Rook had five days. Five days rocking on the waves. Five days with nothing to do. Five days to brood in silence and hold his tongue while his heart kept him awake all night. Many years ago he told himself he would take the world as it was; he would not strain over what could not be changed, he would not waste time crying over coffins, and he would live for the living—for he knew how suddenly and pointlessly life could be snapped.
It was a stoic philosophy that he was not especially good at observing.
The trouble was he no longer knew what was or was not mutable. Now it seemed the dead could return while a woman in love could never be persuaded to romance. One had to know which hardships were eternal and which could be overthrown before he accepted them, surely? Somehow that was more challenging than resurrection.
Rook had five days. He tried to accept how it seemed things must be, but still he stayed awake. Thus he retrieved ink and a slip of paper from the captain and did what he often did in his head, now by hand, for the first time in many years.
The golden eyes like yellow coals left in the furnace flame;
Beneath a white unmelting breast burns passion just the same:
An open blaze so bright and hot, so comforting, so warm;
Belies the marble skin: the curves draw men like moths in swarms;
And for the patron of all fire, the Sun which hangs above,
For all he does for us on Earth, it pales before my love;
For granting life to plants and trees and bringing spring anew
Is small indeed contrasted to the flame inside of you:
Which shines through wit and barbèd tongue and temper to behold;
But spreads too far with fire loose and burns us uncontrolled.
And after so much time so near you’d think I might have learned
But now and for forevermore, I like it getting burned;
And every kiss that swells the risk we’ve taken love too far
Reminds us still that love is how we forget who we are.
Over the course of the next half-week more words were scratched out than existed in the Kathar language, more space crossed off the page than could be afforded, but at last his final draft was finished, squeezed in tiny letters at the bottom of the margins. There he read it again and again and again. It was terrible. Spontaneous verse did not last long enough for self-consciousness to set in, but when written down it was different. He was frankly shocked at how much his talent for the bard’s craft had atrophied. But it did reflect how he felt, and he was happy to have expressed himself somehow, even in silence, even in solitude.
Now to decide whether or not to give it to Eris. Normally Rook had no compunction over making a fool of himself, but this time he hesitated. Would she understand his meaning? Would she understand ‘white unmelting’ as a reference to both her frosty-pallid skin and her icy heart and overlook the fact that ‘unmelting’ wasn’t a word at all; and if she did, would she be offended? Parallels between a passionate woman, the sun, and a fire mage seemed obvious enough—but he doubted she would ever understand why forgetting ‘who she was’ would be so desirable. The point was getting over oneself, but now looking at it in context he wondered what it had to do with the rest of the poem, and he almost started all over again.
But the captain rung his bell to signal land on the horizon. Five days adrift were at their end. He made one copy for himself and sealed another in an envelope from the captain’s desk, then hid it within Eris’ pack.
----------------------------------------
Aletheia spotted a man in a cloak watching them from the crossroads outside Vandens. He stood atop melted snow and the moment Rook turned his way he chose a path opposite the party’s destination and fled down the road, heading west, walking quickly like someone too startled to be subtle yet too worried of conspicuity to run.
They watched him go.
“A friend from our first year in Rytus, perhaps?” Eris said.
“Too tall,” Pyraz said.
“If we’re likely to be recognized anywhere, it’s here,” Rook said. “We’ll make sure to keep watch all night. But a single suspicious figure is the least of my concerns.”
----------------------------------------
The sun set early. Snow showered from skeletal trees. Their breaths hung in the air. Tomorrow they would reach Dakru. Tonight they camped in the woods. By the light of the fire Rook caught the glare off Eris’ eyes. She said nothing, but regarded him with the expression of a starving tigress in debate over whether or not to devour her young. Confusion, sadness, resignation, yet also consideration, hunger, and contempt. Rook had known so much sadness in his life; he would never understand why this woman chose it for herself.
“Did you ever visit the Spires?” Aletheia asked. She caught a squirrel with her bow some hours earlier and now they roasted it over their green campfire.
“Of course,” Pyraz said.
“You walked the Oldwalls?” Rook said.
“Yes.”
“I’ve always wondered why they were built how they are,” Rook said. “They don’t seem to protect anything in particular. And what were you afraid of that needed walls so high?”
Pyraz played with his dagger. “They formed a web across the kingdom. Like the quarters of Katharos and Ewsos, each principality was divided, demarked at the borders. Thus every Archon knew where his sovereignty began and ended. Now they lead nowhere. But they weren’t for protection. It was through the Oldwalls that we spread the mana of the aether through the realm, to each and every home and town and village and city.”
“Like aqueducts for magic,” Aletheia said.
“Yes.”
“So they weren’t really defensive walls at all,” Rook said.
“Not at first,” Pyraz said.
“What do you mean?”
“A wall is a wall.”
Rook frowned. He received the impression that the view of the Spire on the horizon during their daytime journey had Pyraz in a bad mood. Fair enough. Rook knew what it was like to have a life taken away. He still wasn’t sure what Pyraz’s implication was, but he fell silent—until Eris interjected:
“He means,” she said, “the strength and scale of the Oldwalls proved their use once the men of Esenia began fighting each other.”
Pyraz nodded.
“I thought you said all the people of Esenia were loyal to the Regizar,” Aletheia said.
“We were,” Pyraz said. “But not all People of the Blood agreed on what loyalty meant.” He rubbed his eyes. “I need sleep.”
“I have the first watch,” Rook said. “It’s going to be a terribly long night.”
----------------------------------------
This time there were no apples on the branches. All around the base of the ancient Spire the trees were frigid. Rook craned back his head to stare at the jagged black metal that lined the exterior, at the teardrops of steel and spines of iron along its sides that led up infinitely into the sky. The tower attached to the Magister’s Keep was impressive, but no comparison existed between that and this. Nothing like Dakru Spire had been built in eons. Nothing of its kind was like to ever be built again. There was something deeply sad about that.
Oldwalls jutted from its right side. Gargantuan in height, built of black blocks tinged with frost. Like snow at night. The walls led east. Uphill. Toward Thermopos Mountain. Visible for some distance on the horizon, snaking over land, before disappearing into the terrain.
The Spire’s front door was ajar.
“You all met here,” Aletheia said.
Rook considered Pyraz. “I suppose we did.” To Eris: “Do you think anyone has been here since us?”
“‘Tis a conspicuous landmark. I would be surprised if no one had,” she replied.
“You left it open,” Pyraz said. With that he stepped through the door. Into the darkness. Entering the Spire once more.
The mana circuitry along the walls still burned brightly, casting enough light to see unaided inside. Their lines led from the portal chamber and into the Oldwalls.
The few coins they left behind in the commander’s bedchamber were long gone. The armory was disturbed, though much as Rook remembered leaving it otherwise. He grabbed Aletheia’s wrist as she went to idly touch a sword in a rack.
“Don’t,” he said.
In demonstration he retrieved an arrow from her quiver and poked the same sword. Its hilt turned to molten metal in an instant and a red globule dropped to the floor at her boots. She jumped backward. They both watched as it solidified in mere seconds back to what seemed to be steel, now malformed in a puddle on the ground.
“Oh,” she said. She looked between the other weapons and various armors still on display. “Okay.”
Then there was the portal chamber. The way to the tower’s top. They found its door, and…
It did not tug open.
“What did you do with the door’s keystone?” Pyraz said.
Eris pulled at the handle again. She closed her eyes, thinking hard, but at last she admitted, “I do not remember.
“You don’t remember?” Rook said, astonished.
“Well—‘twas three years ago! I have found several keystones since, I—I was certain I still had it.” She swore and fell to the ground, where she began searching through her pack.
Rook was amazed to see the assortment of magical oddments she kept strictly organized within her things. She never threw away what she could stand to keep. Old scrolls, pages of books, notes, and…his poem. The letter opened. Folded neatly away where it would be safe. When she saw him see it she quickly closed the pack and gave up her search.
“I have tried to keep everything,” she said, “but I must have lost the stones to this Spire when our things were stolen by the bandits outside Kaimas. It was foolish not to notice their absence, but it was also impossible to carry two tiny keys with me wherever I went for the rest of my life.”
“It was foolish,” Pyraz agreed.
“But it was impossible,” Rook said. “Our destination isn’t the portal. This doesn’t change our plan.” He motioned at the mana circuitry. “And the Spire’s still active regardless.”
Pyraz tugged on the door. “We did not close this door.”
“No,” Eris said. “As I recall we left it open.”
“Then someone else with a key has returned here to seal the chamber.”
“What does it matter?” Rook said.
“In my time,” Pyraz said, “the teleportation room of a Greater Spire could be configured to lead elsewhere than merely the pinnacle
“Ewsos?” Aletheia said.
“More likely another Spire. There were other ways to return to Ewsos.”
“I found one myself,” Eris said. “Do you suggest that someone else with access to a Spire has visited this place, after we reactivated it?”
“Yes.”
“…I would be curious to meet him. Yet we are not here to speculate. Unless you believe we are to find him at the manaforge, let us continue to our destination.”
Rook led the party back toward the eastward path. He followed the circuitry along the walls. “It’s a long way.”
“Indeed it is,” Eris said.
“You don’t know a manaforge waits for us at its end. Or that it still works.”
“No. I do not. I also do not know you are not a goblin in human disguise.”
Rook smiled. He walked backward, entering the dim confines of the Oldwalls’ entrance. “The joke is on you, Eris. I’ve been a goblin this whole time. My real name is Snotnozzle; now follow me if you dare!”
----------------------------------------
The Oldwall hallways were twenty feet wide and a hundred feet tall. They were pitted with guardposts and upper storeys and staircases that led to battlements, with living quarters and crumbled arcane machines that had sat dormant and rusted for an eternity. Magic flowed through this place now, but for many years it had been gone, and although the walls’ exterior looked much the same as the day they were abandoned, the interior was dusty, musty, and decayed. Large sections of the roof had collapsed. Rubble crowded the path. For the first ten miles they walked uphill and, looking up, they often saw not the ceiling but the clouds overhead, and they trudged through deep snow captured in the wide trenches of the walls. Yet always to their sides, never broken, ran the parallel lines of two dimensional piping, the Manastone circuity of yellow on the right and blue on the left that melted all they touched.
Soon the clouds disappeared. The roof became solid even as debris still cluttered the path. They were forced to clamber over heavy stones fallen from the ceiling—yet in their place was not the sun, or now the moon, but earth and rock.
They were underground.
“The walls take us into Thermopos,” Rook said. “We’re under the hills already.”
“Thermopos is a volcano,” Aletheia said. “They built their forge inside a volcano?”
“It wasn’t a volcano when they built it,” Pyraz said.
“With our luck we will encounter a cave-in and find no way forward well before we reach the forge itself,” Eris said.
Rook frowned. “If we are entering a volcano, that might be the luckier outcome.”
Soon they rested for the night. They set up their bedrolls between fallen bricks, nestled against the lines on the walls, feeling no longer like they were traversing halls but instead cavernous tunnels and underground highways. Rook supposed they were.
He found himself with a racing heart as he took watch that night. He was thinking about Eris. Would she really leave him again? After everything they’d been through? Over and over again the same thoughts played through his mind. He became frustrated to be thinking so much about so little. It was driving him mad.
For the first time he almost understood Eris’ point of view.
He abandoned his post an hour in to explore their surroundings and distract himself. At first he expected to find nothing at all, yet with a little looking he stumbled upon a staircase that long ago would have led to ramparts. He drew his sword and ascended.
There was a second storey. Another hallway. Perhaps a kitchen, or a barracks, or a place for travelers to rest; it was much too dark to tell. No lights lit this place.
A noise like wind came from the black. At first Rook startled, but then he listened more closely. It was not the wind. It was the howling of pain. So distant to almost be inaudible, yet the longer he stayed on those stairs and listened the more voices he could make out, drawing closer, until…
His heart jumped. He stepped backward and turned to flee back to camp, but when he faced the bottom of the stairs, he saw a man in a tunic. He wore sandals and no pants and fringe hung from his sleeve and he looked real—he was really there—and he took one step forward, and before Rook could think to do anything at all, the two had touched…
And the man was gone.
At once his mind returned to the Magister’s Keep and the scarshades that descended upon them by the thousand. He checked himself for burns. He was fine. He considered waking the others, but they still slept soundly, and here there was no sign of anything except silence.
He put his sword away and sat on a fallen brick. That was when Eris spoke softly.
“You are not surprised to find this place haunted,” she said.
He jumped to hear her voice, but he calmed quickly. “You’re awake.”
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She sat upright. “There is more on my mind tonight than sleep.”
“I know, it must be hard to learn the man you love isn’t a man at all.”
She ignored him. “I heard the spirits miles back. ‘Tis good to know not only I can see them.”
“They’re different from scarshades?”
“These are the echoes of mundane men who died in the Fall. The violence of their ends sundered their souls from their bodies. They are ‘true’ ghosts, trapped forever in this world.”
Rook shook his head. “That’s horrible.”
“To you who believe in stories of salvation at the jaws of lions, perhaps. Yet there may be reason to prefer being trapped in this world to imprisonment in the next. The next may well be worse.”
“Then we’re in the right line of work,” Rook said. “For if horrific death is how one ends up a spirit, then I think it rather likely we’ll both get your wish.”
“I am not saying I ‘wish’ to become a spirit. I am merely saying it is foolish to think ‘tis the worst fate that can befall a man.”
“Thinking on it. You know it sounds rather nice. You’d never be able to run away from me if we were ghosts together.”
Eris groaned. “Nor would you be able to touch me.”
“Are you saying you miss my touch?”
“…I am going back to bed. If you wish to flirt, find a spirit who will listen instead.”
Rook had heard worse ideas. But he decided it would be best to stay near camp, and so he did until Aletheia relieved him the next hour.
----------------------------------------
It was another day of walking before they caught their first glimpse of natural light in the distance. It ebbed and writhed like flowing lava, casting shadows back down the hallway. Before long Rook felt the heat, then he smelled the sulfur, and then he saw: not lava at all, but magma.
A flowing river of magma before them.
They were within Thermopos Mountain.
Before the magma they saw something like the ruins of a gate. Metal boxes on either side of the hallway, atop the blue and yellow lines of the walls, but any gate itself was long since removed. Nothing stopped Rook from stepping forward—except the crack in the nearby wall, from which that molten stone poured.
Eris motioned to the boxes. “These are Lightning Wall emitters. They are broken, but others may function yet. Be cautious.”
“What are Lightning Walls?” Aletheia said.
“If you see a wall which is made of lightning, do not walk into it. Is that clear enough?”
Aletheia didn’t respond, but Rook said, “I think I get the idea, but you’ll be kind enough to point them out if we run into one.”
“If you run ‘into’ one, there will be no need for anyone to point anything out to you ever again,” Eris said.
Their attentions returned forward. And there, across the molten stream, Rook saw the beginnings of the manaforge itself. The Oldwall hallway, so familiar, branched in two. The ceiling expanded from a hundred feet to a thousand, so that they found themselves at the threshold to a cavernous ring, around a dark and forged metal center, like the middle disk of a wheel. The mana circuitry shot out onto the ring’s walls, then spiraled to the ceiling, intermingling, leading in countless directions before converging at the facility’s heart.
The air was foul and hot. In the distance, metal crashed. Echoing, banging, like a thousand dwarves at a thousand anvils, until…
“Get down!” Pyraz shouted.
Everyone scrambled for cover at fallen stones or against the walls. Presently the crashing became even louder, and then they saw the automaton.
It stood thirty feet tall with shoulders ten feet wide. Its body was crafted from steel of purple and blue. A glowing shard of mana burned dimly in its enormous chest cavity. It walked like a lame man, its knees unbending, and it waded toe-first into the stream of magma.
Then it waded out, molten rock, red and burning, dripping off its unblemished exoskeleton.
It continued around the ring. Soon it disappeared around the other side of the central circle, the only sign of its existence the cacophony of its movement.
“What is that?” Aletheia said.
“The Forgemagister’s Protector,” Pyraz said. “His ultimate bodyguard.”
“It still works?” Rook said.
“So it would seem.”
“Let’s not fight him,” Aletheia said.
“Agreed,” Eris said. She pointed across the magma stream. There she indicated toward a narrower path that led into the central ring. “It will not be able to follow us inside.”
“There will be other defenses,” Pyraz said. “Do not be reckless.”
“Being here at all is rather reckless,” Rook said. “But all the same…” he looked to Eris. “We found your manaforge. Good work.”
“Crossing the lava may be the most reckless measure yet,” Eris said. “We had best go quickly, before the Protector returns.”
Pyraz nodded. He stepped forward. His eyes fixed over a large section of the stream. Then he ran his hand across the area, and from the tips of his fingers billowed frost. The red calcified black over a section large enough to step across, turning before Rook’s eyes into solid stone across the ground.
More still came from the crack in the wall. Slowly dripping, pouring like molasses their direction. “Come,” Pyraz said, and he led them into the central ring.
Another hallway. Here the ceiling was low, like a narrow slit cut through the earth. It led to a room that was brightly lit with countless colors. Pyraz hesitated for a moment so Rook stepped ahead to lead, when just then he heard a noise like a nearby honking. An artificial noise, very unfamiliar, that rang out once; then again; and finally a third time, and then—
Pyraz grabbed him with a spell and pulled him to his back. He fell hard and hit his head on the ground and cracked his skull, but not a second later there came a roar of thunder and a flash of lightning as a white streak of energy shot past his eyes. It missed him by an inch and collided instead with the wall behind him, where it blew a smoldering hole three feet deep.
A noise like a whirring followed. Several seconds passed. Then…nothing.
Rook swore. Pyraz stepped cautiously ahead. Eris rushed to Rook’s side and pulled him up off the ground; once he was standing she stepped away consciously, and when Rook was on his feet he saw the source of the lightning’s emission: a small pyramid with coils that hung from the roof. Now Pyraz raised his hand at it. He concentrated for a few moments, then with a gesture the metal of the coils turned molten like the magma they left behind and dripped onto the ground.
“A Sentry Pylon,” he said. “It requires seconds between its shots to recharge.”
“I have seen similar devices,” Eris said. She had hardly exerted herself, but her voice came quickly. When she and Rook met eyes her expression was one of hardly-contained agitation. “You are lucky to be alive.”
“Will there be any others?” Aletheia said. She grabbed Rook’s arm.
“Likely,” Pyraz said. “If you hear its coils charging, jump backward and duck.”
Pyraz took the lead thereafter. Soon they emerged into the inner ring, where mana circuitry ran crisscrossed along the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, glowing hot with magic, and low walls were everywhere within a circular, domed-roof chamber, all around a central smokestack that connected from the ground to the ceiling like a mighty pillar of stone within a cave.
That central pillar was the manaforge itself.
It was an enormous silo made of black steel. Around its top burned a halo of blue electricity. Blue and yellow scored the floor all around its base. It looked nothing like a forge or an anvil, but instead a pedestal in a church: atop a metal pyramid was an altar scrawled with Regal writing, wide enough for a suit of armor or a great sword, and around it at chest level the pillar of the forge was bisected. Yet a few feet above that pedestal was the rest of the machinery, etched everywhere with magical runes, covered in dark steel, leading all the way to the ceiling.
“We’re never going to be able to use this,” Aletheia said with despair in her voice.
“It is simpler than it seems,” Pyraz said.
“Be quiet,” Eris said. She jumped to translate the writing. “‘While the Archons issue the commands, and the forgemagisters wield the tools, she is the one who guides their hammers and chisels all the way. She is the one whose sacrifice enables our Kingdom to thrive. To her all respects are paid.’”
Eris finished the sentence with a rising inflection, uncertain of the meaning. “Who is ‘she?’”
“The Adjutant,” Pyraz said. He put a hand to his forehead. “I remember now. It had been so long, I had forgotten…”
“Forgotten what?”
“The manaforges were not run by Forgemagisters. They merely crafted the items. It was the Adjutants who looked after the machines, who cared for the forge, who managed the defenses.”
“What’s an Adjutant?” Rook said.
“A Magister whose Essence has been transferred into a machine.”
Eris’ eyes lit up. “You mean to say an Arcane Intelligence? That is what runs this place?”
Pyraz nodded.
“We must retrieve her,” Eris said. “She will be most valuable. More valuable than even Pyraz, I should expect. Marvelous! That is a treasure I never might have anticipated in this place.”
Aletheia and Rook shared an unknowing glance. “We’re here for the forgestone,” Rook said.
“And we shall use it, but have you forgotten already about our need to raise funds?”
He sighed. “No.”
“No,” Eris said. “And regardless, we must find out how to use this device. The Adjutant will tell us.”
They looked around the premises. There was a back exit to the far end of the ring, where Rook spotted more magma flowing and another wide avenue that led into darkness—and another Sentry Pylon. That hallway bisected this central ring, forming two large rooms to the left and the right of the forge itself. Both were marked.
To the left: OFFICE OF MAGISTER HERUKAZ
To the right: ARCANE INTELLIGENCE CORE
Both doors were heavy metal, locked with keystones like that back at the Spire. Eris went straight to the righthand door.
“Damn you!” she swore. “The magic still holds. ‘Tis sealed with a spell I cannot break.”
Pyraz stepped forward. “Arcane Abrogation,” he said. “Robur knew that spell.”
“Yes, Robur knew that spell. And none others.” Eris thought for a moment. “There is little mana here, so deep underground. Perhaps…”
She knelt down to the ground and cast a spell Rook had never seen before; at the touch of her fingers the circuitry on the floor, then on the walls, disintegrated. The runes on the handle to the door faded in their strength, but still held.
Eris swore again. “Can you do nothing?” she said to Pyraz.
“You’re close to unlocking it yourself.”
“And you could do it better?”
He sighed. A moment. Then he made a symbol on his chest. A moment passed…and the runes all went dark.
“…you know Arcane Abrogation?”
“I just remembered it,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have worked before you cut off power to the door. That was clever.”
Rook stepped forward then, and together with Pyraz he tugged the door to the side, hauling its dozen-tons of steel out of their way.
The other side was dark. The room was large and empty. Opposite them, against the wall, sprawled a huge, infernal machine. It burned red and blue and gold and green and arcane fire bubbled from the mouth of a furnace that sprawled pipes in all directions, to the ceiling, into the walls, over the ground.
Before the furnace’s mouth was a pedestal that glowed red itself. In Regal there was a name inscribed beneath it. Eris read it aloud:
“‘Plethwih.’”
She stepped forward and tapped the pedestal. A moment later there erupted a column of rainbow-colored flame, but no heat followed; seconds passed, and then a woman flickered into existence on the pedestal. She was no more than a foot tall and made of fire, shifting like lava, colors ebbing and flowing before Rook’s eyes. She wore a dress and had long hair but all her other features were indistinct, too changing to be pinned down.
She said something Rook couldn’t understand. Whatever it was, Eris went from the tips of her toes to sunken anger. “No!” she shouted.
“What’s she saying?” Rook said. Thus Aletheia translated:
“The new world of Ewsos is too perfect for the obsolete. The manaforges have been shut down. I understand that now. I waited so long, but without their return I know my place. But I made my sacrifice to serve, so ever I will serve.
“The silence is too oppressive. It has been one thousand three hundred and eleven years since my last communication with a mortal intelligence. I cannot endure the silence any longer. It has come time to terminate my consciousness. Should the Regizar ever return and need tribute of my services to operate his great forge once more, I have left a remnant of my mind behind to instruct any who might reclaim this facility. It is not a conscious fragment, but it knows what it must know to at least see that I am replaced successfully.”
The small figurine of the woman on the pedestal began to cry.
“Goodbye. I hope to see you again, Your Majesty.”
The woman disappeared. Yet where she stood there appeared a black stone, a small slab of obsidian like the key to a Regal door. Eris grabbed it.
“She killed herself,” Rook said.
“Miserable bitch,” she said. “At least she had foresight to think we might return some day. That is something.” She held up the slab of stone in her palm and pressed a finger to it. A moment later, a smaller projection of the same woman, this Plethwih, appeared on it.
It said something in Regal. Eris replied.
“I can’t understand it,” Rook said.
The projection hesitated. She snapped her fingers. Then she replied in Kathar, “I am sorry.”
Rook blinked. “How can she speak our language?”
“She cast a spell,” Eris said. “To me she still speaks Regal.”
He nodded, pretending like that made sense to him. He found his opportunity to make a joke, “What is there worth stealing here?”
Again the projection hesitated. Thinking. Then: “Each Protector managem is worth approximately three talents. There are eight hundred and seven protectors awaiting deployment at my command.”
Everyone froze.
“Protectors? Like the one on patrol outside?” Rook said.
“This facility is defended by multiple security systems centrally commanded at my AI processing center. In the event of a security breach, I would deploy the protectors to eradicate anyone unwelcome according to the Forgemagister.”
“The Forgemagister is dead,” Eris said. “Now we have come to use this place. Deactivate all security measures and tell us how to use this forgestone.”
A few seconds of consideration. In that time Eris retrieved the stone from her pack. She placed it on the pedestal, atop the forge, as they proceeded back to the central ring.
“Security measures are deactivated,” the AI said. “You do not have authorization to begin the crafting protocol.”
“And how does one get authorization if not from you?”
“The Forgemagister’s key is required to begin the crafting protocol.”
“Where is the Forgemagister’s key?” Eris was getting impatient.
“The Forgemagister’s office is located across from my processing core.”
They glanced at the other closed door. “Can you open it for us?” Aletheia asked.
It slid open on its own. Eris put the stone away into a pocket. “Be wary of what this machine says. It is not to be trusted.”
Rook walked to the door. He glanced inside, ready to duck back if he heard any noises. “Seems to me she’s another stroke of good luck.”
“At least she’s willing to cooperate,” Aletheia said.
Windows of warm sunlight illuminated the rear end of the Forgemagister’s office. It was the size of the Adjutant’s control center, with an arched roof, a vast desk surrounded by finely crafted chairs, walls of wood miraculously undecayed, upholstery and silken curtains. Carpet in fine floral patterns and dyed purples covered the floor. Six statues of men in armor stood along the walls, three to each side. It would have been a serene, calming place...
Were it not for the ooze. The ooze which gathered like a wall of mildew across the room's corner, which congealed into a creeping gray mass like a hulking wolf spider at their entrance. It was gigantic. At least four times the size of the creature they encountered in the Shrine of Zur-Bas, where they found Samdosa and her brood.
The ooze lashed out in Rook’s direction with a pseudopod. It fell off the wall and its gelatinous, uneven, ever-shifting shape vibrated like water as it moved.
“Back!” Rook said. “Get back!”
Suspended in the semi-transparent gray liquid was a black slab of stone, a golden chain, and a diamond ring.
“How did an ooze get here?” Pyraz said.
“It is not an ooze,” Eris said as she backed up, “it is the Forgemagister. That is the key.” She pointed at the slab of stone.
The ooze was very slow. It crept toward them at a glacial pace. But as it raised itself on the ground of the office it formed a tsunami of slime on approach, so much more than Rook knew how to fight.
“Astera froze it last time. Then we trapped it,” Rook said. “Can we freeze it?”
“I will disintegrate it,” Pyraz said.
“No, you idiot!” Eris shouted. “You risk destroying the key!”
He fell silent. “Then we freeze it.”
“And how will we retrieve the key after? ‘Twould be better to melt it, yet even that may not work…”
They stepped back an inch every several seconds.
Aletheia stared at the thing as it moved. Shuddering. Shaking her head. “We can’t fight it. We tried last time. It…it freezes.”
“And? As will a human, with enough mana,” Eris said.
“Humans are mostly water,” Aletheia said.
“Humans are mostly—” Eris started, but then she looked to Aletheia. “What is an ooze?”
“Mostly water?”
The girls shared a long look.
“What?” Rook said. “What is it?”
A pseudopod lashed out at him. The reach of this massive ooze was far longer than he realized and it grabbed at his ankle, tugging him forward, but he managed to cut it with his sword and jump farther away.
“If you have a plan,” he said, “do something!”
The ooze was near the doorway now. It squeezed its way through, very slowly.
“Help me,” Eris said. She stepped backward and focused on the ooze. Then she closed her eyes, and she grabbed Aletheia by the hand, and the two cast a spell—some spell, somehow, Rook watched as they did it together. Seconds passed. Another pseudopod like a sling flung from the inside of the office lashed out and hit Aletheia, wrapping around her waist, yet just as she gasped there came a sound of splashing—
The gray ooze turned completely transparent. Gray banished. The entire gelatinous form turned to water.
For a moment it held its shape. Just for a moment. Then…
A deluge of clean water flooded through the office and the manaforge, soaking their boots. The black key was washed directly to Eris’ feet. She picked it up.
The words sounded pained as she regarded Aletheia. “Good…work,” she managed.
Aletheia shrugged. “It was your idea. I just remembered.”
----------------------------------------
The windows that let in ‘daylight’ in the Forgemagister’s office were in fact Manastone lights colored to look as the sun. The room seemed perfectly preserved at first glance, but Rook stepped one foot over its threshold and stopped. He looked at the statues along the walls.
“Do you remember the statue in the office at Dakru?” he said.
“Yes,” Eris said. “But the AI has assured us these defenses are offline.”
“Do you trust her?”
She sighed. “I am not afraid of statues.”
Rook grabbed the few pieces of jewelry off the ground. “Eris. We have what we came for.”
“Yet there is more still to take. Stay behind, if that is your concern.” She proceeded inside. There she touched one of the wooden chairs at the Magister’s desk, and…
It immediately turned to ash. Like the items in the Spire’s armory.
She glanced at the statues.
“On second thought,” she said, “perhaps we are better to be safe. We have what we came for, after all.”
They tugged the door shut behind them. Then they returned to the manaforge.
Eris presented the key to the AI shard in her hand. “We have your authorization. Now tell us how to proceed.”
The projection of the lambent woman reappeared. “What do you wish to create?”
“We intend to use the forgestone as many times as it might allow, at least one for each of us. Is that possible?”
“Yes.”
“Then I wish to craft a magic staff. One that will aid me in my efforts to channel the aether.”
A long pause.
“Please contact the Forgemagister,” the AI said.
“What?”
“I am not capable of fulfilling that request without the presence of the Forgemagister.”
“Why not?”
“The manaforge must operate on its own. Specific requests are outside its parameters without the presence of the Forgemagister.”
Aletheia stepped forward. “How does it operate on its own?”
“The manaforge will determine the artifact you desire most and create it from a portion of the forgestone. Tailored artifacts require the presence of the Forgemagister.”
Eris scoffed. “That is not what the books say—”
“Do you think your books know better than the forge’s Adjutant?” Pyraz said.
“What does this inbred piece of stone know?” Eris swore. “She is a machine. She…” She sighed. “The forge does the work, not the Magister. Why can it only do this—to create the ‘artifact we desire most?’”
“The forgestone is one small component of the manaforge’s operation,” the AI said. “To create artifacts, a piece of the wielder’s soul is required. An artifact to match the soul is then produced. This bypasses the need for an individual Forgemagister’s craftsmanship.”
Now Rook, who had been idle until then, stepped forward. “A piece of the soul? What does that mean?”
“It is unadvisable to utilize a manaforge more than once without the presence of a Forgemagister.”
“A piece of the soul is a small price to pay,” Eris said. She rubbed her forehead. “It should be harmless if we do as the machine says.”
“Did you know about this?” Rook said.
“Yes,” Eris admitted. “That is no secret. Why do you think this world is not flooded with fantastic objects from these devices if they are so easy to use? A price is attached.”
"The price of our soul?"
"A small sliver of the soul," Eris corrected. "Do not be so dramatic. 'Tis hardly like you are losing it, anyway. It is merely being deposited into the item being crafted. You will still have it with you."
Now Rook was angry. He did not approve of this at all. But he fell silent. What was there to do, at this point? Could he stop Eris from using the machine? Did he want to? Was it worth it? Did it matter anyway?
“It is no matter,” she continued, “for I know what I most desire. Now who else will use the forge?”
“I will,” Pyraz said.
“I will too,” Aletheia said.
“Aletheia!” Rook said. “What could possibly be worth it?”
She hung her head. “I guess we’ll find out.”
He grabbed her by the wrist and looked into her eyes. Eyes just like Eris.
“Please,” he said, but it was all he could manage.
“I’ve already lost everything, Rook,” she said. “I’m not afraid of any price.”
“You haven’t lost me.”
“Then we can use the forge together.”
“What is it you think you want that you need to take this risk?”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said. “That’s why I need to do it.”
He saw then determination, resignation, in her eyes; and he knew that she would do this no matter what he said. He wouldn’t take her choice away from her.
“Well,” he said. “Then I guess I won’t be the only one out. Who needs a soul anyway?”
“I will go first,” Pyraz said. “Move out of the way.” He took the AI from Eris’ hand. “Now tell me what I need to do.”