City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3)

by Heath Pfaff

  The agony of his injuries diminished, and Xandrith felt a fog clear from his mind. He felt alert and awake, better than he had in a long while. He looked over at Crow. The young man was listing heavily to one side. His head had dropped and his hands, still held up in front of him, were shaking. He was obviously using more magic than he was use to handling. Tilda may have been the one losing her life, but the toll of making magic a useable force was rough on the inexperienced. Xandrith was about to say something on Crow’s behalf, but Tilda spoke first.

  “That’s enough. Sit down a moment. You’re going to need some time to recover.” She instructed the young rogue. Crow didn’t need to be told twice. He nearly collapsed as he released the magic. His brow was covered in sweat, exhaustion evident on his face.

  “Thank you, Crow. Thank you, Tilda.” Xandrith said, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

  “Be careful, Xandrith.” Tilda cautioned. “You might be feeling better, but the magic hasn’t completely done its work yet. You will need a few hours of rest, both you and Crow, if you want to be back to your best. We will take a few minutes now to rest, and then we will go somewhere away from this troll corpse and set up a camp for the night. We have much to discuss, and we might as well do it somewhere that doesn’t smell like rot and death. The front doors of the forge aren’t far from here. We should get close enough to at least have access to some fresh air. Though let’s not get too close, it’s rather cold outside.”

  Tilda’s suggestion seemed fine to Xandrith. He enjoyed that he wasn’t having to decide things at that moment. He crossed his legs and relaxed as well as he could with a giant troll corpse sitting a few feet away. They didn’t talk much as they waited for Crow to recover enough to move, though it was clear there was a lot to be said between them.

  Xandrith was happy to get up when it was time to move. He stepped gingerly on his healed leg at first. It ached dully up and down its full length, but it seemed steady and solid. The muscles protested as he moved on them. Some of that would work itself out as the healing magic finished its work, but some of it would be permanent. His leg was going to hurt for the rest of his life. It wouldn’t be the first such wound he’d taken over the years, but it would certainly be the most substantial. He was getting old.

  Assassins didn’t have the luxury of growing old and comfortable. Some of them retired early, got out of the business as soon as they could. Some of them died young. Those who lived to grow old almost certainly died in the course of work. Xandrith was getting there himself. How many close calls had he had recently? He wasn’t getting any better either. His injuries were stacking up. Even with the added strength and durability of his troll side he was fighting a losing battle.

  Was he even still an assassin? Since he’d killed his friend, Leahn, he hadn’t precisely been taking money for lives anymore. What did that make him?

  “You’re still an assassin.” The younger version of himself had appeared at some point and was walking with him and his friends, just another part of the group. “You have one more target to kill.”

  “The god-thing.” Xandrith said aloud. Haley and the others looked at him.

  “Yes?” Haley asked.

  Xandrith felt like a fool. “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.” He shot an angry glance at his doppelganger.

  The younger version of him grinned and shrugged. “You can’t hope to keep me a secret forever. The others are going to find out that your mind is broken eventually.”

  Xandrith didn’t reply. He would keep that secret for as long as he could manage it. It wasn’t that the other him was a threat, but there was a certain shame involved in letting his friends know that he couldn’t always tell reality from illusions created by his own mind. So far the other him hadn’t created any trouble. In fact, he had helped Xandrith out of a few tough spots in the past. It was less like a separate entity and more like a door into Xandrith’s own inner awareness. It knew only what he knew, but sometimes it had a different perspective on matters, or it caught things that he was maybe only aware of in a peripheral way.

  They didn’t have to walk long before the air began to smell less burnt, and more like the fresh mountain winds that blew across the icy peaks. Tilda called a halt and they set up a small camp, laying out their few supplies and taking what comfort they could amidst the shattered remains of the Forge. They had gathered some wood scraps from the debris as they walked, and Tilda set to work on building a fire as soon as they’d stopped. The wood took a flame quickly since most of it was already dried and scorched from the explosion.

  For a time they sat in silence, watching the small fire crackle and sputter. Tilda spoke first, and then the questions and curiosity that they’d all held at bay flowed free. Xandrith quickly realized that he’d need to recount all the events that had occurred since he’d lost the others in the gray halls, and began his story earnest.

  After Xandrith had finished catching the others up on his own journey to the Forge, Haley set about retelling the path followed by herself and Crow.

  “After Tilda found us in the woods we spent the next few days tending to Crow, and I spent the time working on my magic. I broke Tilda’s silence curse, and then set to work on breaking the hold the bonesteel weapons held over us. I knew that it needed to be done. I was afraid of what I was becoming. When Kassa attacked us, and I realized that she’d lost herself like she had back when I’d first met her, I decided I didn’t want to be like her. I’d already been looking at the magical ties my weapon had. I think that’s what triggered Kassa’s attack to begin with.”

  Haley held her axe up in front of her. “The spells around the weapons are really complex. They’re tied to the weapon, to the wielder, and to something distant. I could trace all the lines of energy from the weapons, but I wasn’t certain what they all did. The symbols were far beyond anything I’d been taught. That single strand that flowed off into nowhere, though, was suspicious. I couldn’t think of any good reason for the weapons to be connected to anything far away. I wasn’t certain, but I guessed that was the part of the spell that attached the intelligence to the weapon.”

  Xandrith raised an eyebrow. “It could have been attached to the source of the weapon’s power.”

  Haley chuckled nervously. “I hadn’t thought of that at the time. I was angry about what had happened to Crow, and I just went and broke that strand of magic. The first few times I did that, the magic unbalanced and exploded. It was like breaking the leg off a table. Without the support the whole thing just fell apart, but I was more cautious this time. I severed the line of power and then grounded the spill of magic, letting the energy flow back into neutral paths.”

  “Neutral paths?” Xandrith was more than a little bewildered.

  Haley nodded. “Yeah, the world is full of neutral magic paths. I don’t know how they got here, or what they do, but I can feel them reaching up through the soil, hungry, like they’re looking to reclaim lost magic. When I send the energy back into the neutral paths, there isn’t an explosion. The spell just falls apart. The first time I used that technique was on Tilda’s binding. There were several different strands of that spell that I had to direct out. I could tell immediately that it was dangerous work. The whole thing looked like it had been designed to break violently.

  “Using the same system on the weapons was much easier. Whoever had weaved the spell on those had done so with the assumption that the magic could not be tampered with. The spell that connected the intelligence to the weapon wasn’t even bound in with the other parts of the weapon’s magic. Severing the intelligence had no effect on the weapons abilities! The only difference is that the powers don’t activate automatically. The intelligence can’t trigger the abilities so we have to do it ourselves, but once you learn how it’s really easy.”

  Crow was nodding his agreement. “When I woke up after Haley had broken the intelligence from my weapon my head felt clearer than it had in ages. I didn’t realize just how wound up in the will of the blade
I’d become.” His expression turned grim. “It tried to make me kill Haley. If Kassa hadn’t injured me so badly, I would have tried to take her life after we arrived back in the woods. The compulsion was so strong. In a way, Kassa’s attack saved Haley’s life.”

  Haley picked up there, definitely trying to move the conversation away from that line of thinking. “After Crow woke up Tilda began to teach him how to use his magic abilities as well as she could. He needed to learn healing to aid his own recovery. He’d lost a lot of blood and suffered some internal injuries that would have killed most men. We spent the next week waiting for him to recover and discussing what our next move would be. At the time we feared that you were dead. Tilda told us there was a place she could take us that would be safe, and so we left for Forge Haven.”

  Tilda spoke up, taking up the story. “I had friends who’d helped build this place. If we’d had to travel by foot all the way here it would have taken forever, but I knew a better way. The mechanna built a system of underground tunnels that they call Fast Paths. These tunnels have small carriages in them that travel up and down the lengths of these paths at incredible speed. The carriages only carry a half dozen people, and access is generally prohibited to the average person even if you know where to find the tunnels. With the state of the world however, I didn’t think we’d have trouble with security. I was unfortunately correct.

  “We had to travel up near Yillan Reach to get on the Fast Paths. That’s when we first discovered that the possessed creatures were gone. The trolls had moved in, however. We had to be careful, but luckily the Fast Paths don’t run all the way into the city proper. It would have made them too easy to find. They connect to the sewers beneath the city, but only from a distance beyond the walls.

  “The Fast Paths were designed by the mechanna as a hidden road to move small cargo and information at incredible speeds across the country. They’re more secure than sending a bird, and often times faster. To get to the Forge from Yillan wasn’t easy. We had to transfer Paths many times, and some of the tunnels had been damaged by trolls. That forced us to walk legs of the journey. Without maintenance and care the system is falling apart quickly. We made it here though. We never encountered any trolls, but we ran close to where they’d recently passed many times.”

  Tilda pointed in the direction of the entrance to the Forge. “When we got to the front gates the Forge was already blown open. We scouted the entrance for a bit and then came down to investigate, and that’s when we heard you and the troll inside. We didn’t know it was you at the time, but Haley and Crow were intent upon going to the rescue of whoever it was.” Tilda shrugged. “Call me a coward, but I probably wouldn’t run towards the sound of a troll murdering someone if I’d been on my own.”

  Xandrith replied with a dry chuckle. “I’m not sure I would have either, especially if I’d had any idea just how big that particular troll was.” There was a short silence as Tilda and the kids finished their story, but it didn’t last long.

  “Well, what do we do now? Are we going to go after that knife?” Haley voiced the same set of questions that were probably being mulled over in all of their heads.

  Xandrith wasn’t sure what to do next. When he was alone it had been easy. He was going to hunt down and kill the god-thing no matter what the cost to himself. What did he have to live for? Now though, he had other lives to consider. Chasing after a god wasn’t conducive to living a long life. Crow and Haley didn’t deserve to be tied up in that kind of mess. It wasn’t difficult to guess that they wouldn’t take well to being told they should stay behind. Still, he had to try.

  “I have to go further into the mountains and try and get the knife back from the saboteur who brought down the Forge. I don’t think there’s any hope of me reaching her before she reaches the troll god, but I need to make the attempt anyway. I don’t think it would be wise for the rest of you to go with me.” Xandrith saw the protest jumping to Haley’s lips and went on quickly to keep her from getting a word in.

  “I’m not trying to sound like an ingrate here, but there is a good chance that I won’t be coming back down this mountain. I would prefer not to drag my friends with me to my grave. I have enough resting on my conscience already.” Xandrith tried to explain.

  “I’m not just going to let you go up and there and die by yourself.” Haley said, her gaze unblinking as she met Xan’s eyes. She reached up and pulled off the mask, revealing the wicked scars that she often strove to keep hidden. “You may be a jerk and a murderer, but you’re my jerk. My murderer. Short of killing me, you’re not going to stop me from following you up that mountain.”

  Crow stepped to Haley’s side and nodded. “I’m going where Haley goes. If she’s following you to kill a god, then so am I.”

  Xandrith felt a keen pain in his chest and his eyes burned. He closed them and looked away from the others, afraid to show them how much that foolish sentiment actually meant to him. “You lot are almost as stupid as I am. Maybe more so, since you’re following me.”

  Tilda spoke up. “Not that anyone asked, but I’m going along as well. I’m old and I’ll be dead soon anyway. The prospect of dying of old age pales in comparison to that of being smote by an angry god. If we’ll be going further into the mountains, then I think it’s time we consider making contact with the Unth.”

  “The Unth? I’ve heard them mentioned before.” Xandrith remembered his conversation with Gryn before the poor man had died in the caravan attack. “They’re a territorial people who live in the upper reaches of the Ragged. I had considered trying to seek their help when I was on my way here to begin with, but now I’m not so certain. If they’re territorial they might just cause us more trouble if we run into them.”

  Tilda was already shaking her head. “We will run into them if we go any further up into the mountains. The Unth are very protective of these peeks. It would be better for us to approach them on open ground and with the intent to travel peacefully. If we’re caught sneaking up the mountain they’ll likely react with hostility, and the Unth are a dangerous people when angered. Forge wasn’t the first settlement to try and build in these mountains.”

  The old woman gestured at the ceiling, though Xan knew she was really pointing towards the high-peaks. “There once was a proud group of mountain men who lived in these valleys, and on the lower slopes. They were too proud, though, and they sought higher ground. They believed the mountains belonged to them. An Unth representative came to them and warned them away from the high peaks, but these men didn’t believe the Unth were a serious threat. After all, they’d sent only one person to speak on their behalf, and the men of the lower mountain had never heard or seen the Unth before.

  “The tribesmen were fools. They sent out a hunting party to find the Unth that had visited them, and when they did, they captured him and brought him back to their camp. Their intent was to get information from him so that they could attack the Unth home village and claim the mountains for themselves. Their Unth prisoner refused to talk, and so the men of the village decided to give him one more night to speak before killing him in the morning. They told him that if he gave them the location of the Unth village, they’d let him leave the next day. They had no intention of doing any such thing, but that is what they told him.

  “They left the Unth under guard to consider his options for the night. When morning came, the Unth was gone. More, all the children of the low mountain men villages had vanished, and with them the men too. Only the women remained. Their families had disappeared into the night without leaving so much as a single footprint or trace of where they’d gone. Some of the women formed search groups and went up into the mountains to find their missing families, but those groups vanished as well. The remaining women fled the mountains to tell their story, though few believed it. Some further expeditions went up into the mountains, and none of those that passed into the high peaks ever returned. That’s part of the reason the Ragged are considered impassable.”

  Xandrith jus
t shook his head, his normal half-smirk on his face. “That’s a good ghost story, but I doubt the Unth are that dangerous. That sounds like a story that’s grown out of proportion over the years.”

  Tilda just shrugged. “And yet the Unth are still the only ones living in the high peaks, and no one is willing to cross into their territory.”

  “I’d say the trolls are willing.” Xandrith noted dryly.

  “That, my young friend, might be why we still have a chance of getting your knife back.” Tilda noted with a smile. “With any luck the Unth will be keeping the trolls busy, and they might actually be happy to see us. If nothing else, they should be able to tell us where the trolls are headed, and that is more than we know right now.”

  Xandrith sighed. “It’s depressing when someone besides me is right.”

  “Oh, poor dear. You must be depressed quite often.” Tilda chided.

  Xandrith’s grin faltered, and then sprang back to life. “I think I might be in love with you, Tilda.”

  “Aren’t I the lucky girl?” Tilda said with a surprisingly youthful titter.

  They spent a short while longer in idle chatter before deciding that it was time to rest for a few hours before resuming their journey further into the mountains. Xandrith’s wounds needed time to finish their healing, and the others were tired from their time on the road to reach Forge. In short order they had all fallen asleep in the ruins of the city of steel.

  Xandrith’s freshly healed leg was stiff in the cold mountain air. The muscles pinched with each full extension and it felt like the bone at the center was constantly throbbing, sending waves of discomfort up into his body with each step. That aside, Xandrith was feeling surprisingly good. His aches and pains were nothing compared to how he’d felt the previous day, and it felt great to be traveling with companions again. Even with the bleak prospects for the future ahead, he felt refocused and refreshed.