Year 3090 After Teu, Calendar of the Empire of Elakon

Town of Fogren, Kingdom of Siskail

The boy’s bare shoulders scraped the doorframe, and his head bent forward as he hauled another load of coal into his father’s forge. Dawn hadn’t broken over northern Siskail yet. The mountain winds howled through Fogren’s streets, carrying early winter’s sharp bite. He fed the chunks of coal one by one into the furnace, each movement precise despite his massive hands. Finished, he stepped back to catch his breath, inhaling the fumes he had grown accustomed to.

“Feridun, stop dawdling and get on with the overseer’s last pieces,” his father said from the corner.

“Aye, Old Brodd,” he replied to his father.

Brodd’s voice was gruff but warm, as if stone-baked by the summer sun.

“He’ll be here with the mine captain just after dawn,” Brodd said.

Feridun nodded, reaching for his tools. King Nelium wanted his court guard’s weapons and equipment decorated - silver and copper inlays on iron that would soon be coated in dirt.

And three dead in the mines this season already.

Their families now survived on charity.

All hail the king, he thought, not without some sarcasm.

A horn echoed from the mine entrance, even louder than the ever-present sound of the Crown Wheel’s troubled turning.

First shift is starting.

Feridun moved to the workbench where the pieces waited: blades for swords, daggers, and a few spearheads—all things his father had forged, now waiting for embellishments.

“Master Skrimmi!” A voice called from outside. “The overseer’s coming early!”

Feridun’s father cursed, grabbing his coat.

“Keep working. I’ll stall him.”

Left alone, Feridun laid his hands on the unfinished pieces. For a moment - just a moment - he thought he felt something bubbling in the metal beneath his fingers as if it were molten but cool metal within and not hardened alloys. He felt dirty at that sensation and could not understand why.

Steel and stone call to me, he thought, unbidden.

He pulled back from that impure thought.

Righteous Frakkel will not be happy to hear of it at confession this coming Crownday.

But then his father’s voice carried from outside, and he pushed the strange sensations aside.

“Overseer Querbel, what an honor to see you,” his father said.

Leave it to him to talk an iceman into paying gold for snow.

He shook his head but was truly grateful. His father kept people fed in this forgotten corner of Siskail.

He and the crown wheel do most of the heavy lifting, people like to say.

He looked at the blades once again and picked up the chisels

Come on, Feridun, there is work to be done.

***

The frigid morning air bit at Feridun’s exposed skin as he and his father trudged, pulling a cart of freshly finished weapons from the workshop towards Fogren’s main square. The heavy load made each step an effort. Each breath was air as much as smoke from the forges, the latter hanging thick in the air, like grease on a plate.

“Damn cold today, ain’t it?” Old Brodd grunted beside him, his breath frosting in the air.

Feridun nodded and looked at his father, who, despite his young age, was already several inches shorter than him. Coal dust smeared his furrowed face and callused hands, turning them shades deeper than their already dark bronze complexion.

The narrow street took a deep bend and on a slope steep enough to force walkers to watch their footing when sleet abounded, as it did now. The city of Fogren hugged the mountain face like a desperate child to an uncaring mother. They passed by half-asleep villagers preparing for another day of mining or work at the forges. The occasional snoring face pressed against a window told tales of a long night spent drinking to forget what the next day would bring.

Finally, they reached the edge of the square and lined up. There, they joined their fellow forgers, each bearing their own burdens of iron and steel.

“Get ’em in line,” barked one soldier.

His eyes roamed over Feridun and his father with disdain as if the coal dust staining them was somehow an affront to his impeccable uniform.

As they waited, Feridun glanced around at the other workers, seeing nothing but grimacing faces and too many scars to count.

The more we dig, the higher the price we pay.

But there was little to be done. Fogren was one of the last working mines on Siskail, and the kingdom would keep squeezing it for all it was worth. It was either that or taking steel from the imperials and their slave labor. Incidentally, many former paying customers across Siskail were already happy to do so on the black market. The king was no friend of the miners, but the low imperial prices hurt their income as much as the unsafe mining pits.

Are we doomed? Feridun asked himself.

He knew he was far from the first in Fogren to ask that question since dawn that day.

After an eternity, they finally delivered their load and cashed in their royal vouchers. Father and son stepped back out into the streets of Fogren. The sun was now fully up, casting long shadows across the cobblestones. Feridun squinted against its harsh light, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

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“Get some rest,” Brodd said, clapping him on the shoulder. “And take this,” his father added, handing him a few coins.

“I…don’t,” Feridun tried to push them back.

“You’ve earned it. The Wheel bless you, my son.”

Feridun stepped away from the square, his colossal frame pushing through the late arrivals among the forgers getting to the square. He knew he would not sleep, but he had to try. His next shift was coming.

***

Feridun lay awake, legs folded, trapped in the confines of a bed, room, and home far too small for his imposing body. A body that made him a favorite of the metalworkers and an unsightly beast to every woman and girl in a city that, outside the forge, prized the leanness of the “southerners”, as they called the other denizens of Siskail’s island kingdom. Plus, there was the perennial issue of the typical homes in Fogren being narrow and tall. Every visit forced him to bend his head.

The southerners, he thought of the guards from the capital city.

Not that he or the other locals met many such folks. Fogren was as isolated a mountain town as they came. And without the now dying mines and the wheel, it would have long been abandoned. He pushed off the bed, nearly cracking the wooden structure in half as he did so, and got up. He felt suffocated by the attic room his parents had granted him as a coming-of-age perk. His brothers and sisters still shared the communal space downstairs. The attic was his, alongside all manner of stored goods, from spare mattresses to broken linens and old pots. It was narrow and uncomfortable. But the window made it all worth it.

He climbed out of it and up, planting his naked feet on the red bricks of the sloping roof. The sky was gray, the air freezing under his sleeveless work outfit, but he did not care. Far above the townhomes, there it stood.

The Mountain Crown, as they called it.

A colossus of wood, stone, and steel. It circled, slower, ever slower. But it circled. The lifeblood of his town. Forbidden as it was by the religion of the Righteous, they all prayed to the wheel, day and night.

Please, never stop turning.

Their engineers had given up trying to fix it. There were too many broken components they could not replace, and there were too many ‘mysteries’ about how it turned without wind or water.

Yet it was no mystery to those who lived here, at least not for the elders. Some still remembered where that power came from. But the Righteous and the royals would not allow any of that blasphemous knowledge.

He watched it for hours, feeling its cranking echo as much as the beating of his own heart.

Then he saw the soldiers.

***

“Triple the next delivery? Triple? That is…that is impossible, Overseer.”

“Master Brodd?”

“Yes, Overseer,” his father replied, standing before the assembly.

“I have been courteous to you and your townspeople, Master Brodd. But my hands are tied. This is a sudden decision of the crown but a royal order nonetheless. You have two weeks.”

The murmur in the crowd of angry miners and metalworkers in the hall rose to a pitch.

“Two weeks? Crazy! How are we to do it? We won’t even have the raw materials to smelt!”

“Silence!” the Overseer now shouted. “Do not mistake my politeness for weakness, my fellow Siskailians. Trade over the West and South routes has been dead for decades. All we are getting are raids from those Scymnee savages and cheap, shoddy goods off the imperial ships. I say unto you: the Righteous shall bless your efforts. Is that not so, Righteous Frakkel?”

“Aye, milord, aye,” the wiry priest, standing in his white robe next to the overseer, conceded. “The Eye of the Righteous warms the heart of those who work hard for a righteous cause. As this is one such a cause, no doubt.”

“Yes, Righteous. We cannot allow further weakening of the imperial coffers. It shall be goods or taxes, my dear friends. Now, I leave you.”

The first stone hit the overseer right in the temple.

Feridun and Brodd were in the first line of miners when it happened.

“No, stop, stop!” his father screamed.

“Kill these bastards!” the drunkest of the miners were shouting.

The overseer was dragged, bleeding as he was from a head wound, out the back door of the large council hall right next to the square.

The soldiers dug their blades into two unlucky souls too close to the overseer for comfort, regardless of guilt. Feridun cracked his fingers and made to confront them, but his father pulled him back.

“No, Feridun, no! We cannot fight! Out, now!”

They darted for the same exit as the overseer, who the soldiers were dragging away. He was unconscious and still bled profusely.

“Why aren’t they helping him?”

They watched as the soldier laid the overseer down, then stomped on his face with a heavy boot.

“No, st-” Feridun started shouting but never finished that sound.

The soldiers turned to them.

“Oh, you fuckers are finished.”

“Kill them; they should not have seen that,” another soldier, who had seemed just another of the overseer’s guards, said.

“What are you doing?” Old Brodd asked, hands trembling and already stretched out as if in surrender.

They heard the door being shut being them, locking the commotion within the room. The brawl was ongoing, and more miners were likely being killed.

“You have to stop this!” Brodd begged.

“Stop this?” the soldier laughed.

Then the man made a gesture. Feridun turned just in time to see the blade pierce his father’s tunic through the back, skewering him. Blood sprayed from the wound and hit him, blinding him. Feridun fell to his knees, watching as his father’s body was kicked free of the blade.

“Burn it. Burn it all. We’ll blame the rioters,” the soldier was saying.

We were…baited? This was their plan?

“The emperor sends his regards,” the soldier said, approaching.

The blade was lifted and ready to slice him open. Then, something broke within Feridun.

***

Feridun tasted his father’s own blood on his lips as the blade arced down toward his exposed neck. But Tek, the forbidden magic coursing through him, was awakened by what he had seen.

Betrayal.

The blade made contact, and it shattered as if it had been swung powerfully against a thick stone wall. The soldier stared at the broken weapon in his hand.

“Sir Bronco?” he called, turning to his traitorous leader.

Feridun let out a soul-spilling scream.

A scream deeper than his lungs, deeper than the air it pierced. Deep as the earth their very feet stood on.

The soldier’s eyes widened as Feridun’s scream continued. The ground trembled, a subtle vibration that quickly escalated into violent shaking.

Feridun rose to his feet, steady despite the earth’s groaning.

A deafening roar split the air from above. Feridun, shaking from head to toe, kept his gaze fixed on the soldiers before him. The soldiers looked up. Even in the moonlight, they saw.

The crown had cracked in two. Chunks of stone broke away, a murderous wave that plummeted onto the town below.

“Kill this monster!” shouted Bronco, the captain whose actions had broken the dam holding back Feridun’s power.

Before he could repeat the order, the ground beneath him buckled, and the town square cracked open like an enormous egg, swallowing the man into the mining pits below.

The shaking intensified, buildings crumbling like matchsticks as the churning earth swallowed them. Dust choked the air, mingling with Feridun’s heavy breaths as he fought to contain his power.

I. Must. Stop.

With a mighty roar, he thrust his hands into the ground, directing the convulsing earth like an extension of his body.

It was too late.

With an ear-splitting collision, the two halves of the Royal Crown tipped over and crashed upon the town beneath them, smashing homes and workshops and burying most of the council hall behind him. Screams punctured the air across the town as dust and debris exploded. The earth was still shaking, still hungry. Fumes burst from the ground as the mines were cracked open like so many pus-filled pustules, releasing noxious gases that hissed and flamed out in the open air or in contact with the torches and lanterns along the town streets above. The roil of metal, stone, flesh, and fire overpowered Feridun’s attempts to control what he had unleashed. Then, an avalanche collapsed upon the square, burying Feridun alive.

Father, what have I done?