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  THE EQUILIBRIUM OF MAGIC

  THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC – BOOK TWO

  By Michael W. Layne

  SUMMARY OF THE EQUILIBRIUM OF MAGIC

  This is a Modern Epic Fantasy Adventure Novel and Book #2 in The Science of Magic Series.

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  There is a world that exists alongside our own—one of magic and of elemental dragons. Merrick used to be a stranger there—but not anymore. He’s become a living legend among the Drayoom. Even the Emperor of the Wind Family thinks he’s destined for greatness and tries to convince him to take the throne of the Earth Clan for his own.

  But Merrick has other plans. He’s determined to unite the four dragon tongues into a single language and to uncover the secrets of the mysterious element known only as divinium. Doing so would give him unthinkable power—maybe enough to return the planet to its equilibrium. But achieving his goal may cost him more than he can stand to lose.

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  **This book deals with topics such as adult relationships and death, but contains no explicit scenes or gratuitous violence. It was written for adults but is suitable for ages 12+.

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  I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul. I want to be like you, able to reach every corner of the world, cross the seas, blow away the sands that cover my treasure, and carry the voice of the woman I love.

  The Alchemist

  I had become something, as if born again. I had hung between possibilities before, between the cold truths I knew and the heart-sucking conjuring tricks of the Shaper; now that was passed: I was Grendel, Ruiner of Meadhalls, Wrecker of Kings!

  But also, as never before, I was alone.

  Grendel

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  MONA SAT SIX FLOORS beneath the main lobby with her supervisor, Bradley, in a room with plastic walls, on a plastic bench, in front of a plastic worktable. Because she didn’t wear a watch, she knew only vaguely that it was well past the official end of the Rune Corp workday. The rest of the employees were heading either to their homes, to the gym, or to any number of happy hours in the Tysons Corner area.

  None of those options were in Mona’s near future.

  A baseball-sized cube sat on the table in front of them, smaller and more advanced than the old ones the company produced even six months ago. It appeared to be cut from some type of black stone, but it shimmered as if alive. The cube had veins running through it, similar to those found in marble, but the striations pulsed and shifted as if alive while clouds of dark reds and greens floated through the cube’s center.

  In contrast to the frenetic activity of the strange stone cube, the lab itself was quiet, and Bradley and Mona only spoke when necessary. This was mainly because the security wards that Mona’s fiancé, Merrick, had built into the room made it difficult for sound to travel through the air, leaving the lab unnaturally muted. The effect was similar to that of a soundproofed recording booth, except the lab was lined with magic instead of foam insulation.

  This precaution was for Mona and Bradley’s protection. They were working in the company’s newly launched weapons division, and their jobs involved exploring and testing unknown dragon words and their effects.

  This was one of the riskiest jobs in the entire company, and even though Mona was only a human, she was familiar with magic and with the dangerous effects it could release on the world. Her recent adventures with Merrick and Rune Corp’s CEO, Cara, proved this to her. They also showed her that wars among the Drayoom families and even among the dragons themselves were not relegated to works of fantasy.

  They were happening in today’s world, and they were real.

  She realized this now, in the dead of summer, but when Mona had been exposed to magic for the first time last year, she had not immediately accepted her new reality. Merrick’s powers had just awakened, and though she had been both fascinated and afraid of what she had seen, she hadn’t really believed.

  Since that first exposure to magic, she had experienced things that would cause most humans to die of shock. She had met a sentient tree, seen stones rise up to attack people, and traveled through the core of the planet as a part of the living Earth Dragon, Terrada. She had even found some magic inside herself and had used it to save Merrick’s life.

  Now, magic was just an everyday part of her day. And as with anything that happened every day, it could get boring.

  When Mona and Merrick first joined Rune Corp, he had urged her to work above ground, where it was safer. For three months, she had spent her days cataloging and tagging new words and phrases that had already been tested and entered into the Rune Corp database.

  When the novelty of that work wore off, she had volunteered to join the weapons division. This was partly because she thought the work was fascinating but mostly because she seemed to be the only one in the company not completely convinced that they should weaponize magic any more than they already had.

  The words stored in the Rune Corp cubes were powerful enough to stand against any enemy Mona could imagine, and she wanted to make sure firsthand that the weapons program would proceed with the proper degree of caution.

  And no event deserved a more careful, measured approach than the type of experiment for which she and Bradley were preparing.

  Bradley was arrogant at times and always had a sense of self-entitlement, but there was no denying that he was also one of Rune Corp’s best programmers. For a human, he was a complete natural, and he had worked relentlessly since joining the company during its second year—enough to gain the respect of Cara, Merrick, and his co-workers.

  Not two hours ago, Bradley had greeted Mona with his usual grumpiness before they made their way together down to the lab. They were close to being ready to test one of the new words from the Fire Dragon tongue that Merrick had brought back with him from Annoon—the island that the four dragons called home and where she and Merrick had almost died.

  Almost dying had been a traumatic event for both of them, but Merrick had emerged with a stronger sense of self, and the two of them had ended up with a closer relationship because of it. Merrick had also come away from the experience with an appreciation or maybe even an obsession for the beauty of the Fire language and the power held in its words. One such word was the one they were currently studying.

  As best they could tell, the word was an action command that was something close to the verb, to splinter, but Mona never trusted a first translation and knew that dragon words were often subtle in their meanings and in their effects.

  Bradley turned to Mona and removed his earphones. In his right hand, he twirled a pencil around and around like the blade of a helicopter.

  Even though Mona was officially Bradley’s subordinate, she prided herself on knowing and following the company’s rules that Merrick and Cara had set in place.

  Foremost among the rules for the test lab was that having even a simple object, like a pencil, made from one of the elements was strictly forbidden.

  She had mentioned this to Bradley several times—that items made from natural materials weren’t allowed for a good reason.

  Every time she pointed this out, Bradley looked at her dismissively, demanding that he needed the pencil to think and that he preferred hand-written notes to those typed into a computer.

  He made it clear on several occasions that he wanted her to drop the issue, so she had eventually stopped mentioning it.

  After all, he was in charge.

  “I’ve done all the preliminary tests I can think of,” Bradley said, still
spinning his pencil. “From what Merrick’s told me, it seems like a pretty standard verb. The only thing about it that interests me is that it’s a Fire word.

  “I could list several names and phrases in the Earth language that cause solid objects to shatter. That makes sense, because most of the things you would expect to break apart belong to the Earth Dragon, anyway. But I wouldn’t expect one of the Fire Dragon’s words to shatter anything. Maybe it would cause something to burst or ignite, but shatter?”

  Bradley bit on the end of his pencil, deep in thought.

  “No way to really know without trying it out, I suppose. Maybe your fiancé knows something he isn’t telling us.”

  Mona sighed.

  “Merrick is my fiancé,” she said, forcing her words out so that Bradley could clearly hear them in the heavily muted room, “but I wish you’d stop bringing it up. I’m an employee just like you, and I have no idea why he does most things that he does at this company. I’m here to do my job and to learn from you, so...please teach.”

  Bradley grunted and looked back at the glowing cube on the table in front of him.

  “You know the routine by now, Mona. But to refresh—the cube is made of divinium, a stone that has, among other things, a living memory. In the cube, we have installed our own proprietary operating system, using a programming language composed of sounds instead of zeros and ones. This allows us to access the dragon words we’ve uploaded to the cubes and use them as we see fit.

  “Each word is unique and is taken from the creation name of a single Drayoom. This gathering of names has been going on since the days when the dragons created this mud ball we live on, so we have a vast number of names at our disposal already and are able to construct whole phrases with our software. And that’s when things get really interesting.”

  “I don’t know,” Mona said, as she swept back her dark brunette hair from her eyes. “I’m more interested in the fact that each Drayoom is given a name by one of the dragons at birth, but doesn’t remember it until they’ve lived long enough to understand their true selves and are able to control their internal magic. It makes me wonder about my own name. I know Mona doesn’t mean anything, but I wonder if I have a creation name I don’t know about.”

  Bradley smirked as he reached out and touched the cube with his outstretched index finger.

  “You know we’re only humans, Mona. By our nature, we’re nothing special. None of us are special here, except for Cara…and Merrick, of course.”

  Bradley fidgeted with his pencil again.

  “Not very fair if you ask me,” he said.

  Mona let his comment hang in the air, ignored, while she slipped her headphones on and looked up at the flat screen monitor that showed the code Bradley was compiling. She wasn’t going to take the bait and give him an excuse to go off on another rant about how magic should be open and available to everyone, just like open source computing code—or about how it wasn’t fair that the Drayoom had the physical abilities to tap into the magic of the planet, whereas humans didn’t.

  “To continue the lesson,” Bradley said, as he cleared his throat. “There are three ways we collect words to be tested and then added to our data stores. Way one. Rune Corp employees record sounds from nature with our special recording equipment. They go out on a special day pass, which allows our workers to leave the building without having their short-term memory suppressed—don’t even get me started on that.

  “Way two. We test names that Merrick and Cara bring back from interactions with other Drayoom—same way we used to do with Cara’s father, Ohman, back in the day. We obviously have a much better hit rate with these names, since we’re usually given some sense of what each word does.

  “And way three. We simply put different names together and see what the combinations do. Doesn’t give us any new primary words, but the phrases are often more useful than the words themselves. I know it’s a lot to get a hold of, but this will become second nature to you soon.”

  Mona nodded. Bradley could really go on about things, but at least she was learning something.

  “Now forget everything I just told you,” Bradley said, “because those things apply to the regular testing of words in the labs closer to the surface. Down here, we get first crack at words that have a high probability of having some seriously destructive potential—usually words that Merrick brought back with him from Annoon—the next best thing from getting them directly from the mouth of an actual dragon.”

  Mona let Bradley finish his ramblings. She had heard this very same speech from him several times before, but he enjoyed giving it, so she politely listened. Despite his arrogance and his wordiness, at least he had time to talk with her, and on those rare occasions when he wasn’t talking, he was also a pretty good listener.

  In some odd way, Bradley filled some of the communication void she had been feeling lately since Merrick had started pouring himself so intensely into his work.

  Mona had hoped that working together after their last adventure would give her and Merrick a chance to see each other more frequently. Instead, she saw him less now than ever before.

  The Merrick she used to know had a problem applying himself and being responsible.

  Today’s Merrick had gone too far in the other direction, working insanely long hours and always thinking about work, how to improve himself, and how to hone his abilities.

  And that didn’t leave much time or energy for her.

  Mona sighed as she stared at the code on the screen.

  “If I’m reading that right, it looks like you’re done with all the preliminary testing. That’s amazing, Bradley. I assume you found the same thing as always—no discernible syntax—a few similar sound strings in other words, but nothing of note? Now we document it and let Merrick know we’re ready for a full test, right?”

  Bradley nodded as he stared at the cube.

  After another few seconds, Bradley cleared his throat.

  “I think we should just go for it,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Mona said.

  “We’ve done this a dozen times already. One of us loads the new word into the cube, then I step up to the safety area, activate the plastic shield, which is man-made enough to not be affected by magic, and speak the word out loud. Then we see what happens. Easy peasy. I say we just go for it right now.”

  Mona turned to Bradley—her eyes large.

  “We can’t do that without Merrick here. If something happens, we don’t know enough to get things under control...”

  “You go ahead and get Merrick, then. I’m going to test this sucker. I know that Merrick thinks what we do down here is more dangerous than in the other labs, but I think he’s wrong. Up there, they’re dealing with brand new words that they usually don’t know anything about. Total unknowns. But we have background on this word. It means to splinter. I’m going to say it out loud, and guess what? The wood in the testing bay or the lump of hardened magma out there on the ground is going to...splinter. Or turn into splinters. Or something else splinter-like will happen. And I’ll be safe behind the plastic barricade. This is not a big deal. Trust me.”

  “Bradley, come on...” Mona said, even as he scooped up the glowing black cube and carried it with him into the testing area.

  The room was long and deep like an underground firing range, and Bradley walked approximately twenty feet away from the workbenches before stopping at a podium in the middle of a large circle painted in bright yellow on the plastic floor. Beyond him, the room was packed with all sorts of earthen material laced with sophisticated sensors to record reactions from the words. There were pieces of wood hanging from the ceiling, leaves, stones and elements of all types—sodium, mercury—but nothing radioactive. That was something that even Ohman hadn’t wanted to mess with.

  “Listen,” Bradley said, “Merrick has been getting on my case to finish weaponizing some of the new words he got from Annoon, and this word is going to be a no-brainer. I can promise yo
u that the test is going to be yawnsville. Once we pair it with some other words later on, we might get something fun out of it, but otherwise, I’m not holding my breath. There’s no reason to waste Merrick’s time with this.”

  As if to emphasize his last word, Bradley hit the button on the raised podium, causing a translucent cylinder to rise up from the floor and to thud firmly into a circular groove in the ceiling. Within seconds, Bradley was encased in an airtight, soundproof chamber. Just behind him, another thick wall of plastic rose up to physically separate the testing section of the room from the control section in which Mona still sat.

  She pressed her ear and said Merrick’s name out loud. He picked up on the second ring, and Mona started to explain the situation.

  Before she could finish, Merrick told her that he was on his way and ended the call.

  In front of her, she saw Bradley adjusting his headset and securing his enunciator collar that gave his all-too-human throat the ability to pronounce words in the dragon languages. Because Bradley was inside the safety shielding, Mona knew she wouldn’t be able to hear what he was about to say.

  She could only watch from afar and hope for the best.

  As she looked down at the bench where Bradley had been sitting, something didn’t seem right. There was something missing that she couldn’t quite bring to mind.

  She looked up and saw Bradley’s shoulders lift. He did that every time he spoke a new creation word for the first time.

  As soon as his shoulders reached their peak, the entire room erupted in front of him, and Mona was thrown to the floor by a shock wave strong enough to be felt through the shielding. There was so much dust in the air that it was hard to tell what exactly had happened—they would have to rely on the sensors and the high-speed cameras to determine that—but it looked like everything had exploded. Wood, stone, bones, minerals...everything.

  As soon as Mona stood up, she saw a large swatch of bright red inside the plastic cylinder.