The Restored: Chapter Thirty-Five

Slipping onto the Malapert was a strange mix of impossibly hard, and incredibly easy. 

Devi led them through the endless gray landscape until they stopped in the part of the Wandering Path that geographically mapped to where the Malapert was apparently hovering in the air. Kelly wasn’t sure how that was possible, as they’d only walked for a few minutes, and they hadn’t gone upwards at all, but Devi was certain.

Given that as they approached, they could all see a vast network of wards criss-crossing the landscape, he had no reason to doubt her. Kelly frowned as he studied the strange, quasi-geometric patterns,

“Those don’t look like any normal wards that I’ve seen before.” 

“That’s because they’re not,” Devi said. “When you lay a ward that protects from extraplanar invasion, the most effective and powerful method is to lay it on each of the realms in the same geographic pattern. It’s absurdly expensive, as it requires multiple portals and rebuilding every time a ley line shifts even slightly. But that doesn’t work for the Malapert.” 

Kelly frowned. Surely the Malapert, the most expensive ship in the entire city, could afford something like that. He was about to ask why it didn’t when Jin spoke up. 

“It moves! Since it’s always drifting, and sometimes even has to visit other nations, it doesn't have a consistent geography to map to.”

Devi gave her a salacious wink, and Kelly rolled his eyes at the pair. 

“Exactly. So this is a ward that’s entirely build and maintained by the Malapert, then extended out into the other realms that way, instead of being built in each realm. Even still, it’s an absurdly complex ward, and one I’m going to need to find a way to smuggle you both through.” 

“What about you?” 

Devi fished around and lifted as an employee badge, which both Jin and Kelly studied.  Officially, Devi was registered as the Chairman’s consultant, which Kelly was pretty sure was just the rich person word for ‘does whatever I need them to do’.

“This will let me through, but there are going to be three problems we need to bypass in order to ensure we don’t get caught. First is an archmage strength force barrier around this whole thing, which sets off alarms if it’s broken. Jin, this is where you come in.”

Jin swallowed thickly, but nodded. 

“If we move with a constant velocity, I should be able to artificially cut our acceleration to zero, then use that to conceptaully bypass the ward. The fact I’m relying on some conceptual magic means we will also be totally useless in combat, as all our force will be zero.’ 

Kelly nodded as if that made a lick of sense. 

“The second problem is that the wards on the Malapert shunt any extraplanar magic – even something as simple as summoning a familiar – to a specific room. I can open a portal fine, but guards will be on the other side. Kelly?” 

“I can stop them from seeing us,” Kelly said confidently. “I’ll hold the invisifield spell ready, and shove it into their brains the moment we appear.”

“Great. That just leaves the last bit of security – the death runes on the engine room. I know there’s a way to disable them for engineers to tune and upgrade them, but I don’t know how. We’re going to have to trigger an archmage level life ripping spell and not die. Familiars don’t work, since they’re vessels made of aura, and the door is warded so I can’t teleport through it.” 

They all exchanged looks at that, and Devi bit her lip before starting to speak again. 

“I do have an idea. We could make Abraham do it. Kelly, can you puppeteer him?” 

“No,” Kelly said. “Controlling others is really hard.” 

“Fallen Void,” she cursed, then Jin frowned. 

“Does he need to do anything?” 

“Touch the door,” Devi responded. “Or the wall around it. They keep a curtain over everything, and it’s behind another locked door, but… They really don’t want to risk their engine room.” 

“Why don’t we just truss up Abraham with some metal chains and a gag, Kelly includes him in the invisifield, and then we throw him at the door?” 

“Huh,” Devi said. “I guess sometimes brute force is the right solution. Right, then our plan is complete?” 

Jin and Kelly looked at one another, then at her, then both of them nodded. 

“Then let’s go,” Devi said, stepping through the force ward. Jin extended her hand to Kelly, who took it, and the pair leapt forward. Kelly felt a moment of strangeness as her magic enveloped him, leaning heavily on concepts of physics that were only now entering the greater will of the collective subconscious, and then they were through. 

Kelly tensed and began building his invisifield spell as Devi worked to open the portal, and the instant he could sense minds other than the three of theirs, he flung the spell out in a wave of magic. The three of them, as well as the portal, faded from the minds of everyone around them as they stepped onto the Malapert. 

Even though they were there to blow it up, Kelly couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer opulence of the airship as they entered the waiting room. The ceiling of the extraplanar entry hall was ten and a half feet high, absolutely massive for an airship, and decorated with a crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Light enchantments set into golden sconces on the wall caused the chandelier to sparkle and cast rainbows across the entire room. 

The walls, floor, and ceiling were all wood, imported from outside the city. The floor was a solid dark wood that Kelly thought might have been mahogany, or maybe ebony? Was ebony even a wood? Kelly wasn’t sure. 

The walls were more of the same, but they’d had large sections cut out, with new, differently colored parts of wood inserted into the wall to form murals depicting the myths of founding Elderglass. There wasn’t a single speck of paint to be seen anywhere – every bit of the mural was made from different shades and stains applied to what seemed like a hundred different woods. 

A pair of guards stood next to the portal, and they glanced at it, as they must have seen a flicker as the portal started to open, and Kelly felt the drain on his aura increase as their attention tried to pierce his veil. He was forced to snap and draw in more aura, and was shocked to feel the massive rush of magic enter him as he did. He let out an audible gasp, and both Devi and Jin jerked and looked at him. 

“The ambient aura,” he said. “It’s so thick here.” 

“Oh,” Devi said, visibly relaxing. “Yeah, it’s really potent.” 

They crept down the halls, with Kelly keeping them as invisible as possible. A few times, Devi had to poke at either Jin or Kelly when one of them stopped to stare at the sheer opulence. 

“Who has golden doorknobs?” Jin asked. “Not even gold leaf. Solid gold, all the way through?! That’s just… Ridiculous. I’m pretty sure I could eat for a year or five for what that one doorknob cost!” 

“Keep your voice down,” Kelly admonished. “I’m keeping us cut out of their minds, but it’s harder when you’re shouting.” 

Devi led them down the stairs, and then froze. Abraham, as well as the rest of Nexus, save for four members who must have been elsewhere in the city when Alyphize had created her Throne. Kelly could feel all of their minds, though one of them had a similar bubble around his mind to what Devi had. 

“...twelve airhsips located across the southern border in Saxum!” one of them, a judge on the Overriding Judiciary Council shouted, red in the face. 

“For some reason, I’d assumed they’d just be in their rooms,” Jin muttered. 

“I thought they would be too,” Devi said. “Their rooms are the most heavily warded spots on the ship against physical or magical assault.”

“This makes grabbing Abraham a bit more difficult,” Kelly observed dryly. “How are we getting through the door?” 

“I could try and rip it out by its hinges?” Jin offered. 

“That would just set it off and it would trigger the nearest living being,” Devi responded, shaking her head. “It’s really high quality work.” 

“Do we need to get through the door?” Kelly asked. “We have enough explosives to tear apart the whole ship.” 

“If we damage the wards, which are powered by the aura generators behind the door,” Devi said. “There’s no easy way through the door.” 

Kelly snapped, drawing in more power as they stood there dumbly, then Kelly blinked and turned to Devi. 

“Familiars don’t work because they’re just vessels of aura, right?” 

“Right,” Devi agreed, frowning. “I don’t see how that helps us.”

Kelly pointed out the window, where a handful of demons were gnawing at the wards.

“Then let’s give it a live demon.” 

Devi’s eyes widened, and Jin started to laugh – at least until Kelly shushed her. 

The group quickly left the hall, making their way toward one of the windows, where Devi knocked out a demon with a flash of spellfire, hidden by Kelly’s magic, and Jin made it acceleration-less in order to slip it through the protective wards, dragging it to them at a constant speed. Devi then used some supplies to bind and gag it, and they dragged it up to the hull, where the engine room lay. 

Devi unlocked the door to the vestibule on the other side of which the life-destroying door sat, and they tossed the demon at it. In an instant, the green and red skin of the fishlike demon dissolved, and a spark of red light floated away, dissolving into nothing. 

On the other side of the door was an aura generator, one remarkably similar to the one in the ship that they’d blasted Alyphize with, but where that had been the size of a person, this one was the size of an elephant. At least, Kelly thought it was the size of an elephant – he’d never actually seen one in person. 

Either way, it was big, and they quickly scurried around, placing the charges of the dozens of bombs. Devi placed spell anchors for all of her own explosive spells down, and then Kelly handed her the massive, anti-airship gun. 

“Great,” she nodded. “I’ll fire then teleport to you all right after it happens.” 

Kelly and Jin nodded, then still under the cover of the invisifield spell, made their way to the portal. 

“You’re up,” Jin told him. 

Kelly reached out through his mind sense archstar and crafted a mental attack. It was one of the simplest attacks that a mind mage could create, and also one of the most terrifying.

An illusion of nothing. 

No sense of touch, not even the clothes resting against the skin or the currents of air brushing against the skin.. No sense of smell, not even the faint metallic scent that was constantly in the air in Elderglass. No sense of taste, not even the lingering tastes present on the tongue after taking an open-mouthed breath. No sense of hearing, not even the sound of a person’s own heartbeat. Other senses were targeted too – removing a person’s innate sense of gravity so they couldn’t tell if they were falling or standing still, cutting away their sense of their own body and its location in space, and more. 

Sight was actually the most difficult part of the illusionary attack, as Kelly didn’t have a real concept of no sight at all. Absolute silence was easy, but darkness was the best imitation of no sight at all. Still, it was a deep darkness, a darkness so thick that a dagger could be an inch from stabbing a person in the eye, and they wouldn’t even know. 

True, absolute nothingness, a degree of sensory deprivation that was unmatched by even the best non-magical isolation cells. 

It slammed into every mind in the entire ship, slamming through even the one person with a mind bubble. Though the spell was simple, it wasn’t cheap, and Kelly snapped his fingers, even as he started projecting new magic into their minds – a mix of memories and an auditory illusion that would project an altered version of his voice. 

He took a deep breath and started to speak.