Three minutes after discovering magic, Elias attempted to improve it. This would later be cited as one of the more concise descriptions of his personality.
"Energy output."
"Approximately twenty-one joules," Myrddin replied.
"Pathetic."
"Elias, unknown organisms have entered the estate grounds."
"Increase atmospheric oxygen concentration within the chamber by two percent."
"That introduces a fire hazard."
Elias looked at the flame floating above his hand.
"Myrddin."
"Yes?"
"We have fire."
A pause.
"Oxygen increased."
Elias repeated the sequence. Gesture. Breath. Word. Intent.
"Burn."
The flame returned, larger.
"Twenty-seven joules."
"Again."
Thirty-one.
Again.
Twenty-nine.
Again.
Thirty-four.
"Variation remains significant."
"Good."
"Why is that good?"
"Because variance implies variables."
A heavy impact shook the facility. One of the ceiling lights flickered. Myrddin interrupted. "Security is requesting immediate instruction."
"Display surface feed."
The wall became a grid of cameras. Night had fallen strangely fast. The sky was scarred by luminous fractures. Objects burned through the atmosphere. Beyond the eastern wall stood something approximately three metres tall. Grey skin. Four arms. A narrow head. The lower right limb ended in what appeared to be a weapon fused directly into the flesh. Two other creatures moved beside it.
Six-legged. Black. No visible eyes. The estate security team had already engaged them. Rifle fire cracked through the camera microphones. One six-legged creature stumbled.
It did not stop.
"Interesting."
A security officer shouted over the radio. "Doctor Vale, we need to fall back!"
"Approved."
The four-armed creature raised its fused limb.
There was a flash.
A section of stone wall exploded. Elias leaned toward the screen.
"No visible projectile."
"Correct."
"Thermal?"
"Brief thermal spike."
"Radiation?"
"Minimal."
"Electromagnetic?"
"Significant."
"Excellent."
One of the black creatures reached the guard position. A man disappeared beneath it. Elias's expression changed.
"Seal underground access."
"Already sealed."
"Send drones."
Four quadcopters launched from concealed surface housings.
One lasted five seconds.
The grey creature destroyed it. The second moved high. The third swept behind. The fourth descended near the dead black creature.
"Get tissue."
"Retrieval mechanism deployed."
A mechanical arm descended.
The creature twitched.
"Not dead."
"Apparently not."
"Increase distance."
The drone rose. One claw struck upward and nearly caught it.
"Motor control despite substantial ballistic trauma."
"Elias."
"Yes?"
"Your sister has called eleven times."
That brought him back to the world.
"Catherine."
He checked the time.
The apocalypse had been underway for eighteen minutes. He had forgotten his family for twelve of them.
That irritated him.
"Connect."
His sister appeared. Her face filled the monitor.
"Elias!"
"Hello."
"Where the hell have you been?"
"Working."
"The sky has opened!"
"I noticed."
"There are things outside!"
"Yes."
"Things!"
"That remains an imprecise classification."
"Elias!"
A crash sounded through her connection.
He straightened.
"Where are you?"
"Manchester. At home. Lucy's here."
His niece.
Eight years old.
"Doors locked?"
"Yes."
"Windows?"
"Yes."
"Fill the bath."
"What?"
"Fill every container with water."
"Elias-"
"Do it."
Something in his voice changed her expression. He had spent most of his adult life behaving like her ridiculous older brother. She occasionally forgot the years before academia. The uniform. The countries he rarely discussed. The people he had learned to negotiate with because the alternative involved shooting.
"Turn off unnecessary lights. Keep away from windows. Do not open the door for anyone."
"What about neighbours?"
"Not if opening the building exposes Lucy."
"Elias."
"People are going to become frightened very quickly."
"They already are."
"No. They're confused."
He looked at the global feeds.
"Fear comes next."
Another crash.
Catherine looked over her shoulder.
Elias opened a file.
"Myrddin. Send her Model Four."
"Model Four has not been confirmed functional."
"Nothing has been confirmed functional."
Catherine's phone chimed.
"What have you sent me?"
"A defensive ritual."
Silence.
His sister slowly looked back at the screen.
"A what?"
"Salt. Do you have salt?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"Elias."
"Draw the geometry exactly."
"You're serious?"
"I have successfully produced fire four times."
She stared.
For once, Catherine Vale had no immediate answer.
"Magic?" she whispered.
"Apparently."
"You found magic?"
"No."
Her eyes widened.
"Elias-"
"It found us."
Within the next hour, Elias discovered three things. First, mana-if that was what they were going to call it-was increasing. Second, the increase was not uniform. Third, almost every ritual he had ever tested needed to be retested. His excitement became physically uncomfortable.
He had eighteen thousand four hundred and forty-one experiments. Each could now produce different results.
He could spend years-
A government emergency call forced itself onto the secondary display.
PRIORITY NATIONAL SECURITY CHANNEL.
Elias ignored it.
It returned.
He ignored it again.
On the third attempt, Myrddin spoke.
"They are attempting to compel connection through emergency telecommunications authority."
"How rude."
"Shall I continue blocking?"
"Yes."
"You may eventually need assistance."
"I am aware."
"Then why refuse communication?"
"Because they'll ask questions before I have answers."
The display changed.
A video from Tokyo.
A young man stood inside a faint geometric pattern drawn across a road. He extended both hands.
Fire erupted.
The creature in front of him burned.
Elias froze.
"Repeat."
Myrddin replayed it.
"Slow."
Again.
"Stop."
The geometry beneath the young man's feet was crude. Incorrect in three places.
But Elias knew it.
Experiment 2,903.
Basic Projection Framework.
His.
Eighteen years old. Published publicly. Never worked.
Until tonight.
"Search all public feeds for Vale-derived geometry."
"Processing."
Elias watched people die while he waited. Madrid. Cairo. São Paulo. Delhi. Washington. Glasgow. Humanity had become very small, very quickly. Things came through fractures.
Not merely aliens.
Animals. Monsters. Organisms that resembled nothing in Earth's evolutionary history. Some could be shot. Some could not. The American military destroyed something enormous outside Phoenix with missiles. Another creature in China appeared to survive direct tank fire. People were discovering abilities. A woman in France generated light. A teenager in South Korea shattered a door by touching it. A man in Brazil lifted a vehicle.
Some people manifested nothing.
Others changed.
Then the killing began.
Not monsters killing humans.
Humans killing humans.
A livestream from somewhere in Eastern Europe showed three men forcing neighbours out of a building because one of them had developed some form of protective field. A video from Mexico showed armed criminals dragging two glowing people into vehicles. An emergency transmission from a police department in the United States reported that a suspect had created fire from his body during an arrest. Another showed a mob surrounding someone they believed had caused the invasion.
Forty-seven minutes.
It had taken forty-seven minutes.
Elias watched silently.
"Myrddin."
"Analysis complete."
"How many?"
"Confirmed successful magical manifestations incorporating designs from the Vale Archive: two hundred and thirteen."
"Probable?"
"Three thousand, nine hundred and seven."
Elias sat down.
The scale of it struck him. He had spent decades publishing failure. Thousands of diagrams. Hypotheses. Material tables. Phonetic reconstructions. Comparative ritual structures. Theories about energy circulation.
Nothing had worked.
But the groundwork existed. A civilisation encountering magic for the first time should have started with superstition. Trial and error. Generations of experimentation. Humanity had accidentally performed much of the experimentation before the relevant force existed. They had a head start.
Not much.
Perhaps days. Weeks. Maybe months. Against whatever was coming, that might mean nothing.
Or everything.
"Bring the Vale Archive fully online."
"It is currently receiving approximately nine million requests per minute."
"Mirror it."
"Commercial systems are failing."
"Use distributed caches."
"Already initiating."
"Push the compressed archive to universities."
"Which universities?"
"All of them."
"Governments?"
"All."
"Military?"
"All."
"Public?"
"Everything that doesn't contain procedures I previously flagged as potentially catastrophic."
Myrddin paused.
"That excludes thirty-one percent."
Elias considered.
"Good enough."
Another incoming call appeared. This time the British government successfully broke through. A woman in a secure operations room stared at him.
"Dr. Vale?"
"Unfortunately."
"My name is Deputy Director Anna Harcourt. We need you to cease all publication immediately."
Elias blinked.
That had been fast.
"No."
"Doctor, this is a national security emergency."
"Correct."
"You are distributing unverified instructions for producing potentially dangerous effects."
"Correct."
"Then you understand why-"
"No."
Harcourt visibly controlled herself.
"We need your full archive transferred to government custody."
"Also no."
"People could weaponise it."
"They already are."
"Which is precisely-"
"Deputy Director, something destroyed one of my perimeter walls fifteen minutes ago using an organ that appears to function as a directed-energy weapon. There are creatures attacking cities across six continents. At least three thousand people have independently activated procedures based on my research."
"That research must be controlled."
"By whom?"
"By responsible authorities."
Elias looked at another monitor. A government building somewhere in South America was burning.
"Which ones?"
She said nothing.
"Your government? The Americans? Chinese? Russians? Indians? French? Nigerian? Japanese? Do we allow friendly states access? NATO? Commonwealth? What happens when one government develops a countermeasure another doesn't possess?"
"We can establish international coordination."
"You haven't established international coordination for carbon emissions."
"This is not the time."
"Exactly."
Elias leaned closer.
"You are thinking like the world that existed this morning."
"And you are acting recklessly."
"Yes."
That surprised her.
Elias continued.
"I don't know the correct answer. Neither do you. But restricting basic survival information to whichever governments remain functional enough to request it seems a poor starting assumption."
"Dr. Vale-"
"Goodbye."
He disconnected.
Myrddin spoke.
"She will call again."
"I know."
"She may send people."
"I know."
"Should I prepare security?"
Elias looked at the creature still prowling his estate.
"Let's survive the aliens before shooting the government."