2 THE SECOND WRIGHT

  Medhan was born in the fifth century of the dark age when man was little better than a beast. Much of the world was driven to the edge of madness by the hidden towers. Rather than violent death by titanic horrors, civilisation suffered a slow agonising withering.

  Medhan had a different madness. From the moment he was born, he was plagued by sporadic inspiration. When the inspiration found him, it was in the sound of hammer falls. He would scream and try to shut out the noise and heat that overwhelmed his senses for days at a time. When it was over, however, he would exhibit some new knowledge or obscure secret.

  As a toddler, he knew the ways to animate the simple toys given by his woodcarver parents. When he was seven, he captured a ghost inside an inscribed glass jar and would question it on its understanding of the world. At ten, he had made a small army of wooden helpers to do his chores, while he sat on the riverbank fishing. It was this knowledge that brought him fame.

  By the time he was a young man, he had assembled a menagerie of strange creations and they were in great demand. These servitors were resistant to the void creatures and could pierce their obfuscation. Royals, struggling to keep their city-states intact, bought them by the hundreds to protect their walls and hunt for the singing towers.

  Who can say how many gods came as well in mortal guise to purchase a flock of artificial hummingbirds? There was certainly one who came and made no effort to hide. Ahlum, the Highest of Sovereignties called upon him herself.

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  She waited at the door of his simple workshop until he was done before speaking to him. She looked older now, though that meant little to those who enjoyed the comforts of heaven. As ever she bore the Shadowless Blade but it was sealed within scribed paper and cloth. She praised his inventions for finding the towers but she needed more. More ways to find all the towers and more ways to destroy them. She needed weapons for both mortal and divine hunters.

  Medhan could not undertake this job, he explained. He could not control the subjects of his inspiration and he lacked the raw infrastructure needed for such a task. Ahlum said she knew what he required, for she had seen it in an age before.

  She bade him find and raid the Forge Mount. She gave him leave to take what he desired but stressed that the most essential thing was the actual fires of the Forge itself. These were spectral flames of every colour that could condense dreams into substance.

  She could not tell him the way, for the Mount always moved. She could not tell him the traps, for the systems of the Forge routinely rotated the nature and triggers of the traps. Her ancestor's prophecies were only of use at that one specific time. She did however promise the aid of the gods and gave him a horn that could always reach the heavenly city.

  When she was gone, he promptly began studying and reverse engineering the heavenly horn. He also did not set off at once. He finished all the orders he had been given and took no more. He spent many days assembling all manner of tools and servitors in preparation. It took three full years for him to finally set off to hunt for the mountain.