Book 2: Chapter 28: Leyforge

  The laughter and strings from the Duskmoor gala didn’t reach this deep..

  Alex followed Cole through two servants’ passageways, before dumping them into a maintenance stairwell. From there is was a short walk behind an unused armory whose items look as if they hadn’t seen polish in a decade. The corridor narrowed gradually as they descended, and the lights dimmed darker and darker with every passing minute. Even the spells enchantment in the sconces along the wall flickered more like torches than stable lights.

  Finally, Cole slowed at a dead-end hallway near the eastern base of the palace. All smooth stone, spider webs, and storage crates stacked against the wall, half-draped in dust sheets. One section of the wall was oddly recessed in a square-shape, and flush with no handle.

  “There,” Cole said quietly.

  Alex stepped closer to get a look. The surface shimmered faintly in his aether sight, the sign of an active ward. Probably an old one, too. The magic was dense and layered. But after a few second he could decipher that the enchantment was not meant to alert anyone of its use, just meant to hide it's properties.

  I don’t see any way for me to alter this, or get into it. There’s no glyphs or runes, its some kind of enchantment I don’t understand. Obby, what can you do?

  “Hmmm, its old alright. I can’t do anything from here, I need contact with this aether itself. Remember those pedestals in the dungeon?” Obby’s illusion body pressed against the wall and ‘tapped’ the stone silently.

  Uh, Cole is right here. He might find it weird if I’m putting rocks next to enchanted walls.

  “True. But I can’t do anyhting otherwise. Shit or get off the pot, meatboy.”

  He looked after at Cole, who was simply waiting off to side. He glanced at Alex, then looked back down the corridor keeping a watch on their six. Would he tell the others? Did it really matter?

  Fuck it.

  Alex reached toward his waist, thumb brushing the surface of his belt pouch where his glyph stylus tool hung, from his bracelet’s space he pulled the little compact construct known as Obby, nested tight in his fingers.

  He quickly pressed the rock up against the stone wall, hoping that Cole was still watching the corridor instead of him. A soft tick sounded as the wall flickered to life, the seems of the square recess glowing a soft-blue.

  “Low-light sigil. Cloaked lock. Encryption pattern is… antique. I like it.”

  Can you open it?

  “I can try.”

  Obby’s stone flashed once, releasing a thin stream of aether that floated to the wall’s seam. Three rings of runes spiraled into place over the large panel, glyphs woven with a meaning that Alex didn’t recognize. Obby’s stone seemed to click once, twice, then fired a fine filament of red energy into the outermost ring.

  There was a soft thunk. Then the wall receded and split open like flower petals folding inward.

  Behind it was a narrow stone platform. A lift shaft of some sort to a long ancient magical technology.

  He waved Cole over, slipping Obby back into his bracelet. They stepped on the platform together and the stone wall slid shut behind them.

  The descent was surprisingly smooth. Silent, no pull of weight or chains sounded around them, just a slow drift downward through a stone tunnel lined in glimmering aether enchantments. In his either sight, he could see that many of which had long since already dimmed into dormancy.

  Alex didn’t speak. Neither did Cole. Obby hummed bland elevator music into Alex’s head.

  The deeper they went, the colder the air became. The general vibes around them chilled, not just the temperature. The feeling of a space forgotten, abandoned. The smell of sealed stone, stale air unbothered by breath or movement. Then the lift slowed and locked into place with a faint click. The wall in front of them hissed open. And the world beneath Terraxum unfurled before them.

  The corridor in front of them wasn’t just old, it looked like it was pre-Age. Stone walls appread to be shaped by hand but layered with inlaid magic, faint crystal veins ran between embedded metal plates. The walls were carved with murals too faded to parse, though eh was able to catch glimpses of figures without eyes, it the worn carvings.

  He stepped forward, boots quiet on the worn floor, Cole stepped out right after. Obbys lanky elder-thing body hovered by him. .

  “Anti-scrying enchantments detected. Multipoint layers. Very old. But still very functional.”

  “Somebody didn’t want this place seen,” Alex muttered. He ran a hand along the wall, not touching the murals, but near. The stone was smooth, warm, and…

  “Do you see that?” he asked, nodding toward a rib-like arc built into the upper wall. Cole leaned in and nodded.

  “Yeah, what is that?”.

  It was undeniably some sort of object. Alex brushed his fingers along the surface. It was pale, fossilized, and almost blended with the stone. Once again he was brought back to his childhood days at the museum. Bones, each of them long and ridged, not human at all, but still unmistakable.

  He exhaled. “Petrified bone. Integrated into the architecture.”

  “Purposefuly?”

  Alex nodded. “Looks like it.”

  They moved deeper. More bone and murals appeared. More forgotten pathways. Some sections were collapsed or roped off with rusted chain. Obby buzzed once when they passed through a hallway with a lingering ward, one tuned to alert from passerby’s. They avoided that one, taking an alternate path around.

  Someone built this place for secrecy. And someone still wanted it that way.

  They didn’t find crates, not yet. But the floors showed faint drag lines. Something had been moved recently, and often. Alex knelt, pressing his fingers to the dust-traced groove.

  “Whatever they’re moving,” he said, “it’s heavy.”

  Cole looked around the chamber. “Why bring it here? What is this place?”

  Alex shrugged noncommittally. He was already looking at another wall, this one smoother, darker than the others. Covered in symbols… but not glyphs. It was some sort of older enchantments carved directly into the stone.

  “Not that way, keep going.” Obby said in his mind.

  The continued on and eventually the corridor narrowed again, this time into a rounded tunnel ringed with dim blue glyphs, half-flickering. These glyphs were newer. The air changed as they walked, the aether heavier, charged. Every breath tasted faintly metallic, like ozone trapped inside. The hallway ended at a wide arched door, old, seamless, but alive with residual energy under his aether sight. A thin ring of light pulsed once around the edges as they stepped near.

  The door folded open in segments on its own, clockwise. On the otherside, they stepped into a different world.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The chamber beyond was enormous. The cavern had domed ceiling, with walls veined in crystal strata that grew out from the stone in jagged lines. Each mark on the surface humming faintly with stored power. Conduits of metal and glyph-threaded tubing arched across the space like skeletal ribs, feeding into a circular platform at the center of the room. It was easy to see that platform was the heart of it all.

  “A Leyforge.” Obby intoned.

  A what?

  “Leyforge. Leylines are the natural flwoing lines of Aether inside a planet. Like the blood veins of energy for the whole world. A Leyforge is built to tap into the lines. They can only grab as small fraction of a percentage of yet smaller fraction of a Leylines energy, but even that is enormous. What they plan to do with it… well.”

  “Hey, Alex, over here.” Cole’s voice was barely over a whisper as he hiss-shouted at him.

  He looked over to see Cole standing near the edge of the corridor opening. He inched over and swung his out to get a view of the rest of the cavern, including what Cole had wanted him to see.

  It looked alive.

  A hybrid construct of enchantments, handmade machines, and raw magical materials. Coils of metal braided with runes spun slowly around a pillar of pulsing red-violet light. Faint arcs of aether cracked the air every few seconds, drawn from six massive containment tanks surrounding the core like organs.

  Alex stepped closer, making between crates of supply, lines of braided metal and tall support structures that dotted the area. He need a closer look. He recognized the forms inside before his brain accepted them. Small, round object dense with aether energy, Arcane beast cores. Each tank had one floating at its center.

  Some glowed green. Others shimmered blue-black. All of them throbbed with corrupted aether, naturally, as the machine seemed to be pulling in energy from the leyline below and forcing into the tanks, through spiraling compression glyphs, and into the beast cores.

  On the upper rings of the structure, masked figures moved. Five of them; engineers, mages, maybe both. Their faces were hidden under hoods, as each of them were wearing dark robes lined with protective runes. They all wore the same darkened boots on their feet and steel-tipped gloves on their hands. Each worked in silence, moving with the coordination of people following a well established schedule.

  “That’s a compression loop, siphoning glyphs,” Alex murmured. “They’re… shit. They’re not just pulling aether from this things, they are forcing it into those cores far beyong normal capacity. Arcane cores can’t normally be recharged like this. It will make them immensely powerful. But far too unstable.”

  He stepped forward, watching the pattern as it synced with the leaking cores.

  Cole soke quietly behind him. “So this isn’t just some research facility.” Alex turned to look at him. Cole’s face was set, cold.

  “They’re researching on how to build weapons.”

  They stood there for a beat longer, the hum of the Leyforge filling the silence like a heartbeat from deep inside the planet. Every crystal gleam, every containment tank hiss, every glyph flicker added weight to what they had just discovered.

  Above them, high up in the palace, the court danced and traded smiles.

  Down here, war was being built by the aether filled orb.

  “Shit, hide.” Alex whispered.

  They didn’t hear the engineer coming, so much as felt him. It was a shift in the room’s rhythm as footsteps broke the established a pattern. Cole slunk back behind a support beam, tensed. Alex tucked himself back against the opposite beam from Cole. He caught the movement at the edge of his vision. From down below, he saw one of the masked figures at the upper ring had peeled off from the others. He was moving carefully, head turned just slightly so, like he was listening for something.

  He’d heard them. Maybe not clearly. But enough to make him suspicious.

  “He’s circling,” Cole murmured.

  Alex’s eyes darted across the Leyforge. There were no easy exits and no real cover. Above them, the crystal-laced structure buzzed louder suddenly, as if it could feel their panic.

  “We can’t fight here,” Alex whispered. “One wild spell could ignite the whole chamber.”

  “Then we don’t use spells,” Cole said.

  The figure dropped down from the ringed walkway, its movements silent, controlled. A short cloak fluttered behind him, catching the red glow of the leyforge. He moved like someone who had real training, fast, but not loud. He was heading directly toward their hiding spot.

  Alex gestured, stepping left. Cole mirrored him right. The engineer rounded the pillar just as Alex moved in on him, not to attack, not yet, but to just grab his attention.

  The man turned, and his eyes locked on him.

  “You’re not cleared—”

  That was all he got out before Cole was behind him. One arm hooked around the man’s throat. The other slammed his forearm into the engineer’s elbow, twisting it behind his back and locking the joint. The man dropped an aether infused gemstone from his sleeve, but Alex snatched it mid-air before it could activate.

  He rapidly ran his aether through the spell pattern for his [Flare] spell, but focused his intent on only shaping it in his hand. The Gemstone was barraged by the focused energy of his spell, and the item was crushed it in his hand.

  “Hold him still,” he said.

  The fight wasn’t long. The man tried to kick, twist, throw weight, but Cole was stronger, trained for managing inertia and momentum, practiced, proper control in hand to hand combat, not just pure muscle. He brought the man down hard on the stone floor, with a quiet thud.

  Alex slid in, one knee to the chest, forearm across the man’s mask, he pulled a dagger from his bracelet, and thrust the tip up under the mask into where his jawline should be. Deep crimson blled gushed out shortly after.

  The engineer froze, then went slack.

  Alex vanished the blade back into his bracer with a mere flick of his hand. Then he reached to the utility belt strapped across the man’s side and pulled the object he had seen tucked into a pocket there, a thin aether-slate, still humming faintly with residual energy.

  “Got it,” he smiled.

  They bound the man’s hands with reinforced ribbon-twine from a broken crate, then dragged his body behind a collapsed brace wall just out of direct view from the upper level. The Leyforge spun on, oblivious.

  They turned to the far side of the chamber, where a maintenance tunnel branched off, narrow, old, barely lit. Alex pointed. “That way.”

  Cole nodded, asking no questions. No hesitation. They vanished into the dark, shadows swallowing them as the forge chamber faded behind like a bad dream to be forgotten.

  ***

  The suite was quiet when they returned.

  Alex and Cole stepped in through the front door, their shoes tracked with gray dust and something like rat piss. The others were already waiting, clustered loosely around the enchanted table, a few had half-finished drinks left untouched.

  Kate‘ looked up first. “Where the fuck were you two?”

  Alex’s answer came in the form of him walking to the table, pulling the aether-slate from his pocket, and setting it down. It pulsed once, a quiet, waiting blue.

  “Read it,” he said.

  Eric stepped forward, reached out with a single hand and tapped the slate’s corner, the other hand gripping the enchanted table, syncing to its stored data in the slate with the table after just a pulse of energy. A projection bloomed to life above large wooden surface, a hazy, encoded memory flickering in shades of violet and pale-white.

  The first image was blurred. A massive arcane beast, chained and bound, half-submerged in crystal, but still breathing. The second was a dissection. They watched masked engineers peel apart bone and flesh, separating magical essence from physical tissue until they extracted an aether core, feeding it into conduit lines.

  The third image: a glyph-sealed chamber lit with gathering and compression runes, testing chambers, weapons rigs. One of the arcane cores detonated in slow-motion, sending shrapnel through a warded dummy.

  Fourth: a war map. Lines drawn across regional trade routes. Reinforcement routes traced to multiple cities. A contingency overlay marked in crimson. The projection ended in a flicker of static and silence followed.

  “They’re not building a power plant for energy,” Cole said. “They’re preparing for a war campaign.”

  No one disagreed. But they didn’t agree on what to do next.

  Eric leaned forward, “I say we use it. Blackmail the whole court. We don’t name names, just suggest we know what’s being built. Drop the right hint at the right moment and let the court sweat.”

  Lance frowned. “Or leak it anonymously. Stir up pressure without pinning it to us. We could tip the vote and still walk out clean.”

  Peter nodded. “Hit them in the shadows. Stay ghosts.”

  Kate shook her head once, firm. “If this gets out, our death is inevitable. Doesn’t matter who leaked it, or which factions is actually doing it, it’ll come back to us. The Church will scream heresy, the nobles will scream sabotage, and Terraxum will need a villain.”

  “And we’re already wearing the costume,” Zach said quietly, not looking up.

  He didn’t add anything else.

  Devon exhaled, slow and tired. “That’s not all.” Everyone turned to him.

  “Vess Auralde tricked me,” he said. “Bound me to an inferred-consent contract. I touched this tube, she activated the clause the moment I agreed to an offhand comment while I held it.”

  “Fuck,” Alex hissed.

  “What kind of contract?” Allie asked.

  “Tech-sharing. Anything I develop, I’m obligated to feed her. She wants to stage a public contract next to make it official and garner attention and respect. Use us to secure her bloc.”

  “So she owns you now?” Garret asked.

  Devon didn’t flinch. “Not completely.”

  “But close enough,” Alex said.

  “She also brought up desgins I’ve been working on. Ones I haven’t talked about. I think somehow, were are bugged.”

  The weight in the room deepened. It was a lot all at once. Just when they thought they were getting a handle on the political game, more shit kept falling into their lap.

  Just three days left. And none of their hands were clean.

  Allie was the one who said what no one else would. “We don’t just need to win the vote,” she said. “We need to choose what kind of future we’re gonna be released into.”

  No one spoke right away. Because she was right. They weren’t guests anymore, or simple prisoners, or even diplomats. They were leverage, symbols, scapegaots, and martyrs all together all at once. And how they moved next would define not just the vote, but what came after.

  Alex looked at the board again. At the figures arranged in their clean little circles, red and green, leaning ally and high risk. None of it felt abstract anymore.

  “We start tomorrow,” he said. “No more playing safe.”

  “You mean we start making enemies,” Kate said.

  Alex met her eyes. “We already have.”