With a cry of pain, Antony backs away. Has he been hit? So it would seem.

  The soldier who had surrendered wasn’t alone: there was another one hidden!

  “Antony!” shouts Samuel, rushing to help his brother.

  But before the pilot, it’s Dawn who takes the initiative. In a flash, the girl sprints across the few metres separating her from the scene of the clash. The soldier who pretended to surrender is bent over, in the act of picking up his rifle, when the rebel’s staff smashes into his skull.

  I flinch at the sight. But it isn’t over.

  Like a fury, she spins on the spot and hurls the staff inside the ancient building, in the direction from which the beam that struck the junior sergeant came. From my position I can’t see the weapon’s trajectory, but from the cry that follows I gather that the hidden enemy has been hit.

  At that point, I finally manage to react. Still aching and disoriented, I stagger after Samuel, reaching Antony and Dawn. Beyond the entrance to the structure, the second soldier targeted by the girl is trying to get back up. Next to me, the pilot doesn’t hesitate: he draws a pistol from an inside pocket of his cloak and shoots the gendarme. The latter falls back and moves no more.

  “Ah…” I utter, shaken.

  I hardly have time to process what’s happened before, straight after, the rebel turns his weapon on the first man brought down by Dawn. He’s still on the ground, helpless. And yet…

  BLAM!

  … Samuel kills him too.

  “Damn it!” bursts out Antony, sitting on the ground, grinding his teeth.

  “Dawn…” murmurs the pilot, as if urging his sister to go to the junior sergeant.

  Meanwhile, he moves off towards the burning velivus. There, the soldiers struck by the fire are in agony. Samuel is upon them in an instant, and with two sharp shots, he finishes them both. Then he returns to us.

  I’m struggling to think… to assess the situation… to understand what’s right or wrong. My gaze is fixed on the pilot, searching for I don’t even know what; remorse, perhaps, or the same terror mixed with horror that I’m feeling. But on his face I see only a rigid… ferocious… expression—one I never would have imagined him wearing.

  Inside, I feel afraid of that young man who until now had always been so cheerful.

  “Antony… wait, let me see,” says Dawn, trying to lift the hand with which the elder Sanders brother is covering his wound.

  The young man has a nasty burn on his left arm. Fortunately, or thanks to his reflexes, the shot only grazed him. Even so, it’s not an injury to take lightly.

  From the pouch at her side, Dawn pulls out a small bottle and some bandages. Samuel draws a knife from his boot and uses it to cut the sleeve of Antony’s clothing. His sister pours the contents of the bottle over the burn, then bandages his arm.

  These actions seem to me as though I’m seeing them through a screen. Yet in truth, strange as it is, I am right here: in the middle of this absurd scene.

  I realise I’ve slumped down at the entrance to the ruins. My breathing is laboured, and my body is wracked with pain. But above all, I’m in shock: people have just died. God, I’d never seen dead people before… and now, I’ve even watched them be killed right in front of me!

  Did all this… really happen? It was… it was so quick…

  “I didn’t know you were a mage.”

  I almost jump at the sound of that voice. Without my noticing, Samuel has come over and is now standing in front of me.

  For a moment, I have the urge to shrink back from the person who has just killed a lot of soldiers without hesitation. On his face, I almost expect to see the same expression as before.

  But I notice nothing of the sort. He just looks… wary? Puzzled?

  I stare at him vacantly.

  “Mage?” I repeat.

  “You used mayea,” says the pilot.

  “Me?”

  “Mayea?” Dawn cuts in.

  She’s finished bandaging, and now she’s turned towards us.

  “I didn’t see the symbols of the universe in that fire,” the girl says, looking confused. “It… couldn’t have been mayea.”

  At that point, as if in the agitation I’d pushed it somewhere to the back of my mind… it resurfaces in my memory: at the movement of my arm, the flames…

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Did they… did they come alive?

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Antony cuts short, hauling himself up with a groan. “Let’s make sure there aren’t any more inside.”

  “You okay to do that?” his brother asks.

  “I’ve still got one usable arm.”

  I get up. My gaze goes to the fire which, a few minutes ago, swept over the soldiers.

  Mayea… was it mayea…? A mayea of mine?

  I can’t think. I’m so dazed that I take a pistol Samuel hands me without even thinking.

  “Ethan, are you all in one piece?” the pilot asks.

  Good question.

  Every single muscle hurts. I’m certainly covered in scrapes and bruises, each one radiating a constant pain. What’s more, the ache left by the lightning bolt—which I thought had disappeared days ago—has come back. But at least my sight and hearing are back to normal.

  As for my mind… I’ve no idea what to say.

  Even so, I nod.

  “Try to hang in there a little longer,” the pilot encourages me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “Go, come on.”

  In my stupor, I begin to follow Antony and Dawn into the building, both with their weapons at the ready. Samuel, on the other hand, stays behind to guard the entrance.

  The interior is dim, but enough light enters through some holes in the walls and ceiling to allow us to see around. It’s a rather small building, consisting of a single room with a high ceiling. However, some stairs indicate that there’s a lower floor.

  Since there’s nothing here, we head down the steps.

  “Can’t see a thing,” mutters Antony.

  Dawn raises her hands in front of her and sighs. In front of her palms, a yellow symbol appears, radiating a bright light. At this sight, my mind seems to regain some contact with reality. I take a good look at the mayea: it looks as though the glow originates from a sort of Greek letter.

  Could that be what they call “symbol of the universe”?

  Mayea… a phenomenon I still haven’t been able to investigate properly, although, in truth, it’s very important. Now more than ever.

  What I did earlier…

  … was it really this sort of magic?

  On the lower floor, there’s only a short corridor. Cautiously, we make our way to the end. Here we find a pedestal, protruding from the ground by a little more than a metre. There’s no one here.

  “A soldier caught in the explosion of the velivus, two killed while chasing us, two burned…” Antony enumerates. “I killed the armoured one, and then there were the two at the entrance. Eight in all. That’s already too many… at this point, I don’t think there’ll be any more.”

  I stagger at hearing all this. My breathing becomes laboured again, and I have to lean against a wall.

  Flashes from the recent fight appear in my mind.

  “Ethan?” calls Dawn.

  Is it just the effect of the dim light, or is the girl very pale?

  Damn… pull yourself together, Ethan, I tell myself. You’re not the only one shaken.

  “The map was supposed to be here,” says Antony, indifferent to my condition, as he feels a hemispherical hollow at the top of the pedestal.

  The Maltian turns his eyes towards the wall. On the stone, there are frescoes, faded and barely visible also because of the poor lighting.

  “Well, well… Dawn, can you shed some light here?”

  The girl snaps out of it and brings the symbol closer to the wall, trying to illuminate it better.

  “All right, Mr Philosopher… it seems rather clear what the key is. Now it’s your turn,” says Antony.

  The drawings on the wall depict many people dressed in ancient attire, all in the act of pointing towards a series of symbols on the wall.

  I take a deep breath to calm myself.

  Don’t think about it… don’t think about it, for now. Later… you can do it later.

  Surprisingly, I manage to push away the thoughts that are agitating me with relative ease; or rather, I set them aside, like something whose shape I can’t yet grasp, so it’s impossible for me to process it at the moment. I already know… I know myself: soon enough, as I brood over them, those thoughts will fill me relentlessly and mercilessly, and I won’t be able to avoid them any longer. But at least for now, as long as I focus on staying anchored to the here and now, I can buy myself some time.

  So, keeping the images of what has just happened at the back of my mind, I examine the frescoes. The sooner I finish the job, the sooner we can leave.

  “Exactly what sort of key are we looking for?” I ask.

  “Uh?” replies the junior sergeant.

  “I mean… is it a code or what?”

  “It should be a number.”

  “A number…”

  I’d hoped for something more than what Archeos already told me… given what’s here.

  The symbols are, in reality, empty and filled circles. These are placed side by side in ten long rows. There must be a hundred or more.

  A number…

  My head buzzes as I try to work it out. I have the feeling that there’s something familiar about those circles. But what?

  “How many digits should the number have? In what form should it be?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  In truth, I wasn’t expecting an answer. I’m just voicing the questions running through my mind. Meanwhile, I feel a kind of tickling at the back of my mind; something is trying to connect itself within my memories.

  Empty circles… filled circles… empty… filled… exists… doesn’t exist… zero… one… zero… one!

  A spark. The sudden emergence of a fully formed concept. There it is, the intuition that takes shape as something understandable.

  “I need to write this down,” I declare, my voice trembling slightly from the excitement following the realisation.

  From the pocket of my cloak, I take out a notebook and a pencil, and start jotting down the code.

  “You don’t understand it?” asks Antony.

  “Perhaps I can decipher it, but I’ll need to talk to Archeos about it.”

  It takes quite a while, especially since I have to double-check several times to avoid making any mistakes, given the number of circles on the wall. When I’ve finished writing, I close the notebook and put it away.

  “Done,” I announce.

  “So then…”

  Antony places a small metal box against the wall and presses a button on it.

  “We’d better run,” he says.

  Sensing exactly what is about to happen, I set aside the weariness that still pervades me. All three of us dash towards the stairs, and from there to the upper floor. We reach Samuel, who joins us at a gesture from his brother.

  Once we’ve put some distance between ourselves and the building, the roar of an explosion comes from within it. A cloud of dust billows out from the entrance, spreading over the grass.

  “I take it you’ve found the key,” the pilot comments, stopping with us.

  “So the philosopher says,” Antony nods.

  “I, on the other hand, have figured out why we crashed,” Samuel informs us, pointing at the soldiers’ corpses. “Weapons with mayea-neutralising charges. They put the kemadra out of action.”

  “You’re joking? Why were they so heavily equipped?”

  “It seems the Republic’s military forces are reaching a new level,” his brother suggests. “I hope the artificers and philosophers hurry up and find a way to counter all this, or it won’t take long before we’re wiped out.”

  “How’s the velivus?”

  “I retracted the lower wing before the crash. If the impact didn’t damage it too badly, it should work. Mayea neutralisation only lasts a short time.”

  “Good… go and see if you can get it working again. As for you two, help me gather up these weapons,” Antony orders.

  “What do we need them for?” Dawn asks.

  “A little present for our artificers, in the hope they’ll supply us with something similar as soon as possible.”

  A few minutes later, we’re aboard the velivus. The craft lifts off again without any trouble, setting a course once more for the Epos.

  Strapped firmly into my seat, I sigh, letting myself go in the absence of gravity. Then, with a slow gesture, I bring my left hand up before my eyes.

  As, just as I’d expected, the doubts I’d pushed aside earlier begin to resurface in my mind…

  Archeos… I need to speak to him.

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