Metal Mage 4

by Eric Vall

  The mages shifted uncomfortably as I stood there and scowled at the few tracks stretched out in front of us. Then I caught sight of something, and I turned quickly to the Ignis Mage who still warmed the innards of the locomotive with a small orb of flame.

  “Mina, put out that flame,” I ordered, and she did so immediately.

  In less than a minute, the temperature in the locomotive plummeted. What felt like a cool breeze was actually a fucking frigid one, and I leapt from the mouth of the locomotive to the frozen path. The air outside seeped straight through me and made my bones ache, but I grinned at the sensation. It was oddly remniscent of my Chicago days.

  I walked between the last tracks I’d laid before Aurora stopped the train and bent low to get a good look at their placement. They looked the same as any railroad, but as I ran my fingers along the frigid steel, I felt the seam I was looking for. I rose and made my way back to the locomotive, and then called out for Aurora to join me.

  She leapt down and immediately wrapped her slender arms tightly around herself.

  “It’s f-fucking freezing,” the half-elf stuttered. “Wh-what are you doing out here?”

  I grinned even wider at her words and motioned toward the tracks beside us. “Could you light the tracks, my love?” I asked.

  Aurora stared at me as she shivered for a moment. “What?”

  “The tracks,” I chuckled. “Could you light them for me? Don’t melt them down, just … send some of that nice blue flame you use on your sword.”

  The half-elf looked at me like I was crazy, but she pulled her hand from its warm little place under her arm and sent two streams of flames toward the tracks.

  I watched as the steel ignited, but it held its shape, so I gave the Ignis Mage a kiss and hoisted her frigid body back into the warmth of the locomotive.

  “You can warm us back up, Mina,” I called as I climbed in. “And … Deli is it?”

  The young mage Bagnera had left with us waved from the corner near the engine. “Yeah.” She smiled sweetly. “I’m Deli.”

  “Great,” I replied. “I need you to come up here and light the tracks I lay out, alright?”

  Deli looked at Aurora, but the half-elf just shrugged, so the young mage hesitantly joined me near the opening of the train.

  I sent her a smile. “Thanks. Now, the train is slipping on the tracks,” I began, and the Terra Mages shifted uncomfortably at my words. “It’s where the tracks meet that we’re losing traction, though. They’re holding up fine otherwise. So I need you to light the tracks I lay before we go over them, but not so hot that they melt. Just keep them warm enough to counteract the temperature out there, and it’ll keep the steel from shrinking, ok?” I spoke slowly to be sure the mage understood, and she sent me another sweet smile when I finished.

  “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “That’s gonna work, though?”

  I chuckled and thought back to the many Chicago winters I’d spent commuting on the metro. “Oh, it’ll absolutely work,” I assured her. “Just so long as you don’t melt the tracks.”

  Haragh chuckled, and I looked to see he’d lost the worry on his face. The half-ogre had helped me forge many tracks and ties, and I knew he had spent enough time around steel to realize the logic.

  “Well,” he sighed and clapped me on the shoulder, “there ye’ have it. Light ‘em up, and let’s get to it.”

  Aurora brought the engine back to life, and the Terra Mages carefully let their magic take hold of the cliff face. When Haragh gave the signal, everything began to shift again, and the roar and rattle of the train echoed through the pass.

  I held my breath as the train rolled forward, and the wheels turned smoothly as they crossed over the flaming tracks. Haragh chuckled and shook his head, and I lifted the next set of tracks and ties.

  At least I’d gotten something from those cold ass, miserable winters in Chicago.

  After another hour of laying tracks while Mina set them on fire, I began to feel like we might actually make it through this. The wheels hadn’t squealed once since I’d accounted for the temperature, and the top of the cliff was only about six hundred feet off. Once we crested this ridge, we’d be able to take the train across whatever terrain it had for us and get the hell away from the sheer drop that gaped along our left side.

  “Nearly there, guys! You’re doing great!” I hollered over the ruckus. The four nodded, but they kept their focus forward. I glanced back to Aurora and Cayla and found pride glowing in their smiles, even though the princess had a death grip on the stack of tracks next to her.

  Yaxin joined me then and yelled close to my ear. “Nothing up there but peaks! What’s your plan?”

  I shrugged and kept stubbornly laying tracks. I’d worry about that when we got there.

  Within the hour, we reached the top ridge of the cliff, and Haragh quickly veered the path up and over. Clearly, he was as eager as I was to get the hell away from the two thousand-foot drop.

  Once the train was on level ground, I called out for the Ignis Mages to cut the engine. The Terra Mages slumped against the sides of the car the moment it came to a full stop. They’d all paled by several shades, but their eyes were bright.

  “Holy shit,” Pindor breathed, and I laughed as I realized he’d probably picked up the phrase from me.

  Jovion and Zerla also chuckled in response.

  I clapped my hand to Haragh’s massive shoulder. “You guys are fucking amazing! Did you see that drop? Look at that drop!”

  I jumped from the locomotive, but the others waved me on while they struggled to catch their breath.

  “I saw it,” Zerla said curtly.

  “We saw it,” Pindor agreed, and his eyes bulged uneasily.

  I had to laugh at the shaky group. They must have damn near pissed themselves.

  Cayla and Aurora eagerly jumped down to join me, and I led my women down the track a ways to admire the feat we’d just accomplished, with Haragh and the tradesmen close behind.

  I noticed Durigh was a little paler than he’d been at the bottom, but he stood and admired the view as he fanned himself with his grimy hat. “Well, you’re a damn fool, but you did it,” he said with a harried nod.

  Haragh chuckled. “Not bad, but I don’t envy the crew that’s gotta ride down it.”

  Neither did I. The path left only a foot on either side of the track, one flush with the rugged, obsidian laden cliff face, while the other dropped straight down to the ravine below. I peered over the edge and could see the jagged peaks of boulders which ran the length of the pass.

  I smirked. “Well, it’s not us today.” Then the scent of a warm summer breeze came over me, and I turned to see Shoshanne edging carefully toward me.

  Her brown eyes were huge, but she wasn’t nearly as pale as the others.

  “Here,” I offered and scooped her hand up into mine. “I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

  The woman looked at me for a moment, then nodded and boldly came to my side. Her warm fingers were laced in mine, and she squeezed tighter as she carefully peered over the cliff side. Her copper curls fell over her shoulders, but I could see her eyes darting all across the boulders at the bottom as a smile came to her lips.

  She looked back at me, and her eyes sparkled. “You did it.”

  Pride bloomed in my chest at the beauty’s words, and I didn’t even pause to consider my next movement. I raised our intertwined hands to my lips and kissed the smooth back of her hand. “We all did it.”

  She blushed, and a wide smile bloomed across her pretty face.

  We turned to rejoin the others, but I kept her hand in mine until there was a comfortable distance between us and the cliff edge. Then I released her and let her work on that blush while I started to survey the land around us.

  Haragh managed to coax the other Terra Mages from where they hid in the locomotive, so I joined them and gave Pindor a reassuring clap to the shoulder.

  “What do you think of Orebane?” I asked the young mage.
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  A lopsided grin came to his face, which looked oddly similar to my own. “It’s fucking cold,” he laughed.

  We all chuckled at the kid’s insight.

  “True,” I admitted as I shook my head.

  The wind that whipped through the valley near Garioch didn’t seem to reach us here, but the gain in altitude had caused a twenty-degree drop during our ascent. Yaxin had been correct about the terrain. The top of the cliff didn’t flatten, but rose and fell in angry peaks that seemed to gain in size as they stretched into the mountain range.

  The two tradesmen walked a ways ahead to take in the view. “That peak,” Durigh said as he pointed to the largest one in our immediate view. It looked to be about twenty miles away, with a mess of rocky and uneven terrain leading up to it. “You get to the other side of it, and you’re heading into Thrungrig’s territory. There’s a cave on the right of that icy patch, that’s where we camped. Could probably do the same if we make it before nightfall.”

  Haragh gave a thoughtful grunt.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He looked toward Durigh. “How big is this cave?”

  “Big,” the trader assured him soberly.

  The half-ogre turned to me, and I could tell his mind was working through a plan. “Say we use this cave as the starting point to a tunnel? That peak don’t look to have any friendly little paths for us, but we tunnel straight through it and--”

  “And save time while getting out of the elements a bit,” I finished for him. Excitement pulsed through my veins at the prospect of making the trek to the capital a quick one.

  Haragh nodded as he smirked. “Better than falling off a mountain, and easier than starting a tunnel from scratch.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s do this.”

  We spent the next twenty minutes surveying the terrain between us and the peak Durigh had pointed out. The tradesmen had enough experience in this region to know which way to wind through the rocky mess, and the Terra Mages listened closely to every word.

  I felt a static arc of magic in the air, and could tell they were forming mental maps of the work ahead. Once we all had a feel for the plan, we took a short lunch in the locomotive, while the small, blonde Ignis Mage that Bagnera gifted us provided an orb of fire to warm us.

  Deli told us how she had been one of the most recent to join the work at the mine north of Serin, and Bagnera snatched her up on her second day there. She looked about as surprised as I would expect to be suddenly sitting on a giant mountain hundreds of miles away from her home.

  Aurora had taken a liking to her, and the half-elf proudly told everyone Deli had been able to power the engine steadily for a portion of our ascent.

  This was exactly the kind of help I needed, and I silently thanked Bagnera for taking the initiative. The goofy biddy really came through for us on more than one account.

  With lunch over, we quickly took our positions and wasted no time getting rolling again. The four Terra Mages smoothed the way, and I was pleased to find my own magic wasn’t as taxed as I had expected. The weeks of laying tracks had been like hitting the gym every day. I smirked as I thought of Aurora’s constant reminders since we’d met, that I should be steadily exercising my powers. I hadn’t realized how much the railroad had been doing just that. Tracks and ties felt half as light as they did when I’d first began forming them. This probably meant the Terra and Ignis Mages had steadily built their own strength up as well.

  I grinned widely. Things just kept looking up. Literally, from this altitude.

  I figured by the time we reached the peak and got a good night’s rest in the cave, we’d be strong enough that our circuit of power would make tunneling a piece of cake. Still, I needed to figure out a way to support the tunnel as we worked through it. I’d put it off long enough, because I had been so focused on the frozen cliff and the wild ascent, but the cave-in at the mine near Serin had proven that magic could only take us so far. I needed to be practical.

  I hollered to Haragh over the drone of the engine. “You remember those supports we put in at the mine?”

  The half-ogre nodded. “Gonna need better than that.”

  He’d obviously been mulling over the same idea, so I continued on with my work and tried to think back to the tunnels I’d driven through on Earth. All of them had been fully formed with concrete walls and well-lit ceilings, which gave me no indication of their initial construction.

  I started to work on designs in my head as the day dragged on, and the Terra Mages focused on crushing and reforming the boulders ahead of us. I hoped there would be metal buried in the walls of the mountain and decided to survey the depths of the cave before we turned in for the night.

  If I could locate some iron, I might be able to construct some metal beams for structural support, but as we neared the peak, it gained in size. It was much taller than I anticipated, and the prospect of the weight made me wonder if a few beams would be enough to keep the whole damn thing from crushing us half way through.

  By the time we reached the cave, Haragh’s glower showed he was of the same mind.

  While the other’s prepared dinner for themselves, the half-ogre and I explored the cave. The mouth stood a good thirty feet above the smokestack of the locomotive and narrowed as we moved deeper. Aurora followed and sent small orbs of light ahead of us to light the way. The rock had lost much of its obsidian and appeared to be mostly granite straight through.

  I had never been inside of a mountain before, but my magic sparked on every inch of my body and felt fantastic in the dense cold of the cave. I paused and placed my hand on the wall, then let my magic reach far into the rock as I searched for the familiar tingle of metal calling out to me. Minutes passed, but nothing called back.

  “No metal?” Haragh asked.

  I sighed and dropped my hand. “No metal.”

  The three of us were in lower spirits as we made our way back along the deep cave. I racked my brain for a solution that wouldn’t burn through my entire supply of tracks and ties, while the half-ogre took stock of the structure and height of the walls around us as we went.

  We slept well despite the cold, huddled close in the locomotive. Between Cayla and Aurora, I felt like I was in a sleeping bag from my boy scout camp days, but this sleeping bag was soft, supple, and had a habit of curling its legs around me with hands tucked in my pants for warmth.

  The morning was dark and fucking frigid, but we all rose and shook off the stiffness of our muscles, and I noticed Shoshanne had snuggled against Aurora for warmth sometime during the night. The copper curls and blue braids contrasted in a catching way as the Aer Mage curled her face into the half-elf’s neck.

  I was pleased at the sight of them there, but I looked away before that pleasure could become an awkward situation. As I stood up, I heard the pair giggle when Aurora realized who was next to her and smirked to myself.

  That was a sound I could get used to.

  The Ignis Mages got us up to temperature while everyone slowly picked through their breakfast. We took our time and decided to wait for the sun to reach the northern mountains before we finally headed to the back of the cave. The sunlight poured in as it rose, but I wouldn’t say it provided much warmth.

  I decided that I could spare about sixty tracks for the tunnel construction, which meant I’d have thirty beams of support throughout the peak. Hopefully, Korion would arrive with another shipment by then, and we’d be able to make it to the capital without any delay. I began by moving a pile of tracks to a corner of the cave, and I instructed Deli and Aurora to melt two tracks at once as I held them suspended in the air. Then I combined the orbs of molten steel to shape long beams about four feet thick and fifteen feet high. The work was slow since we didn’t have a vat of water for cooling, and I was forced to carry each beam into the icy wind outside the cave. By the time we’d created six of these, Haragh and the Terra Mages had finished testing the walls for structurally weak points, and they had already begun rem
oving large chunks of rock.

  The day was half gone when they were ready to raise the height of the tunnel, and the first four beams fell in seamlessly with the makeshift ceiling. Haragh had decided to create an arching curve to the tunnel’s top, in order to keep it as close as possible to the natural formation of the cave.

  I wedged the giant beams along the outer edges while Aurora stood ready at my side. I focused my magic as I supported the beam on its end, and once I gave the signal, the half-elf aimed a searing flame at the top so I could reform it enough to lengthen the ends and bury them into the rock. It felt a lot like welding, but the metal didn’t meld with the Earth, and I hoped the cold of the rocks would quicken the cooling time.

  I had begun to re-form the fifth beam when an angry crack broke along the center of the tunnel ceiling. The Terra Mages and I sensed the weak point only seconds before it echoed through the tunnel, but my magic was focused on the beam, and the mages couldn’t react quick enough. The half-ogre yelled instructions to the others to try and catch the break before it spread, but a chunk about the size of the locomotive itself broke loose. It narrowly missed the group, who scattered and flattened themselves to the wall, and the debris crashed into the ground with a great crack. The rumbling above us sounded hollow and heavy, like nothing I’d heard before, and everyone froze where they stood.

  If the mountain had a belly, I’d say it was rumbling and ready to eat us all.

  Then the wall on my right cracked, and my stomach dropped into my heels.

  I dropped the beam that I held extended in front of me. “Fucking run!” I screamed to the terrified faces in front of me.

  I heard the screams of the others as the sound echoed throughout the cave, combined with the terrible rumble of the mountain around us. The ceiling cracked and split down its center faster than we could run, and massive chunks began to fall at our heels. I stopped in my tracks and sent my Terra magic out at full force. I hoped to slow the falling rock long enough for the others to get out.