Chapter 14 – Matchstick House

Aeva walked behind Linton and Frost down the empty hallway, their footsteps producing loud echoes. Dust crowded the corners of the floor, and droopy cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Uneven, flickering lights lit their way.

Sweat beaded down her lower back.

They all wore stolen Ministry of Affluence uniforms, their faces glamored. Linton had not been able to procure doctored identification badges, however, so he had advised them to stay as inconspicuous as possible.

According to Linton, the security at the front would have been too tight and too meticulous for them to get through without blowing their cover. Instead, they had gone through the sewers, blasting their way through to an old, unused section of the underground facility.

Hopefully, they could get through this cleanly.

“Gjurin, watch over me,” Aeva whispered. “Help me find the Crown so I may save my people.” She focused all her being into that request, imagining herself balancing a feather with her breath. “Draegir.”

Nothing happened.

She sighed.

Aeva had a pistol just in case a fight broke out, but supposedly the Vault of Kings sported over a hundred guards at any one time. She didn’t fancy those odds if they had to fight their way through.

“The Vault has thirty-eight levels,” Linton explained, flicking through a hardlight panel that showed him a layout of the facility. “The lower an item is kept, the more vital or dangerous it is. Sometimes both.”

“So, where would the Crown be kept?” Aeva asked.

“One of the lower ones,” Linton said. “I’d say thirty-thirty-five. Right now we’re on Level Six. There should be functioning master elevators just across this floor which’ll take us where we need to go.”

Linton ignored any doors or intersecting corridors, completely focused on the path ahead.

Frost wandered along next to him, his gaze flitting this way and that. He carried a wooden wand in his left hand and some cloth packs on his hip. No weapon. No protective gear. Aeva was having a hard time figuring out what utility he could possibly serve in accompanying them.

They reached the end of the hall, their path barred by a locked door.

“Frost, why don’t you take care of this?” Linton asked, making way for the lubbard.

Frost dropped to one knee, plucking at the numbered input panel next to the door handle. He hummed to himself as he put the tip of his wand to the metal box, working it around like a thief jimmying a lockpick.

He stuck out his long, pink tongue, licking one of his eyeballs as he worked.

“Oh yeah, I know this one,” Frost said. “Easy-peasy. Just… One moment…”

He flicked his wand in a grand flourish, stood, and pulled the handle. The door remained closed.

Frost frowned and yanked harder.

It didn’t budge.

He thumped the number panel with the flat of his hand, and the door came unlocked with a sharp click. “Like I said, easy-peasy.” He stepped aside to allow Linton and Aeva to enter.

They walked out onto a broad, circular catwalk fenced in by a thin railing. Aeva peeked over the side and saw a wide hole leading down almost endlessly until it faded into darkness. There were many floors below them supported by similar catwalks, lit by steady magelights.

Linton pointed across the divide at a set of elevators. They began moving towards them. A pair of workers came down the opposite way, chatting with each other.

“Good afternoon,” Linton said with a smile and a nod as the workers got close.

The two women murmured greetings in return and passed them by, continuing their conversation. Aeva held back a sigh of relief.

***

They stepped out of the elevator on Level 30, having suffered no incident.

So far, so good, Linton thought.

He took the lead, bringing the group through one of the many doors that ringed the floor. They came into a large corridor lined with doors, some rooms sporting windows to peek inside. Most held but a single item, placed centrally and visibly.

One of the rooms contained a carnivorous beast the size of a horse chained to the floor. It looked miserable. Another contained a ceramic vase that appeared ancient. Every few seconds, it released a dark, billowing gas that settled on the floor, before being sucked back inside the vase with a muffled sound like human screams. A third held a single coin raised on a dais, dully reflecting the light.

“Where to from here?” Frost asked.

“If we had a complete inventory list, I’d be able to tell you that,” Linton said. “Sadly, we don’t.”

“So, we are lost,” Aeva said.

“Not lost,” Linton said firmly. A white-coated researcher rounded a corner coming their way, and he clicked his tongue. “Why, there’s our map right now.”

The researcher frowned as he drew closer, looking them up and down.

“Hey, where are your ID-tags?” he asked. He wrinkled his nose. “And what’s that smell?”

“One moment, sir,” Linton said while walking up to him. He pretended to dig around in his pocket.

Aeva kicked the man in the center of his chest, knocking him flat on the floor. He wheezed as he attempted to catch his breath, curling into a fetal position.

Impatient much? Linton thought.

He approached the researcher, who had begun begging for his life.

“I won’t kill you,” Linton said, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Just let me have a little look inside that head of yours.”

He placed his hands on each side of the man’s head and closed his eyes.

“Sovi,” he said. Then: “Bringa.”

A disordered mess of images tumbled before him as he delved into the mind of the researcher. Linton brute-forced his way through before he could put up any instinctive mental barriers and rooted around his memories for something pertaining to the Crown.

When he found nothing, he upped the intensity and introduced a question.

Where is the Crown of the Moon-King?

He let the question bounce around the researcher’s head and read his instinctive reactions. The man was clever enough that he had caught onto what was happening and was trying to hide any pertinent information. He clearly wasn’t trained in the art of defending his mind from outside attack, however, so his raw stream of consciousness read like an open book.

Level 34.

Section E.

Item Number 4022.

Linton let the man go and stood up. The researcher looked around with a panicked stare.

“You did so well before, Aeva,” Linton said, “why don’t you go ahead and knock out our friend here for me?”

Aeva obliged, giving the researcher a kick to the head that sent him sprawling against the wall.

They hid him in a nearby supply closet, then set off for Level 34.

***

Cat and the others parked the stolen rumbler on the side of the single-file road leading up to the sprawling mansion.

Matching the information Doc and Hunter had given, the place was four stories tall. It overlooked the angry sea in the distance, built from white stone, with pillars and archways supporting the heavily slanted roof.

Upon a flat section of the roof stood a sleek skyship with four thrusters. The skyship came to life as people small as ants rushed in and out.

“Looks like Tamos is trying to make a getaway,” Hunter said. “I’ll take care of that.”

He stepped out of the rumbler with his freshly loaded rifle, took aim on the building, and waited. Silent, breathless, statue-still.

A shot rang out and the cockpit of the skyship was stained red. He unloaded more shots, and another man fell.

Hunter stood and reloaded his rifle.

“Tamos wasn’t there,” he said. “But they’re not taking off like that. Let’s get inside and finish this.”

The construct placed his rifle back in the canvas bag and pulled out a more compact assault rifle.

“Uh, I think I’ll stay with the rumbler, if none of you mind,” Doc said, shifting uncomfortably in the driver seat.

Hunter gave the old man a long look. Despite his impassive, metallic face, it was easy to catch the disgust by the set of his jaw.

Doc cleared his throat. “I’m no fighter, as you know. My oath prevents me from taking a life. I’m sorry.”

Cat pulled Hunter away before he did more than stare.

“Don’t worry about it, Doc,” she said. “You need to stay safe, anyway, since you’re the getaway driver. Just keep an eye out for reinforcements.”

Doc nodded, mustaches quivering. “Of course. Thank you.”

Hunter slowly shook his head. He picked up a belt of grenades from his bag and threw it over one shoulder.

“Ready,” he grunted.

Cat gave a thumbs up.

They ascended up the shallow hill towards the mansion.

Cat raised a barrier to ward off enemy fire.

Hunter shot a marksman in one of the windows before the man could return fire. He fell through the cracked glass and tumbled through the air with a pained scream, arms flailing. He hit the ground with a sickening crack and moved no longer.

When they reached the sturdy, locked doors, Cat told Hunter to step aside. She raised her right hand, steadying it with her left.

“Baku!” she yelled.

An explosion shook the ground, and the forward-directed shockwave tore the door off its hinges.

Hunter rushed in through the billowing smoke.

***

Cat stepped over charred, dismembered corpses as she made her way to the back of the foyer.

Hunter sported a new hole in his torso and a few dents in his silvery paint job, but seemed no worse for wear.

Hunter walked up the stairs and threw a grenade into one of the rooms on the left. There were screams, then a boom, then silence.

“So much for quick and easy,” Cat said.

Hunter ignored her. “Our prey is close,” he said. “Come.”

Cat followed the construct up the stairs, leaping two steps at a time. The second and third floors were both empty.

“The remaining guards will be concentrated on the top floor to protect their leader,” Hunter explained. He stopped in a room on the third floor and pointed up at the ceiling. “This is where the master office would be on the floor above.”

“May I?” Cat asked.

He nodded.

She grinned.

Hunter backed up a bit as she readied another explosion, generating red anima like stoking a fire inside her.

Before she could fire off her spell, a hole tore open in the ceiling and a woman with a green sash leapt through it. She dropped into a smooth crouch on the floor and raised her hand.

“Knuph,” the woman said.

Cat was caught in a moving wall of kinetic energy, pushed off the floor. Her spell went off as she tumbled, producing an explosion that sent her sharply to the left. She hit a wall and sank to the floor, dazed.

Another person dropped through the hole in the ceiling, a man with a red sash.

A geomancer and a vivimancer.

Shit.

The woman dove for Hunter on magic-assisted legs while the man prepared a spell, his aura flaring.

Hunter dodged the female mage’s opening attacks, furious punches raining around him. He folded the pistol out of his forearm, but the woman caught his hand and crushed it, gun and all.

Cat returned her attention to the geomancer. She read his aura to figure out what spell he was about to use—a big one, presumably one that would reduce Hunter to dust.

There was only one sure-fire way to prevent that.

“Svido!” she called, mustering all the anima she could.

The geomancer’s spell fizzled into a shower of disappointing sparks, and he looked down at his hands in confusion.

Counter magic was some of the most anima-intensive, always more costly than the spell it was overriding. This one had cost her almost a third of her full stores.

The man’s face lit up with realization. He focused his gaze on Cat, full of fury, and his aura spiked once more.

She dove out of the way as the geomancer sent a couple of slapshots her way. Cat picked up a piece of wood as she scrambled to her feet, imbued it with a Baku spell using a concealed hand gesture, and threw it with Drida—just a tad slower than she could have.

Just as expected, the geomancer raised a hand, and the piece of debris slowed to a stop in front of his palm. He readied to throw it back at her.

She unleashed her spell with a mental command.

A compact detonation knocked the geomancer backward, his left hand blown clean off. He hit the opposite wall and put a solid dent in it before falling face first onto the floor.

He didn’t get back up.

Cat walked over to him, picking up the remains of a candle holder to use as slapshot material. She couldn’t take any chances with a mage.

She caught a flickering glow coming from underneath his chest, growing steadily stronger.

Oh, shit.

She dropped the candle holder and jumped to the side.

“Hryna!” the geomancer barked. He burst into a brilliant spray of superheated material that melted through anything it touched. His entire body was instantly liquified, all the anima contained inside him converted for this single spell.

Cat conjured a Skolda barrier and curled up behind it. She was too slow. The plasma shot past the hardlight and stained her clothes, digging through it like red-hot termites.

She threw off her hoodie with a scream, but some of it had already gotten on her skin and was producing angry, red burns. She hissed at the pain and backed up against the wall as parts of the floor melted away from the geomancer’s final spell. She clenched her fists to keep herself from wiping away the plasma. That would only make it worse.

Cat used another minuscule piece of counter magic to remove the plasma stuck to her skin.

Until she got back to Doc, there was nothing she could do about the burns, so she gritted her teeth and endured the searing pain.

Turning to Hunter, she found that he had gotten the vivimancer on her knees. He drove his shining sword clean through her jaw, sheared her head in half, then did the same to her torso. The woman slid into three neat parts.

Hunter’s sword sizzled with her viscera, white sparks flying from its surface until the blood was all burnt away and the steel was pure once more.

“Good timing,” the construct said. He tried to move his ruined right hand, only able to make his fingers twitch uselessly. He grunted with displeasure.

“Time to make all this worth it,” Cat said, teeth gritted. “Let’s bag ourselves an archon.”