IoaUM Chapter 8

With the occasional root or sprout appearing as we walked, there was a nebulous path to follow towards whatever our destination would be. Jetiza, with her eyes modified by an unfamiliar Arcane Brand, led the way. I pointed my penlight wherever I saw anything that could be of note, but with her magically amplified sight, Jetiza didn’t need my help so instead I inspected whatever caught my eye as the Blue followed the trail of magical plants. 

I hadn’t spent much time in any greentunnels or groweries, so I couldn’t begin to guess what the plants might have been, but the more I saw and inspected, I was sure of one thing–these weren’t plants that had miraculously survived the explosion the day before. No, these plants had grown in the 20 or so hours since I’d been down here the day before. There were no scorch marks on the leaves or stems, nor was there any evidence of the plants having functioned as a shade or shield for the flames that had blossomed so wildly before, so they had to be new.

Step by step, we approached the stretch of tunnel where the explosion had originated the day before. The singes and scorches here were replaced by deep scars scored into the stone walls, evidence of loose debris being flung through the enclosed space with unrelenting force. I couldn’t help myself from looking specifically up at the manhole where I’d attempted my descent the day before.

“You see something?” Jetiza asked, her eyes constantly roving and inspecting the surrounding sewers.

“Ehh. Maybe. You see that little box thing there?” I gestured at the vague shadow illuminated by my penlight’s weak glow, and Jetiza cocked her head, curious. 

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’d go check it out, but I’m not Purity’s gift to ladder climbing competitions. You willing to look for me?”

“I’m not going to trip your trap for you.” The Blue resisted.

“Ash me, Jetiza. Do you honestly think that I’m–” I cut myself off. “I don’t want you to touch it. Just take a look, see if you can see any triplines or anything, then I’ll grab it with this,” I held up my spectral hand, “and bring it down. I can’t really look at it and keep myself from falling at the same time. See what you can see with your eyes, and I’ll see what little I can glean about it magically from here. Is that acceptable for you?”

Though she leveled a distrustful gaze at me, she did begin scaling the ladder, albeit cautiously and nearly as slowly as I would have were I the climber. As she proceeded, I did open my eyes wide, seeing what little remains of magic I could pick up from this distance. There was no special “sight” or “vision” that being a Mage granted you, but after nearly four decades of magical practice, I could see the slight trails or markings that magical workings left in their environment. 

“Hey.” I said, just before Jetiza’s hand reached the box. She startled and glared down at me as she fought to retain her balance.

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure it was magical before, but it’s spent all the potential it was imbued with. Should be safe, at least magically. You seeing anything mechanical?”

“I’m not a tinker,” She groused, “I can see that there’s some mechanism in here. Not attached to anything I can see. Not sure if maybe there’s something on the wall? Not seeing much.” With that, she dropped to the ground and looked up at the box. “That’s it.”

I grumbled to myself as I sent my spectral hand up and away from my body, just a couple seconds passing before it reached the box. Before I let it touch, though, I took two steps back so that, if the mystery contraption did go up in smoke, I wasn’t in the direct blast zone. Then… I made the hand… touch it…

And nothing happened. I peeked around the corner of the tunnel in the roof, and my hand was wrapped around the box. Nothing. I closed my fingers around it. Nothing. I pulled gently. Nothing. I yanked. With a screech of protesting metal, the box ripped free from the wall and tumbled to the ground. It jingled like a full money pouch when it struck, but still, it didn’t react. Satisfied I was generally safe, I stepped forward to the box, seeing it for what it was.

Though clumsily constructed (or weakened by an explosion and broken by a 20 foot fall), the box was obviously an artifice. The cogs and wheels were fitted together to whirr into motion after pulling a cord which obviously was no longer connected to this trigger. However, the artifice was more than a mere sound device or something of the like, and as I held it in my right, physical hand, I could feel the presence of multiple spent enchantments. Looking down at myself, I was already filthy from this journey through the sewers, and I knelt on the ground to begin the dissection.

“You see what it is?” Jetiza asked, peering over my shoulder.

“See, yes. Not sure what it is yet.”

“Well, what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t tell you yet.”

With a sigh, Jetiza returned to keeping a lookout while I pulled a set of screwdrivers, picks, and drills from one of my pockets. I dutifully set to picking apart the mechanism, setting each part aside in groups of what it was connected to. It wasn’t long before I determined the function of the device and the enchantments alike, and I whistled under my breath. Before my Blue companion could excitedly ask me again, I explained, “Simple artifice, simple enchantment. Neither by an experienced tinker nor a Mage. It was real clever, though. Both worked together. The artifice contained a small canister, probably with oxygen or methane inside. The enchantment was set to blow with a relatively unimportant explosion, but drew on the magic of whoever tripped it to empower itself, along with the explosive canister. Combined with the methane already in the sewers–”

“We have what happened yesterday.” Jetiza finished. “Smoke and ashes. Smoking ashes. We’re lucky there weren’t any deaths yesterday.”

“Yeah.” I concurred.

“This really wasn’t you?” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

“If I was setting an explosive trap that could, potentially, literally destabilize much of Kormos, do you think I would find myself anywhere near that deadly explosion?”

“Figured I better ask.”

I scoffed. “We’re just lucky this part of the Greens seems to have been good with their regular venting sessions. If there’d been a buildup, at least half of the mulchers around here would be totally gone.”

“Yeah. Now hand over the artifice.”

I nearly asked why, but it was obvious after only a second’s thought. I passed it over after pulling a handkerchief out of my jacket and neatly reassembling the now loose inner workings of the artifice where they used to be then tying the handkerchief around it. “I think they’re mostly where they were. No guarantees.”

Jetiza shrugged. “We’ll have someone take a look at it. I’m about ready to get out of here.”

“I still wanna follow the plants. I’m glad to see there’s a reason this all happened yesterday,” I felt a slight pang of responsibility that I dutifully pushed down, “but I’m still looking for my man. I’m following the sprouts.”

“I guess we’re still stuck down here, then.”

I shouldn’t have hoped for any other result, I supposed. We resumed following the trail of sparsely growing sprouts.

It wasn’t unusual for a tended plant to grow as much or more than these little sprouts did in as much time, but why would a grower come down into the sewers to tend to single plants in a weird spread across hundreds of feet of tunnel? It just didn’t make sense, and would be exhausting to summon up the magical will to grow individual plants so far from each other. What could be the purpose? If they were valuable in and of themselves, the grower would hide them, and if dangerous, even more so.

“Shhh.” Jetiza shushed me as I mumbled to myself. I looked up as she pointed at an anomaly in the wall of the sewer. I’d never have noticed the shift in the lay of the stone without the Blue’s amplified sight, but there was something off about it. I tugged the glove off my hand and carefully ran it over the wall, searching for any additional anomalies beyond the slight bulge in the stone. After a full three minutes or so, still nothing. 

“Must’ve been wrong. Sorry.” Jetiza apologized, but I sighed. 

“I thought it was something too. These walls are all perfect. A team of immensely powerful elementalists established the whole system of tunnels, and they did so perfectly–” I cut myself off. There absolutely was something wrong with this. With a thought I sent my spectral hand across the stone, the fingertips pressing just barely into the surface. The icy touch of obscuramite chilled my mind as it forcefully dispelled my magic as soon as my spectral hand’s fingers crossed a particular brick. I gasped as my mind was wrenched from my idle search, the sickening taste of obscuramite fouling my mood.

“What was that?”

I ignored the Blue as I pulled my casting rod from my coat, leveled it at the brick directly beside the concealed magic-eating alloy, and hissed, “Sproxte!”

The formless force disintegrated the old brick, revealing a cleverly concealed clockwork mechanism. I flicked it into motion as I resummoned my hand. The door completed whirring and clicking into an open position by the time I completed the resummoning of my magical extremity. Before stepping into the revealed room, I reset my sleeves around my phantom wrist and gestured for Jetiza to lead the way.

She didn’t hesitate to do so, her dagger drawn and ready to strike. Nothing moved. Looking back and forth, it was an improvised office. A desk and three makeshift shelves ringed the room, all formed of clumsily controlled creeping vines and branches, and the same greenery that made up all the furniture in the room was the stuff we’d followed down here. Though the explosion had surely rocked the room, all the shelves were well ordered and filled with notebooks. The desk had nothing noteworthy laying atop it, just an inkwell and a couple loose sheets of paper. As I shuffled through them, I did find a rudimentary blueprint for the artifice we’d found, the scribbles detailing its manufacture and design almost childlike in their wonder and legibility.

I pulled the blueprint free and brandished it at Jetiza. “Here’s our culprit.” She wordlessly collected the paper, folded it neatly, and stored it in her own jacket. While she did so, I rifled through one of the notebooks before I stopped on a random page.

My mentor has removed all mentions of them in any identifying manner and has told me to do the same. Though it sucks, it makes sense. I mean, if anyone finds my office but I’m not there, then I might be able to escape. I’ll have to try to rewrite all the lessons I’ve already gotten, I don’t know if I’ll have the time. For now, I’ll just focus on how to embrace without conceding. It’s so… weird. Because the foreign touch demands attention, and draws you in, but you can only let so much in to broaden the vessel…

The journal entry continued from there, talking in vague terms that I couldn’t understand without more context, though something at the back of my mind whispered that I did understand what the author was saying. I glanced through the notebook, still lacking any definitive information that could help me to finally understand what they were doing. All the while, I wondered if this had anything to do with Lydin at all, given I’d only followed a hunch and a single report down into the sewers in the first place.

And then I found what seemed to be the author’s second attempt at recording their initial lessons, and its title made my blood run cold:

How to utilize Corruption to enhance magical sensitivity and proficiency.

“Oh… Purity protect us.” I muttered, and Jetiza stepped close. I simply pointed at the title. Her response was much more succinct. “Ash me! Smoke me!”

“I don’t want anything to do with this.” I said before Jetiza could gather herself. “I don’t want to know anything about what’s in these pages. I’m happy to burn them all, but I don’t want to touch them. If anyone from the Magistrate’s Guard or the Academy suspected I had anything to do with that, I’d be more than locked up.” In a flash of panic, I considered murdering the innocent Blue here in the sewers and burning her body with the evidence of whatever was happening here. Immediately after, though, I discounted my idiotic first impulse and instead looked at the Blue. Her face, in the plain white light of my penlight, was pale and afraid.

“Grab a couple of the notebooks,” I commanded. “I’m not sure who, but someone will want to see this. If we hide it, we’ll go down faster than the actual culprits.” Then, without waiting for Jetiza’s approval, I grabbed as many of the notebooks as I could and dumped them in her hands. Thankfully, once the books made contact with Jetiza, she gathered herself and stored them within her large peacoat. With another two loads, every sheet of paper and notebook was collected and held between the two of us.

Before we could begin to make our escape, though, I paused. “Do you hear that?”

The shelves were groaning, letting us know that something, somehow, somewhere, was approaching.