by Joe Ducie
“What are you doing out here?” an armed young man said. “It’s past lockdown!”
Keeping my weapon pointed at the crystal floor, I walked forward slowly, one palm raised. “We’re here to rescue you, mate. Sent in by Lord Winter.”
The guard waved us over and we crossed entirely into the Vale Crystalis, a similar style balcony and shuttle station on this side of the bridge. Now that we were close, I could see that the guard wasn’t only young—he was a teenager. Fifteen, sixteen at the most. He was armed with a short sword on his hip, much like mine. I recognised the craftwork—an enchanted blade.
“You didn’t look like deadlings,” he said with a grin.
“Soldier,” Arlon said. “What’s the situation here?”
The guard snapped Arlon a quick salute, either knowing him or his reputation, I gathered, and scratched at his chin. “Haynes, sir. Private Haynes. We’re hold up mostly on the upper floors of the Crystalis, sir. About a thousand of us here, some thousands more in the towers to the west. The accommodation block you’ve just come from was meant to be sealed, which is why it’s just me on patrol on this level.”
“Is Lady Waterwood available, Corporal Haynes?” I asked politely. “She sent for us.”
Haynes nodded. He squinted at me, as if he couldn’t quite place my sexy face.
Arlon cleared his throat. “This is Arbiter Declan Hale of the Knights Infernal,” he said, and that was enough to make the young corporal take a wide step back. “Best you lead us to where the lords and ladies are sipping their tea, lad.”
*~*~*~*
“What took you so long?” Lady Evelyn Waterwood, Chief Librarian of the Atlas Lexicon, said with a smirk, her silver-blonde hair hung in gentle locks, her blue eyes flashed. We were presented to the seated council of the Atlas Lexicon near the summit of the Vale Crystalis sweaty, tired, and grumpy.
Getting up here had required another thirty flights of stairs, and my knees throbbed. A few hours rest was going to be needed before I started to work my dark schemes on solving this mess. Annie looked ready for a nap, too. For us, on Perth time, it had gone something like three in the morning. We were spent. Food and an hour’s rest, that was the plan.
Next to Waterwood was an old man with a long, scruffy beard tucked into his belt. He was bald save for a thin ring of hair circling the sides of his head. “Lord Maerlyn,” he muttered, half asleep, resting his chin on his palm. “I was against involving the Knights Infernal.”
The opulent chamber held a horseshoe table of fine dark wood, nine high-back chairs placed around it, one for each lord and lady of the Atlas Lexicon. Only two of the chairs were occupied, by Waterwood and Maerlyn. Winter was locked outside, of course, but I wondered where the other half dozen rulers of this city were hiding.
“Where are the other half dozen rulers of this city hiding?” I asked.
Lady Waterwood leaned back in her chair. “Some are sleeping, some are working on the protection enchantments in the western accommodation towers. Our students’ safety is paramount. We’ve been pulling long shifts to keep the ward schemes in place, which as you know, against such an overwhelming force as the one below, requires constant maintenance. Everyone is pulling their weight, but we cannot last much longer. A day, two at the most, before the wards fail.”
“This will be over long before then,” I assured her.
“Is that a promise?” she asked. “I trust there will be something left of my city when you’re done with it, Arbiter Hale.”
I found half a grin. “Oh yes, one or two towers left standing, I promise.”
“What is happening outside of the shield?” Lord Maerlyn asked. “And how did you get through?”
“The offensive is being led by Lord Winter.” I let them ponder that a moment. “He extended an official envoy for my aid, given that we weren’t sure what we would find here in the Lexicon.”
Maerlyn grunted. “He had no authority to do that, not without speaking to the rest of us first.”
“Which was quite impossible,” Lady Waterwood said, trying to keep the peace. “I would know how you breached the shield, Arbiter Hale. If we can evacuate through that monstrous piece of dark magic, then we should.”
I was shaking my head before she finished. “No, we’re all trapped in here. I can’t be certain of even getting myself back through, let alone thousands of children.”
“We must bring it down then.”
“I agree.”
Over the next ten minutes, I filled in my new allies (perhaps) on what I knew (not much), most of which was already public knowledge. I told them of Dread Ash, loose somewhere in the city, and that raised a few eyebrows, I told them the outline of my plan to bring down the shield, and that I would need their aid—supplies, manpower, something to eat, a place to rest for a few hours.
“The shift on the enchantments changes at midnight,” Lady Waterwood said. “Just over two hours from now. Arbiter Hale, Detective Brie,” Annie, on the edge of the room, perked up, “we can offer you a quiet corner and some food until then.”
“Sounds good. I take it you’re going to summon the entire council, what’s available, and decide whether to act on my plan or not.” I adopted a severe frown. “Know that I’ll proceed regardless of what you decide, but I hope you’ll help me.”
That got me a few irate frowns and a long moment of awkward silence.
“Hey, you wanted me here,” I said. “Be careful what you wish for.”
*~*~*~*
Sipping bowls of creamy tomato soup, dipping crusty chunks of stale bread, Annie and I had been given a small waiting room a few floors below the grand chambers, with a window overlooking the Atlas Lexicon. The hour had grown late now, true dark beyond the shield, and turned the ugly barrier almost wholly bruised purple.
I sat in a comfortable lounge chair, feet up on the coffee table, shotgun and sword resting on the glass table top. Annie sat next to me, occasionally tapping my boot with hers as we devoured the warm soup.
The waiting room was small, but cosy. Not quite an apartment, but secluded, secret. We were being hidden away until the lords and ladies decided just what to do with us. I felt no worry on that matter—we were, for all intents and purposes, their only option. The lords would bicker, the ladies would argue, but in the end they would fall just short of demanding my help. They would formally ask, as Lord Winter had done.
“Feeling better?” Annie asked.
I laughed softly. “Feeling fine.”
“You didn’t look it,” she commented, ever honest. “Not since punching us through the shield, not since you spoke with… Dread Ash.”
“Reserves running a little low, that’s all.”
Detective Annie Brie rolled her eyes. “You’re lying to yourself as much as me, Declan. It’s OK to be… drained, emotionally as well as physically.”
“Can’t afford the weakness,” I muttered.
“That’s horseshit.”
A scoop of soup masked my surly frown.
“How long have you been fighting?” Annie asked. “Most of your life, and not once have you stopped to reflect. Even in your exile, before we met, I’d put good money on you not doing a damn thing to work through the mess of emotion in your head. You’re only human, Declan. It’s OK to feel it.”
“You my therapist now?”
“Someone needs to be—and I’m all you’ve got. Right now, at least. When we get back to Perth, I’m putting you in touch with the psychologists the police use. And I’ll see that you go.”
I snorted. “And the first time an elder god or demon attacks during our sessions what do I tell them? That it’s not all metaphor and fantasy? That the monsters are real, and after my head? No, Annie, thank you, but no.”
She sighed and finished her soup. “Are you going to tell me more of your Atlantis story or not?”
I glared out at the city and into the purple-night. Above, ripples of distant lightning coursed through the shield. Below, armies of dead, dying, and worse.
We’d be back out in that mess soon enough.
“Sure, we’ve got an hour or two to kill. Get comfy.”
REMINISCENCE THE THIRD
(Eight months before soup and scowls and purple skies)
Games in Atlantis
Four months in the Vale Celestia went by faster than I thought it would, but such was the way when you were busy, when you were avoiding something, when you didn’t want the time to pass at all.
One afternoon, long after I’d begun to suspect there was more afoot in Atlantis than I’d seen, than I’d been shown, Tylia Vale—the blue-skinned, painfully quiet girl from my squad of students—showed me something that changed everything, that moved the time frame for getting home from worrisome to dire.
We strolled through the hills and dells of the Vale Celestia, speaking about her people, how they had been lost in a Voidflood and remnants, only pieces of remnants, remained.
“We were not just cast from our homeland, our world, but across time, as well. What odds do you think I have of ever seeing a member of my race again?” Her tone was light, light in the way only the very sad can be.
“It’s a large multiverse,” I said. “But I’ve seen longer odds on harsher fates, Tylia. Your people really created the central towers in cities like Atlantis?” I shook my head, believing but awed. “They survive, you know. Ten thousand years from now, we still use the towers—the Vale Whatevers.”
“My people built three such towers on True Earth. One in Atlantis, one to the north of your world, and one in the far south… they are fine works, fine memorials, I suppose. Other towers are scattered across worlds of power and influence. You have encountered many?”
Three on True Earth… I knew of two—well, one, as the Atlantis tower would be lost to time and the fire before too long, the whole city and a great deal of the land swept into the Void and adrift for ten thousand years, until a dumb kid with everything to prove stumbled across it and started the ball rolling on all this sordid dark work.
The second tower, the Vale Crystalis, sat in the heart of a secret city in Switzerland. A place I had never visited, never had plans to visit. The Knights Infernal were not enemies of that city, but we were not friends, either.
“I’ve encountered the same tower in different points of time,” I said. “But for all that, yes, one or two others. And your people—they are out there, Tylia. You will see them again.”
Tylia smiled but her heart wasn’t in it. She liked my words, didn’t believe them, but liked them. I knew that look well—the look of someone who had seen their entire civilisation come crashing down. Hell, I’d been responsible for that look in hundreds of millions during the Tome Wars.
“What was it you wanted to show me?”
Tylia pulled herself from her thoughts. We crested a rise under some bent redwoods, the canopy overhead thick and heavy. A scent of burning copper, hot metal, flame and fire, but somewhat ordered, hung in the air. Down below a small collection of buildings surrounded an open courtyard. Mighty furnaces and chimneys, vast forges, metal works, blacksmith anvils and crucibles stood in the courtyard. I hadn’t visited this part of the pocket world yet, but I was impressed.
“There’s a man here who wants to see you,” Tylia said. “I apprentice under him, create enchanted weaponry and armour. He asked me last week if I could bring you along.”
A thousand thoughts—and worries—ran through my mind. “Who would want to see me?” I said, with a grin I didn’t feel. “I don’t know anybody here.” Emily? Was this her doing?
“Forge Master Alexas,” Tylia said. “This is his workshop, all of it. He’s a… genius, when it comes to creating things. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
“I’m sure I will.”
I followed Tylia down the hillside and into the courtyard proper, the heat from furnaces and forges almost stifling even in the open air. Playful starlight, those bands of interstellar cloud overhead between here and the broken moons, gave the whole works a midwinter fair vibe. All I needed was a cup of hot chocolate and two feet of snow.
Tylia navigated the maze of iron stores, tool shops, storage sheds, and brought me to the eastern corner of the workshop. Here I saw something wonderful. More furnaces and forges, yes, but infinitely more precious. A wide space, about the size of Riverwood Plaza back home in Joondalup, sixty feet across by a little more wide.
Great troughs, circular pools, had been dug into the stone, and were filled not with molten metal or fire, but with what I could only describe as liquefied starlight. Glittering, molten-black fluid dotted with glowing sparks of light, like the canvas of the heavens cast down into the earth, God’s own can of paint. Several of those pools swirled around the central forge, a massive chimney of gleaming silver-blue metal, a metal I recognised as mythril, fed by enormous self-pumping bellows.
Apprentices and staff darted around the courtyard, carrying shining materials, working with foreign, exotic tools I didn’t recognise.
A bear of a man, tall and wide, dressed in a simple pair of leather trousers and a sleeveless jerkin, swung a massive hammer into a piece of shining crystal. The chime produced when the hammer struck the crystal was ethereal, soothing. He was a walking stereotype—the original blacksmith.
“There’s the Forge Master,” Tylia said. The star pools shone in her eyes, cast her blue skin almost purple. “Let me introduce you.”
We approached the large man, Forge Master Alexas, as he poured a stone bucket of fluid from the swirling pools into a sword mould and thrust the whole thing into the furnace in front of him. I expected a blast of heat, smoke and sweat, but the air blowing from that glowing furnace was cool, refreshing, like mountain spring water after snowmelt.
“Hello, sir,” Tylia said and gave a small curtsey. “I’ve brought Declan Hale, as you asked.”
Forge Master Alexas turned and I got a good look at the man for the first time. Something happened to time then, it slowed, and in the space of about two seconds I had time to recognise his face, tag it well, and knew—knew—who I was really about to shake hands with.
The man forging starlight into glass, hammering shadow into substance, was none other than the Everlasting Scarred Axis.
Yet to be scarred, it seemed. His face was unblemished, almost handsome. The creature I had met, chained to a pillar in an abandoned outpost in the storm clouds of Jupiter, had only vaguely resembled something human. In the sense that it had had two arms, two legs, and a head. The rest of Axis had been wasted, elongated grey skin stretched over ruined bone. His eyes had been removed, leaving only twin scars like that on a scarecrow.
I had cast that monstrosity, who had claimed to be responsible for gifting Will to humanity, along with my rebellious shadow, into the Void. It had mangled my hands and nearly killed me, but I had done it. Such a journey into darkness wouldn’t kill something as ancient or as vile as an Everlasting. But it would have pissed him off good and proper.
“Ah,” Axis… Alexas said and offered me his hand, attached to arm corded with thick muscle and coated in ash from his forge. “You must be our visitor from the future. Tell me, my friend, what of our fair Vale Celestia ten millennia from now? Does my forge still glow hotter than starheart?”
“I… don’t know.”
That was an interesting question. Although Atlantis had been swept from the map, well and truly annihilated, for all that mattered, the dozens of pocket worlds linked through the portal chamber in the Vale Atlantia wouldn’t have been touched. Merely severed from their access point. This world, this school, even this mighty forge and workshop could still exist in my time.
Lost and cut off from the rest of Forget, a bead of the Story Thread almost cast into the Void, but very much whole.
It didn’t have its Forge Master, though, that much I knew for certain.
I shook hands with the man, the elder god in disguise, and forced a grin onto my face.
“This is an impressive forge,” I said. “What is it you make here?”
Alex
as nodded and smiled. He held my gaze for a quiet moment, perhaps trying to read my mind, but I had protections against that, and then let go of my hand. “I am forging the fires of creation,” he laughed. “I am creating celestial illusion.”
“No you’re not,” I said, before I could stop myself. Tylia frowned at me. “I mean, that alloy is naturally occurring, and it cannot be recreated.”
Alexas gave me a funny look that I read a lot deeper—I knew him as Scarred Axis, I knew him under the disguise he wore now, and that funny look was more condescending than confused, more arrogant than confident. “You mean to tell me, millennia from now, the art of my craft has been lost? Say it not, Declan Hale. I would have you say it not.”
“I say it not not,” I said. “I’m telling you, celestial illusion cannot be… made.” The very idea offended me. A petal of celestial illusion sat in my heart, I had used the Roseblade to devastate entire worlds, end wars. The alloy was priceless, the shards leftover from creation itself.
Alexas grinned, reached into the pouch on his thick leather apron, and handed me a single seed of celestial illusion. “Here is what I have managed to create in the last few years. With enough time and left undisturbed,” he said, “this seed will grow an entire grove of alloy. What would that be worth to the future, hmm?”
A piece of celestial illusion the size of a golf ball would be priceless. An entire grove… to be used as I saw fit, to create weapons and defences against the Everlasting. That would level the playing field somewhat. An idea occurred to me, and I saw the look on Axis’ face. He had come to the same conclusion.
“Of course, a grove would take thousands upon thousands of years to grow,” he said. “And finding a place to leave it undisturbed for so long would be difficult. If only we could know the future.” The pointed look he gave me was about as subtle as a train wreck.
But not impossible for a Knight Infernal, for the Willful who could create and travel to their own secret little worlds. Or… I thought. Or even hide it on this world. Somewhere quiet and out of the way. When I made it home, followed the path through time and space using the petal of the Infernal Clock tying me to Annie, ten thousand years would have blinked past in a heartbeat. I’d be moments older, but my little seed of celestial illusion…
