Book 1 of Rebirth of the Technomage Saga: Earth's Awakening

Chapter 469: Chapter 468: Ash

Date/Time:TC1855.06.13

Lysanthir arrived at dawn.

The dimensional transfer was subtle — less dramatic than Kairos’s projections, more precise. One moment, the containment corridor was empty. The next, a figure stood at its center: tall, black-robed, the sword across his back catching the formation light in a way that made the metal look older than the stone around it. He materialized with the controlled stillness of a being who had performed transitions between planes more times than most worlds had completed orbits around their suns.

Raven met him at the containment level entrance. The corridor had been cleared — Thorne’s security team positioned at the surface access points, the entire subsurface level evacuated of all personnel except Raven and the guard. If the organism triggered emergence during the transfer, nobody else would be in range.

Lysanthir inclined his head. "Sect Leader Raven. My Lord has briefed me on the subject’s biology. The emergence response. The motile form."

"He told you what it does when the host body is damaged."

"He told me." The guard’s voice carried the resonant timbre of four thousand years of composure. "I have prepared accordingly."

"Your containment can hold it? If it emerges during the transfer?"

"The Observatory’s arrays operate on dimensional principles. The motile form is a physical-plane organism. The containment will hold." A pause — fractional, but Raven caught it. "It should hold."

She looked at him. At the sword across his back that hadn’t been drawn in centuries. At the professional calm that four millennia of service had built into something indistinguishable from certainty.

"Bring her back if you can," Raven said.