Agnete stepped into the vast chamber, her breath catching in her throat as she stared with wide eyes. The room was a colossal expanse, a domed structure as large as a moderate village, where rivers of molten metal flowed like lava throughout a great basin. Streams of red-hot metal fell like waterfalls from tall crucibles hanging from massive chains or wide-open pipes mounted in the walls.

The heat was oppressive, even for Agnete, but the hazy, burning air wasn’t enough to stop her. She stepped forward, ignoring the scraps of cloth bursting into flames as the heat blasted her clothing from her body. Her eyes were fixed in the center of the chamber where the molten metal seemed to come alive, rising to form a massive figure.

The Burning Forge emerged from the seething, glowing liquid, a feminine body towering above the flowing metals as if the liquid were part of her being. Only the upper part of her body was visible with the rest below the opaque lava, but even that was enough to overwhelm Agnete with awe. The god’s eyes burned with an intense orange light, far, far brighter than the embers in Agnete’s eyes. Her hair was a cascade of living flames, flowing down her back, flickering and crackling with every movement. Adorned in an armor of blackened steel, etched with pulsing magma veins, and wrapped in chains, the god looked ready for battle.

And yet, rather than a weapon, she held aloft a smithing hammer. The Burning Forge brought it down against an anvil. A thunderclap threatened Agnete’s ears, but she couldn’t stop staring as massive sparks the size of obese horses flew in wide arcs in all directions. Some merged with the grand pool of lava below while others struck the walls. The bits on the wall didn’t turn to slag but instead dribbled down the sides without leaving a trace behind.

Hanging the hammer from a gigantic hook, the Burning Forge reached a hand forward. She pinched together the clawed tips of her gauntlets, picking up a tiny black object that she promptly started inspecting—a little black box covered in gears, steam-spewing pipes, and narrow pistons. Turning the box over, she moved it to her left molten hand and continued the inspection. Satisfied, she swam through the molten metal to a small opening in the wall of the chamber and deposited the black box within.

The Burning Forge turned back toward the anvil in the center of the chamber, only to pause as those orange eyes crossed over Agnete.

Agnete’s breath hitched again as she felt something familiar reach out. The flames within her chest, unbidden, surged, drawn out to swirl around her. Agnete reached out to her fire, trying to pull it back in, but it wouldn’t obey. Before joining with Arkk, she had often lost herself in the flames, obeying their desire to be used, but she had never been refused. Never once since lighting her first candle had the flames disobeyed.

Gritting her teeth, irritation welling up, Agnete glared through the flames at the being before her. The fire, forced upon her as a child, had been the cause of everything in her life. Burning down her home village, being chased and captured by the inquisitors, exposed to the icy Binding Agent, meeting Arkk, arriving here… All because of this fire. And now this so-called god was trying to take its flames back?

Agnete stepped forward, onto a small obsidian platform that hung over the vast pit of molten metal. She stretched out a hand, grasping at the flames. Normal flames couldn’t be held in human hands. But Agnete wasn’t a normal human and these weren’t normal flames.

They were her flames.

Twisting her wrist, ignoring the blackening of her fingers, Agnete pulled the fire back toward her. She slammed her fist and her flames into her chest, biting down on the cry of pain. There was one final resistant tug before the flames surged back to where they belonged, back into her. As soon as she felt that flicker of control back, she pulled and pulled, drawing in every scrap of fire.

Her fingers and toes blackened with every passing moment. It wasn’t until the dark skin crept up past her knees and elbows that she realized she was drawing in too much. Far, far too much. More than she had ever held before. The heat in her core wasn’t just a flame, it was an inferno. And it was still growing.

Eyes wide, she snapped her gaze to the Burning Forge.

Her iron mask of a face was cracked in two, split horizontally in a jagged, ruinous grin. Not unlike the carvings villagers made of pumpkins to celebrate the harvest. It even glowed behind the sharp teeth, though it was far more intense than a simple candle.

The Burning Forge wanted this? Was that what the smile meant? She had to be allowing it, allowing Agnete to draw in too much, to now burn herself on her own flames. A little anger, even from an avatar, couldn’t possibly contend with the might of a god.

Agnete grit her teeth, trying to control the flow of the fire around her. It was a struggle just to stay standing. Sweat vaporized instantly, coating her in a thin layer of rapidly dispersing steam. All the while, she felt her limbs burning away, the heat creeping up toward her shoulders as her skin charred and cracked. It snaked upward, spiraling around her neck and down her chest and back. The pain stopped at some point. Her nerves burning out?

Whatever the cause, Agnete straightened her back and glared up at the Burning Forge.

Questions burned in the back of her mind—unless that was the fire. Why was the most prominent. Why give her these powers in the first place? Why choose her? Why put her through everything only to try to take back those flames now?

But, before she could open her mouth, she remembered Arkk. Or, rather, his advice to her. What answer would satisfy her? What question hadn’t she built up a profound answer for in her head over the years?

Would a god disappoint her with the actual answers?

Arkk would say yes. The Protector would say no.

“What does it matter?” Agnete said through clenched teeth. “It is what it is and it is my job to deal with it!”

The jagged smile on the Burning Forge’s mask slowly sealed back together, regaining its full form. Yet, there was something different about it now. The metal that had been shaped in an impassive mask of a human now looked somehow calculating. Her head slowly shook.

[Failure]/[inadequate]/[incomplete]|[understanding]/[assimilation]/[mental omega]. [View]/[observe]/[sightsee]|[problems]/[inadequacies]/[opposition]|[fight]/[eliminate]/[incinerate].

The words, if they could be called that, slammed into Agnete with the force of the giant blacksmith’s hammer. She had heard Vezta and, more recently, her own metallic clone use that language. But they had spoken the words that then forced concepts into Agnete’s head. The Burning Forge’s words were raw and unfiltered, a molten torrent of thoughts. Agnete staggered under their weight.

[Alternate]|[solution]/[victory conditions]|[exist]. [CREATIVE]. [CONSTRUCTIVE]. [DESTRUCTIVE].

Agnete grasped at her head without feeling in her fingers, wondering how her hair was still intact. “The orc blacksmiths have a saying,” she ground out. “When all you have is a hammer, every solution involves swinging it.”

The Burning Forge leaned back, using the massive anvil as a throne. Or perhaps a stool. She looked down at her with that vacant mask, almost as if disappointed that its words weren’t getting through to Agnete. Though thankful that it wasn’t wording at her at the moment, Agnete wasn’t sure that she and the god could come to an understanding. What was it the Protector had said about the Cloak of Shadows and the former inhabitants of the Underworld? Poor Lady Shadows couldn’t understand. The Cloak of Shadows had ‘saved’ the denizens of the land by turning them into mere shadows of their former selves, doomed forever to carry out the motions of life as if the ones casting those shadows were still around.

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Hardly a salvation in Agnete’s eyes.

Now here was the Burning Forge, trying to communicate something to her. Despite the clear concepts slamming into her like a crystalline hammer, Agnete wasn’t sure exactly what they were trying to say. She had thought the Burning Forge was disappointed with how she had been using the flames, hence her response, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“What do you want?” Agnete hissed. Even her tongue, despite the lack of pain, felt charred and broken.

The Burning Forge stared. It was said that the designs and plots of the Light were impossible to understand for mere mortals and that the same held true for other gods before their departure. But something about the Burning Forge struck Agnete as different.

It was this world. Although strange and alien compared to what she was used to, the world itself was… understandable? Agnete couldn’t begin to guess what the machines were making, but they were making something. There was a logic to their processes. Raw material went into the furnaces, ingots went into molds, produced goods went elsewhere. Some amount of it must have come to this central area, for there were several buckets along the walls collecting pieces and parts that fell in from large hoppers.

And, while Agnete didn’t understand how they worked, she had seen the Burning Forge produce one of those black gearboxes. One of which now served as the core to the mechanical copy of Agnete, others had been the center of those flying serpents. They were… somehow… people. Or living beings, at the very least. Presumably, after being produced here, those black boxes would go elsewhere in the factory. Perhaps they would be turned into more flying serpents or those suited figures Agnete had only seen from a distance.

The Burning Forge was creating… followers? A population? The god existed here, on the ground level among mere mortals, working alongside them. A stark contrast to the Light, who shone down radiance from afar, or the Cloak of Shadows, or Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Presumably different than the Heart of Gold or the Almighty Glory as well.

The Burning Forge leaned forward. She stretched out her bare hand, scooping it through the pool of molten metal. Pulling her hand up, she held out a small globule of the glowing viscous liquid. Bits of it dripped back through the god’s fingers, but once she moved her hand over the obsidian platform that Agnete stood upon, the drippings began moving, pulled unnaturally toward Agnete.

Agnete took an unconscious step backward only to realize the foolishness of her actions. If this god wanted to kill her, lower, more tangible god or not, Agnete doubted she would have been able to stop it. With the charred skin of her body spreading ever further because she had grasped hold of her flames only to pull in too much, Agnete doubted the god needed to do anything at all but wait a few more minutes.

With Agnete standing still, the thin strands of the molten metal dripping from between the Burning Forge’s fingers touched her. Her flesh hissed for a brief moment, but there was still no pain. The glowing red metal worked its way around her body, flowing as if it had a mind of its own, filling in the thin cracks left behind in her charred skin. The skin near the glowing strands of metal started to change as well, turning from crusty and rough to a near glass-like smooth. It remained black but looked more like the obsidian platform she stood upon than anything organic.

The heat in Agnete’s chest started to spread out. It didn’t leave her body as it had when the Burning Forge first spotted her, rather, it expanded, filling the metal lines that now covered her arms, legs, and neck. The burning of her skin slowed and subsided even as the metal started glowing ever so slightly brighter.

Agnete looked down at one of her hands, frowning as she flexed her fingers. Both the metal and the glassy skin flowed and shifted, allowing her to move. With a thought, she pulled out her flames just as she would have done before. A small burning ball ignited the air over her palm. Instead of the familiar red-orange flames, the ball of fire was blue. Almost white. Agnete sucked in a breath and forced down the amount of magic flowing from her. It took concentration and effort, but the blue flames slowly turned back to yellow and finally a deep scarlet.

Movement from the Burning Forge pulled Agnete’s attention off her magic. Once again, the god dipped her hand into the pool of magma that surrounded the anvil. She scooped up a globule and held it over the obsidian platform. This time, she did not hold it near Agnete. It plopped down, landing in a large blob.

The Burning Forge used the sharp tips of her gauntleted fingers to carve into the blob as it quickly solidified. Having worked in a forge plenty of times, Agnete recognized some of the techniques that she used in manufacturing something, melting down specific parts while allowing others to cool and mold the metal. Except the skill with which the Burning Forge worked was unbelievable. The metal form started to take shape. A ruff of precisely carved feathers, complete with individually lined barbs in the vane… a beak with perfect roughing making it look as if it had been used… the sharp points of the talons gripping the top of the obsidian platform’s raised railing…

If Agnete had been as large as the Burning Forge, such fine details would have been impossible.

Yet it was clear. As the Burning Forge pulled her hand back, she left behind a raven. A life-sized raven cast in metal yet looking so realistic that Agnete was genuinely surprised when it didn’t take flight.

The Burning Forge pulled back, leaning against the anvil once again as she watched Agnete. With a lazy sweep of her arm, she gestured Agnete forward.

Agnete took a step, idly noting that she could feel her toes once again. The marvel of that would have to wait, however. She was fairly certain that the Burning Forge was, once again, trying to communicate with her. Having decided that those words weren’t working, she decided on… interpretive artwork, apparently.

Agnete threw a questioning glance up at her patron god, wondering if all of the gods were so…

So…

Obtuse.

Would it kill the god to just explain normally? Surely a god could figure out how to talk rather than use those concepts.

Concealing a sigh, Agnete looked back to the raven.

And stared.

And… something, somewhere deep inside her, was disappointed.

It was an impressive work, to be sure, as lifelike as it was. But it was just a raven. No matter how she looked at it, no matter the angle, it was just a raven. Not even a raven. A metal simulacra that couldn’t take flight. It wasn’t doing anything apart from sitting. It perched and sat, forevermore.

For a mortal, it would have been wonderous in detail alone. But coming from a god? Perfection was the bare minimum of expectations. A god whose domains included creativity? Disappointment was the least of the feelings surging inside Agnete at the moment. She reached out for the raven.

She paused, seeing her arm once again. Her once-charred skin was now a smooth, obsidian-like surface, crisscrossed with glowing veins of molten metal that filled the cracks and imperfections. The delicate lines of fiery gold traced intricate patterns across her fingers and palms, turning her hands into a work of art that celebrated the rebirth, forging beauty from her broken skin.

“Ah.”

Agnete looked back to the god lounging against her anvil.

“I… I see,” Agnete said. “I… I didn’t have a choice. Up until this last year, I had no choice but to burn and burn and burn.

“I’ve built things since then. Armor, mostly. But also a wheelchair, mechanical legs, and…” she trailed off, looking back to the door to the chamber where her copied body was presumably waiting.

The Burning Forge was disappointed. A god of fire, creativity, manufacturing, and automation wanted her powers used for more than just sweeping away enemies in gouts of flame. She wasn’t a god of war of domination, nor of purification through cleansing fire. She was a constructor. A builder. An innovator.

“There’s a war going on,” Agnete said with a frown. “I can’t make promises that things will change immediately, but…

“But,” Agnete said, straightening her back. “The war has left a full half of Mystakeen in ruins.” She looked down at her hands again before looking back up. “It can be rebuilt, grander than before. Even with your power, I’m only one person. I can’t do it alone…”

The Burning Forge crossed her arms, looking down with that mechanical mask shifting ever so slightly. Her gaze was judging, trying to decide if Agnete understood what the god was trying to say. Agnete… honestly wasn’t sure, exactly, that she had. Communicating in such an enigmatic way was surely less efficient than other methods. Then again, this wasn’t a god of efficiency.

With a casual, almost human-like shrug of her shoulders, the Burning Forge looked upward. Her fingers curled around a large chain dangling from the domed ceiling overhead. Each link of the chain was taller than Agnete and the metal bars were thicker than her entire body. Yet the Burning Forge grasped a hold of it with ease and gave it a light tug.

An ear-splitting whistle resounded through the air, drawn out. Agnete clapped her hands to the sides of her head, trying and failing to protect her ears. The whistle lasted until the Burning Forge released the chain.

[Understood]/[comprehend]/[know-it-all]. [Assistance]/[aid]/[SERVITOR]|[required]/[lifetime supply]|[begin manufacturing]!