The dust of the forgotten library annex was a certain type of antique. It was not the soft, drowsiness of a study in repose, but a gritty, rough pollen of decay, which fluttered at the back of the throat and was like the smell of rotting paper and forgotten dreams. In the case of Leo, it was the smell of desperation.
He wasn't supposed to be here. The "CONDEMNED" signs plastered on the bolted main doors were plain enough, however, the loose floorboard, at the back of the chemistry section - that which he had discovered after a month of patient investigations - was a less noisy, more inviting beckon. At the back of it was a small maintenance tunnel, a black alleyway into the heart of the unoccupied wing of the school.
His excuse was pathetically banal. The silver pen of his father, a gift to him at graduation, a present given by a man who had supposed he was going to be an engineer, not a daydreamer. Leo had lost it in an adventure, a foolish adventure which had resulted in his scurrying off in the presence of one of the custodians, leaving the pen behind. He couldn't go home without it. The eyes of his father had broken his heart less than the fear of the edifice coming down.
Therefore he moved on his hands and knees, stumbling in the darkness, light of his phone flashlight flicking this side and that as he made his way through cobwebs and cracks in the wall. The tunnel led out into what must have been the former office of the head librarian. It was a tomb. The room was dominated by a huge oak table, whitened by age, and shelves were overwhelmed by books which were unreadable due to the impact of water. Something, however, in the center of the room was clean.
One of the few elements still standing in the destruction was a stand made of a single block of obsidian which appeared to absorb the light of his phone. And there was but one thing on it; a ball of opaque milky crystal, big as his fist. It was dead and it was silent, but it was so when everything else in the room was patinaed with neglect. It was beating a low, lethargic, slumberous pulse.
This was it. That pen was on the floor right next to the pedestal and was shining in the poor atmosphere. Relief flooded him. He'd grab it and get out. This was where he got the shivers.
He made a step, his sneakers scraping at the gritty floor. His shoulder rubbed over the crystal sphere as he bumped to get the pen.
The sensation was instantaneous and utterly alien.
A sharp, cold shock raced up his arm, not like electricity, but like diving into an arctic lake. After a nanosecond, a burning internal pressure, a furnace in his core, followed. His muscles seized. His breath got stuck stuck in his throat. He was a puppet whose strings were cut, in a torturous half-crouch. He would have screamed, but his vocal chords were no longer at his beck and call. This was not magic but it was a violation. His own flesh and blood hostilely taken over. His sight wavered, the contours grew dark and the final object he caught was the crystal sphere flaring with a light so bright that he thought it was burning the back of his skull.
Awareness came back to him in a slap.
Leo strangled, as he reeled back and crashed upon the dusty floor. And leaped off the pedestal, his heart beating like a trapped bird. Once more lifeless and dark was the sphere. But something was wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong.
The world was different.
An elaborate glowing UI was flitting around the periphery of his vision and it could not be ignored. It was a carpetwork of glittering, incomprehensible symbols and angular figures that glowed to a dim golden light. There was a warning in a language he could not understand glittering in a corner, their signs hard and desperate. He shook his head and then he couldn't stop blinking but the UI was there, a digital ghost that haunted reality like a bad omen.
What the hell is this? A concussion?
Then a voice spoke. It wasn't in the room. It was inside his head. Iced, royal, antique, and interwoven with a tensing that was drawn steel.
"Master! Run! The seals are failing!"
Leo shuddered and his blood turned to ice water. He clutched his head. "Who said that?"
"The integrity of the structure of this chamber is affected. You must move. Now."
The voice (The Warden) was not demanding. It was commanding. It was the voice of a general in arms, a voice which demanded instant and unhesitating compliance. Leo had a thrill of pure, unduluted terror. There was someone in his mind.
"Get out of my head!" he screamed, and his own voice reeked hollow and reed-like in the vaulted room.
Keep your head, not your hysterics. Move. Sixty-three percent chance of collapse of ceiling.
His vision of UI flashed red and the arrows pointed at the sinking ceiling beams with an ugly accusation. Leo stood in paralyzed horror and amazement. It was not a falling ceiling he was running away; it was the phantom in his head. He attempted to get on his feet, but his legs were rubbery, his balance broke by the psychic invasion. He had difficulties walking directly, every step he made was conscious and his perception was divided to the real world and the shining data that flowed in his mind.
Its motor functions are unacceptably wanting, Warden said, and his voice ran with cold disdain. There will be a need to recalibrate.
The world groaned before Leo had succeeded in creating a retort. There was a noise of protesting wood and moving rock beside the office. He heard a gun-shot crack in a large area of the rich plaster ceiling above him. Dust and debris rained down. A great splintered beam, discharged of its hundred-year-old moorings, was falling. It was going to crush him.
Time seemed to slow. And his mind, screaming to his body, to plunge, to roll, To do something. but he was ice, a deer in the headlights of his prospective fate.
Then, his body moved.
It was the worst feeling ever in his life. It was quick, productive and totally against his will. It was a passenger, a spectator in a flesh-and-blood automobile. His right arm flashed up, palm outstretched, which he could see himself, somewhere behind his own eyes. There was a curious and warm energy vibrating in his centre, and streaming down his arm, like a stream. His hand was faintly lighted with a blue-white luminance.
There was a little kinetic impulse on his palm. It was no great explosion, a sudden concussive thrust of invisible power. It struck the falling beam not with sufficient impulse to prevent its descent, but to change its course. The beam fell on the floor, and it struck him by the closest bit, and a puff of choking dust flew out of the room.
This instant silence was thunderous. Leo was there, and still his arm was extended, and his hand remained numb with the coldness of that power that had just passed through it. He was putting it down, very slowly, very shakily, and gazing at it like a stranger.
The voice of Warden broke the silence, and it was furious.
"An unacceptable delay. A minute more of your indecisiveness would have given way to disastrous system failure. It takes you as long to react with your neural system as it takes a common grub. This will be corrected."
Leo at last discovered his voice, a kind of roaring, tremulous thing. "You... you took over. You moved me."
"I did the required evasive measures. This ship is the heritage of Aethelgard Order. My major role is to preserve it."
"Vessel? Order? What are you talking about? Get out of my head!" Leo was fast boiling with hot and sharp rage. The violation was absolute. He had no privacy, no control. This rented room was his own body, and the landlord had just kicked the door down.
I will always be here, Master. A symbiosis. You will acclimate."
"Go to hell!"
He ran and ran back through the maintenance tunnel, with no regard to the noise, with no regard to anything, but simply to get away further, away out of that room, that sphere. He went wailing into the chemical department, pushing the plank of the floorboard back into its place with a desperate thrust, his heart pounding. He was safe. In the open air, in the well-known, completely illuminated modern library.
But the UI was not gone away, there was a soft, golden mist at one edge of his vision. And the Warden was a cold silent thing at the back of his mind.
He got to his tiny, cramped bedroom, and shut the door behind him as though it could prevent the phantom. He was sitting on the shelf of bed, safe and trembling and bringing his arms about his body. The adrenaline was spent and he was empty and trembling.
Ok, he said to himself, like in the room. "Talk. What are you? And what is this 'Order'?"
The voice of the Warden was instant, and its chilly conviction possessed the emptyness of his brain. I am the Warden, and the keeper of the Legacy. You are the Master, the reved souls of the last Paladin of the Order. Your awakening was... delayed. And what is your present condition... not optimal.
"Reincarnated? I am a seventeen-year-old child who fails in pre-calc. You've got the wrong guy."
The spiritual and the biometric resonance is unquestionable. This is not by choice, Master. It is your destiny. The legacy of the Order should not die away. you have the burden of a thousand fights, the sound of a thousand charms, but you have wasted that learning in this world.
The phrase living weapon wandered near the thought of the Warden and was a shivering thing that it never uttered but was haunting him like a specter.
"Destiny? Legacy? I don't want it! I never asked for this! Just leave!"
"I cannot. Your soul to my role is linked. It is to deny me is to deny a constituent of your being. A painful and, probably, deadly task.
Leo experienced a sense of despair even close enough to take away his breath. This thing could not be argued with. It was to dispute a physical law. He was trapped.
Your body is an instrument, Master," the Warden went on, and his voice changed to cold, practical teaching. Learn to use it, And I shall have to.
A window was created in the UI which was less complicated than the others. It showed one graceful glyph that resembled a stylized spark. Scrolled next to it: mana channels, somatic trigger, incantation stability.
"A basic lumen spell. A simple light generator. You will practice. Now."
No I will not, Leo replied in a voice of defiance.
"You will. The privilege of autonomy comes with competence. Show me nothing, and I shall take the entire control when the need arose to keep us alive. Begin."
The threat was clear. Do according to his own expectations, or become a puppet. The authority was on sale, and it was a collar on his neck.. He balanced the very frightening power to cast magic with the loss of everything that he was.
Leo groaned with complete frustration and raised his hand, staring at the glyph. He attempted to replicate the experience he had had when the Warden had ascended to power - that inner warmth, the energy-directing channeling. It was embarrassing, as though I had been acting as a movie wizard.
He concentrated, gnaring his teeth. He pictured light, he made it happen. There was a moment of nothing. Then there came a glow of warmth to radiate in his palm.
And the world shattered.
It wasn't a memory. It was an explosion. A flashback, jarring, blaring, not his.
The smell of ozone and blood. The sensation of cold wet steel under his - no, no his - fingers. A hand that was gauntled in polished, dark metal, an armored hand, gripped the hilt of a sword that throbbed with power. in front of him lay a battle-field, in a dark, bruised twilight sky, besmirched with figures not quite human. And a voice which was not his, but which belonged to him and was full of a weariness which was centuries old, and said a cold command: Hold the line. Not one step back."
That was under a heart beat, but it was marked on his soul. Sensory overload was gigantic, concrete and completely alien.
Leo screamed, falling back at the phantom odour of blood and ozone. The embryonic warmth in his hand was extinguished at once. The magic did not work and the UI displayed a soft "Connection Lost" message.
He had fallen against his bedroom wall and had fallen to the floor, shaking his whole body. He rocked his knees into his arms, and attempted to shrink up. In the room there was a silence, and the Warden made no comment, no explanation.
Central mystery now gaped at him, a hole of horrible possibility. The Warden stated that he was a reborn hero, a Paladin. This recollection, this deathy, red stuff of a past life... was it evidence? Or was it a deception, a fantasy ingrained so that he should be compliant?
Was this power a gift of some glorious past, a destiny which he was to recover? Or was it a curse, the resonance of a life never his, a course that led nowhere save to battlefields and chilly orders? Was it the past that the Warden wanted him to repossess even really his?
He had no answers. The cold silent presence of his mind and the specter of a battlefield that haunts his vision. Leo was alone, very confused and scared than ever in his life. The lost annex had not merely possessed a lost pen; it had possessed a key to a jail, and he had unlocked the door accidentally and foolishly at the inside.