The thing beyond the breach did not fit through. Elias considered that encouraging. The eye alone was nearly a metre across, golden and slit vertically. It stared from a darkness crowded with pale tree trunks and moving shadows. One of the split-necked creatures struck the barrier again. Blue light spiderwebbed through the air.
"Generator load?" Elias asked.
"Eighty-seven percent," Myrddin replied.
"Increase to ninety-five."
Harcourt grabbed his arm.
"What happens at one hundred?"
"We learn something."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only honest one."
A rifle cracked from the roof. One of the creatures dropped, one skull shattered. The second head twisted toward the body of its dead twin and began biting at the wound. Priya, standing behind a sandbag wall with a tablet, stared.
"It eats itself?"
"Preserve that one," Elias said.
"Preserve-"
"For dissection."
"Of course."
The breach pulsed.
The great eye vanished.
Something hit the far side. The oval stretched outward like rubber. Every alarm in Elias's portable sensor array shrieked.
The barrier failed.
Not dramatically.
It simply ceased to exist. The nearest creature sprinted forward. Harcourt's security detail opened fire. Its chest split under sustained rounds, violet vapour bursting outward.
A soldier inhaled it.
He immediately dropped his rifle and clawed at his throat.
"Masks!" Elias shouted.
Too late.
The man's veins darkened beneath his skin. Harcourt dragged him backward while another officer sealed a respirator over his face. Elias watched for three seconds.
"Don't touch the vapour."
Harcourt looked at him with murderous disbelief.
"Thank you."
The final small creatures died under gunfire. Then the breach expanded.
A claw emerged.
Longer than Elias was tall. Pale armour plated each finger. The lawn sank beneath its weight.
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The creature pulled.
The breach fought it.
Space distorted around the arm, edges shimmering. Elias forgot everyone else.
He stepped closer.
"Doctor!" Harcourt shouted.
"Look at the edge."
"I'm looking at the claw."
"The edge."
Symbols were appearing around the breach.
Not written symbols.
Patterns.
Geometric stress structures formed in the air wherever reality deformed.
Myrddin saw them too.
"Recording."
"Map every line."
"Already doing so."
The creature forced a second limb through. The breach widened another half metre.
Priya swore.
"If that comes through, we're dead."
Elias looked at the old experimental geometry beneath their feet. Then at the converter feeding the failed barrier.
Then at the breach.
Magic had obeyed relationships before it obeyed words.
Circles enclosed.
Lines directed.
Angles altered flow.
The barrier had attempted to create a wall.
Wrong idea.
He grabbed Priya's tablet.
"What are you doing?"
"Changing the question."
Elias drew over Model Four.
"We don't stop it. We make the breach smaller."
Priya stared at the new geometry.
"You've never tested that."
"Correct."
"Excellent. I feel much better."
The claw tore a trench through the lawn. Elias shouted to the engineers near the generator.
"Reverse the inner phase!"
One shook his head.
"It'll dump the whole charge!"
"Exactly!"
Copper stakes had been driven around the field for the barrier. Elias changed three connections, kicked one lead free and told Myrddin to recalculate.
"Proposed geometry has a nineteen percent probability of catastrophic local discharge," Myrddin said.
"And probability of effect?"
"Unknown."
"Good enough."
Harcourt arrived beside him.
"I hate that phrase."
"Stand back."
"You first."
He ignored her.
The generator roared.
Electricity entered the converter. The copper lines burned blue.
Elias felt mana gather.
Not like heat.
Like pressure against the inside of his bones. The shapes around the breach sharpened. For one impossible instant he understood them.
Not intellectually.
His mind simply recognised a relationship.
Open.
Distance.
Passage.
Connection.
He changed one final line with the heel of his boot.
"Now."
The stored energy discharged.
The world went white.
Elias woke on his back.
His ears rang.
Half the grass was burning. Priya was screaming at someone. Harcourt stood over him, blood running from her nose.
"Are you alive?"
"Probably."
"You exploded."
"Did it work?"
She pointed.
The breach was shrinking. The enormous claw remained halfway through. As the opening contracted, the limb convulsed. Something on the far side roared. The sound made the windows of Vale House tremble.
The spatial edge closed around the arm. For a moment, Elias expected the breach to stop.
Instead, reality cut.
The severed limb fell onto the lawn hard enough to shake the ground.
The breach vanished.
Silence followed.
Then Myrddin spoke through every surviving speaker.
"Arcane event terminated."
Elias sat up.
He stared at the gigantic alien limb lying twenty metres away.
Then he began laughing.
Harcourt closed her eyes.
"Of course."
"We closed it."
"You nearly killed everyone."
"But we closed it."
Priya walked over, one sleeve smouldering.
"If you say 'again', I'll kill you myself."
Elias looked at the dead limb.
"Not yet."
That was when the text appeared in his vision.
Not on a screen.
Inside his sight.
INTEGRATION ADAPTATION CONFIRMED.
ARCANE RESONANCE ESTABLISHED.
COGNITIVE INTERFACE AVAILABLE.
OBSERVED BEHAVIOURAL SPECIALISATION DETECTED.
PROVISIONAL PATH IMPRESSION:
ARCANE ANALYST.
Elias stared.
Below it, another line appeared.
ACCEPT STANDARD INTERFACE ASSISTANCE?
YES / NO.
He frowned.
"Myrddin."
"Yes?"
"Can you see text in my visual field?"
"No external projection detected."
Priya went still.
"You got it too?"
"Define it."
"A message. In my head."
Harcourt swore softly.
"Mine says Tactical Coordinator."
Elias looked at YES and NO. The universe had presented him with a magical user interface. He had an immediate objection.
"No."
The option vanished.
Priya stared.
"You declined?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"I don't install unknown software on laboratory systems."
"It's in your brain."
"Exactly."
Another line appeared.
STANDARD ASSISTANCE DECLINED.
MANUAL ARCANE DEVELOPMENT ENABLED.
WARNING: MANUAL DEVELOPMENT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NEWLY INTEGRATED NATIVES.
Elias smiled.
"Now that's interesting."