Into the Fire (The Elemental Wars, Book 1)

Chapter Three

Aiden. Twenty years had been enough to get used to the name. It wasn't far from the original, after all. Aiden, Aedynan—what did spelling matter, so long as people could pronounce it?

Of course, phonetic transcriptions hadn't worked for everyone. But, considering what else they'd lost...

He let out a slow breath, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back until it rested on the floor beyond the lip of the mechanic's crawler he lay on. Magic pulsed in his left hand, a couple of glowing orange runes that soon faded back into his skin as his attention dropped. He'd been under the shield engine for hours, attempting to rework its energy paths and tweak its build in order to solve the city's latest defense quandary—a job which both him and Sophia Laforest, formerly Safya Git'sial, had been working at for days and which both of them had deemed near-impossible to complete at its start. The third component of their shield engine management trifecta, Michael Seif, formerly Krolir Seif, had walked off with his engine's earth crystal, leaving the engine dark and the other two crystals, Aiden's and Sophia's, struggling to pick up the slack.

Which, with the daily bombings the city received, had put their energy output and reclamation into a negative spiral. Normally, crystals simply reclaimed power from the planet's latent magical fields—but Terran magic was less abundant than Lurian magic had been. Compared to the old world, it didn't take much to trip crystal use into a downward spin.

Hell, just allowing a crystal spirit to manifest would do it nowadays. Outside of the crystal host enclosure and the engine casing, the spirits would likely die.

A problem, for sure, but not his current problem. The Council over in Mersetzdeitz could deal with the crystal preservation inadequacies. He had more pressing concerns.

Probably, Michael would be back. The man was, in Aiden's unbiased opinion, a snobbish, self-serving asshole. This wasn't the first time he had walked off with his crystal. But they couldn't rely on probably. Not with ten million people in Lyarne counting on the shield for their safety.

He opened his eyes again. The bottom of the shield engine stared back at him, a hodgepodge of Terran wires and circuits built into the smooth,obsidian-like surface of the engine's Lurian body. Made of Maanai,the same energy-channeling crystal substance that had caused the collapse of Lurian civilization, it had, like all others that served in their technology, undergone the eriduat exposure process which halted its growth and produced a tamed, domestic form for the manufacturers to mold.

It had formed the backbone of modern Lurian life, forming the basis of everything from their ships and weapons to their computers, comms devices, vehicles,public transportation, and, in one insane showcase of wealth and crass, someone's private toilet. Without the raw form available for growth, exposure, and manufacture, they couldn't make any more,only change existing structures. It had, therefore, been officially dubbed as 'Lost Technology' in the early years of the Transition politics.

As one of the few crystal engineers left from the old world, its post-Transition remodels and maintenance had been the bane of his existence.

If they'd been on Lur, he could have simply added a few parts and reconfigured a few internal settings, and his energy crisis would have been solved.

Of course, if they'd been on Lur, there wouldn't be an energy problem in the first place. The overabundance of latent magic fields would have taken care of it.

He put down the ruler in his hand, placed his on the part of the engine closest to his head, and gave it a hard shove. The mechanic's crawler he was lying on scrambled backward, one wheel squealing in his ear before it realigned itself. When the rest of the room came into sight, and he'd counted the requisite two seconds to avoid bumping his head, he hauled himself upright and stripped off the one glove he used to do his work and made an immediate turn to consult with the engine's dashboard.