Birthright-The Technomage Archive (35 page)

Damien glanced at Nary and said, “I'm sorry.” She looked puzzled. “I've been writing lately, Gilbert.”

“
Good for you.”

“
You see, in the village I lived in back in Ternia, I was a storyteller. I didn't socialize much, but on special occasions and events and for festivals, I told stories. I figure that I've seen enough that the least I can do is spin a yarn that the young kids want to listen to and that the adults have to wonder about.”

“
Interesting stuff,” Squalt said. He raised his eyebrows and shut his eyes at the same time. He faked a yawn. “Go on.”

“
I planned to,” Damien said. “Somewhere in there, I got the crazy idea that I needed to tell another story. This time, a true story. Of how all this happened.”

“
How all of what happened?” Nary asked.

“
All of this. Everything we know, really. Ennd's. The technology we take for granted that was just miraculously left to us by the,” he whispered, “
technomages
.” He turned his attention back to Headmaster Squalt. “So I set out to write it all down. All of it, mind you. The truth.”

“
And who would believe you?” Squalt mocked. “The technomages are legends, and Erlonian society has functioned the way it has for thousands of years. You would come across as just another conspiracy nut. Or worse, a religious weirdo.”

“
There is that possibility,” Damien conceded. “But there was also the possibility of people finally having the truth and knowing what to do with it.” Damien leaned back and extended his arms across the back of the couch. “Either way, I started to write it down. Just a little at first, but since you took my boy, I had the inclination to finish it out, say it right.”

“
And what does this have to do with me?” Squalt asked.

“
That's actually why I'm here. My home was recently broken into.”

The room was silent.

“
And?” Squalt prodded.

“
And
the only thing the intruders took after ransacking everything I own was this unfinished book.”

“
Well, that's just a shame,” said the headmaster.

“
Isn't it, though?” Damien retorted.

“
And what does that have to do with you being here?”

“
I want you to tell me who took my book and why.”

Squalt laughed. It was an easy laugh, but Damien thought he heard some strain in it. Or maybe that was just his prejudice against the younger man. “I don’t know anything about your book, Damien.”

“
Don't lie to me, Gilbert.” He looked at Nary Thralls, whose expression was somewhere between interested and frightened. She smiled, and the edges of her mouth barely curled upward. She blinked hard a few times as she looked back and forth between the men. “You know more than you're letting on,” he said.

“
I don't! Why would I know anything about someone stealing a book from your house?”

“
I don't know. But I heard them speaking the our language, so I’m sure you could—”

“
This is ludicrous,” Squalt said, standing. “If you'll excuse me—”

“
Sit. Down
,” Damien said. Squalt actually felt the power Conjured in Damien Vennar’s voice, felt it echo in his chest. Squalt sat down, and Nary leaned back a little in her chair. “Gilbert, I'm going to ask you again: who took my book? And why did they take it?”

“
I really don't know, Damien.”

“
Gilbert,” Damien said, his voice even and measured, “I’m just an old man.”

Squalt snorted a laugh.

Damien continued, “I want to know why someone would break into my home, ransack my personal space, and then leave after only taking a single, unfinished book off of my shelf. You’re going to tell me, or things are going to get pretty ugly in here.”

Squalt smiled. “Damien, if I knew anything, you know that I would be the first one to tell you. But I do not know anything. And Nary here certainly doesn't. She was just coming in to discuss a few students who failed her cooking courses in Phase II.”

“
I honestly regret that she got caught up with this,” Damien offered. “But it's too late to cry over that kind of coincidence. I've worked too hard and been through too much today. I am going to find out what's so important about me and my book.”

Squalt laughed at that. A legitimate, heartfelt laugh that took both Damien and Nary by surprise. He said, “You should know by now that there is
absolutely nothing
important about you anymore. And your book, I'm sure, is equally uninspiring. You're a relic, Damien. You had your chance, and you gave it up. Now, I know you did good things—great things—once upon a time, but you gave it all up. I don’t know anything about your little storybook being stolen, but I do know that you caused me a great deal of trouble today.”

“
Glad I could be of service.”

“
I had been given reports that a visitor who claimed to be Swarley Dann's uncle kept trying to get the automated transport system to bring him to my office or the Library or something. And then when Uncle Dann could not get to where he wanted to go, his visitor’s pass disappeared. Coincidentally, right after that, our security drones were activated. I assumed they would take care of any problem. And yet, here you stand in my office.” The headmaster stood up, and Damien said nothing to stop him this time. Squalt went to his desk and tapped the screen on his tablet. “My newest report says that we’re down nearly half a dozen security golems, and that the Phase II corridors are…in need of repair. Ring any bells, Damien?”

“
Not a one, I’m afraid.”

Squalt smacked his lips, “Then I think our business here is at an end, old friend. It seems we're at a stalemate, an impasse. We are both equally ignorant of the other’s problems, so what can happen now, but to part ways and keep in touch occasionally?”

Damien cringed at the headmaster's melodrama. He was putting on a show because the cooking professor was here. Damien stood, too, but Nary remained seated. He walked behind her and said, “We do seem equally ignorant of one another these days, Gilbert.”

That was when Nary Thralls started screaming. It was a high-pitched shriek that indicated terror more than pain. Damien’s face showed no hint of emotion. He just stared at Squalt.

Golden light from the late afternoon sun shone through the windows, and it was tinted ever so slightly by the wooden shelves that lined the room. One window was perfectly aligned to shine light directly on the area where the three of them just sat, making it lightly glow with a hazy afternoon feeling of warmth. The effect was actually quite picturesque.

In stark contrast, Damien’s right hand rested on Thralls’s neck. Black tendrils extended themselves out of his hands and wrapped around Nary Thrall’s neck. The blackness worked its way inside her body, and it slithered around her torso and face, crawling between her skin and the muscles beneath it.

It took Squalt a moment to realize what was happening, but when he did, he shouted, “Let her go!”

Damien scoffed. “No.” He waited a moment, then added, “Tell me who broke into my house and stole my book.”

“
I don't kn—”

Nary Thralls screamed. Her cheek erupted as the black nanites burst out from under her skin. Blood speckled the arm of the chair. Damien looked at her and said, “Oh, please, Nary. It doesn't hurt that much.” She screamed in response. He looked back at Squalt. “Well, it doesn't.”

“
I don't know who stole your book, Damien,” Squalt said. “Let her go.”

“
I said
no
to that, already, Gilbert.” He turned his attention to Nary. “What’s about to happen, however, is going to hurt quite a bit.” Tears welled in her eyes and her mouth opened to scream, but Damien clamped his left hand down on it before she could. “Let's try this the quiet way first. What do you say?”

She responded by blinking tears from her eyes and letting them run down Damien's hand. Squalt said, “Damien, why are you doing this?”

“
I need answers, Gilbert.”

“
And you're not likely to get any from Nary Thralls. She's as oblivious to all this as… old man, she didn't even know the Charons were real until a few minutes ago. You heard her.”

“
More's the pity,” Damien said. His whole right arm was pulsing now, the skin rippling as black tendrils of nanotechnology flowed from his body and out of the back of the hand he had attached to Nary Thralls' neck. She made a sound that would have been a shriek had he not been covering her mouth.

Squalt watched as the culinary professor’s pale white skin darkened. Her cheeks and lips began to bulge, and her veins began to fill with nanites. Half of her face was filled with the tiny machines under Damien's control, and they were working their way up and down simultaneously. They poured from her nostrils and through his fingers, finding their way into her mouth. Damien removed his hand; it was no longer necessary to keep her silent. The nanites rushed into her throat and filled her airways and her mouth. Her neck expanded and throbbed as a solid layer of nanites separated her skin from her muscle. Tears rolled down her cheek and onto Damien’s hand.

Her eyes looked back and forth between Damien and Squalt, and when they rested on the headmaster, he looked away when he saw the fear and pain in them. She was asking him for help, and he would do nothing.

Damien saw their eyes meet and focused his concentration on the nanites in her throat. The nanites released her airways, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Then she did what Damien had hoped she would do: she screamed. It was louder than he had anticipated, and it made Squalt flinch.

“
You can help her, you know,” Damien said. “Just tell me who took my book. Tell me why those people would break into my house and take something from me. In fact, you can tell me how they knew I was writing it in the first place.”

Squalt ignored him. “What I don't get, Damien, is that you were able to breach our security and do this,” he gestured at Nary, “but you weren't able to stop a few men from removing a single book from your home?”

“
My nanites were inactive,” Damien said.

“
Of course they were,” said Squalt, condescendingly.

Nary's cries and weeping became louder. She stared at Squalt the whole time, urging him wordlessly to help her. Damien urged the nanites to coat her eyes.

“
I don't know who took your book, Damien,” Squalt continued. “Why don't you let her go and stop this?”

“
If you want me to let her go, then you'll tell me what I want to know. And you'll start within the next five seconds.”

Squalt pursed his lips and sat down. He rested his elbows on the surface of his desk and steepled his fingers.

At the end of the five seconds, Damien leaned down to Nary's ear and said, “I truly am sorry for this. If any gods truly exist, you'll be in a much nicer place than I ever will.”

She cried harder. She screamed louder. Her airways were once again blocked by Damien’s nanites as they ramped up their expansion. Her once pale skin was now a dark shade of grey that was growing darker by the second. Her face, neck, and upper torso were bloated. Nary Thralls’s skin looked wrong, like a sweater that didn’t fit quite right. Her chest heaved as she tried to suck in air, but couldn’t. Every so often, Damien would open her throat, letting her inhale or exhale, but never both. Every exhalation was a raspy scream, and every inhalation was a gasp.

Through it all, her tears never stopped. It only took a moment for Damien to finish what he had started.

Damien recalled his nanites; they rushed back to his body, coating him entirely for a split second before soaking back into his flesh. He looked at the dead woman, then back at Squalt, who said nothing. Damien fixed both of his hands on either side of Nary's skull. He twisted and pulled up at the same time, pulling the skull free along with a few vertebrae with a wet
snap-pop
.

He lobbed the professor's skull toward Squalt, and it landed on his desk and rolled toward the headmaster. He rose off his steepled fingers and elbows just in time for the disembodied head to fall directly into his lap.

Chapter Twenty-five

Ceril’s first thought was that he had gone blind. His second was how much his whole body tingled, like he was just waking up from a lengthy nap and had to get his blood circulating again.

“
Saryn? Chuckie?” he asked aloud and got no answer. “You there?”

He quickly Conjured a light in the palm of his hand to see if his vision really was gone. It wasn’t. Wherever he was, there was simply no light anywhere. He extended the Conjuring, until he wore it on both hands like gloves made of light.

He was in no pain, so he picked himself up and tested his arms and legs.

Good. They all moved.

He remembered walking along…and then…falling? The ground must have given way beneath him as he walked. The ruins of Meshin were apparently in worse shape than they looked. He hoped that Saryn and Chuckie were okay.

He looked around, and all he could see was rubble; a dome of dirt and stone surrounded him, and he knew that he was lucky in that none of the bigger stones had landed on top of him. In fact, they had fallen so perfectly that he actually had enough room to sit up and move around, but not to stand completely. He could see purple dust floating in the air, especially around his hands. His Conjured breather would protect his lungs from the irritants, but not his eyes, so he Conjured a protective coating for his eyeballs.

He had to get out of there. His air would eventually run out, and he had to find out about the rest of his team. Chuckie was tough; he could take care of himself. But Ceril’s heart began to beat a little faster when he thought about Saryn falling through the ground the way he had. She wasn’t trained like Chuckie was. He had to make sure she was okay.