Chapter 95: The Anchor

Chapter 95: Chapter 95: The Anchor

Helena didn’t offer him tea. She took a sheet of paper from her desk drawer, turned it over to the blank side, and started drawing.

"Everyone in this country was taught that gates are natural," she said. "Weak points in space that tear open on their own. That’s wrong. I spent eleven years proving it was wrong."

She drew two circles, one at each end of the page, and joined them with a line.

"A gate is a tunnel between two places. Something has to hold each end open, the way a doorframe holds up a wall. That something is an anchor. A dense knot of mana, built on purpose, set at each end of the tunnel."

She tapped the left circle. "The Abyss side." She tapped the right one. "Our side."

"So every gate has two anchors," Donald said.

"Every gate has two anchors. Most of the time, the one on our side is buried deep. Under a mountain, at the bottom of a cave, in the boss room. Kill the boss and the anchor on our side loses its guard, and the gate closes. That’s why clearing a boss works. Nobody in the Capital ever asked why it works. They just knew it did."

Donald thought about the Abyssal Warlord’s core. The grapefruit-sized sphere of purple and gold mana. The System had called it a Dimensional Tear Anchor.

"The boss carries the anchor," he said.

Helena looked up at him over her glasses. "In the big gates, yes. The boss is the guard and the anchor at the same time. You killed a general, took his anchor home, and plugged it into your power plant."

"It powers the city’s shield."

"I know. I felt the shield go up across the whole sky a few days ago. I wondered what could feed something that size." She set down her pen. "Now I know."

"Is it dangerous?"

Helena took a breath.

"An anchor has one job. It holds a door open. When it’s cut off from its gate, it goes quiet, like a coal with no air. But you’re feeding it. Your reactor is pouring mana into it every second to run the shield. A fed anchor wakes up. And an awake anchor does the only thing it knows how to do."

"It opens a door," Donald said.

"It tries to. Right where it sits."

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Donald looked at the drawing. Two circles and a line. He pulled up his interface and checked the reactor readout.

[Celestial Core Reactor: Integrated Dimensional Core (Abyssal Warlord Anchor).]

[Output: 100%.]

[Status: Stable.]

Stable. The System had never warned him about it.

That was the part that bothered him most. The System told him everything about value, weak points and threats. It hadn’t said a word about this.

"Can I just pull it out?" he asked.

"You can. Your shield would fall back to the size of one building. And the city would be open again to the next King who comes." Helena shook her head. "There’s a better way. In my research, I worked out how to turn an anchor around. Change the way its mana flows, so that instead of holding a door open, it holds one shut. A lock instead of a doorframe. With the right method, the anchor in your basement could seal gates instead of opening them."

"Where’s the method?"

Her mouth tightened. "In a Dragonheart vault in Aldmere. With the rest of my papers. They took everything the night Thomas died. My notes, my samples, my proofs. I have most of it in my head, but not the numbers. Without the numbers, if I try to turn your anchor and get it wrong..."

"It opens the door anyway," Donald said.

"Or it opens a bigger one."

---

Donald’s [Valuation Eye] had been open the whole time. Now a new line appeared under Helena’s readout.

[Immediate Needs Identified: Safe housing. A working laboratory. Unfrozen license. Her stolen research.]

[Note: Target is under active surveillance. One watcher, across the street, second floor window.]

Donald didn’t turn his head. He let [Lesser Mana Perception] reach out instead.

Across the street, in the dark second-floor window of a closed tailor’s shop, a single mana signature sat very still. It was C-Rank, cold and patient. It had been there long enough that the cold had gone into the walls.

"Someone’s been watching you," Donald said quietly.

"Since the day I moved in," Helena said, without looking toward the window. "Three years. Dragonheart sent the first one. They change every few months. I don’t know who pays this one. With Vane gone, I thought they might stop."

"They didn’t."

"No."

Nyx came out of Donald’s collar, stretched once, and slipped out the open window into the dusk. She’d follow the watcher home. Donald would know who sent him by morning.

He turned back to Helena.

"I came here to ask you about the anchor," he said. "Now I’m going to make you an offer instead."

Helena folded her hands on the desk. "I’ve had offers. They’re usually from people who want me to stop talking."

"I want you to start. TIG has an empty floor with its own mana supply. You’ll have a lab there tonight, and guards who answer to us, not to the Capital. Aris Thorne will have your license unfrozen within a week. The Association owes us a favor after today."

"And my research?"

"We’ll go and get it."

Helena stared at him. "From a Dragonheart vault. In Aldmere."

"I’ve broken into Dragonheart before," Donald said. "It was a Tuesday."

For the first time since he’d walked in, Helena laughed. It was short and surprised.

Then she looked down at her ink-stained hands. When she spoke again her voice was lower.

"Thomas told me once that I would get us both killed with that paper. He was joking." She turned her wedding ring with her thumb. "I want it back, Investor. I want it in the light, where they can’t bury it again. If you can do that, I’ll turn your anchor around for you. I’ll teach you everything I know about gates."

"Then we have a deal."

He took out his black data-card and laid it on the desk.

"And your rent," he said. "The landlady said you’re three months behind."

Helena’s face went pink. "She told you that?"

"She told me before I’d finished saying hello."

He tapped the card against the boarding house’s payment slate on the wall by the door. It chimed green.

[Transfer: 1,800 Credits to Weller Street Boarding House.]

It was a small amount. The System didn’t treat it as small.

[First Investment Confirmed: Target Helena Cross.]

[Intent Recognized: Support of a Mature Target.]

[Calculating Returns...]

[Reward: +3 Mana.]

[Reward: Skill Acquired — Arcane Reading (C-Rank).]

[Arcane Reading: Lets the user see the structure of an active spell or enchantment: its source, its flow, and its weakest joint. Pairs with Valuation Eye.]

Donald kept his face still behind the mask.

Helena was already standing up, pulling a heavy old satchel out from under the desk, and filling it with notebooks.

"I want to see the anchor tonight," she said.

"You need rest."

"I’ve rested for three years," Helena said. "Take me to it."

---

The basement of the TIG tower hummed.

The Celestial Core Reactor stood in the center of the lowest level, a column of white metal two stories tall. Set into its base, behind a ring of glass, was the Warlord’s anchor. It pulsed purple and gold, slowly, about once every two seconds.

Helena stopped five feet from the glass. She put her palm out toward it without touching anything and closed her eyes.

Donald stood beside her and used his new skill.

[Arcane Reading]

The anchor came apart in his vision. He saw the reactor’s mana pouring into it as a thick white stream. He saw the anchor’s own mana turning inside it, purple and slow. And he saw a thin purple thread coming out of the top of it, going straight up through the ceiling, through the tower, and out of sight.

He followed it with his eyes as far as he could. It ran north.

Helena opened her eyes. Her face had gone pale.

"It isn’t just awake," she said. "It’s calling. That thread is the other end of the tunnel looking for this one."

A gray window opened in Donald’s vision, one he had never seen before.

[Dimensional Core Resonance: 61%]

[Rate: +1.2% per day.]

[At 100%: The paired anchor will open a gate at this location.]

[Estimated time: 32 days.]

Donald read it, and then read it again.

At this location. Inside the shield. Under his own tower.

Helena looked at him.

"You see it too," she said. "Don’t you."

"Thirty-two days," Donald said.

Helena took off her glasses and cleaned them on her sleeve, slowly.

"Then we’d better get my papers back in less than that," she said.