"And what exactly is that supposed to represent?" Leonidas asked dryly as Omegas entered the room, empty except for a sigil on the ceiling that lit the place. Leonidas stood before a group of men and women sitting around a long wooden table, who were staring at their hands in their laps as he scolded them like children.
"It's Rome, we know it's goddamn Rome, I figured that out when I got the thing. The reason I even called you here was to tell me what the hell the rest of it means! And why are you crying?"
The last part was directed at Omegas, who was wiping the last of his mirth from his eyes. He just shook his head.
"I-" he broke out into laughter, unable to keep it in. "Tell you later. Not-"
The sentence was interrupted by another laugh, hilarity bubbling up from inside.
"Not the place," he managed to finish. "So, what's up?"
"The finest minds in Nisi have gathered for me to realize that they know fuck all about anything." Leonidas said, staring unblinkingly at the foremost of the group before him. "One riddle from the ancients is giving them trouble like an elephant with indigestion. Even you could take a crack at it and give me the same answer."
"I don't like the way you phrased that, but I'll take it as a compliment," Omegas said. "Can I have a look?"
Leonidas snatched a piece of parchment out of the group leader's hands, and held it out. Omegas came closer and took it from him. The material rolled naturally inwards, as though it had been kept like that for centuries. It definitely looked old enough. Omegas read.
'The empire is risen
The constructs stand
The emperors know
The power of their hands
The greatest of truths
Collected in one land
The first to begin
The quest to understand
The knowledge of power
The fear it demands
The torches are lit
The building is damned.'
He looked up.
"Is it just me or does this sound like they're talking about the future? It reads like someone telling you how something's going to happen."
Leonidas looked at the others in the room with a distinctly unimpressed expression.
"None of you said anything about that. I'm amazed." He looked back at Omegas. "Go on."
"Just a guess, but…" Omegas frowned. "Is it Rome? It's the only place that was really involved in our magic back when we still coexisted that I can think of with an emperor."
"Picked up on that one," Leonidas said. "Simple enough. As much as they're idiots, at least they know history. Anything else?"
"Place was burned down," Omegas shrugged. "That's obvious. Figuring out which building it was is impossible. Sounds like the burning was deliberate and the people who did it were afraid of the building or something. I can't think of anything like that in Rome."
"Well, isn't that just impressive," Leonidas said through gritted teeth, addressing the table. "That sounds just like what you said. With an extra observation, too."
"Don't be too hard on them, Buzzard," Omegas said without looking up. "We're all only human."
"They call themselves the greatest minds of Nisi. And then they don't prove it. The opposite, in fact. What are they even good for, then?"
Omegas looked up, and flashed him a smile. "Math is always nice. Where would we be without the hypotenuse of a triangle?"
One of the assembled scholars snickered at that one. Leonidas immediately rounded on him.
"Here to joke around, are you?"
The man looked nervously at his colleagues for support, but found none. He looked back at Leonidas, and cleared his throat.
"Um, no sir. I… I might have an idea? For the answer to the riddle?"
Leonidas glared at him. "Then say it sooner, you moron. What are you thinking?"
"Um. Can I have the document, your majesty?"
Omegas handed it to him. The man… well, not completely. Still something of a boy. He looked younger than Omegas, that was for sure. His hair didn't even have any gray in it, like the rest of the wise men assembled here. His hair was still brown and curly, and bounced as he frantically perused the writing for whatever it was he was looking for.
"Ah, here. It says, uh, that the knowledge of power demands fear, and something about the 'first to begin the quest to understand'. Sounds like the pursuit of knowledge."
He looked up at Leonidas, and his eyes were immediately riveted to the parchment again. The Commander was attempting to bore holes in his head with that gaze.
"So, uh. The pursuit of knowledge, right? So the building that was burnt down had something to do with knowledge?"
"Will you please," Leonidas said, "get to the damn point?"
"Um. Sorry. About that," the young intellectual said. "What I'm trying to, what I'm trying to say is… could be it be a school? Or a library? Or something? Some kind of forum for scholars?"
"If we're talking about libraries," another one interrupted, glancing at Leonidas warily, "the first one that comes to mind is the Library of Alexandria. It was burnt down a number of times, according to a lot of different people."
"The hell does 'according to a lot of different people' mean?" Leonidas snapped. "Was it burnt down or not?"
"It was, sir," the older man said quickly. "The reports just differ a bit. Some say it was an accident, others say it was deliberate."
When Leonidas said nothing, he continued desperately. "Invasions, you know? Anything can happen."
"Shut up. I'm thinking."
The man immediately snapped his mouth shut and stared at the table.
Omegas grinned. Leonidas had really put the fear of, well, Leonidas in them.
Magids in general didn't like to believe in gods, not when magic was around to elevate them to the same status, but the Commander was right in front of them. People found themselves believing quite strongly in not getting thrown through walls.
"Alright," he said at last. "We'll see if the Library thing is right or not. And if it isn't, all of you are going to be dragged out into the streets and tied to a pole for a week."
Everyone at the table found something else to believe in, and began to believe with all their strength.
Leonidas looked at Omegas.
"Prince bastard. You stay. The rest of you can go."
There was a mad scramble for the door.
=0=
"Ah, damn," Alphas suddenly said out loud.
The king and everyone else in the room looked at him.
"Problem?" someone asked. Alphas didn't remember his name. He was a young talent, already a lieutenant in the army.
"No, it's nothing," Alphas replied. Oh yes, his name was Olympiodoros. Gift of Olympus.
"Alright then. As I was saying, your majesty," a general in the ground forces said, "repairs have already started. Kleon has been assigned to developing safehouses to be constructed for the general population, and our developers are working on figuring out how Myre neutralized the shield to construct better ones. Currently, they think some kind of-"
"Whatever they think is undoubtedly wrong," the king interrupted from the head of the table, "unless Larisa has passed the word on."
The general frowned. "Larisa? What did she find out?"
The king leaned forward, lowering his voice. Alphas understood that subtle power play, and stayed put, putting all his effort into listening, as everyone else was forced to lean in to hear what the king said.
"I'm sure you all understand," he said, "that this is a very, very important development. None of you are to breathe a word of it to anyone."
The room waited, holding their breath. Alphas crossed his arms, ears straining.
Alphas," he said, nodding to the aforementioned, "knows what I am going to tell you. Myre revealed that trump card himself as they fought."
The majority of the table looked at him with grudging respect. Olympiodoros, however, had only unfiltered awe in his eyes.
"Now, I am going to say what we know. This knowledge can, under no circumstances, leave this room, or upon my word, you will be executed for betraying your king."
A deep breath.
"Myre is an antimagid."
The whispers raced through the table in an almost physical wave. Alphas saw the mouths as they began to move, one after the other, as though each word was a catalyst for the same action in the person adjacent, like slow thunder spreading through the room.
It may not have deafened any, but it was every bit as startling, every bit as terrible.
"Now," the king said, raising his voice for a moment to return everyone's attention to him, "this is, understandably, the worst possible outcome. On the other hand, it means that before Myre, we are all playing on a level field. What will decide our victory over him is not our magic, but our strength and our wits. His soldiers, however, may be beaten with ease. For now, this is the extent of the situation we must deal with. Base all your ideas, all your plans, around that."
The doors creaked, and Omegas entered. A moment later, they banged and shuddered open, and Leonidas came in with his hands in his pockets, his leg flowing seamlessly down into the next step of his walk as though he hadn't just kicked open the doors of the royal court.
"Right," Leonidas said, glancing at the various expressions. "You told all of them something. Mind if I know?"
"Myre is an antimagid," the king informed him pleasantly.
"That so?"
Leonidas grabbed a glass from in front of the nearest person, and poured water from the jug on the table. A long gulp of water which drained the glass, and then he set it back down with more force than was probably necessary.
"I don't care."
The look in his eyes burned.
"That scum is going to burn in hell for taking this from me," he said, pointing to his eyepatch, "and as long as he's human we can kill him dead. He takes our magic from us? Doesn't matter. All we need is sword and fist."
He glanced at one of the people seated.
"And some of us need brain," he continued, ignoring the indignant splutter from the unfortunate target of his gaze. "But in the end, Myre dies."
Silence reigned in the room for a long few seconds until the king sat straight up, and cracked his knuckles. Like the man himself, the sound was huge. The king was the incarnation of a boom.
"Well put," he said, eyes glinting. "And now, with all the members we need here, this meeting can continue in full force. Leonidas, your seat is here."
He pointed to the seat right next to him.
"Please make sure to trade your glass with Neophytos," he continued, with a little smile peeking out from under the beard. "Omegas, your seat is over there."
Leonidas sat down next to the king, while Omegas sat down beside Alphas.
"He ripped the shit out of the scholars, man," was the first thing he said, whispering gleefully. "You should've been there."
"What," Alphas whispered back, "are you talking about?"
"I'll tell you later," Omegas said. "It's amazing."
=0=
"So," the king said, heaving a deep sigh as he sat back in his throne, "what was troubling you, Alphas?"
"Hmm?"
"I recall you saying something along the lines of 'Ah, damn.' Or have you forgotten?"
"Oh, that," Alphas said. "No, I remember. Our friend the chief, however, had a bit of an important question that I think he forgot to ask you."
"Is that so?" the king said. He put an elbow up on the armrest of his throne, and rested his cheek on his knuckles. "Do tell."
"His father visited every few years, yeah?"
"Yes. I presume he wanted to know why? How?"
"Spot on, uncle. I'm kind of curious myself, to be honest," Alphas said.
"The vikings hold their roots to magic. That is all there is to it. The nature of their connection, even I yet do not know, the relationship is so old. But I suspect their own beliefs, their own mythology, might hold a clue. Try to ask him the next you meet, will you?"
"Sure thing." Alphas turned to Omegas. "And what the hell did Leonidas do?"
Omegas grinned. "Alright, so they couldn't completely solve the riddle for whatever's going to lead Myre to the First, yeah? He was going literally insane, yelling at them and all that-"
"Ah." The king sat forward, eyes twinkling, fingers laced. "Let me hear this too."
=0=
A knock on the door.
"Come in," Myre said without looking up from the letter he'd been sent. He didn't need to. Only one person he knew knocked like that.
His suspicions - well, not even that, his certainties - were further confirmed when the door opened and that ice-cold presence flowed in like winter's fog.
"Hello, Eurenym," Myre said, treating him to one of his calculatedly cheerful smiles before returning his attention to the letter. "How are you?"
Eurenym quietly set something down on his desk.
"I made one," he said in his slow, soft tones. "You can't use it, the magic in the shots will just disappear. Give it to whoever you want."
Myre looked up, peering around the letter to see something that looked like an ingot on a stick.
"And this is?"
"It works like the magic cannons. From your attack," Eurenym said as he turned to leave.
"Ah! But thank you. You didn't have to."
Eurenym said nothing as he closed the door behind him. Myre set the letter aside, next to a stack of the thinnest parchment he'd ever seen. Orgoze had found a kind of writing material matching the one he'd requested some days prior. It came from Egypt, apparently.
Ah, well. Shouldn't be too hard to replicate the creation process.
As for what Eurenym had brought in, however…
Myre picked up the gun, the longing ache of antimagic reaching out, attempting to devour the magnificent power held in Eurenym's little creation. Myre held the hunger at bay as he examined the device.
Of course he'd made one. Myre had told him to, even if Eurenym himself didn't recognize the order. A little poke at his ego, just the right twist of his words, just enough to make Eurenym want to prove him wrong.
"I do not believe you have enough in you at the moment to power one", wasn't that what he'd said? And yet that sequence of words, so nonchalant and unassuming, so casually carefree, held exactly the right strokes of manipulation, had the most delicate structuring to earn Myre what he wanted, without making Eurenym feel like he was being used.
A pet project. An ego-fueled construction. That was all he needed to think of it as.
And Myre had given him the thought.
It was one of the most standard of his techniques, yes, a typical scenario for working the minds his way, but every time he did it, Myre felt that little electric thrill.
He'd just welded a small, thick piece of rectangular metal to a metal pipe. Undoubtedly there were sigils at play, but it was just so satisfying to see the simplicity of the invention.
'Point', Eurenym had written on the end of the pipe that hadn't been welded on. Myre stepped up to the window and opened the latch. Immediately, cool air washed over his face, specks of ocean spray darting in.
Myre pointed the miniature cannon.
Nothing happened. He checked it again, aware that the antimagic was growing increasingly restless. He wouldn't be able to hold it much longer.
Ah, there it was. At the welding point, a lone symbol, with a line leading up along the metal rod and into the opening.
"Press," Myre murmured, looking at what Eurenym had scratched into the metal.
He pointed the little weapon out of the window again, and tapped.
Again, nothing.
The antimagic was rioting now, bouncing against the iron walls of his control.
He'd figured it out, anyway, so it didn't matter.
He tightened his control, hauling the leash to the critical point, drawing it back to the barest instant before it snapped back in a wave of force, and within that moment of atomic precision he aimed and tapped.
A beam of white as thick as a pencil, mixed with other phantasmic colours, darted out for a moment before evaporating into wisps under the devastating hunger of the antimagic that exploded from Myre in a burst of elastic strength, recoiling, snapping back so hard from being pushed down that it catapulted itself outward in a rapidly expanding ball, half a kilometer in every direction.
And just a little way off, Eurenym gasped and clutched at his chest, gripping the fabric so tightly his knuckles turned white as the teeth of Myre's aura latched onto his soul, draining his magic like a Bloodstalker, feeding on the energy of his life with animal fervour.
"..." he managed through gritted teeth.
The door to Myre's office opened, and Myre himself walked out, his every step smooth, the motion polished as always.
"Sorry about that," Myre said politely, fingers curling under his arm. He lifted Eurenym with barely any effort, and pressed the gun into his hands.
"It had a bit of a reaction with me, unfortunately," he explained, his brilliant smile telling Eurenym the complete, unadulterated truth.
Ah, so Myre wasn't afraid to lie to his face. Eurenym leaned against the wall, that terrible feeling fading, the gun held loosely in his fingers.
Myre lied to his face, and let him know. Wasn't that something. You'd never be able to pick out the lies otherwi-
"I didn't lie, Eurenym."
Eurenym's head snapped up. Myre gazed back thoughtfully, with a quiet smile on his face.
"Trust me enough for that, at least," he remarked reproachfully, and spun on his heel. The door opened, and shut, leaving Eurenym staring at the dark crest burned onto the door.
"It's called a gun," he murmured.
"Thanks for informing me," Myre called, his voice muffled by wood. For the second time in as many minutes, Eurenym started, normally half-open eyes unusually wide with shock, and rightfully so.
No matter the things he was going to do after the next four days, Myre would remain the most inhuman of the two of them.
All Eurenym could do was build the condition.
All Myre had to do was live it.
=0=
The man walked in without knocking. Myre didn't even respond for the next few seconds, before he finally looked up from a sheet of some material he was folding.
"Ah, hello, 'our best rider'," he said. The smile he wore now was calm. "According to Caird, that is. I notice you didn't knock, but we both know why that is. As much as you'd like to draw attention to it, I know what to expect of you."
"I'm surprised you think you know me that well," the man replied.
"Ah, but of course I do," Myre replied, folding the sheet again. He looked up with another variety of smile, this one tailored to look genuine. "Marauder."
The man didn't move. "That isn't anything special. Everyone who is anyone knows that about me."
"Ah?" Myre said, running his thumb along the sheet, flattening a crease he'd made. "You are correct, of course. It is quite easy to see why you are the one that survived."
This time, he frowned. An uneasy expression that looked quite disturbing, with what had become of his face.
"That information, too, runs in certain circles. And you, I know, are undoubtedly part of them."
Myre sighed good-naturedly, and flipped the sheet.
"It takes quite a bit to satisfy you, doesn't it?" he quipped, somehow making a kind of hood out of the material as the man watched. "Have it your way. I'll let you know what to really expect of me."
"Tell me, then," the man said, still standing patiently. "Put your chief into play. The move, of course, only compromises you."
"Chief?" Myre said, laughing a little. "You misunderstand. The chief, as you say, is always on the board. What I offer you now is yet only a pawn. Or, as you would understand it, a hunter."
And the frown deepened.
"Here," Myre said, once more folding and smoothing what had become of the sheet.
And he handed the man a folded Night Fury with a single tailfin.
Myre put his elbows on the desk, fingers steepled, and rested his face behind his hands.
"Now," he said pleasantly as the man recoiled, "your reason for visiting."
He tilted his head, and allowed a bit of predation to sink into the smile. "Or must I tell you that as well?"
=0=
"Alright," Hiccup said. He laced his fingers together, and stretched. Knuckles cracked in succession.
Hiccup picked out the first of the books before him, records of Berkian history. "Time to figure out how our 'new old' basement was built."
In the dim, steady candlelight, he began to read.
