Nestled within layers of strange, foamy fabric fixed to the interior of the iron trunk’s charred wooden siding, was a single thin leatherbound book.
The binding was stiff, heat-desiccated, and its singed pages felt poised to crumble between Kera’s fingertips. But a legible heading was scrawled in familiar handwriting on the inside cover.
Research Notes, it read. Ilektromagnetika Interference and Transference.
All contents within are classified, by order of His Majesty the Emperor.
A. Iumatar, Spring 1891.
56 Summer 1893
Need: Week of eggs, salt, drosca. Fifteen yards copper wire
60 Summer 1893
Laid a flower on his shrine today. I miss him every day.
68 Summer 1893
Sybilline forecast was only worse, but of course no resolution to action. Need to figure out a way to get out of going to those things. They’re depressing in more ways than one
71 Summer 1893
Find Khepr and Pairos: Momentary vis haloes observed in lab rodent transmutation recipients. Qualitatively, I certainly sensed brief presences before subject expiry. Perhaps off-putting, but progress nonetheless!
Flipping forward a few pages, Kera found the very last pages of the journal inscribed with any writing.
6 Spring 1894
Observation was sickening today. Knowing the visions would foretell the same dooms, and knowing that again nothing would be done. They’re only getting worse. I’ve heard Kerauna has been given a very remote assignment, very far from the city, so at least I have that. Wish I hadn’t missed her thing
10 Spring 1894
I walked out of the imperial audience today. Perhaps I will be arrested for the disrespect of such a transgression.
But I couldn’t bear it any longer. The idiots, the deadly idiots, have poisoned his ear. Or perhaps they’re not idiots, but just plainly evil. They have told him that the sybils are being misinterpreted, that things could never possibly be that bad…
They have told him that we have the strength to weather any storm. But we do not.
And all the while they spend most of the year far away, in their safe summer estates east beyond the mountains. Princess Octavia seems concerned, but only barely. Only half-swayed by their forked tongues. If only the old fool would seize up at one of his banquets, and let her finally take the throne. At least she has the sense to rotate one of her heirs out of the city, like my Kerauna. And her husband, too, has taken note of our warnings, directing the construction of some facilities underground here and there, though I fear they are implausible as saviors in our specific case.
Why won’t they just listen to us? Our research has clearly delineated the implications of attacks possible through the perverse manipulation of vis, through the manipulation of ilektromagnetika. This is the field to which we have devoted our lives’ work, that field which the Emperor pays us to research, and we are shouting ‘fire! fire!’ directly in the ear, with maximal urgency during every observation, audience, and Diet inquiry. And for what? To have our certainty reversed on us as the zeal of monomania, our expertise downplayed or ignored, and our motives questioned as though it is not they who stand to gain from so grotesquely gambling with human lives.
A great release of energy would occur in any sort of disaster, they say. Portents of destructive energy were present in the readings that forecast the brushfires, and the most recent eastern earthquake, and we survived them quite well, they say. It would be a fool's errand to completely abandon a city as vast as Atum-Ra, they say.
But never have the oracles reacted like this. Never with such uniformity among them, and such intensity in each. Never.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
11 Spring 1894
I have a terrible feeling that however it comes, it will take us before any can think a second thought. There will be no time to run to high ground, no time to build battlements on the walls. It will come, and we will be gone.
13 Spring 1894
I committed treason today.
I told Pairos what I’ve been privy to, at the sybilline observations afforded my station. He seemed oddly calm about it. More interested in the theory of what was possible, regarding an attack of the type that I’m theorizing. People like him are why I love this profession. There’s something pure, innocent even, about how little he cares for anything beyond the science. At any rate, we ended up discussing the minutiae of the theoretical limits of mass-energy conversion ratios for hours.
It really is as bad as I thought, unless both of us are wrong.
21 Spring 1894
Almost none privy to the visions of the oracles even visit the city anymore, despite the fact so many of them still tell the old Emperor to contravene our warnings.
But I have discussed with Khepr and Pairos, and we have found ourselves to be in agreement. Something must be done, no matter the cost. Because no cost could be greater than our inaction, now.
We have discussed some plans, all the highest of treason. All based only on what has been until now purely theoretical. But Imperial Guards haven't broken down any of our doors, yet, so I suppose three really can keep a secret.
22 Spring 1894
To order: Ten thousand yards copper wire. Four hundred two-by-four aluminum-nickel alloyed iron rods. Catalytic lightning-rated grounding apparatus. Twelve centum-frequency field-actuated NOR gate circuits with military-grade cabling. Four thousand gallon masterwork glass vacuum chamber, with at least nine-hundred-ninety-nine-per-mille vacuum purity. Twenty thousand pounds lead II sulfate. Nine thousand gallons sulfuric acid. Maps of the recent underground construction and the catacombs beneath the imperial mall.
At least the Diet allows us such a generous budget.
50 Spring 1894
The machination we devise and its implications are not lost on us. We three are obscuring the true nature of this project from our subordinates — they believe they are creating a network for an experimental new form of telegraphy. In this way, the guilt of our crime will lie only with our three souls.
May the Gods forgive us.
77 Spring 1894
I would be enraptured by the perfection of our design if only its purpose were not so terrible.
It really is beautiful, in perhaps a way only we three might understand.
It is nearly complete now. Its effective range envelops the entire city within the walls, owing to the extensive pre-established network of telegraphy wires that cross the city like a spider’s web. The device will preempt the whole network, once activated. Arc of ilectromagnetika at such concentrations will be more than great enough to do this wirelessly, with the power infusion from the ambient energy release occurring near-simultaneously.
Twelve live circuits are presently active running at minimum power in a rough circular perimeter around catacombs of the imperial mall. They are variable-current wires receptive to induction by ambient vis ilectromagnetika — very importantly, only at heretofore inhumanly massive magnitudes. I suppose if Maxadin the Great were to reincarnate and manifest her vis on the steps of the palace, she might set the whole thing off. But excepting for conditions such as that, they are in essence a wireless fail-deadly switch receptive only to releases of ambient ilektromagnetika at magnitudes associated with the type of weapon we have theorized, and which the sybilline by all accounts have so indicated.
Ilektromagnetika is known to propagate at the speed of light through aether — whereas destructive forces released by the weapon we’ve theorized would necessarily travel at the speeds of massive particles. Thus, the wires will short and trip the activation mechanism at least fractions of a second before most physical deaths take place in the city itself.
And after the circuits fail and the device actuates, everyone within city limits who finds themselves within one thousand feet of a telegraph wire will be transmuted into pure vis.
Sacrificed, you might call it. Or preserved for another time. I don’t know. Either way, it should only happen mere microseconds before they would almost certainly be killed anyway, by overpressure or heat or whatever else.
I know some whom this device will take might have instead survived the destruction, at least some of those that are very far from the epicenter. I know the theory behind transmutation is barely understood — let alone what would be needed to reconstitute a person from a state of pure vis. And I know we do this all without their consent.
But we can only ask for forgiveness. The Emperor’s inaction has left us with no other choice.
The product of the sacrifice, the concentrated combined vis essence of the city, will be funneled into a vacuum chamber for storage we’ve prepared deep in the catacombs. I cannot fully predict the stability of such an entity, so in order to plan for the eventuality of a breach in containment — if, for example, the magnitude of physical destruction renders the chamber compromised, which is of course very possible, or if anyone attempts to tamper with the seal — I have calibrated what will become the frequency of the concentrated vis entity to exactly match the frequency signature of a person perhaps able to serve as a living vessel, until methods of reconstituting those transmuted can be developed by future researchers. Thus if the entity leaves containment, it will automatically entangle with the attuned user of that frequency, most likely jumping via arc to the nearest conductive medium that provides a path of least resistance to the vessel of destination.
Until we determine the most suitable potential vessel, I have tuned the frequency of the containment chamber to match that of the only other person in the world whom I trust who is also likely to be far from the city during the catastrophe. Nevertheless, we three will continue to search for more suitable recipients of the potential transmutation for as long as possible before the end.
The pit in Kera's stomach bored twice as deep, as she turned the page, and found that was the journal’s final entry.
"For in much wisdom is much grief, and in increase of knowledge is increase of sorrow."
Ecclesiastes 1:18
Favorite characters?
