Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (31 page)

I stood up and leaned over the map. The yellowed paper and brown outlines of the continents gave it the appearance of a pirate map. Jeremiah touched a finger to the approximate location of El Dorado in southern Colombia. The map zoomed in revealing more and more intricate details the greater the magnification. I tried to read the text, but it appeared to be in some sort of scribbly language I didn't understand.

"Is that Arabic?" Elyssa asked.

"Keen eye," Jeremiah said. He consulted a legend in the upper corner of the map and ran a finger across it. The text blurred and morphed until it appeared in English.

"Is there a reason we couldn't use Moogle Maps?" I asked. Moogle was the Overworld version of a similarly named nom company.

"Moogle is quite precise for showing the fastest way to travel via flying carpet or Obsidian Arches, but there are very few maps that show what I want you to see." He ran a finger across another part of the legend. The grid of streets beneath the label
El Dorado
vanished, replaced by three thick glowing lines that formed a starburst pattern where they intersected.

Jeremiah magnified the view. Tiny black numbers faded into view, each one connected to a glowing line by a dash.

"These are ley lines," I said. "I assume those numbers represent the magical voltage of the lines."

"The numbers are simply how the ley lines are identified." He didn't wait for me to follow up with any further questions and plowed ahead. "The aether pods are located directly above the convergence." Jeremiah zoomed out and flicked the map far north to Thunder Rock. Two ley lines formed a convergence there.

"We have a natural advantage," I said. "More aether means more power."

"Precisely." He zoomed out and ran a finger along a ley line extending from Thunder Rock to El Dorado. "This particular ley line flows south to north. In other words, we are upstream, sapping power before it reaches them."

"Brilliant!" I said.

He offered a faint smile. "The more aether pods they build, the more they dilute the available aether supply."

"Is there a danger of sapping a ley line dry?" I asked, uncertain what that might mean.

"For the first time, I believe it might be possible." He looked up from the map. "The earth dragons earned their nickname of leyworms long ago because Arcane researchers found the creatures acted much like earthworms by promoting the healthy flow of aether throughout the realm. I have spoken to Altash about the possible weakening of this ley line. He remained rather enigmatic in response, but I gathered he does not plan to send dragons to increase the supply of aether."

I shrugged. "You're friends with him and all, so it sounds like he's helping you."

Jeremiah gave a slight shake of his head. "Do not mistake him for a friend, Mr. Slade. The dragons have an agenda even I am not privy to."

My guts tightened. "Didn't they fight against the Seraphim back in the day?"

"Many of them, yes." He folded the map. "Others took no sides, and some even fought with the Seraphim." He tapped the map with his wand and it vanished. "The dragons are no different than us or Seraphim. They are not one monolithic race. There are, however, far fewer of them than existed during the Seraphim War."

Elyssa leaned against the table. "The small leyworms aren't small because they're young, are they?"

"You're most perceptive," Jeremiah said. "There are many sizes of dragons, and different classes. There are perhaps hundreds of the smaller dragons left, and only a handful of leviathans."

An uneasy feeling settled into me. "What happens when the leyworms are gone? No more magic?"

Jeremiah gave me an almost sad look. "It is a possibility. There may be far more dragons left than I have been led to believe, however."

"Are there any flying dragons?" I asked, unable to keep the note of hopefulness from my voice.

"Not in Eden," he said.

My former uneasiness evaporated. "They exist?"

"Perhaps." He shrugged. "Altash accidentally revealed the possible existence of many other kinds of dragons, though I have never seen them."

Childhood fantasies ran wild in my mind. If there were more dragons, it also meant the possibility of more allies. I had to speak with Altash. "Let's go to El Dorado," I said. "We can collect Grundwig and you can show me the aether pod."

"I would like to finish my coffee first." Jeremiah regarded me for a moment. "While we have a moment, would you like to see if we can optimize your chi?"

I was impatient to get a move on, but getting into top form was just as important. "Should we go to the gauntlet room downstairs?"

The old Arcane offered a small smile. "Considering your control issues, that would be wise." Coffee in hand, he stood and led us downstairs past the omniarch room, and into the gauntlet room in the corridor beyond.

Once again, he performed his doctor routine.

"Could an Arcane healer like Meghan check my vitals?" I asked.

"With years of training." He mumbled something and adjusted the fingers on my forehead. "You might feel a slight tingle."

A shock ran down my spine as if my forehead had a funny bone and someone had just nailed it. I staggered back and gave Jeremiah a dirty look. "That wasn't a tingle!"

He touched a hand to his chin. "Perhaps you were even more out of alignment than I thought." He waved his wand and a candle drifted from a shelf and landed on a cinder block in the target practice area. "Light the candle and blow it out."

Although my control was pretty good with Seraphim magic, my Arcane abilities were crude, to say the least. I aimed my wand at the candle and willed a spurt of flame to light it. A torrent of orange flames melted the top half of the candle. "Son of a biscuit eater," I growled.

Jeremiah flicked his wand. The remainder of the candle stopped burning. He traced a pattern with his wand, and the wax on the candle peeled away at the top to reveal fresh wick. With a twist of his wand, a flame flickered into being atop the candle. Another tiny slash of the wand extinguished the flame.

I felt my eyes widen and shook my head. "How did you light it without fire?"

"What causes fire?" he asked.

I thought for a moment. "Heat."

"Precisely." He held up his wand. A tiny flame perched atop the tip. "To light a candle, one doesn't need to set the distance between the wand and the wick ablaze."

"Just the tip," I said.

He pressed a thumb to my forehead. "Prepare for the tingle." He pivoted his thumb.

Another jolt traveled my spine, though it wasn't as bad as the first.

"Try again, Mr. Slade." Jeremiah stepped back to a safe distance.

I noticed Elyssa doing the same and regarded her with a hurt look.

She shrugged. "I don't feel like losing my hair today."

Turning back to the candle, I focused on the wick and willed the air above it to grow hot enough to burn. I twisted my wand in the same manner Jeremiah had. Blue flames a foot high sputtered above the wick. When they vanished, a tiny flame burned at the tip. I turned to Jeremiah. "I did it!" I whooped and held up my hand for a high-five.

He raised an eyebrow as if momentarily confused, slowly raised a hand, and clapped it against mine. "Congratulations."

Elyssa gripped me in a hug. "You didn't kill anyone, babe. Great job!"

"Ha, ha." I kissed her on the nose.

Jeremiah regarded me with an almost nostalgic look on his face. "Well done, Mr. Slade. Every problem has myriad solutions, it is simply a matter of narrowing it to the barest of essentials. Perhaps another session would be beneficial when we have time."

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked.

He lowered his coffee cup. "You remind me a great deal of myself when I was learning magic." Jeremiah looked into his coffee. "I had no teacher. Although I never killed anyone, there were a few goat casualties."

I chuckled. "I'd like to hear about your early days some time." I realized with a shock I actually meant it. Jeremiah had made a lot of stupid decisions in his life, but the man had done far more good, hadn't he?

A smile crept onto Jeremiah's face. "I believe I might enjoy that, Mr. Slade."

"Justin," I said. "My name is Justin."

"Very well, Justin."

Jeremiah took the last sip of his coffee and we travelled via the portal in the omniarch to the El Dorado way station. I saw a white dome tent back near the control room entrance. "What's the tent for?"

"Kassus is staying there," Jeremiah replied. "He didn't wish to stay in the mansion."

"Hell, I wouldn't want him staying there." The idea of that scoundrel living under the same roof gave me the willies. Closer to the center of the way station stood a sleek silver pedestal with two rotating silver rings. Instead of the null cubes I'd seen at Daelissa's, a glass sphere was suspended inside the rings. The dark form of a cherub writhed within.

We followed Jeremiah to within ten feet of the aether pod. Even though sparks of aether clouded the inside of the glass chamber, the husk was clearly metamorphosing into a cupid. The infantile body spun as if weightless, its limbs thrashing. The blank slate where a face should have been was gaining small ridges and bumps where eyes, a nose, and cheeks usually were. The round orifice that served cherubs as a mouth widened. The smooth, oil-black skin grew noticeably lighter.

"How long has this cherub been in there?" I asked.

"Only since midnight." He stepped closer to the pod and examined the rotating rings. "It appears to be operating optimally."

Cinder walked through a small gap in the coils of the giant dragons slumbering a few yards away and approached us. Behind him appeared a small stout humanoid form with smooth dark blue skin. "Greetings and salutations," the golem said. "I have had a very interesting time conversing with Grundwig."

The troll stepped to Cinder's side. She stood about three feet tall and was much more slender than the trolls I'd seen at Jeremiah's house. Her long black hair didn't look the least bit bristly. Huge green eyes hung above a catlike nose and mouth, and pointy ears protruded from her hair. She was a gazillion times better looking than the trolls I'd met.

I held out a hand to greet her. She stared up at me without saying a word, then looked at Jeremiah and spoke in a guttural language.

"She wants to know if you're offering her something to eat," Jeremiah said.

I jerked my hand back quickly. "How do I greet a troll?"

Jeremiah leaned toward Grundwig until his nose was almost touching hers, and clacked his teeth together. Grundwig opened her mouth wide, displaying a set of pointy chompers and clacked them together so hard, the sound echoed.

"I've grown rather proficient at the troll greeting," Cinder said, and proceeded to demonstrate with a clashing of teeth rivaling even the troll's.

Unwilling to let a golem outperform me, I leaned toward Grundwig and chomped my teeth together. She repeated it and then smiled. I looked to Jeremiah. "Please tell me a smile is a good thing as opposed to her wanting to snack on my nose."

"It is, Justin," said the troll, her accent sounding as though she'd just stuffed a whole rabbit in her mouth and was talking around the fur. Then again, getting words through all those teeth had to be a challenge.

She speaks English.
"Thank goodness I don't have to learn Trollish," I said.

Grundwig swallowed loudly and I could have sworn I saw a cat-sized lump go down her throat. "Apologies. I should not speak with my mouth full." Her voice was noticeably clearer though she had a strong accent I couldn't place. "We should start."

I decided not to ask what she'd just swallowed. "Are you a fast digger?"

"Yes." She held up large hands. Long ebony fingernails sprouted from the ends. "Speed is not a problem, but you never know what you will find in the Nether."

I was almost afraid to ask. "Great. Let's go."

"Have a wonderful day," Cinder said in his usual deadpan voice. "I must go prepare an area to receive the rescued cherubs."

"I will remain to work on the aether pods," Jeremiah said. "Should I prepare a malaether crucible?"

I mulled it over. "I think we should concentrate on reviving cherubs instead."

He crossed his arms behind his back. "It might be wise to have one on hand just in case. Daelissa has a head start on us and destroying her facility would be a tremendous setback to her plans."

He had a valid point. If his information on Daelissa's plan of attack was correct, we had only days before she started a major offensive. Then again, she'd already launched the offensive against the Australian Templars. "By taking all the cherubs, we remove her ability to revive more Brightlings." I bit my lip. "Let's stick to reviving cherubs for now."

"A very tricky proposition." Jeremiah met my eye. "We should prepare for the eventuality that not all the cherubs can be saved."

I had to admit the idea didn't horrify me, but what if Nightliss's friend was left behind? What if we sacrificed hundreds of Darklings with a malaether crucible when we could save them all? "Let's use a bomb only as a last resort."

"It's possible the explosion won't kill the cherubs," he said. "They may simply absorb the energy."

"If that's true, wouldn't leaving too many behind nullify the bombs?" The energy inside the crucibles was the very same we used to revive the Seraphim.

"I could be wrong." He managed to look pretty certain despite his expressed doubt. "The blast may be too much for even a husk to absorb."

I decided a compromise might be in order. "Prepare one bomb. Hopefully we won't have to use it."

He nodded. "I will have it ready. Though I also hope using it is unnecessary"—he splayed his hands in a helpless gesture—"we may have no choice."

I grimaced. "We've done the impossible before, and I fully expect we can pull it off again." I turned and motioned to Elyssa and Grundwig to follow.

"He has a point," Elyssa said as we reached the portal leading back to the mansion. "We should prepare for the worst, though I think using a malaether crucible would be a terrible mistake."