The pace of the slow-moving wagon was a frequency of sound that suited thought well. It was the sound of the groaning timber of veteran timber, the beat of hooves on parched earth, the whistle of the wind through the grain sacks. To the uninitiated, it might have seemed simply the sound of boredom.
Aleric sat in the back of the cart by the burlap mound of barley that provided the poor man's back support as he rode, his feet dangling off the edge of the cart. His dark coat may have been worn from travel, but it was immaculately kept, as if the dust of the province would not adhere to his very presence. To Gurn, the man who led the horses with his pungent sweat of stale ale and hard labor, Aleric was what any traveler should be: an impassive young man with coins to spend to be taken to his destination to gaze out at the clouds with his hands hanging limply by his side.
But behind Aleric's calm, brown eyes, the world was being dismantled. He did not see the landscape as a painting of green hills and blue sky; he saw it as a vast, rolling data set.
In the last several weeks, he had traveled through a dozen nameless villages, a ghostly wanderer on the remote fringes of the Empire. In one of them, he had spent three days watching how tight a fishing net had to be stretched in order to identify the precise stress patterns of the hemp rope used in its weaving. In another one, he had whiled away several hours in the scorching heat of a local forge, observing the effects the impurities of local coal had on the molecular structure of the metal being hammered into bars. A Jack of All Trades he was indeed, but the one skill he used best was the power to recognize the "static" in the world.
"Thou art a peculiar traveler, lad," Gurn bellowed over his shoulder, his words ringing out through the stillness of the afternoon. "Most people on their way to the Empire Capital, lad, they've got a mind only on getting rich, lad, or getting famous. They take the whole damn trip, lad, thinking of sharpenin' their knives or countin' their gold. You plod along as if the dust of the road was the greatest joy."
"The dust tells me of the soil's composition," Aleric replied, his voice a level, melodic chime that seemed to cut through the rattling of the wagon. "And the depth of these ruts tells me exactly how many heavy carriages have passed this way in the last moon. It is a busy artery for such a poorly maintained province. A logistical inefficiency that speaks of a Lord who prioritizes his own comforts over the flow of trade."
The merchant chuckled, though he cast a look of mounting unease at the boy. "Logic and ruts. Thou speakest more like a royal auditor than a lad seeking his fortune. Most boys thy age are dreamin' of findin' magic that commoners like me can't access. They want to be heroes. Thou? Thou art lookin' at mud."
"Mud is the foundation of the road," Aleric murmured. "To ignore the foundation is to ensure the eventual collapse of the structure."
The talk ended as the land changed. The rolling hills became flat, leading towards a massive stone bridge crossing a dry, jagged wash. It was a marvel of old world engineering, marred slightly by a heavy timber gate which had been thrown across the path. Guarding the gate were six men wearing the mismatched plate armor of a local lord's private militia. They did not stand at the ready, as soldiers would, but slouched, aware that out in the wilds of the local domain, they were the law.
"Toll road!" the lead guard shouted, brandishing an old spear. "Ten silver pieces for the wagon. Five for the passenger."
"Ten silver?" Gurn pulled hard on the reins, the horses whinnying as the wagon came to a halt. "Since when have the crossing charges been that high? Last week, they were only two coppers. I've only five silver in profit on all the grain I've carried so far!"
"Since the Lord decided his wine cellar was too empty," the guard sneered, drawing the short sword to make his point clear.
"Prices go up when the thirst is heavy. Pay the price or leave the goods. We are the law on this stone, merchant."
Aleric hopped down from the grain sacks. He landed softly, his boots making a hollow thud on the ancient stone. He walked to the front of the wagon, moving with a calculated grace that made the guards' hands tighten on their weapons. He didn't look at the guards' faces; his gaze was fixed on the lead man's sword.
"The enchantment on thy sword hilt is cracked," Aleric said, his voice devoid of emotion. "The mana-lattice is fractured at the third node. The energy is pooling in the crossguard rather than flowing to the tip. It is a dangerous variable. If thou attemptest to swing it with force, the feedback will likely break thy wrist before the steel even touches its target."
The guard's face turned red with a combination of confusion and anger, "I've had enough of thy mouth, boy! I will show thee feedback!"
Raised the steel to strike, tensing the arm for the downward cleaving motion. Aleric did nothing. Aleric drew no blade. Aleric did not back away or take a defensive pose. Aleric merely changed the way he focused his mind, unlocking the invisible paths inside his mind. Aleric's eyes did not turn yet, but his presence had an attention-grabbing quality to it as the air seemed to heavy with a force three times the normal atmosphere. Aleric focused his eyes directly on the coordinate of the mana leak from the guard, the structural flaw in the steel.
There was no flash of light. There was no dramatic calling out of a spell name. There was simply a terrible, violent, jerking motion in the air – a kind of ripple, a heat haze, which moved too quickly for the eye to see.
CRACK.
A sword made invisible, shifting with pressured mana and shooting straight from Aleric's line of vision, struck the soldier's sword. It was not so much broken as it was splintered; the sword cracked with a force comparable to a glacier crashing to the ground. The tip impacted the ground so forcefully, accompanied by a whirling sound and an unnatural humming from the dimming resonance from the earth. The soldier looked at the shortened sword he was now holding and was surprised by the vibrations from the unseen blade, which caused him to drop the sword.
"Thou! What didst thou do?" the guard stammered, a step backward into his comrades from sheer surprise. "The very air seemed to come to life and take half of our sword in its teeth!"
"I simply removed the error," replied Aleric simply.
However, these expressions of the various guards were suppressed, and they leveled their spears on him; "Sorcery! The man's a rogue!" exclaimed the leader in utter confusion, holding up his numb arm.
However, before they were able to charge their attack, the environment around them started to fail. This didn't mean that the sun actually set, but rather that the color of the sun became icy and sterile, as if something was sucking the warmth out of the color itself through an unseen maw. Next, a shadow began to seep out of the ground from the feet of Aleric and start moving across the bridge at an unnatural pace. It grew up out of the back of him like a mountain range of ink, forming into an irregular silhouette that rose four tall stories into the air with horns that seemed to bore directly into the sky itself.
This was an unrefined pressure that didn't simply block the light out, but actually replaced it with its presence as a shadow.
But then, the heavens themselves seemed fractured. For in the clouds above, two massive Red Eyes opened.
They emitted no fiery, blazing passion like a horde of demons; no, they emitted an intelligence that was cold, calculating, and terrifying. An intelligence that did not wish to merely snap them out of existence, so to speak, but to carefully examine the very souls that walked upon the bridge as if recording them on a dusty, old book. The weight was so great that the guards' legs buckled under them. Each man, one by one, fell to the stone, breathing heavily as he realized the weight that was placed on them, an intelligence that saw failing cardiovascular function, every act of debauchery he committed against the laws that previously constrained him. The weight, the very weight, of a higher logic.
"Move the gate," said Aleric quietly. His words were not loudly spoken, yet the sound of them reverberated in the mind like the clang of a gigantic iron bell.
The guards scrambled, their hands shaking so violently they could barely grip the timber. They did not ask for silver. They did not dare look him in the face. They pushed the gate aside and pressed their foreheads to the dust, praying to gods they had long forgotten until the sound of the wagon wheels resumed.
The shadow retreated into Aleric's heels. The red eyes in the sky closed, leaving the clouds as they were before. Aleric swung back up onto the grain sacks, his heart rate never having exceeded sixty beats per minute. He nodded to the merchant. "The road is clear."
Gurn did not speak a word. He didn't even look back to see if his passenger was still there. He simply lashed the reins with frantic desperation, getting the wagon across the bridge as fast as the horses could gallop. He treated Aleric not as a boy, but as a living natural disaster he happened to be carrying in his cart.
Aleric produced a piece of dried fruit from his pocket, took a bite, and returned his eyes to the horizon. Out on the plain, the tall white pillars of the Empire's Capital at last rose out of the tree cover, sparkling like polished teeth in the sun.
He was an outlander. He was a traveler. He was an oddity in an era where heritage and ancient magic defined potency. And he couldn't help but wonder what sort of math the Empire would make of their own libraries' logical systems. He had questions to be answered—and few places to get that information from but the Capital itself. He had traveled far to gain access to this place of power—and would sift through the world to make sense of it all.