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April 26th
The radio had sustained so much damage, Eldren wasn’t sure how they salvaged any of it. Temple’s own forces had done a number on the ’ship it had been on board, and the less than graceful landing hadn’t done it any favors. The casing holding it together wasn’t usable, so he started by taking measurements to fabricate a new one.
Working off the remains of the front panel, he could see the interior wasn’t any better. Every single component on the inside was damaged in some fashion, and none of it was salvageable. Gears were bent, wires ripped to shreds, tubes busted, the crystal that powered it was shattered beyond recognition. He whistled as he took inventory of the damage. Everything inside was in need of repair, but the radio had been built with severe damage in mind. It was amazing it had survived at all, but the engineers had done their job.
Eldren took the time to remove the rest of the shattered panels on the outside and worked loose a gear that he examined with a smile. He compared the damaged component to a few from the items Temple had sent up with the radio. It looked like their parts would work after all.
“Can you fix it?” Merethyl asked from behind him.
“I think I can. It will take a lot of work, and normally I’d have help, but it should be doable.” He looked at her. “You have any experience with engineering?”
“No. My work is restoring old tomes and making sure new ones don’t degrade.”
“They wanted Phae for that, but she had no interest. And neither Orso nor Abraham had any interest in making her.” His chest hurt at the thought of her dead, or one of Aurelius’s men, and he couldn’t decide which was a worse fate.
“We’re taking a detour,” Merethyl said.
The sudden change of subject startled Eldren and he glanced up at her. “Why?”
“Someone spotted one of Aurelius’s ’ships nearby, and Orso wants us to see what they might have found.”
Eldren gripped the gear in his hand so hard his knuckles lost their color. “Was Phae among them?”
“We don’t know. Just that it wasn’t one of his privateers.”
“And if she is?”
“Let’s not borrow trouble we can’t pay back. First, let’s go see what they might have found.”
“And if she was there?”
“What’s that human phrase? ‘Don’t put the cart before the horse’, isn’t it?”
“We also say, ‘don’t ask for trouble’, but Phae never paid attention to that one either.” He looked up to see Merethyl looking at him with sympathy.
“We’ll be there in about an hour. Get your gear on. Simone doesn’t know what we’re going up against, but she wants us to be prepared.”
***
Eldren checked the bandolier one last time, touching the cartridges almost reverently, and walked down the gangplank with Merethyl behind him.
“Give me a minute.” Merethyl motioned for him to stay where he was and started looking around.
“What are you looking for?”
“Signs they were here.”
Eldren looked around. “Could they have landed anywhere else?”
“Maybe. But Simone said it was unlikely.” Merethyl gestured Eldren over. “They definitely landed here. Someone went this way.”
They made their way through the forest, swatting the foliage aside as Merethyl tracked someone. “It looks like there were two of them. Maybe three.”
Eldren blinked, his eyes misty. “Anything else you noticed?”
“One is leaving more tracks than the other.” Merethyl paused. “There were definitely three.”
“Phae has no outdoor skills. One could be her.”
Merethyl looked at him, something unknown flitting across her face. “Let’s keep going.”
They came to a stump, and even Eldren could see the signs of someone resting on the log next to it. Merethyl went over and picked up some long blond hairs and short brown ones.
“That’s Phae’s hair.” Eldren paused to let the tightness in his throat leave. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“Looks like they got back up and kept going.” Merethyl hesitated before drawing her cutlass.
“No. Phae isn’t a bad guy.”
“We don’t know what to expect. It might not be her. They might have left a trap behind, too.”
Eldren shook his head. “I’ll draw when it’s time. And not before.”
Merethyl opened her mouth and then closed it. “I’ll stay in front,” she said finally, and started walking again.
Eldren looked up as they approached the abandoned Temple location. The brass fixtures had greened with age, and the windows didn’t reflect light the way they would have when this Temple was thriving because of layers of accumulated grime. But it was Temple, and Temple was home. Eldren’s chest ached at the symbol of hope. It was almost a relic of days gone by for all that Temple had stayed the same. Eldren followed along, not quite feeling the ground under his feet, as Merethyl tracked them through the thinning forest. This part Eldren had an easier time following
“They broke into the room here,” she said.
Eldren looked at the broken lock on the armory door. “Phae never was one for subtlety.” They went through the things, Eldren wondering what she had been looking for, as there was nothing unusual stored in the armory. “Doesn’t look like they took anything.”
They explored more, Eldren trying to soothe himself with old tales of Temple’s rise to power. Temple was the only beacon of hope against Aurelius, and had multiple connected locations that, mostly, had stayed out of Aurelius’s way. A lot of that was the shielding they used to block not just physical matter but vision. The older Temple locations didn’t have that, and a few fell before they perfected the blind sight protecting them. The towns that had survived had to rely on other means to pass unnoticed, to a lesser effect.
“They broke in here too,” Merethyl said, looking into the treasure room.
“Looks like they took something,” Eldren said, noting where the missing box had been, judging by the square that was free of dust and debris.
“What now?” Merethyl asked.
“We check the places Phae didn’t.”
Merethyl gave him an odd look, causing him to smile recklessly.
“I didn’t see any sign she showed them all the secrets.” Eldren all but ran out of the room, heading for the back of Temple. The room he had fled to when Sanctuary fell would be in the same place; all Temple locations had the same layout after all. He felt lightheaded as he led Merethyl along, winding up in the room where he had left Phae. The world spun again, and he stopped moving, closing his eyes. She had promised him she would catch up to him, and instead died making sure he escaped. His lungs burned, and he forced himself to breathe. “Damn it, Phae,” he said, punching the wall next to him. “You promised.”
Merethyl jumped at the outburst. “Are you okay?”
Eldren dashed away a few tears. “Yeah. The door is at the back here.” He walked up and activated the locking mechanism, causing it to swing open. Merethyl gasped. “I escaped through this door,” he said, chest tight and face tingling.
A hand touched his arm, gently squeezing. He looked to his left to see Merethyl standing next to him, a soft look on her face. “You made it through once before, remember? And you’ll make it through again.”
Eldren opened the door. Next to the door were a few old packs, though not much older than some of the ones at Sanctuary. Rifling through the top one, he produced an old lantern and a few bottles of spare oil. He filled the lantern and lit the wick with one of the few spells he ever mastered that wasn’t engineering related. Sparks lit up the dark and smoke puffed up, and the wick was lit. He turned to look at Merethyl. “Ready?” She nodded, and he stepped into the dark.
“Do you feel something?”
Eldren concentrated. There it was, a faint humming different from the magic leeched into the ground of Temple. It felt so familiar, but it wasn’t until now he realized he had only felt it before at Sanctuary. “What is it? I don’t recognize it.”
“The protection ward guarding something.” A crease formed between Merethyl’s eyebrows. “But it shouldn’t be humming like that.”
He looked at her. “You didn’t say there was anything here being protected.”
Merethyl looked at him, eyes flat with fear. “I wasn’t told about anything being here.”
A tingling rush swamped Eldren. “What do you think it is?”
“It could be anything. I can’t say for certain.”
“Maybe we should come back. See if we can find out first. Simone can always bring us back here, and we need to collect the ’stones first.”
Merethyl looked around her for a few moments before looking back at Eldren. “Sounds good.”
Eldren turned back and headed toward the entrance and herded Merethyl through the door, extinguishing the lantern before putting it back.
Once back through, they started back towards the ’ship. Eldren resisted the urge to scream Phae’s name. Life wasn’t fair, but that was all he could think as they walked back to where Simone waited.
He was so lost he didn’t notice they were back at the airship until he ran into Merethyl. On the deck, they found Simone waiting. “What did you find?”
Eldren explained what they had seen.
“There might be something here,” Simone said, stroking her chin. “I think you made the right call. There is much magic out there that we abandoned in the search for better offensive magic to fight with. We don’t know all that’s been lost or forgotten in the one hundred fifty years since Temple started pushing back.”
“I thought he came into power two hundred years ago,” Eldren said.
“This phase of whatever he’s planning is about a hundred fifty years old,” Merethyl said. “The elves knew something was amiss two hundred years ago, and that’s when Temple started gathering resources because everyone knew it was bad. No one knew how bad, though, and in the mad rush to bring him down, Temple abandoned some of the older magics to focus on offense.”
“What were the elves doing then?”
Merethyl looked downcast. “I wasn’t alive when that happened. Everything I know I’ve learned second hand. The elves did nothing because originally, Aurelius was only seeking elves to gather the location of the ’stones back then. The elven people were worried he wasn’t being altruistic, so they weren’t forthcoming with him. Unfortunately, it extended to the rest of humanity, and that’s what the fighting has been about. Aurelius was once human, after all, so could we really trust humans?”
“And then a hundred years ago, they took your prince or whatever.” Eldren’s tone was harsh. “I heard that story, at least.”
“It was longer ago than that, but the elves were so wrapped up in trying to hide the ’stones that it took a while to get the message out.”
Simone clapped her hands together. “We can regret history all we want, but it’s not today’s problem to solve.” She fixed both of them with a stare. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I have to reach my elven contact and see what’s going on. I think it’s best to do that at Harbor. That way, we can update Orso at the same time.”
“We can come back when it’s safe,” Simone said. “We need to know what’s underneath in order to make sure it’s something we want at all.”
Eldren licked his dry lips. It was quickly becoming apparent how much he despised not knowing what something was or what to do about it. “If it’s something we don’t want?”
Simone looked at him. “Then we figure out if we need to destroy it. And if we do, we figure out how.”
