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Shame. That is what David felt the most. He wasn’t ashamed of his actions, nor was he ashamed that Natalie had lost her life. He was ashamed only that he had failed the Queen and had let her and the Earth Clan down. David had no idea what the evil Ohman was going to do to him now that he had been captured, but pain and torture did not scare David. He was a true warrior of the Earth Clan and would endure whatever he must for Terrada’s family.
As he sat on the floor of the traitor’s office with his hands tied behind his back, David fumed with the knowledge that the battle would have ended much differently if Oodrosil had not intervened. It made no sense to David that one of Terrada’s most powerful creations was living here among the humans in the first place. In fact, David had almost aborted his mission entirely this morning when he had first laid eyes on the powerful tree so out of place in the lobby of such a modern building. How could Oodrosil forgo the company of other trees and living outside as a part of nature? How could it turn its back on Terrada so blatantly? And then there was Natalie. If she had not summoned the mighty Oodrosil, David would have defeated Ohman and would have returned to the Earth Clan a hero.
Now he was at the mercy of the traitor.
David tested the straps that held his hands together. But they were made from the branches of Oodrosil itself, and would not be broken by one such as he. Especially with the gag that Cara had stuffed in his mouth. As David looked up from his broodings, Cara, Ohman and Chris entered Ohman’s office with stern looks on their faces. When he saw their eyes, David resigned himself to death, but also pledged a silent oath to Terrada that if he were able to somehow make it out of this place alive, he would never stop pursuing the demise of Ohman and his daughter.
Cara positioned herself behind David and helped him stand, guiding him by tied hands to where Ohman stood.
“I won’t tell you anything,” David said.
The old man laughed—actually dared to laugh at David’s noble bravery in the face of death.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, young man,” Ohman said, “You’ve already told me all I need to know. I know the Queen sent you to kill me and to steal one of my cubes. I also know that you, like my daughter, underestimate the value and the bravery of humans. They are a worthwhile species, despite what you think of them. And speaking of nobility, you will be relieved to know that I am not going to torture you, nor am I going to kill you. Instead, I must ask you to leave and to please never return. Good day, David. It has not been a pleasure.”
This had to be a trap, David thought. There was no way that the declared enemy of the Earth Clan—that the traitor himself—was going to let David just walk away from here, especially considering everything he had seen and learned today at Rune Corp.
“Come on, David,” Cara said. “Let’s go.”
She and Chris led David out of Ohman’s office, out past the traitorous Oodrosil, and over to the elevators. They took the next elevator down to the ground lobby, and walked over to one of the glass doors leading outside.
Cara unbound David’s hands and nudged him forward to one of the doors.
“Good day, David,” Cara said. “It’s unfortunate that you believe the lies your sad Queen tells you. My father is a patriot of the Earth Clan. Everything he does here, he does for Terrada and in her name.”
Such a blasphemer, David thought. How could she look at him and lie like that?
Cara took David’s visitor badge and swiped it over the door reader. A green LED lit up, and David entered the security chamber.
He tried immediately to open the door that led to the outside, but it remained locked as the door behind him closed with a click and a security warning came over the speaker. As the voice went through its speech about the imperative of protecting company information, David wondered if he would be gassed at any moment. Or maybe electrified. And that’s when David felt it.
Deep in his stomach, a strong vibration travelled from his toes to his cranium. He recognized the vibration as Terrada’s words. They were being masked by the voice of the security announcer, but they were there nonetheless, and they were powerful.
David’s insides shook several times before stopping, but finally the message was over and the door to the outside clicked open.
A draft of fresh air enveloped David as he breathed in deep the scent of his freedom. Looking up to the beautiful clouds in the sky, David wondered for a second if he was forgetting something. Something very important. Shaking his head, he figured that if it was important enough, he would remember it later.
After all, it had been a tough day, and he had a sense that the interview hadn’t gone very well for him at all. David was pretty sure that the female candidate was the one who got the job instead of him. He tried to recall the name of the woman who had interviewed him, but searching for her name was like chasing a ghost. The harder he concentrated on remembering her name, the more elusive the details of that morning became. David shrugged his shoulders and walked over to his car. At least the day was still young, he had the rest of the afternoon off, and he planned on enjoying it.
David clicked the button on his remote key fob and heard the familiar double beep as he walked over to his inexpensive red rent-a-car. Plopping himself behind the wheel and closing his car door, David buckled his seatbelt and started the engine. He put the car in drive but just sat there, trying with no luck at all to remember where he lived. In fact, David couldn’t remember anything at all. He wasn’t even sure at this point why he was sitting in the parking lot of this company with the words Rune Corp on the side of the building. David still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had something very important to do.
He was still unsure of his destination when he pulled out of the parking lot and started down Route 123. David hoped that something would come to him as he drove, but he had a rising fear that it would not.
5
Cara sat in her office, staring at the plant that had grown to maturity during the interviews that morning and reflecting on the events that had followed.
What had happened today was another reason that she did not approve of humans handling the cubes and being involved in the operational side of magic. Humans were just too fragile and unable to defend themselves. Still, Cara couldn’t ignore the reality of how close she had come today to losing both her father and everything they had built here together.
There was simply no denying the fact that she owed her life and the life of her father to Natalie’s quick thinking and selfless acts. Today was a reminder of how serious the Earth Clan, and in fact all of the families, took the business of rebuilding the dragon tongues.
First thing in the morning, Cara would start reinforcing the security wards and filling in any gaps she could think of. One thing was for sure, the wards needed to be fine tuned to detect any Drayoom trying to enter the building, no matter how well cloaked with magic they might be. At least she and her father had agreed on this.
However, Cara did not agree with Ohman about his decision to still hire Chris. In light of Natalie’s death, Cara thought that it made sense to pull back and to think further about the necessity for a human interface to the cubes. Ohman, on the other hand, thought that Natalie’s death was the ultimate proof that the work on the interface had to begin immediately.
When Cara had told Chris that they still wanted to hire him, he seemed dumbfounded and awash with guilt. Chris believed that Natalie should have been the one to be hired despite the fact that he had been her number one choice. In the end, Ohman had pulled Chris aside for a private conversation. Cara was familiar with what Chris had probably been told. Ohman had likely appealed to Chris’s sense of honor and had implored him to look at the bigger picture—to not let Natalie die in vain. Taking the job would mean Chris could help make magic safe for humans to use. He could be an integral part of building Terrada’s language and making sure that her power ended up in the right hands, and not under the control of the Queen of the Earth
Clan.
In the end, Chris had walked sluggishly out of Ohman’s office and mumbled to Cara that he accepted the position. When Cara shook his hand, she could feel that he was trembling from the mix of emotions and from the stress of the morning’s events.
She had seen the guilt in Chris’s eyes—how he wished that he had been smart enough and fast enough to use the cube to summon Oodrosil. Cara was sure that Chris would be better than most humans at developing the cube interface, but she also suspected that he would operate under a cloud of guilt for some time to come.
Cara had walked Chris out to the lobby and suggested that he take a couple of weeks off before starting his new career with the company. The later start date was something that Cara had successfully negotiated with her father who had wanted Chris to start immediately.
Cara was thankful that once Chris left the Rune Corp building, he wouldn’t be able to remember anything other than the impression of a great interview and his acceptance of a new job. Chris would have a wonderful evening, and a great couple of weeks where he would call his family to tell them the good news and celebrate his good fortune with his friends. But when he showed up in two weeks for orientation (and counseling), Chris’s memory would once again be restored, as would his guilt.
As for David, she and her father had argued about the best approach for handling the situation. Cara had been in favor of a much harsher penalty for the Drayoom spy, although in all fairness, she hadn’t had a firm suggestion when Ohman had asked her exactly what David’s punishment should be. Ohman, as usual, had provided an elegant and measured solution.
Rune Corp’s exit wards typically instilled a form of short-term selective amnesia on Rune Corp employees whenever they left the building. Ohman had tinkered with this ultimate form of corporate security so that the wards would permanently erase all of David’s memories about himself, his identity, and his mission. Ohman had essentially levied a life sentence on David, stripping him of being Drayoom and with no anchor in the human world, probably dooming him to the dregs of society.
Cara could not bring herself to care.
After Chris and David had both gone. Cara had called 911 to report an accidental death associated with one of the company’s experimental technologies. The police and medical personnel had shown up quickly and had entered the building one-by-one. Cara had apologized for not being able to deactivate the security doors, and the irritated police officers had waited through the security message like all visitors to the building. The police officers had asked a lot of questions and had certainly been suspicious of what really had happened at Rune Corp that morning. They could tell that there had been an explosion, and had taken several photos of the body, found exactly as Chris had discovered it, minus the cube, the enunciator collar, and the earphones, of course. The lead officer had promised that they would be back, but Cara knew that this would not be the case. After they left the building, the police officers and the paramedics all felt a sense of closure like they had never felt before after an initial investigation into an accidental death. This was such an open and shut case that there was only the need for the most minimal of documentation and paperwork. Natalie’s family would be notified of the terrible accident, and would be compensated heavily with an out-of-court settlement that would effectively dissuade the family from any potential legal action. Cara didn’t like operating like this. It was unfair to everyone, and it was too messy overall, but in this case, she had been left with no other options.
Cara’s primary concern was about the danger that everyone at Rune Corp now faced. Cara, all of her employees, and especially Ohman would have to be very careful moving forward. Now that the Queen knew their location, Cara was sure there would be more attempts on their lives and that the Queen would try her best again to steal Rune Corp technology in the future.
Cara still stared at the plant sitting on her floor. Its leaves were almost to the ceiling after having been forcefully grown by each of the three candidates this morning. The plant stood tall, but its leaves were already turning brown. It was dying. Cara hadn’t mentioned one very important thing to the applicants that morning—that working with divinium allowed humans to tap into their inner energy, but that it also drained users, literally taking away years of life each time the cube was used. A Drayoom could master his or her craft and get to a point where using magic didn’t have such deadly repercussions, but for humans, this was not the case. Each day, Cara’s employees were drained of their life forces. And each evening when they left to go home, their detailed memories were obscured by the security wards, and their life forces were replenished thanks to the power of Oodrosil.
Neither Cara nor Ohman knew how this constant draining and recharging of the human body and psyche would affect Rune Corp employees in the long-term, but it was a risk that Ohman had declared acceptable for the greater good of the cause.
Cara reached out and touched the dying plant, remembering once again Natalie’s heroic act and thinking how both noble and foolish humans could be in their willingness to give up their lives to protect the live of others, even strangers. Although Cara still had her misgivings about involving humans so deeply in the affairs of magic, she quietly vowed in Natalie’s name to never doubt their integrity and their desire to do the right thing.
Cara leaned in and whispered a word in Terrada’s tongue, giving some of her own life energy to the dying plant, and smiling as its leaves slowly turned from brown back to a deep, rich green.