An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I, Exile, Chapter 9

Evidently, loyalty ran through the stomach. Pretty soon the water was steaming, filling the air with the scent of broth. I figured I and Mindy would get our—

Nope. Nope, the kids got it all. Sort of like a bunch of short piranhas. It had been a long time since they had hot soup, I guessed.

I bent down and grabbed the still warm stone out of the pot and stuck it in my pocket. Didn’t need one of the kids to swallow it as well.

“How much more do you have?” Mindy asked.

“One more meal’s worth,” I said. The wind outside kicked up more, we could actually hear it moaning outside. “Where is your sister,” I muttered.

“She said if… if things got bad, she’d just find shelter.”

I looked around the room.They had piled blankets and carpets all over the place, with little bed rolls. Above us, I could hear the sound of wind and the room, now that the hot soup was gone, was getting colder, little breezes coming from the vents.

Probably need that for fresh air.

That’s why it’s just this room, they’re using their body heat to keep warm… you could see little piles of blankets—not for one kid, but three or four.

This wasn’t something you could do over the long term. They could stay covered up and sort of warm, or be moving, and freeze. But just staying here…

There was a bang somewhere higher up in the building. A little girl shivered.

“Do we have to put the lights out?” a boy asked.

“We don’t have any batteries,” Mindy said. “And we don’t have a lot of oil left.”

“Good thing we have…” I sent another ball of light up, “Magic!”

Oohs and aahs filled the air.

“Really? Magic?” Mindy asked.

“That’s what we call it back home.”

“Where’s home?”

“A long, long way from here.” I shrugged. “I can hang a light ritual on an object, maybe one of the lanterns since the purposes are aligned. That’ll last six hours at least before I have to renew it.”

Mindy glanced over at the glowing ball of light that some of the kids were trying to catch and made another arm flapping gesture. “Great. The world ended and now Merlin shows up.”

“You have mages?”

Another arm flapping gesture. “No! Merlin!”

“Don’t…”

“Wizard? Camelot? King Arthur?”

I shook my head. “Never heard of them.”

Then I felt a tug on my jacket and looking down it was little Miss Cannibal.

“Um, yeah?”

“Where’s your hat and magic wand?”

“I… have a jacket with a hood and I use a scriber.” Magic Wand? The hell? Mages might use rods or staves, but a wand? That was like a conductor’s baton. How could you hang a matrix off of something so—

“Oh. Can you make the snow stop falling?”

“Um, no, I'm not that kind of wizard.”

“You’re not a good wizard?”

I stared at her and then I flapped my arms like Mindy.

“So, you’ve been watching them.”

“Me and Sis.”

“For a month.”

“Yes.”

Well, she hasn’t gone mad… So that was a good sign, I guessed.

“Right, well, when she gets back, we need to talk this—“

BAM! BAM! BAM!

I practically jumped through the roof at the sound. Someone was hammering on the door I’d come in.

“It’s the monster!” a boy screamed, and suddenly the room was full of screaming kids, some hiding, some running in circles, some just… screaming.

“EVERYONE! QUIET!” I bellowed. “Your sister?” I asked.

“I—maybe, but she was supposed to come in the other—“ the banging continued.

Fuck. Maybe it wasn’t her. Or maybe something was making it impossible for her to come in the other way.

“Stay here!” I told her. “Get the… the…” I gestured at the cabinet.

“Shotgun?”

“Yes!”

The door I’d come in was just a short way down the hall. I moved past the hung blankets, the screams of the kids sounding behind me.

I had the shovel in one hand. It was nearly as sharp as the short blade, and I didn’t want anything hostile getting close enough to bite or claw me.

I got to the door.

“Sis! Let me in, please!” the voice was female and very scared.

“Pull it open!” I shouted.

“I can’t!”

The fucking snow. I put my back into it, pushing the door as hard as I could, and it slowly started to open, and then I saw a pair of mittened hands pulling the door back, fighting the collection of snow that had built up with it.

The wind was howling in, and the conjured light I’d thrown out wasn’t showing much, but I got the door open enough to pull the girl in. She looked back and cried out, her face indistinct under a hood.

I followed her terrified gaze and saw them standing. Forms, vague in the howling storm. Except for the eyes. They seemed to glow with a flickering, sickly green light.

And they were standing, clearly not wearing heavy clothing, ignoring the storm that would kill an unprotected man in a few minutes. A howl echoed far down the canyon formed by the buildings.

Oh. Fuck. With one last pull I got her in and then pulled the door closed, throwing every look.

“Who—who are you?” She gasped, teeth chattering, her eyes invisible behind frosted glasses.

“Someone here to hel—shit!”

The blow on the door sounded soft—but the door actually shuddered in its frame.

“Get behind me!”

“I—they were following me, they made the storm worse they-they-they….” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the door.

If they get in here, a shovel isn’t gonna help you. I’ve never done—I shook off the terror. It didn’t matter if I had never done it before; if I didn’t do it now, we were dead, and not in a pleasant way.

I pulled the book out, the book the king had given me, and it flipped open, pages blurring, text changing as I made my desire known.

There. A ward. And old, simple ward, because I didn’t have time to do the complex ward.

I ran to the door with my scriber out, dropping the shovel. I drew the circle, the lines glowing with moonfire, as I stared down at the other symbols. The door shuddered again. There was no time to get it wrong and fix it. I scribbled the symbols down and something… something seemed to be speaking to me, dimly. Not the book… But…

I didn’t care; I needed to get this done. Finally, the symbols were done, and now—I slammed my hand down on it, the way I’d done time after time in the ship for stuff that wasn’t nearly this vital.

“Unclean spirits, powers of  evil, feel the light of day, the pain of virtue!” And then I gave the little mental push that sent my power into the completed symbols.

They blazed with light, and I blinked. When did I get that kind of oomph?  And then something hit the door again, and they blazed up brighter, and there was a howl of pain and rage, followed by…nothing.

“What…What…”

“Mindy get your sister. What other doors are there?”

“We blocked most of ‘em off, but there’s one to the main reading room.”

“Right, you, Cannibal Girl!” I snapped at the blond who was peeking around the entry to the sleeping room. “Take me there. I have to put another ward up.”

Not that they’ll last. Hopefully, if I’m right and there isn’t any magic, or at least no trained mages here, those spirits never ran into a ward and will take time to think things over.

But they’re gonna try to kill us all. And I have a half-frozen college girl, her sister, and a bunch of kids.

Damn. It.