Chapter 6: Whispers from the Old Ivy

Chapter 6: Whispers from the Old Ivy

The city had healed, at least on the surface. The lampposts stood straight, the pigeons were just pigeons, and the stockbrokers were back to their regularly scheduled avarice. But in my apartment, the silence was louder than the chaos had been. We had held back the tide, but the foundations of the dam were cracked and groaning. My Aetheric Interface, which had screamed in alarm during the tremor, was now a constant, nagging feed of low-priority notifications. The scrying attempts from Aethelgard had stopped, but the alerts from the Draconic Covenant and the Fae Court remained, two distant, powerful entities now staring in my direction like security cameras I couldn't disable. We were on their radar.

Our desire was simple: a plan, a next step, anything other than waiting for the next tremor. But we were adrift. Elara was tirelessly sifting through city archives and dark-web forums, trying to find any mention of "Manus Corp," the corporate shell for The Hand, but it was like trying to grab smoke. They were ghosts in the machine. We had cut off one source of their power at the market, but they had completed their ritual stage anyway. We were playing checkers while they were playing a game so vast it used a city for a board.

The obstacle arrived not with a bang, but with a whisper. A single sheet of crisp, cream-colored parchment materialized from thin air and settled softly on the map of Oakhaven spread across my table. The paper radiated a faint, familiar aura of ozone and condescension. Aethelgardian magic. The kind that didn’t ask for permission to enter your home.

Elara looked up from her tablet, her eyes wide. "What is that?"

I didn't need to read it to know it was trouble. I could feel the magic woven into the fibers of the paper, a spell of privacy and urgency. As I reached for it, ink, the colour of dried blood, bled onto the page, forming elegant, looping script.

Corbin, Your… signal… was quite spectacular. A bit crude for my tastes, but effective nonetheless. The Pragmatists are becoming a problem for us all. Their methods are upsetting a balance centuries in the making. I believe our interests may temporarily align. The Vernal Equinox Gala, at the Atrium. Midnight. Come alone. We have much to discuss. —L.T.

My stomach tightened into a cold knot. L.T. Lysander Thorne. A contemporary of mine at the Academy, a man born with a silver spell-stave in his mouth and a talent for magical politics that was as brilliant as it was loathsome. He represented everything I had fled: the arrogance, the entitlement, the belief that power was a birthright.

"Aethelgard," I said, the name tasting like ash. "An old… acquaintance. He's offering help."

"Do you trust him?" Elara asked, her tone sharp with suspicion.

"I trust a viper to bite," I replied, tracing the flowing script with a finger. "But right now, we're out of options. The Hand has resources, manpower, and a plan that's already in motion. We have a drafty apartment and dwindling supplies of coffee. We need information, Elara. Resources. Something. This might be our only chance to get it."

My desperation was a bitter pill. To even consider walking back into that gilded cage, to deal with the very people who had watched my career burn and done nothing, felt like a betrayal of the quiet life I had tried to build. But that life was already a casualty of this war.

Action was the only path forward. "You're not coming," I stated, leaving no room for argument. "This is my past. My mess. If it's a trap, only one of us needs to walk into it."

She opened her mouth to protest, but saw the hard line of my jaw and subsided. "Be careful, Corbin," she said instead, her voice tight with worry. "Don't let them drag you back into their world."

The Atrium was a place that didn't technically exist. It was a pocket dimension tethered to the penthouse of a downtown skyscraper, a grand ballroom under a perpetual, star-filled twilight sky that had never known Oakhaven's grimy rain. The air itself hummed with contained power, tasting of champagne and smug superiority. Mages in robes of shimmering, impossible fabrics mingled, their conversations punctuated by flashes of casual, ostentatious magic. Floating orbs of light provided a warm glow, and illusions of mythical beasts roamed the curated gardens at the edge of the ballroom. It was a world away from the grimy sub-basement of the soul market, but in its own way, it felt just as profane.

I stood out like a sore thumb in my worn tweed jacket and simple t-shirt. I could feel the stares, hear the whispered recollections of my spectacular fall from grace. Corbin Pierce. Such a promising talent. Such a tragic end. To them, I wasn't a Warden protecting a city; I was a cautionary tale, a ghost at their feast.

I found Lysander by a fountain that flowed with glowing, effervescent wine. He was exactly as I remembered: tall, impeccably dressed, with a smile that never quite reached his cold, calculating eyes.

"Corbin," he said, his voice smooth as polished marble. "I'm surprised you came. I thought you'd sworn off civilization."

"Desperate times, Lysander," I replied, skipping the pleasantries. "You mentioned the Pragmatists. The Hand. What do you know?"

He handed me a crystal flute of the glowing wine. "They are a vulgar little enterprise. A corporate coup on the world of magic. They see no art, no tradition. Only assets and liabilities. Their current project… this business with the genius loci… it's incredibly destabilizing. Bad for everyone." He took a delicate sip. "Aethelgard is prepared to offer resources to see them dismantled. Information. Artifacts. We simply need to know the extent of their operations."

It was everything I wanted to hear. A powerful ally, the backing of the magical world's single greatest institution. It felt too easy. A nagging alarm from my Aetheric Interface, a low-level hum I’d almost mistaken for the Atrium’s ambient magic, sharpened in my perception. It was a proximity alert, a faint trace of the same sterile, Pragmatic Thaumaturgy I’d felt from every cleaner and techno-mage. It was close.

"So you're just going to help me?" I asked, my eyes scanning the crowd. "Out of the goodness of your heart?"

Lysander's smile widened, becoming something predatory. This was the turning point. "Not at all," he said, his voice dropping. "It's a merger. The old ways are inefficient, Corbin. Aethelgard is a monolith, slow to change. The Hand… they understand the future. Power isn't a birthright anymore. It's a commodity. And their board is offering us all a very generous stock option."

My blood ran cold. The faint hostile signature wasn’t coming from the crowd. It was coming from him. From the wine in my hand. My Interface flashed a warning: [Substance Analysis: Potion of Aetheric Suppression. Scrying Tracer Compound Detected.]

The surprise was a physical blow. The Hand hadn't just infiltrated the magical world. They were buying it. They were absorbing it. The line between the old guard and the new threat had just dissolved.

I let the crystal flute drop. It shattered on the marble floor, the glowing wine sizzling like acid. Two figures who had looked like gala security began moving towards us, their tailored suits doing a poor job of hiding their unnatural, fluid movements and the faint hum of their enhancements. Cleaners.

"You sold out," I snarled at Lysander. "You sold out everything."

"I bought in," he corrected, taking a calm step back. "And our first acquisition is you. Your unique Interface is a resource we are very keen to… analyze."

The two cleaners charged. There was no room for a grand display of power here. I was surrounded by a hundred powerful mages who would incinerate me at the first sign of overt aggression. I had to be smart.

As the first cleaner reached for me, I kicked the base of a nearby ice sculpture, a magnificent phoenix carved from frozen magic. Using Sympathetic Resonance, I didn't just push it, I sent a vibrational shock through its core. The phoenix exploded, showering the immediate area in a blinding, razor-sharp blizzard of magical ice and slush.

The guests cried out in shock, creating the perfect cover. I ducked under a wild swing from the second cleaner and grabbed a champagne bottle off a floating tray. I smashed it on the edge of a table and drove the jagged edge into the seam of his armored suit at the shoulder, eliciting a grunt of pain and a spray of sparks.

Lysander shouted orders, but his voice was lost in the panic. I vaulted over a banquet table laden with exotic food, sending a cascade of enchanted pastries and dishes crashing to the floor. I needed to get to the exit, the shimmering portal back to the mundane world.

One of the cleaners recovered, raising a concealed weapon. A bolt of concussive force shot past my ear, vaporizing a floating candelabra. I couldn't fight them head-on. I dove behind a large, potted Night-bloom tree, its flowers absorbing the ambient light. I placed my hand on its trunk, and instead of pushing power, I drew upon the Atrium's own complex warding scheme, the magical security system itself. I didn't have the key, but I could pick the lock.

With a wrench of will, I twisted a single thread of the wards. The beautiful, illusory stars in the sky above the ballroom flickered and died, plunging the entire hall into absolute, disorienting darkness. Screams of confusion erupted. The cleaners’ optical enhancements would be useless against a magical blackout.

I didn't wait. Using the lingering light of the spilled wine on the floor as my only guide, I ran. I burst through the exit portal, the transition jarring and violent, and found myself back in the sterile, air-conditioned silence of the skyscraper penthouse. I smashed the emergency alarm, flooding the floor with strobing lights and a deafening siren, and fled for the fire escape.

I emerged onto a rain-slicked ledge high above the city, the cold drizzle a welcome baptism after the Atrium's cloying perfection. I was bruised, bleeding from a shallow cut on my arm, and utterly defeated. The one door I had hoped to find help behind had opened into a nest of enemies.

There was no old guard left to appeal to. There was no ancient institution that would save us. There was just The Hand, their influence reaching from the darkest alley to the highest ivory tower. There was just me and Elara. We were completely, terrifyingly alone.