Book 3, Chapter 57 (Patreon)

We didn’t go to the platform that had the Breaker spy stationed there for the simple reason that the rest of the crew wouldn’t be so willing to overlook a strange group appearing. The operator, if no one else, was likely to realize that someone had appeared on the platform. Then there were all manner of sentinels and workers in the facility for various reasons, any of whom might stumble across our little group.

With my staff in hand, I reshaped the ground we stood on into stone, then carved the teleportation runes into a circle around us so that the spell would pick up everyone instead of just me. Averin and his messenger watched me work warily, the messenger no doubt searching for some sign that I was going to betray them, but Averin just judging the quality and speed of my work.

“Impressive,” he said when I’d finished. I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes and I got a sudden suspicion that he was reevaluating exactly how much help he wanted from me. Considering that no matter what he asked for, I suspected what I wanted would be even harder to obtain, I wasn’t worried about it.

“Feel free to inspect the work,” I told him. “It’s a basic teleportation circle. When you’re ready we’ll teleport directly into the tower.”

“The wards will stop us,” the messenger objected.

“Not if you know the key sequence the platforms use.”

“Those are different for every platform,” Averin said as he regarded the circle. “Ah, I see. That’s why you were visiting so many of them. You were gathering data to figure out a master key. You were successful, I take it.”

“I was,” I confirmed.

“Keep that information secret. The Great Houses would put aside their differences to jointly hunt you down if they found out that you possessed this knowledge.”

That also meant Averin had a lever to use against me should he decide to end our tentative partnership in the future. He could just let the right people know about me and they’d be more than motivated to take care of his problem.

Or maybe I was just being paranoid and he’d deal fairly with me.

“I am satisfied with my examination of the circle,” Averin announced. “What platform will it take us to?”

“None. There would be guards and checkpoints. I thought we’d either go directly to one of your safehouses or just pick a random unoccupied alley.”

“But the wards-” Averin started to object.

“Will not be a problem,” I finished for him. “I know how to teleport through them.”

I ought to, considering how much effort I’d put into examining the various platforms’ security. The only thing I lacked was a destination. My initial plan had been to use a spot from the memories I’d gleaned from the two Lightbearers, but if Averin knew a better spot, I wasn’t opposed to letting him pick the drop point.

I’d be using a teleportation variant that let me scry the location prior to arriving anyway. Just because I wasn’t expecting a backstab prior to having every last drop of my usefulness extracted from me didn’t mean I would forego basic precautions.

“My friend, you continue to impress,” Averin said with a grin. “Now… What would be the perfect location? Somewhere our organization has secured, obviously, but where we won’t find ourselves under fire for teleporting in unannounced. It should be some place discreet…”

“Floor Forty-Nine,” the messenger supplied.

“Ah, of course. That’s perfect.” Averin turned to me and said, “I’ll assume you know how to do the mind link that will let me target our landing.”

“I do, if you’re ready.”

Averin pulled a ring off his finger, removing his mind shielding enchantment, and a small pinprick of his thoughts slipped through. The rest had already been carefully protected, leaving me only the sliver that contained the destination he had in mind. I took that blip of thoughts into my own head and examined it – a dozen different memories of walking through it at different times, seeing it from different angles, and studying it in different lights flooded my mind.

It was the perfect memory to construct a teleportation spell from, far better than what I’d skimmed from the Lightbearers. I had no doubt at all that I could bring us to this place. “I’ve got it. Step into the circle.”

Normally, a teleportation spell took five minutes for me to put together. Platforms got around this by already having the spell’s framework built and just needing to be flooded with mana. My staff could do something similar, though it still wasn’t instantaneous. I had to build the framework, but using the thousands of tiny runes imprinted into the ember bloom wood’s core made it far easier than constructing it from scratch.

It took just over one minute for me to finish the spell, though I made sure to make it look like a casual accomplishment. I wanted to awe these people with my skills so they’d think twice about betraying me later. Let them know what they were up against if they tried anything, though I had plenty of tricks in reserve to surprise them with if needed.

The world vanished, replaced by a pitch-black storehouse. It was unusual for anywhere to be truly dark unless it was underground or during the extremely rare nights when all moons were new moons, but technically speaking, no sunlight ever reached the inside of the tower. Whatever magic was used to light the interior, it didn’t extend to this building.

My scrying spell hadn’t been hindered by that, so I already knew about the six Breakers guarding the place, the various contraband stored in a secret room in the back, and the stairwell leading down to what I assumed was the floor beneath this one. As far as I could tell, there were official, guarded pathways between floors, and then there were backdoors like these that some people knew about, but weren’t controlled by the official government.

It was curious, though. Whoever’d built the tower either let its inhabitants have a remarkable degree of control over their environment, or they’d built all these different access points in on purpose and left it to the people living here to discover them. Neither explanation felt right to me, but I didn’t have anything better to justify the existence of a secret staircase between floors.

Two mages came running out onto the floor, mana flowing through them into wands and spells ready to be unleashed. Light flooded the area, revealing our group. Averin held up a hand to halt their advance and displayed a large, hexagonal token with the image of a broken chain carved into it. Magic radiated off it in a specific pattern, almost a signature of sorts.

“Peace, brothers,” he said. “We are only passing through.”

The mages exchanged looks, then let the mana fade from their spells. “Sir,” they said in unison, giving what I assumed was some sort of Breaker salute to Averin. As the only unhooded person here, I bore the brunt of the curious gazes, but I wasn’t terribly worried about being recognized later. It was going to be all but impossible to fit in here anyway. I didn’t have the right clothes, the right accent, the right skin color, or the right knowledge about their culture.

“We need to get a cloak on you,” Averin said after he’d sent off the storehouse’s staff. “Even at night, you stand out too much.”

I reached into my phantom space and pulled one out. “It’s not in the local style,” I said.

“Hmm. Yes, that could be a problem. How good are you with undetectable illusions?”

“There is no such thing,” I told him. “Especially not in a city which, as I understand it, is populated exclusively by mages.”

The problem with illusions was that they twisted mana subtlety, and any mage worth their salt would quickly realize that what they were seeing wasn’t real. On amateur apprentices or dims, sure, a well-timed illusion could be useful, but the longer it ran, the more likely it was that someone would recognize it for what it was. Creating an illusory appearance would draw more attention to me than just walking around with a mask on my face.

“It’s dark out,” the messenger said. “I’ll assume we’re not going far. He should be fine like that with an attention redirection ward on him.”

Averin didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded along. “Very well. It’s a short walk to what I want you to see.”

He led us out of the storehouse onto a street made of perfectly smooth stone. I wasn’t even able to tell what it was at first glance, but whatever we were standing on, it was so stable that a quick earth sense spell returned absolutely nothing. Fake stone, then?

The floor we were on—and probably every other floor—was a giant circle surrounding an enormous glass pillar, one that glowed softly in the night. It cast a faint blue glow across the roofs arrayed around us and I could send an enormous quantity of mana rushing through it.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Averin said when he saw me looking at it.

“Something like that,” I told him.

Who had built it, and why? I had my suspicions, but it was too soon to say for sure. This super weapon the people in charge were supposedly trying to make… Were they still putting it together, or was it already built and they were just trying to figure out how to operate it? That much mana, fired in a concentrated beam, might just be enough to destroy a moon.

I made a mental note to fly to the top of the tower soon and see what was there for myself. I had my suspicions that it would be focusing and directing array, or perhaps just the charred and weathered remains of one. Nothing I’d read had mentioned Ammun Nescect’s moon-buster being fired more than once, after all.

Now if only I could find some proof for that theory. The control rooms were probably not in these living floors, so depending how close to the top of the tower they went, my guess was that they were near the base.

“Here we are,” Averin said as we approached the outer wall. “We found it three months ago, apparently unguarded, but no one’s been able to get it open.”

“Found what?” I asked.

He gestured to an empty stretch of wall between two houses. “Ah,” I said. “Are those homes occupied.”

“Almost certainly.”

“Then I guess a bit of cover is in order.”

I cast an aura of silence over all three of us and slipped between the houses. How anyone had thought to check here of all places was a mystery to me, but perhaps that was why it had remained secret for so many centuries. Even knowing to look for it, I could just barely see the twist in the wards that protected the wall here.

“Take a few minutes to look it over and let me know if you think you can get it open,” Averin said. “We’ll keep watch for you.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“There’s not?”

“No, I already know how to get past this,” I said.

Considering they were my ward designs in the first place, it’d be strange if I couldn’t bypass them. Whoever had made them had copied the design so specifically that I was still keyed to the damn things. Temporarily disarming them so that the other two could pass with me with as easy as turning a key in a lock.

The wards parted and a previously invisible seam appeared in front of me. The wall split there, swinging back to reveal a dark and dusty passageway. It was too bad the builder hadn’t incorporated my cleaning wards, else I wouldn’t have been forced to use elemental earth manipulation to collect the dust as it billowed out into the open.

“Shall we see what’s on the other side?” I asked.