4 THE FIRST WRIGHT

  A servitor, dressed in servant robes, greeted him and asked how they could help. Ahlum had asked to be shown the greatest treasure of the Mount and was led through the labyrinthian complex to the Perfect Weapon. Medhan did the same, hoping to find a great tool or the Forge itself. Instead, he was led to a three-meter by three-meter pool of blue liquid. Inside the gel-like liquid, a beautiful woman slept.

  "Somewhat disappointing," he said. He asked the servitor to wake her and it did. The woman cleaned herself and soon returned in fresh clothes.

  "I am Jaini, daughter of fire and sea," she said before expressing frustration at how long it took him to get her. She said she was the source of his inspiration, trying to lure him to the Forge Mount for decades. She was the daughter of the forge god and his wife, the goddess of beauty and the sea.

She explained that she was her father's student and claimed to have assisted in the creation of the Perfect Weapon. When it went rampant, she was elsewhere in the mountain. The mountain suffered great damage and falling debris almost mortally wounded her. She managed to crawl into a healing pool to save her life but was trapped in a coma-stasis ever since.

  Her only option was to try to mentally reach someone in the distant world but they always failed to reach her. Medhan was the youngest she ever started with, purposefully setting him on a wright's path. Baited with a small taste of knowledge, she hoped a wright would then have cause to seek out the vacant holy place of their kind. Instead, Medhan stayed home, building what he could with the scraps she gave him.

  Indeed it took a visit from the Usurper Queen to get him to make the trip. And even then, it took almost forty months to get there. He was too cautious, even after she gave him the knowledge of how to pass the first two challenges. While she was lambasting him, he wandered around the room, examining the secrets of medicine and organic manipulation.

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  "Now that I am free, I will proclaim myself the new forge god and demand the return of my father's magnum opus," Jaini declared.

  "I care not at all about that. I merely wish for a few boons for my workshop."

  She was incensed. He was a wright and she was thus literally his god. "Your contract with the Thief will mean nothing when the Perfect Weapon is returned to the proper hands."

  He was annoyed. He had freed her from a long waking nightmare even after she had tortured him since birth. "I am owed something. And I will collect it today."

  "The Forge Mount and all within it is mine. You will get not even a gram of soot from me child."

  He produced the heavenly horn from his person. The animated rope unfurled. Two swords, a hammer and a shield materialised behind him and floated there. "I am not leaving here empty-handed."

  Jaini backed down. A wright needed preparation and she had nothing of use on her. God or no god, he was heavily armed. Even worse, she could not risk him calling down agents of heaven to investigate. Not before she was ready. So she gave him a deal.

  "I will allow you to take one ember from my father's forge," she said, leading him to the Forge. This was a trick of course. No mortal vessel could contain the flames and she had given him no inspiration that could aid him in such.

  Using the forge's tong, Medhan reached into the forge of many colours and withdrew a singular ember. This he placed into a silver box. There the ember floated in place, cycling through the prismatic colours.

  "What sort of box is that?" Jaini asked, simultaneously furious, awed and worried.

  "A box with no sides or bottom. At least none on the inside," he said, casually invoking her father's impossible geometry. He began to leave, his floating armoury disappearing before he stopped. "I owe much to your visions, Revered Jaini. But not everything."