Ryn of Avonside

The rest of the room contained more of the same— magical experiments and cubicles with ancient personal effects littered all over the place. We decided to take any and all of the photograph thingys that we could find. Understanding the people who’d built this place would be a huge boon to figuring out a lot of other stuff about its function and purpose.

As we investigated further and further into the huge complex, we began to realise that the whole place was based around studying magic. Just as with that first experiment though, it was all strange and primitive— none of it being properly useful as magic. Just blobs of arcane energy that had been twisted into basic knots and shapes.

We also found a warehouse full of furniture, cutlery, and everything else needed to support a large population of scientists underground. There were also quite a few of those black slate computer things, and so we couldn't help ourselves. We began to schwoop the whole lot into my grove. Desks, chairs, beds— nothing was safe from our thieving hands.

We were dumping it all in the grass, intending to store the loot properly later, but on our third trip, we found the buns doing their part too. They were using every inch of their three-foot height to haul all the junk we’d been dumping up into the storage rooms inside the tree. I couldn’t resist giving the little munchkins a few pats for their hard work—they were such good buns.

When we were done with the warehouse, we continued, exploring yet another floor. This one opened out into a room that was different from any we’d found so far. Wide and spacious, it appeared to be a huge common room chamber of some kind. They even took a little more care with the aesthetics of the place, with dusty and very dead pot-plants laying around in the corners, along with what appeared to be an abstract sculpture in the middle of the room.

“This is actually kinda nice,” Grace whispered as we spread out into the room. “I could see myself living here if it wasn’t for the whole sunless hole underground thing.”

“Yeah, same,” I agreed with a note of appreciation.

“I hate to be the one to bring the mood down, but I think we found the scientists,” Adam said sobrely. He was right.

The whole place was open plan, but areas had been clearly set aside for different things. The area Adam had found was what looked to be the communal eating area, an open expanse of floor with several square tables set out.

Sitting at those tables were almost a hundred dead ring builders, slumped down onto their tables amongst an ancient banquet. Their corpses were old and withered, but they hadn’t had much of a chance to decay in the reasonably sterile environment of their makeshift tomb. They looked almost mummified.

In the center of the dead banquet was a stuttering hologram showing the ring and the rest of the star system. Our first glimpse of the whole intrastellar region.

Running through the hologram at a system-wide scale, a strange red cloud-like mass stuttered back and forth. It was caught in an animation, the vast red cloud perpetually sweeping over the ring, then flickering back to the last moments before it did so, over and over. Above the whole hologram was a single glowing red symbol, and unlike all the others, it wasn’t hard to figure out what that symbol meant. Zero.

“Is this what I think it is?” Kit asked, his voice high with anxiety. “Did they… kill themselves? Like, mass suicide?”

“Appears so,” Troy murmured, walking towards one of the corpses. “I wish we had some plastic bags, taking samples from this lot would be invaluable for the the brains back home. Even if it is… disrespectful.”

Staring at one of them with something like loss and pity swirling in my stomach, I asked, “Why though? What is that hologram showing? I mean, it’s obvious it was something they feared more than death, and more than those steel ones that they fought a war against… so what is it?”

“That’s the million dollar question isn’t it?” Troy remarked, glancing up at the hologram. “It wasn’t a localised event either, it hit the whole damned ring— hell, the whole system. I’d be willing to bet that scenes like this played out all across this world when that wave was about to hit. Mass suicides across the ring.”

“That’s terrifying,” Grace said, coming to stand closer to me. I reached out instinctively to clutch at her arm, and she gave me a grateful smile in return.

“You can say that again,” Troy nodded, and for the first time I thought I saw genuine worry on their face. “Let’s do a quick search of the room, then get out of here. This place is… let’s just move. Taking samples can be done by another team.”

“Yeah, agreed,” Adam said with a wary look around us.

We searched the floor at speed, all of us wanting to get out of there and fast. It felt like we were encroaching in places we shouldn’t now— like disturbing the dead in their rest would lead to something awful happening down the line. Superstitious, I know… but magic was real now, and that put to question everything humanity had assumed about the supernatural.

We left all the alien miscellania where it was this time, it was more of the same that we’d found in the warehouse anyway, and the idea of stealing from the immediate possessions of the dead gave us all the heebie jeebies. Especially considering we found more dead scientists in their bunks and in other nooks, presumably wanting solitude when they died, rather than companionship.

We all piled back into the lift a few minutes later and headed further down into the complex, only two more floors left to go. The next floor was more labs with more random experiments and desks. The very last floor of the magic research lab was just a single room, and it was different.

A massive cylindrical glass tank rested in a floor depression, containing a swirling white cloud. The cloud’s edges shimmered with rainbow light, as if fraying back into its component wavelengths. Pipes hung from the ceiling, connecting to the top of the tank, and spaced about five feet away were four strange, flat disks. The disks, held in metal cradles, looked like they were made of a grey ceramic.

On the raised area surrounding the tank and disks were a series of workstations and large black glass screens, some of which were cracked and damaged. Had they been smashed on purpose? It sure looked like it— which raised a whole host of alarming questions.

“Okay, this looks important,” Troy said, turning to me. “Ryn?”

I nodded and brought up my mage sight. As with most of their experiments, I was in awe of what I was seeing. Unlike their other attempts at magic, though, this one was far more sophisticated— hell, I couldn't even recognise what type of magic it was. It definitely wasn't happy being contained however, judging by the way it seethed with violent energy. Only the flat grey disks and the field of magic they generated kept it inside the tube.

“It’s magic all right, but it’s not shitty magic,” I told the group, warily stepping towards it to get a closer look

“I’m half tempted to leave right now—this thing creeps me out. But… we've come this far, we may as well finish the job. Gang, take a look around while Ryn investigates,” Troy said, and I had to agree with him. This thing felt like trouble, and it was far too complex for me to understand anyway. In fact, I almost suggested we leave, but curiosity got the better of me.

Grace was quick to step up beside me, but the others began to spread out and look at the busted terminals instead. The room was so bare of anything interesting besides those terminals and the big ball of volatile energy in the middle, that I didn't expect us to stick around long.

“What does it look like to your magic eyes?” Grace asked quietly, gesturing to the experiment.

“It’s even more rainbowy,” I told her, shifting my balance this way and that to look at it from different angles.

The odd cloud was a riot of different overlapping magical energies, as though someone had made a cocktail out of every single variety of magic that had ever existed. I could feel little flickers of the Nameless Garden in there, as well as other strange signatures that I didn’t recognise. Were they from other magical realms besides the Garden? Esra’s lessons had mentioned the existence of such realms, but I had zero real world experience with them.

“Oh wow,” Grace murmured, drawing my attention away from the angry bottle of magic.

Turning my mage sight off, I found her staring at me, her eyes fixed on mine with an inquisitive intensity that had goosebumps running up my arms.

“What?” I asked, frozen in place by her gaze.

“Your eyes go funny when you’re using your mage sight,” she told me breathlessly, stepping closer. “They go all sparkly. Do it again.”

I gulped, and switched my mage sight on again for her, but I had to take a step back in the process, because she’d gotten way too close again.

I... should not have stepped back.

When I moved backwards, I felt my shield brush against something— magic washing over and around it in a discordant stream. I turned to see what my shield was snagged on, frowning, only to realise with slowly dawning horror what I’d done. I’d stepped in front of one of the flat disks, blocking the stream of containment magic with my shield in the process.

The wild magic smashed through the glass with a thunderous roar akin to a jet engine and hit my shield square on. It bowed inward with the force of the impact, like a baseball deforming in slow motion as it was hit with a bat.

Helpless in the face of such overwhelming force, I was thrown violently backwards into the containment disk. Bone snapped, and pain lanced through my shoulder. Dazed, my vision swayed, and it was only through force of will that I kept my grip on consciousness.

Through the slow motion clarity of pain and adrenaline, I watched helplessly as the stream of rainbow energy rebounded and struck Grace directly in her chest.

The moment it made contact with her body, it began pouring into her like water down a drain. It surged and bucked even as my friend fell to the ground with a scream, her body writhing with pain. Within a second or two, it was over— faster than anyone could react, and Grace’s twitching body glowed with a subtle aura of rainbow light. She’d absorbed the magical abomination— the whole thing.

Instinct guided me towards her, but I buckled and cried out in pain when my own injuries made themselves known— stars dancing before my eyes.

Troy tried to go for Grace too, only to receive a shock when the energy around her lashed out violently, knocking him backwards. “Shit!” he swore, and with a grimace, shook off the pain. “What the hell just happened?”

“I think… I think it was my fault,” I said, my voice quivering with guilt and pain. “I stepped back and accidentally blocked the containment thingies.”

“No, Ryn. I made the call… damn, why did I— I knew we should've—” Troy winced, then cut himself off with a shake of his head. “Alright, it was an accident, blame is not helpful or important. We need to leave though, and get Grace to safety.”

“How? It’s pretty obvious we can’t touch her,” Adam asked, moving over to me instead. Kneeling down, he gingerly helped me to my feet, dragging a whimper from me when bone scraped against bone. “Ryn’s hurt,” he told Troy. “Broke her shoulder I think.”

It sure felt like he was right, my shoulder felt sickeningly wrong and I could feel it shifting in ways it was not meant to. Fuck, it had been so long since I’d had a broken bone that I’d forgotten how much it hurt.

“Keep hold of her,” Troy told him. “I’ll figure out how to get Grace out.”

Before he could go and get himself shocked again, I cut in, “I can do it.”

“How? Your arm is—“ Troy began, before understanding dawned on him and he nodded. “Right, your magic. This makes things a lot easier, thank you Ryn.”

I didn't bother with a reply, instead I reached out with my mind to carefully envelop Grace with my telekinesis, then gingerly picked her up. I didn’t get shocked, thankfully, and she wasn’t too heavy for me.

Seeing her floating unconscious like that sent a terrified pang through my heart, and worry gripped my mind so hard that I thought it would burst. She needed to be okay, she had to be okay. I couldn’t lose Grace. I was so damn stupid, I was so, so stupid. Why had I stepped back?

“Good, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Troy said decisively.