Ideworld Chronicles: The Art Mage

Day in the story: 1st October (Wednesday)

I aimed Noxy at the priest and fired. No sound. Just a muted puff in my arm. The bullet found its mark, his shoulder, sending him stumbling back, robes twisting in the air. He fell, clutching his wound, shouting something I couldn't hear.

The silence swallowed me again.

Red had activated it. Of course.

He stood now, wrench in hand glowing faintly with that grey light of Authority, whatever the hell that was. The others moved behind him, coordinated. Controlled. Clockwork shadows with teeth.

I had maybe nine shots left. I didn't bother counting exacts. I turned and ran.

I knew the terrain. We had jumped and walked at least five minutes before encountering this crew. The bridge was empty ahead. The next group, if any, would be five minutes out, minimum.

I sprinted to the opposite railing and vaulted over it.

Behind me, Red followed, his leap superhuman, landing with a boom I could feel in my bones despite the silence.

The workers, less agile, didn't try to follow directly. Instead, they started building, grabbing stray beams, lashing them together, laying makeshift planks across the gap. Efficient. Predictable.

But slow.

I leapt from one structural bar to the next, using the bridge's skeleton like a monkey on scaffolding. As I moved, I fired, one clean shot per head. Four down before their bridge even stabilized. Each dropped like a marionette with its strings slashed.

Red kept coming.

He pounded his wrench against the bars below me, not to destroy, but to destabilize. I couldn't hear the impacts, but the vibration in the steel echoed through my legs like drumbeats from hell.

I made a decision.

I abandoned the chase and doubled back, leaping across the span to the other side, where Reverend Thorne was still limping toward the corpses of his workers, dragging one leg behind him.

He turned at the soundless thud of my landing, staggered backward. His mouth moved, likely a curse, or a plea, but I couldn't hear a word.

Didn't matter.

I charged.

My reinforced leg slammed into his shin. The bone snapped like dry kindling beneath cloth. He screamed, but in silence and fell.

I raised my arm to finish it. One hit to the head. Just one,

WHACK.

The world went sideways.

The wrench hit me square in the ribs, my good side. The air vanished from my lungs and I flew like a ragdoll, crashing into a scaffold with a shriek of bent metal.

Pain exploded through my body.

Left ribs cracked hours ago. Now the right ones were joining the club. Balance, I guess. Life needs symmetry.

I groaned, trying to stand but the entire platform seemed to sway beneath me.

Red was right over me again.

The Reverend was crawling away, still dragging his broken leg.

And I was in no shape to run.

That's when the light returned.

Silver, pure and sharp, like moonlight caught in motion. It coalesced into a familiar form: the woman-shaped shimmer, radiant and otherworldly, as if someone had cut the sun into crystal and carved her from its shards. She darted across Red's vision, slicing through his focus like a knife across fabric.

Zoe.

She blinded him. Again.

She bought me seconds. Precious, aching seconds. I didn't waste them thinking, I had nothing clever left to think.

Instead, I drew Noxy. The pistol was hot, heavy, comforting.

I raised it to Red's head.

I wanted to scream, Move, Zoe, move!, but sound was still gone and she was too close to his face. Too close for a clean shot. Too close to risk it.

I lowered my aim, heart pounding and shifted the barrel toward the giant's knee.

Then fired.

Once. Twice. Five times. Maybe six, I couldn't count in the haze of it.

Each shot cracked through his reinforced joint like a jackhammer. Sparks flew, shards of synthetic bone scattered. And finally, finally, the knee gave out. With a sickening, twisting lurch, Red's leg separated from his body.

He fell like a felled tree.

The wrench came with him, an arc of death aimed straight at my skull, but I rolled away just in time, scraping across the metal and leaving a streak of blood where my side dragged.

My breath hitched.

I crawled, legs screaming, ribs on fire.

I looked back.

Red was crawling.

One knee gone, but his rage still intact, he heaved his bulk across the platform like some broken colossus, arms pulling, body dragging, wrench still in hand. His movements were grotesque. Childlike. Comical, in a way, if not for the gore and silence.

He crawled after me.

And I?

I crawled after the Reverend.

Three broken people in a godless chase.

The absurdity of it hit me like a drug. I laughed, no one could hear it, not even me. It stayed inside my mask, soundless and hysterical.

But I crawled faster.

I reached the Reverend first. He was struggling, dragging his shattered leg behind him, robes torn, that accursed lantern still glowing faintly at his side.

I grabbed his jaw.

My hand fumbled into my satchel and found the page I had written before I came here, the one marked with sigils and strokes of fire. I didn't hesitate. I shoved it into his mouth.

His eyes widened.

I gripped his head with both hands. Fire.

He thrashed. He tried to scream.

The flames sparked from inside him, igniting the parchment, consuming his tongue, then his throat. He twitched, choked on the light and collapsed. Dead. Truly this time.

The lantern fell with him. Its glow flickered once— then died.

And with that, the silence shattered.

A great crash echoed behind me. Red's spell broke the instant the Reverend's life was snuffed out. His body, restored, borrowed, collapsed with it. Just a hulk of metal, meat and fury extinguished.

I exhaled.

For a heartbeat, the world was still.

Then a voice cried out.

"Lex!"

I turned just in time to see her, a streak of silver, burning through the air like a comet trailing grief. She raced to me, light stuttering as if out of breath.

"I'm so sorry, Lex," Zoe said, her voice trembling. "I was woken up, some neighbor's dog, stupid, but I got back as fast as I could. Before I reset."

She reached for me with those little glowing hands, colorless now, her form reverted to an earlier state, stripped of the hues I had painted onto her.

But when her fingers brushed my cheek, I felt it.

Warmth.

"It's okay, Zoe," I whispered.

I collapsed beside a crooked metal bar jutting from the bridge's surface and let my back slide against it. I could feel the ache blooming across my ribs like a wildfire, sharp and angry with every breath.

"I think I broke something," I muttered. "Hard to say. Might just be bruised. Hurts like a motherfucker, though."

Zoe floated beside me, her light dimming softly in rhythm with mine. Above us, the bridge groaned once more, but this time, it wasn't rage or collapse. It was just settling.

"Zoe, please… just give me a few minutes," I said, leaning back against the twisted bar of metal jutting from the ruined bridge. My body screamed at me from every angle. "I just need some time to do nothing. Okay?"

She hovered there, her glow flickering faintly. "Of course," she said softly. "But it's almost morning. I might wake up soon… and if that happens, I don't know if I'll be able to return. Maybe not for a long while. Maybe not at all. If I stay awake any longer, I'll reappear back in my room… above the bed, like always."

I turned my head toward her, every muscle aching. "I see. Still… thanks. For coming back. For coming fast."

She gave a faint smile, her light trembling like a flame in wind. "I couldn't leave you here, Lex. Not like that."

"Are you sure you can stay safe?" I asked, half-joking, half-afraid.

She shrugged with her tiny shoulders and drifted a little closer. "Are you sure you can continue?"

I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly. "Honestly? No. I'm a wreck. But I've made it this far. If I give up now… I might never come back. I don't know when, or if, I'll find another portal into the Ideworld."

Zoe tilted her head. Her silver light pulsed gently. "You want that soulmark that badly?"

I nodded, still breathing heavy. "When I touched my soul core crystal… I felt it. There's room. One more mark. You said this one was powerful. Strong enough to be worth it."

"It is powerful," she said. "But that doesn't mean it will play nicely with your Domain. Power without harmony is not worth it."

"I know," I muttered. "But still… I've come this far. I need to try. I have to. Whatever happens next, it's on me. But right now, I just need a moment. Please."

She nodded gently, wordless. Then, without another sound, she drifted downward and landed on the staff the reverend had left behind. The light in her form dimmed, softening into a ghostly silver outline. She folded her knees beneath her, sitting like a child perched on a high branch.

And she waited.

In silence.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I let my head fall back and closed my eyes.

Just for a second.

Just one breath in a world made of memory, fire and pain.

**********

Around half an hour later we stepped into a narrow corridor, the air thick with dust and the scent of oxidized metal. Shadows clung to the walls like damp cloth.

Silence stretched between us as the walls narrowed. We kept walking.

I knocked at the heavy door at the end of the corridor. My knuckles made a hollow sound, as if tapping on a mausoleum. A pause followed, just long enough to raise the hairs on my neck, before a voice, high and sharp, yet distant, called out:

"Open. Come in."

The handle was cold, the wood grain under my palm unnaturally smooth. I pushed the door open slowly.

The room beyond was a curious contradiction, small and intimate, yet filled to bursting with ideas. Blueprints blanketed nearly every surface: hung on walls, curled in stacks on shelves, pinned under rusted compasses and metal rulers. Electrical cables wormed their way across the ceiling and floor like veins, pulsing faintly with residual energy. A desk dominated the center, bathed in the warm, flickering glow of a few candle lights, despite the clearly functioning electric light fixtures that buzzed overhead.

The woman who stood behind the desk rose with a precision that felt measured, not merely graceful. As she stepped into the light, her form shifted subtly, angular, kaleidoscopic. Her face didn't move so much as rearrange. Eyes re-aligned, cheekbones shifted angles, her lips stretching, compressing, folding back into beauty shaped by logic. If M.C. Escher had dreamed of a woman, she'd be the result.

Her dress was severe, grey as concrete and woven into it just above her hip in perfectly neat stitches was her name: Eleanor Glass – The Architect's Assistant.

She folded her arms. "Why are you here? Did Reverend let you pass?" Yeah, let, right.

"Yes, Mrs. Glass," I said carefully.

"Miss Glass, young lady. I never married."

I smiled behind my mask. "Then the men in your life must have been blind."

Her mouth quirked. "Aren't they all?"

But her tone held no warmth, no flirtation, no nostalgia. A wall of concrete polished to a shine, unmoved by flattery. The quip had hit a door, not a nerve.

New approach.

"I'm sorry, Miss Glass," I said, softening my posture. "I came to meet the one who shaped this… place. The Architect."

Her laugh rang out suddenly, sharp and raw like breaking glass. She threw her arms up, papers fluttering in her wake.

"The Architect?" she scoffed. "You think he made all this?" She spun in place, arms wide. "He just signed the prints. Placed his tidy name on my lines. My curves. My tolerances."

Her voice trembled, not with weakness, but with long-buried fury. The air pulsed with her bitterness. Something hot and volatile wrapped in math and graphite.

"Did he?" I asked carefully.

"Yes. Abram Roebling. The King. The God. The Man," she spat. "Every plate bears his name. Every rivet signed in ink that came from my pen. But no one remembers Eleanor. Not the workers. Not the clergy. Not even the shadows that haunt these halls."

Zoe flinched at that.

"And yet," I said slowly, "they remember someone. Which means they remember your work. Maybe not your name… but the lines they follow, the ones they build again and again? That's you."

Eleanor's head tilted, face momentarily fractaling, nose where her eye should be, mouth a perfect square. Then it realigned with a soft click. Her eyes narrowed.

"You flatter well. But why now? Why have you come?"

I exhaled. "Because I've walked through this whole place chasing echoes. And all of them led here. To this design. I want to see the mind behind the pattern."

A beat passed. Then two. Her fingertips tapped against the blueprint-covered desk, her sharp nails ticking out a code I didn't know how to read.

"Do you know what it means to build?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes," I said simply - no flair, just substance.

That got a flicker in her eyes.

"Fair," she said.

She paced away, toward a large cabinet with glass doors. Through it, I could see preserved tools: a compass made of bone, a slide rule inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a drafting triangle burned along one edge.

"He'll see you," she said. "But I'll warn you now, he won't be what you expect."

"I've come this far," I replied.

She gave a faint, unreadable smile. "Then you may pass."

As she moved aside and pointed toward the final door, Zoe whispered in my ear, "That was incredible."

I murmured, "No. That was lucky."

But deep down, I knew better. Eleanor had seen something in me, whether it was admiration, manipulation, or a mirror of her own rage, I couldn't yet tell. But the door to the King was open now. And there was no going back.

"Yeah, well, you're good at telling people what they want to hear," Zoe said, voice half-joking, half-impressed.

I gave a soft snort. "It's easier when they're still people. When they have patterns."

"Aren't all conversations improvisation?" she asked, floating a little ahead of me now, watching our steps.

"Not in my line of work," I said, brushing a hand along the rough wall. "Some conversations can be run like scripts, repeated, rehearsed, until they yield the same result every time. You just make minor adjustments to tone, posture, pauses."

"That's terrifying," she said, glancing back. "Are people really that predictable?"

"Most," I replied. "Especially when they're doing their jobs. People become machines when they work long enough. Their edges dull. Their thoughts tighten into loops. Easy to read. Easy to… push."

Zoe slowed. "That's the scariest thing I've heard you say."

I smirked, the curve hidden beneath my mask. "So far."

She smiled back, but it was cautious, thoughtful. Like she'd just seen another layer beneath the one she thought she knew. And for a second, her light flickered, casting long shadows ahead of us, bending and twisting into strange shapes against the corridor's end.

We emerged into thin, silver air, the wind kissing our skin like a whisper from another world.

The incline had led us to a rooftop we had never seen before, despite all the time we had spent climbing and watching the tower from below. This place, this open-air platform above the clouds, had not existed from any earthly angle. It was as if the castle had grown a secret crown, blooming into being just to receive us.

Zoe hovered beside me in the pale light. "We're above everything," she murmured, almost reverently.

The sky here was a dome of stars and ash-colored clouds, a cathedral of silence.

And at the center of the platform stood the god-king himself.

Abram Roebling.

The final overseer.

He was not a man. Not anymore.

He was ruin and blueprint. He was vision calcified into torment.

He rose thirty feet tall, fused into the very floor of the castle. His form was made of bricks, steel, concrete, his bones were pillars and rebar, his skin weathered with soot and rust. Cables ran through his body like veins and sinew, writhing faintly under his surface as if dreaming of movement.

His head slouched forward, eyes sealed shut with mortar and time. A crown of iron rivets circled his brow, each one humming faintly. His beard was a cascade of hanging wire and rusting iron filings. His spine, an exposed arch of suspension cables, seemed to reach down through the floor itself, anchoring him eternally to the bridge below.

He was beautiful. He was horrifying. He was suffering.

"The soulmark is here," Zoe said, pointing toward the metallic plate embedded at the base of the giant's body. "Those rivets, they're all glowing. Each one's brimming with authority."

I squinted. "Some are missing," I said softly. "Others have been taken. I'm not the first to reach this place."

"Is it… asleep?" Zoe asked. Her voice barely rose above the wind.

"I hope so," I whispered. But the weight of his presence said otherwise. He knew we were here, somehow. I could feel his awareness pressing against the air like a sun behind thick cloud.

"How do I take this soulmark?" I asked her.

"I don't know. I'm a Seer, not a locksmith."

I bit my lip. "The last one, I just touched it. But that was part of a trial."

Zoe floated a bit closer. "Let's go to it. Carefully."

I nodded. Together, we moved closer, our steps near silent against the stone. The platform beneath us felt old, older than any part of the castle we'd walked before. I could hear it creak beneath us, like something holding its breath.

Kneeling at the base of Abram's colossus form, I stared at one of the rivets.

It was massive, aged black, yet glowed faintly from within, a pulsing silver warmth beneath corroded skin.

I hesitated. "What kind of soulmark is it?" I asked.

Zoe's glow pulsed near my shoulder. "Touch it and you'll know."

I nodded once. Swallowed. Then pressed my palm against the rivet.

The moment I touched it, the world fell away.

I wasn't standing on a rooftop anymore. I was inside something, between things.

The rivet spoke, not with words, but with sensation. With memory. With purpose.

It was connection.

A soulmark of union, of binding. It was the echo of every hand that had driven it in place. Of every beam joined. Of every purpose shared. It was sweat crystallized into permanence. The invisible thread that links builder to blueprint, will to wall, dream to stone.

It filled me with its power for a heartbeat. I felt the castle through it, the bridge, the strain of each arch, the ghosts still laboring. I felt Eleanor's pencil dragging lines over vellum, the hammers that answered her call and the agony of Abram as he gave himself, his body, to keep it all together.

Then the power pulled back. It recoiled.

The rivet burned against my hand. Not with heat, but with refusal.

"It's still his," I said aloud. "The soulmark is bound to Abram's authority. As long as he's a part of this structure… I can't take it."

Zoe floated closer. "Can't you dislodge one? Just one?"

I tried. Fingers curled around the edge of the rivet. I pulled. Nothing. I gritted my teeth, summoned every ounce of force I had, Authority, technique, leverage. The rivet did not move.

"I can't." I fell back onto my heels. "They're locked in."

"So much walking, so much talking," Zoe whispered, "just to get beat at the end."

I looked up at Abram's still face, his eyes sealed beneath mortar and pain. "We're not done yet," I muttered. "We've just reached the final test."

And I had a feeling…

This time, force wouldn't win.

This time, I might need to talk a god into letting go.

"Wake up!" I shouted.

Then the air thickened. He stirred.

A sound like tensioned cables groaning beneath strain shivered through the platform. I jumped away as cracks spread through the stone at my feet. One of Abram's colossal eyes flicked open, crusted in rust, yet glowing dimly like a forge left to smolder.

"You."

His voice was colder than the deepest night, raw with the weight of something that had forgotten how to speak softly.

"Why did you wake me?"

I swallowed, keeping my footing. "I came because I felt the connection," I said carefully, choosing truth where I could afford it.

A pause. Then a sound like a thousand grinding stones in unison, low and furious.

"I measured every stone with blood," he said and his massive torso shifted in place, steel cables tightening like the muscles "And you think you deserve what lies at the summit?"

So he knew. Knew exactly what I sought. Damn. I stepped back, my injures screaming with every breath. I felt the power of my armor supporting my moves.

"I don't know if I deserve it," I said, standing tall. "But I've climbed your skeleton, walked your memories and met what's left of the people who built you."

His head shifted. It took minutes for the motion to finish. Steel cables creaked in his spine. One massive arm lifted from the platform, carrying a section of parapet with it like it weighed nothing.

"You walked past ghosts and thought it made you kin?" he rumbled.

"No," I said, breath catching. "But I listened. To their songs. To their grief. To their reverence."

The air stilled. And then,

SLAM.

His arm came down like judgment. I threw myself to the side, my augmented legs absorbing the jolt, springing me away just as stone exploded behind me. I hit the ground and rolled, white-hot pain lancing up from my ribs. Zoe screamed my name in the back of my mind.

Abram leaned forward, cables flexing like a tide.

"You think this bridge remembers joy?" he whispered, terrifyingly soft. "It remembers collapse. Sacrifice. The weight of unfinished dreams!"

"I saw it!" I shouted. "Saw the endless work! Bricks placed, bricks dissolved! Songs that tried to outlast the silence!"

He growled, sweeping an arm like a pendulum. It tore through the scaffolding on the far side. I ran straight at him instead, ducking under, then vaulting onto a length of exposed cable. My footwork held. Barely.

My breath burned in my throat.

"You're not Abram!" I called. "Not really!"

The movement stopped. His body froze.

One slow second ticked by. Then another.

"…What did you say?"

"You're not him," I said, quieter now, standing on one of his suspension cables. "None of them were real, not Eleanor, not the Reverend, not Red or the singing men. They were fragments. Impressions. Reflections in wet stone. And so are you."

The forge-eyes narrowed.

"You're the bridge," I said. "The bridge trying to remember itself."

He didn't move.

"You're the dream that refuses to forget," I continued, heart pounding. "And everything I saw, every shadow I spoke to, was a memory trying not to die. That's why it loops. That's why the bricks crumble after they're placed. Because even memory fades."

The air shifted. He exhaled a gust of wind hot enough to scald.

"…Even memory fades," he echoed.

Then, at last, the rivets began to hum. The glow intensified. With a noise like strained metal groaning free of rust, one rivet, just one, unscrewed itself. It fell with the gravity of a bell toll and landed near my feet, not with violence, but reverence.

"That," he said, voice suddenly small, "was one of the firsts. The ones I placed with my own hands before I broke."

I stepped down from the cable and approached the rivet. I touched it. It was warm.

"Then let me carry it forward," I whispered. "So, you don't have to keep remembering alone."

There was no reply. Only silence.

I held the rivet in my hands, its weight more symbolic than physical, as Zoe floated closer. Her glow dimmed slightly as her gaze drifted to the sleeping giant looming above us like a dormant god.

"He closed his eyes again," she murmured. "Sleeping? Dreaming this whole thing?"

"I think so," I replied, eyes still on the rivet. "That was my guess. He is the bridge… and all the people building it? They're just echoes in his dream. Fragments of memory looping themselves into labor."

Zoe stayed quiet, pondering, while I turned the soulmarked object over in my hands. Its surface pulsed faintly, not with light, but with presence, like a held breath.

"I feel like I could absorb its power now," I said, "but I'm not sure I understand it. Identity expressed through art is easy. That's what I do. But connection? How do I shape that through art?"

"I don't have the answer," she said, softly. "Maybe you could paint memories to change them?"

That made sense. That fit. I nodded slowly. "Yeah. That would line up with everything I've seen. A painter who doesn't just remember the world, but rewrites it. Maybe — maybe I'll even be able to change the mark later if it doesn't work out."

Zoe tilted her head. "I'm not a mage, Lex. I don't know if that's possible."

"I made my decision the moment I started climbing this bridge," I said. "No going back now."

I opened myself.

Not physically. Not magically in any way I could describe. It was instinct. A kind of inward turning, reaching from within my soul. Life stirred beneath my skin, like light filtering through water. It moved outward, wrapping around the rivet like a cocoon. Then, slowly, the soulmark responded.

I felt the power of connection reach back, threading itself into me, becoming part of the architecture of my being. A beam of invisible light, tethering me to the soul core crystal in my Domain, pulsed once. And then the wave hit.

It was too much.

I dropped to my knees.

A tidal surge of memory and feeling swept over me: the orphanage. The cobbled streets of my childhood. My university years. My domain and its painted sky. Penrose's Finest. The park where I sketched. My painting of the Sanctuary under siege. The billboard that loomed above the city with my name etched in color. It was all connected. Every piece of art. Every place. Every piece of me.

I understood now. I didn't just remember places, I was bound to them.

"I think…" I gasped, my chest heaving under the weight of that revelation, "Zoe… I think this might be the greatest power I could have hoped for."

Her eyes widened slightly. "How so?"

"I'll show you."

I reached into my bag, pulled out my spray paints and began to work. Not with urgency, but reverence. I painted my room onto the bridge floor: the worn wooden floorboards, my bed tucked under the window, the shelves lined with sketchbooks and paint cans, my work desk covered in half-finished ideas. I painted the open window, inviting in the wind and the world.

"This is my room," I said. "As I remember it. And now, I know, I can reach it. Through this. Through connection."

"Really?" she asked, hovering over the painted window.

"Yes. But I don't know if I can take you with me."

"Don't worry about me," she said, smiling. "If I see you go, I'll just wake up. Call me when you get there."

"Deal, partner."

I placed my hand on the painting. My fingers met the painted window and I whispered:

"Take me home."