Chapter 63: 62. Arcane Intelligence

Aletheia followed Eris downstairs. Her wounds healed quickly under the effects of a healing potion, but she still ached and limped badly. The goblin sorcerer’s spell had caused another near brush with death. She wondered how many more times she could be injured this way before she would never be injured again. She wondered if she would bother fighting next time, when giving up would be so much easier.

Not yet. Not until Corvo was back someplace safe. For now she had no choice but to keep going.

She leaned against the wall as she descended the stairs. Eris had changed so much over the last decade, but she was still not conscientious; she stormed ahead, leaving Aletheia to descend on her own.

Each step jolted her painfully. She gasped as she came to a landing, then continued down the spiral again.

Her wounds were not her only hardship. She had felt lethargic since they arrived in the Mortalist compound. The mana suppression field robbed her of her sixth sense—she could feel no mana here and had no sense of it in her own body. It was an eerie taste of what it might be like to permanently remove her Essence. She wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep.

But there was something else to do. For here, descending the staircase, for the first time since she arrived in Seneria, for the first time since she had been resurrected as a child, she could no longer feel Astera’s presence.

Her mind was her own again. And that was a relief.

She reached the bottom of the stairs. Eris had disappeared, but her voice called from a nearby archway. Aletheia headed that way.

She stepped through an open portcullis. Then a library came in view.

It was cavernous. Walls were stacked with countless books, most frayed and decaying and worn to nothingness. They formed a rainbow before her as the shelves arced across a cold and windowless interior. It was dark within, not like the vault at Waterrest, lit only by candles hanging from a chandelier and sconces along the walls. Artifacts—swords, armor, and much more beside—were scattered on pedestals, displayed like the trophies of an ancient king.

She had to squint to see Eris. She stood before a large table at the room’s center. Beside her was Trito and, seated nearby, was Neiaz.

Eris glanced to Aletheia.

“There she is,” she said. “Good. This is very important. It—has come to my attention that my son acquired something from Waterrest. Something he was not meant to. He must have slipped it into his pocket when we were not looking. Yet ‘tis good he did, for we are lucky to have it, and luckier still that Deror and his elves do not.”

Eris placed a small shard of obsidian, shaped something like an arrowhead, on the table.

Aletheia came over to it. She leaned over it, trying to get a better look, but in it she saw nothing except her own distorted reflection.

Her own reflection, and her own eyes.

As a child, her eyes had been green. They became gold after her manasearing, like Eris’. But once—they had been green. She had always missed her green eyes.

Now, for the first time in over a decade, she saw them. It wasn’t an illusion, not Arcane Semblance, but really what her eyes had looked like so long ago, trapped within the tanned and scarred face of a plain young woman. Partially blocked by a strand of blonde hair. Gazing back at themselves.

Green eyes.

“Describe it,” Neiaz said. His blindfold looked blindly ahead, not at anything in particular.

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“It’s like an arrowhead,” Aletheia said. She sank squat, to look at it from the side. “Made of volcanic stone. Obsidian. Polished. It’s smooth.”

Trito kneeled down beside Aletheia. They looked at it together.

“It is an Arcane Intelligence core,” he said. He looked to Eris. “I have seen them before.”

Eris smiled. She removed the shard from the table and brought it close to her chest. “As have I, elf. Aletheia and I both have, in fact.”

“I remember,” Aletheia said. A memory came rushing back to her. “At the manaforge in Thermopos. Right before—you were captured.”

She had her locket on its chain around her neck. She took hold of it reflexively.

“Precisely,” Eris said. “Though what we found was a mere remnant. The Arcane Intelligence itself had been destroyed.”

“You have brought it to us knowing we shall counsel you to destroy it,” Neiaz said. “Immediately.”

“First I desired your confirmation that it was what I suspected.” She glanced at it in her hand. “I will not destroy it. Not yet. It is much too valuable.”

“An Arcane Intelligence is one of many perversions of nature left by the Esenians,” Trito said. “If this slab is not empty, do you know what it might contain?”

“An Arcane Intelligence?” Aletheia asked. Everyone looked at her for a moment. She shrugged as she felt the weight of their eyes. “Just seemed kind of obvious.”

“Indeed,” Eris said. “A creation of the Old Kingdom. That is to say, not an abomination of the Fall, the destruction of which your order seeks, but one from a time when the veil between the Aether and the Earth held strong.”

“It is mana regardless,” Neiaz said.

“She is right,” Trito said to the other elf. “That device, like magicians themselves, will be among the last of the Magisters’ mistakes to be purged from this world. But do not mistake this sentiment for approval. No good comes from mana in the long stretch of time.”

“In the long stretch of time, we are all dead,” Eris said. “Even you.”

She and Trito watched each other’s eyes for a moment. Then Trito stood back upright. His expression was neutral, like always.

“You think we might know more of this device,” he said. “That I might know more, for I was alive when such things were last used.”

“Yes,” Eris said, “that is what I think. Or at least what I hope.”

He considered this. He glanced to Neiaz, then Aletheia, then at last settled his gaze on Eris.

“The Magisters built complexes of great machines. Manufactories. Defense networks. Warships. Controlling the arcane subsystems of such machines was challenging. Thus the Arcane Intelligences were created—human magicians whose Essences were stripped from their bodies and transferred onto physical shards.” Trito nodded at the shard in Eris’ grasp. “You hold the soul of one of my kinsmen in your hands. Literally. Dormant for millennia.”

This was consonant with what little Aletheia knew, though she had never thought of it in those terms. But she frowned.

“Who would agree to that?” she asked. “To become a machine? A brain without a body?”

“Plenty consented to such evil rituals,” Neiaz said. “Before the end of the Old Kingdom, there was no path to immortality save this.”

Trito nodded. “So long as the core is not destroyed, and there is mana to draw from, the Arcane Intelligence will never die.”

“Then he has been asleep since the vault was shut,” Eris said. “Waiting to be rescued.”

“There is no telling what has become of the AI’s mind, Eris,” Trito said. “It may be mad. It could harm you. Once it is awakened, it will have the power of the magic in the air. It will be able to cast spells, as a demon might. It could lash out at Corvo.”

“The inability to know such things is one more reason why the arcane should not be tolerated,” Neiaz said.

Eris shook her head. “The risk—is worth it. I will activate this core and see what it holds, unless you conjure warnings more distressing than these idle guesses.”

“The warnings have been issued,” Trito said. “We will not take it from you. But we would ask you to reconsider.”

Eris turned from the table. She peered at the core briefly, as she might have a golden ring in her palm.

Aletheia came up behind her.

“Eris,” she whispered. “Maybe they’re right. What use is it?”

Eris hesitated. But she looked to Aletheia with a serious expression.

“The secrets of this technology are lost forever,” she said. “We hold a sapient machine in our hands. We cannot let that go to waste.” Here she looked back at Trito. “Your magic suppression field keeps it inactive, does it not?”

“Apparently,” Neiaz said. “It is meant to neutralize spells and most beings of Essence so long as they are within our walls. Evidently humans are only minorly affected. The core, however, will have no access to mana here, and thus remain as it is now.”

Eris slid the core into a pocket. “Then I will hold onto it until the opportunity comes to awaken it.”

“You have come far to be at this place and hear our advice,” Trito said. He sounded more agitated now, and more determined. “I would ask that you reconsider—”

But he was interrupted by a scream. A child’s scream, from up the stairs nearby, saying, “Mama! Help! Please! Let me go! Mama!”

They all turned to each other. Then they all, save Neiaz, darted up the stairs.