Nana sniffed. “You dump a corpse on my Ellesian rug, and expect me to thank you for it?”
Jeni bent down close to inspect them. The bones shimmered with otherworldly light. “Amazing. They’re still warm, can you feel it?”
“We have a heartstone as well,” Athel added. “You have the best forges anywhere in the world. If anyone can do this, you can.”
Nana scowled at Ryin. “So you did bring this upon us.”
Athel pulled back the hammer on her rifle. “Now, you will begin immediately. Time is running out.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I will make you comply.”
Alder could not hold his tongue. “Athel, you’re threatening an old woman.”
“I have no choice.”
“There’s got to be another way.”
“There is no other way.”
Talliun spun the tumbler in her arm. “Alder, hold your tongue. You don’t contradict your matron.”
Alder looked at her incredulously. “Are you telling me you’re okay with this, Talliun?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but instead only looked away.
Alder stepped closer. “Athel, this is wrong, and you know it.”
Athel hesitated. “Yes…I do know it. But, if I don’t, even more people will die.”
Nana raised a white eyebrow. “So, are you going to shoot me, or are you going to let me begin your order?”
Athel lowered her weapon. “You mean…you’ll do it?”
Jeni gushed with excitement. “Are you kidding? This is the ultimate challenge. No one has had the chance to work with dragon bone in millennia!”
“Silence, daughter.”
Jeni pouted.
Nana stepped closer to Athel, studying her closely. “You don’t trust me, do you, young one?”
Athel shook her head. “Trust leads to failure and betrayal. Fear is the only thing that really works.”
“Is it?”
Nana clenched her fist, and suddenly the metal of every weapon pointed at them became red-hot. Athel and the others were forced to throw them to the floor.
Nana and Jeni drew pistols from within their gowns and pointed them threateningly. Dobsworth twisted his cane and withdrew a hidden blade, pointing it at Captain Evere’s throat. Now, it was the intruders’ turn to raise their hands.
“Well, this is embarrassing,” Captain Evere remarked.
Athel blinked. “You…you could have done that at any time?”
“I didn’t get to be where I am by bending a knee every time some hooligan threatened me,” Nana scoffed. “I should have all of you shot right here and now.”
Jeni pulled back the hammer on her pistol and grinned excitedly.
There was a tense moment as the room stood still, waiting for her order.
“…But I am also not a fool. I can clearly see that viper Queen Sotol has no intention of freeing the gods and saving us. And no one is doing anything about it! You’re probably the only people in Aetria right now trying to stop the seas.”
Athel looked her over. “So, what? That was a test?”
“I needed to see what you really were. Yes, it was a test, and you failed, Wysterian.”
Athel lowered her eyes.
Dobsworth resheathed his blade. Nana and Jeni lowered their pistols. “We will fill your order, but not for her.”
She pointed at Alder. “For him. He has a good heart.”
Athel winced in shame.
* * *
Strenner sat dejected in a corner of the hotel room, the crystal lamp flickering from burn marks along its side. The curtains were drawn, piles of food trays stacked in one corner. The staff had long ago learned not to ask if they could come in and clean. The charred pit in the wall opposite the door served as a fair reminder. They would just set down the occasional fresh meal and pick up the money left behind for them.
Hanner knew it wasn’t fair to keep Strenner inside like this, but he just couldn’t stand the sunlight anymore. He preferred the dark. The light hurt him. Yet, even still, he felt bad for depriving his son of the simple joys of playing outside. The world only had a few weeks left, the least he could do is let his child enjoy them.
Hanner took a deep swig of grog to ease his guilt. But, rather than solace, he found only numbness instead.
The air split open and Setsuna stepped out, landing atop a pile of discarded bed sheets.
“Ah, there you are,” she wheezed, covering her mouth.
Hanner’s gaping maw opened up, his cigar falling free. “How the squat did ya’ find me?”
“It wasn’t that hard. I just followed the stench.”
“Get lost!”
He took a drunken swing at her, but she vanished before his fist, reappearing atop a charred nightstand.
“Something I learned about myself, ex-pirates like you and me, we’re disgustingly predictable once we get a pile of treasure. We head for the best place we can find, then we eat, drink, and gamble till it’s all gone. It didn’t take long to find a resort with a disgruntled but wealthy Iberian flittering away a fortune. From there, I just searched each room till I found one that singed my nostrils.”
“Squattin’ witch! I’m nothing like you!”
Hanner grabbed the bed and threw it at her. The nightstand was crushed beneath the force of the blow, causing Strenner to clap his hands and cheer, but Setsuna was already gone.
She reappeared atop the singed writing desk, sitting on it as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “You know, they have a saying where I come from. Bogs flow together.”
Hanner prepped a fireball in his fist, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Does any part of this conversation involve you leaving?”
Setsuna’s eyes became distant. “You and I, we’ve betrayed a lot of people. We know what it feels like to trust no one, because we ourselves can’t be trusted. We see the world as full of people looking to take advantage of us, because that’s how we are on the inside.”
Hanner grabbed a lamp and crushed the crystal with his bare hand, darkening the room further. “I’m nothing like ya’. I had people who ruttin’ trusted me, and I shot ‘em in the back! Do you know how many people died because I enraged Poe?”
“That’s not your fault, at least, not in the way you think it is. The Kabal forced Ellie to kidnap Strenner, and that forced you. Ultimately, the blame falls on them. Believe me, I’m a manipulator to the core, I know how easy it is to pull someone’s strings. You were just a tool in their hands, no different than if they had done it themselves.”
Hanner grunted and searched among the discarded bottles for one that still contained a little liquor. “Is that why you’re here? To manipulate me, too?”
“Absolutely. I need your help. The Kabal has imprisoned everyone in the navy who was captured on Boeth, along with the Wysterian men on Madaringa. They’ve placed them in a time prison, and we’re going to bust them out to screw up the Kabal’s plans.”
Hanner sat down, staring at his hands sadly. “I can’t help anyone. I can’t be trusted.”
She shrugged. “So, I’ll risk it.”
Strenner crawled over and began batting the tip of one of her long pigtails like a cat.
“You don’t get it, do you, moss-head?” Hanner groused. “If Strenner gets threatened again, I would do the same thing I did before.”
“Yes, and that makes you vulnerable. But, it doesn’t make you useless, either. Look, not everyone can fight on the front lines. People like us, we’re supporters. We back up the soldiers on the front. We can’t do what they do, we can’t face the evil and refuse to budge, no matter what we are threatened with. When we are put on the spot, we waver, we hesitate. We can’t be trusted to always do the right thing. And sometimes, we even turn on our comrades. But, that doesn�
�t mean we can’t still do something to help.”
Hanner looked up. “Like a camp follower?”
“Exactly.”
Setsuna appeared before him and held out her hand. “Come with me, let’s help from the back.”
Hanner looked up, and the fire came back into his eyes. “I’m not gonna do it for you. I’m gonna do it to hurt the Kabalists who threatened my son.”
“That works too.”
Hanner swatted her hand away. “What do you need?”
“How much of the stolen federal reserve money do you still have?”
“Most of it. Why?”
She grinned. “Because you and I are going into real estate.”
* * *
Calling what the Colenat’s possessed a “forge” was wildly inaccurate. The caves beneath their property contained what was probably the last crucible in the world, a lost relic of the second age, built by the hands of Kala’Minthem, the great artisan of Maltua himself. Nearly five stories tall, it stood like a step-temple at the center of the cavern, large hexagonal pipes coming in from above to draw fresh air and water. It looked to Athel like a great, chained giant made of stone, ceramic tile, and delicately carved heat-shields. The floor and ceiling of the surrounding cavern was lined with a field of crystal mirrors, all reflecting heat back towards the center. The bottom layer housed a room-sized pit of wood, channeling the red flames upwards into the second layer above, which burned high-carbon charcoal in a bright blue flame. The heat from the first two layers fed into the third, which burned mage-stone into a nice, white-hot fire. It took nearly twenty men working constantly around the clock just to keep the first three layers fed. Even Bunni Bubbles managed to chip in, her clay body withstanding the heat surprisingly well as she carried sticks and logs to be tossed into the fire.
Even with all the shielding and heat-reflectors, the heat from it all was astonishing. Even from a distance the moist rock of the damp cave steamed, despite the constant flow of water poured over it by the pipes that snaked everywhere, like roots. Without a constant dousing, Jeni had explained, the rock itself would ignite. Athel wondered if such a thing were even possible, but from where she sat, it certainly seemed so.
Amazingly, these first three layers only served as kindling to ignite the next, bringing up the heat so high that steel and iron themselves were used as fuel, crackling and sparking under the powers of the Ferrun smiths, creating a flame that was so hot it sat at the edge of one’s vision, a kind of flickering and shimmering indigo.
Whatever was burned in the final layer remained a mystery to the visitors. A large stone platform crowned the final story of the crucible, blocking all view from below. But, whatever it was, it gulped up the air forced in from above to create a blast furnace unlike anything they had experienced before. It roared like a living thing, the very earth trembling as it stirred and breathed, like an animal straining against the bars of its cage.
It was into this flame, which burned black as night, that the dragon bone was fed by Jeni and Nana, the tattoos on their arms pulsing and rippling like waves in the ocean as they worked their ancient incantations and magics.
Athel watched as the two funneled the heat around themselves, creating a pocket of cool air directly around their bodies like a cocoon. The slightest lapse in concentration, and they would be instantly incinerated, yet they seemed calm, excited even.
Privet had tried to make himself useful, wheeling himself over to toss in a log, then wheeling himself back over towards the mountainous stores of cordwood protected by a curved stone wall. It was a pathetically small contribution compared to the wheelbarrows of material the other men brought in, but he was determined to do it, and stubbornly persisted until one of his wheels had broken.
Now, he sat there in the viewing bunker with Athel, watching through the carved slit in the wet stone, feeling useless. Sadly, he reached down and massaged his limp knees with his hands. He felt nothing. It was a part of his body, but it felt like touching raw meat.
Sensing his feelings, Athel leaned over and gave him a hug. “It’s all right, husband,” she said.
“No, it’s really not,” he answered back. “But, thank you.”
The stone door swung open, and Nana Colenat walked in, wiping her face down with a damp cloth. “It’s coming along well,” she explained. “Better than expected, actually.”
“What’s happening in there?” Privet wondered, trying to take his mind off of things.
“The crucible is like a living thing,” she mused as she leaned against the wall shovel, a strange look in her eyes. “Like a spirit of the land, we feed her water, we feed her earth, we feed her air, and if we respect her, she will bear us good ore.”
“Oh…right.”
Sensing he didn’t understand, she leaned in close and pointed to the top of the tower. “Think of each dragon bone as being like sandstone. It’s made up of many different kinds of grains of magic. Now, much of the magic is dead, but scattered among it are a few that still live. The fire we have created is just hot enough to consume the dead grains, but nothing in this world could destroy the ones that live. And so, particle by particle, little bits of living magic are dripping down into the heart of the crucible there, gathering together into tiny droplets, flowing together into a small puddle of molten purity. The heart of the crucible.”
“Amazing.”
Athel glanced up, looking sheepish. “I’m uh. I’m sorry for the way we…”
“Invaded my home?”
“Yes.”
Nana Colenat sat down. “Athel, I look in your eyes, and I see a young woman beyond desperate. If you don’t check it, you may end up doing something you’ll regret.”
Athel sighed. “I appreciate what you are trying to do, but the reality is…”
She gripped the fabric of her pants. “…there’s nothing I could do that would make me feel worse than I already do.”
Athel reached up and placed her hand atop the scar across her heart. She winced, as if it were burning her.
“Are you all right, Athel?” Privet asked.
“It’s nothing, it’s just…I’ve been feeling this pull all day. It’s something I’ve never felt before, I can’t quite explain it.”
“Is it your scar?”
“No, it’s deeper…like something is tugging me, always the same direction too, like no matter which way I’m facing, it’s like my insides are pulling me to the west.”
Jeni ran in and held up her glowing tattooed fist. “It’s ready.”
A stone channel snaked down along one side of the crucible, twisting up at the end like a spigot. It was around this jet of black flame Jeni’s forge was set up. Wearing a smith’s apron made of ceramic scales, Ryin held the ore with a special set of glowing crystal tongs specially made for this project, flipping it over between each hammer stroke as Jeni struck expertly with her hammer, slowly flattening and elongating that material. Nana watched on with the others, a mixture of pride and disappointment on her face.
“Ugh, faster! Can’t you keep the rhythm?” Jeni complained as she worked.
“This isn’t a dance, sis,” Ryin quipped.
“Yes it is. The material has a cadence, a heartbeat. You have to listen to it and follow its lead. This is purified dragon bone, you can’t just hammer it with brute force, you have to sing with it, harmonize with it. Slowly coaxing it into a shape it is comfortable with becoming.”
Ryin sped up his rhythm and the hammer blows sounded differently this time. Like the ringing of a bell mixed with the sound of rain. The way it echoed through the cavern made it sound so much like a dragon’s roar that it made more than a few people uncomfortable listening to it.
“There, now you’ve got it!” she praised. “See, even you can be useful sometimes.”
“Thanks for reminding me why I ran away, sis.”
Ryin took the
ore and reheated it in the black fire. It was like no material Athel had ever seen. A smoky glass, flowing and misty like a vapor, yet solid and smooth as polished steel. When Jeni struck it, the material rippled like water, swimming sparkles of light tracing through it like the veins of fireflies.
“It weighs nothing,” Ryin remarked as he lay it down across the anvil and Jeni began hammering again. Ryin turned it on its side and Jeni began lengthening it out.
“It seems like such a waste to rush this,” Jeni remarked excitedly, her eyes alight. “I want to spend a month engraving and adorning this thing. Once it cools, it will be set forever.”
“Don’t bother with a fuller or distal taper,” Nana instructed. “It will be unbreakable once set, so there’s no need to strengthen the shape.”
“Just a simple wedge cross-section? How dull,” Jeni remarked as she worked to form the tip.
“This will not cut flesh nor wood,” Nana remarked. “Only balance and shape is needed, so focus on that, not the grind.”
“Gotcha.”
Ryin reheated then flipped it over, allowing Jeni to form and draw out the tang.
“Prepare the handle.”
A simple grip and cross-guard were brought forward, and affixed into the vice. With expert care, Jeni grabbed a tong in each hand and lifted the now long glowing blade above the grip. Ryin filed the grip with a sprinkle of flux, then she slipped it inside.
The flux hissed and sizzled with the heat, melting inside and creating a barrier between the tang and the grip surrounding it. Within a heartbeat, the two were permanently fused.
Jeni only had a few moments before the blade cooled. This was the most crucial part, and Ryin knew enough to back away and not interrupt.
She held the sword by the grip and expertly straightened it with the tongs, making microscopic changes along the length, expertly turning it from a relatively straight blade into a flawlessly perfect line. Years of experience and boundless talent guided her hands without thought or command. Her body knew what to do, and she trusted it to do so. Grabbing her finest diamond-tipped hammer, she worked along the edge, feathering it into a razor sharp edge with dozens of tiny practiced taps. Ryin marveled that she could work so fast. It was so easy to tap a little too hard, curving the edge instead of drawing it out, but she never erred in the slightest. Without grindstone or polish, she created a razor sharp edge while the material was still hot.
Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains Page 27
