Amarra was deep underground in the library of Aurum Logos. Growing up, her mother’s house had been full of books; more books than most people would ever see in their lifetime. That is, unless they came to Aurum Logos. The library was one of the reasons she had come to Aurum Logos. Recent works written on the finest vellum were found alongside the ancient paper texts that had been recovered and meticulously preserved in the years since the Chaos.

However, even in the five years since Amarra had first come to the institute, she had noticed a pall fall over it. It had begun to fade. The people who walked its marble halls were fewer. And those that she did see, were more reserved. The Age of Reason where magic and knowledge had flourished was giving way to what was being called the Storied Age. It saddened Amarra to see the world she loved to much recede into history, but her library was still as grand as it must have been 200 years earlier. The main level was the newest and largest, with a soaring stained glass domed ceiling overhead. Rows upon rows of curved bookcases radiated out from the centre of the room, which was filled with mahogany study desks. In its prime, hundreds of Cuprics would have been studying at these desks, but now only a few eager Argents were present. The Cupric intake had remained low, but steadily since King Matayus had ascended to the throne 10 years earlier, but the recent appointment of Crandlin as an advisor reduced that number to almost nothing. Amarra sighed. The politics, the intrigue, and, she dreaded, a coming outright war, were things that could quickly overwhelm her. Back to the task at hand.

She was in the lowest level of the library. It contained books that were thousands of years old. The level itself, called Euston, was from the mid-twentieth century with several smaller room of books along with the with one she was in with its hundreds of aisles branching of the grand atrium. She was seated at one of the dozens of tables that filled the atrium. The only light now came from the three orbs of light that she had hovering 10 feet in the air. Over the centuries, Euston had been lost and sealed. Found and dusted off before being lost again. The glass dome had been covered with dirt, rubble, bricks, another library, and then the institute. Amarra felt a passing worry that the Storied Age would not be kind to poor Euston, but pushed it aside. That was a large and complex problem. Her task was related, but much more manageable. If you considered hunting for a needle in a haystack manageable, she smiled wryly to herself. Especially when that needle was a single name and your haystack was 1000 years of history and 200 million books and documents. She sighed, even though her task was next to impossible, it was one of the few non-violent avenues the Corvus had left to pursue. The people and politics that pushed the world forward into the Storied Age had brought suspicion, fear, and violence into her world.

But to find the name. It all started with Fynn. Infynnism was the dominant religion on the continent of Linnaea and Fynn was their saviour. If you stripped back the religion, power, and mystery, Fynn was simply the first of the recorded linked to appear almost 1000 years ago. He travelled widely and counselled the Chaos survivors to keep hope alive in a world that had been torn apart, but he also performed what people of his day called miracles. Looking at his acts through the lens of hindsight, Amarra knew these miracles occurred because he was linked. The bringers of the Storied Age had begun to burn the Book of Fynn. Not because they were non-believers -in fact, they believed too strongly. They were destroying the books because they believed it never should have been written. In the time of Fynn, the humanity was recovering from the Chaos. Writing was a luxury and the oral tradition of story-telling was used for decades while society rebuilt itself. It wasn’t until 300 years after Fynn lived that someone decided to write his stories down. If Fynn did not have a need for the written word, why did the people of Linnaea? This was a common theme of the Storied Age rhetoric. If people in the time of Fynn lived in a world without magic, why do we depend on it so much?

Magic was already dying, Amarra and the Corvus knew that well. The Storied Age was just pushing it out the door. The linked were being persecuted. The violence so far had been isolated, but the followers of the Storied Age movement were growing bold. First there had been suspicion, then fear, and only recently had things begun to boil over. Aurum Logos was an institute that championed excellence in everything, including magic. The masses had conveniently forgotten that most of those trained at Aurum Logos nowadays were not linked and anyone who had attended the institute was viewed with suspicion.

The Corvus were trying to give magic a chance. Gone were the day that a child would spontaneously develop a link. Even the inheritance of a link was scarce. Whatever was the source of the links had disappeared. And Amarra felt that if she could find out how Fynn did it, the world might slowly start to grow in magic again. It was not likely to have a difference in Amarra’s life, but she hoped that her decedents would have peace. For Amarra was linked. And so was Phidias. Strongly linked. There was little doubt in Amarra’s mind that any children they had together would be linked. So she searched for Fynn. Not the God or the saviour, just the man.

After spending a year in the Trials – the books collected in the earlier years of Aurum Logos – Amarra had finally had some luck. She considered it a minor miracle. Fynn’s own journals. Something that would not have existed so long if anyone knew about them. For they were just what Amarra was looking for – they proved he was a man underneath the mantle of a God. It was difficult to verify their authenticity. Both Phidias and Venar agreed that now was not the time to reveal them to the world, or even to others at Aurum Logos. So Amarra designated herself as the one to verify their contents. She was had been a member of the Athene branch of the institute before Aurum Logos had become almost deserted. It was mainly Corvus who walked it halls now, a branch that had only been rumour and legend for most of the institute’s history. The branch that was made up of scholars, warriors, and artist – people from all walks of life who had the skills necessary to shape the world. Often these skills included a link, but assassins and actors, lawyers and liars filled their ranks. And they had failed their primary mission. The Corvus existed to control the masses. To influence the leading class. To protect Aurum Logos, and by extension magic, from within the system. Now they existed to combat the Storied Age, however futile their quest. Although Amarra did not agree with all of their tactics, she was helping in her own way, using the skills that she had. The library of Aurum Logos contained a long history of people persecuted for their differences.

The journals had been fascinating. It was obvious to her that whoever had written the Book of Fynn had used the journals as a primary source, or the journals had been written using the Book. Amarra’s gut told her that the journals were real. They were too imperfect, too flawed to have been writing by one who worshiped Fynn. Its pages were riddled with self doubt, regret, and hopelessness. There was a three-year gap in the journals that captured Amarra’s attention and once she noticed the dates, she could not help but notice the difference in tone. After the three years, he still expressed doubt, but for the things he had done in the past, not for his future actions. He felt hopelessness for the people, but there was a new confidence in his own abilities. Amarra was almost certain this three-cycle period played a pivotal role in Fynn’s life, but also the path of humanity. It was this Fynn that would gather the scatterings of people from all over the continent and give them a purpose. Together, they built the foundations of what would later be called Sen Fynniskoh in the High Age and was known know as Fynnston, the capital of Linnaea. He taught them how to grow crops and care for animals. How to make bread and dye cloth. Perhaps Fynn had buried himself in a library for the three cycles to learn all of these things, much like Amarra was doing now, but she believed there was more.

More and perhaps paradigm-altering events, but it still was not the event Amarra needed. Fynn had been known to the world since he was fifteen. According to the book, it was after his mother’s death that he began his wandering of the continent. It was hard to pinpoint the exact date of his birth, but she knew it was near the end of the chaos, or just after it ended. It was generally accepted that linked arose after the Chaos because of a shift in the Earth’s axis, which lead to it slowly slipping back over the centuries and reducing links to nothing. Amarra did not accept that hypothesis. She had studied solar and star charts extensively in her first year at Aurum Logos. They had found some in Euston from the 20th century that were beyond anything they were capable of today. But from what they could map, other that a few missing stars, there could not have been a shift in the axis. It had something to do with the Chaos, of that Amarra was sure, so she was in Euston doing reading all the material on the mid to late 21st century she could find. It was like she had entered another world. Flying vehicles, talking machines, instant lighting – all things that today’s population would see as miracles, and then probably try to destroy. Amarra sighed. The now ancient Information Age had changed so rapidly, it was hard to pinpoint if it was something humans did to cause the Chaos, or if it was the result of a solar flare or a meteor strike.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. She needed a nudge in the right direction. Each new piece of information she learned about the 21st century cause her to have a eureka moment. For a time, she was convinced that nuclear weapons had caused both a mutation in DNA (she had spent an entire day learning about what made up human cells, after she learned that cells existed) and a nuclear winter. It was still plausible, but did not help her cause, since building and using such a weapon was not something she wanted to suggest to the increasingly violent Corvus. Even though building such a weapon was likely beyond their means, she still chose caution. There was lots of weaponry described at the Euston level that she purposely re-shelved incorrectly, just in case someone realized just what kind of secrets Euston held. A few decades ago someone in Corvus, rumors said it was Venar, rediscovered gunpowder. It was a discovery that had deeply divided Aurum Logos – those who felt they should share the knowledge with the world, those who wanted to sell the knowledge, and those who wanted to keep it a secret. It remained secret for a time, but eventually the information was leaked and now muskets were commonplace.

She was shaken from her musings with the sound of the trap door in the roof opening. There was a flood of green light as an orb floated in and a man dropped onto the makeshift wooden staircase. He waved and his thoughts rushed into her head. She watched him leap over the railing of the staircase and he though, He couldn’t wait another moment to be with her. She watched his controlled fall to the ground as he amended that thought to, He could wait a few more second instead of going splat on the floor. By the time he reached the ground she ran into his arms, so both their bodies and minds were one.

Amarra and Phidias both had what was once called True Links – linked to everything. Their ability was not called a True Link anymore simply because it was not known to exisit. Even during the High Age, where almost everyone was linked to something, true links were rare. Linked to everything and to everyone. It gave them the coveted ability of telepathy. Very few people knew of their ability, even amongst the Corvus. In fact, only Phidias’s Ingot Venar and Amarra’s mother knew the extent of their abilities. When they had first met their minds had merged, quite by accident as they each went to probe the other, and they had been together ever since. Not always physically, as Phidias’s job with the Corvus was quite different from Amarra’s. He had just returned from the North, but each night she could find him and link with him and he would visit her in her mind. Now that he had returned to Aurum Logos, they did not have too much to report to each other, as they had just spoken the night before, but she held him close feeling his warmth and his presence. His breathe. His heartbeat. Her head filled with his passion.

It wasn’t long before he picked her up and whisked her deeper into the library.

Afterwards, she was distracted. For a time, her worries had been vanquished, but now the weight of the world had settled back onto her shoulders. And he knew, “My love, we have been parted for so long. I returned to you, victorious in my epic quest. We made beautiful, unrestrained love of such magnitude that it would make even Fynn weep. And yet, I find another man on your mind?” He pulled away from her, adopting a look of suffering and a posture of defeat. His thoughts were playful and a bit smug, with his knowing.

She stuck out her tongue at him, “He is not a man, but a God. How can you, a mere mortal hope to compete with that.” She smiled at his apparent willingness to try and compete. Then she sighed and shrugged her shoulders, “Fynn. The Chaos. I just can’t figure it out. You and Venar are actually doing things. Striking blows against the Storied Age. I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels.”

Phidias first looked puzzled at her unusual turn of phrase and then looked thoughtful. Amarra frowned as those thoughts, both hers and his own, flitted around in his head. He arched an eyebrow when he saw where she had hidden the weaponry books, but nodded in agreement. The Corvus had their own weapons – he was one of them.

When he finally spoke Amarra was surprised at what he said, even though she thought she had been following his logic and reasoning. It was the first sentences of the Book of Fynn, “Born of Everything and of Nothing. Chaos and Calm. Power in the waves. Power in the storms.”

“The waves. Power. Phi.” Amarra was stunned. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t made the connection. She had read about coal power, gas power, solar power, and the crowning glory of an age – phi power. Free, accessible electricity for all. It was in the air – no wires, no circuitry – just power. The Chaos started shortly after and much was lost. Including the fact that there was a link between phi power and the Chaos.

She raced back to her working table and scanned the neatly stacked books with the titles all upright and facing her seat. She carefully extracted a book she had skimmed through, but had not found to be much help initially. “Changing the World by Edward Marigan” no longer seemed like an optimistic, yet farfetched title to Amarra. It was much grimmer now that she read it with the bias that this man contributed to, if not outright caused, the Chaos. Opening the cover, she saw that it was published in 2073, within the window of when the Chaos had likely started. She barely felt Phidias kiss her neck and murmur that he would see her that evening, before chuckling mostly to himself that he’d see her perhaps when she had saved the world. But she had already started reading. It was a memoir. An autobiography written by an unassuming scientist who had achieved all of his wildest dreams and then some. He had everything. And left the world with almost nothing.

Next Chapter: Test - 3138