Secret of the Sunstones, Part 1: The Wanton Kingdom

Chapter XV : Overworked

Highsun on Somnus, First Day of Autumnmoon

Cedric yawned and rubbed his eyes from under his spectacles. He glanced at the grandfather clock, shocked to find it moments away from striking highsun. It seemed like only moments ago, he had started work in the wee hours of morn. So much time had passed, yet so little progress made. He had planned to dedicate his weekend to advancing his latest airship design, but he was still hours away from finishing.

He sat back and groaned. Long, lonesome hours were part of being Grand Craftsman, a job whose definition changed with the whim of the king. It came with a lucrative salary, fame, and power; but it also required grueling workloads, sleepless nights, and periods of intense pressure.

Fortunately for his mental health and wellbeing, he spent most of that time in an office setting, where he labored on crunching numbers and balancing sets of multifarious equations. There was no need to visit the machine shops, where soot, steam, and grease quickly disheveled a man. He much preferred his quiet workshop, which helped him maintain his well-groomed appearance and at least provided the comfort of a stool and desk.

Well … almost comfort. Cedric stretched, finding more kinks than usual. They tended to scale with age. As a younger man, he could last all day, but now he required breaks every few hours, or he’d find himself in more pain than Angkor’s sorcerers knew how to remedy.

His latest project was ambitious—perhaps the most ambitious the world had ever known. And yet, Richard was no less aggressive in demanding its swift completion. The only way to meet the king’s demands was to invest large quantities of overtime, from premorn till midnight.

The design was galleon-class, the largest in the fleet, requiring massive scale and resources. But it was more than just an airship. Rather, Richard intended for it to be an airborne base of operations, one that flew indefinitely without landing. It would even allow other airships to dock inside: a so-called airbase.

Richard had tried commissioning such designs before, but they proved impractical. A horde of wizards needed to offset weight and maintain flight, and in the end, the designs were scrapped. The difference now was that Cedric had figured out a way to shift the work from human pilots to automated engines. And he planned to use manna as the energy source.

When he first proposed the idea, Angkor’s scholars laughed. They told him he was mad, or at least ignorant of the basics of wizardry. Fortunately, Cedric didn’t need to know about magic. Manna was just another form of fuel. When ignited, it created work and became the core of his new engine design. More astonishingly, it burned a thousand times cleaner and more efficiently than coal.

His initial experiments proved successful, and he showed that even a layman could operate machines based on it. As long as scholars provided periodic shipments of the vital liquid, the airbase could maintain its operation indefinitely, without a single scholar on board. He named the project Zounds, an acronym that stood for Zero Overhead and Unlimited Navigations Defense System—and it would soon become his magnum opus.

King Richard spared no expense. Soon, Cedric had all the budget and resources he required, including hundreds of Angkor’s brightest technicians and laborers. The project was only slightly behind schedule, and the limiting factor was Cedric’s schematics. He needed to finish his second draft before the project could move on to the next phase of construction. At first, he believed a weekend of work would be more than enough, but he couldn’t focus. Not after what he had learned at the king’s banquet.

Bram’s fate should have been none of his business. Whether the Knight had defied the king’s orders, or whether he deserved accolades for his success, shouldn’t have mattered. Yet, the Craftsman could not deny his feelings for Rosa. Nor his instinct to protect her, should the Gnostic fall from grace. Despite his efforts to rid the beautiful sorceress from his mind, the fear of seeing her hurt became an unceasing distraction.

Even now, his page of unfinished multivariable force equations stared back at him, mocking his lack of concentration. A loud bong from the grandfather clock shocked him from his daydream, and he hardly noticed the inkwell at his side until his arm accidentally knocked it over. In vapid horror, he watched as black liquid bled across the page, ruining his mathematics logs.

Reality set in, followed by shrieks and vulgar curses. Weeks’ worth of work disappeared before his eyes, soon to be lost forever! Sweat oozed from his pores, and panic set in. He grabbed a clean shirt from a nearby bench, and after destroying an otherwise elegant garment, the papers remained black and unreadable. Cedric lowered his head, defeated ….

But, then he remembered: scribes had just finished a new set of copies the prior evening. By now, those copies would have been sent to the Archives. If Cedric retrieved them, he could retrace his steps and start over, losing only a single morn of progress. He rejoiced!

After doing his best to sop up the remaining ink pool, he gathered his coat and scarf and ran out the door. Outside, his retinas burned with midday sunlight. Temperatures had risen, creating a rare, sweltering heat for so late in the season. Earlier that morn, it had been rather cool, but he hardly needed his coat anymore. He took a moment for his eyes to adjust, blinking several times. When sight returned, he found himself in a surprisingly empty courtyard.

Angkor’s Capital District was typically bustling on the weekends, with Royals on watch, administrators in transit, and a constant flow of government officials. This was truer around highsun, when workers stopped for lunch at the cafes and taverns. Yet, at that moment, not a single man or woman walked the streets.

“You, there!” shouted a voice from behind. He turned to find a Royal marching toward him. “Don’t move!”

Cedric spun around to face the man, who seemed to recognize him immediately.

“Mister Curtis, I presume.”

Cedric scoffed. “Yes, what is it? What are you yelling about, and why is the Capital District so empty on a day like this?”

The Royal took a small bow. “Apologies, Sir, but we’ve undergone a lockdown. We’re under orders to clear the district and direct all government personnel to the Substratum.”

Cedric’s eyes widened. The Gardsman referred to the barracks built underneath the capital. Such protocols were usually reserved for wartime attacks or similar crises.

“What in the Goddess’s name for? Are we under attack?”

The Royal paused, as if searching for an appropriate answer. “No, Sir. We’re certainly not under any kind of attack. Nevertheless, the protocols have been invoked. To be honest, we’re all eager to find out what King Richard has to say. He’ll be making an announcement to nearly every man and woman in the capital momentarily. You should head there, too, as I’m certain it’ll be worth hearing.”

Cedric sure was curious, but he couldn’t afford to fall behind schedule. “I won’t be joining the others, I’m afraid. Richard has me on another important assignment.”

“But, Sir—”

“You can clear it with Grandmaster Hart, if you’d like. He ought to be familiar enough with the king’s top secret project to know that I’ll be granted an exception. I’ll follow up on the announcement later.”

The Royal nodded. “Very well, Sir. I’ll be clearing out the area and then heading down below, myself. You should know what the lockdown protocols demand. If your task is truly as important as you say, I suggest you don’t deviate.”

Cedric nodded and was off. He had to admit the announcement sounded significant, if the palace went through the trouble to use a lockdown to gather all government workers on short notice. It seemed unlikely to be related to the king’s banquet the prior night. The kingdom had already dealt with the rogue scholars from Minoa, and there would be no point in talking about old news. Either way, Cedric had made his choice. He’d have to put his curiosity aside and focus on one thing at a time. The Archives was only a brisk walk down the street.

When he arrived, he stood before a tall stone building that had been built a century earlier to serve as a common library. Over the years, scholars converted the space into an athenaeum of magical texts. And when they ran out of space, they expanded underground. Angkor’s power and influence grew in the decades that followed, and as more of the Northern Continent used the repository, deeper passages were dug. In the modern day, the Archives was an international hub of arcane knowledge and historical record. With such status came tightened security, since the government stored their top secret documents there, including periodic copies of Cedric’s work.

The Craftsman approached the heavy bronze gates. As a senior official, he could access the building anytime using some magical enchantments that were grafted into his body. As expected, the steel hinges groaned, and the doors swung open. He slipped inside, hearing the gates shut the moment his feet crossed the threshold. He couldn’t help but cringe. Ideally, he’d find the paperwork without too much trouble and spend as little time there as possible.

Once adjusted to the dark interior, he lifted a lantern from the wall and used it to get a view of his surroundings. Impossibly tall bookshelves towered in all directions. The upper floors contained content available to the general public, while the lower floors required various levels of security clearance. The deeper one went, the more clearance was required. Only the world’s most powerful scholars had access to the lowest level.

Cedric headed to the stairwell at the back of the building, since he expected to find his documents on the first sub-level. The stairs were behind a plain wooden door. He brought his lantern close, noticing nothing special. He tried the doorknob, recoiling at the sudden loud clank of a lock being unlatched. He barely needed to touch it for his enchantments to activate. Anyone else attempting to enter would find the entryway inaccessible.

He made his way down the stairs, wafting away motes of dust. The floors of the Archives were well maintained, but the content was old and seemed to constantly generate particles of material. It was dark, too. Almost like a tomb, except for bookshelves in lieu of coffins, bent under decades of dead weight. If they should topple and fall, Cedric would be buried, unable to breathe, with nothing to gasp but stale and dusty pages.

He banished the horrible thought. Now was not the time to succumb to inane anxieties. Still, he had this unshakable feeling that someone in the Archives was with him. He heard faint sounds, almost like shuffling feet, or heavy volumes being dropped upon wooden tables. It had to be his imagination … or was it?

It wasn’t uncommon for Archives curators to perform various duties on closure days. But with the district under lockdown and workers directed to the king’s announcement, it seemed impossible that Guildsmen were performing legitimate duties. And yet, the sounds persisted. He wasn’t imagining it. He wondered if, perhaps, he had stumbled upon some kind of intruder.

The idea was preposterous. No one had successfully broke into the Archives in decades. The security mechanisms were quite robust, allowing only those with the right credentials. Still, Cedric was a member of the king’s staff, and as much as he loathed it, he had his duty to report anything out of the ordinary. But, if he should leave and raise a false alarm, he’d be answering questions from the Royal Guard for the rest of the day, with nothing to show for it. Especially now, with the district locked down.

He had no time! Zounds was waiting for him back in his workshop. All he needed was to confirm that nothing was the matter, then he could go about his business.

But, as he neared the door to the second sub-level, his heart jumped, and his throat went dry. It was ajar. There was no evidence of forced entry, but it should have been closed and locked. Worse, the noises had gone silent, offering him no more clues about their source. His only hope was to confirm with his own eyes. He just hoped it was nothing. Then he could return to his workshop without a guilty conscience and leave the whole hideous experience behind him.

He entered the stairwell slowly, hoping to tiptoe to the bottom. He made it halfway down, when the door above slammed shut! He nearly jumped out of his skin. His only thought was to run. Whatever was down below, he needed to escape while he still had a chance. He ran up the stairs and threw his hands against the door. It was already locked shut, but he banged and thrust his body against it, hoping to burst through by sheer force of will. His lantern hit the floor, and the flame snuffed out. He was alone. Surrounded by darkness. Terrible darkness!

“Stop where you are!” a voice ordered below him.

He turned around to confront it, holding his hands at arm’s length, as if they could shield whichever threat would surely come his way.

A bright light shined upon him. All he could see was a shadowy figure at the base of the stairs. “Cedric, is that you?”

He squinted, thinking he recognized the voice. “Rosa …?”

The figure lowered its lantern enough for him to get a better view, exposing her beautiful features and elegant white dress. The Craftsman’s knees gave way, and he sagged against the stairs, clutching his rapidly beating chest.

“Thank the Goddess it’s you.”

He figured he must have looked like a fool, banging his hands against the door. He fought to calm his nerves, hoping he could address the sorceress in a dignified manner. He opened his mouth to say something, but was sidetracked at the thought of how she happened to be there.

“But, Rosa, what are you … why are you ….”

He couldn’t even finish. It didn’t make sense. Had he been under so much stress that he now invented imaginary figures? Was anything real?

At last, she sighed in resignation. “Come on down, Cedric. I suppose I should explain.”

He shook his head. Her excuse had better be good.