As she stood in front of the Power generator chamber, an old horror that she thought she had gotten over was bubbling up to the surface. To the Empire, sorcerers were just raw material for generators, and Arienne had been repulsed by the idea of being turned into a generator ever since she first entered the Division of Sorcery at the Imperial Academy. Fractica, a century after the fall of Danras, was still providing Power to a ruin while wandering around in search of something it would never find. Maybe the Power generator had gone insane. Maybe all of them did, in the end.
Arienne hesitated for a moment before entering the chamber, unsure of what she was going to find there, but she had no choice. On this side of the door, there were only ghosts who didn’t know they were dead. Inside the room, there would be a stairway up to the surface.
“And on that surface prowls a mad Power generator,” she murmured as she pushed open the door.
In most Power generator chambers, the door should open into a corridor of pure white light. But this corridor was as dark as the catacombs, and there were holes in the walls. In the middle, there was a pile of something—the light from her glass orb showed it was an old sorcerer-engineer robe, and inside were a few melted bones.
Arienne took a deep breath and turned the robe over. She could still read the name embroidered in silver thread on the chest.
Engineer Junior Grade Noam.
So, Noam had been here when Danras fell. The Noam in hermind was small and meek, but he seemed more miserable here where only his bones remained. But why had he died in the corridor to the chamber instead of on the stairway to the surface?
“Oh!” shouted Arienne, understanding in a flash. “The older skeletons in the catacombs were not melted like this…”
She sat down against a wall and opened the door to the room in her mind. Noam was still singing the same song, and Tychon was fast asleep. Aron had his ears perked up, listening to the song. Noam stopped singing when Arienne entered and said in amazement, “I knew Tychon was a Power generator made from a baby, but I never knew this was what he looked like.”
“Obviously. You’ve only seen him as a lead sarcophagus.”
Noam gently brushed a strand of hair away from Tychon’s closed eyes.
“I wonder who his mother was?”
Arienne noticed his edges blurring. She shouted, “Hey! Wake up!”
Noam was startled. Tychon opened his eyes.
“Why are you shouting? You woke the baby.”
“If you don’t keep a good grip on your mind, you start to get blurry again. So, try to remember. Why were you in the passageway?”
Noam paused. “I thought the catacombs would be safer, so I was trying to leave the chamber on that side…”
The catacombs would be safer?Arienne then recalled that they were mostly intact, unlike the city on the surface. She waited for him to elaborate.
He blinked. “I really don’t remember.”
“Try!”
“It’s not easy; you wouldn’t remember something from a hundred years ago either!”
Not having lived long enough, Arienne didn’t know if she would. But she suspected it wasn’t a question of time. Even if he’d recovered his form in her mind, his mind could still be trapped in a century-old fog. How long could this man survive in this room?
Trying a different tactic, Arienne said gently, “All right. If it’s too hard to think, take your time. Just rest in this room, though do let me know if you remember anything about what really happened here…”
Noam gazed at her for a moment before speaking.
“I died.”
“Yes.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“I know. So I’m going to take care of you.” Arienne hesitated before adding, “I’m all alone in this country. I don’t want to see you blurring.”
Noam became a little clearer.
“All right,” Noam started, “I don’t know why, but I keep remembering this one thing. There’s an old prophecy. Although Lysandros said it was just some provincial superstition, like the god I believed in.”
