He would need to design a new type of person who could live in such climates, of course, but that was not an issue. The cities of Terra had plenty of organic material with which he could mold his vision.
The loom gurgled and retched. The emissions gasket dilated. And the first of his new acolytes emerged, exactly to specification.
The creature was no longer bound to the rules of corporeal form. Its torso was a harvesting pouch the size of a warhorse’s chest. It had four malleable limbs, but no eyes or ears or nose. The loom had imprinted a skin of input sensitivity that was far superior to any sensory organ built by thousands of years of trial-and-error evolution.
“Omega One,” said Ward. “Welcome to existence.”
A Yellow-Spined Greezel the size of a Ghalamarian bull emerged from the underbrush at the fringes of his workspace. Its predator eyes focused on him.
“Ah. Our first field test.”
The lizard charged.
When the Greezel was twenty strides away, Omega One’s enormous maw spread wide and sucked the entire dragon into its harvesting pouch like a frog snatching a lake fly. The acolyte’s sides swelled to adjust to the specimen’s size, then compressed. It coughed up a ball of concentrated organic material the size of a cantaloupe, which Osyrus tossed into the loom.
“Excellent. I’ll have another one just like you, I think.”
Ward gave the production orders, and his mind wandered again while the loom did its work.
Beyond placing cities in the deep of the ocean and the heights of the sky, he dreamed of piercing the aether film that imprisoned them upon this hunk of rock. He would leave this planet and travel across the vastness beyond, where thousands upon thousands of other worlds waited for him. He would visit them all, and give creation to each of them. Write a destiny and future upon the multitudes of lifeless minerals.
The loom had just finished printing Omega Two when Osyrus felt the familiar magnetic hum of Ashlyn Malgrave’s approach. She was moving too fast for the loom’s siphon to catch her, but that was not a real concern.
She crunched to the ground behind him, surrounded by her archaic shroud of lodestones.
“What do you want?” he asked over his shoulder. “I’m very busy.”
“I won’t let you do this.”
“This little game of ours is no longer particularly interesting to me. Leave me to my work, or be re-formed by the loom.”
Ashlyn’s bands churned into motion. The lodestones orbiting her body blurred with speed.
Osyrus shrugged. “Very well. Another redundant test, then.”
He ordered Omega Two forward alone, figuring that he could at least confirm its configuration and reactions were up to specification so this interaction wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Omega Two charged, its maw opening and preparing for suction. However, Ashlyn released three lodestones from her system at a surprisingly high velocity. One careened into each of the Omega’s mouths, and one careened into Ward’s stomach.
“Hm.”
Ward focused on the foreign object in his belly. Wrapped it in fiber from the loom. That was good, because Ashlyn overloaded the lodestones a moment later, causing a relatively powerful reaction. Ward was blown in half, but the loom’s fiber prevented any damage to his vital organs. The Omegas were not as quick to protect themselves from the foreign object—a minor design flaw he would rectify once Ashlyn was dead—and were each reduced to shreds of loom fiber that scattered across the broken tree stumps lining the area.
“Does your test still feel redundant?” Ashlyn asked, moving toward him.
Osyrus turned off the loom’s siphon to conserve energy, then issued a new set of production orders. “Yes, Ashlyn. I would still characterize that display as a waste of my time. But not a complete loss. The platinum that I drilled into your arm is quite rare. I will put it to good use.”
The loom sprayed a swarm of mosquitos into the air around Ashlyn. The insects latched onto her lodestones and exploded, expelling a mucus that reprinted her lodestones with a corrupted orientation system on contact. The stones fell to earth with a series of thuds.
Ward then ordered the loom fibers on each half of his body to tug back together. His legs fused to his spine with a satisfying pop, similar to cracking one’s knuckles. His nervous system self-healed, and he stood up. He ordered the Omegas to pull themselves together, too, but given their fragmented condition, that would take several minutes.
Ward ordered the loom material in his stomach to form into four tentacles and latch onto Ashlyn’s wrists and ankles, which they did with perfect accuracy.
“Good-bye, Ashlyn Malgrave. I promise to turn you into something more useful.”
Before he could reel her in to the machine and out of existence, that irritating Gray-Winged Nomad swooped through the clearing and severed the tentacles with her tail. The lizard departed again before he could order the loom to mulch her, but Silas Bershad leapt from her back in a rather improbable feat of athleticism and attacked him with a spear that Ward was pretty sure he had designed on Ghost Moth Island.
Ashlyn Malgrave had been powerful enough to cause a mild inconvenience, but Bershad’s attacks were simply useless. Ward’s loom-skin shifted across his body in automatic waves, nullifying each prick from his spear regardless of how rapidly they might have been arriving. Bershad growled and yelled and grunted, but it made no difference.
Seeds. Such wild creatures.
Ward allowed the attacks to carry on for five seconds while he moved a wire of loom fiber to the tip of his right index finger. He pointed the finger and stabbed Bershad through the heart, which paused his futile onslaught. Ward then twisted his finger in a tiny arc and sliced off both his legs.
They began to regrow immediately, of course. Ward slipped a tendril of loom fiber into Bershad’s body, immediately recognizing the steroid of his own design flowing through his bloodstream.
“I see that you have commandeered Commander Vergun’s tonic. While its impact on your body is certainly noteworthy, the time for my experimentation with Seeds has come to end. For once, I think it best I revert you back to your natural state.”
Ward siphoned the steroid out of Bershad’s bloodstream. His lost limbs stopped regrowing. Instead, bundles of roots began to spread from his leg stumps. The transformation was upon him.
“Normally, I would allow you to complete your cycle, but I am using this area for my own purposes, so I’m afraid you’ll need to be mulched. Apologies, Lord Bershad. You were a very amusing and interesting specimen, but all things must come to an end.”
Ward attached his tentacles to Ashlyn’s and Bershad’s ankles. Pulled them closer together.
Ashlyn’s bands whirred to life. She reached out to Bershad. Osyrus wasn’t sure what she was planning to do, given there were no more lodestones for her to play with. Then, two hunks of metal that appeared to be crossbow bolts were pulled from Silas Bershad’s back. Ward dropped the fibers and prepared countermeasures, but Ashlyn zipped the metal chunks through Ward’s chest before he could properly defend himself.
The damage to his heart was swift and catastrophic, but also repairable.
Ward sent half of his loom’s skin inward to repair the mortal wound and redirected the rest into a coil that would kill Ashlyn Malgrave.
That left him unprotected when something landed on his back and injected a score of copper barbs into his skin.
“Caellan sends her regards,” whispered Vera.
Poison flooded his veins.
Ward spun the fibers into more countermeasures—ordering them to identify the substance and process an antidote. But the system balked and choked. The loom returned a salvo of errors in the identification stages, then turned against his flesh and organs.
His half-repaired heart sagged apart. The toxin roared through his neural pathways, toward his brain.
In his final moments, Osyrus Ward thought once more of the cities he could have built. Buried in the ocean deep. Hung beneat
h the glistening clouds. And nestled among distant stars.
116
BERSHAD
The Heart of the Soul Sea
Vera shoved Osyrus Ward to his knees. Retracted the copper barbs of her cloak. Osyrus vomited an astounding amount of black liquid onto the ground in front of him. Blisters rose on his neck and arms and cheeks. The golden patches of his skin turned black, then a cold gray—the color of dead bamboo.
Osyrus released a guttural, pained moan. Tried to mumble something around blackened teeth, but they fell out of his rotting gums as he spoke, muffling whatever his final words would have been.
His head slapped into the puddle of his own vomit, and that was where Osyrus Ward died.
Bershad looked at himself. There were vines and roots radiating out of his leg stumps and stretching into the ground.
“Well, that’s not good.”
Sensation exploded from the places where the roots worked into the ground. He could feel the soil like it was his own body, filled with worms and burrowing animals. The Nomad slammed back down into the earth and released a bone-rattling howl. He felt her pulse shift to match his own. Felt the change finally coming.
And then he felt Ashlyn’s familiar hand on his cheek and neck.
“You have to hold on, Silas. Hold on for me.”
“Think we’re past that point, Ashe.” He winced at the feeling of his roots spreading deeper into the unfamiliar ground. “Just wish it wasn’t happening here. I wanted to die in Deepdale.”
Tears were streaming down Ashlyn’s face. She looked up at the sky, where the last skyship in Terra hovered. Then she looked at the Nomad.
“We can make that happen, Silas. But you need to hold on. Can you do that?”
He nodded, but he didn’t think he could. Not really. He was so fucking tired.
“I love you, Ashe,” he muttered.
117
ASHLYN
The Heart of the Soul Sea
“Always have,” Silas finished, then lost consciousness in her arms.
“Jolan!” Ashlyn called to the skyship, which Kira was guiding to the ground in fits and starts. “Jolan, I need you down here now!”
Once the skyship was a hundred strides off the ground, a rope dropped. Jolan skimmed down it and ran over. Vera paced around aimlessly, face pale and eyes glassy. When Jolan reached them, he stopped. Stared.
“Do something!” Ashlyn screamed, chest brimming with panic.
Jolan’s eyes filled with tears. “There’s nothing we can do, Ashlyn.”
Ashlyn shook her head. “No. No, I won’t accept that.”
She looked between Silas and the skyship, then to the loom that Osyrus had created. There was a small shred of golden fabric on the ground near her foot. A remnant that had come off Osyrus Ward before he’d died.
Without thinking, Ashlyn pushed it between the seam of two bands. Let it sink into her.
She could feel a connection between the scrap and the loom, and inside the loom she felt a power that existed beyond lodestone loops or dragon threads. A churning of possibilities that seemed both fundamental and endless. It scared Ashlyn to her core, but it also let her see the parts of Silas’s flesh and blood and bone that were transforming. It showed her how to stop it.
All she needed to do was make the smallest of changes.
One change.
Nothing more.
ONE MONTH LATER
118
JOLAN
The Heart of the Sea
Jolan stood with Ashlyn on the deck of the Blue Sparrow. The bands on her arm rotated and whirred as she moved the final piece of the sarcophagus into place, sealing Osyrus Ward’s loom under seven layers of steel and bone and concrete.
They’d tried to destroy it, first. But whether they used Jolan’s explosives or more lodestones from Ashlyn, the loom only grew larger. More powerful.
So, they decided to cover it up. Hide it from the world.
Jolan and Ashlyn had designed the structure together. Mapped out the places they would need to source the materials. And then, over the last month, Jolan had stayed with Ashlyn in the Heart of the Sea while she built it.
When the final cap of the dome was in place, Ashlyn’s bands went still. They both gazed out at the massive structure for a while.
Eventually, Ashlyn looked down at her arm. Touched a few of the bands with her good hand.
“It’s time,” she said.
A week ago, Ashlyn had told him what she planned to do when the dome was complete, and he’d been dreading it ever since. “You told me once that a day would come when we could use your arm for something good. Do you remember that?”
“I do. But I was wrong. This is too much power for any one person to wield.”
“Are you sure that you don’t want to wait a little longer?” Jolan asked. “There might be an issue with the foundation as it settles. Or support struts that require a patch.”
“The foundation is strong, Jolan. The support struts are perfect. There is just one last thing required to clean up this mess. Then it’s done.”
Ashlyn had used her arm to move the massive slabs of steel and iron into place with lodestone anchors. But Jolan also knew that Ashlyn was using something else. A part of the loom itself that allowed her to morph and change the raw materials they brought by skyship. It was the same power that Osyrus had held before they killed him.
That was why she wanted to get rid of it.
“I have everything ready in the cabin,” Jolan said.
Jolan used a circular saw that was powered by dragon oil to cut off Ashlyn’s bands. He stacked them in a pile, and stopped after each segment to apply a moss poultice to the flesh beneath, which barely looked like it belonged to a human. Her muscle and bone were twisted together with the dragon thread in a tight braid.
When all her bands were removed, Jolan put them into a steel locker. He moved to disassemble the circular saw.
“You’re not finished with that yet.”
“What do you mean?”
She held up her arm. “This isn’t a difficult choice. The loom wasn’t just in that machine we covered up, or the bands you just removed. It’s in me. And it will never stop spreading through my body if we don’t do this.” She gave him a gentle smile. “There is also no way that I’m going to let Cormo amputate my arm. He’d probably saw off the wrong one.”
Jolan knew she was trying to cheer him up. It didn’t work.
“There has to be another way.”
She paused. “I’ve put an unfair burden on you, Jolan. You, more than anyone else. But I need you to help me with this. Please.”
Jolan gave her a long look. Then he moved to his bag. “I’ll prepare the numbing tonic.”
* * *
When it was done, Ashlyn put her own severed arm into the same locker as the bands and secured it with a Balarian seal. Then she walked to the stern of the ship and threw it into the sea.
She waited another full minute before throwing the seal to the lock into the ocean.
“What will you do now?” Jolan asked her.
“The loom and my arm needed to be destroyed, but there are a thousand applications for the lodestone systems that will improve the world. Windmills. Plumbing. Skyships that are built for travel and trade, instead of war.”
“Sounds like the job of a royal engineer.”
“Empress Kira needs one.”
Jolan nodded. But he couldn’t help thinking about how easily he had retrofitted the lodestone technology into bombs. As long as the technology existed, there would be people who would use it for violence and destruction.
Floodhaven came into view ahead of them.
“There’s a place for you in the court,” Ashlyn said. “At this point, I can’t imagine working without you.”
“I want to, Ashe. More than anything. But I left something undone a long time ago. Before I move forward, I need to go back and finish it.”
“I understand.” Ashlyn put her remaining arm on hi
s shoulder. “You have a brilliant mind, Jolan. And a good heart. That’s a rare combination. Whatever you do with the rest of your life, I know in my bones that it will make the realm of Terra a better place.”
He nodded.
And in that moment, he believed her.
119
VERA
Floodhaven
On the day that Ashlyn and Jolan returned from the Heart of the Soul Sea, Vera burned her widow’s armor in the rubble of Castle Malgrave. Kira helped her make the fire.
As the armor that Vera had spent most of her adult life wearing turned to ash, Kira took Vera’s hand and squeezed it.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
Vera thought about that. There were so many things that she had done in that armor that she wasn’t proud of. Wretched things that she could never take back.
“I once told someone that you can have black deeds in your past, and keep moving forward. It’s time for me to move forward. With you, Ki.”
Vera kissed her. Got lost for a moment in the softness of her lips.
They broke apart as the Blue Sparrow began its landing sequence.
Now that the skyship was back, it was time for Kira to start rebuilding the ruined relationships with the different countries of Terra. They were planning to leave first thing tomorrow, once the Sparrow was resupplied. First to Pargos. Then Dunfar, Ghalamar, Balaria, and Lysteria. All of the countries that Osyrus Ward had conquered.
“Ashlyn will need me for a while,” said Kira. “She won’t admit it, but she will.”
Vera nodded. “I need to track down the others, anyway. Make sure that Felgor hasn’t stolen anything too valuable.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then.” Kira kissed her again, longer this time, then whispered in her ear. “I want one more night to ourselves in a proper bed.”
* * *
Vera walked through the ruins of Floodhaven. All around her, people were still rebuilding and repairing the destruction that had been caused during the final battle for the city. Some people had refused to use any of Ward’s materials to repair their homes and shops, others had embraced it. The result was an amalgamation of rock, slate, metal, and dragon bone.
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