XXVI - PROTECTION
Glass was a moment frozen in time.
A single speck of dust could hang suspended therein, conserved for æons. Of the countless bygone civilisations buried in the mammoth ashes of time, the only shadows that marked their wake, their presence upon Eot, were artefacts of glass, stone and steel.
Where metal obscured whatever it touched, keeping at most the echo of its subsumed form, translucid amber preserved memory for all to see, indifferent to tide and turn.
Though seemingly diametrically opposed, Baethen found that they were but two sides of a singular token. Mirrors, he knew, were backended with alloys of silver and mercury and lead, coated with a varnish of glass and other alchemicals.
How could he marry the two? Better yet, how to part them?
He’d used extreme heat to purify a third of his shards, turning them into a singular molten amalgam of fulgurite and lead. The lump was heated until it bled its leaden blood, stealing away most of the impurities of char and cinnabon with it. Baethen then molded it into a sheet, taking care to make it thin enough for carrying but thick enough for a lasting structure; the actual durability of the shard did not affect the font-of-reflection conjured through [Sunder-the-Mirror] unlike with shape affecting manifestation form but its constitution did make it a whole lot harder to preserve spell reagents through the heat of battle.
Baethen used his gladius’ blade to carve grooves into the sheet while it still cooled so then when it set, he could more easily separate them. The damascene was unmarred, not needing to be cleaned for nothing would take to it, sorrow-steel scorning even the fiercest of flames; you could throw an arm of Damasc within a fiery Helmouth and it would remain clean of soot.
The end product of the fining ordeal was a verdigris ice that did not break without the equivalent power of oxen ploughing the fallows come spring.
Well, that may have been a bit of hyperbole—Baethen didn’t actually know that bit of fact.
The next set of reagents were a new type he hadn’t worked with before: etheric glass.
He’d gotten access to it through the third contra of his Crucible-Arcanum, allowing Baethen to condense smoke into solid form. Streamers of the stuff coalesced like morning dew upon leaf, transmuting insubstantial air into solid substance.
Etheric glass was pale-blue and near translucid—you’d not know it was there without a keen eye or previous knowledge. As for durability, a shard of the stuff was more fragile than sugar glass, breaking with the slightest of touches; even looking at it funny could risk the thing shattering. The edge that it could keep though was sharp enough to slice through stone as if paper.
Heat also proved to interact strangely with the esoteric material which was to say not at all. Baethen could hold a piece of etheric glass over an open flame for licks if not stunds and it wouldn’t even get warm, cool to the touch. Just as with heat, light passed right through it, utterly indifferent without either focusing or dispersing.
In regards to combat, [Sunder-the-Mirror] projected a plane of reflection no different with etheric glass as regular lead fulgurite. The difference lay that Baethen had to coat the former with a thin layer of steel so as to stop the brittle stuff from breaking. Perhaps he could devise a card-chain to make use of it in battle, forging a dome of etheric glass in an instant and then in the next, transforming it into an inviolate shield through [Sunder-the-Mirror].
The newly-minted reagents were carefully slotted into a leather parcel he’d modified for that exact purpose. It took some elbow grease to make plates of metal thin enough to box the square-shards in and a spring to boot but it was worth it.
Though he was no tinkerer, the contraption functioned well enough to hold his reagents in place; seeing as it was delicate work, he layered the space between leather and machine with riveted plates like brigandine—these made on the spot while the steel-wool he’d used to cushion the device was brought with him into the Evergaol.
His only surviving equipment from the fight with the sphynx, beyond the ivory-hafted gladius, was the pack he’d left at the outside of the Gate-Guardian’s lair. His armour had melted into slag and scale; he’d need a new suit.
For that he called the Captain to tell him of his plan.
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“Foolish, reckless, hopeless scheme, that one.” Haviershan reproached, gravel tumbling from his gullet. “I like it. Let me call the others ‘ere and tell them the good news.”
They did just that, convening on a section of the refuge where none had staked claim.
Baethen would play his forbidden card, clad himself in wormscale, douse himself in molten metal, shape and cool it so that he’d not be trapped and then redraw his Hand so as to expend any rune-brands of {Wrath}. To keep him from doing something rash, the cadre drew their weapons so that they might beat him senseless before the feyries could do it for them.
“Last time I was in the middle of a circle of men with just my breeches, they also had rods in their hands.”
At last did someone laugh at a jest of his, Tratvgar’s composure breaking like a thin layer of ice. Haviershan shook his head, not surprised at all at the shameless bit.
“Counting you, o’ course, Lac. Your rod’s the biggest.”
The consternated exhale was followed by a begrudging smile.
Just a round ago it would have elicited a guffaw but progress was progress.
“Well, nothing more for it.”
[Imp-of-Serpents] interfaced readily with [Scoric-Wormscale-Hide], forking Baethen’s tongue such that his next set of words were all in the Language—cards of the same deck bled into one another, especially so when their arcana resonated. Baethen could not help but speak in such a manner, be it by nature of the transformation or by his own sense of theatrics.
“[Speak of the Devil…]”
His grin did not elicit the reaction he was hoping for. Escoriot seemed ready to attempt an exorcism then and there, sybilant absent and all. Tratvgar took a step back, gripping his stave with white-knuckles as his eyes grew wide and his teeth began to chatter. Lac’s stance lowered so as to be ready to swing her sword-slab from her shoulder at a moment’s notice. Haviershan and Narancan were further away, watching and waiting.
It was difficult to think, his thoughts swept up in the undercurrent of mania that seeped through his skin, burrowing deeper than bone and reaching beyond marrow. The wont of a beast is to do as it wills, nothing more—he kept this at bay through repetition of the plan he’d concocted.
He took up the crucible that lay near him and doused himself in its already-molten liquid. It felt like nothing more than weight, the heat too petty to penetrate the crags of scoria that grew from his hide.
A devil could not be burnt by mundane fire alone.
The Beast lathered itself in amalgam of lead and iron, the metal seeping in between the wends and rents and vents of his topography. He half expected someone to say ‘ye missed a spot’ but no such luck—the silence was deafening.
After being sure that he missed no crack or crevice, the Beast took up his ivory club from the ground and struck the air, playing [Clouded-Fiefsight] in tandem with [Cycle-of-the-Crucible], and [Slag-and-Scale] whilst drawing upon any and all available arcanums—this last was more instinct than anything else, the animal cunning within seeking the gaps of his cards so that he might rectify them with his dominion, bending rules just so.
In an instant, a steel-shell froze atop him, draconic in aspect with large windswept horns spiraling outwards. Though his own rack of antlers was a shorn, half-ruined, malformed thing, these were regal and exultant in all their primaeval glory.
The next play was the hardest.
Beasts do not like being corralled into corners. They do not like chains, they do not like being fettered by rules they do not understand, they do not plan ahead but for moments and they see any trespass as trespass upon their very lives.
Why should he let go of something that felt oh so very right?
The wrong answer to that question was the easiest, and for a long moment, he almost gave in—how easy would it be to just let himself do what came natural? But not all bonds are evil. Self-denial was not self-sacrifice but rather freedom from the darkest, most despicable corners of the self that knew only to seek pleasure and shy away from pain.
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The Beast discarded his Hand and Baethen redrew that very same, only now, the {Brand-of-Wrath} was forfeit, cast away into the oblivion of Babylon. He could not see, trapped as he was within a cask of cold metal.
“Any help ‘ere, lads? This didn’t happen last time.”
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Baethen had left weak points in the plate through a mixture of cooling, heating, and shaping; it wasn’t all that far off from what he’d done to the glass sheet. The cadre took up their chisels and began to pry open the shell.
Each plate was thick and heavy, thinning only to preserve some amount of range of motion where they met. For most warriors, the leaden armour would’ve been nothing more than dead weight. But for Baethen, it would be like cladding himself in resplendent gold.
When at last they’d pried enough of the back plates so that he could remove himself from the cavernous maw of the suit, Baethen pulled in a deep lungful of breath.
“Gods, that was a bit unnervin’.” He said as he rolled his sore shoulder and stretched the knots out of his spine. “Usually like tight spaces.”
Perhaps he was not as humorous as he thought he was since the lot o’ them simply shook their heads or looked at him funny.
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Baethen took to tinkering and articulating the armour’s joints in the coming notch before they set off again. Just like the previous suit, he made heavy use of meshes and half-chains to give it flexibility without providing weak points where most of the locomotion would take place.
He’d heard of Haërztromian steel-shelled, faceless warriors, so-called ‘knights’, that fought each other with daggers, searching for holes in each other’s iron skin; and Baethen wanted no such thing happening with him. Dread-knights were supposedly named after them, given the second half of the name and all. The actual, Woedenite kenning for that sort of devil was helgrísar or ‘Giant-of-Hel’ which was descriptive if uninspired. When the steelshod men from Sunset-beyond-the-Dreadsea made landfall upon the Sapphire Isle’s shores, the people of Woeden couldn’t help but think that either devils looked like them or they looked like devils.
Most likely a bit of both—beyond the dragon-powder arms they bore being outlawed for their use of infernal sulphur, Haërztrom had attempted, with no small amount of effort invested, to annex Woeden into its Holy Byzantine Empire which was neither holy, Byzantine in origin, nor even an empire for that matter.
Till this day, the women of Woeden tend to the sword-graves of a thousand-thousand-thousand nameless men, be they outlander and isleborn, neither forgetting nor forgiving. Warriors die by order of their king and cannot be blamed for war so they get a soldier's burial all the same.
But as for the country itself? For the head which bore the crown?
Modern sailor’s curses and old pyrate hymns alike dedicated themselves to ridiculing and vilifying the landbound, throne-shackled, wall-cowering, lily-livered kings of the Continent that would not fight amongst their host but rather wage war from afar with a sea between them and their enemy like the cowards that they were.
Truly, it was a wonder how the mind could wander while one worked with their hands. Baethen hadn’t expected himself to rant and rave on his hatred for the Haërztromian monarchy while he made chain links.
The central theme for this set was ‘impenetrable, impregnable, impervious’.
Baethen would have to wear a mountain of lead on his back and shoulders to be able to live up to that ideal but it would be worth it. He’d not have to react to every attack, able to think out his approach and card-plays beneath a shield thick enough to stop bolt-caster’s dragon-powder bullet.
To make the inside of the suit more livable, Baethen exchanged a few tokens with the cadre in exchange for cloth, leather, straw, string, and wool. The insulation would help control heat as well, slowing its creep from the outside-in. Etheric glass was too brittle to fashion plates out of but could be rendered into a fine sand and then laced through the wool to ward off flame. The hybrid material reminded him of the unburning dresses of Byzantium barrow-kings; amiant, he thought it was called. A crystal-like lace that was popular among merchants that came from beyond the Dreadsea.
As for what kept him from chaffing, Baethen would float inside the suit in a pool of pure mercury. Before the addition of [Flawed-Steelheart] into Hand, this would have been a death sentence—now, it just felt like water if a whole lot heavier. Mercury, being dense as it was, also took on the role as a font reserve to power the suits other functions.
On the back of the armour, Baethen placed a hatch and set of unfurling plates that would allow him to extricate himself from within the Behemoth as he began callin’ it. The mechanism that moved the plates was a weld that could be undone through use of his cards, the mercury that flowed through the living war machine acting as conduits.
Cables thick as a man’s wrist like a ship rope would bind his blood to the various channels and veins he’d carved into the suit’s metallic flesh—this part was no different than in his previous dread-knight suit, biting into his back and lining his spine from shoulders to tail. He’d fashioned metal muscles in the same manner as the cables, threading them throughout the armour so he could pull on them to increase strength at the cost of the suit’s mercury reserves.
Once the armour was nearly finished, Baethen had one more step to do: [Ascension].
It was a common enough process to alchemy, allowing metallurgists to transmute metals into increasing purities, all the way from worthless lead to gold. Royal token-minters made use of ascension and descension to regulate the coin in circulation though it was outlawed for those not bearing the High-King’s seal to sell any transmuted material seeing as they kept the ‘memory’ of its previous form.
Each night, Baethen would place his hand on the chest of Behemoth and chant in the Language: “[Rise, stronger than before.]”
The first night lead decayed into rotten copper. The second, green melted away to bear the bluish, skyshod patina of fresh tin. The third, pearl darkened into the amber of bronze. The fourth, iron broke through like a river-serpent breaching the waters. On the fifth, the last and final night, a bastard of sorrowsteel was born.
It wasn’t ‘true’ damascene, not consecrated in the tears of Morophesh or the blood of Babylon, but it was just a smidge tougher than mundane steel. The amour, resplendent in argent, looked to have been an artefact fallen from the Silver-City itself and Baethen couldn’t have been prouder.
He’d had to weld more and more lead to the suit’s bones as it turned sleeker with each spell as the process thinned the resultant mass of metal. The sevenfold alloy that constituted Behemoth was one part lead, one part tin, two parts iron and three parts damascene in that order—the metals bleed into one another’s distinct weld layers. The lead-tin layer provided cushion while the sorrowsteel was the true barrier.
Once he’d gotten the armour as ready as he could, he called on the cadre to show them his prized creation.
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Haviershan gave the slumbering Behemoth a low whistle of appreciation as it stood in all its argent glory. Making the suit balance itself had been difficult, especially making it stand upright.
“Impressive lad.”
Its skin had been engraved with scrollwork and sagas, decoratory rune-brands at the intersections of each limb and at the centre of each plate. The horns had been rather fun to carve, reminding Baethen of his smithman’s lessons from Big Yldira.
“Can this thing carry our packs?” Narancan asked, ever the Field-Sergeant.
The suit had the air of a Nezarri clockwork soldier, those war-machines powered on dragon-powder and lightning. It was no wonder that they thought it some sort of eastern automaton.
“Aye, that it can.” Baethen said as he patted Behemoth on the shoulder. “It’ll cost ya though. She is a hungry lass and every bit of weight she carries, she needs to munch on some metal. Mostly lead though tin and copper are also needed.”
It seemed that it was rather impressive, truly, as Haviershan gave Baethen a friendly shove and said: “Go on and show us how she moves! Haven’t seen a war-suit like her in ages.”
Woedenites tended to be conservative in their arms and armour so seeing something like Behemoth stoked a bit of the Captain’s wanderlust.
Baethen went around the slumbering, steelshod helgrísar, towards its back hatch where he would enter. At the centre of the flower-like furling plates was a circle of copper which Baethen touched his palm to, heating it by use of his arcanum and cards.
The blend of the metal had been chosen for its low melting point so that he could take command of it with his magicks. Once it was red hot, the liquid wove through the channels, no longer locking the plates in place and letting them slide out by gravity alone. That had been a rather inspired working on his part, Baethen knew because the cadre worded their wonderment; even Escoriot couldn’t help but be enthralled by the mechanism.
Once the hatch was open, Baethen grabbed onto bars within and pulled himself into the Behemoth. It was weighed mostly in its front and especially on its foot so as to not topple over when he entered. The entire suit weighed more than an ox, he reckoned.
The insides were hollowed out from the knees-up so that Baethen could reach his arms into place and there was just enough space for him to wriggle his body about against the solid layer of lead amalgam.
Behemoth needed to go through a rather ornery card-chain called ‘ignition’ for it to function. Without heat, it was just an unmoving lump of metal which couldn’t do anything by itself.
“You lot will want to step back. It’s about to get rather warm.”
[Gullet-of-the-Sky-Gorger], [Cinderspark-Spit], [Forge-Maw], [Imp-of-Serpents] and [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] came together in an union that could only be described as ignition.
“[Awake O Sleeper.]”
Fire surged through the Beast’s veins, resurrecting it from the grave like a vulcan-mount stirring from slumber. The engravings lit up with shimmering, molten emberlight, smoke wafting from the Behemoth’s nostrils.
The lead amalgam melted into mercury which Baethen manipulated to ferry the cables into the slots he’d already had implanted along his spine. This made it hurt less seeing as he didn’t have to wound himself over and over again. He only had to twist the disengage the locks of the interfacing medium and his blood and the suit’s would mingle, further connecting him to the Behemoth.
Its head had no eyes, only a graven, rictus grin of a maw which opened to bare Baethen’s true grin. The upper part of the head furled backwards, up and over like a sallet while his chin rested on the Beast’s tongue like a head on a silver platter.
“Before you go clapping, know that this little trick cost me twenty lead-tokens and two coppers.”
That doused their fires right quick and Baethen doused his own lest he burn more money on a little show of braggadocio.