Chapter Eleven

Fuel Your Ambitions

“Messr Scipio, I understand that you are distraught. But please, would you understand that there is nothing we can do? Your sister’s letter is very sad, yes, but I have my orders, Messr Scipio, and you have yours. You should be happy that I don’t have you martialled for the speech that your sister here has chosen. It’s a hard war for all, ja, and to purport that the Free Cities is favoring the defense of one city over another, that’s total quatsch. Think no more of it, and persist in your studies, and you’ll serve your sister much better in that way. Understood?”

The words pounded in my ears as the dwarf, the Grand Marshal of Engineering, pounded his fist on my sister’s letter. He was flanked by his second and third in command, the Arch-Sapper and the Master of Forge and Fire. All three of them were dwarves. All three of them had hailed from Kreuzhain.

They hadn’t even given me the courtesy of ceasing from their lunchtime beers as they heard me air my grievances. The Arch-Sapper continuously took heaving gulps from a large tankard of beer that he had brought with him, branded in white paint in a seal of some brewery from Duar D’ardin that I had never heard of.

Behind me, the Emberhold Hearth crackled and rolled its coals. The room wasn’t just warm, it was hot. Sweltering. In the Dining Halls, Maren and Ceecee had told Delmar and myself that the Office of the Grand Marshal’s hearth was connected to each and every one of the college’s forges so that the Marshal would be able to survey how much production was being pumped out of the College based off the heat that the hearth would radiate. With the Emberhold to my back and the three old Kreuzhainer dwarves to my front, I was sweating heaps, but I fought on for them to hear out Isidora’s letter.

“But there must be something we ought to be doing, correct? Don’t you think that this constitutes some level of action from our part? The Council of the Free Cities would want to hear that Avengard needs more defenses, and-“

“The Council of the Free Cities does not take military advice from the letters of War College Lances, Lance Scipio,” the Grand Marshal pointed his thick finger at me as he scolded me, and I could have sworn I saw small bags of fat shaking on his finger as he did.

“But then, Wilhelm-“

“That’s Grand Marshal Wilhelm to you, little boyling,” the Arch-Sapper interrupted me.

“Grand Marshal Wilhelm, like I had told you months ago, I had seen Seviskian scouts in the Black Forest. Boots on the ground, men right before the walls. I know that the forest can act as a sort of protection from the Seviskian front, but what if it’s instead acting as a cloak? A screen that invading men are hiding behind?”

“Historically, that’s impossible,” the Arch-Sapper interjected again before the Grand Marshal could share his thoughts. “The supply train and logistics traveling through the thicket of the Black Forest would be too difficult. It can’t be done.”

“What if they’ve invented something new?” I challenged them. “Some new tactic, or some new machine that trivializes logistics?”

“Quatsch,” the Grand Marshal said. “Ridiculous. Kreuzhain here is at the peak of engineering, driven by the War College itself. We know that the age of inventions is before us. Engineering, Lance Scipio, is a matter of optimization, ja? Everything that can be invented has already been invented. Look no further than the War College.”

I thought to reach for the hand cannon and wave it in their face, proving them wrong, showing them that innovation was still possible, and by non-dwarves nonetheless, but I thought better of it. The hand cannon was a massive leap in lethality, one conceived, essentially, by the Lady of Loss herself. Unleashing this unto the world would require a bit more thought.

“There’s nothing I can say or do that would change your minds, then,” I voiced my realization.

“Now you are beginning to understand,” the Arch-Sapper confirmed as he took a swig of his brew.

With that, I bade my goodbye, but not my thanks. They merely grunted as I turned my backs to them to leave the Grand Marshal’s office, the heat of the Emberhold Hearth lightly singing my skin as I made my exit. That hearth was very likely the last piece of change or innovation that had been embraced by dwarvish leaders within the War College, and it had been installed at least fifty years prior. All they saw was that productivity and output were high; they did not seem to bother check whether what was being produced matched the realities of the day and age.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

I needed to think, and so I walked. I walked aimlessly, with no destination in mind, and almost matching my mind step for step, my thoughts wandered aimlessly as well. The weight of the hand cannon, slipped into a pocket of my cloak, and what its weight would be on a world that seemed hungry for blood. Vengeance for Delmar, and what justice I could possibly earn for him when everybody else seemed convinced that the tower’s collapse was born of his own mistakes. And, finally, Isidora’s letter, and how I could best help my sister with two more years of being tied to the War College on my shoulders.

My shoulders. The worries and anxieties and traumas began to pile up on them, and as I walked, I felt as if I were carrying the world on my back. More thoughts, more dread. The smell of sulphur in my nostrils as I had administered the nightshade to my mother. The burning bodies and forlorn screams as Ignisclaw bathed Avengard in his inferno. The years that my family had spent on the run, so very far now from our home in the Dalintaya Isles.

Suddenly, I came to my senses. I hadn’t realized where I walked to.

I was on the top of the War College’s watch tower. If I remembered my lessons correctly, then I had climbed over a hundred and fifty steps without realizing it. Just a few dozen feet away, a cinderhawk glided through the sky, a specie of bird endemic to the region that had adapted to the constant ash and smoke from the city’s furnaces with its dark grey plumage. Somehow, the cinderhawk had adapted to an unforgiving world. Could I?

All of these questions I had in my head, with no answers. So many problems without clear solutions. As I looked out to the night sky over the rolling, empty plains, I felt small, like a tiny speck of dust on an infinite canvas. For what reason would I endure such impossible hardships? For what meaning would I take on such painful sacrifices?

I drew the hand cannon and I held it to my temple.

As I held the freshly wrought iron barrel to my head, one singular thought stayed cemented in my mind. The world, as broken as it was, simply could not be changed. This immutable fact stayed steadfast in between my ears. If there were a world without the Seviskians bringing war and violence to Jattan soil, then, in all likelihood, it would be the Kreuzhainers and their black and white sense of morality, or the elvish monarchy in Fleur d’Lain from their ivory towers, from which they rejected my family along with other refugees, or perhaps even the Avengardians who had let their Laurel be so easily corrupted by the other Free Cities.

And if the world would stay broken, why continue?

As I walked mindlessly up the stairs to the peak of the War College, many different questions had flooded my brain, but at the top, I realized that at its core, there was only one, and that was the question of pulling on the hand cannon’s trigger.

And so, with the tip of the barrel pointed at my temple, I pulled the trigger.

The Flintstrike Gloves ignited the blackpowder pot, leading to the chemical reaction igniting the iron shot, and-

The wisp-like visage with two glowing eyes floated before me once again. And the world seemed to stop. The cinderhawk was frozen in mid-air, its grey wings unmoving. The brick and stone under my feet…gone. The entire campus had disappeared; all that remained was the sky and the haunting coalescence of smoke and spirit-stuff constantly moving and re-forming before me. The Avatar of the Lady of Loss.

“Deserter,” the spirit taunted me, each syllable emphasized deliberately, like a haunting echo reverberating inside a dark seaside grotto. The smoky wisps began swirling and spiraling until they collapsed together forming a more material, a more recognizable womanly figure.

“I have no choice!” I yelled at the figure, as unwise as it was. “I can’t wait another two, three years in this damned college while Avengard burns a thousand miles away, and my sister with it.”

“That is not the desertion I speak of,” the Lady of Loss’ Avatar mouthed before me, with my body still held unmoving by Her unseen grasps. Seeing her before me reminded me of the cold, dense fog that gathered over the wreckage of Avengard after the Seviskian raid. “You desert your duties to me. Your life is not yet forfeit. Your soul must remain on this mortal realm.”

“My duties to you?” I echoed her, perplexed. “What could I possibly do for you that you couldn’t accomplish with the wave of a hand? Why won’t you let me just rest?”

In my hands, Her unseen grasp picked away the hand cannon from my grip, and the iron glowed with a menacing black aura. She floated the hand cannon back into my cloak and said, “You may rest when I allow it, as with all of your kind. All you have loved, all you have lost, and all you will lose belong to me. So do you.” After a moment, she added, as if she felt the need to clarify herself, “All you are is what you have loved and what you have lost.”

I did not have the heart nor the courage to argue against an Exiled God. Instead, I asked, “So what is it you want me to do, then? Anything I could do would be a drop in the ocean. You should have chosen Grand Marshal Wilhelm instead maybe, or better yet, Kazador.”

She began floating me down slowly, safely, towards the ground, towards the Wallwright’s Yard where Delmar had fallen along with his tower. As she did, she spoke, “The self is fleeting, but much lighter than you may understand. Take the loss and pain that has accumulated in your life and burn it.”

“To throw it away?”

“To fuel your ambitions,” the Lady of Loss said simply. “So come down from that tower and descend upon the world with the powers I am granting you, and engage with your pain as a catalyst.”

I landed gently atop my feet a fluttering bed of grass on the Wallwright’s Yard, and confused, guarded, I looked up towards the sky at the Avatar of the Lady and asked her, “What powers? Why are you helping me? To what end have you chosen me?”

And without heeding my questions, the willowy wisps began to unravel and vanish, and I was left with even more questions than I had answers. Only one thing was certain; I was leaving the War College, whether I was granted permission or not.