Birthright-The Technomage Archive (22 page)

Damien remembered when he had built the school. The ground it sat on was empty plains back then.

When most people had only just begun their exploration out of Erlon’s habitable zones, Damien and his Charons were already creating new universes. He remembered being shunned by the religious leaders, and in turn, most of the population. They claimed the Charons were blasphemers and heretics, and the situation was only escalating. There hadn’t been any violence yet, but it was inevitable that there would be. So the order needed a headquarters, a place where they could work and research in relative safety. They could have found haven in an Instance, but their work was so tied to the high-yield energy pockets all across Erlon. While they were capable of creating their own universe to live and work in, they wouldn’t have had the same success there that they had in Erlon

Hope came when initial surveys of a section of the Uncharted Wastes turned up a massive energy pocket—unstable, but possessing the highest energy yield they had ever discovered. Damien and a handful of his closest colleagues spent months journeying to it.

These were the days well before the Blood Rites and internal nanites, before Damien would have near-total control over his molecular structure. That technology would come later, after centuries of research at Ennd’s. Back then, the Charons all wore sleeves of nanites under their clothes. This technology, now treated like training wheels for Apprentices preparing for the Blood Rites, had once been the pinnacle of science on Erlon.

Damien Vennar stood in front of Ennd’s Academy and let the memory of being a much younger man wash over him. He closed his eyes, and he could still feel how his nanite sleeve had reacted to the energy pocket as he had walked into the plain. Damien planted his feet—his body in one time, his mind in another—in the exact location he had ten thousand years ago.

He had been the only one who could withstand the pressure. His colleagues fainted immediately. They were unable to push against the pressure emanating from the ground, the pressure that was magnified by their nanites’ reaction to it.

But Damien had kept walking toward the energy pocket. His nanites began to move without any instruction from him. The machines would listen to his suggestions when he made them, but he let them work on their own for a while.

The microscopic robots had originally been programmed to replicate only when one had been lost. They would draw energy and physical material from either the Charon's body or the surrounding environment to produce a replacement for the lost machine.

That was their original program.

What Damien Vennar had experienced on this plain was magnificent and beyond anything he had imagined possible. The tiny machines rushed from his body toward the source of the energy that excited them. None were lost, but they replicated as they surged away from Damien. They maintained physical contact with him and created a bridge between the energy pocket and his mind.

The nanites flew toward the energy storm below ground, and that's when Damien knew what he could do. What he
had
to do.

He stood tethered to the ground by the nanites burrowing deep within the ground. Time stood still for Damien; his colleagues remained unconscious. He fully exerted his power, pushing himself past any established human boundary. He went well into what he would have considered godhood before. Creating a universe was easy; he had created dozens of Instances, and they had never filled him with a feeling like this.

This was divinity. This was apotheosis.

One by one, a dozen crystalline spires emerged from the earth, tinted only by the refraction of the sunlight that hit them. They rose from the ground as liquid, but became solid as the nanites continued to pack themselves on top of one another, microscopic layer upon layer.

Damien laughed as the energy beneath the soil empowered him. He commanded the nanites to replicate faster, more efficiently. They did.

In his mind, Damien Vennar saw the end result of this construction. He saw a palace surrounding a single tower that reached upward, more majestic than anything ever before constructed on Erlon. He could see the footprint of the building, and its interior corridors. He saw his fortress in his imagination, and the surging nanites made every detail of his fantasy a reality. Every hall, every door, every tower poured upward from the ground and solidified into the haven he and his Charons had been searching for.

He had no idea how long it took to build. From then on, time meant nothing to Damien, and eventually he was finished.

He stood a few hundred meters away from his creation. He could see gardens that were already blooming on the terraces. He had not just created this fortress, this haven and sanctuary—he had created
life.
He embraced the rush of nanites as they came back to him from the storm of energy below. Their work was finished for now.

Not long afterward, his colleagues regained consciousness, and they walked up behind him. Damien could feel their nanites pulse with the energy from the pocket beneath them, eager to experience what his already had. It was a new sensation, feeling another person’s nanosleeve. Damien liked it, but said nothing. The other Charons were awed by what he had accomplished, what they had known to be impossible just hours (or had it been days? weeks?) before. They were at a loss for words.

“
Welcome home,” Damien had said to them.

His mind snapped back to the present, and he heard himself speak those same words again. They seemed strangely appropriate now, too. A lot had changed since he had Conjured it out of nothingness, but still, it felt familiar. Damien knew that once he was inside, he would have little trouble finding his way to the Headmaster's Office. It would still be locked away in its own Instance via the Library. There was only one portal on the grounds, after all.

The campus was bustling with students and faculty making use of the various gardens and terraces as they enjoyed the beautiful day outside. The twin suns beamed along the building’s crystalline exterior, which made the whole building glow in a hundred different colors. It really was a beautiful sight. He admired his handiwork as he climbed the shimmering stairs that led to the front door. No one seemed to notice him; one lonely old man in a sea of crotchety professors was probably not going to get anyone’s attention.

Damien finished his fruit, secured the rest in his satchel for later, and walked directly into the front door of Ennd's Academy for the first time in over four hundred years.

Chapter Fifteen

Ceril and his team found shelter well before the storm came, but luckily for them, it turned out that the rain had little in common with the acidic tree sap that had eaten through Harlo's test tube. The cave they found was a bit cramped for five people with travel gear, but it kept them dry. Chuckie even managed to Conjure a decent enough fire to keep the chill from the wind out of the cave.

Ceril had to admit that Chuckie had talent, even if he was kind of an insubordinate jerk. Making a fire was easy. Conjuring a fire was not.

Technomage nanites did not naturally produce heat. Whenever they created excess energy, the surrounding nanites absorbed that energy so that nothing went to waste and so the nanites had a perpetual power source. Because of this design, it took intense concentration from a Charon to be able to condense and control nanites well enough to produce even a minimal amount of heat. It went against the tiny machines’ base design. That’s why a Flameblade’s aura was completely aesthetic unless the Charon was in total control. Chuckie was able to keep the fire going for the duration of the storm. Ceril wondered what emotion he could have channeled that long to fuel the Conjuring. Maybe there was more to Chuckie than was on the surface.

Even though Chuckie seemed a bit tired afterward and needed to rest—that Conjuring had obviously taken a lot out of him—Ceril knew he was a tough kid and would pull himself together quickly enough.

“
What next, Ternia?” Saryn asked. “It’s been half an hour or so since I saw lightning.”

“
We go looking for ways back to Erlon.”

“
Vague,” she said.

“
It's about all I have right now. I guess we should try to find signs of some sort of civilization if there is any. Let’s hope there is. Because if not, we're in for one hell of a trip if we try to find some kind of Instance connection on our own. I can only assume that the locals would have legends or stories of some kind that can lead us in a general direction.”

“
Yeah,” said Saryn, “but where do you propose we find these locals?”

“
We walk for a while. Pick a direction,” Ceril said.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Pick a direction. Any of them is as good as any other.” Ceril got up and walked toward the mouth of the cave. He had to step over the pile of his team’s supply bags, and he was careful not to trip since Chuckie's Conjured fire no longer provided enough light to see by. He wasn’t careful enough, though—his foot caught in one of the straps, and he went sprawling.

Chuckie laughed, too busy recuperating from the fire to bother checking if Ceril was okay. Swinton was the first to get to him and help him stand up.

“
Sorry, boss,” he said. “Think it was my bag that got you. Shouldn't have left it out like that. I'll be more careful next time. You okay?”

“
Yeah, I'm fine.” Ceril brushed himself off and led Swinton and Saryn to the mouth of the cave. “So…which direction?” he asked.

“
You got me, boss,” Swinton said. “All looks the same from here.”

“
He's right,” Saryn chimed in. “It's either plains that way or mountains behind us. If my vote counts for anything, though, I say avoid the mountains. We don't know what kind of wildlife to expect, but if Harlo’s acid tree is any indication, I'd rather take my chances with whatever is in the plains. That way, we can see it coming instead of getting maimed by some mountain-climbing Whateveritis.”

“
Point,” Ceril said. He crooked his neck backward and shouted into the cave at Harlo and Chuckie. “You guys have any preference? Where we go next?”

Harlo shuffled forward, grabbing her pack to strap on as she joined the trio at the mouth of the cave. “Doesn't matter to me,” she said. “I think Saryn's got a point, though. Not saying the plains critters will be any nicer, but I'm not really in the mood to have an alien Whatchamacallit jump off a mountain and eat me.”

“
Agreed,” said Ceril.

“
If you're going plains-way, though,” Chuckie said, “I think there was a path back near where the portal dropped us.”

“
Will you be able to find it if we backtrack?” Ceril asked.

“
Yep.”

“
Then we go into the plains. Chuckie, grab your stuff and lead the way. We move out in ten minutes.”

“
You're the boss, boss,” Chuckie said.

Ceril scowled at Chuckie for laying the sarcasm on a bit too thick. He tried unsuccessfully not to sound irritated when he responded with a simple “Yes, I am.” He left it at that.

A few minutes later, Chuckie showed them the path he had seen as they walked past. It was barely there, but he was right: the path led into the plains, and probably into the forest that bordered it farther out.

The wind from the storm had beaten down the tall, purple grass, and the rain had made the ground soggy and muddy. Finding where the path had begun was no problem, but keeping up with it was considerably harder. Eventually, anything resembling a path disappeared, and all that stood in front of them was a waist-high wall of weeds and grasses. Three of the acid trees were visible twenty or thirty feet away. They walked for nearly an hour, and no one saw anything that indicated that they were heading toward civilization.

“
What now, Ternia?” Saryn sighed. “There’s nothing here.”

Ceril was silent. He was in charge, and he had to come up with some idea fast. They could keep walking, sure, but there were plains for as far as he could see.

Then it dawned on Ceril. He had been treating this like any other field exercise Bryt had put him through. But it wasn't. They were allowed to Conjure, and that made a huge difference.

Instead of answering Saryn immediately, Ceril focused the excitement he felt and concentrated on the breather. He used that as a base and instructed his nanites to cover his eyes. His skin tingled as the black mass slid up his face and into his eye sockets. He felt the sleeve grip his eyeball. To the rest of the team, it just seemed like he was standing still and surveying the land.

“
There's a forest a little to the,” he checked the compass on his belt, “I think west.” Ceril turned around, and his team could see that the whites of his eyeballs were now black, and they were bloodshot with glowing purple veins. His glowing green pupils were spinning slightly as he refocused. The nanites from his breather now extended tendrils from his nostrils into his eyes. They coated his eyeballs and worked as magnification lenses. He had forgotten he could Conjure at will here, had honestly forgotten about being issued the sleeves.

“
Ceril,” Harlo said. “Your eyes…they’re, umm…”

“
Conjured,” he said, smiling. “Kind of slipped my mind until just now when Saryn spoke up, but we’ve been essentially walking blind. Anyway, I can't tell if what I see ahead are more acid trees or something else—they’re just too far away—but it's something that's not plains. And if I’m not seeing it wrong, there’s some kind of structure in the middle of the forest, or maybe on the other side of it. I can’t see much of it, but it looks like a tower of some kind. I’m not sure, but it’s not like any tree I’ve ever seen. If this Instance is anything like Erlon, or anything like some of the others Bryt and Roman had me in, there’s a pretty good chance that some kind of village would have sprung up around it. At least, there’s a better chance of one being there than out here in the middle of this…
nothing
.”