by Rosie Scott
“To be fair, Uriel,” I finally said, “I created thousands of words during that time, and many were simply different renditions of the same idea. Then I had to test them as part of various spells to see if they could even be used. Only a select few actually worked.”
“What is the spell?” Uriel asked.
“I promise I will give it to you the moment we cross the border.”
“Ah.” Uriel huffed with realization. “Withholding the goods, are we?”
Even though the Sentinel seemed to understand, I explained, “You wouldn't be able to use it to its fullest extent anyway. You don't know the element of death.”
“It is still a life spell,” Uriel pointed out.
“I know. And you could use it to a lesser extent. But to use it to give a high, you'd have to have the right amount of energy in your system first.”
“So if you gave me a high, I could then give it to someone else,” Uriel surmised.
“Uh-oh,” Cyrus chuckled softly. “You're going down the rabbit hole with this one, friend.”
Uriel widened his light eyes. “It's fascinating, Cyrus. This changes so much about what we understand about magic. Necromancy is as feared as it is because of the power these highs afford the body. Kai's spell can give that power to anyone.”
“Which means that the powers of necromancy can now spread in more ways than one,” Cyrus commented. “Kai will be even more feared by those who don't wish for necromancers to be in power. Kirek and Tilda in particular should never hear of this.”
Uriel nodded. “I agree. Though I wonder if Tilda wouldn't just ask for the spell rather than fear it. She doesn't let necromancers into power, but if that power could be hers?” The healer shrugged and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Don't even joke about such a thing,” Cyrus groaned as his friend laughed.
*
The dwarven workshop was stocked with parts of various machinations on tall, wooden shelves. The large building reminded me a lot of Olympia's Hall of the Dead since aisles ran up and down the length of it. Stone walls and wooden supports flickered with orange firelight from oil lamps and a large forge that was built right out of the far center wall. The workshop smelled of flame, oil, metal, and sweat. Thrown around on shelves with little rhyme or reason were gears and supplies, some of them new, some of them broken. At the ends of the aisles were rectangular shaped areas that were darker wood than the rest, alluding to signs and organization that had been lost long ago.
Mirrikh sniffed to my left as if getting used to the smell. He was quiet today, currently a victim of his most depressed and forlorn personality. Even still, he had worked up enough energy to fulfill Calder's request, and he subconsciously fingered the knapsack hanging by his waist.
Maggie was in the midst of the workshop mess, one giant hand around a hammer while the other used a shirt sleeve to wipe sweat from her brow. She must have heard the door shut behind us because her big blue eyes rose to mine before they widened.
“Love!” Calder exclaimed it from my right, before we continued into the building, Mirrikh lagging behind on our heels. “I've brought Mirrikh, as you asked. I also brought Kai, as you didn't.” He chuckled roughly as he came to stand before her. Just a table was between the two. On it were large pieces of dark silver metal, some of which were adorned with gold. I recognized them to be parts of Tyrus's suit of armor. Maggie had broken it down to study it.
Maggie smiled nervously at me. “I didn't expect ya here so soon, Kai.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, confused.
“Nah, love. It's okay.” Maggie tossed the hammer she'd been holding on to the table to her right.
“Maggie didn't want you here because of her pride,” Calder said, his tone teasing. “You've tagged along with Kai for how long, now, love? And you don't know how supportive she can be?”
Maggie huffed with embarrassment and leaned over on the table with both muscular forearms. “It's been six years, nosy one, and the whole reason I joined up with Kai was because she was supportive of me. I know how she is. That don't mean I like disappointin' her.”
I frowned. Maggie had been spending most of her time working on the tasks Altan and I had given her since arriving in Olympia, and she'd claimed she liked to work alone. I'd always respected that and gave her space, though now I wondered if she had been pulling away from me for reasons unbeknownst to me.
“You've never done any such thing,” I finally told her. “You're an amazing engineer. It's because of you the giants are here at all.”
“Save your compliments before ya wanna return 'em, love,” Maggie replied, before sighing. “I've never felt more terrible at my job.”
“Why?”
Maggie twisted her lips to the side and stared at me a moment as if finding the right words. “This here,” she began, poking at a piece of Tyrus's armor, “is the bane of my gods damn existence.”
I chuckled at her wording, and she relaxed a bit. “It was the bane of mine, too,” I told her, to which she laughed softly.
“I...” Maggie reached up to her head, becoming distracted when she felt that one of her blonde dreadlocks had been singed by the forge at some unknown point. After a moment, she went on, “This armor is unlike anything I've ever seen. I broke it apart. Tested it. Tried to figure it out. It's just steel, Kai. This part, anyway.” She tapped on the silver material with a finger before grabbing the piece and turning it over. On the inside of the armor was a thick layer of padding. Maggie squished a finger into it to let me see its consistency. “This part is the real trouble. This squishy stuff is what rejects the magic. Not the steel.” She motioned to my hand. “Summon somethin', love. Fire might work.”
I did so, holding a ball of flame out over the table. Maggie lifted up the flat piece of armor, putting the steel side of it close to the fire. Nothing changed. She turned the piece over, hovering the armor padding beside the flame. As if the fire feared the material, the flames bent at an unnatural angle to avoid crawling over it.
“You're a mage, love,” Maggie continued, lying the armor back onto the table. She reached out to my hand, grazing a finger over my rings. “Why do ya wear these? Why do most mages wear jewelry?”
“Because many metals are conductors,” I replied.
Maggie nodded. “Right ya are. And these,” she squished her finger into the armor padding again, “are insulators. Wood is an insulator. I'm sure ya know that. The only problem is that this padding combines a variety of insulators, many of which I can't track the source. Some of them appear to be created by Tyrus himself. Using what? Hell if I know.” She snorted in frustration.
“You told me you did know what this stuff was,” Calder said, tapping on a shiny black layer of the padding.
“Aye,” Maggie admitted. “The same stuff the dwarves use for them water sprayin' machines. Altan took Nyx to help him interrogate some of our prisoners of war a few weeks ago. The dwarves call the machines hoses and this flexible material here rubber. Just to make this rubber, the dwarves have all manner of machines in the mines to process it. One chews it up and spits it out, another adds some manner of alchemy to the stuff to strengthen it...” Maggie trailed off and shrugged. “Now the dwarves who know how to do all this stuff have either escaped or died. There's a process just to make one part of this, Kai. And I don't even know what the rest of this stuff is.”
“That's why I'm here,” Mirrikh spoke up, his voice so low we barely heard him.
“Aye,” Maggie agreed. “Calder here tells me ya have methods of testing these kinds of things.”
Mirrikh nodded quietly and pulled his knapsack up onto the table. As he pulled out various tools and gadgets, I spoke up, “You said wood is one type of insulator, Maggie.”
“Aye.”
“I can still use magic on wood. I have fewer options with it, but it can still be done. The dwarven siege ladders were wood, and both Cyrus and I used magic to disable them.”
Maggie nodded. “Insulators don't outrigh
t reject energy. Ya can burn wood with magical fire, after all. That's the part that's makin' me so confused about this armor, Kai. Even if Tyrus did everything right, this shouldn't have been strong enough to protect him like it did.” She tapped on the padding.
“Is it possible we're looking at this all wrong?” I pondered aloud.
“More possible than I'd like to admit,” Maggie replied. “What did ya have in mind?”
“You mentioned that the elements can still affect insulators. Fire burns wood. Lightning strikes trees. It's more likely it'll hit them if they're wet, but it'll strike it nonetheless. This...” I pointed to the black section of padding. “...rubber material allowed for the passage of water. It wasn't magical water, but it's still an element that created a current of energy.”
“You're lookin' to make my job more complicated, are ya?” Maggie laughed dryly.
“No. I'm trying to make it simpler. I think that our knowledge of conductors and insulators may be all wrong, and I think the dwarves know that.”
Mirrikh managed to smile over at me despite his depression. “You're starting to sound like a scientist.”
“I'm starting to feel like one.” I hesitated. “It's possible, don't you think, that what mages know of as energy is not all one similar substance. Mages already know energy exists in various forms. Even though we can utilize all of it for magic, perhaps protecting from different forms of energy require different types of insulators.”
“Or maybe the protection doesn't require insulators at all,” Calder commented, lifting up one finger as he pondered this. “Kai—hear me out. Years ago, when we were in Tenesea, you asked me how the sconces in the city didn't light the whole tree on fire.”
I nodded, understanding his direction of thought. “You said that an alchemical substance was coated on the tree to protect it. Koby used to make it. Alum...”
“Aluminhyde,” Calder finished for me. “It's a flame retardant. It gets soggy in water because it's a powder, and it wouldn't do a damn thing against lightning. But for fire?” He shrugged.
“You want me to test this for alchemical agents, then,” Mirrikh surmised, tapping the armor.
“It's all yours, love,” Maggie offered.
Mirrikh grabbed a white rag with one hand, and a glass bottle full of clear liquid with the other. He put the rag to the lip of the bottle and flipped the two, letting some of the concoction saturate the cloth. Then, he put the wet rag to the armor padding, dabbing over and over again in the same spot. He pulled it back, laying the cloth on the table where the wet spot was facing up.
When Mirrikh felt our eyes on him, he said simply, “Give it a minute.”
The seconds ticked by. Slowly, the wet spot started to darken, multiple colors appearing before melting together into a dark brownish-gray. Mirrikh exhaled loudly as he watched it happen.
“What? What's it mean?” Maggie asked.
“It means it's so full of shit that all of it is fighting for precedence,” Mirrikh grumbled.
“It's alchemy, then,” I said. “Alchemy that fights the elements not because they are magic, but because they are elements.”
“It seems to be so,” Mirrikh agreed. “I could go through and do tests to figure out which recipes if you want. It'll take a while to test for everything. I'm warning you now, though, I've never seen alchemy used in such a way. There are multiple substances here, and it's hard to mix recipes like that without getting really bad results.”
“Bad results?” I questioned.
“Explosions, the release of caustic gasses, the degrading of materials...” Mirrikh tapped on the armor.
“Give him a couple of personality changes, love,” Calder told me, “and he'll be jumping at the chance and calling those fun results.”
I chuckled. “I'd appreciate you testing it, Mirrikh, but only if you'll remain safe. It would be nice to know how to replicate this, but we've seen nothing like it before or since. We may not come across it again.”
“Which means that this might have been a prototype,” Maggie commented.
I frowned. “A what?”
Maggie chuckled. “It's an engineering term, love. I basically mean that this elite armor may have been the first of its type. Ya once said the gods were lazy. Maybe that was true for Tyrus. He created and tested things when he had a need to. None of the dwarves from the north had this armor. It was only from Olympia, and only from the soldiers who were with this bastard. He might've even had help. Heartha was with him. Maybe she had somethin' to do with the alchemy used here.”
“That's more than possible,” I agreed.
“On the positive side of things,” Maggie went on, turning to poke at Tyrus's weapon on another table. “I figured out how this thing worked. Hand cannon on the top, flamethrower on the bottom.”
“I don't know what a flamethrower is, but it sounds fantastic,” Calder mused.
“Tyrus's creation, love. We found a place for it in his forge callin' it that.” Maggie tapped on the canister which once hung from the god's hip. “One flip of the weapon's switch, and it triggers a little mechanism down here that rapidly heats up an alchemical mixture in this canister. Using steam propulsion, it then shoots it out this way—” she motioned to the metal tube which once had pointed at Tyrus's palm “—and the flame accelerant hits hovering fire magic, causing it to shoot outward.”
“It's not surprising, then, that he'd use alchemy in his other creations,” I said.
“Nah. Not at all.” Maggie stood straight and shrugged.
“What about the cannons?” I asked her. “Have you gotten a chance to look at those?”
“Enough of a chance to understand it,” Maggie informed me. “They ain't cannonballs, Kai. The dwarves have developed ammo for these things I've never seen before.”
“Keep giving me the good news,” I encouraged her, and she laughed.
Maggie turned to grab something from the floor, bringing it to the table before us. It was an elongated piece of ammo that resembled a broad arrowhead in its shape. Unlike cannonballs, it appeared to be encased in metal.
“Shells, they called 'em,” Maggie informed me. “Much more powerful than cannonballs. And as ya could tell in battle, they exploded that stone wall like it was nothin'.”
“It's a different shape and material,” I said. “How could it be that different?”
Maggie pointed at the metal tip of it. “Piercing,” she said, before running her finger down its length. “Velocity and greater range.”
“I wonder why Olympia had no access to these,” I commented. “These came from either Griswald or Hallmar.”
Maggie raised her eyebrows. “Because they're a new invention moving in from the west, love. As a result of your destruction of Narangar, I think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I have an inkling that Chairel spread the message that we'd stolen their iron-sided battleships and used one of them to keep ya protected when ya destroyed the harbor.” Maggie glanced down at the shell. “I think they developed these to use them against us because they thought we'd create iron-sided ships of our own. Ya were safe from the cannonballs. But these? If they'd had these at the time, that ship would've sunk with ya on it before the tsunami could get there.”
“Kai's advancing science one destroyed city at a time,” Calder teased, nudging me in the side playfully.
“You're welcome,” I replied in jest.
“In either case, I think we should expect the dwarves to have these from now on,” Maggie said. “Dwarves live and learn. Inventions are created out of necessity. After Narangar?” Maggie chuckled and started to put the ammo away. “This was a necessity.”
Twenty-nine
The smell of cleaning alcohol was in the air, my clothes, my hair. Uriel and I stood beside one another, scrubbing surgical tools. Blood and pieces of body tissue floated aimlessly in metal trays on the table before us.
“I love this smell,” Uriel said, breaking the few minutes of silence that had
fallen over us as we worked.
“Me too.”
“Really?” The Sentinel laughed softly. “I'm usually the only one who does.”
“You are talking about the alcohol, right?” I chuckled. “Not the blood?”
“I am.” Uriel huffed.
I shrugged playfully and put the scalpel I'd been cleaning out to dry. “I guess I like the smell of blood, too, if it's the enemy's.”
“It smells different when it's a friend.”
I frowned and went silent for a moment. “You're right,” I agreed softly. “It does.”
“Losing loved ones changes a person,” Uriel continued. “I can't help but wonder if the deaths of Jakan and Anto helped to fuel your recent magical discoveries.”
My stomach ached with tragic memories. “If I had made such discoveries sooner, perhaps I would be surrounded by even more friends.”
“No.” Uriel hesitated from cleaning a moment to grab my attention with his receptive gray eyes. “Don't even go there in your mind, Kai. It has never been your responsibility to save people from their own fates. You may have some semblance of control over it now, but that doesn't mean it is or ever was your responsibility.”
“Sometimes the what-ifs kill me, Uriel.”
The healer nodded. “I understand that, and I wished like hell that I didn't. It doesn't matter what I or anyone else says. The what-ifs will always be there.”
“Altan said after the Battle of Highland Pass that out of him, Cyrus, and you, there was only one Sentinel who hadn't killed someone with friendly fire.” I paused. “Cyrus's tragedy was with Enya. Altan has never told me his story, but he said he had one. That would indicate you are lucky enough to not have had such an experience.”
“How would I kill someone with life magic?” Uriel asked.
I thought of trying to heal Jakan and Anto even though they were dead. “You would arrive too late to save them, perhaps.”
Uriel exhaled slowly. “You may be a mage of the six elements, but you think like a healer.”
