Chapter 14

A Former Legacy

I froze as I couldn't see a thing anymore. I felt the plateau's rock underneath my feet, but it was the only thing. The wind was gone, the sound of the bird chicks absent, the heat of the sun a fading memory on my clothes.

Sheraine had let go of the One Power. "What happened?" There was an odd echo as she spoke.

"There was a boobytrap after all." I grimaced and let her and Gemiad go so they could stand on their own two feet again. "It was meant to capture enemies and transport them instantly. Unfortunately, I didn't get any information about where to."

"We have a problem then. Because I can't embrace the One Power anymore. I can … feel it. Just can't … reach it." She was gasping.

"Air's thin," Gemiad said from somewhere in the dark. "I can't channel either!"

I was gasping as well, though whether it was for air or because I was losing my fight against my own panic, I didn't know. I'd led us straight into a trap made by people who had dealt with things even more dangerous than Godbound. And when I called upon a miracle to free us from the need for air, at least for a little while, I felt the other jaw of the trap close in.

It was as if I was trying to swim upstream, as if I was walking against the storm. An empyrean ward? The book said those were rare, reserved for the most important locations. Where were we? Why was it so dark?

No, needed to focus. Take on one problem at a time, and the empyrean ward didn't stop a godbound, it only made it more difficult. But I had the reserves to pay this toll.

Breathe free!

The miracle took shape, and all our breathing eased. That ward had doubled the cost of the Miracle. I could only perform perhaps two more before I was tapped out entirely. "Just breathe. You won't need air, not for another quarter of an hour. We'll be out of here before then."

"And where is here?" Sheraine asked.

"I don't know. A cell, maybe. That trap was meant to capture enemy soldiers and … weapons. But we might not be on your world anymore." I didn't want to believe it, but my insight into its working told me the teleport mine could actually do that. It worked by switching two locations and everything inside its reach, bypassing any need to move through Uncreated Night. The downside was that it burned itself out, and the destination couldn't be changed after the mine had been made.

"We've been transported to wherever the people that made that device wanted to bring their prisoners to. One of the Former Empires. I'm going to get us back to your world. I promise." With that, I steeled my resolve and finally committed.

I reached down inside my power, into the well of my soul. I flew through a vast ocean of potential, filled with constellations, not of stars, but ideas. I couldn't see them, not most of them. You couldn't really see an idea; you experienced them.

The ferocity of Beasts ran hot through my veins, the crisp frost of Winter nipped my scales, and Wealth's hunger filled my mind with gold and dragged me closer, I had to fight against its gravity only to tumble through Time, every blink a tick, every breath a tock. Tick, the moment to ask her out has passed, tock, you hold your first child in your arms.

With a shudder, I broke through and escaped. The book said nothing about this, it should be the work of a moment to bind a new Word to myself. And yet, as I'd moved through Time, I knew that not a second had passed in the real world.

I searched for what I was looking for. It shouldn't be hard, it couldn't help but catch the eye. And there it was, blazing away all on its own. I rocketed towards the Word and opened my mouth, swallowing the Sun whole.

Light filled me, fire filled me, truth burned me. A scream brighter than a lighthouse spilled from my mouth and the darkness was annihilated. In a flash I saw we were trapped in a metal sphere, some sort of titanium-silver alloy stained dark gray by additives, the ground underneath our feet was only flat because it had been teleported right along with us.

The light winked out, though I could still see everything perfectly fine, and I dropped to one knee as my heart pounded in my chest.

"By the Light," Sheraine said, blinking rapidly. "What was that? What did you do?"

"I empowered myself, I'm … more now." I stood up and flexed a new mental muscle.

Behold the Sun

Light as gentle as a spring day chased away the dark once more, allowing my traveling companions to see our surroundings. And because it just came with the Word, it bypassed the empyrean ward.

"More what?"

I couldn't help the grin. "Yes. Just didn't expect it to be quite so spectacular. Or painful." I took a deep breath to settle my nerves, but it did little. Another reminder that we had little time before we'd be back to asphyxiating if we didn't escape very soon.

Then I realized that Gemiad was nowhere to be seen. How? I spun around, but there was no door, no exit at all. Just me and Sheraine, the rock from the plateau, and the copper alloy chest. "Gemiad? Gemiad, where are you?"

"What?" Sheraine looked around now as well. "She was just here."

I pushed with my power, looking for the path out of here, the same one that must have been used to take her, but I felt nothing. There was no echo, no path to trace, there was no way to leave this place except teleportation and nothing had been teleported out of this room in a very long time.

But how did they take Gemiad then? Unless … nobody had? I ran over to the footlocker and threw it open, a wide-eyed Gemiad stared back at me with her knife bared. "Ron?"

"I'm here," I said, kneeling down but hesitating to reach for her. I opened my mouth to ask how she had gotten herself into this position. Had she fallen in? Though, why close the lid if it had been accidental? "Come on, I'm getting us out of this place," I said instead, offering my hand.

At last Gemiad blinked. "Yes. Yes, please." She took my hand, and I pulled her out. The locker was big, but she still had barely fit. Only once she stood on her own two feet did she sheathe her knife.

I saw that the chest had been empty, except for a single sheet of blue, plastic-like material that had rows of strange symbols on its surface. I quickly stashed it in one of the pockets of my coat.

Gemiad looked around the featureless room. "How are we getting out?" It was a perfect sphere, only a few burrs and slashes here and there marked the presence of previous occupants.

"I'm going to make an exit."

Walking over to the nearest wall, I rapped my knuckles against the metal. No real flex, it sounded thick. And something had already tried to cut their way out, but hadn't gotten any further than scoring some deep scratches into the surface.

I had taken the Sun word because it was one of the most powerful Words and I didn't know what to expect once we got out of here. But to get out of here, Sun wouldn't work. Instead, I had to fall back on a Word and Gift I'd used plenty already.

I only had a general sense of what this material was, something far superior to any tank armor back home, as resistant to force as it was to magic. But I didn't use anything as simple as mere magic. And while creating something like this alloy using Transmute was beyond me, ironically, nothing stopped me from turning it into something worth far less.

Metal becomes wood!

It still wasn't easy, the empyrean ward forced me to double my commitment and the material itself resisted me as well. I felt the Effort slip away. Rather than returning in about a quarter of an hour, I wouldn't get it back until tomorrow. Which meant I had only a little Effort left.

But before my eyes, a section wide enough three people could walk through it at the same time turned into the warm yellow-orange of pinewood. Still had to break through and given the amount of material I had to transmute, it had to be half a meter thick.

With a shout I dug my fingers into the wood and started tearing parts out. If only I could revert to my draconic form, I would have broken out in a moment, but while this room was big, it wasn't big enough for that.

However, this still counted as a form of labor and all my labors counted for thousands. Gemiad and Sheraine had to step out of the way as chunks flew through the air, the smell of pinewood growing thick.

Then, I punched through and I felt a gush of air rush past my arm and into the chamber. I let out a breath in relief, there was air outside. "We're almost out," I announced as I redoubled my efforts. And even before my first miracle ran out we were standing outside of our cell. Though, looking at it from the outside, perhaps tank might be a better word.

It was one of many, rows of tanks all along the circular wall of a vast chamber so big the light I was emitting barely reached the far end. There were several rows below us and many more above, as if we were in a gigantic tower that could have easily housed an aircraft carrier.

All of it, except the tanks, was made from a steel alloy stained black. There were no markings that I could see, but there were light fixtures, even if they were dead. The air smelled dead, not rotten or decaying, but as if it had been circulating inside a completely sterile environment for centuries.

Some of my Effort came back now that we were outside the tank and apparently, outside the area covered by the ward. A moment later, the smell of flowers appeared, even more jarring in this setting.

"That's better," Sheraine said as she summoned a light orb of her own. Though it flickered and seemed to bob in the air rather than hoover steady. She frowned at it. "Still feels like I'm trying to suck air through a reed."

"That might not improve while we're here. It might be more about how … far we are from the Wheel here."

"The Wheel is everywhere," Sheraine said, shaking her head, only to freeze and then grimace. "You said we might no longer be on our world?"

I nodded and looked around the chamber again. I noticed there were no railings or other safety barriers between the wide platforms and the central void. "Yes. That trap exchanged locations, so strictly speaking, distance is entirely meaningless. And a place like this wouldn't have been built on your world. Not before that Former Empire had conquered it first."

"You spoke of that before. What do you mean by a former empire? How … far are we from our home?"

I let out a long breath. "I'm sorry, I don't know. I know a little about a couple of Former Empires, barely more than a name, but the trap hadn't been made by any of them." I had gotten a little about who had made the mine, or should I say what. It had been made in a factory belonging to something called the Foundry of Exchange. Or maybe that had been the name of the factory, the paradigm behind it had just been too alien to really grasp.

"As for what a Former Empire is, imagine a people with the knowledge and wealth of your Age of Legends. Except they never forgot how to wage war and even elevated it to a level beyond anything from the War of Power. Balefire wouldn't be considered the ultimate weapon to them, just something to equip the troops with and hope it wouldn't be immediately countered."

Sheraine glanced at Gemiad. "Even the Forsaken feared balefire enough they stopped using it. It threatened to unravel the Pattern."

I nodded. "And the Former Empires had no such fear, they had quicker ways to unravel a world. Be very careful, touch nothing if you can help it and treat any object as if it is a powerful ter'angreal that's malfunctioning."

"Wise words to live by," Sheraine said, looking straight at me. Then she studied our surroundings again. "I suppose one direction is as good as another in this situation. Though, there might be a door over there." She pointed to our right and started walking, keeping well away from the edge of the walkway.

"Might as well," I decided after a moment and we followed her.

"Perhaps you can tell me more about these Former Empires as we walk," she said. "Why call them that, for example?"

"It's a long story," I warned her.

"I think we have time," Gemiad said as gestured at the long row of tanks that disappeared into the gloom only my eyes pierced.

"You're not wrong. Very well, this all began a long time ago, as ever with people that couldn't just be happy with having every need satisfied and knowing neither want nor lack."