The Forbidden Mountains were behind them, but the air still felt heavy with the memory of the "Sun-Stone." Alaric Vance sat in his high tower in Oakhaven, watching the sunset. For the first time in months, he didn't feel the shadow of Vane hanging over his shoulder.
A week ago, a messenger had arrived from the Imperial border. He brought a small, lead-lined box and a final report. Vane was gone. The "Star-Fire" had been his undoing. Without the modern understanding of radiation, the rogue inventor had handled the glowing ore with his bare hands. The "manual" he had followed told him how to build a bomb, but it didn't tell him how to survive the materials. Vane had died in his sleep, a victim of the very power he tried to steal.
With Vane's death, the "Manual of Ruin" was burned by the Imperial Admiral, who feared the "cursed" knowledge that had killed his greatest scientist. The Empire of Solis retreated, terrified of the invisible sickness.
Alaric stood up and walked to the large table in the center of his room. He picked up his own blueprints, the plans for the "Deep Vault." He looked at the designs for the underground bunkers, the lead-shielded walls, and the emergency air filters. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, he threw them into the fireplace.
"No more," Alaric whispered.
"Arthur?" Elena asked, entering the room. She saw the blueprints curling into black ash. "That was our insurance policy. Why are you destroying it?"
"Because the race is over, Elena," Alaric said, turning to her with a look of clarity. "The only person who could compete with me is dead. If I build a vault for a nuclear war that will never happen, I am just scaring the people. I don't want to live in a bunker. I want to build a Renaissance."
---
Alaric realized that his greatest "Dilemma" had been fighting a mirror of himself. Now that the mirror was broken, the world of 1042 was back to being a world of knights, wooden ships, and simple iron. They were centuries behind him. He no longer needed to build weapons of mass destruction to survive. He needed to build a life worth living.
"Kaelen! Harl!" Alaric called out. "Gather the guilds. We are stopping the production of the 'Sky-Piercer' rockets. We are dismantling the 'Magnetic Traps.' We have work to do that doesn't involve killing."
The enemy was no longer a genius from the future. The enemy was Inconvenience. It was hunger, cold, and the slow pace of a world that moved by horse and cart.
---
But the world wasn't entirely peaceful. The Southern Marquis, the man who had funded Vane, was still alive. He didn't have Vane's science anymore, and he certainly didn't have Alaric's 21st-century memories. To the Marquis, Alaric was just a "Sorcerer" with strange tools.
The Marquis gathered the largest army the South had ever seen, ten thousand men in heavy steel armor, thousands of archers, and hundreds of knights on horseback. He believed that sheer numbers could overwhelm Oakhaven's "magic."
"He's marching on the Great Bridge," Kaelen reported, pointing at the map. "He thinks because he has more men, he wins. He's using 'Old World' tactics, the Iron Square formation."
Alaric smiled. It was the smile of a man who knew exactly what was coming. "Let him come. We won't fire a single cannonball at his men. We're going to show him the power of Logistics."
---
The Marquis reached the river at noon. He looked across the water and saw Alaric standing on the other side. There was no army waiting for him. There were no "Thunder-Tubes" lined up on the walls. There was only a strange, long building made of glass and wood, and a single, thin iron rail that ran across the bridge.
"Is this your defense, Architect?" the Marquis shouted, his voice echoing across the water. "A glass house and a toy track?"
"I'm giving you one chance to turn back, Marquis," Alaric called back. "The world has moved on. Your knights are obsolete."
The Marquis laughed and lowered his visor. "Charge!"
Ten thousand men began to thunder across the bridge. The sound of their boots and hooves was like an earthquake.
Alaric didn't move. He simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, copper-bound device, the first Wireless Signal Transmitter.
---
Suddenly, a high-pitched whistle screamed from behind the Oakhaven hills. It wasn't the roar of an explosion, it was the steady, rhythmic chuff-chuff-chuff of a perfectly tuned Steam Locomotive.
From the glass building emerged a beast of iron and brass. It was Alaric's latest masterpiece, the Oakhaven Express. It wasn't a weapon, it was a transport engine. But at twenty tons and moving at forty miles per hour, it was the most unstoppable force the Marquis had ever seen.
The train roared onto the bridge's iron rails, headed straight for the charging knights.
The Marquis's horses went wild with terror. They had never seen a machine that didn't tire, that didn't breathe, and that grew larger and louder every second. The "Iron Square" formation, which had worked for a thousand years, shattered in an instant. Knights tumbled from their saddles, and the infantry scrambled to get out of the way of the iron giant.
The train didn't hit them—Alaric had timed it perfectly. It screeched to a halt just inches from the Marquis's lead horse, venting a massive cloud of white steam that blinded the soldiers.
---
When the steam cleared, the Marquis was on the ground, his beautiful armor covered in mud. He looked up at the massive iron wheels of the locomotive, his mouth hanging open in total surprise.
"What... what is this?" the Marquis stammered. "How does it move without a heart?"
"It has a heart of fire and water, Marquis," Alaric said, stepping onto the front of the engine. "And it can haul enough grain in one day to feed your entire province for a month. While you were training men to die with swords, I was training men to live with Efficiency."
Alaric reached down and handed the Marquis a small, cold object. It was an Ice Cube.
The Marquis stared at it. In the middle of a hot summer day, he was holding solid water. To him, it was a miracle. To Alaric, it was just the result of a simple Ammonia-Cycle Refrigeration plant he had built behind the University.
"I can freeze the water. I can move the mountains. I can talk to the coast in a second," Alaric said. "You are fighting a war from the past. I am building a future where war is simply too expensive and too slow to be worth it."
---
The Marquis didn't order another charge. He looked at the train, he looked at the ice melting in his hand, and he looked at his terrified army. He realized that Alaric Vance wasn't a sorcerer. He was something much more frightening, he was a man who knew the Answers to the Test.
"I surrender," the Marquis whispered. "Take my lands. Take my gold. Just... teach me how to make the ice."
--
Alaric returned to Oakhaven that evening. He hadn't spilled a drop of blood. He had won the war with a train and a refrigerator.
"You're always ten steps ahead, Arthur," Kaelen said, watching the workers begin to lay more tracks toward the South. "They don't even know what to be afraid of until you've already beaten them with it."
"That's the secret, Kaelen," Alaric said, looking at the city lights. "I don't want them to be afraid. I want them to be Curious. Vane is dead, the Vault is gone, and the 'Sun-Stone' is buried. Now, we can finally stop being 'Architects of War' and start being 'Architects of Life'."
Alaric walked into the University and sat at his desk. He picked up a new piece of vellum. He didn't draw a gun or a bomb. He drew the plans for a Public Library and a Sewage Treatment Plant.
The enemy was in the dark, and Alaric had the only flashlight in the world. And for the first time since he woke up in 1042, he felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.