The Omen Machine

Satisfied that it was compacted the way he wanted it, Zedd finally flung the glowing sphere of liquid fire toward the square metal box sitting in the center of the room. The tempestuous inferno cast flickering light across the floor, walls, and ceiling as it flew, all the while hissing with deadly menace.

Richard felt the powerful concussion in his chest as the sphere of liquid flame exploded against the unyielding machine. The liquid wizard’s fire, one of the most feared substances in existence because it burned so violently, engulfed the machine, crackling as it poured down the sides, burning with white-hot intensity.

Wizard’s fire unleashed in a confined space was extraordinarily intense and profoundly dangerous. Even though Richard, Nicci, and Cara turned their faces away from the inferno, they still had to put hands up to shield themselves against the brutal heat and light from the concentrated conflagration. The burning roar was thunderous.

It felt as if the entire world were being consumed.

CHAPTER 69

When the violence of the wizard’s fire at last subsided, Richard was finally able to open his eyes and take his hand away from his face. As the last glowing clots of conjured conflagration dripped onto the floor and extinguished with a steamy hiss, and the smoke cleared away, Richard expected to see Regula reduced to a puddle of molten metal.

It was not.

He saw that the machine was still sitting in the center of the room, looking exactly the same as the first time he had seen it. It looked untouched.

He was certain that the outer walls of the machine would be scorching hot, but as he approached it he felt no residual heat radiating from the metal. Richard cautiously reached out, carefully testing, then tentatively touching the metal surface. It was cool to the touch.

Richard had seen some of the terrible damage done by wizard’s fire, yet it had done nothing to the machine. It hadn’t even scoured the patina of corrosion off the surface. The symbols on the sides, the same symbols that appeared in the book Regula, were still in perfect condition.

If he hadn’t seen the wizard’s fire engulfing it with his own eyes, he might not have believed that anything had happened, much less that it had been the target of some of the most powerful conjured magic in existence.

Nicci, standing beside Richard, tested the surface with her fingers.

“Well, Additive Magic obviously didn’t work. Maybe it’s time to try something a little more destructive.” She motioned for the rest of them to move back.

Richard shepherded Zedd and Cara back into the protection of the stairwell. He knew what Nicci was going to do. He could see the aura of power crackling around the sorceress. It gave her a kind of glowing, otherworldly appearance, almost as if she were only there in spirit.

The sorceress lifted her hands out toward the machine. The sizzling aura around her flickered with intensity. He knew that others couldn’t see it, but he had always sensed the field of power around certain people. No aura he had ever seen was as strong as Nicci’s.

Black lightning— Subtractive Magic— ignited in the room with a thunderous thump. Dust lifted from the floor. The proximity spheres instantly went dark.

The black lightning twisted together with a blindingly bright sudden discharge of Additive Magic. The rope of Subtractive Magic was so dark that it was like looking through a crack in the world of life into the underworld itself.

In a way, it was.

The inky black lightning connected with the machine. The end played over the surface, flickering up and down it. The rest of it, between Nicci and the machine, whipped wildly about the room as it crackled and popped where the two flows of power, impossible darkness and blinding light, touched. The air of the room smelled like burning sulfur and vibrated with the power of the conflicting forces fighting each other. Both dark and light twisted with savage effort to dominate the other, to occupy the same place at the same time. The machine was bathed in the hot glow of the Additive Magic, only to then vanish into the void of Subtractive Magic.

It was a terrifying display of incompatible powers focused with destructive intent on the omen machine.

As abruptly as it started, it stopped.

The sudden quiet made Richard’s ears throb. The proximity spheres brightened, but slowly.

“It isn’t working,” Nicci said as her hands dropped to her sides. The aura around her calmed and then extinguished.

Richard stepped out of the stairwell. “How could it not work? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve never felt anything like it before.” Nicci ran her hand over the top of the machine as if trying to perceive its inner secrets through that light caress. “I could sense that it simply wasn’t connecting.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t connecting?”