The First Step

BOOK ONE: The New World

CHAPTER 1: The First Step

Having disconnected the [Cinder Spark] from the dozens of arrays scattered across the castle, Arkyn and Dusk could almost hear all the tethers disintegrate. The hums of energy were being snuffed out one-by-one, and the silence it made had echoed.

By the time they made it back to the front gates of the castle, only the remnants of the magic remained.

Arkyn couldn't help but glance back at the event with [Mage Sight]. 

The scene appeared as if gold was raining down the mountain, cascading down the partially standing towers and open walls. It was both captivating and sad to watch.

They had stepped out of the ruined castle a few hours before sunrise, finding the bodies from the tent still positioned as Akryn left them. They didn't serve any further use, so Arkyn swept his foot around the loose dirt, making it open into a trench that he buried the bones deep inside.

The effort was about the same it took to clear the tunnel before, but the process didn't strain his body as much. 

Once he was done, Arkyn peered around the surroundings of the castle. The darkness was not blinding despite the lack of sun. The snowy mountain peaks around them reflected enough of the moonlight that they could see the world around them clear enough.

Dusk watched Arkyn stare off and pondered what was next.

'So where are we going? Did you plan this out any farther or are you just picking a direction and wishing for the best?'

The Odbrane Castle sat on the edge of the west coast of the Continent, where a long stretch of mountains ran straight into the Altum Sea. Their options were limited to the icy regions North, the rocky mountain ranges that ran South, or the endless stretch of forests in the East.

"I was more or less going to wander but . . . " Arkyn squinted off to the distance, a dim light on the horizon caught his eye.

Deep in the forests East, there was a bulb of light on the edge. It was only visible against the night sky, missing Arkyn's attention the first time he came up to the surface.

That source of light could only mean that there was something out there. Perhaps it was civilization, or it was a pit of fire and eternal torment. Either way it meant something there was worth investigating in Arkyn's mind.

'Well I guess that's still a step up in comparison to hiding in the dirt till the end of time.' Dusk slithered up Arkyn's leg and coiled up to his shoulder to see what he was looking at. 

"Your obsession with my life decisions would be more endearing if your tone was less mocking and you suggested something some ideas yourself for once." Arkyn fought the compulsion to flick the Fractal Snake off his shoulder.

'Well you raised me from nest egg to adult-'

'Still juvenile more like it.' Arkyn thought.

'-so my character is in your image. What is that?' Dusk was genuinely distracted by something gleaming in the moonlight.

In the rubble of the tower that fell against the walls of the castle border, a piece of metal was reflecting the light. Arkyn walked over and recognized it once it was within reach.

He pulled out a circular plate of bronze out of the rocks. It would have stood Arkyn's full height, but the collapse made the concave shape crumple down to twisted scrap. The brass was covered in more green substance from age than reflective surfacing now.

Arkyn tossed it off to the side and pointed through a hole in the wall that the tower made during its fall.

His finger gestured at the large ceramic pillar that stood on a stone block in the main pavilion. It was tucked just behind the guard station.

"When the castle was first constructed, it was always cold. Even when simple heating arrays were placed throughout, there were some awful cold and windy days. So an older member of the royal blackguard had this big tower constructed with polished—and once pristine—bronze plates positioned from the sun to the ceramics." Among the broken tower, fragments of other plates were still visible.

"They always had some newly recruited court-mage adjust the plates to focus the sunlight onto these things scattered about the grounds. It magnified the heat beam so intensely, that the ceramics would heat a lot of the castle with little effort."

'Why was it on a pedestal?'

"Well . . . it was a first attempt at such a project. So the results weren't exactly a perfect success." Arkyn replied somewhat sheepishly.

"No one was aware that when making the concave brass plate, the heat retaining stonework needed to be a specific distance because the focused light only has a small window to magnify the light beam. If the ceramics were too close or too far, the light wouldn't be concentrated enough to create a proper focus to heat the clay.

Most of these [Sun Towers] were off by about ten paces in height. So it was either make a new kind of brass plate, move the whole tower, or raise the ceramic.

I was told that the king at the time declared they perform the cheapest option and think more carefully next time."

'So you heard the story, but did you ever think back to that advice and really listen? Not so sure you have followed any careful thinking these last few years.'

"I am sorely tempted to leave you here, and I'll have you know that this [Sun Tower] inspired my best work."

Dusk could tell this was headed into a long story and lecture, so he slid down Arkyn's shoulder and into the pack Arkyn now carried. He avoided the strange forge hammer, as he didn't like the sensation it gave, and nestled atop the stack of books to try napping.

Arkyn took that as a cue to continue and began walking down the mountain road.

"Amid probably one of the worst winters the kingdom had ever seen, I had an epiphany.

Odbrane can make anything out of arrays, machines, and creativity. The biggest limiter was the amount of mana we could use to power any of them."

'Is mana not in everything around us? You have told me many times that everything has a mana circuit and it naturally siphons the surrounding energy of the world, simply refueling the natural energies our bodies need to operate magic.' Dusk questioned before his mind started drifting off. 

He had never heard this story before, so Dusk impulsively let out the question before losing consciousness. Being inside the boundaries of the newly crafted [Cinder Spark] amulet, he could fully enjoy its warmth for all its glory and succumbed quickly to sleep.

"That is still true, and if an array was not so power hungry, then a mage could create it and then recharge the runes before the mana fueling its structure dies out. 

Though not every mage intends to monitor every array they ever created, so unless they planned to sit there and constantly refuel it every so often, then it would eventually fade. 

Sometimes a human mage lacks the volume of energy needed to even refill larger scale arrays.

Mana-expensive creations need potent sources of mana to draw from. Mages over the years have found plenty of methods and materials to do such a thing, but I figured there had to be some nearly bottomless sources out there."

Arkyn looked over to where the sun would rise, thinking back to the moment he made the connection, and the chain reaction of events that unfolded from it.

"Everything we hoped to achieve required a constant flow of power, and where might we find such a thing?" Arkyn asked rhetorically.

'I had found a way to take the energy from the sun, just like the [Solar Towers], and convert it into magic.'

Arkym traversed the sloped road until the sky started to lighten up, he chatted with himself and wondered more about the drastic changes the Continent must've undergone while aging beneath the castle.

'If the war ended, one way or another, then perhaps magic changed for the better. Less fixations on the offensive magics and more on evolutions. Although if Odbrane had lost, then that means magic of any kind would be enslaved and freedom would be limited to practically nothing.'

Akryn ignored the thoughts about the opposition of war. He was instead glad to see his theory about the [Containment Array] being the source of his preserved body. He felt no symptoms of weakness or numbness the entire trek.

A small part of his mind had been stressed that the plan to take out the [Cinder Spark] had failed, and there was no way to undo that mess if he had been wrong. Now that worry was finally subsiding.

Eventually he found the compacted dirt roads ending. It stopped at a large platform made of mountain stone bricks. There were several, large structures around the edges made of the same material as the ground that resembled the archway in the banquet hall, only much larger and in much worse conditions.

'What are we standing around at now?' Dusk felt they were no longer moving and peaked out to see the reason.

"The end of the road." Arkyn said.