The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 339

Chapter 339: The Central Dominion

ARTHUR LEYWIN

“Alright, you remember everything I told you?” Alaric asked me for the third time, despite already covering it twice that morning.

The old Alacryan was standing with his hands in the pockets of a royal purple robe—an outfit closer to the bath robes of my previous world than the battle robes commonly worn by mages in this one—that was stretched just a little too tight across his midsection.

“Yes, Uncle Al,” I said sarcastically, tugging at the hem of my own simple traveling clothes.

Darrin had offered to let me borrow a few high-end outfits, which he said would fit in better in the central dominion, but he was significantly broader across the chest and shoulders, and there was no time to have anything altered.

“You know,” he replied thoughtfully, “I don’t know if I hate that or not.”

“By the High Sovereign, are we going or what?”

Alaric, Darrin, and I turned to look at Briar, who was leaning against the wall of Darrin’s warp chamber. She had clad herself in crisp white leather armor, and kept her hand on the pommel of her slender blade.

The intractable young woman met our gazes unflinchingly. “I’d like to get back to the academy before I’m as old as you three.”

‘Considering all the forces of evil arrayed against you,’ Regis said solemnly, ‘who’d have guessed you would be murdered by a sixteen year old school girl.’

Alaric barked out a laugh and clapped Darrin hard on the back. “However much Blood Nadir is paying you, make them double it,” he teased.

The girl only huffed, redirecting her line of sight to the tempus warp, which sat at the center of a raised stone platform. The roughly anvil-shaped artifact was crafted of a dull gray, pockmarked metal, and engraved with dozens of runes.

A quick glance at the lines of runes told me it was based on a similar premise to the teleportation gates in Dicathen, but these were much more compact and complex.

“How far can this reach?” I asked, feigning casual interest.

Darrin bent down over the artifact, brushing off nonexistent dust from its surface. “It’s powerful enough to get to the west coast of Sehz-Clar, or just past the southern border of Truacia.”

Seeing me frown, Darrin added, “More than strong enough to reach Cargidan City in the central dominion.”

So not nearly capable of sending me home to Dicathen, I thought, dousing my disappointment.

It was a foolish thought, anyway. As much as I wanted to tell my sister and mother that I was alive, returning to Dicathen now might actually put them in more danger than they already were.

‘Hey, you still have the Creeper’s Stone,’ Regis said in what he thought was a consoling tone. Sorry, the what? I asked, my train of thought completely derailed.

‘I decided “Orb of Long-term Stalking” was way too long. Creeper’s Stone rolls right off the tongue—figuratively speaking.’

Forcefully shunting Regis’s thoughts to the back of my mind, I returned my attention to Darrin, who was beginning to calibrate the tempus warp for travel.

“I’m going to send you to the Library of the Sovereigns,” Darrin was saying. “Briar, can you show Grey to the—”

“Student Administration Office, yeah.” When Darrin cocked a brow at the girl, she straightened and said, “I mean, yes, sir.”

Smiling to himself, Darrin finished the calibrations and stood back. “All ready to go.”

I offered my hand to the Alacryan, and he took it. “Thank you for your hospitality, and your help,” I said sincerely.

Although I could have forced my way out of the Granbehls’ jail cell or the High Hall at any point, it would likely have made everything else I needed to do much more difficult—even impossible, if it drew the attention of a Scythe or two. Thanks to Alaric and his friend—and Caera—I’d avoided that.

“What you faced was a terrible injustice,” he replied. “I’m glad we were able to help.”

“You owe me big, kid,” Alaric said wryly as I offered my hand to him as well. “Darrin here is never going to let me hear the end of it, and that’s not even including all the other favors I’ve had to call in.”

“My hero,” I replied, deadpan.

“So, before you go, we better settle up.”

Thinking he was joking, I gave him an exaggerated roll of my eyes, but then he slipped my old, empty dimension ring from a pocket and held it out. “Forty percent, I believe?”

Briar scowled. “Forty percent is highway robbery.”

Darrin gave the old man an embarrassed frown, but kept his opinion on our transaction to himself.

“Plus ten percent for my services as your legal counsel,” he added with a wink.

I made a show of sliding the ring on my hand and “activating” it as I rifled through the collection of accolades I’d brought back from the Relictombs. Few of the items were of interest to me, as the weapons would degrade too quickly when imbued with aether, and I couldn’t use anything designed to channel or utilize mana.

When I pulled out the first piece—a silver crown set with blood red jewels that swirled with so much fire mana it was visible to the naked eye—Alaric beamed with unsuppressed glee. One by one, I began handing over half the treasure I’d collected.

Briar’s bright eyes grew larger and larger with each piece that came out of my extradimensional storage rune, and even Darrin failed to hide his surprise at the size of the payment, made up of a wide variety of shiny, lightly magical artifacts.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any wealth?” Darrin asked, cocking an eyebrow in my direction.

“I don’t. I have a bunch of stuff. It’s not really ‘wealth’ until I get the chance to sell it, technically,” I said as I pulled another accolade from my dimension rune.

Alaric made a show of inspecting each piece before tucking them away in his own dimension ring, trying to keep up a cool facade, but by the end he was practically drooling, and his hands trembled with excitement.

“Do me a favor and don’t drink yourself to death with this,” I said, fixing him with a stern look.

The old ascender hefted the ring as if he could feel the physical weight of all the treasure it now contained. “When you get to Cargidan, the local Ascenders Association will buy whatever else you have and put it right on your runecard,” he said distractedly. “And they can print you an official badge, too, now that you’ve completed your prelim.”

“You got all that from your preliminary ascent?” Briar asked disbelievingly, her eyes jumping from me to the dimension ring and back.

Darrin was quick to reply. “Don’t get your hopes up, Briar. That definitely isn’t a normal haul for a single ascent—or even several ascents.”

I simply shrugged at the young woman. “My travelling companion and I got lucky.”

“I’ll say,” Darrin replied. “Anyway, you two better be on your way. Grey, Briar will help you find your way around.” He eyed his student and ran a hand through his blond hair. “And Briar, don’t forget that Grey is going to be a professor at the academy. You may not be in his class, but I can’t imagine he’ll take kindly to any more rudeness from you.”

Briar was slow to peel her eyes away from me before stepping onto the platform next to the tempus warp, standing with military precision as she waited for me to join her.

“See you around, Grey,” Darrin said as I joined the young woman on the platform.

“Hurry up and get settled so you can go back to making me money,” Alaric added gruffly, twirling the dimension ring around his calloused finger.

“Bye bye!” a tiny voice said from the doorway as Pen peaked around the corner, waving. I waved back, then the mansion faded around me, and I found myself standing on a different platform, far away from rural Sehz-Clar.

The transition was seamless, without any jarring sickness or twisting of my insides. The platform under my feet had changed from bare stone to dark wood, while the room around me was simultaneously cavernous and claustrophobic.

Glancing quickly around the rows of bookshelves, each one laden with leather-bound tomes, I considered the enormous amount of information contained within this library. Tens of thousands of books on every topic imaginable. Although, if it’s as carefully curated as the library in Aramoor, there probably isn’t anything very important or useful here, I thought, tempering my expectations.

Still, I was eager for a few quiet moments to spend studying Alacrya, the Sovereigns, and the Relictombs. There was still too much I didn’t know, too many ways I could mess up without even realizing it. I hoped the library would contain some answers.

Pulling my gaze away from the bookshelves, I caught sight of Briar standing on a separate small platform a few feet to my left. She was watching me carefully, but her attention was pulled away as a man in black and gray battle robes approached.

“Identification?” he asked in a bored drawl, holding out a hand.

Briar had hers ready, but I had to draw mine out of the dimension rune, making a show of activating my useless ring. The guard’s eyes darted across the face of her identification badge before handing it back wordlessly.

When he got to mine, though, he stared at it for several long moments, a deep frown forming on his face. His eyes darted to me, then back. Briar huffed again, but he ignored her.

Eventually, he turned his focus on me, inspecting me closely, his gaze lingering on my simple clothes. “I’m afraid I’ll need you to come with me, Mister Grey, so we can verify the validity of this identification.” Although the guard’s words were professional, his tone told me clearly enough what he thought about the “validity” of my presence in the central dominion.