Chapter 116: Barrier Online
The canned meat was not going to wait for me. I accepted this on the way back up the spiral stairs and moved faster, the red lights tracking my ascent the same way they had tracked my descent, patient and indifferent to how long I had been gone.
By the time I reached the cone room the sounds from above had returned, muffled through the hatch but present, someone laughing. Coco probably.
I moved the small lever back. The lower cone shifted on its mechanism, sliding into position, and the gap between the two tips returned to its original distance. The movement of the cone created a loud, metallic sound.
"Something turned on." I heard from above, then Coco’s voice carried down through the hatch. "Allaran... Are you there?"
"Yes." I called up, raising my voice just enough for it to be heard.
I climbed the silver ladder, reached the top, and pulled myself through the hatch. Coco was sitting against the wall of the room with a can open in his lap, a piece of preserved meat halfway to his mouth, looking at me like he had been caught doing something bad.
"There are still some left." He said quickly, before I could ask.
"Good." I said, while thinking that at least they didn’t finish it all by themselves, hungry beasts.
The group had gathered in the main room by the time I got there, most of them seated, all of them eating. Jim had a can open and was examining its contents with the careful attention of someone who had decided to commit against his better judgment. Coll had finished two already, the empty tins sat beside him. Finn was eating slowly, with the focused appreciation of someone who’d found a culinary treasure by the second time.
Nobody looked particularly worried.
"I’ve made a new plan." I said as I took the remaining can Coco handed me.
Everyone looked up.
I explained it in the order it needed to happen, Jim flies ahead to the canyon top, far enough to see the abandoned city and looks for barriers, I go back down and connect the two cones, which are the energy source, and hold it, we wait for Jim’s signal, if the city barriers turn on then the last stretch is covered. If they do not we build the final corridor the same way we built the first.
"What about getting up there?" Finn asked, nodding toward the canyon walls. "I don’t think climbing every time is a good solution."
"That is your part." I said, meeting his look directly. "Kira can provide structural support. I need you to build some stairs that can hold weight."
"I will need silver." He said, with the certainty of someone stating a fact rather than making a request. "But not from this building, I don’t want to destroy a working structure." He added, glancing at the walls with quiet resolve. "I can feel a deposit to the right of here. Ruins, I think, maybe half an hour on foot."
I focused and started spinning the twenty spheres inside my mind. Sense.
I looked for something in that direction but all I found was rock.
"I cannot reach it with Sense from here." I said, acknowledging the limitation. "It’s too far for me."
"Then I will go get it." He said, not quite pleased about the extra distance.
"Coll and Coco can help you carry more silver." I said, deciding it without hesitation.
Phinyx set his empty can aside. "I will go as well." He said. "I can create some energetic vibes to carry more silver at once."
Coco looked up from his second can and looked at me. "Why don’t you go?"
"Because I am the only one who knows how to work the mechanism below." I said, keeping it practical. "If something goes wrong with it, we would need to build the entire final corridor by hand, and we would lose days we do not have."
Coco considered this with the expression of someone running a very simple calculation. "Okay." He said.
Finn looked at the wall again, then at his boots, then stood up with the resigned energy of someone who had just eaten a lot and probably wanted to nap.
The group separated quickly after that. Jim finished his can, stood, adjusted his glasses with both hands, and walked out without additional ceremony, rising into the air as soon as he cleared the entrance.
Coco, Finn, Coll, and Phinyx walked in the direction Finn indicated. Coll moved slightly ahead, like he was holding himself back from sprinting. Coco followed at a steady pace. Phinyx walked last, unhurried.
Kira had already started before anyone else, the vines along the right canyon wall growing steadily upward, dense at the base to hold weight and becoming more structural as they climbed.
"If this works, the rest of the path to the exile point will be a swift walk." I said, watching the vines take shape.
She glanced at the outpost barrier, still dormant, then back at me. "More than that." She said quietly. "With something like this, Argent could actually expand. Not just survive."
I did not have an answer that fit the scale of that thought, probably because I knew that the voidstone reactor would need more energy soon, so I nodded and went back inside.
Down the ladder. Into the cone room. The familiar white light activated in sequence as I descended.
I stood in front of the large lever. It was clean, well-made, the golden material showing no wear despite its age. I put both hands on it and pulled.
The lower cone began rising. The upper cone descended. Slowly at first, then the gap closed to nothing, tip meeting tip, the assembly locking into contact.
Then both of them started to spin.
Slow at first, then faster, then significantly faster, until the cone assembly moved with a speed that should not have been possible, driven by something internal I did not fully understand and was not going to question right now.
The glow at the contact point built from nothing to faint to visible to bright, a concentrated discharge where the two golden surfaces met.
The structures lit up.
And above me, through the ceiling and the ladder and the distance between, the ward on the runic table woke up.
The green hue reached me first. The barrier expanded outward and downward, passing through the ceiling as if it were not there, moving around me in a growing sphere that hummed at a frequency I felt more in my chest than my ears.
I walked to the control panel beside the spinning cones.
Four buttons. The first and fourth were already active, glowing faintly while the others were dark. Grow. Shrink. Hold. Activate.
Eric’s notebook had shown the hold button pressed only after the barrier had covered the full facility... and I was alone in the basement with no way to see the outside.
When it felt right I pressed Hold anyway.
The hum steadied. The barrier stopped expanding, locked at whatever size it had reached when I made the decision.
I climbed back up.
Outside, Kira had stopped working on the vines and was standing very still, looking at the green dome that now enclosed the sixth outpost in a soft, steady light. Her expression was the particular one she got when something incredible happened.
"It is a little small." I said after reaching the outer wall and studying the boundary.
"It is enough." Kira said, with quiet certainty.
Maybe. I was not fully convinced, but right now the priority was to know if Jim had seen anything at all, after that we could geo the barriers further.
We waited.
The canyon walls caught the green light and reflected it softly, turning the surrounding rock into a different shade. Wip had been in Kira’s head all this time, but after seeing the barrier she jumped to my head and got in defensive position.
"Wip wip, wip!" She said to the barrier. She probably still remembered that time it pushed her away.
Then a silhouette appeared at the distance, moving toward us.
Jim descended fast, faster than his usual measured pace.
He opened his mouth.
The wind took the first word, but the second came through clearly enough.
"Corruptors." He said.
