Chapter 262

Carmen entered the room and closed the door behind her. “How is she?”

Augustus stood with his arms crossed, his attention on the viewing window. Beside him, Annie leaned against the glass, forehead resting against the surface, hands stuffed in her pockets. She hadn’t moved since he’d arrived.

Augustus glanced at Carmen. “Stable. She’s going to be alright.”

Carmen came to stand between them. She looked through the window and shook her head.

Talia lay on the surgical table. One healer had a hand on her forehead, pulsing steadily, a constant output that kept the dozens of lacerations across her exposed skin from bleeding. Her left arm rested on a pad beside her, clearly broken, but neither healer was touching it. It wasn’t the priority.

The priority was the gaping wound across her stomach. The second healer worked there with both hands, focused on bringing flesh back together, both inside and out.

“What in the void happened?”

Annie muttered the answer. “It’s my fault.”

Augustus turned his head toward her. “Don’t be stupid, Annie.”

Annie winced.

His attention went back to the glass. “There’s no way we could have anticipated they’d be willing to die for each other like that.”

“Talia did. She tried to warn me.”

“No. Talia saw the black robe retreating a second before your strike. You couldn’t from your angle.” He sighed. “She didn’t know. She reacted. There’s a difference.”

Annie said nothing.

Augustus recalled it clearly enough. Annie had driven her hand into the white-robed wizard’s chest. A clean and decisive killing blow.

The wizard had bloated. His body swelled, larger and larger, skin stretching, robes tearing at the seams. Then he’d detonated. Razor wind in every direction, cutting through everything in the blast radius.

Annie had taken the brunt. MetaMetal absorbed most of it, but even she had been almost carved through.

Talia had been caught near the edge of the blast radius, and still the wind had torn into her. Several members of the Haze guild had gone down instantly.

Nothing could have saved them.

Augustus uncrossed his arms. “Did you get anything from the surviving Haze members?”

Carmen shook her head. “Their last orders from AEGIS were to provide Flashpoint a place to stay while he cleaned up the city and reinforced their position. None of them expected anything to come through the gateway, and they didn’t know about any deals.”

He nodded.

On the other side of the glass, the two healers continued their work. One hadn’t been enough, because the wind had carried a curse with it. The wounds had refused to close when the first healer began, the magic resisting his power.

Out of the corner of his eye, Augustus caught Carmen going still. Her features, faint in the reflection of the glass, took on the familiar look of someone dealing with a System message.

“What is it?”

Carmen turned to him, frowning. “I’m not sure. Ryan says the ship is going crazy.”

Augustus snapped out a hand. The wand materialized in his grip. He turned and began spinning up the portal, targeting the bridge of the Sleipnir on the other side of Astra Omnia from where they were.

Annie pushed off the wall, mouth opening.

“Stay with Talia,” Augustus said. “Felix and Gabe will be here shortly.”

Annie’s mouth closed. She nodded.

The portal completed. Augustus gestured Carmen through first, then followed.

The floor was alive. Arcs of electricity grew out of the metal, raced across the surface, licked up the walls, then across the ceiling. The bridge hummed with it. Every surface crackling with current that had no source.

Ryan sat very still in the captain’s chair. His hands rested on the armrests. His eyes tracked the lightning but his body didn’t move.

Yuki had her arms wrapped around her knees at her station, feet pulled off the floor.

Carmen stepped forward.

A bolt raced toward her across the deck.

Augustus reached for her shoulder. Too slow.

The lightning split in half as it reached her feet, shrank, and faded back into the floor.

He dropped his hand.

Carmen turned to Ryan. “What happened?”

Ryan shook his head. “No idea. The ship powered up by itself. I tried to abort the sequence, but it’s ignoring all our commands.”

Yuki nodded emphatically. “It’s trying to calculate a jump. Look.” She tapped her console.

A hologram lit up in the center of the bridge. Thousands upon thousands of lines of calculation and code, streaming past faster than Augustus could read. The display filled the air around them, equations branching and splitting and reforming.

“Compute capacity is at one hundred percent,” Yuki said. “It’s burning through everything the ship has. And the coordinates it’s trying to calculate...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “They don’t make sense. There are too many variables.”

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“Contact the Chief,” Carmen said. “Tell him I want—”

Every console went dark.

The bridge fell silent. The lightning vanished. The hum that had been building through the deck plating cut out. For a moment, the only light came from the holographic display still hanging in the air, equations frozen mid-calculation.

Then that died too.

Darkness. Nobody moved.

Ryan’s console flickered. A single word appeared in the center of the screen.

Master.

Yuki’s console flickered next. The same word.

Master.

Then navigation. Engineering. Comms. One after another, every screen on the bridge lit up with the same word.

Master. Master. Master.

The word began to scroll. Dozens of lines. Hundreds. Every console printing the same thing, faster and faster, the text racing down the screens.

Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master. Master.

Carmen stared at the captain’s chair console. Ryan had gone pale.

Then everything stopped all at once. The screens went dark.

Everything was quiet for a moment.

Then the lights came back on. Life support systems rebooted. Yuki’s console blinked back on. Her navigation display returned, showing exactly what it had been showing before the ship lost its mind. Standard orbital data. Normal. As if nothing had happened.

No one spoke.

Augustus stared at the screens. The Sleipnir had just woken up. It had tried to reach Alexander. And it had failed.

He glanced at Carmen. “Make sure the Sleipnir is okay.” Then he turned back to the portal.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t pause. “Alex is in trouble.”

***

They stood in front of the gateway.

The aperture was sealed. A flat surface of dark metal where the passage should have been, unmarked, featureless.

Annie hit it. MetaMetal formed across her fist a fraction of a second before impact. The ring of metal on metal echoed through the corridor.

She screamed and hit it again. Harder. The echo bounced off the walls and faded into nothing.

Augustus put a hand on her shoulder.

She spun to face him. Her eyes were wide and furious. “What do we do?”

Augustus didn’t answer. He stepped past her and placed a hand against the surface of the gateway.

He closed his eyes.

His power pushed into the surface. Magic pulsed outward the same way he reached for the ethereal hands without his wand.

He found what he was looking for almost immediately.

Magic. A deep, vast ocean of it stretching from the gateway’s surface into a darkness that crushed down from every direction. The further his awareness reached, the heavier the darkness became, until the magic thinned and there was nothing. An absence so complete it reminded him of the void of space.

And threaded through all of it, holding the darkness at bay, keeping the pathway intact between one reality and another, was a framework of magic so intricate and so layered that Augustus forgot to breathe.

His recent studies of the Empire of Stars’ magic, measured against his own superpowered magical abilities, had given him insights that he thought would allow him to push the boundaries one day.

This made all of it look like finger painting.

He opened his eyes.

“Well?” Annie’s voice was tight.

“It’s not protected. I think I can claim it.”

Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, and her eyes sharpened. “Then hurry up and do it.”

Augustus placed both palms against the surface. Closed his eyes again. Let his power pulse outward, spreading across the gateway’s face, sinking into the layers beneath.

His Will followed. It moved through the framework slowly. Each layer was more complex than the last. Each one built on principles he’d never encountered, using techniques he’d never imagined, solving problems he hadn’t known existed.

He wanted to understand all of it. Every thread. Every connection. Every elegant solution woven into this impossible structure. Alexander thought the gateway a machine, but he couldn’t be more wrong.

It was magic beyond belief.

His Will pressed deeper, finding no resistance. If there had been even a fragment of another’s possession, it would have responded the first time.

The gateway drank in his power, as something within it filled. Then his ownership settled over the structure.

—

[GATEWAY CLAIMED]

Congratulations, Augustus Greaves.

You have successfully claimed a Gateway on behalf of Grimnir.

Destination: Earth_5 (“Empire of Stars”)

As a new claimant, you have access to the following one-time option:

Relocation: This gateway may be moved to a new location once within the next 30 days.

Sealing: This gateway has been sealed. Time remaining: ~30 days.

Note: Relocation expires if not used within the specified timeframe.

—

He opened his eyes. “There’s no option to open it. We have to wait until the sealing ends in thirty days.”

Annie stared at him, face pale.

Augustus took a breath, then pulled up the System interface. Grimnir’s guild list first, followed by his contacts. Alexander was grayed out, but his name remained.

“Whatever happened to him, he’s still alive. All we can do is believe in him.” He sighed. “I’ll move the gateway to the sanctum. It’s the most secure location for when it opens.”

“And what are we supposed to do until then?” Annie demanded. Her eyes were wet.

Augustus met her gaze.

“Prepare for war.”

***

Alexander blinked awake.

The ceiling was straw. Bundled, dried, and lashed to a wooden frame that looked like it had been built by hand. The walls were rough-hewn logs, gaps stuffed with dried mud. The floor was straw. From the feel of it, the bedding was made of straw too.

Sunlight streamed through an open doorway. Warm air carried smells he couldn’t place. Something herbal. Something cooking.

Two children knelt beside his bed. Small. Maybe six or seven. They were bickering with each other in a language he didn’t understand. Quick, sharp syllables fired back and forth, voices rising and falling with the intensity of an argument that had been going on for a while.

If there was any doubt about where he was, that settled it. The fortress had translation magic woven into its metal structure. This place had straw.

The bond pulsed faintly. Droney was nearby, but not in the room. Somewhere outside, positioned between Alexander and whatever lay beyond the walls of the hut. A sense of duty threaded across the connection.

The little guy was standing guard. Well, hovering.

Then Droney noticed he was awake.

The bond flooded. A jumble of sensations and half-formed impressions crashed across the connection, too tangled to separate, too fast to process. Fragments of things Droney had seen, heard, recorded, understood, all tumbling over each other in a rush to reach him at once.

One thread ran through all of it, clear and steady beneath the chaos.

Safe.

Alexander closed his eyes for a moment, dedicating one mental thread to deciphering the information packet.

Then he opened them. And noticed the lights.

Flashes of color danced across the rough-spun wool blanket draped over his chest. He blinked again, focused.

Two semi-transparent figures, each no taller than his index finger, stood on his chest. One held a tiny sword. The other held a spear. They circled each other, lunged, parried, dodged. The spear-wielder jumped back from a slash and counterattacked with a thrust that caught the swordsman in the shoulder. The swordsman flickered, recovered, and charged.

The children weren’t arguing. They were playing. Each one controlling a fighter, casting in rapid bursts, their small hands glowing faintly as they directed their champions across the battlefield of Alexander’s blanket.

He lay there and watched. It seemed rude to interrupt.

And he needed to see the ending.

His money was on the spear figure.