Jobby clenched his fists and took several deep breaths. He could feel the familiar warmth of his natural aether weave, pulsing in an intricate pattern of waves throughout his body. That self replicating ball of warmth in his brain washed down his spine and made him a person: more than just a bag of meat and bones. With a little effort, he could nudge the aether around and shape it to his will. It was second nature to him, once. Not anymore.

  He pulled at the chains binding him to the metal table in front of him. They jingled loudly in the confined space, but there was still no give. The tiny room’s black bricks robbed him of any interesting sights. The aether light overhead buzzed an irregular, irritating rhythm. The people that had designed this place wanted it to inevitably erode his resolve.

  Jobby mentally berated himself for years of laziness. Against his mentor’s many warnings, he hadn’t bothered to continue exercising his will regularly. He had relied on orchestration constructs for everything and now the mage chains were blocking access to his system—a layer of useful tools and processes connected to his weave, augmenting his natural skills. Without it, he had no finesse and enough strength to hurt himself. He closed his eyes and repeated his mind-clearing mantra.

  Slowly, the extraneous thoughts fluttering through his mind slowed and then stopped. He gingerly pulled a strand of his aether towards the woven lines of heat where he knew the links to his system should be. The connection was still intact. He let out a slow breath. At least his system was still being kept alive.

  He inched his probe around the lines, hoping to find the construct that was blocking his access. There was a large blob of foreign aether around his system links. Unlike his own, this aether felt cold, sharp, and solid. His probe was too thick to make out any fine details on the construct’s surface. It was as if he had spent too much time outside on the ice and now his hands were completely numb. He pushed.

  ZAP!

  The mage chains around his wrists shocked him. He jerked and cursed, pounding his fist on the table. He had tripped the chains’ security. He was lucky they were set to break his focus and not burn his brains out. He draped his head over the back of his chair, rolled his shoulders, and looked around. The room hadn’t changed.

  He took a few moments to recover. He promised himself he would start doing daily aether exercises without system assistance if he managed to get out of this. With the grumbling out of the way, he centered himself again and mustered his will. He followed his links again and found the chains’ blockading aether. He put pressure on his own aether strand to force it to compress. It shrank, but it was still several times wider than the coarsest strands his system normally made. It was almost impossible to do precision work like this.

  Without any other options, he started to break down the problem like he had been taught in the tower. Apprentices were all taught the basics of building and modifying aether constructs with their natural weave. Even as rusty as he was, he still had more control than he did in those early days, and he had an Adept’s mastery over theory. No construct was perfect or accounted for every possible attack; there was always a workaround.

  He gently moved his aether strand down the length of the foreign construct. It extended out further than he could reach. He brought the probe back and skimmed the construct’s surface, back and forth. There was a hint of texture to the surface. Those were imperfections in the construct’s weave he might be able to exploit, but structural weaknesses required far more brute power to break through than he had in his weave. He needed to get to the control circuits underneath the armor.

  He continued to carefully test the construct’s exterior, running his probe in circles around it. It was tube-shaped and smooth, except for a small protrusion a short way away from the leading edge. He fought down a surge of excitement. The mage chains would need a way to lock and unlock the construct from his aether channels; this might be an access link. He smiled. He wrapped his aether strand around the protrusion and pushed.

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  ZZZZZAP!

  His back slammed into the metal chair and he spasmed for a few seconds. His vision turned completely red and black, and he could hear his heart pounding away. As his senses started to return, the smell of burnt hair and skin forced its way into his consciousness. It turned his stomach. He gagged and coughed hoarsely.

  “Effective device, isn’t it?” a nearby voice said.

  Jobby whipped his head up and immediately regretted the movement. His vision swam and threatened to leave him entirely for a moment. It cleared and there was a man now sitting across the table from him. There had been no warning or sound; he was just there.

  It was a middle-aged man with dark eyes and a cold smile. He was dressed in black and wore a golden badge on the left of his chest. The badge featured an open eye with eight arrows behind it fanned like a compass rose. He carried a large metal container with a leather strap across his chest. He narrowed his black eyes when Jobby didn’t respond. Jobby coughed and shook his head.

  “I... I warrant a High Inquisitor?” Jobby asked.

  “For now,” the inquisitor said. He placed a leather bundle on the table and looked Jobby in the eye as he unrolled it. It contained a variety of knives, pliers, tweezers, and several brass devices Jobby couldn’t identify but were clearly enchanted aether tools.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me what you know about Dagmyth Urall, Jobby,” the inquisitor said. He spoke with a casual, almost indifferent air that made Jobby‘s skin crawl. The attacks... the Inquisition must have been hunting down the cells responsible for all those deaths.

  “Please, I am not an Urallite! I have never met Dagmyth and I don’t want to!” Jobby pleaded.

  “Not an Urallite,” the inquisitor said, humming. He pulled a glowing glass vial from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table next to one of the aether tools. It was filled with a glowing blue-green fluid: stabilized aether.

  “I suppose those 25 lances we found in a hidden pit under your wardrobe were for entertainment purposes then,” the inquisitor said. He scratched his chin and nodded to himself.

  Jobby flinched. How could they have known? If they knew where the lances were, they had to have been watching him for weeks. Who else had they caught? What else did they know? Could he talk his way out of this?

  “I don’t know about any lances. I go to temple every week. I work in the tower every day. Anyone could have snuck in while I was gone,” Jobby said.

  The inquisitor looked off, as if he was considering Jobby‘s claims. He rocked his head from shoulder to shoulder.

  “A Dayist Adept who doesn’t notice a new space under his own bedroom, how interesting,” the inquisitor said. He picked up the aether vial and inserted it into the device next to it. A quiet hiss and click sounded out. Etched glyphs along the surface of the tool faded into existence and bathed the contents of the table in a faint red light. The room seemed to grow colder. The inquisitor’s gaze never moved from Jobby‘s eyes.

  “And who do you suppose would be able to bypass an Adept’s wards, cart in enough lances to arm several squads, and hide the evidence from your senses, hmm?” the inquisitor asked.

  Jobby was sweating heavily now. He shook and his voice wavered.

  “Please, I am not an Urallite. The Brothers have so few mages now. I, I sometimes let some others use my quarters when I’m not there for meetings and discussions and gatherings and, and...” his voice hitched. His wrists still ached from the mage chains’ punishment, and now they started to sting as his sweat found its way onto the burns.

  “Please, I am not an Urallite,” he repeated.

  “It could have been anyone from my temple, or anyone they invited, or, or... or anyone when I wasn’t there!” he said.

  The inquisitor’s bemused smile vanished in an instant. He picked up the glowing aether device and flicked a lever down. The glyphs brightened and the red hue deepened. An arc like red lightning jumped between two probes at the end of the device and it emitted a sharp sizzling hiss and hum. The inquisitor leaned forward and twirled the device in the air.

  “Yes, Jobby, it could have been anyone. But it wasn’t. It was your neighborhood. It was your temple. It was your quarters. It was your wardrobe. It was you. And you are going to tell me everything,” he said in a harsh whisper.

  Jobby quaked. He watched the tip of the device as the inquisitor thrust it closer to him with each declaration. He glanced at the glyphs now burning with energy. Much of the enchantment was beyond his mastery, but he could make out a few snippets. Pain, memory, lightning, fire, and cycle.

  It was enough.

  The inquisitor smiled.

  Jobby talked.