is protecting one. I’ll send you to her. When you want to return, you can pull on the link.”

“Understood.”

Who vanished from the foundry. Arkk did as well, reappearing in front of Drek.

This time, with little warning given, Drek still jumped in place, even despite Arkk appearing several paces away. The gremlin wasn’t as nervous as Luthor, but he still startled easily.

“You had a second issue you wished to raise,” Arkk said. Not a question, a simple statement of fact.

“Yes, Sir. It’s the remaining airships. They’re acting… oddly. Ever since we shot down the first.”

“Odd how?” Arkk asked, approaching the crystal ball to peer inside.

The current image was focused on the airships from underneath, looking up at their underbellies. Both sat there, hovering in the air. Without the ground adding context, it looked like they were utterly still. Neither moved, both were a short distance from one another. Nothing looked odd about either.

“They haven’t done anything. It has been five minutes since the last egg drop. Seven since the main ship unleashed its cannons.” Drek tapped his finger against the crystal ball, scowling at its contents. “I think they’re up to something.”

Arkk bit his lip. There were still a few eggs inside Fortress Al-Mir. But he realized that Drek was right. No new one had crashed down in a while. Priscilla, Dakka, and even Perr’ok inside one of the war machines were taking care of them.

“Maybe they ran out of bombs and eggs?” Arkk said with a hopeful note in his voice.

“Sir. We are not that lucky.”

“Of course not,” Arkk agreed with a sigh. “I… I think I’m going to try something mildly foolish.”

“Sir?”

“Lightning forced that airship away the first time around. It came at a bit of a cost, but Hale fixed me up. If they’re just going to sit overhead, with no army to protect the ground just yet and no attacks coming in…

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t try a second time.”