Beyond?

“The brothers fought and those beneath them were consumed by war. Their swords clashed and stone shattered. Their magic controlled the elements and burned the weak.

In the end only One remained, the one who betrayed his kin. He disappeared and in his wake he left only chaos, war and death.”

-The forbidden Chronicle.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Lucas***

I am in Helen's office, watching her sort through a stack of documents in one of the shelves. She said that she had to find something important. Azir's story made both of us more than anxious. Then there is Stella's loss, which made me almost go on a killing spree myself.

For my cute darling daughter to suffer such a fate, I failed as a father and as a leader. And for such an organization to exist without my knowledge...

But Azir's report made it all the more believable and even explained some of the strange actions of this underground network. I take the evidence, which my investigators found, from the table in front of me. It's a pouch, filled with gold. We found many such pouches in the personal belongings of the people who were killed by Azir.

His method of dealing with this situation was barbaric, but I have to admit the effectiveness. Being able to drain someone's memories gives you a huge advantage in an affair like this. The problem with this evidence lies in what it implies.

I push my hand into the gold and let the nuggets fall through between my fingers. All of them are of a different size and form, like someone picked a pile of earth and transmuted it into gold. Some are big, others just grains of sand.

Azir isn't the type to notice such worldly things and if he did, he didn't mention it. This gold wasn't dug up from the earth. Someone transmuted it with magic. So either the enemy has a Gejene working for him, or the enemy has a similar ability.

The corrupt elements within the bureau of magic were all bribed with this gold. It is entirely possible that they thought that they were working for us instead of a foreign power. Azir mentioned that none of them were sure for whom they worked.

Another point is the perfect secrecy of this network and how it worked. The entire thing was created in anticipation of being interrogated with mind magic. No one knew what was going on. Even the people who received the messages and the bribes didn't know exactly what they were doing.

The foreign operatives never left their warehouse. They just made contact with some small gangsters and used them as message carriers. Take the bag and the message, don't open them, bring them to a person of power with connections to the underworld, then go your way. That's it, no information flowing back, no one knowing the whole picture.

If their chain of command hadn't failed in some vital aspects, even Azir with his godlike mind-reading abilities had been without a chance. It had taken the accidental encounter of the assassin with the baker and a very curious message carrier, who went against the rules of the network to find out more about his employers.

Azir had to hack his way through dozens of enemy agents in order to find these leads. In fact, most of the agents he killed until he arrived at the enemy base were citizens of Nict, who simply took doubtful jobs to earn a little extra money.

Even the agents who came from enemy countries didn't know anything of value. They were just instructed with tasks that wouldn't have been taken even by corrupted citizens. Afterwards they were ordered to return to predefined extraction points with portals, of course far away from the enemy base.

The enemies hindered themselves by not letting any information flow back towards them, but at the same time it secured their secrecy. It worked well enough to divert our attention and that's what bugs me.

Again, if Azir hadn't made them stumble, we would still be hunting black magicians.

The good point about their procedures is that it'll be very hard for them to rebuild this network. Azir went through their organization like a storm and cut their connections with each other. Even if there are surviving elements, they are just tools without commands now. And it seems like most of the network grew on its own, set in motion by the illegal elements of Nict itself.

I shudder at the thought that such a network was working and in place for centuries. But the evidence is undeniable. If we hadn't a mind magician with previously unknown powers on our side, they would still be operating.

Throwing the pouch with the gold back onto Helen's office table, I turn around and face her. “We have to prepare for war. I'll order the army to the highest alert level. And we have to reopen the ports and rebuild our fleet. The enemy seems to be farther away than our immediate neighbours. I don't believe that they are responsible and even if so, then they are only pawns in a far bigger game. In any case, we have to gather intelligence. I want to know what we are dealing with now and not when an army that's able to crush Nict stands at our borders. Our self-imposed isolation has to end.”

Helen murmurs something and pulls out the last report on a shelf at ground level. Then she places it on the neat stack of reports, dusting it off with her magic. “I am sorry, you can do as you wish. I'll support your decisions as if they were mine.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Dear, are you okay? You've been acting strange for quite some time now. First you are avoiding Stella and instruct Sola to look after her, then you keep sorting these old documents from years ago.”

Helen's expression turns conflicted. “I may have done something bad to my daughter. And then there is this old secret which keeps bugging me. I would have never thought about it, if Azir's report hadn't made me remember..”

I stand up and kneel down beside her. “What did you do?”

She touches the freed section of the wall, which was previously covered by the reports. The wall flows apart and reveals a secret locker with a metal case inside. “I am a meddlesome woman. I had a hand in her early pregnancy because I hoped for a fast joining of our clans. If their children become even more powerful than them, we might have a chance in what's coming. But now it looks like there isn't any time left.”

She pulls out the metal case from its hiding place and lets out a sigh while looking at it. It has no visible way to open it.

“You did what!?” I grumble and place one hand on her shoulder, forcing myself to smile. “Y...” I stop and try to think over her reasons and the implications. “It's not your fault that she lost the child. Though you should prepare for problems if she ever finds out.”

She nods, but isn't really relieved. I didn't intend to give her absolution, her games caused Stella great pain. Then she places her hands on the metal case and the upper part of the box floats apart. So it wasn't intended to be opened by anyone else.

Inside are a few old books, she takes one and opens it. Turning the brittle pages, she skims over the content.

“What are those?” I ask her, raising an eyebrow.

She answers with a careful voice. “Records of the war and the immediate time afterwards... when the empire fell and the emperor was overthrown by his own kin.”

“Oh...” I think she informed me of that time once and I hoped that it would remain an unnecessary gesture. There is a secret history to the events of that time.

She stops at a certain passage close to the end of the book. “There it is...” She starts reading the text for me. “... And I followed my brother to the throne room, where we fought the last battle against each other. Neither of us begged for mercy, nor do I think that it would've been granted. At the end I managed to wound the 'Master of All' gravely. I left his dying body there, because the palace was damaged beyond help due to our fight. There was no choice, I had to save my life and escape the crumbling building. Maybe it was a fitting end to be buried inside the remains of the symbol of his reign. Unfortunately it robbed me of the chance to investigate the glowing red portal of energy. Probably it is based on a similar principle to the Gates and allows someone to travel over great distances. In any case, the secret seems to be lost and buried under the remains of the palace.”

Helen closes the book. “A glowing red portal of energy. It sounds familiar and Azir even mentioned that the one who escaped him called his leader the Master. I didn't remember reading about it until the word 'Master' fell.”

I start chuckling. “You want to tell me that the Emperor survived? He would have to be over a thousand years old by now. Nobody gets that old. And why didn't he return earlier?”

Helen places the book back in the case. “I don't know. Maybe he had to recover from his wounds? I just remembered about it and informed you. It may be just a coincidence after all. After his brother freed us of him, he unified the seven cities again and rebuilt the palace and instructed us to close Nict against the outside world. He gave us strict orders to guard the palace and especially what lies under it. Maybe he feared that his brother or one of his servants survived after all?”

She shakes her head. “We have to turn our attention outwards once more. After such a long time it seems that our strategy of isolation has started to fail. We can't let Nict fall into the wrong hands.”

I frown. “And such words from my dear wife, who was always against my attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with our neighbours?”

She reseals the case and shoves it back into its hiding place. “My family was fulfilling our saviour's commands to the letter for generations. Even if we didn't reign from the palace at all times, we still protected what lies beneath it. That oath was sworn beyond time and generations. But even if the saviour was as powerful as his brother, he couldn't see the future and right now it seems like a bad choice to wait until the enemy comes to our doorstep.”

.