Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

  By Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Copyright © 2016 Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Smashwords Edition

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2016 by Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Cover Design by Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Map of King’s Isle Design by Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Map of Throne Design by Jeremiah D Schmidt

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  ISBN: 9781311200631

  V1

  Foreword

  Greetings, potential reader. I’d like to take this opportunity to briefly explain to you what you’re about to read.

  As the title implies, this story is part of the Aethosphere Chronicles, which is a loose assemblage of interrelated stories written not only to entertain, but to enrich the storyline of the Aethosphere series of books. However, this shouldn’t dissuade anyone unfamiliar with the main series from giving this story a read, as it requires no prior knowledge of events or characters from Aethosphere (or of the other Chronicles for that matter). It has been crafted to stand on its own.

  So please, think of this as an opportunity to vet the series if you’ve never been exposed; or as a chance to enrich the experience if you have.

  Enjoy!

  Table of Contents

  Map of King’s Isle

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Discover

  Connect

  Map of Throne

  Map of King’s Isle

  Chapter 1

  Atmium mining quotes are up seventeen percent across King’s Isle.

  Drish Larken finally finished the atmium audit, and the feeling of timelessness that so often washed over him as he worked, vanished, only to be replaced by a profound weariness. The gray pool of light thrown down by his desk-top lamp seemed a cold and harsh companion. The stack of sorted papers, each decorated in rows of itemized numbers, glared up accusingly as if asking him why he was still here. He removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose, and then tried to rub that bothersome weariness out from his eyes. When the low-level bureaucrat glanced around the room, he found an aged darkness had settled in around him.

  Drish yawned, the sound of it echoing true through the vast chamber. It was late, and he was tired, and something about this dark and empty office made him all the more uncomfortable. Perhaps it was something about the sheer size of the cavernous room that made it so poignant. It was simply too large to have only one solitary man working this late into the evening. It was a far cry from the days when this building had been filled with Candarans toiling away at all hours for the glory of the Unified Kingdoms of Ascella. Now, the few that remained toiled for the Hierarchs and their Iron Empire.

  Drish glanced out the tall windows that lined the chamber. Not a trace of the sun could be found, not even a pale sliver or vague impression, just a jagged black graveyard of ruined buildings. Even the streetlamps stood dead. All of them still blown out after yesterday’s bombing. Only the constant, nebulous blue haze of the Gods’ Bind, linking the summit of the nearby Sovereignhelm Mountains to the floating islet of the High Crown, interrupted night’s absolute hold. Where has the time gone?

  Fat snowflakes called for the man’s attention, flaring up in the Bind’s atmium glow, resembling dying stars, and Drish frowned with the realization that it was snowing, and probably had been doing so through most of the night. The probing headlight of a lone, military tread-rover came sloshing up the wet road, ejecting slush from its armored sides in torrents, and Drish knew the walk home was going to be sloppy and abysmal. He sighed and turned his irritated gaze to the spread of workstations around him for anyone who might still own a steamer-cart, but the orderly progression of desks, sitting in their neat rows, held not a single soul, just a dark stretch of emptiness.

  How could I have lost track of the time so easily, the accounting clerk wondered, setting his glasses back on the perch of his narrow nose. It even smelled late in the office. The daytime scents of perfume and soaps now replaced by the nighttime musk of brick and antiseptic cleansers—a chill seeping across the floor added a stale bite. It won’t end well if I’m found out and about after curfew.

  Thinking back, there was a vague recollection in his mind of seeing people passing him by, but it lacked any sort of frame of reference and could just as easily have happened yesterday for all he remembered—or cared. Even though he felt loneliness he dismissed it casually, simply chalking it up to the jarring effects of transitioning from tabulating numbers to becoming aware of his surroundings. He’d been absorbed in his work enough times to know the difference. Besides, there was little to no real human interaction in the office these days. The imperials preferred their subjugated collaborators quiet and orderly, and just as well, they had nothing to say to one another anyway.

  “Quarter past ten,” muttered the accountant, after he sought out the confirmation of a clock hanging at the far end of the room. His solitary voice boomed intrusively in the vast silence. Quarter past ten was late, even for him. He was used to working long hours to escape his father, but this was the first time he’d worked later than even the Accounting Bureau’s imperial overseer. There was a policy concerning Candaran subjects, and that was for Hierarch imperials never to take their eyes off them—not even for a moment. The military governor had boldly stated such last week, after a flare-up in insurgent violence.

  Larken meticulously arranged his belongings into a leather carrier and then slung it over his shoulder, taking care not to ruffle his paisley necktie or wrinkle his trim blue-velvet tailcoat in the process. Satisfied, he looked around and gave his workstation an approving nod, then pulled the drawstring on the desk lamp and consigned the room to a ghostly existence. Pooling in from the outside world, the azure glow of the megalithic Bind guided Drish’s course as he slipped out into the shadowy hallway.

  “Larken,” someone whispered over the clacking of his loafers, and startled, Drish wheeled around, dropping his bag to the stone floor. As far as he’d known the east wing was supposed to be empty, and the deep shadows of the recessed office doors along the corridor’s left-hand side maintained that illusion. A cold sweat erupted over the accountant’s brow as he tried to pass it off as a product of a tired mind. “Larken?” the husky voice repeated more loudly, and this time Drish spotted the outline of a withered form stepping out from the darkness of a doorway just behind him. “That is you, isn’t it, lad.” It added in a more hopeful tone, just before an old man took shape in the pale light of the Bind.

  “Err, yes,” replied Drish, apprehensive, as this cautious gentleman lingered at the edge of the shadows. “How may I be of service?” But he didn’t receive an answer. Instead the newcomer just receded back into the darkness he’d wandered out of, and without anothe
r word otherwise. For a moment the young accountant stood dumbfounded, wondering if the old man had made a mistake in calling out to him, or if he was meant to follow after him. Though, as a matter of course, Drish had no intention of following. Fortunately the issue put itself to rest when the hunched Candaran reappeared. With arthritic hands he was attempting, with great difficulty, to tuck a folded slip of paper into his coat pocket. Eventually he managed, and then gave the coat a tender pat.

  Satisfied, the old man stepped closer, uncomfortably close.

  Never give, even by the smallest margin, Drish remembered his grandmother’s stern lesson. A noble cannot afford to show weakness, so remember your station.

  The consummate aristocrat stood his ground, though arching his back to escape the sour reek of this intruder’s stringent breath. As the aged Candaran scrutinized him closely with dull, clouded eyes, Drish suddenly registered this sagging face as belonging to a man he knew.

  Yes, this is the Ethnic Liaison clerk? He realized, of that I’m sure. Drish had seen him enough times, limping his way through the halls, to recognize the man, but that had always been in the light of day. In the dark, this withered husk looked more ghoulish than alive, as though having risen as a vapor wraith upon the setting of the sun to haunt the world of the living. But beyond that, it struck Drish that he recognized him from a situation even further back. He tried to recollect when that occasion might have been, or where, but found the memory shrouded in the vapidity of their present circumstances.

  And then it suddenly became clear. The court of King Brahnan Vereen…before the war. It came rising up like a dream. This was one of my father’s friends, and a relatively influential noble. Drish tried to relax, picking up the contents of his spilled bag as the old man began to talk at a rapid clip, “You’re looking well, Lord Larken.”

  “It’s just mister now,” Drish reminded the old man curtly, the admission filling him with bitterness.

  “Yes…your father’s reluctance… Still, it’s good to see one of the old guard again. I dare say it’s been a while since last we spoke—back in the Palace I should think…just before the end of the Great Skies War. Hard to believe that was only three years ago. Seems like a lifetime’s gone flashing by since then.”

  For Drish, he couldn’t seem to remember the man’s name for the life of him. Is it Dumount, he tried to reason. I should know it…I would know it had the UKA not fallen. But now what does it matter? He might as well be a common born…I might as well be a common born for what my father’s left me. “Yes, yes, after King Brahnan ordered everyone to evacuate the Palace,” reminisced Drish, feigning a remembrance of the man within an account of the war. “After the imperial ground forces got their Siege Hulks in position across the lake…before they leveled the industrial district and set that firestorm…I should think that was the last time we spoke.”

  “No, by then I’d signed my Oath to the Empire and fled to the Estates,” the old man’s voice faded to a whisper. “I watched the Riverside Slums burn from the comfort of my own mansion…and now that mansion’s been long-since burned by the Resistance.”

  Drish offered him a hasty condolence. “I’m sorry to hear that—”

  But Dumount raised a wrinkled hand in interruption. “It’s just as well, I suppose, and in a way they saved my life by doing so. Many a noble’s been murdered in those hillsides since.” He turned to the hallway windows while the Gods’ Bind painted his drooping eyes a chilling blue. “And now here I am, a prisoner in Throne.”

  “Well, sir, take comfort in the words of my grandmother, when she said, ‘there is very little reason to ever leave Throne’.”

  A sad smile crept over the sagging flesh of the elderly noble’s face as he nodded in rumination. “Ah, yes, the Baroness Larken, she was certainly a woman of reckoning; though as I recall, your father never particularly saw eye to eye with her. Not much of a relationship either. Seems he handled the imperial offer in a manner to spite his mother’s dying wish, but you on the other hand…you were a precocious young courtesan, forever following in her wake, and of like temperament and reason. As I recall, you fought hard to uphold the Larken family name during the imperial tribunals.”

  “To no avail, however,” replied Larken, surprised by the sadness in his own voice. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t dearly miss my grandmother, and yet I take comfort in the fact she never lived to see what became of our noble family.”

  “Ah, the Oath…I’m sorry for what you’ve lost, but for what it’s worth, the old guard still remembers the noble families of King Brahnan’s time…even those who the imperials have disavowed…even those who would despise the rest of us as collaborators.”

  “I assure you, sir, that I am not—”

  “It doesn’t matter, there are urgent matters I would discuss with you instead.”

  “Oh?” Drish raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  But Dumount turned a leery eye to the windows lining the hall. “Not here…” he said. “Come on, my boy, we’ll talk outside…where the walls are less apt to be listening.”

  Perhaps having sensed the young man’s reluctance, Dumount grabbed hold of Drish’s arm and led him away forcefully. For such a frail old creature his grip was monstrously firm and his pace preternaturally brisk. Even Drish, in the prime of his youth, had a hard time keeping up as they wound a course through the hallways and chambers of the complex, until finally they rounded a corner and there was the building’s reception foyer. By then Drish’s breath was coming in ragged gasps and he paused just a meter from the exit to collect himself.

  “Dumount, I think this is quite far enough,” he managed when suddenly a voice barked out from behind, ordering them to halt. Cold dread turned the bureaucrat’s muscles to ice. “Turn around,” it commanded, “slowly!”

  As instructed, Drish turned, finding with no real surprise that an imperial soldier; a pale-faced Hierarch glaring through the colorless eyes of his species; stood at the ready, with one hand already perched on the butt of his holstered gun.

  “Let me see your hands!” His voice rang sharp off the stonework.

  This wasn’t Drish’s first run-in with the complex’s guards. They were forever suspicious of any Candaran working in their midst, and sometimes just lingering in a hallway too long was provocation enough to bring down their scrutiny. It’s all in the name of security and order, the expatriate reminded himself, just another unfortunate byproduct of having insurgents running amuck in the streets. The key to such encounters was to do as instructed, and so Drish raised his hands as the guard circled around behind him and his elderly companion. Knowing, however, did little to ease the fear.

  Next to him, Dumount was openly trembling, and Drish wonder if this might have been the man’s first encounter. Impossible, he debated internally. If there was one thing anyone could count on in this broken world, it was in being stopped at least once a week by the Hierarchs.

  The guard pulled out his whistle and gave it one shrill blow, but it only seemed to push Dumount into a more frantic state, and he began to shuffle away. The guard yelled once more at the aged nobleman to stop, accompanying the order with the rustle of a gun being drawn from its holster.

  “Dumount,” snarled Drish, trying his best to sound calm and civil. “Stand still.”

  “You, halt,” yelled the guard, “And you”—Drish felt the comment directed his way—“down on your knees, cross your ankles, keep your hands up, and your mouth shut!”

  Dumount seemed momentarily confused, put off, and frightened as he reluctantly turned to face the guard. The bolt action on the soldier’s pistol clicked back as he yelled once more for him to stop. Meanwhile, Drish did as he was instructed, finding the maneuver to get down without using his hands awkward and clumsy. The stone floor pressed painfully into his knees as he attempted to cross his ankles, all the while hoping Dumount would stop acting so damned foolish… so damned guilty… so they could just be done with this humiliation. Just what was the old fool doin
g? Was he trying to get himself shot?

  And it seemed like they were only moments away from it actually happening when an officer appeared in the side-door to the lobby. “Stand down, trooper,” this new addition commanded in calm authority, as though nothing in this world could truly bother him. It was a reassuring tone, and Drish sighed openly in relief when the black-uniformed officer strolled into the center of the confirmation; more so when it turned out to be Colonel Graye. This Hierarch was renowned for his professionalism. On occasion, Drish would pass him in the hallways, and sometimes they’d even exchange civil courtesies. Granted, it was never as late as it was tonight.

  “Mr. Larken,” the officer said in his characteristically sharp Hierarch accent. His leather gloves groaned as he removed them, “you’re working a bit later than usual this evening. I believe your section chief went home hours ago. I’m surprised he authorized you to stay here alone. He’s not the sort.”

  “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if he did,” stated Drish in a matter-of-fact sort of way, though he regretted his knee-jerk joviality. “My work tends to get the better of me,” he explained with more tact, “very engrossing stuff.”

  “I’m sure,” interrupted the officer, cocking an eyebrow, “but that can be rather problematic for you, sir, if you’re not on my list.”

  Utterly fantastic, thought Drish. Whether or not he was going to spend the night in a detaining room depended entirely on him being on a list of late-night workers; a condition not apt to be given based on the temperament of his overseer.

  “Ah, but Mr. Domaire,” remarked the officer to the elderly gent at Drish’s side. “You are on my list—as usual—so you’re free to go, sir.”