Chapter 1411: An Unexpected Package
A drizzle came down over the shore of Gemini Bay in the Kingdom of Dawn.
Agatha could not have said whether the nuclear test had induced it or whether the timing was coincidence. She was inclined toward coincidence, but she lacked the data to be certain, and the uncertainty stayed with her as a small persistent detail she could not quite set down.
The explosion had lifted a water spout of remarkable scale — visible, she estimated, from fifteen kilometers away. Against the ash-gray of the overcast horizon, the water spout read as pure white, impossible in color, as though the sea had thrown up something that had never belonged to it. It climbed. It kept climbing. Seconds passed while it rose and the spectators watched it rise, and the entire process had the quality of witnessing something that common sense had not reserved a space for.
Then the water spout softened and fell back as rain, and where it had stood, a twisted white cloud formed in its place — broader and taller than the spout had been, expanding as it climbed into shapes that no natural formation produced.
The cluster of sailboats that had been positioned at the explosion point had been removed without remainder.
The rain began.
She had missed the first nuclear test on Snow Mountain, and that absence had sat with her as a particular species of regret. The world had changed at that moment, and she had not been in it. She had made certain she would be present this time.
Standing on the shore, Agatha let herself recall a conversation — Roland and Phyllis, two winters back, after the artillery demonstration in Neverwinter. The distinction he’d drawn that evening between chemical exothermic reactions and what he was actually pursuing. He had described it as the recreation of the Glory of the Sun, and had used the phrase “Resplendent Radiation” in a way that she had, at the time, understood least. But in every other matter, he had been reliable. And the explosion before her bore out the rest.
What surprised her was the silence from the spectators.
She had prepared a speech — a short, appropriate piece Roland had requested, as the Graycastle representative at the demonstration. She had been planning to deliver it to applause. Instead, the nobles who had been invited to observe sat in their chairs and stared. Several appeared to have forgotten how to whisper. On more than a few faces, she had seen something pass that was not admiration.
She understood, watching them, that she did not need to speak. They had seen what they came to see. Words would only diminish it.
There were times when silence revealed more than any prepared address.
Roland had honored his promise. Whatever their expressions contained — wonder, fear, the particular dread of having understood something they could no longer pretend not to understand — the nobles of the Kingdom of Dawn had now seen what humanity was capable of producing.
The Ministry of Industry members moved efficiently through the data collection. In less than half an hour, the preliminary assessment arrived: the test had achieved its projected results.
Agatha wrote four words on a piece of paper — Everything went smoothly — tied it to a carrier pigeon’s leg, and released it. The bird climbed, caught the wind above the shore, and vanished into the gray horizon.
I hope the air operation went as well, she thought, and turned back toward the shore.
Inside the walls of the City of Glow, the General Staff assembled the incoming intelligence from the air raid in systematic order.
The attack had succeeded in its primary objectives beyond what anyone had formally predicted. The demons had not anticipated a second offensive operation so quickly after their success at the Impassable Mountain Range. Combined with the Aerial Knights’ maneuverability — the hard-won, particular mobility of machines that owed nothing to the Devilbeasts’ biology — the fleet had penetrated close to the Deity of Gods before the enemy had fully scrambled their response.
This told the staff something specific: although the demons could lift and maintain a floating island measuring tens of kilometers across, they could not monitor the surrounding sky comprehensively. For the superiors of the First Army, that was not merely encouraging — it was the shape of a plan. For Sylvie and the Seagull, it had produced detailed recordings of every Devilbeast position on the island. The beasts required open, large flat spaces for housing; every Blackstone tower large enough to shelter them was now a mapped target.
Most critical of all was what they’d learned about the barrier.
The Aerial Knights had discovered its existence and confirmed, through the second drop, that concentrated bombardment could weaken it. The barrier dimmed under sustained attack. The principle behind it remained unclear, but it showed the same fundamental characteristics as the personal barriers that Senior Demons maintained — expanded, somehow, to city scale. Once the connection between the two was mapped in detail, the General Staff believed they could calculate the firepower required to break it.
Four Fire of Heaven planes lost. Against the value of everything gathered, that was considered the minimum price for the information.
Roland set the report down.
“Manfeld Castein.” He said the name with a particular quality of attention, the kind that meant he was turning someone over in his mind. “He truly deserves recognition.”
Determination was common enough, in the abstract. What was not common was the combination of determination and the specific ability to act on it — to fly out of cloud cover over a demon stronghold with the observer down, read the geometry of the drop without assistance, release the bomb on a judgment call, and bring his team home. That was not determination. That was talent, and talent without the courage to use it was indistinguishable from the absence of talent.
“I’ll pass the honor along to him.” Tilly shrugged, and then, half under her breath, as though completing a thought she hadn’t meant to speak aloud: “But I haven’t seen—”
“What?”
“Nothing. I have other things to handle.” She turned toward the door and left.
Laughter, barely audible, came from somewhere behind Roland.
“Did you catch what she said?” he asked.
“No.” Nightingale’s expression was doing something that wasn’t quite a smile. “But I can guess.”
“Then tell me.”
She raised five fingers.
“That many?”
“Princess status. That’s already a discount.”
“Fine. Done.”
Nightingale licked her lips, settling into something she’d been prepared to say. “That pilot genuinely has talent, but you praised him a bit extravagantly. Among all the Aerial Knights, isn’t it already obvious who is the most talented and accomplished? You seem to treat the ability to do things as a given for capable people, but not quite so for — this other matter.” A pause. “After all, talent isn’t something we get to choose. Is it.”
She was right about that, at least.
Roland sat by the window in the Rose Café, watching the pedestrians below without quite registering them.
Talent is the starting point. Fully realizing it is a different kind of work entirely. I’ve been overlooking that lately.
“What are you staring at?”
He turned. Valkries had set two cups of coffee on the table and settled herself into the chair across from him with the ease of someone who found the café’s formality faintly amusing.
He shelved the thought and ran through the air raid — the barrier, the drop results, what they’d confirmed about the Deity of Gods’ internal defenses. “Is a magic barrier capable of covering an area the size of a city the product of some Senior Demon’s personal ability? Or is it something newly developed?”
“If I were you, I would stop using the label ‘demon’ on my race in that way.” Valkries wrapped both hands around her cup. “The specific abilities individuals possess depend on which magic stone they receive at birth. Selecting for a barrier stone is a matter of compatibility and subsequent mastery — it has nothing to do with some inherent ‘demonic’ capacity. I, for example, received no such stone. And in any case, it would be impossible for any magic stone to encompass the entire Birth Tower on its own. What you are describing is the result of Mask’s research.”
“What research?”
She drank. “Using a core apparatus to simulate the cyclone structure of a magic stone and amplify the result substantially. The concept has existed for some time, but the practical barriers were significant. I had not expected Mask to have succeeded.”
The barrier protecting the Deity of Gods and the barrier a Senior Demon carries on their body are essentially the same phenomenon, scaled. Roland noted it and held it. Which means the General Staff’s hypothesis is viable.
“And the Symbiotic Demons — is that also Mask’s work?”
“In a sense, yes. He is, in some ways, similar to Transformer Heathtalese — he has never taken an offensive-type magic stone.” Valkries nodded. “Given that the Symbiotic Demons are poorly suited for dealing with the Sky-sea Realm, sending them here is the logical move from the King’s perspective.”
They talked through the operational picture until there was nothing left to add. Valkries set down her cup and rose.
Roland saw her to the door and, just before she stepped out, said: “Thank you.”
She stopped.
“Hackzord hasn’t appeared in either battle. He believed the contents of the letter. If he had been present, the First Army’s losses would have been considerably worse. For that alone, I should be grateful.”
She turned back. “Do not forget that I am not helping you. I am helping my race.” Her voice was even. “The best repayment is honoring your promise. I require nothing else.”
She stepped into the pedestrian crowd and was gone.
Roland returned to the café, sat back down by the window. Then his phone chimed.
A delivery notification. He stared at it for a moment.
He had not purchased anything recently.
Puzzled, he returned to the apartment and found the package waiting — half an arm in length, paper box, the weight of it completely wrong for its size. Almost nothing. He inspected the shipping address, confirmed it was his, brought it to his bedroom, and opened it.
He stopped.
Inside, resting motionless against the package’s interior, was a frozen astrolabe.