Nethermost Realm: Prisoner of Arlunn

Chapter 44

Quince took a deep breath. "Perhaps you could try. Would you?"

"All right," said Rian.

Still Quince hesitated, no doubt under some new order from Arryk. "If I let you out, will you give me your regal word of honor that you won't hurt any of us, or try to escape ... or try to sabotage anything?" By anything, he meant the paravescea.

What did Rian have to lose? Anything to get out of this cell. "Yes, I give you my regal word of honor ... not to do any of those things."

"Good," said Quince, relieved. He unlocked the door and let Rian out. He followed them up the two flights of stairs to the top of the tower. When he entered the paravescea room, he stopped dead in his tracks.

The room held a foreboding, dangerous feeling. The paravescea glowed a sullen red color and out of tune pitch caused a painful pulsating buzz. It looked about the size of a basketball and near the same color. Previously, it had been a bit bigger than that.

"It's bad," said Quince. "The worst I've seen it yet. It has me worried."

"Yes," agreed Rian. He walked over to the black control orb. Even passing his hand over it alerted him to danger. He pulled his hand away.

They all linked hands: Rian, Quince and Braejeunné. Rian took a deep breath and, using his mage hand, he made contact with the paravescea. Immediately the force of it grabbed hold of his mind and he fought to stay conscious. Hungrily, the paravescea pulled energy from them at an alarming pace. As soon as Rian could, he used his mage hand to constrict the flow of energy—down to almost nothing.

Quince gave him a nervous glance. "Perhaps we should just wait," he said.

"No," said Rian. "I think it's too unstable for that. Let me take a look at it." He closed his eyes and focussed on the ball of energy in front of them. Inside the paravescea, the energy pulsed so wildly that it caused Rian's head to hurt. He didn't see any way to work with this. Soon, he opened his eyes, shaking his head, partly to free it from the high pitched sound.

"If it's too much to handle, perhaps we should shut it down," suggested Quince. "I can walk you through it."

Rian looked up at the paravescea. "But isn't it really hard to set up? I thought Arryk said that they barely managed it."

"True."

"I haven't given up," said Rian. "I just need to study it a few moments; see if there's something I can do." Again he closed his eyes and looked inside the paravescea. But that didn't seem to help. To balance it, they'd need to grow it bigger by letting it feed on their own life-energy... and surely they needed more people to do that. There had to be another way.

He studied the outside of the sphere. There, he found some small conduits leading out from the paravescea, like little pipes through which Rian could only assume energy could flow, maybe to another paravescea.

Another paravescea.

Rian had an idea. He cast his mind out into the darkness, using the paravescea as his eyes. He found it, somewhere to the northwest of them: another paravescea. And this one powered all of the Interstitium, keeping it in existence. This paravescea was large and healthy. Quince had said that you could join two paravescea towers together. Why couldn't he do that—take energy from this one and siphon it over to their own meager paravescea?

He knew it could be done, but the only question was how. So he studied the Interstitium paravescea. From it, he saw a beam of power that vanished out away from the Interstitium. No doubt that's where it drew it's power from: somewhere else—Arlunn, perhaps.