Mage Dissolution Page 7

  I telekinetically pulled myself out of the snow-drift that I had managed to lodge myself in while I considered matters. I was about three more jumps away from my base camp, but with the way I was feeling I doubted that I had it in me. This didn’t look good and to make matters worse, it looked like it might snow again.

  I needed to get somewhere secure for a few hours so that I could rest and recover my strength. I still had my survival gear, so if I could find somewhere sheltered I would be alright. The only problem was that this area didn’t look too habitable.

  I was halfway down a sheer cliff face. What I needed to find was a cave or at the very least an outcropping of rock I could camp under. I couldn’t see anywhere from this vantage point, but that wasn’t surprising. For one my main view was the side of a mountain and for two the damned snow covered everything.

  I sighed as I sent out a Scry thread and began to search the cliff face. There had to be something, a cave or anything. What kind of cliff face doesn’t have nooks and crannies? This one obviously.

  I had just about given up when I found it. It was half luck and half logical deduction that I found what I was looking for. The small avalanche that I’d created when I’d come tumbling down the mountain had cleared away much of the snow and I could now see the rocks and cliff face behind it.

  To the far right of where I had attempted to land was a small entrance into the bedrock. It didn’t look like more than a metre wide, but it would be enough to crawl into. I wouldn’t even need to teleport – things were finally looking up.

  I telekinetically pulled myself up the side of the mountain and with some complaint from my bruised and battered legs crawled into the opening. I had no way of knowing what was inside or even if it would be large enough to house me as it had been pitch black inside when my Scry thread had found it.

  It turned out that someone up there must like me. The cave was larger than it looked. I crawled a little deeper in. It was cold in here, but it was far warmer than outside. I considered creating some light, but I thought better of it. Who knows what might inhabit this cave that might be drawn to the light. I was in no condition to go looking for trouble.

  The floor was uncomfortable, but at least it was flat. I lay down on my back and attempted to stretch my legs and take some of the weight off my injured knee. This actually helped a little. There was an alarming click and a jolt as my knee fully extended, but the relief was immediate. I scavenged through my backpack and pulled out a muesli bar. I couldn’t understand the label on the packet when I had grabbed them, but assumed that they were at least some kind of fruit.

  Apricot – damn. I hate Apricots and they were no better in bar form. Hopefully it was a variety pack and there were different flavours. I grudgingly finished off the bar as I pondered the plan from here. I assumed from the silence outside that it was snowing again. In a few hours I’d probably be snowed in. This wasn’t really a problem; I could easily teleport out from here once I was ready to go. Hopefully once the opening was covered it might warm up in here a little. I didn’t have an exact plan as such, but I figured that I’d spend the night here and then head back to town in the morning.

  Then I’d need to determine what to do next. I was half tempted to just return to Berlin empty handed. This was becoming too much work for not enough chance of success. Maybe I could return in the summer when conditions were better. That would make sense, that’s what we should have done in the first place. Had I known what I know now that’s definitely what I would have done.

  I sighed deeply and pulled my snow glasses from my face to rub my eyes. I was beginning to be able to see a little better in here now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I still couldn’t see much, but I at least was getting some indication of space. I couldn’t determine where the far end of the cave finished, but it looked relatively evenly spaced on both sides.

  I was just pondering the implications of this when I placed my hand on the ground next to me and instantly pulled it back. I had accidently placed my hand on something sharp. I hadn’t cut myself through the gloves but had heard the fabric rip as I had placed my hand down.

  Yep, I’d definitely torn a hole in the glove, right next to the middle index finger. I groped my hand back down trying to figure out what had caused this. At first I thought it was a rock, but no – that wasn’t right. The object was too smooth to be a rock.

  It was metal. I slowly slid my fingers across it trying to ascertain what it was. It was a small metal bar with one end broken and hacked off. The top of the bar was smooth and tapered off at both edges.

  Curious. There was nothing for it now; I needed light. I threw up a glow spell and blinked as my eyes adjusted. I had thought that I was in a natural cave. I was wrong. The walls, with the notable exception of the one that I was leaning against, were made out of hewn stone. I wasn’t in a cave – I was in a tunnel.

  The object that I had cut my glove appeared to be a railway track segment. The end that I had touched had been smashed, probably when the rocks had come tumbling down from above when the tunnel mouth had been closed.

  I was in an old railway tunnel. I had no idea how old it was, but it looked ancient. I wondered where the railway originally led or how much of it remained intact. Perhaps there was once a bridge across the pass to the other side of the mountain. I could make out broken pieces of wood under the rail. They had been mostly smashed into kindling in the tunnel collapse. The wood looked old and brittle – yeah, this railway had definitely been here for some time.

  A low growl from the other end of the tunnel snapped back to the present. The growl was deep – far deeper than a human could make. I knew there was a reason that I shouldn’t have made that light. I wasn’t alone in this cave.

  I heard it approach before I could see it. It sounded big. The sound of its paws striking the ground echoed throughout the narrow chamber.

  The lumbering form as it shambled closer. My heart caught in my mouth. I flicked a shield around myself. This wasn’t going to be fun. I’d never faced anything like this before. My new cave companion was a very large bear.

  I’d obviously intruded into its lair and it looked very angry about this. I shuffled back slowly, attempting to get a little further away from the light. Maybe it wouldn’t see me if I crouched in the shadows. Wrong! The bear reared up onto its hind legs and let out a growl. Okay, moving had been a bad idea.

  There was nothing for it, I’d have to somehow try to chase it off. The only problem was I had no idea how. Do I scream at it? Shout at it? Wave my hands around like I’m crazy? I remembered hearing something about punching a shark in the nose to get it to lose interest in you.

  That sounded like a good idea. Bears are like sharks right? Land Sharks. I grinned somewhat dryly at the thought. It wasn’t that helpful.

  The bear had dropped down onto all fours again and was approaching, still growling at me. It didn’t look any less threatening once it entered into the light. It was a brute.

  The bear reared up in front of me and roared at me. Then it dropped back down and charged. What did it want me to do – run maybe? I’d heard that running from bears was a bad idea. I braced myself as the bear got close and the inevitable swipe connected with the right side of the shield.

  I staggered under the impact and felt my left side go numb. Okay, that wasn’t any harder than a bullet – but it covered a lot more area. The bear seemed confused that I hadn’t fallen down and quickly swiped again.

  I attempted to side step, but wasn’t fast enough. This bear was damned fast. How comes bears were so fast? I thought they were slow and lumbering.

  The impact sent me spinning and sprawling to the ground. I immediately got back to my feet in fury. The bear was still blocking my path through and I really needed it to move on. Hopefully I could scare it off with a show of strength, as I didn’t particularly relish killing the beast.

  ‘Okay Yogey – you’re getting punched in the snout.’ Hopefully this would work. My fist impacted with
the bear’s nose and it let out a loud growl and fell forward, its paws reaching out and pulling me in a crushing embrace. The smell of the bear was over powering as my face was smooshed into its fur.

  I’ve learnt many things over the past few years. One of the more important things I’ve learned is – Don’t punch Bears. I can’t stress this enough – They don’t like it and it won’t intimidate them. It took me several seconds to extricate myself. The bear had a look of confusion on its face it had obviously never fought someone like me before. It growled again and launched itself in for another attack.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I whipped a Mana thread catching it across the side of the head. It shook its head angrily and shrugged off the attack. Shit – that should have floored him.

  The bear launched another strike, I narrowly avoided it by teleporting several metres behind the bear. The bear roared in shock at the explosion of light and sound. I think its first impulse may have been to flee but as it turned it me and its eyes narrowed and it prepared itself to charge again. I didn’t really want to give the bear another chance to maul me again. I turned and ran. My legs screamed at the abuse and with my swollen knee it felt like I was running across shards of glass.

  The second thing I learned that day was that it’s almost impossible to outrun a bear. They’re big and they look slow – they’re not. True, I wasn’t exactly running at my full speed, but the bear had absolutely no trouble catching me. I felt its massive paws thunder down onto my back and force me onto the ground. Its stunning weight pressed down and I felt its powerful jaws attempt to close on the back of my neck.

  My shield cackled in response sending a cascade of sparks off in all directions. I felt the bear rear up in shock and anger. I managed to turn onto my side just as the bear brought its paws smashing down onto me. I felt my shield buckle and truthfully I had no idea how it held through this punishment.

  I now had a face first view of the gnarled claws of the bear scratching against my shield’s surface. I don’t claim to be an expert in discerning bear emotions, but this bear looked pissed off. I’d hoped to avoid this – but it looked like I didn’t have a choice now. I really didn’t want to do any serious harm to the bear, but it was looking like it was coming down to him or me.

  “Okay Boo Boo,” I whispered, “this ain’t no picnic basket.”

  I managed to raise my hand and flexed my fingers into a tight fist. The bear snarled and moved to bite my forearm. From the force of its jaws I was sure it could have cleaved straight through my arm. Fortunately I didn’t give the bear enough to time test my theory.

  A jet of flame burst from my fist and into the bear’s face. It was only a short burst, intended to scare it off. The bear reared back. I’m sure he was reacting more to the shock of the blast than actual pain.

  It backed up several steps and roared at me again. I fired off several volleys of flame before it growled and began to back away. It was fortunate that it was backing away from the direction I wanted to go. I let it go. It didn’t look too badly burned as it skulked off into the shadows. Just a little scorching on the hair on its head and chest.

  I set off several more glow spells to navigate my way through the railway tunnel until eventually I staggered up to another cave. Whatever had closed this tunnel had done a good job. Too good a job.

  Unfortunately, this end of the tunnel didn’t have any entrances through the rock fall. I sighed and shook my head as I summoned my powers. I hit the fallen rocks with the most powerful telekinetic threads that I could and watched with satisfaction as several rocks exploded from the mountainside.

  Light poured in as a cascade of smaller rocks and boulders rained down into the newly created entrance into the chamber. I grinned to myself. While that had been quite impressive, it had also been a little reckless. There was a good possibility I could have collapsed the whole tunnel down upon me.

  I hadn’t thought about that until I noticed a small avalanche of rocks sliding into the tunnel mouth. I tentatively made my way out into the daylight.

  The mouth of the tunnel on the other side of the canyon looked like a wound upon the mountain face, grey rock slid down the silky white snow sheathed cliff face and the gaping hole of the tunnel looked almost like a bullet hole in the side of a pristine mountain.

  * * * * * *

  Now that I knew what I was looking for it was easy to spot the locations on the cliff face where a railway bridge had been secured. I was confident that should I look amongst the rubble at the base of the cliff I would find railway rails and smashed wood.

  I teleported across to a clearing and was gratified to see bolted metal plates mounted into the cliff face. This had definitely been the structure of a cliff side railway bridge. I was definitely onto something here.

  I sent my Scry thread further down the smashed railway line until I came to a second series of tunnels. I would need to find entry into the tunnels the old fashioned way. I couldn’t dare teleport into that dark – who knew what I would be teleporting into?

  I teleported as near as I dared and examined the rocks. I had suspected whoever had closed these tunnels had been systematic and effective. It took me several tries before I was able to gain access to them.

  A small landside of rocks later I was inspecting another smashed railway line. I ventured deeply into the tunnels and found that the air quickly grew cold and stale. It was old air – it had been stagnant too long. I was sure I was in the right place.

  This tunnel was far more extensive and seemed almost to worm its way deeper into the mountain. A set of wooden doors had barred the railway lines at one point, but this secure barrier had long since decayed through age and neglect.

  I had set off a series of glow spells to light my way. The light they created was eerie and caused shadows to dance across the chamber walls. It set my teeth on edge and by the time I reached the end of the line I was already in a heightened state of agitation.

  The end of the line wasn’t what I expected. It was simply a long concrete platform that led into a larger subterranean yard. The yard was segregated from the train platform by a high wire fence. It would have been quite adequate security if the wire were not hanging loose and broken from the poles.

  A sign above the concrete platform identified the place as ‘Stolibor’. I didn’t recognise the name. This complex was old. I carefully moved through a gap in the wire fence and into the main compound yard. The floor of this cavern was concreted and was riddled with cracks and craters. Small boulders littered the compound. I couldn’t see the roof of the cavern, but I assumed from the lack of light that we were still completely underground.

  I shivered as I glanced around the complex. The whole place had a ghost town feeling. I could make out large wooden towers at each end of the cavern, with large flood-lights attached to them. The whole place screamed prison.

  At the far side of the cavern I could make out a set of steel double doors that led into the cliff face on one side. The doors looked ominously heavy. On the far side of the compound there were several dozen small cordoned off areas. Each cordon was only about ten metres by ten metres wide and had a small gate that faced towards the doors.

  It was obvious what they were. They were animal pens. They had to be – what else would you use such a structure for? Obviously they’d been used to store pigs or sheep or something. Maybe this was an elaborate abattoir? Unlikely, but I couldn’t immediately think of any other reason for the pens.

  I went over to inspect them, but couldn’t really see anything more up close. They were simply as they looked, small caged off areas for the animals. As with the exterior fence, the wire here was hanging loose from the poles and presented no barrier. Each pole was approximately two metres tall, which seemed a little excessive for animals. The whole place just felt wrong.

  Behind the pens were the remains of some kind of wooden building. It was mostly ruins and ash. The frame of the building rose from a throne of charred beams and broken panels. I cou
ldn’t tell what the original use of the building had been but it looked like it had been one long room.

  Maybe a hall of some kind, that didn’t make much sense though. In fact nothing about this place was making any sense. Why had Marcus sent me here? What did he want me to find? There was only one place that I hadn’t fully explored – whatever lay behind those iron doors.

  I had a deep sense of foreboding as I pried my fingers behind the door and pulled. The door didn’t budge, either because it was locked or because it was simply so damned heavy. I wrapped a telekinetic thread behind it and pulled. The creaking of the hinges resounded throughout the cavern. It obviously hadn’t been opened in a long, long time.

  The door had been leaning slightly into the mountain face, which meant that its entire weight was resting against the frame. It would have been impossible to move without magic. Whoever had built this place had wanted this room to be secure.

  I peered inside nervously. As I had expected it was dark, what I hadn’t expected to find though was a corridor that led deeper into the mountain. I set off a glow spell and wished that I’d thought to bring a torch. I was chewing through all my power with repetitive use of these glow spells. I could already feel a tingling on the sides of my head that would foretell the arrival of a headache caused by too much use of Mana.

  I gently massaged my temples and ran my fingers across my eyes before I entered into the corridor. The corridor was about ten metres deep and ended in another set of double doors. These were more traditional interior doors though and opened easily when I pushed them. They led into a much larger chamber.

  I was now standing on a catwalk that looked down over what must have been some form of operations centre. Crude machines lined the far side of the room. They looked just like the pictures that’d I’d seen in high school of punch card terminals. Very primitive computing machines. Small lamps hung from the ceiling. A thick layer of dust covered everything. This room hadn’t been visited in years. I sent out another glow spell into the centre of the room.