Elrik held the boy close.

Sherlot shook like a taught thrumming string, his teeth chattering, his body out of his control. Some of it was for show, so that under the cover of their bodies, he could slip that bed buckle to Elrik.

But the rest was not. This wasn't just some mummery. Elrik could tell from the way he shivered and shook.. this was his body betraying him.

Elrik held him close and tight.

After a few minutes the shivering slowed. Sherlot's body still convulsed every now and then, but the intervals between the bouts widened.

Finally the spasms ceased and Elrik felt the boy go limp in his arms.

For a while longer Elrik held him. He felt the boy's body go limp, into a shallow exhausted sleep, his body too weak to go on.

Elrik sat there, on the cold flagstone floor with the limp body in his arms. He thought about the last time he'd been like this, on the floor. With someone else in his arms.

He thought about that for a long while.

Then Elrik carefully laid Sherlot's sleeping form down.

He sat himself down in a corner, as if exhausted, and closed his eyes.

Then he began.

...

Behind his eyelids, as he willed it, the room took hazy, then increasingly clear shape. Every glance, every passing sweep of the cell, stitched together until, inside his head he had an image of every inch of the tiny cell.

His eyes still closed, mentally, Elrik swept through the room, looking in fine detail.

It was a small cell. In one corner was a small hole that led down a toilet shaft. It was little more than a hole in the ground. Elrik didn't know exactly how that was cleaned out, but if the building stench in the room was any indication, it wasn't connected to the larger sewer system.

In the back of the cell, at the top of the wall, close to the ceiling, was a narrow slit. From here, fresh air entered the room. It might have proven an opportunity for escape.. but the opening was too narrow for anything larger than a cat to enter the room.

The third and last opening to the cell was a heavy metal door. It was a crude, raw thing - Elrik remembered the terrible screech it made each time they pulled it open.

It had a small keyhole, through which they could watch him, if they cared to. It might have had a lock, of sorts, but the lock didn't seem to be used. Instead it was barred shut from the outside with a heavy deadbolt.

When they came next, they would enter there.

Elrik kept his eyes closed. He slipped his hands into his jerkin, as if for warmth.

There.

The belt buckle was heavy, ornate thing. They must have left it on him, not bothering to remove it.

Elrik carefully reached in an touched it

[gghjyseyolbss fffhhhjjjjnvcdd]

A chirrup of noise assaulted his mind. Elrik welcomed it, trying intercept it, understand it.

the belt buckle was titian - that strange metal Sherlot had first shown him, the first time they'd met.

The Lordling had described it as a toy - magical play-dough - or a tool for meditation. In the hands of someone with a trained mind, it could become any shape the user wished.. as long as they held that image in their minds. Fascinating but ultimately useless.

Elrik had given some thought to the strange metal since he'd seen it. A part of his mind was cycling endlessly, looking for tools to help him understand the nature of the magic in this world - and that part of him had formed some very curious hypotheses about titian - this strange metal found only by the banks of the Yitka.

It was time to see if this thing was what he thought it could be.

In his mind, Elrik focussed on the image of a slim dagger. He held that image in his head, then reached out to the titian through his fingers.

[~ferrousialwj magnetiasmdksl]

Again - that burst of noise in his mind - and lo - Elrik felt the tempting weight of a dagger fall into his hand.

Good.

Again.

Elrik focussed on the image of a simple metal rod.

[lkjnbwuv289 4i3ncskkl]

A thin metal rod, longer but still smaller than the little hollow of space within his jerkin, fell into his hand. Its weight was the same as the dagger, so no surprises there. The volume of the metal was simply being stretched. There was no conservation of matter being violated here.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Okay. So far, so good.

Now Elrik focussed on the image of a dagger again. This time he spent considerable time focussing on the edge, trying to sharpen it, hone it.

[bmdicinwn imoisvma]

From the outside, if anyone was spying on him, they would see a clearly exhausted Elrik, slouched against a wall of the cell. His hands tucked inside his jerkin as if for warmth. He hadn't moved since he'd gone up against the wall, and looked believably asleep.

Behind his eyelids, Elrik was chanting furiously.

Sharp dagger, sharp dagger, very sharp dagger

[asd adalknadcd]

And there it was.

Inside the jerkin, Elrik very carefully, gingerly tested the edge of the dagger with the thumb of his left hand.

He almost didn't feel the pinprick of the dagger-tip pierce meat of his thumb.

Ah. Sharp!

Hmm..

Elrik thought for a second. Then he focussed his mind again, this time a very, very deliberately.

He started by imagining a matrix. A fine crystalline lattice. Then achingly slowly, he let his imagination peel back, almost zooming out.

He wanted to fix in his mind, the image of a pair of large tongs - but he wanted to hold the image of every part of it - down to every piece of its structure.

The lattice would make the structure of the metal strong but compressible without being brittle. At the same time he wanted to imagine those tongs closed, compressing the metal..

Elrik focused his mind.

[srxckp snjoparcjos]

Aha

A pair of tongs dropped into Elrik’s hands, and almost immediately sprang open.

Elrik forced down the urge to smile to himself.

If it wasn’t for the threat of a long and painful death hanging over him.. he’d almost say he was having fun.

Elrik sobered his thoughts. Focus. He needed focus.

This metal - titian - gave him what needed right now. The element of surprise. A trump card when he didn't have any cards left to play.

He still needed to know how to use it. He needed to make it a part of the plan that taking shape in his mind. Then he needed to execute it.

Oh, and not die in the process.

Pyramid. Elrik sent the thought through his mind, and through his contact with the metal. By now he was transforming it even faster than before.

[srxckp asdawwa]

Cylinder

Rod. Dagger. Tongs. Spring

Elrik cycled through the images in his mind.

Spiral. Cube. Sphere. Each time he heard it - felt it - that assault of noise in in his thoughts.

But he kept at it - keeping his mind open - letting the static of it wash over him. Now he was almost starting to feel like he could grasp it. Like it made a kind of sense..

Then suddenly, what he was hoping for, finally happened.

[Process 2291f: Codename professor ]

[Stage-1 Analysis complete]

[Commencing report]

[Unknown metallic substance identified as titian]

[Analysis reveals abnormal pizoelectric sensitivity to nerve impulse visua-]

Elrik dismissed the thought. There was time enough for that later. If he survived.

What he needed right now was a way to survive.

If he could just figure out a way to speed up his use of the titian, that would really help with-

[Notification: Process 2221f: Forking new process; code: Process 6103g: Codename Armorer]

[Notification: Driver development 1.0 complete - expected 7.2x speedup in render]

Elrik tried again.

Dagger. Rod. Curved blade.

The metal twisted and shifted - almost as fast as he could send the thought into it.

Nice.

Very nice.

Elrik felt ready.

...

The door's deadbolt opened with a dull thump.

That thump followed by the muffled sounds of shoving and the grating shriek of the door as it was pushed open.

Two men walked in.

They had their swords sheathed, and carried a heavy steel shod bully sticks.

One of them was a new guard, one that Elrik hadn't seen before. He had a visible bald spot on the top of his head. The other wore a red bandana around his head. That one, Elrik remembered. He was the one that brought him to old sallow-face.

They sauntered in at first. They'd done this dance a few times these last few days. Any caution they had was long faded. Every time they'd come in here, they'd seen Elrik slouched up against the wall, looking defeated.

Their saunter petered out when they saw he wasn't in the cell at all.

Instantly they straightened up, alert, looking urgently around.

In one corner, Sherlot still lay where Elrik had set him down, but the guards ignored his prone form.

"Fuckers gone" hissed the bald one, as they both stood tense and still - evaluating, "He's out. We need to call-"

Which is as far as they got.

With a thought, Elrik released his new clawed pitons.

The metal spikes, that he'd driven into the ceiling of the cell released from the stone, and he dropped like a cat. A well rehearsed movement took over, and as he twisted, the pitons in his hands morphed and twisted in a fraction of a second, turning to thin sharp blades.

As he landed, before his feet touched the ground, his two thin scalpel blades sunk deep into where their necks met their shoulders.

Without a sound, they were dead, eyes bulging and wide, silently falling to the stones below.

Elrik let out a held breath.

He'd been hanging there, upside down, holding onto his pitons, like something out of a nineties spiderman movie, ever since he'd heard them approaching his cell. He hadn't expected they'd pause and chat outside his cell for full three minutes.

Elrik shook his head. Best laid plans...

Still, that was a lucky moment.

Elrik quickly ran his hands over the two men. He unbuckled the sword sheath one of them wore, wearing it himself. One of them had a small dagger - closer to a pocket-knife, that Elrik gladly took. Then he rose and looked back at the cell.

Sherlot still lay there, where Elrik had put him down.

The boy was in bad shape. Terrible shape really. Little difference if he died here, or soon after. He would be a liability, and Elrik's chances for getting out of this alive were already fairly slim.

Really, what was he going to do? Put his life on the line for a spoilt little lordling he'd just met a few weeks ago?

He looked dead from here, hard to tell apart from the two corpses at his feet. It was only if you watched carefully for a minute, that you saw the subtle rise and fall of his shallow breath.

Another limp body, her chest, gently rising and falling, surfaced in Elrik's mind.

Goddamnit..

Elrik quickly peeked outside the cell.

He'd dealt with the two quickly, and he'd done it near silently. For now, the hallway seemed empty.

Elrik cursed under his breath and ran back to Sherlot.

He tried to gently wake the boy. Then he tried less gently, shaking him awake.

"Psst", Elrik had a hand over the little lordling's mouth as he woke him.

Sherlot's eyes first went wide, then to the side to see the bodies on the floor, then back to Elrik. He nodded, quickly understanding.

"Stay quiet. Stay close" Elrik whispered, helping him to his feet.

Sherlot stood up, shakily, "I'll follow. Don't wait on me Corporal"

Elrik looked back at him in askance, but the boy just gave him a wan smile, "I'll be fine in a minute, really."

Then he turned and threw up on the cell floor.

Goddamnit..