The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage: Wandmaker Vol.2

WM [77] Extraction Site 12

The lightning—or whatever it truly was—struck the earth only a few hundred feet in front of Bjorn and his group. It froze in place, an ethereal tree of light that stretched endlessly into the heavens, its branches a jagged network of blinding luminescence. The air around it rippled, warping like water disturbed by a stone. Reality itself was torn; the past, the present, the future all collided and warped as if the concepts themselves were but toys in a game.

Bjorn—Isin felt himself slipping, the collision of his current self and his past self tearing through his mind like a storm. Visions seared his consciousness. He was back, reliving the destruction of his home—the grand aetheric city he had painstakingly built over millennia crumbled around him. His citizens, his people, lay slaughtered in the streets, their screams swallowed by the chaos. He saw his mother, her life extinguished by his father's hand, and then Nuriel's twisted, sadistic grin as she tore him apart and rebuilt him over and over for her own perverse amusement.

The cascade of memories and images spun faster, faces he didn't recognize flashing by in rapid succession, too fleeting to process. Then, abruptly, the vision stilled. His breath caught as he thrust into a grand ceremony. People lined in a massive parade outside a palace of gleaming aether tech. He looked around at faces that held no place in his memory but brought tears to his eyes all the same.

He looked down and in front of him a young woman stood. She held his gaze, her eyes cybernetic, her face undeniably familiar. It was a face he couldn't forget. It was Edita, it was the woman that killed him, though now she looked younger and more vibrant. He was handing her something and she looked down at the sword. The very blade that would one day kill him. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she bowed deeply, her lips moving to form words he couldn't hear. Then the vision shattered, leaving only silence.

Bjorn shook his heads and saw that no time had passed in the present. He looked around frantically and saw that Aurelius had tackled Tanisha and forced her to look away from the bolt. Bjorn's other head saw that Fuyumi was frozen in place, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at the scar in reality. He jumped her and forced her to look away as well. Surprisingly she was hot to the touch and her form felt less solid. She shook her head as reason returned and Bjorn let her up.

He roared to get everyone's attention then started to run. The others followed as Bjorn found himself back in the body of Isin. The landscape shifted and he turned around to see that the faces of his closest companions, Martin and Eliska, were not far behind. The storm had grown worse as they traveled deeper into the Alpha Extraction Site. They were close now if the beeping of Martin's locator was anything to go by. The corruption was so thick in the air that Isin would risk blindness if he attempted to look with his aetheric Site.

"Isin we are here!" Martin yelled as he closed a holographic image only he could see and started to dig. "It's down. Get the shovels quickly!"

Isin threw off his combat pack, yanking a shovel free from its straps. The group, a team of ten, attacked the ground with near-manic ferocity. They dug with a determination born of desperation, breaking through the corrupted soil inch by inch. Eliska struck something solid, her shovel clanging against an unyielding surface.

"I hit something!" she called out, urgency thick in her voice.

The others crowded around, brushing away the loose earth to reveal a gleaming, blemishless metal surface.

"Don't just stand there," Eliska snapped, her voice cutting through their awe. "Keep digging! We need to find the control panel!"

Everyone redoubled their efforts, uncovering more and more of the buried door. It was Isin that found what they were looking for. He risked his sight and found the control panel. Once uncovered it lifted from the ground a single scanner panel for someone to place their hand. The moment his hands touched the control panel, it hummed to life, lifting from the ground to reveal a glowing scanner. Without hesitation, Isin pressed his hand against it, channeling aether into the device. The air around him vibrated with anticipation as ancient mechanisms stirred, the buried door beginning to awaken from its long slumber.