An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I Exile. Chapter 1

There are a lot of places where you can consider your life choices. That day you first became an apprentice. That day you learned that Teresa was dating Gorath and considered making an unnamable bargain to bring her back. (Or going to the inn and drowning your sorrows, which was my actual choice. According to my friends, I was a weepy drunk.)

Sitting in a cell, waiting for my execution? Yeah, that’s another place.

I probably should have listened to Dad when he warned me that if the price was too good to be true… Four spell-draining matrices, the kind of stuff you use to purify an old building of any sorceries. Four for the price of forty. I could buy my own workshop…

I’d barely finished counting my money when the royal guard came bursting in.

You know what you can also use spell-draining matrices for? Draining the protective spells around the palace.

Only…

Turns out an apprentice arcane engineer actually isn’t who you want to go to if you’re trying to bypass rituals created by the greatest masters in the kingdom.

As coups went, it was pretty anticlimactic. And I can’t even say it was for a good cause, because evidently King Jessen had demoted some nobles for corruption and abuse of authority and they’d taken exception to it.

Granted, they’d been executed first.

So here I was, with a menu for my last meal, and paper to write to my family. Because I was seen as only partially culpable, there’d be no fines—my property would go back to them. As well as a form to see if I wanted to take some calming potions before I went to the headsmen, in front of the King and the 12 observers chosen by lot.

Very civilized. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t my gods damned head!

Then the door opened, and I looked up. “I haven’t finished choosing my last….” That wasn’t the guard. “Your Majesty!” I said, standing up.

And almost got killed for my pain as a guard held up his sword right under my neck.

“I think I can handle one prisoner, Jerad.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Jerad backed off, his pose letting me know that he wasn’t about to give the king a chance to handle me before he ran me through.

“Do you know what I dislike, Marcus?”

“Um… No, sir?”

“Being made to do something I don’t want to do. And executing a greedy idiot who probably thought someone was trying to purify a botched ritual is something I don’t want to do.”

“I um… sorry?” Is this where I get pardoned?

“I’m afraid sorry doesn’t cut it for treason, even at one remove, and I cannot let people think they could get away with this… Twenty years, we’ve been at peace, but I remember the Civil War…” he shook his head. “So you will die, as far as the public is concerned. Guards?”

And then I was being marched out of the prison cells, going down passageways…

Old Passageways. The palace had been built where an ancient city of the City Builders had been. You could tell because the proportions were just a little off for humans… nobody had ever found an image of the City Builders.

Which made walking through one of their halls a little creepy, the weird diagrams covering the walls.

“Um, Your Majesty… where are we going?”

“To give you a choice.”

Yeah, that’s not ominous at all.

Finally, we came to a chamber. It looked like an auditorium,and in the center was an arch…with some kind of glowing field in it.

“The Gate of Destiny,” King Jessen said. “Perhaps the only remaining artifact of the City Builders.” And there are words in it, in their language.

I blinked. As far as anyone knew, the only things the City Builders had left behind were carvings of mathematics, architecture, magic, to the point where some figured they didn’t really have a culture.

“What does it do?”

“People go in and vanish. Find their ‘destiny’, whatever that is, but they never come back here. So, you really weren’t intending on supporting a coup, but I can’t risk sparing you… so I’ll offer you this. You can go through, ‘find your destiny’, which may literally be a fate worse than death. Or you can go back up, have your last meal, take your calming potion if you desire and then be executed, swiftly and painlessly.”

I stared at the arch. The field hurt my eyes, and it didn’t feel like any kind of magic I’d ever seen.

“Nobody’s come back out.”

“Not a one.”

“Who has gone in there?”

“My father, after mother died. He had nothing to live for here.” Jessen shook his head. “Not even his child.”

Right, I wasn’t touching that one. But King Jessen was continuing.

“A few priests seeking to carry their faith to other worlds, one or two explorers… a few like you, people who were going to be executed but deserved the opportunity.”

Well if his father went through it, they certainly don’t think it’s a certain doom. Not to mention I was facing a certain doom above.

“I accept, but…”

“Your estate will be sent to your family.”

“And, I ah…have some money I’d like to send to a tavern maid. I liked her and she was talking about buying her own inn, and…”

“What was her name?”

Oh crap, I had never gotten her full name. “Um, Celeste. She’s brown-haired, works at the Broken Stallion and has, um—“ Okay, I wasn’t thinking when I made the universal male gesture for big breasts. King Jessen looked at me. A guard stifled a laugh.

Then he sighed. “I’ll double what you gave her, and to show that I am a truly kind monarch, I’ll find out what her name is and say you wanted her to have the money. I think it works better than ‘give this money to Celeste with the big chest,’ don’t you?”

“Yes, your majesty!”

“Well then, if that’s it?”

I’d written all my letters, so I nodded.

****

It didn’t take long for me to get ready. I had clothing, designed to protect me from the weather, be it hot or cold, a reversible cloak that could keep me dry or provide a place to sleep on the ground, a month’s worth of concentrated rations. A few days’ worth of water, and…

“Here,” King Jessen said, handing me a heavy, ironbound book.

I nearly dropped it.

“Is this…”

“An archive, yes. It has everything you need.”

Archive books were magic, adding more pages as you needed them, and opening to the page you wanted. There was an index, but it felt full. This was…

“Your Majesty?”

“If I was going to set you up to fail, I would just kill you. Fare well…and… Use your common sense.  More than you have been.”

Yeah, I had that coming.

Then he was gone and it was time to give me my weapons.

Yeah, the king was nice; not an idiot.

The first thing was a short sword, more like a thick dagger.  Not some gleaming display piece, but blacked metal and a woven grip. Then there was a…

“Shovel?” I asked.

“Can use it as a spear, tip’s sharpened,” one of the guards said. “Shovel  will save your life, boy.”

“Right.” Next was a hatchet. Oh yeah, that was good. You always needed a hatchet.

And that was it, good boots, the kind of thing a ranger would wear, which was nice, but I wasn’t a ranger, and for all I knew it wouldn’t help me when I stepped out into lava, or the Fifth Hell or…

Calm down. You made your choice. “Right, I’m ready.”

“Wanna priest to bless you?” The guard didn’t sound like he was joking.

I shook my head. “I’ll lose my nerve.”

“Then go.” The guard looked at me. “And good luck.”

“Right.” And then I jumped through the arch.