Birthright (The Technomage Archive, Book 1) - Complete Novel

Chapter Twenty-Four

Damien could hear the constructs chasing him. Or, more accurately, he could hear the destruction they caused as they chased him. The ground shook under him, which spurred him to run faster.

The hallways passed him in a blur as he weaved through doorways and around corners. He occasionally passed a person who gave him a funny look, but he couldn't warn them about what was heading in their direction. If he did, the constructs would catch him and he couldn't have that.

So he ran. Hard. He pushed himself to his physical limits, and he was just barely able to stay ahead of the security drones.

The crashes were getting closer as he ran. Blocks of stone and pieces of metal began to shoot past him, landing in his path. As he rounded a corner, he felt the energy of a Horrith golem's bolt zip past his face and slam into the wall next to him. Dust erupted into his eyes.

He blinked them clear as he ran, and that's when he saw it. The Library. The massive doors leading to the central hub of Ennd's Academy. Damien's natural instinct was to drop to the ground and relax.

He had made it!

But he couldn't stop yet. Stopping would get him killed.

So Damien Vennar focused his fear, and the nanites in his veins energized his muscles into one last burst of speed toward the brushed metal doors.

He reached the doors just as a nicely dressed female professor entered a passcode into the control panel in the wall. She seemed oblivious to the constructs rampaging through the halls as she nonchalantly pulled the doors open with a whuff-pop. Damien leapt at her, hooked his arms around her waist, and dragged her into the Instance she had just opened. The destination didn't matter right now. Any Instance would do, would keep him safe from the golems.

Immediately upon entering the new Instance, Damien closed the door. He had to lock the security constructs out and hoped that Ennd's still wiped the last passcode from the entrance panel when the door shut. He heard no banging from the other side of the door, and nothing crashed through. He assumed he was safe for the moment.

"Get off me!" the professor said. She tugged at his hands around her waist, trying to free herself from Damien's grip.

He let go and said, "Yeah, sorry about that."

"I have a strange feeling you aren't," she replied. "Just what do you think you are doing? Who are you?"

"Damien Vennar," a voice behind them said.

Damien whirled, taking in his surroundings as he did so. High windows let bright sunlight beam into the oval room, where rounded walls housed books from nearly floor to ceiling. In the gaps where there were not books, numerous weapons sat in transparent cases. Damien recognized many of them from his youth, but some of them were not Erlonian in origin. As he turned to face the voice, his view was blocked. A gigantic holovid was being projected from the ceiling. The hologram dissipated as he faced it.

Sitting behind a crescent-shaped desk was a middle-aged man, balding, dressed in a very fine suit. He rose as if to greet Damien, but instead, he ignored him and spoke directly to the professor.

"He's an old acquaintance of mine, Nary," Headmaster Squalt said, and Damien smirked at the remark. "I thought he was deep into retirement by now. How is retirement, Damien?"

Professor Nary Thralls distanced herself from Damien and walked toward Squalt. Her demeanor had gone from anger to confused anxiety the moment that Squalt had said his name.

Damien stayed put. He put on a show of absorbing the events going on around him, but in reality, he was resting from the fight and chase that led up to his serendipitous arrival in the headmaster's office.