Read Aetheric Elements: The Rise of a Steampunk Reality Page 6

  Three days later, and hundreds of kilometers south of Humbrey, Nomed waited underneath the city of Everyway for a man. He knew the man - if that is what you wanted to call him - would be coming. Nomed’s spies and magics had warned him well in advance. The tunnels under the city were cool and humid from the runoff of rainwater. Odd echoes often led any unfortunate enough to get lost in the forgotten halls to their doom.

  A rat scurried along the edge of the room, watching the large man on the gray stone dais. He was as still as the stone itself, but something emanated from him that made the scavenger keep its distance. The man stared down the long square hall in front of his seat, and watched it fill with the shadow of the one for whom he had been waiting to arrive.

  Nomed leaned forward and looked closer at the man in front of him. The new arrival’s skin was gray, a definite change since last time they had seen each other. The extra foot of height was even more defining. The man had shown surprising resourcefulness in finding Nomed, something even the most powerful people in Everyway could not do. The guest smelled of powerful magics, and of something more ancient and dangerous.

  “Nomed, I didn’t seek you out to banter or have some sort of competition of ego or wit,” Grenedal Dragonblood said, striding into the room. He stopped three paces from the other man.

  “Fair enough, I am in no mood for that anyway,” the demon-kin said with a wave of his hand. “So where are your wings? I heard a rumor that you have wings now, and that you fly over fields and steal sheep for snacks. You aren’t going to cough up some horrid bloody cotton ball, are you?” Nomed grinned.

  “The priest named Cyril, which you sought,” Grenedal said, ignoring the other man’s taunting, “I have found him. He is going for his God’s ultimate temple. I think others may know about this too.”

  Nomed cocked his head, his smile slipping into a look of boredom. “Why should I give a hairy nut’s handy damn about some priest?” Nomed sighed. “The other-worldly blood in me veritably boils to think of any do-gooder priest.”

  “Don’t play games, or if you must, at least wait until I have left to play with yourself. Great evil spills from the comet, Talisman. Unnatural things come to the lands, and though the people fight it, they need leaders to stop them from squabbling amongst themselves and powerful allies to help them in the coming war. No matter what happens, good or bad, it is guaranteed to change the face of the land.”

  “I know what it means. Is your tongue becoming forked too? I see your skin is etched; are those scales?” Nomed asked and the man, giving a frustrated sigh, turned to leave when Nomed spoke again. “Spend any more time strapped to huge machines that drain magic, Grenedal Dragonblood? You were just a man before that, weren’t you? I am just curious if your change is accelerating on its own, or if you have had more of the treatment that activated your heritage in the first place. Your dragon heritage. It must have been a hell of a woodpile to hide that relative in it.”

  The visitor turned back to Nomed, his cloak rustling and bulging. Nomed smiled a charming grin; glad finally to get a rise from this man who could track him down when no one else could. Grenedal raised a clawed hand and pointed at Nomed.

  “You know about that machine? What else do you know of it? What did you have to do with that?”

  “Nothing. I know there are others like it in the city, hidden in sewers and basements. I had nothing to do with it, though, except being the cause of its existence. It was made by the Troöds to drain people of enough magic to draw demons to this plane and blend them with people, like bait in a rattrap. It is nice that you and your friends broke it; I really don’t want my kin showing up and ruining my fun. It seems that the frisky little bastards who dreamed up this scheme are still out there though,” Nomed said, leaning forward in his armchair.

  “No,” Grenedal sliced the air with one clawed hand, “I will not be distracted. I found you the same way I know how to find Hue Blueaxe, your balancing counterpart. We three are connected, but you two only through me. We need to be prepared to fight. I warn you, you will help, or you will perish.”

  Dragonblood turned and, in one movement, stepped to the end of the tunnel, a step that was more than a fifty meters. Nomed lurched forward, his eyes shifting to the spectrum of magic that would tell him more of his guest. A wide set of wings unfurl from beneath the man’s cloak as Grenedal took flight upward and out of the well that served as entrance to this hidden place.