NOVEL NEXT Chapter 162: A Plague
The tremors stopped in the early morning. Wulf lay in his dorm room bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
By the time the sun rose, he might have caught an hour of sleep total, all things combined. He pushed himself up. Irmond was still asleep, but turned himself around in his bed, and his sheets were a scrambled nightmare. Hadn't been a good night for him, either.
Wulf went to the bathhouse and slashed cold water in his face, and when that didn't help, he immersed his whole body in it. That helped slightly.
But the only thing that was going to drag him out of this slovenly feeling was getting to work.
He arrived at the meal hall early and snuck into the kitchen, then snuck an end of a baguette and some smoked meat. It was good enough. Besides, his presence at breakfast probably would've caused more chaos. The news that he was an Alchemist would've spread like wilfire.
Next, he made a beeline for the academy library. He was pretty sure it wouldn't have everything he needed. If it did, it would've been at least somewhat common knowledge. But he could brush up his history and give himself a point to jump off from.
He tapped into the library's codex using an access key that Dr. Tallari had given him. For those who weren't directly attuned to codexes, or who didn't have a specially-made bracer, they couldn't access it on a whim. He approached a search terminal, a hanging rectangle of stone on one of the numerous pillars running down the central atrium of the hall. He pressed his hand into the center of the rectangle. The sheets of enhanced parchment pinned to it fluttered, but there was no wind.
Then, with a push of intent, he entered the slightly more advanced access key Dr. Tallari had given him—one reserved for TAs. He entered in a set of numbers and letters, using the same sort of mental manipulations that he'd use to select a Skill upgrade.
The parchment activated. It read:
[Access granted. Perform search.]
Wulf shut his eyes and focussed on the notion of history, and whispered, "The demon war." Calling it the 'first demon war' wouldn't work—they weren't calling it that yet, not in this time period.
The sheets activated, displaying a string of messages, sifting through layers of restrictions and access restrictions and authorizations. It lasted a half minute before finally displaying a list of books and their locations, as well as excerpts containing the words he'd concentrated on.
He couldn't exactly use the excerpts, but he narrowed his search. When did the war end, how long did it last, and how exactly did it end. Were there demon spirits?
Once he had a list of potential books to read, he set off through the library, hunting.
The library was a ten-storey tall jut on the west wing of the academy, with an atrium down its center and rings around the outside, each covered in bookshelves. Even so early in the morning, there were a few students trying to get in some last minute cramming.
Wulf picked out his books, avoiding most of them. Some of them glanced at him, and when they realized it was him, a bout of awkward silence overwhelmed them. He didn't bother trying to talk to them.
Once he had a stack of books, he retreated into a booth near the back of the library, then set up his storage pendants. He couldn't steal these books; they were registered in the codex, and someone would notice. It'd set off alarms if he even put them in a storage pendant. But he had other plans.
While the library was still quiet, he stepped into his pendant and crafted two batches of potions. He didn't worry about spending too much time letting the tinctures steep, but with the time-altering abilities of the pendant, he was able to step outside, speed up time inside, and return. In a matter of minutes, hours had gone by.
Most of the potions didn't give him what he wanted, but he created two concentration potions.
Focus Potion (Low-Gold Quality)
Improves the concentration ability on the user for two hours and increases their ability to retain information they've learned.
He only had one, so he'd have to make good use of it. He picked it up, uncorked it, then drank it in a single gulp. The vinegar-y taste of the potion barely even made him shudder, now and he registered the effect immediately. He began reading, sifting through pages upon pages in a matter of hours.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
At some point, Kalee, Irmond, and Seith found him, and they joined in. He handed them sections he'd read that he thought would be valuable for a second look.
Despite the focus potion, when noon came, his mind felt like it was about to burst. He rubbed his eyes, and his stomach growled at the realization that he'd only taken a few bites of the breakfast he'd stolen for himself.
More important was the information he'd gathered.
"Sooo…" he said, leaning back on the velvet couch inside the booth. "The First Demon War lasted for five years. Only five." He scratched his head. "There used to be four moons, but the demons destroyed one back then, too, and were moving to destroy the others, but Panne and his friends stopped them."
"Not just destroyed," Kalee whispered, tapping a page. "Harvested."
"Harvested?" Irmond asked.
"How do you know?" Seith asked.
"They dragged down chunks of moon rock not just as an attack," Kalee said. "Here, it explains how demons were swarming around the impact sites. Fiends would sometimes be spotted carrying sleds heaped with rock away from the impact."
Wulf nodded. "It lines up."
"What do you mean?" Seith whispered.
"The final confrontation," he said. "Panne's army. He led them to what they called the Great Plains of Centralis, now the Litterlands. They're called that because of what the demons were doing. Digging a big hole, devastating the environment. They were burying something in the crust."
"Or…not just burying," Irmond suggested. "I mean, what if it's like you suggested? What if the world is hollow?"
Kalee rubbed her chin. "We're aware it has a liquid core, though."
"Technically, just the mantle," Wulf replied. "It's possible there's something inside."
"Something the demons were building in the core of the world?" Seith asked. "Something to destroy the world?"
Wulf nodded.
"What were they building?" Irmond asked.
"No idea," Wulf replied. "But I'd bet we can find something more specific in King Athem's library."
They skipped lunch and spent the afternoon in the royal palace, sifting through archives upon archives of old books. The king's library didn't have a codex to easily search and identify the books you needed, so Wulf had to rely on brute force.
But he had a year to work with. He knew the time frame he was looking for. He sifted through journal entries and first-hand accounts from the time, specifically from engineers in Panne's army.
If they could figure out what the demons were building, they could defeat them.
On the first day, he turned up nothing. The second and third day rewarded nothing as well.
But on the fourth day, he uncovered an account from an engineer from many thousands of years ago, translated into the modern language: The demons are creating vast crucibles. They refine rock into the same steel as their pods that crash from the sky. Even the most intelligent of them, the spirits, seem programmed to do this without question. Some spirits say they wish for land, for slaves to rule over, and yet they will destroy the land beneath their feet. It does not make sense.
And yet, there's a portal, deep within the crust. They spend their first four years building it. It can rip into the cords and send substances over vast distances—across the night sky, to different stars. They send half the resources they gather through it. I do not know where, and neither does Panne.
Wulf rubbed his eyes. It was late in the evening, but…
"I have an idea," he said. "They're a plague."
"Huh?" Irmond asked. He was carrying cups of tea into the library—which Athllas' aide had prepared for them. "What's that?"
Kalee and Seith both turned to him expectantly.
"The demons don't travel around the cosmos, looking for targets," Wulf explained. "But when a planet passes through their swarm, they harvest it. They're refining their own materials, building more demon spheres out of our world. And whatever they don't harvest, they send elsewhere."
"If they were building more spheres, why don't we see any?" Seith asked.
"Because they're deep below the surface," Wulf said. "They're turning the inside of the world into an infected pustule of demon spheres. When it bursts, and when our world dies, more of them will spread throughout the universe, hunting for more planets to devour. When they don't use to spread, they send somewhere. Perhaps their homeworld."
"But why?" Irmond asked.
"Perhaps there is a reason," Kalee whispered. "Or perhaps not. But I've seen the malice of demons. To ask why? You're using our sort of thinking, projecting a human or near-human line of thought onto them. But they're not." She crossed her arms. "There's no tragic tale of woe, no horrific circumstances to make the monster pitiable. There's only expansion. Endless expansion."
Wulf grimaced. "Then we know what to do." He shut the book, stood up, then walked to the nearest window and looked out over the skyline of Centralis as the sun set over it. "We can't cower in our cities and hope for the storm to pass. We have to get out there. They'll be boring down into the crust. Perhaps they're trying to find that old portal, or perhaps they already have. Whatever it is, we know what to look for. We have to find them and stop them."
"We're with you," Kalee said, wrapping an arm around his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Wulf," Irmond whispered. "I know you don't have all the answers…but I trust you."
"I'm here," Seith said. "I'm glad you're not one of the old Orichalcums."
Wulf nodded in thanks, then said, "I'm glad to have you three. I think…I think we might just be able to pull this off. But there's a long road ahead…"