Magic in the Air: The Traveler and the Exile

Chapter 6

Please Note: This book has not yet been fully edited. I hope that any typos, awkward phrasing, or holes in research that might remain don't dampen your enjoyment of the story.

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Dean could recognize the land around them. The trees and shrubs outside the range of the turbine still wore some leaves. He could even recognize the familiar landmarks of the old Matucket lands. The giant oak at the edge of their main field, a rock no one in Selene could move. They remained while the lands' owners were now restricted to their house and laneway leading to it. It had been two days, but dean could still hear his father swearing a blue streak about old Matucket's weakness. "First the quarry, the than guild's damn contraption, and now they just sold it all off to them!?" His incredulity still rang in his son's ears.

But he was right to be incredulous. Dean had already spent two whole days working to fix what had been reported as a leak somewhere in the pipes, but the size of the turbine looming over the ten of them was still a shock. He remembered some of the locals describing it as four barns built together with a fifth squashed flat on top before the net itself was built up from nothing. Dean was confident that Artemis' anti-magic device could still destroy it, but he was certain that causing such an explosion would flatten Selene as well as the turbine. Though that hadn't stopped him from thinking about finding Artemis and the means of destroying it from time to time.

As he hurried from one side of the turbine to the other, Orin's tools clanking on his belt, he couldn't quite suss out how his family had reacted to the question of Artemis. When Dean first saw Agnes he knew that the turbine must have taken its toll on the sprite. After all, Artemis seemed to be the very wellspring of Agnes' vitality. She seemed as cheerful as ever that night, but also much more distracted than spontaneous. And everyone's silence when asked about Artemis only confirmed that something must have happened.

By the time he had reached the other side, James already had the panel off of the control point. He grunted a tense " 'bout time'" when Dean stopped at the opening and peered inside. After a quick nod and "yep", Dean was neck deep in the hole. The innards were just like the rest of the turbines Dean had worked on, both with Orin and alone. It had never explicitly been said, but he learned quite quickly that almost every turbine was the same setting size and complexity aside. The magic was gathered from the air, run through a filter on a few an then gathered together when it was directed. How exactly the magic flowed as water might through such pipes, but he remembered Orin once saying that a mass of magic draws other magic to it. Something about the gravity of pure power. It was a concept he read a lot about during his recovery, but he nonetheless retained little.

"You done daydreaming in there, rookie?"

Dean felt his acrid tone like a stinging of wasps. He thought about keeping his head in the turbine's inner workings for a few moments more – the air was strangely fresher in that contained environment 00 but decided against it when he remembered that he still had another week with the crew. Unfortunately, they'd been too awed or entertained on the way to Selene that they hadn't paid attention to him at all, but now that the work had begun he felt like he'd been placed in charge of everything. Mikkel dismissed it as some sort of hazing, but Dean had the sense that he was somehow cramping their collective style. Are Tenders so shallow? He reluctantly gasped in the acrid air of the outside world.

"Finally! See any leaks in there?"

Dean swallowed the words he might have said if they'd been in the guild mess. "No, nothing there. But it's got to be on this side. We already checked the others. Where's the next..."