Author: Tower Curator

 

Arkk leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers over a sheet of parchment that sat atop his desk.

“The temple room is a conduit to the Pantheon,” Arkk said, looking up to Vezta. “You said that before, right? Your former master was able to use it to gain boons?”

“That is correct,” Vezta said with a half-bow. “Though I do not know the proper rituals as my former master considered it a rather private affair, I do know he frequently ventured into the temple, sealed all doors, and emerged after with magical items, minions, gold, and a plethora of other welcome additions to our war efforts.”

“Did he ever enter with any equipment that he might have used? Or did the temple already contain any kind of ritual equipment?”

Vezta paused, gaining a vacant look in her eyes for a brief moment. Notably, the expression only applied to the eyes on her head. The multitude of glowing yellow-in-black eyes dotted around the rest of her body maintained their constant vigil over her surroundings. Eventually, her journey through her memories came to an end as she refocused on Arkk.

“You… may not wish to hear this,” she said, hedging her voice. Arkk simply waved her on with a quick gesture. “It didn’t happen every time, but my former master would frequently take prisoners into the temple. They didn’t often return or, when they did, they came back changed and fully allied with us.”

“Ah.”

Sacrifice. From Zullie, Arkk knew that sacrifice wasn’t used in modern magic anymore. The Abbey ranked it among the highest anathema and even outside the Abbey’s sphere of influence, it wasn’t a very popular method of enacting magic. Modern magic and rituals were often convenient enough. Rituals could be increased in power simply by adding more spellcasters, negating the need to kill people to work them.

The orc chieftain had been planning on using sacrifice to bypass magical requirements for her demon summoning before Arkk interrupted it. The black book mentioned that sacrifice was simply easier than trying to gather together upwards of a dozen competent spellcasters to perform the same ritual. It did mention that demon summoning was possible without sacrifice, but Arkk doubted most people willing to summon demons cared all that much about killing a few people for an easier time.

He wondered if the Prince had sacrificed a bunch of people to summon a demon during his subjugation of Vaales. Someone willing to summon a demon might not care. At the same time, he doubted a Prince would have difficulty gathering together enough spellcasters to perform the ritual properly. Yet again, that would mean a great number of people were involved in it and the more people, the higher the likelihood that someone talks.

“He didn’t bring people in every time,” Arkk said, trying to keep focused on the task at hand. “I presume those times resulted in lesser boons?”

“Sometimes. Not always. What are you thinking, if I may ask, Master?”

Arkk clasped his hands together, rubbing his chin against his knuckles. “We’ve been exploring the other planes for power, magic, resources, and weapons. But it is a long and time-consuming process. We can’t even spend more than a few minutes in the Silence without succumbing to sleep and the Anvil is completely cut off from us at the moment.”

“I see. You wish to bypass manual searching by going to the gods directly.”

“When we first constructed the temple room, there were only five statues in place, three of whom belonged to the traitors,” Arkk said with a nod of his head. “I was a bit wary of using it because of that. Our encounter with Xel’atriss only further discouraged interacting with the Pantheon. Now, over half the pedestals have statues and the traitor gods are outnumbered…

“But what boons to ask for,” Arkk said, turning his explanation into muttering as he thought aloud. “Wouldn’t want to offend them by asking for anything too grandiose. Nor anything that might come from the traitor gods. More weapons to fight in the war? Something to completely nullify the threat of a demon? Honestly, we seem to be doing rather well on both those fronts on our own. Granted, we haven’t faced a demon and there is about to be another big battle unless Evestani finally gives up after their losses to the undead—”

“Master, if I may interject.”

Arkk looked up to Vezta. “You have an idea?”

“Nine of the sixteen pedestals are occupied with statues. Each additional statue beyond the initial five came about when we connected the portal to another plane. With the exception of the Laughing Prince. Regardless, finding ways to fill the other pedestals is likely a positive sign towards our ability to repair the damage the Calamity wrought.”

Arkk drummed his fingers against the sheet of parchment once again. He still wasn’t sure that undoing the Calamity was the best path forward. Not if, as Zullie had theorized, all the magic in the Underworld would come flooding here, wreaking havoc across the whole world. Zullie’s analysis of the Silence, brief as it had been, indicated a higher concentration of magic there as well, though not quite to the extent of the Underworld. Directed by Zullie, he had carved out a small testing ritual with the servant in the Anvil to check there and found almost no magic at all. Savren put forward the idea that the Burning Forge had somehow found a solution to the magic buildup problem by creating that massive factory, which hadn’t been there in Vezta’s memories, constantly producing everything to consume excess magic.

At the same time, Vezta’s idea did warrant consideration. Especially if they could get magic and other boons from additional gods. The Silence had given them a potential weapon against the Heart of Gold’s avatar and the Underworld had equipped his troops with weapons and armor far beyond what they could produce here. Other boons on similar levels would see his troubles with both the Kingdom and Evestani diminished to the point where he could put his full efforts toward finding a proper solution to the Calamity.

Closing his eyes, he looked into the temple room. He swept his gaze over each of the statues. The Almighty Glory, the Burning Forge, the Cloak of Shadows, the Eternal Silence, the Heart of Gold, the Holy Light, the Jailer of the Void, the Laughing Prince, and Xel’atriss, Lock and Key.

Seven pedestals were vacant.

“Who are we missing?” Arkk asked. He had discussed the Pantheon with Vezta before, but a reminder couldn’t hurt.

“The Fickle Wheel—god of luck, random chance, and patron to gamblers everywhere. The Red Horse—god of war, physical strength, and animals. The Veiled Dancer—god of sensuality, celebration, and flow in all forms, from rivers to air to words in a bard’s song. The Whispering Gale—god of winds, travel, exploration, and messengers. The Permafrost—god of ice, winter, and stagnation. The Bloated Mother—god of fertility, disease, and life… and…” Vezta pursed her lips like she licked a sour lemon. “Unknown, the Enigma.”

Arkk waited a moment. When Vezta didn’t elaborate, he prompted, “God of…”

“Nobody knows. Presumably mysteries, the unknown, or something along those lines. I would recommend against entering Unknown, the Enigma’s realm, if at all possible. A single step into the Maze and you may never find your way out again.”

“A single step. You can’t just take a step back?”

“The action itself is possible. Whether or not it takes you back to where you started is another question entirely.”

“I see…” Arkk said, frowning. One of Zullie’s failed projects for dealing with the Evestani army involved a maze of shifting barriers and boundaries. He wondered if that would have succeeded if she had called upon Unknown instead of Xel’atriss. “Well, we’ll avoid that one for now. The god of war, on the other hand, sounds like a useful ally to have at present.”

The expression on Vezta’s face didn’t fill Arkk with confidence.

“Wrong choice?” he asked.

“The Red Horse is a god that extols the virtues of physical strength and loathes magic in all forms. Followers of the war god made up the vast majority of my former master’s enemies prior to the Calamity.”

“It wouldn’t support us even though it isn’t one of the traitor gods?”

“Hard to say.”

Arkk hummed a note of disappointment. Probably best to avoid that one for now too then. What else? The Permafrost, perhaps? Priscilla was a devout of the Permafrost so getting that god on their side could only further ingrain Priscilla’s loyalty to him.

“Speaking of potential allies,” Vezta said before Arkk could put forward that idea. “What of the letter?”

Arkk’s pursed his lips as he looked back down to the parchment. The flowery words written across its surface did not fill him with confidence.

Before you stand not one but two in might, their shadows cast upon your lofty height. Yet from behind, a foe does stealthy creep, To strike your back while you in battle weep. If aid you seek, just voice your earnest plea, An Ally’s hand will then be yours to see.

It was like that prophecy that the inquisitors had given Arkk. Except slightly more straightforward. Assuming the letter wasn’t somehow intended for another and misdelivered, the two standing before were the Evestani and the Eternal Empire. The lofty height was probably the Walking Fortress at Elmshadow. The enemy behind was a little less clear.

There were only a few possibilities. This war now involved three factions, not including Arkk. His two opponents and the King’s army, the latter of which was set to arrive at Elmshadow in a few days.

It was something he hadn’t put much thought toward. They were allies coming at his request to reinforce the Duchy and end this war once and for all. But…

The Kingdom was the home to the Abbey of the Light. If the Heart of Gold’s avatar was directing the Evestani army, there was a chance that the other traitor gods also had avatars who might have their own feelings about his existence. Probably feelings of ill intent. The King’s army could easily show up, stab him in the back in the name of the Light, and then shake hands on a job well done with Evestani.

Except…

This letter had been delivered via a statue of the Holy Light.

“I’m confused,” Arkk said eventually, looking up to Vezta. “Is the Holy Light trying to aid us? Sow distrust between us and the King’s army? Or… was this accidentally delivered to the wrong statue of the Holy Light?”

It could refer instead to Evestani having two enemies in Arkk and the King’s army, warning them of a saboteur at their back. Seeing the letter as having been erroneously delivered made the last bit of it make a little more sense.

Ask for an ally and get an ally.

If it wasn’t referring to the Abbey wanting to re-vitalize their alliance with Evestani, and the letter had reached its intended reader, then it almost sounded like an offer to join him.

“I can’t say with absolute certainty, Master, but the thought of a letter being accidentally delivered to the wrong recipient in this manner seems… egregious.”

“Right? But that would mean that the Holy Light supports us?” Arkk paused, frowning to himself. It hadn’t been so long ago that Zullie put forward her suspicions that Vezta didn’t actually know all she said she knew. That nobody would be able to tell if she got something incorrect.

There had been frequent wars between Evestani and the Kingdom throughout history. Never with such overt magic that it might have directly involved avatars—or their involvements had been wiped from the annals of history—but enough to suggest that the Abbey of the Light and the Golden Order had rarely, if ever, been friendly toward one another.

“Is it possible that the Holy Light isn’t a traitor?” Arkk mused, mostly to himself. “Perhaps they escaped the effects of the Calamity through some other method…”

“Absolutely not,” Vezta said, eyes firm. “There is no doubt about the identities of the traitor gods.”

Arkk pressed his lips together, staring at Vezta for a moment. He nodded his head, deciding not to argue with her for the time being. Instead, he looked down at the letter once again, tapping his finger against it.

“Is there anything on my schedule for the remainder of the evening?”

Vezta shook her head, completely unbothered by the sudden change in subject. “You have a meeting with your magical researchers in the morning. Aside from that, you are mostly clear until the arrival of the King’s army. Barring any emergencies, of course.”

“Of course,” Arkk said, pressing his lips together. “In that case, I’ll think more about this letter. And likely involve my other advisors before making any real decisions.”

“Seeking counsel is a wise decision, though I do not know that any of your other advisors have any expertise in this domain.”

“Be that as it may…” Arkk stood, carefully placing the letter among his important files. “For the time being, it would be best if we carried on as usual. Head to Elmshadow and ensure we’re ready to receive the King’s Army. They haven’t stabbed us in the back yet and I’ll be damned if I’m the first to wield that blade.”

“Understood,” Vezta said with a deep bow. As soon as she righted herself, she turned and departed.

Arkk, left alone in his office, paced back and forth. He checked in every few moments, watching Vezta’s progress through Fortress Al-Mir’s corridors. She encountered seemingly half the notable employees on her way, all of whom stopped her and spoke with her for varying amounts of time. Everyone knew her and it appeared as if most everyone liked her.

Which Arkk did find a little interesting. He could still remember his fear upon first meeting her, the unease among Langleey Village after successfully defending it from the horde of goblins, and the utter terror the soldiers in the Duke’s manor had of her after the assassinations at the party. Although a monster far beyond beastmen and demihumans, she was accepted here.

Unfortunately, her popularity delayed her by almost an hour. It was far later than he wanted by the time she finally made it to the teleportation chamber and vanished from Fortress Al-Mir. Given what he planned for the rest of the evening, he might have to delay the meeting with Zullie in the morning.

Zullie always hated disruptions to her schedule.

But for now, Arkk teleported himself out of his office, reappearing back in the center of the temple. Alone save for nine statues of gods and seven empty pedestals.

He turned slowly, sweeping his gaze around the chamber. He met the eyes of each of the statues. His eyes lingered the longest on Xel’atriss, but he didn’t stop on the thin woman surrounded by tendrils or the door she stood near. Arkk kept turning until he finally ended on the majestic pose of the Holy Light.

Narrowing his eyes, Arkk glared at the statue. It had returned to its usual pose, standing strong and tall. The outstretched hand that held the letter was back at its side. Now, if anything, the only difference from before was the amount of light concealing the statue’s face, acting as its clothing. It was bright. Almost blindingly so.

Arkk didn’t like it. The idea that one of these gods, especially one of the supposed traitors, had such control within his domain set him ill at ease. What if, instead of a letter, the statue had delivered an alchemical bomb capable of destroying the entire fortress? The temple chamber wasn’t adjacent to the [HEART], but it was a whole lot closer than some of the experimental chambers down below.

If the Holy Light could do that, what was stopping the Gold or the Almighty?

And, perhaps more importantly, could he send something through the statues? It was a bit dangerous without knowing who possible recipients might be, but if he could hand the armored figure of the Heart of Gold an alchemical bomb and have it show up at the avatar’s real body…

Planning was useless at this stage. There was no point unless he figured out how this room worked. And all he had to operate on were a few suggestions from Vezta, none of which sounded particularly reliable.

“So,” Arkk said, turning around once more to meet each of the statues. “Let’s chat.”

He waited a moment.

Then a moment more.

Nothing happened.

It was a good thing Vezta wasn’t around. He was embarrassed enough talking to himself as it was.

Spreading his arms wide and spinning around, an assortment of trinkets and items appeared around him. A small pile of gold, what little he could spare at the moment. A pig from the farms. A tome from the library, not unimportant but nothing he or Zullie couldn’t recreate if necessary. Rare ingredients from his personal alchemy laboratory. One of the shadow scythes, fresh from the Shadow Forge. Food and drink stolen straight from Larry’s meal for the evening.

While he did have a few Evestani prisoners, he wasn’t quite willing to leap to human sacrifice just yet. There were plenty of other things to try first.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”

 

 

Hale was fairly certain that she knew a great deal more than she should know. Things that were supposed to be secrets. Things that would probably get her in at least a mild amount of trouble, if not a lot of trouble.

So she kept her mouth shut. She might be one of the youngest actual employees, but she wasn’t an idiot. Best to keep her mouth firmly sealed and herself out of trouble.

In fairness to her, it wasn’t like she was snooping about the place, seeking out the secrets of the fortress. It was just that Hale tended to spend a lot of time inside the library. A location she frequently shared with the likes of Zullie. Zullie had never been one to hide her work. As a former instructor, it was more like she wanted to spread what she knew far and wide. Since being afflicted with blindness, that lax attitude had only intensified. She left books open, research notes scattered everywhere, and odd magical artifacts that she had fashioned lying about.

Hale didn’t snoop, but if a book was left open, that was just an invitation to read, wasn’t it?

It helped that Hale was the quiet sort. She didn’t speak unless spoken to. That made it exceedingly easy to sit down in a corner of the library, put her nose into a book, and simply allow the world around her to carry on as it would. Zullie, Savren, their assistants, and even Arkk would all have short impromptu meetings on occasion. Arkk was always more aware of her than anyone else and even he would talk about things in her presence that she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to hear.

For example, how many others in the entirety of the fortress knew that Arkk was dabbling in necromancy? Zullie, Savren, Vezta… and Hale. She doubted Arkk had told Ilya. That wasn’t the kind of thing Ilya would stand for.

Which was stupid. It wasn’t like avoiding necromancy would bring the dead back and it could only spare the lives of the living. They were dead bodies. Meat and bone with nothing inside them. Might as well use them.

There were things Hale was keeping secret as well. Things she would rather not have spread around, at least not before she was ready. In her case, however, she was a little more careful about where and when she worked on her projects.

Today, for instance, Hale found herself with her hand clasped around the icy claw of Al-Mir’s resident dragonoid, dragging her down to one of the lower-level test chambers leftover from one of Zullie’s experiments. Priscilla was a hard person to find. She often was out of the fortress, off on various tasks for Arkk.

So, Hale had simply asked Arkk to let her know the next time Priscilla was around so that she could perform a little check-up on some older healing. An easy enough excuse.

“I take it you aren’t dragging me around for healing,” Priscilla said with a hint of a growl in the back of her throat.

“You know a lot about these fortresses, right?” Hale asked, not stopping. “I heard you used to have a place like this a long time ago?”

“Who told you that?”

“Leda. She mentioned it while I was tending to some bruises she got while on your back.”

Priscilla clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“Arkk says he can tell when someone is injured. It’s how he gets people out of bad situations and into the infirmary. I want to know if there is a way to avoid that.”

“It isn’t about injury. It’s about pain. The more the pain, the more he notices.”

“So if I muddle my sense of pain, I could chop off my hand and he wouldn’t notice?”

Priscilla stopped abruptly. Hale, hand around her wrist, had to stop as well. No amount of effort or straining would let her move the dragonoid against her will.

“Why are you going to chop off your hand?” Priscilla asked. She didn’t sound accusing or worried. It was a simple curiosity. As if the subject wasn’t any more interesting than what breakfast was going to be served today.

“Well, I was thinking I would have you do it, actually. I figured you wouldn’t have a problem with that.” Hale cocked her head to one side, looking up at the iced-over eyes of the dragonoid. “Was I wrong?”

Priscilla scoffed. “I’m normally all for mutilating humans… but I think Arkk would be displeased with me, regardless of the reasons. And I still need him.”

“Still?” Hale said, frowning for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t want him to know either.”

“You think he wouldn’t notice your hand missing?”

“I’d replace it, obviously,” Hale said as she rolled her eyes. “I’ve been testing the Flesh Weaving spell on myself, but for the drastic changes I want to make, it would be easier to start from scratch.”

“Why remove it if you’re just going to replace it?”

“I want to make it better. Something more like your hand. Get rid of this weak human meat and—”

“My hand?”

“I’m not taking your hand, if that’s what you’re worried about—”

Priscilla curled her lip in a daring smile. “Like you could.”

“But I would like to examine your hand a bit and then replicate it on my arm. Eventually, I’ll replace the whole arm. Legs. Body. And even my head, if I can figure out a way without killing myself.”

Priscilla looked down, staring with her icy eyes even though she was supposedly blind. “How would you manage that?”

Hale shrugged. “Still in the research phase. I asked Arkk if I could practice some unusual healing on prisoners but he doesn’t like causing unneeded distress…”

Priscilla hummed, folding her arms. The ice coating her fingertip clicked lightly as she tapped against the crook of her elbow. “I could get you practice subjects if you can get yourself reassigned to Leda’s tower.”

“Really?” Hale perked up. “You’ll help me.”

“So long as we keep your mutilations hidden from Arkk. How sure are you that you can replace your hand properly? And with a claw-like mine? He’ll notice.”

“Well… I…”

Priscilla leaned forward, putting her face right in Hale’s face as she widened a sharp-toothed grin. “Why don’t I rip off something less obvious? Like your leg?”

Hale didn’t move save to bring a finger to her chin as she gave the proposal serious consideration. It was probably just the dragonoid trying to frighten her off, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Legs were easier to hide underneath clothing than hands were. It would give her a proper target to practice on—herself—and she could retry as many times as she wanted.

Taking her gaze off the dragonoid’s face, she looked down. Priscilla didn’t wear clothing. Just jagged sheets of ice concentrated on her hands and feet. The rest of her was mostly humanoid, except covered in thick white scales. Hale followed the contours of her body down her legs where they terminated in three large toes in the front, tipped with sharp blades of ice, and a single talon in the back. Would feet like that fit into standard boots?

Perhaps she could make some small modifications. If all else failed, as long as she didn’t delay too long, she could always reattach her own leg.

“Very well. I accept.”

“What.”

“I accept. Come help me remove my leg. I’ve got a whole room set up already with medicinal potions, a clean place to work, and everything else I need.”

The grin slowly slipped from Priscilla’s lips as Hale grasped her hand once again. She tugged at the dragonoid’s arm. Priscilla didn’t protest this time, she allowed herself to be pulled away, muttering under her breath as she went.

“Not as fun when they aren’t scared…”

Vezta dipped forward at the waist, hands clasped together. She bowed, righted herself, and turned to carry out her newly assigned tasks.

No matter how many recruits Arkk scouted, no matter how many powerful beings like avatars and dragonoids came to his side, no matter how many spells he learned, Vezta was and always would remain one of only two people who could command the lesser servants. Others could direct them, but only if Arkk already gave commands to follow the orders of others, and only within the bounds of what he ordered them to do. That took foresight and planning. He could give them mental commands from afar, but he wouldn’t know to command them unless he was actively watching the goings on around them. As other matters occupied his attention, he frequently felt it necessary to delegate responsibility for the servants to Vezta.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of being replaced. No matter what, she would always have a role as caretaker of Fortress Al-Mir. But sometimes she did desire more what a simple lesser servant would tend to on its own.

It felt good to have a proper role, to be used, and to offer her services. Even if that role was simply to oversee construction projects. That was what Vezta was best at, after all. She never had considered herself much of a combatant. Leave the warring and the battles to others. Hers was a logistical duty.

Vezta walked through the halls of Fortress Al-Mir, languid and peaceful. Today’s task was to venture out to Elmshadow to construct barracks for the soon-to-be-arriving King’s army. There was no rush. Neither she nor lesser servants tired and they could work all night. Based on the projected arrival time of the army and her intimate knowledge of how fast servants could work, she estimated that the construction would finish three days before the army reached the burg’s walls. Those three days allowed leeway in both additional constructions, if necessary, and changes in the army’s marching pace.

It would go faster if they could build underground, but Arkk wanted above-ground dwellings for the army.

The farms below the burg, connected to the tower’s [HEART], had already been expanded to feed the prisoners they once held. Food supplies wouldn’t be a problem, though it would further strain their income. She would have to request her own scouting expedition, accompanied by a number of lesser servants, to locate additional gold, silver, or gemstone veins. Keeping the fortress funded was one of her self-imposed duties, after all.

Besides, it wouldn’t do for Arkk to find yet another [HEART] and be unable to utilize it because of a lack of wealth.

As Vezta continued down the corridors, trying to think back to how her former master had located the rich source of gold below Fortress Al-Mir, she had to pause as a stout human walked up to her. With his thick arms, hair coated in a dusting of soot, and the thick black apron he wore, it didn’t take long to recognize him as one of the fortress smiths. A refugee-turned-employee, if Vezta recalled correctly.

“David?” she said, plucking the name from the aether. “Was there something you needed?”

“Ah.” He flinched when she turned to face him despite having been the one to walk up to her. Possibly because of the way she had turned around, melding her body to the other side rather than simply rotating in place. “Sorry to bother you,” he said as he took a step back, having apparently decided he got too close for comfort. “But I’m glad I caught you. The raw iron in the stockroom is running low.”

“I see,” Vezta said, lips quirking into a frown. Fortress Al-Mir could consume gold to produce raw materials such as bolts of cloth, chunks of iron, and both crops and livestock. Arkk was burning through it all as of late. She mentally bumped up the priority of finding additional gold sources.

That fairy had a tower out in the middle of nowhere at the moment with servants that Vezta couldn’t direct, being minions of the shadow goddess rather than servants of the [STARS] pulled to this world by Xel’atriss. She would have to propose that Arkk speak to the fairy regarding the fairy’s idleness. She could frame it as getting the fairy experience in directing those minions about, scouring the land around that distant tower for any valuable resources.

“Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will ensure you are restocked by morning.”

“Appreciate it,” David said before practically fleeing from her presence.

She watched him go with a mild smile before turning around to continue her trek.

Only to make it a mere five paces before being interrupted once again.

“Vezta! Vezta!”

A young elf slammed into her side hard enough to almost disturb her current form. Vezta manipulated the side of her dress to carefully push the child away from her. “Yavin,” she said, crossing her arms and giving a disappointed look. “What have I said about running in the corridors?”

The elf sheepishly scratched at his left ear, which had been clipped at some point before his initial arrival in Fortress Al-Mir. He was far more animated these days, even smiling. Vezta wasn’t sure what she had done to earn his adoration.

“I thought I heard your voice. I wanted to see you!”

Behind the young boy, another elf slowly approached. Nyala’s footsteps were completely silent and the way she moved was designed to disturb as little air as possible. In contrast to the young boy, the girl had drawn in on herself even more in her time at Fortress Al-Mir. Not that she had ever been open or happy, but she had somehow lost even that little part of herself. It was like Yavin had absorbed every scrap of elation the two could produce.

“Lexa back yet?” Nyala said, her voice surprisingly deep for her size. “The stupid gremlin promised to teach me some of her hiding spells two weeks ago and I haven’t seen her since.”

“Perhaps locating her is a challenge and you are unworthy until such time as you manage to catch her.”

The corners of Nyala’s lips twitched into a frown. “Is she even in the fortress?”

“No,” Vezta said simply, smiling at the deepening scowl on the small elf’s face. “Arkk has her out on a special assignment.”

The scowl vanished as a spark of interest crossed Nyala’s eyes. “Assassination?”

“I don’t believe the details of the operation need to be made available to those uninvolved.”

Nyala huffed, folding her arms. “She’ll tell me later, she always does.”

“That’s her prerogative.” Vezta gave a light pat to Yavin’s head, earning a bright smile from the young elf. “Run along now.”

“You said not to run!”

“And you well know what I mean,” Vezta said as she turned from the two elves. Their minder, John the carpenter, was nowhere in sight. They had probably slipped away from him while he was working on a project. They weren’t trouble. Yet, anyway.

Perhaps soon.

Nyala had been hanging around those two dark elves when Lexa wasn’t around. Something she was certain that Ilya, Arkk, and most reasonable beings would find objectionable. Vezta, frankly, did not care. If the child wanted to become a more effective combatant, it was something to be encouraged, so long as she was their combatant.

Leaving the two behind, and glad that Nyala was dragging Yavin away from her, Vezta continued toward the teleportation chambers. Along the way, she ended up stopped by no less than ten others, including Lyssa the werecat, Orjja the orc, Larry the butcher, Kia the dark elf—who was looking for Nyala—and Ivan the slime creature.

Vezta wasn’t honestly sure when or how that last one joined up with Arkk. It just oozed out of the walls one day, leaving a terrible mess behind, and continued leaving a mess everywhere it went. It was followed by a lesser servant who never left its side, having been assigned to keep the area around the slime tidy. Naturally, the slime had come to her to complain about its environment being too tidy.

She ignored it.

Let Arkk deal with it.

In the final corridor before the teleportation chamber, Vezta found herself slowing her pace once again.

This time, it was not because one of the myriad denizens of the fortress wanted something from her.

She felt something. A presence. One that shouldn’t be in the fortress.

Eyes surrounding her body narrowed as she slowly turned in place. Was the hallway brighter than normal? The glowstones in the walls and floor looked normal, but the maze-like pattern of the floor tiles gleamed. It only lasted a moment. A trick of the light in her eyes or…

Vezta turned away from the teleportation room. She hurried through the corridors, moving just under a run, as she made her way to the temple room. Arkk had barred the entrance following the failed ritual that inadvertently drew Xel’atriss’ gaze, but that couldn’t stop something like her. Vezta’s body oozed between the bars, flowing over and around them until she reshaped properly on the other side.

Several pedestals now contained statues. Something Vezta was certain was a good sign.

The molten, chained form of the Burning Forge stood proudly atop an anvil. The Eternal Silence rested in a peaceful slumber. The Heart of Gold, head held high, looked as proud as always. The Almighty Glory maintained the same majestic pose. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, stood in front of a now opened door, which was the same as it had been since the ritual was completed. The Jailer of the Void still confused Vezta with its presence. The Cloak of Shadows was barely visible atop the darkened pedestal.

There were two changes from the last time Vezta had been in the room. The first was a new statue atop a pedestal in the far corner of the room. A tall man in a fine suit. He had a thin body, thin enough that a human could touch fingers and thumbs together if they used both hands at the waist. His chin was sharp and pointed with equally sharp eyes and a short tuft of black hair. Aside from his unnatural thinness, the most striking feature was his mouth. He lacked lips entirely. His teeth, flat molars all, were clearly visible. They stretched from ear to ear. If he opened his mouth, the entire top half of his head would tip backward.

The Laughing Prince. Lord of undeath, elation, festivals, and children.

The others, minus the Jailer of the Void, were understandable. The traitor gods existed because they had never left this plane. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, could ignore boundaries and barriers. The Eternal Silence, the Cloak of Shadows, and the Burning Forge all had their worlds visited, opened via the portals.

Now, the Laughing Prince had appeared. It had to be a consequence of Arkk’s actions with the Evestani army. Even with the Calamity, the Laughing Prince had seen the death and undeath and had… approved? Concerning, but nothing to get too worked up about. Occupied pedestals were good, in Vezta’s eyes.

The other change in the room had her scowling.

The Holy Light, still masked in rays of blinding white, now had a hand held forward. In its hand, it held a rolled-up piece of parchment.

Vezta stepped closer, reaching for the parchment.

A flash of light blinded her. Rather than blink away the blindness, she simply formed new eyes deep within her core and allowed them to bubble forth. Just in time to watch her outstretched hand slop to the ground, severed at the wrist. Lacking cohesion with the rest of her body, it deformed and spread out into a thin pool of violet sludge. Stretching a thin tendril along the ground, she made contact and pulled the mass back into her body.

Vezta scowled as her hand reformed. It was painful. Draining. She could feel the load it put on the [HEART] of Fortress Al-Mir. Much like when the inquisitors had injured her during their invasion, though to a far lesser extent.

“Vezta!”

She felt her current master pop into existence behind her. Whether he detected her sudden spike of pain or noticed the drain on the [HEART] didn’t matter. He was here now.

Vezta turned slowly, keeping the statue in full view of her swiftly reforming eyes. “Master,” she said, unable to stop a frown. “It appears we had a visitor.”

 

 

“As useless as I expected.”

A tall woman sat on a grand throne, one leg crossed over the other with her elbow on the armrest, propping her head up. The fingers of her other hand drummed against the chair as she observed the chaos down below.

It was a clever trick. It would have been more clever were it not for how easy it was to see through. At least, she thought it was simple to see through. The fact that her contemporary took one look at the illusory army, believed he understood what was going on, and immediately set off to find the source of the power implied that their opponent had a better grasp on his opponent than she thought.

Now, while he was off meditating and concentrating, his army was being torn apart.

She shifted in her throne, swapping elbows from one side to the other. With an utter look of disdain, she plucked a thin white thread from her black dress and obliterated it.

“Empress, your orders?”

Luminous white eyes flicked to the side.

An older man wearing a clean-cut black and silver uniform stood ready and waiting. He had a cane, simple and unadorned with fine detailing, planted between his feet. Both hands rested upon the silver handle as he stared out the large glass windows. As he felt her attention on him, he turned, raising a white eyebrow above his round glasses.

“Ready the cannons,” she said with a lazy wave of her hand.

He nodded his head, turning on his heel. The long cape he wore as part of his uniform fluttered behind him.

“Wait, Berthold,” she said.

“Empress?” He turned back. There was no confusion in his eyes or questioning why she had stopped him. Whatever she decreed would become edict. It didn’t matter how much she contradicted herself or how often she changed her mind.

Her words were law.

“Ready the cannons but do not fire. We have a truce with the Evestani. Accidentally striking a single man even in accident would violate that truce.” There was little need to explain herself. If she said not to fire, not a single man would do so even were monsters of old charging straight at the cannoneers. But Berthold would appreciate the intricacies of her thoughts.

“If we laid down fire at the battle line, it might harm a few, but it would save the vast majority,” he said with a faint glint in his old eyes.

“Nevertheless, the truce stands.”

“Understood,” he said, laying his hand across his chest in a firm salute. “I’ll see that the men await your orders.”

Watching him go, she waited until the heavy wooden door swung shut behind him. Only once she was alone did she dip her finger into a small bowl of water resting atop a pedestal next to the throne. With an idle motion, she swept the water into a gentle swirl.

“Find anything yet?” she asked.

A golden light pulsed at the bottom of the basin. “It’s underground. I can tell that much.”

“You sound frustrated.”

The golden light pulsed again in an unintelligible snarl. “If you have nothing to contribute, stay silent.”

She, naturally, ignored that command. “While you dealt with your little issue, I found myself musing on the absence of our comrade.” Waiting a moment for a response ended up a futile endeavor. The water simply boiled in irritation. So she continued. “My spymaster has received reports of a string of excommunicatory notices released by the Abbey of the Light’s current ecclesiarch. A handful of prominent inquisitors, priests, abbesses, and so on and so forth have all been removed from the Abbey’s roster.”

“Is there a point to your babbling? I’m trying to concentrate here.”

“All excommunicated individuals are in or were recently in the lands of Mystakeen. Many are known to have associations with the leader of the so-called Company Al-Mir.”

“So what? The…” The golden light in the basin dimmed momentarily. She could almost hear the scraps of wilted wit mustering together to form an insult. “The Limp Light is sticking to her word of not allowing anyone in good standing to fight against us. When she didn’t show up to assist us, I told you that she was plotting something. I was right. As always.”

She hummed lightly, stirring the water again. “I merely wonder what her end goal is.”

“She hates us. Wants to kill us. Take the world for herself. Is that so hard to understand?”

“From you, I would expect it.”

“Same with you,” the golden light pulsed.

“Indeed. But her?”

“What does it matter? She can’t deal with both of us. We handle this little insect and then swat… Ah, there!”

She watched through the great windows. A thin ray of gold lanced out from the center of the Evestani forces down below. It burrowed underground before passing too far, presumably to strike at the underground ritual array.

“Got it! The illusion is gone, right?”

“Indeed,” she said, leaning forward to better peer out the windows. “I can now clearly see the undead army slaughtering your forces.”

The water in the basin erupted like a geyser as the golden light in its depths gleamed in angry incandescence. “The what?”

“Skeletons, it seems,” she said, keeping her tone utterly calm. “Every one of your soldiers they attack rises to join the undead army. A few thousand of your soldiers died while you were looking for that illusion spell.”

“You…” The water boiled over, slopping onto the floor. “You did nothing?”

“I was unsure if you still counted the undead as yours. Our truce—”

“Fuck you, stupid–Do something—”

The voice of her cohort faded as the last of the water boiled out of the basin, leaving her finger stirring through air. She stared a moment, wondering if the few words at the end counted enough to lift a hand. But she had likely pushed him as far as was wise at the moment.

Raising a hand overhead, she flipped up a small cap on a long brass tube. “Berthold,” she said, speaking into the tube.

“Empress?” came the distorted response.

“Send in the vanguard to get those undead off our ally’s back. Then rain down fire on the bulk of the undead forces.”

“Understood.”

She leaned back in her throne, letting the cap fall over the mouth of the brass tube. The wave of black armored soldiers moved in almost immediately, easily handling what Evestani had struggled against for the last several minutes. A golden wall sprung up, further dividing the undead from the living. A bit late but better than nothing.

Her luminous eyes flicked over the undead as the cannon fire commenced.

“Clever tricks,” she muttered to herself. “But they won’t be enough.”

Arkk leaned away from the crystal ball with a grimace on his face.

He had known what he was doing the moment he started. He knew the likely outcome of the foul magics he used. Zullie had expressly explained the effects of the weapons she created using notes from the black book. Arkk had okayed it, signed off on implementing it, and then got Savren aboard to make the whole project more effective by disguising it as something else.

Even still…

Even still, some small part of him had hoped that the Golden Order’s avatar would have caught on sooner. But the disguise had worked on the avatar just as well as it had worked on the rest of the army. The avatar went off in search of the source of the illusion magic—and found it, eventually, blasting a hole through the center of the underground ritual circle. But all that did was vanish the illusion.

The skeletons were still animated. Their swords still corrupted anyone they touched.

“It’s fair play,” Rekk’ar grunted, seated opposite from Arkk. The green-skinned orc wasn’t looking at the crystal ball either. He had his arms crossed, staring upwards at the ceiling of the Walking Fortress command room. “They used their golden statue magic. We used necromancy. Same effect, in the end.”

Rekk’ar thought it was a good idea, clearly. Which did worry Arkk. He rarely approved of anything Arkk did.

“We hit them hard this time,” Rekk’ar continued. “And utilized your undead while disposing of them. The evidence we left behind in the village should imply that some rogue necromancer raised that army. Not us. That should keep the Prince and anyone else with objections off our backs.”

“They’ll know,” Arkk said, clasping his fingers together as he looked back down to the crystal ball.

Carnage filled the ranks of the Evestani army. After the avatar blasted apart a tenth of the illusory forces, they had formed up in proper battle lines, fighting down the illusions manually while the avatar looked for the source. Fighting illusion after illusion, with the tricks Savren installed in them, wore them down and, at the same time, made them complacent. When the first few died, it had come as a surprise. Chaos reigned. A thousand soldiers fell before any proper retaliation could commence.

Fire, boulders, and reality-shearing magic rained down on the army just as they started to get their footing. Bombardment magic driven by glowstone crystals and the lesser servants who placed them on the hidden ritual circles. The lines broke, the undead rushed in, soldiers died…

And then a brilliant force surged through the air. Falling boulders few back as if bouncing off a wall, multicolored flames snuffed out, and while the black voids of severed reality slipped through, those rituals were demanding enough in terms of magical capacity that they couldn’t do much on their own before the glowstones were depleted.

Arkk leaned in, narrowing his eyes as the Eternal Empire made its move. He imagined they had wanted to keep all that they could do secret, but the situation forced their hand. Regardless of how the rest of the battle went, this was valuable information.

To have so thoroughly nullified the bombardment magic, did they possess an avatar as well? Or were they simply using anti-siege spells similar to what Evestani or even he had used in the past? The effects weren’t anything flashy. Not like the Heart of Gold’s avatar when he used his defensive magic.

Arkk grasped the second crystal ball—both were with him today for the special operation, not wanting his scrying crew to see what the undead army at his command—and quickly angled its view upward.

“There it is,” Rekk’ar grunted, leaning in as well.

A ship. A flying ship. It sailed through the sky as easily as a regular ship cut through the ocean. The barriers came from it, different than the normal barriers Evestani or Arkk had used. More like constant gusts of wind that blew with such force that all the siege magic was sent askew, if not nullified completely. The wind barriers didn’t reach the ground—if they had, they probably would have blasted both armies off their feet—but they didn’t need the wind to stop the undead.

If not for the Eternal Empire marching alongside Evestani, the necromancy might have taken out the entire army before the avatar managed to return. As it was, the knights of the Eternal Empire moved in now that the bombardment magic had been dealt with, interposed themselves between the undead and Evestani, slipping in and taking the brunt of the attacks. They were better armored, better trained, and obviously more experienced. A few did fall, but that number was practically nothing compared to the dead and redead Evestani.

“I mean, it is obvious who made the undead army, isn’t it?” Arkk said, scowling as a warm golden light spread through the fighting soldiers. The avatar was back. “Who else could do something like this? The Prince will know.”

The avatar was back and with him, that golden aura. The Heart of Gold’s domains did not include healing or anything that would directly counter a legion of undead skeletons and turned soldiers. But it didn’t really need to. The soldiers stood straighter, bolstered by the arrival of their god. A barrier of gold carved through the battlefield, dividing it in half with Evestani and the Eternal Empire on one side and the undead on the other. Some undead were caught on the wrong side but, without the bulk pushing forward, they were swiftly dispatched by the regular soldiers.

Then it started.

The ship, flying overhead, began unloading cannon fire down on the far side of the golden barrier. Bones shattered and broke, undead scattered beyond the magic’s ability to compensate for, effectively killing them. The bombardment was heavy and widespread, a single blast taking out two dozen skeletons in one strike. They weren’t even tightly grouped. Smaller, more precise shots took out stragglers, scattering their remains to the winds.

A beam of gold lanced out from the center of Evestani’s army, only about a quarter of the size of the mass beam that had taken out a bulk of the illusions at the start. But this one swept back and forth, slicing swaths of undead into pieces.

“It might be obvious if anyone looks too hard,” Rekk’ar grunted, shaking his head as the tables turned for the mass of undead. “But right now, it might be more convenient to believe in the innocent fiction of a third party raising those skeletons. You just decimated the Evestani army and probably pummeled their morale into the ground. We’re in a strong position with reinforcements on their way. The situation is too good for the Prince to start pointing fingers at those ostensibly on his side.”

“Maybe for now. What happens after?”

Rekk’ar’s lips curled, splitting to show off the bulk of his tusks. “They’re bringing the King’s army, right? What happens if that army falls? Accidents happen on the battlefield all the time.

“We’ll have dealt with Evestani once and for all,” Rekk’ar continued before Arkk could even begin to object. “If that thing your witches came up with works as intended, we’ll be rid of that avatar too. Our position will remain strong. Our allies, if they suffer too much, will weaken.” He thumped his fist on the table. “Claim the land for ourselves. Kick everyone else out. That second tower will watch our western border. This tower can move elsewhere to keep the Kingdom off our backs. We’ll finally have peace.”

“Ignoring that you want to get our allies killed, that demon—”

“Demon? If it exists, if the Prince summons it, so what? You’ve got countermeasures for it. Things that can kill a demon.”

Arkk doubted it would be so easy, but didn’t interrupt Rekk’ar.

“Build up enough of Dakka’s Shadow Knights, you won’t even need an army to hold this territory. Each one of them is worth fifty good soldiers, a hundred bad.”

“That still requires me to deliberately weaken our allies.”

“Arkk,” Rekk’ar said, his curled lips twisting into a frown. “I’m going to be straight with you because you’re an idiot farm boy who won’t understand if I’m not. Those allies are only allies until this war is over. You are a threat too great to let stand. Especially once it is no longer convenient to ignore the who behind that undead army,” he said, waving a hand toward the crystal ball. “You want to keep people safe? That’s fine. But keep our people safe. The best way to do that is to ensure that nobody, Kingdom, Empire, or Sultanate, can threaten us.”

A grinding noise filled the air as Rekk’ar slid his chair back, standing from the table. He gave Arkk one last look before nodding his head. With that, he turned and left.

Left alone, Arkk scowled, looking back to the crystal ball. There wasn’t much of a battle going on any longer. Just a clean-up operation. The enemy took damage. A lot of it, even, especially considering the minor resources he had expended on the battle. Was it enough to weaken them to the point where Arkk could handle the battle without ensuring those reinforcements were used most effectively?

Arkk shook his head. He didn’t agree with Rekk’ar on most of the orc’s ideas.

This one was no different.

At the same time, agreeing with it and deciding it was the best course of action were two very different things…

 

 

Arkk stood at the edge of the encampment, his eyes scanning the rows upon rows of soldiers assembled before him. They stood silently, their armor immaculately shined and the tabards in solid black with violet edges. Each bore the crest of Company Al-Mir on their chests, shields, and banners. Their faces were determined, showing no fear… or much of anything else. There was an eerie blank look to every one of them if looked at a little too close.

Savren did good work. The ritual circle powering the ten thousand illusory soldiers was massive and complex, buried deep beneath what would soon become a battlefield. It utilized practically every glowstone of ritual quality that Arkk had collected.

An illusory army would hardly be worth it normally. As soon as the enemy realized that they were illusions, they would simply march straight through. A particularly ignorant army might divert course or even stop entirely, not wanting to test the realistic blades the illusions held, but Arkk was guessing that the avatar wouldn’t be so easily fooled. One of those golden rays would slice through the illusions with ease. Even if the avatar couldn’t blast the entire army, one little revelation would cause the entire effect to become nothing more than a waste.

Except for one small detail.

Arkk paused before one of the imposing figures. It looked no different from the others. The fleshy face underneath the metal helmet bore a thin goatee, furrowed brows, and a thick scar over its right eye, just like every other soldier in the line. It stared straight ahead, eyes failing to track Arkk or anything else.

Reaching forward, Arkk’s hand passed beneath the illusion with only mild resistance. His fingers felt cold, hard bone beneath. A shiver ran through him as he pulled his hand back.

Not every illusion hid those hollow eye sockets and grinning skulls. He didn’t have enough undead to make up an army ten thousand strong. Not unless he was willing to desecrate bodies that he had already sworn off. Let the Evestani fight themselves, dead or alive. He wasn’t going to disturb the rest of anyone else.

Besides, having only half the army be an actual threat might even work to his advantage. The front five thousand, the ones most likely to eat a golden ray and be taken seriously by the enemy, were fully illusory. Get them to let their guard down. And then…

Arkk’s eyes trailed over the blade in the skeletal soldier’s hand. It looked real. Just like every other sword in the army. Arkk shied away from it. Just thinking about what he and Zullie had done to it made him uneasy.

“Everything is established. We should swiftly skedaddle before our adversary arrives.”

Arkk turned to find Savren walking through a line of soldiers without even flinching. It was a bit strange to watch. Even knowing they were fake and knowing which had skeletons hidden within, Arkk found himself moving around them as if they were solid. It just felt… strange not to.

They weren’t real people. Most of them had never been real people. But they looked real enough, at least from a cursory glance.

“Thank you, Savren,” Arkk said, looking back to the scarred face of the false soldier. “It is a bit late to ask, but I don’t suppose you have any hang-ups about this army, do you?”

“Regarding the use of necromancy? None. Rather, I reckon it’s not nearly enough. Shouldn’t we seek to shatter them to smithereens instead of simply poking and prodding them?”

Arkk turned to the warlock with a raised eyebrow. “You think this army, their swords, the buried alchemical explosives, the bombardment rituals we’ve set up, and your illusions are merely poking at them? I wouldn’t be surprised if this decimates them.”

“Or falls flat, felled by the golden fellow.”

“Or falls flat,” Arkk agreed. “Frankly, if that happens, I’m not sure what we’re going to do to stop them once they get to Elmshadow again. Last time, we used the territory magic of the tower, ambushes, surprise attacks, a bomb directly underneath the avatar’s feet, and Agnete and Priscilla. Either he is prepared for all that or he is the biggest idiot in the world and I doubt he is the latter.” Leaning back, Arkk looked up into the sky, squinting into the distance.

There was a shimmer, almost invisible had he not known what to look for.

“With the Eternal Empire along for the journey…”

Savren didn’t say anything for a long moment, looking off into the distance along with Arkk.

“I’m hoping the bombardment magic Zullie invented for Elmshadow can take that thing out. Otherwise… Otherwise, we might have to get the Prince to summon his demon to help us out. Nobody wants that.”

“Indeed,” Savren said. “Are you absolutely assured we shouldn’t seize the situation to trial our tactic against the avatar?”

Arkk slowly shook his head. That was something that had come up in the dozen meetings they had over this operation. “Sylvara is trying to improve it still, make it a little more versatile. If the avatar learns of its existence… Well, I would try to find ways to mitigate its effects or find countermeasures. We shouldn’t use it until we’re ready or pressed up against a wall.”

Both, perhaps.

At the moment, they would practically have to touch the avatar with the little doll-like object. This was a problem not only because it meant that they would have to get close but also because, not unlike the ice marble, it affected everyone else in the vicinity. The one carrying it needed to be rendered immune somehow.

Shaking his head, Arkk started back along the rows of soldiers. Savren swiftly followed along, not offering any further commentary on the subject. To avoid traveling in total silence, Arkk cleared his throat and asked, “Have you had any luck finding ways to remove your curse?”

“You’ve kept me busy beyond belief. There’s been no time to tend to my personal pursuits.”

“Ah.” Arkk winced. “Sorry about that. I…” Pausing, Arkk turned back to Savren. The warlock halted as well, fingers curling through the tip of his goatee. “Honestly, I didn’t really like you… at all when we first met.”

“Likewise,” Savren said with a dip of his head.

“But,” Arkk pressed on. “You’ve been one of the most reliable employees I’ve got. The war is unfortunate and takes priority. After, however, once things calm down—”

“If such an eventuality even exists…”

“If it ever happens, yes, feel free to ask me for any resources you might need. As long as you’re not trapping a village in some mind ritual again, I’ll give you all the support you need to get rid of your curse. Whether that means funds or books or assistants. I’ve practically got full access to the Cliff Academy’s library as it is and Sylvara and Vrox might be able to help with their access to the Abbey’s archives.”

Savren pressed his chapped lips together and dipped his head. “I appreciate your generous gesture.”

“Good.”

Pressing his lips together again, Savren spoke quietly. “Under your employ, I’ve had an edifying enterprise that hasn’t been the most trying tenure.”

“Careful,” Arkk said, tone flat. “You’ll hurt yourself trying to force a compliment like that.”

“You kidnapped me from a cozy cavern filled with creature comforts, coopted my conspirators, countermanded my command, and cast me in confining chains.”

“I didn’t put you in chains,” Arkk said with a frown.

“Metaphorical manacles, manipulating my methods through threats and terror.”

“I… might have threatened you a little. In fairness to me, you had a village effectively held hostage. And were those mines really that comfortable? Better than Fortress Al-Mir?”

“No,” Savren said slowly, looking like he didn’t want to admit it. “The meals metered out might marginally out-perform portions provided by my minions in the mines… And the company is competent and classy… But first impressions impart an imprint.”

“Right. Well, sorry for threatening you.”

“Apology accepted on account of amends offered.”

Arkk let out a small snort. The words meant nothing, it seemed. It was all about the gold and magic. “Well, shall we see if your research paid off? Evestani will be here soon.”

The forward scouts had already seen the illusory army and were surely reporting it to their superiors as they spoke. Hopefully, they wouldn’t divert anywhere. Not that there was much room to make their way past this soon-to-be battlefield. All the previous roadblocks Arkk had put in Evestani’s way had served to direct them here for a reason.

Woodly Rhyme was a burg that Evestani had used as a staging location before their first assault on Elmshadow. It was strategically positioned as the perfect point to ready their forces for a final march. They would want to capture it if they wanted any kind of fallback point should things head south.

They would come. They would fight.

They would die.

Barin yelped as a pike punctured his shield, pierced his armor, and thrust deep into his chest.

It didn’t hurt. There was no pain. No blood. Nothing more than a slight pressure against his ribs. His armor didn’t have a hole in it and his shield was perfectly intact. That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t disconcerting, to see a blade embedded in his body, but it wasn’t real.

It was just an illusion.

He had to tell himself that a dozen times in the last hour.

Just an illusion.

Embarrassed by the yelp, especially after hearing some of his unit laughing behind his back, Barin channeled his embarrassment into anger and lashed forward with his spear. The scarred-faced soldier standing opposite to him shimmered and wavered as the spear slashed through him. But he didn’t vanish. Not immediately.

Instead, the soldier’s form began to contort. His rough features softened and his battle-worn armor shifted into something more familiar. Barin’s breath caught in his throat as the image before him transformed into the delicate figure of his daughter, Lurya. Her wide, tear-filled eyes locked onto his as she reached out a trembling hand, grasping onto his extended arm.

“Papa,” she whimpered, her voice trembling as if she just woke from a horrid nightmare. “Papa, please come home.”

Barin’s grip on his spear slackened and his heart ached. It was an illusion. Just an illusion. Yet, the sight of his daughter, the sound of her pleading voice, cut deeper than any weapon could. He wanted to reach out, to pull her into his arms and promise that he would be home soon, that everything would be alright.

“You aren’t real, Lurya.” His voice cracked as he spoke. This time, there wasn’t any laughter from the rest of his unit. “You’re not Lurya.”

“Please, Papa.” The illusion stepped forward, clinging to his arm. Great tears welled in her eyes as she leaned into him. “I miss you.”

Barin clenched his eyes shut. Keeping them shut, he shoved his arm, flinging the cruel illusion off his arms. He opened them just in time to watch his daughter go rolling through the dirt, coming to a stop with her legs twisted and arms bent and broken.

Lurya’s head turned too far then twisted just a little more, looking up at him. Her skin turned blotchy and ill. Those innocent eyes rotted and festered, leaving empty sockets behind. An evil smile spread across her face as her skin sloughed off her skull. “You’ll never make it home alive. Die for your false god and—”

“That’s enough of that,” Captain Vultan snarled, stomping a heavy boot down on the illusion, finally dispersing it for good.

Barin stumbled back, breathing heavily as sweat coursed from his brow. Just an illusion, he repeated in his mind. It wasn’t the first he had seen. The first had been his wife, not begging him to return, but claiming she hated him and had always hated him while proclaiming her love for Ming. That had been much easier to deal with… even if he felt guilty after.

This…

Barin shuddered. He had heard from some of the survivors about the magics their enemy used. Black magics that peeled apart soldiers into thin ribbons, fires that couldn’t be extinguished no matter the magic used, dragonoids and monsters and more besides. He had seen the unpleasant tactics for himself on the way here, watching some of his fellows fall into pits to be skewered on spikes at the bottom, bombs buried beneath the ground that exploded upon being walked upon, magics that caused soldiers to turn on one another…

Yet none of that had affected him quite as much as this.

The rest of his squad wasn’t faring much better. Those in the front were falling back after dealing with their own mental demons. One soldier’s illusion turned into an angry mother, berating them. Another turned into a comrade who had perished at the hands of their enemy. Yet another turned into His Holiness, looking around the soldiers with obvious disdain, disappointed in their performance.

One turned into a mass of spiders that swarmed over poor Yones. They had been dispersed quickly by his thrashing and flailing, but he was still shuddering on the ground, twitching every few moments.

“You’re all a bunch of babies,” Sydow barked out as he stepped ahead.

That had been their tactics thus far. While His Holiness searched for the source of the illusion, the soldiers were to clear it out manually. Just in case it couldn’t be found. A front row fought, dealt with the illusions, and then backed away to recover while another line moved forward.

Sydow, the big, burly man that he was, strode with confidence toward the nearest illusory soldier. He hadn’t been affected by the last illusion he faced, simply cutting into it with his curved sword until it vanished, uncaring of its form. “Come,” he barked, spreading his arms wide. “Take your best shot.”

The illusion didn’t acknowledge him. The scarred-faced soldiers never spoke or reacted. Battlecaster Wyn supposed that the illusions didn’t know how to act until they read their opponent’s minds in the first attack. So, it stepped forward, brandishing a black sword.

It thrust, spearing it straight through Sydow’s open helmet.

A hot liquid splattered across Barin’s face, making him flinch.

At the same time, Sydow’s arms lost all their strength, dropping to his sides. The sword ripped out of his face, spraying more blood across the field. Sydow’s hulking body collapsed, gushing blood, as the blank-faced illusory soldier turned to find a new target.

Screams and shouts started crying out all up and down the line.

Barin stood frozen, staring at the lifeless body of Sydow, disbelief coursing through his veins. The air thickened with the scent of blood and the cries of his comrades. Others fell, some fought back.

It was just an illusion… Sydow wasn’t dead. He was the strongest in the entire squad. He had never lost a spar to anyone else, not even solo against pairs. He survived the civil war with aplomb and—

“Hold the line!” Captain Vultan’s voice boomed over the chaos, snapping Barin back to reality. “Regroup and push forward. Don’t let them break us!”

Soldiers up and down the line had fallen in the surprise attack. Some hit back, slamming shields, swords, and hammers into their not-so-illusory assailants.

Barin’s hands trembled as he tightened his grip on his spear. He couldn’t let fear take hold. Not now. Not with so much at stake. He glanced around, seeing the fear mirrored in the eyes of his fellow soldiers. They were all struggling. He had to take action or they would all be overwhelmed.

He jolted forward, stepping over Sydow’s fallen body to slam his shield into the disguised skeleton just in time to keep its sword off Battlecaster Wyn. The older man shuffled back on his hands and knees while Barin jammed his spear into the soldier.

Pieces of the illusion fell away where his spear hit. The bladed tip was embedded deep within white ribs, chipping one as it slid between them. They were scrubbed clean of any flesh. There were no organs or skin. Just clean white bone.

For a fleeting moment, Barin hoped he was seeing another illusion. Whatever was under was fake just as the exterior was.

It was a false hope. Slamming his shield into his opponent again sent it staggering back. Ripping his spear out of its body jerked it back forward. The push-and-pull jerked it enough to dislodge the skull. It fell from the illusion, landing with a thump against the ground. The teeth clacked together in a chatter as the empty eye-sockets stared up at Barin.

Slowly, with almost deliberate gravitas, the illusion fell away completely, revealing the skeleton for what it was. It bent, hand grasping the top of the skull, before setting it back on its shoulders.

It grinned at him.

“U… U… Undead!” Barin cried out.

He slammed his spear forward, straight into the chest of the skeleton. But it just chipped off the bone, sliding right through the ribcage. The skeleton didn’t care at all. It stepped forward, raising its sword.

Barin put his shoulder into his shield once again, letting go of his useless spear entirely to put as much weight into shoving the skeleton as he could.

It fell backward, bones coming apart. But it almost immediately started trying to put itself back together.

“Wyn!” Barin shouted, turning his head. “Need magic!”

The battlecaster was on the ground, pinned down. Not by a skeleton. Not by an illusion.

Sydow’s hulking body was on top of the battlecaster, vomiting black sludge over the older man. The vomit slackened into a dribble and Sydow slowly craned his head to face Barin.

A gap split his face in two, straight between the eyes. The wound from the skeleton’s sword. With that kind of wound, he could never have moved. Yet there he was.

And his eyes… Gone were the whites, the colored iris, and even the dark pupil in the middle. It was as if someone had poured boiling tar into his eyes, melting the flesh until there was nothing left but the tar.

Something slammed into his back. It felt like a white-hot poker. With a grunt and a hiss, he turned, swinging his shield arm.

The skeleton on the ground hadn’t even finished putting itself together. It was one leg, the torso, and its sword arm. Barin’s shield slammed into the sword arm, ripping it out of his body and sending it flying across the battlefield.

He staggered away from the skeleton, arm clamped onto his side. It wasn’t a deep wound. He could tell that much. That didn’t stop the blood from trickling down over his fingertips.

Although the wound was hot, he could feel something else. Like something was wiggling and squirming inside him. He tried to take a step, only to stagger and fall. He tried to open his mouth to call for help, only to spew up black bile. His vision swam and wavered, even as he watched Sydow’s hulking form grasp ahold of another of their squad, ripping him away from fighting his own skeleton.

Barin sank into the ground, face hitting the prickly grass, as Wyn sat upright and started looking around with black tar in place of his eyes.

“Lurya…” he managed.

Barin’s vision went black.

 

 

“Three… two… one… stop,” Arkk said, watching as the sands ran out of a small hourglass.

Savren pulled a small glowstone from the center of a middling ritual circle and quickly began examining it. It took a few minutes to finish and then he still had to pull out a small notebook and scribble down a few numbers.

Arkk occupied his time watching as the landscape shimmered around him. A withered village, run-down and abandoned from the first time Evestani traversed the land, wavered and wobbled. The large fields, currently occupied with more debris and packed-down soil than crops, started misting away into nothingness. It was a depressing sight for a former farmer. Especially so when his gaze crossed the poor animals. Cows, chickens, and pigs had all been slaughtered by Evestani’s army, harvesting their meat and then just leaving the carcasses behind out in the open. It wasn’t quite as bad as salting the land might have been but it certainly did no favors to future attempts at growing crops.

Not that there were any people left here. Arkk didn’t know what had become of them. Perhaps they had evacuated to Elmshadow and beyond. Perhaps they had been slaughtered like the livestock. There were a few human bodies among the animal carcasses, but not enough for a village of this size.

He couldn’t even give them a proper burial.

Without the glowstone in the circle, the land’s true shape came into reality.

It was a pockmark of pits and holes. Lesser Servants scurried across the old village’s farmland, digging to their heart’s content. They burrowed holes into the fields that reached down to a layer of rock deep in the ground. Then, they dug a little deeper, carving out the rock and stone into sharp protruding spikes at the bottoms of each pit.

They left the bodies alone, digging around them. They were careful to not even touch the buildings. The illusory magic Savren had come up with worked poorly when it encompassed too many different materials. Right now, it focused entirely on the top layer of dirt and maybe a scattering of plants. All to hide the deep pits.

Nodding his head as he finished his calculations, Savren looked up to Arkk. “At the current rate of resource reduction, we can sustain the spell’s strength for up to twenty-eight hours.”

“A little over a day,” Arkk said, humming.

Evestani army had small units of scouts moving ahead of the main army. If they suddenly disappeared, the army should grow wary. But he had picked this spot for a reason. This village, which he didn’t even know the name of, occupied just about the only good spot of land for a fair while. To the south, a swamp sprawled out over the terrain. The muck and water would make it difficult and unpleasant for anyone crossing through it. The larger siege engines that Evestani hauled along, as well as their supplies and other carriages and carts, would likely get stuck in it entirely. They wouldn’t be able to use that route.

North of here, the terrain was mostly fine. A bit rocky and uneven for the likes of wheeled carts, but entirely passable for horses and foot soldiers. They would head up that way eventually, and he had plans for that stretch of land, but he wanted them to at least try making their way through this village.

All his hard work in digging out the pitfalls would go to waste otherwise.

“We’ll need to deal with the scouts first and then activate the illusion magic to hide the pitfalls,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “I don’t suppose I can rely on you for that as well, can I?”

“Manipulating the minds of mere mortals to make them miss no mishap should be manageable provided I possess sufficient span to scheme.”

“How long?”

“Ten to thirty minutes per person, pivoting on their perseverance and prefrontal poise.”

Nodding along, Arkk frowned in thought. “We’ll ambush them with gorgon, petrifying them. Can you affect petrified minds?”

“A mind must be malleable to mold.”

“Then we’ll have to unpetrify them, have you work your magic, repetrify them, and drop them off back here, ready to run back and report that nothing ahead of the army is amiss.”

“Workable,” Savren said.

“Good. I’ll contact Khan and get all the gorgon here.”

Arkk looked over the pits once again. The circular holes stretched out practically as far as he could see. There were probably far too many, if he were being honest. It wasn’t like the entire enemy army would continue forward once a few people fell into the pits. But if he could shave off a few of their number, maybe catch a few of their carts and catapults in the pits as well, it would be a victory considering the minor amount of resources it cost to set up.

Most importantly, it would delay them. Delay them long enough to staff Leda’s tower, receive the Prince’s army, and, hopefully, get Agnete back from the Anvil.

They didn’t have long. But every day they bought could only be to their advantage.

“Trigger in… three… two… one.”

The ground underneath Morvin’s feet trembled as he sparked a bit of magic into the ritual circle. A series of alchemical detonations blasted earth into the air in tall geysers of mud and dirt. Trees splintered and exploded. Wildlife, launched into the air, came crashing down in grisly impacts.

And the Evestani army, at the center of it all, disappeared behind clouds of dirt as the plain collapsed inward.

Morvin waited, sighing slightly in relief when the ground he stood on remained intact. There weren’t any explosives buried nearby but Rekk’ar’s words ran through his mind on the subject of accidentally causing a landslide. Fortunately, it seemed he wouldn’t have to worry about that. Now he only had to worry about that golden glow leaking out from behind the clouds of debris.

“We should leave,” Morvin said, grimacing.

“Just a moment,” Gretchen said, standing to the side with the telescoping spyglass pressed to her eye. “We need to confirm the result.”

“The scrying team can do that. Our job is done. Let’s get out of here before they figure out what happened.”

“You sound like we already failed.”

“Of course we did. You think they aren’t ready for this kind of thing? That golden glow means the avatar was here and watching. We’ve already seen it use plenty of protective magic.”

“Yes, but if half the army is buried—”

Gretchen stopped talking abruptly, making Morvin tense. He stared at the dust clouds, fearing the possibility of armored riders charging after them just like at Elmshadow. But, aside from a faint golden glow sufficed throughout the dust, there was no sign of movement.

“Wha—” Morvin started, only to pause as he heard it.

It began as a faint, high-pitched whistle high up in the sky that grew more and more urgent with every passing second. The closest sound he could think of was a keen whistle when the wind blew through a crack in the wall of his hut, something that only happened on the stormiest of days around Porcupine Hill. Even that wasn’t half as sharp and crisp.

Casting his gaze upward at the bright blue midday sky, Morvin squinted against the brightness of the sun. A dark black object, tiny relative to the sky as a whole, plummeted downward. It took a good ten seconds before he realized it was falling in roughly their direction.

The high-pitched howl continued all the while, filling his heart with dread. “Gretchen?”

Gretchen raised a hand. “Electro Deus,” she snapped, arcing a bolt of lightning from her fingers to the rapidly nearing object.

It exploded just as violently as any alchemical bomb that Arkk used. White hot bits of shrapnel scattered in all directions, sizzling as they embedded themselves into the ground around them. Morvin shielded his face with his arms, feeling the heat and force of the blast ripple through the air. Lines of heat scarred across his forearms as he felt warm liquid leak down his elbows. He sucked in his breath but kept his jaw clenched tight.

At his side, Gretchen hissed out in pain. “They know we’re here,” she said in that same hiss. “Or, if they didn’t before, they do now.”

“Let’s leave then,” he said, shakily standing. He plucked a thin bit of metal out of his arm, letting it drop to the ground as he sucked in another pained breath.

“Right,” Gretchen said, cupping her own bleeding arms.

Morvin didn’t wait around for her. The teleportation circle was just behind them. Right at its side, another of those alchemical bombs sat, ready to destroy the teleportation circle to prevent their enemy from using it.

The side of the clay pot was covered in small fletchings of debris. He shared a wary look with Gretchen—if one of those had broken the pot, they wouldn’t be standing around—before twisting the lid to the activation point. With that, he jumped onto the teleportation circle and activated it with a pulse of his magic.

He stumbled out the other side, clearing the circle just in time for Gretchen to appear in a flash of light. She almost immediately collapsed, grasping onto the side of her leg. A steady stream of blood leaked from between her fingers. In a slightly safer environment, he got a better look at her. She had cuts and scrapes all over, covering both her arms—same as him—but also her chest, her legs, and even some of her head. A trickle of blood streamed down her cheeks from a gash on her temple.

He had been crouched down into a small ball while she had been upright, taking that blast.

“You okay?”

“Do I Light-damned look alright?” she swore back, a harsh bite of anger in her voice.

Morvin looked around the new clearing they were in. A fairly desolate stretch of terrain. They were well away from the Evestani army. The teleportation circles were set at their maximum range. If the Evestani army could chase after them in any reasonable amount of time, they would have conquered the Duchy before any resistance could have been raised at the first Elmshadow defense. They were safe. For now, at least.

With a sigh, Morvin stepped forward, uttering the Flesh Weaving incantation.

“When did you learn that?” Gretchen asked, trying to step back only to stumble.

“After Elmshadow. I saw how useful it was when Hale patched me up. Didn’t want to have to rely on her.”

Gretchen didn’t look convinced. “Can you use it as well as she can?”

Morvin took a moment to consider, pinching his wounds closed. If she wasn’t going to let him heal her, fine, but he wasn’t going to sit around in pain. “No,” he said as he sealed together a wound on his shoulder. “But I probably won’t give you scales for skin or a third arm growing off your leg.”

A beat of silence passed with Gretchen doing nothing but staring at him. She finally nodded with a weary puff of breath. “Fair enough,” she said, holding out her arm. A deep gash ran from her wrist to her elbow. Far worse than any wound Morvin had.

It was only then that he realized how pale she was. The gleam of sweat on her brow and her labored breathing wasn’t a good sign either. And she had pulled away from him in that condition?

With a touch of magic at his fingertips, Morvin hurried to fix the worst of her wounds. Hale would probably still look both of them over when they got back, but he could at least keep her alive until then.

“Told you we should have left.”

“We got valuable information on enemy weapon capabilities. They can launch alchemical bombs from afar even with their army half buried in a pit.”

“I’m sure the scrying team saw that too.”

Gretchen slowly shook her head. “They should have been watching the army. They might have seen the explosion in the air—and more when it landed—but they might not have seen what caused it. We did.”

Morvin let the argument drop. He was fairly sure she was just trying to come up with a justification. An excuse. That was just like her. No matter what he argued, she could only be right in the end.

“You think his other ideas will work any better?”

Gretchen scoffed. “Has to, right? Throw a thousand darts at a target and one will stick eventually.”

“Guess we’ll have to see.”

“I’m not trying to destroy them,” Arkk said with a shake of his head. “Not with that avatar there. But we’re experimenting with new magic and weapons here. Besides, if we can whittle down their numbers a little, make sure their spellcasters have to use their magic instead of resting, and damage what morale we can, any advantage works out for our benefit, right? Not to mention delaying them until we can get Agnete back. Things are… a little strange over there at the moment. She’s safe, but…”

Ilya tapped her fingers on her chair’s armrest, frowning at him.

“What?”

Her silver eyes flicked to the board behind his back.

“What?” Arkk asked again, turning to follow her gaze.

The board had a large number of items scrawled over it.

1. Natural Barriers – Landslides, floods, trenches. Assigned – Lesser Servants. TEMPORARY SUCCESS – Forced army to reroute. Additional barriers planned.
2. Mind Magic Demoralization – Fear traps, turncoat traps. Assigned – Savren. PARTIAL SUCCESS – Stopped army completely until avatar showed itself and destroyed traps, turncoat traps caused intra-army fight, few serious injuries.
3. Impenetrable Cube – Xel’atriss magic to create an impassible boundary, trapping the entire enemy army (and avatar) until they starve to death. Assigned – Zullie. FAILURE – orthogonal misalignment.
4. Alchemical Bombs – Detonate bombs as army travels over them. Assigned – Morvin and Gretchen. FAILURE – Protective magic.
5. Supply Line Sabotage – Strike teams, no regular patterns! Assigned – Kia and Claire. FAILURE – No supply lines?
6. Direction Distortion Zone – Xel’atriss magic to shift the idea of forward and backward, making the enemy retreat. Assigned – Zullie. FAILURE – avatar ignored effect and led army through affected area.
7. Mind-Wipe Fog – Exactly what it says. Assigned – Savren. PROJECT DELAYED – Savren forgot where he kept his notes.
8. Natural Barriers with Illusions hiding said barriers – Savren and Lesser Servants. PARTIAL SUCCESS – a small portion of the army fell into death pits, unfortunately, the rest of the army realized what was happening and and waited until the avatar could clear the way.
9. Mirror-Realm Entrapment – Xel’atriss magic to shunt the army into alternate layers of reality. Assigned – Zullie. PROJECT CANCELLED – Accidentally swapped research notes with an alternate reality version, rendering them useless.
10. Poisoned Food Stores – Poison stocks of food left in ‘abandoned’ villages in the army’s path. Assigned – Larry and Lexa. FAILURE – Armies didn’t loot food? Related to lack of supply lines?
11. Maze of Infinite Paths – Xel’atriss magic to entrap the army in an infinitely looping space. Assigned – Zullie. PROJECT CANCELLED – DO NOT ASK. DO NOT SPEAK OF IT.
12. Spread Misinformation – Air drop leaflets containing false or demoralizing messages. Assigned – Ilya, Edvin, and Joanne. FAILURE – Unable to distribute leaflets safely.
13. Leda’s Tower – Requires additional employees. Assigned – Leda and Priscilla. PENDING DEPLOYMENT.
14. Illusory Opposing Army – Create illusion of a massive opposing army standing in their path. Assigned – Arkk, Zullie, and Savren. PENDING DEPLOYMENT.

Arkk looked back to Ilya, noting her deepening frown. “What?”

“Rather than demoralizing the enemy, I’m concerned that we’re demoralizing our side. Only three of the fifteen items on your list have been a success and they all have caveats.”

“It isn’t like everyone in the fortress is aware of all these operations…” Arkk looked back to the board for a moment, frowning at the final item on the list. It was, effectively, a continuation of the earlier mind-related traps that Savren had developed. The biggest difference was that it wasn’t exactly… accurate.

There were some things Arkk needed to keep concealed. Even from Ilya.

If this one worked out… there might not be anything more to this war at all. It could end here and now. At least in terms of the army. He imagined the avatar would still be after him. But an avatar without an army was far more manageable.

If it worked out. That was a fairly large if. The avatar was too versatile to be certain of anything. But if he could cause enough damage, that would work out as well.

One more day and the army would be in the right place…

One more day.

 

 

 

Agnete stepped into the vast chamber, her breath catching in her throat as she stared with wide eyes. The room was a colossal expanse, a domed structure as large as a moderate village, where rivers of molten metal flowed like lava throughout a great basin. Streams of red-hot metal fell like waterfalls from tall crucibles hanging from massive chains or wide-open pipes mounted in the walls.

The heat was oppressive, even for Agnete, but the hazy, burning air wasn’t enough to stop her. She stepped forward, ignoring the scraps of cloth bursting into flames as the heat blasted her clothing from her body. Her eyes were fixed in the center of the chamber where the molten metal seemed to come alive, rising to form a massive figure.

The Burning Forge emerged from the seething, glowing liquid, a feminine body towering above the flowing metals as if the liquid were part of her being. Only the upper part of her body was visible with the rest below the opaque lava, but even that was enough to overwhelm Agnete with awe. The god’s eyes burned with an intense orange light, far, far brighter than the embers in Agnete’s eyes. Her hair was a cascade of living flames, flowing down her back, flickering and crackling with every movement. Adorned in an armor of blackened steel, etched with pulsing magma veins, and wrapped in chains, the god looked ready for battle.

And yet, rather than a weapon, she held aloft a smithing hammer. The Burning Forge brought it down against an anvil. A thunderclap threatened Agnete’s ears, but she couldn’t stop staring as massive sparks the size of obese horses flew in wide arcs in all directions. Some merged with the grand pool of lava below while others struck the walls. The bits on the wall didn’t turn to slag but instead dribbled down the sides without leaving a trace behind.

Hanging the hammer from a gigantic hook, the Burning Forge reached a hand forward. She pinched together the clawed tips of her gauntlets, picking up a tiny black object that she promptly started inspecting—a little black box covered in gears, steam-spewing pipes, and narrow pistons. Turning the box over, she moved it to her left molten hand and continued the inspection. Satisfied, she swam through the molten metal to a small opening in the wall of the chamber and deposited the black box within.

The Burning Forge turned back toward the anvil in the center of the chamber, only to pause as those orange eyes crossed over Agnete.

Agnete’s breath hitched again as she felt something familiar reach out. The flames within her chest, unbidden, surged, drawn out to swirl around her. Agnete reached out to her fire, trying to pull it back in, but it wouldn’t obey. Before joining with Arkk, she had often lost herself in the flames, obeying their desire to be used, but she had never been refused. Never once since lighting her first candle had the flames disobeyed.

Gritting her teeth, irritation welling up, Agnete glared through the flames at the being before her. The fire, forced upon her as a child, had been the cause of everything in her life. Burning down her home village, being chased and captured by the inquisitors, exposed to the icy Binding Agent, meeting Arkk, arriving here… All because of this fire. And now this so-called god was trying to take its flames back?

Agnete stepped forward, onto a small obsidian platform that hung over the vast pit of molten metal. She stretched out a hand, grasping at the flames. Normal flames couldn’t be held in human hands. But Agnete wasn’t a normal human and these weren’t normal flames.

They were her flames.

Twisting her wrist, ignoring the blackening of her fingers, Agnete pulled the fire back toward her. She slammed her fist and her flames into her chest, biting down on the cry of pain. There was one final resistant tug before the flames surged back to where they belonged, back into her. As soon as she felt that flicker of control back, she pulled and pulled, drawing in every scrap of fire.

Her fingers and toes blackened with every passing moment. It wasn’t until the dark skin crept up past her knees and elbows that she realized she was drawing in too much. Far, far too much. More than she had ever held before. The heat in her core wasn’t just a flame, it was an inferno. And it was still growing.

Eyes wide, she snapped her gaze to the Burning Forge.

Her iron mask of a face was cracked in two, split horizontally in a jagged, ruinous grin. Not unlike the carvings villagers made of pumpkins to celebrate the harvest. It even glowed behind the sharp teeth, though it was far more intense than a simple candle.

The Burning Forge wanted this? Was that what the smile meant? She had to be allowing it, allowing Agnete to draw in too much, to now burn herself on her own flames. A little anger, even from an avatar, couldn’t possibly contend with the might of a god.

Agnete grit her teeth, trying to control the flow of the fire around her. It was a struggle just to stay standing. Sweat vaporized instantly, coating her in a thin layer of rapidly dispersing steam. All the while, she felt her limbs burning away, the heat creeping up toward her shoulders as her skin charred and cracked. It snaked upward, spiraling around her neck and down her chest and back. The pain stopped at some point. Her nerves burning out?

Whatever the cause, Agnete straightened her back and glared up at the Burning Forge.

Questions burned in the back of her mind—unless that was the fire. Why was the most prominent. Why give her these powers in the first place? Why choose her? Why put her through everything only to try to take back those flames now?

But, before she could open her mouth, she remembered Arkk. Or, rather, his advice to her. What answer would satisfy her? What question hadn’t she built up a profound answer for in her head over the years?

Would a god disappoint her with the actual answers?

Arkk would say yes. The Protector would say no.

“What does it matter?” Agnete said through clenched teeth. “It is what it is and it is my job to deal with it!”

The jagged smile on the Burning Forge’s mask slowly sealed back together, regaining its full form. Yet, there was something different about it now. The metal that had been shaped in an impassive mask of a human now looked somehow calculating. Her head slowly shook.

[Failure]/[inadequate]/[incomplete]|[understanding]/[assimilation]/[mental omega]. [View]/[observe]/[sightsee]|[problems]/[inadequacies]/[opposition]|[fight]/[eliminate]/[incinerate].

The words, if they could be called that, slammed into Agnete with the force of the giant blacksmith’s hammer. She had heard Vezta and, more recently, her own metallic clone use that language. But they had spoken the words that then forced concepts into Agnete’s head. The Burning Forge’s words were raw and unfiltered, a molten torrent of thoughts. Agnete staggered under their weight.

[Alternate]|[solution]/[victory conditions]|[exist]. [CREATIVE]. [CONSTRUCTIVE]. [DESTRUCTIVE].

Agnete grasped at her head without feeling in her fingers, wondering how her hair was still intact. “The orc blacksmiths have a saying,” she ground out. “When all you have is a hammer, every solution involves swinging it.”

The Burning Forge leaned back, using the massive anvil as a throne. Or perhaps a stool. She looked down at her with that vacant mask, almost as if disappointed that its words weren’t getting through to Agnete. Though thankful that it wasn’t wording at her at the moment, Agnete wasn’t sure that she and the god could come to an understanding. What was it the Protector had said about the Cloak of Shadows and the former inhabitants of the Underworld? Poor Lady Shadows couldn’t understand. The Cloak of Shadows had ‘saved’ the denizens of the land by turning them into mere shadows of their former selves, doomed forever to carry out the motions of life as if the ones casting those shadows were still around.

Hardly a salvation in Agnete’s eyes.

Now here was the Burning Forge, trying to communicate something to her. Despite the clear concepts slamming into her like a crystalline hammer, Agnete wasn’t sure exactly what they were trying to say. She had thought the Burning Forge was disappointed with how she had been using the flames, hence her response, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“What do you want?” Agnete hissed. Even her tongue, despite the lack of pain, felt charred and broken.

The Burning Forge stared. It was said that the designs and plots of the Light were impossible to understand for mere mortals and that the same held true for other gods before their departure. But something about the Burning Forge struck Agnete as different.

It was this world. Although strange and alien compared to what she was used to, the world itself was… understandable? Agnete couldn’t begin to guess what the machines were making, but they were making something. There was a logic to their processes. Raw material went into the furnaces, ingots went into molds, produced goods went elsewhere. Some amount of it must have come to this central area, for there were several buckets along the walls collecting pieces and parts that fell in from large hoppers.

And, while Agnete didn’t understand how they worked, she had seen the Burning Forge produce one of those black gearboxes. One of which now served as the core to the mechanical copy of Agnete, others had been the center of those flying serpents. They were… somehow… people. Or living beings, at the very least. Presumably, after being produced here, those black boxes would go elsewhere in the factory. Perhaps they would be turned into more flying serpents or those suited figures Agnete had only seen from a distance.

The Burning Forge was creating… followers? A population? The god existed here, on the ground level among mere mortals, working alongside them. A stark contrast to the Light, who shone down radiance from afar, or the Cloak of Shadows, or Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Presumably different than the Heart of Gold or the Almighty Glory as well.

The Burning Forge leaned forward. She stretched out her bare hand, scooping it through the pool of molten metal. Pulling her hand up, she held out a small globule of the glowing viscous liquid. Bits of it dripped back through the god’s fingers, but once she moved her hand over the obsidian platform that Agnete stood upon, the drippings began moving, pulled unnaturally toward Agnete.

Agnete took an unconscious step backward only to realize the foolishness of her actions. If this god wanted to kill her, lower, more tangible god or not, Agnete doubted she would have been able to stop it. With the charred skin of her body spreading ever further because she had grasped hold of her flames only to pull in too much, Agnete doubted the god needed to do anything at all but wait a few more minutes.

With Agnete standing still, the thin strands of the molten metal dripping from between the Burning Forge’s fingers touched her. Her flesh hissed for a brief moment, but there was still no pain. The glowing red metal worked its way around her body, flowing as if it had a mind of its own, filling in the thin cracks left behind in her charred skin. The skin near the glowing strands of metal started to change as well, turning from crusty and rough to a near glass-like smooth. It remained black but looked more like the obsidian platform she stood upon than anything organic.

The heat in Agnete’s chest started to spread out. It didn’t leave her body as it had when the Burning Forge first spotted her, rather, it expanded, filling the metal lines that now covered her arms, legs, and neck. The burning of her skin slowed and subsided even as the metal started glowing ever so slightly brighter.

Agnete looked down at one of her hands, frowning as she flexed her fingers. Both the metal and the glassy skin flowed and shifted, allowing her to move. With a thought, she pulled out her flames just as she would have done before. A small burning ball ignited the air over her palm. Instead of the familiar red-orange flames, the ball of fire was blue. Almost white. Agnete sucked in a breath and forced down the amount of magic flowing from her. It took concentration and effort, but the blue flames slowly turned back to yellow and finally a deep scarlet.

Movement from the Burning Forge pulled Agnete’s attention off her magic. Once again, the god dipped her hand into the pool of magma that surrounded the anvil. She scooped up a globule and held it over the obsidian platform. This time, she did not hold it near Agnete. It plopped down, landing in a large blob.

The Burning Forge used the sharp tips of her gauntleted fingers to carve into the blob as it quickly solidified. Having worked in a forge plenty of times, Agnete recognized some of the techniques that she used in manufacturing something, melting down specific parts while allowing others to cool and mold the metal. Except the skill with which the Burning Forge worked was unbelievable. The metal form started to take shape. A ruff of precisely carved feathers, complete with individually lined barbs in the vane… a beak with perfect roughing making it look as if it had been used… the sharp points of the talons gripping the top of the obsidian platform’s raised railing…

If Agnete had been as large as the Burning Forge, such fine details would have been impossible.

Yet it was clear. As the Burning Forge pulled her hand back, she left behind a raven. A life-sized raven cast in metal yet looking so realistic that Agnete was genuinely surprised when it didn’t take flight.

The Burning Forge pulled back, leaning against the anvil once again as she watched Agnete. With a lazy sweep of her arm, she gestured Agnete forward.

Agnete took a step, idly noting that she could feel her toes once again. The marvel of that would have to wait, however. She was fairly certain that the Burning Forge was, once again, trying to communicate with her. Having decided that those words weren’t working, she decided on… interpretive artwork, apparently.

Agnete threw a questioning glance up at her patron god, wondering if all of the gods were so…

So…

Obtuse.

Would it kill the god to just explain normally? Surely a god could figure out how to talk rather than use those concepts.

Concealing a sigh, Agnete looked back to the raven.

And stared.

And… something, somewhere deep inside her, was disappointed.

It was an impressive work, to be sure, as lifelike as it was. But it was just a raven. No matter how she looked at it, no matter the angle, it was just a raven. Not even a raven. A metal simulacra that couldn’t take flight. It wasn’t doing anything apart from sitting. It perched and sat, forevermore.

For a mortal, it would have been wonderous in detail alone. But coming from a god? Perfection was the bare minimum of expectations. A god whose domains included creativity? Disappointment was the least of the feelings surging inside Agnete at the moment. She reached out for the raven.

She paused, seeing her arm once again. Her once-charred skin was now a smooth, obsidian-like surface, crisscrossed with glowing veins of molten metal that filled the cracks and imperfections. The delicate lines of fiery gold traced intricate patterns across her fingers and palms, turning her hands into a work of art that celebrated the rebirth, forging beauty from her broken skin.

“Ah.”

Agnete looked back to the god lounging against her anvil.

“I… I see,” Agnete said. “I… I didn’t have a choice. Up until this last year, I had no choice but to burn and burn and burn.

“I’ve built things since then. Armor, mostly. But also a wheelchair, mechanical legs, and…” she trailed off, looking back to the door to the chamber where her copied body was presumably waiting.

The Burning Forge was disappointed. A god of fire, creativity, manufacturing, and automation wanted her powers used for more than just sweeping away enemies in gouts of flame. She wasn’t a god of war of domination, nor of purification through cleansing fire. She was a constructor. A builder. An innovator.

“There’s a war going on,” Agnete said with a frown. “I can’t make promises that things will change immediately, but…

“But,” Agnete said, straightening her back. “The war has left a full half of Mystakeen in ruins.” She looked down at her hands again before looking back up. “It can be rebuilt, grander than before. Even with your power, I’m only one person. I can’t do it alone…”

The Burning Forge crossed her arms, looking down with that mechanical mask shifting ever so slightly. Her gaze was judging, trying to decide if Agnete understood what the god was trying to say. Agnete… honestly wasn’t sure, exactly, that she had. Communicating in such an enigmatic way was surely less efficient than other methods. Then again, this wasn’t a god of efficiency.

With a casual, almost human-like shrug of her shoulders, the Burning Forge looked upward. Her fingers curled around a large chain dangling from the domed ceiling overhead. Each link of the chain was taller than Agnete and the metal bars were thicker than her entire body. Yet the Burning Forge grasped a hold of it with ease and gave it a light tug.

An ear-splitting whistle resounded through the air, drawn out. Agnete clapped her hands to the sides of her head, trying and failing to protect her ears. The whistle lasted until the Burning Forge released the chain.

[Understood]/[comprehend]/[know-it-all]. [Assistance]/[aid]/[SERVITOR]|[required]/[lifetime supply]|[begin manufacturing]!

 

 

“We cannot communicate, can we?”

The mechanical creature turned at Agnete’s question. The gears and panels making up its ‘face’ turned and shifted. A ratcheting noise came from somewhere deeper within. It clearly heard the question. There was no indication of understanding. It didn’t nod or shake its head, it didn’t speak back to her even in that language the clockwork eye used. It just… stared.

Communication wasn’t a skill Agnete thought of herself as possessing under normal circumstances. Brought in by the inquisitors at a relatively young age and then used by them for the majority of her life, speaking with others simply wasn’t something she did often. Reports, inquiries, interrogations, and all other matters of talking were Vrox’s territory. Or, occasionally, Chronicler Greesom’s. Agnete’s role was to be an imposing, unstoppable force they could wield to get others to talk.

To speak with something that couldn’t communicate with her was far beyond anything she could accomplish.

With a small sigh, Agnete turned and looked outside the window.

The backdrop of the endless factory rushed past at dizzying speeds. Barring teleportation, Agnete doubted she had ever traveled even half as fast as she was moving now. The mechanical version of herself that she had constructed brought her to a large metal carriage set atop thin beams of metal that stretched off into the horizon. Like carts in mines scaled up to an absurd degree. It moved along those tracks with great metal wheels, driven by some unseen magics at the front of the craft. Agnete wanted to look at what was surely an impressive magical array, even if she knew she wouldn’t understand it, but the mechanical version of herself had insisted she take a seat.

It wasn’t a particularly comfortable seat. Just a metal bench. The way it curved upward slightly made Agnete think that it hadn’t been designed for humans.

Presumably, this kind of transportation would carry those humanoids Agnete had seen before stepping through the portal. She hadn’t gotten a closer look at them since. She hadn’t seen much of anything living out here. Just the occasional lightning serpent flying through the dark clouds overhead, more of those mechanical eyes mounted on mobile gantries, and the thing she had created.

“ᚺᛟᚹ ᛞᛟ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚺᚨᚹᛖ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ?”

The steam-filled pipes in the copy’s chest reverberated in a fairly light sound. It pitched upward toward the end like a question, but Agnete wasn’t sure if it was actually asking her something or if her mind was just seeking recognizable patterns.

Rather than try to parse the utterly alien sounds, Agnete decided on a different tactic. She pointed a finger to her chest and said, “Agnete.”

The metal head dipped, almost like it was looking where she had pointed despite its lack of obvious eyes. It stared a moment before its head turned back up.

“Agnete,” Agnete said again. “Can you say that? Agnete.”

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.”

Agnete frowned. The sounds were close. Not exactly. “Agnete,” she said again, this time pointing toward her face so that the thing wouldn’t think her chest had a name.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.” This time, with its words, it bent its arm in several places an arm wasn’t meant to bend and pointed.

But it pointed at itself.

Agnete shook her head. Reaching out, she grasped the thing’s hand and twisted its finger to point to herself. “Agnete,” she said, pointing with the mechanical creature’s finger.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ,” it repeated, much quicker on the uptake this time. Though Agnete wasn’t sure it understood.

“Agnete,” Agnete said, pointing to herself once again. She then turned her finger to the machine. “Who?”

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ.”

“No. No…” Agnete said as it repeated the same thing it had been saying for a while now. It didn’t understand. She sank back into the seat, resting her back against the chair with a sigh. She wasn’t sure why she had bothered. It wasn’t like teaching it her name or learning its name, if it even had one, would let them communicate at all.

The creature made a noise. A low whining tone—or perhaps a whistle. It stretched on for a brief moment before shifting back into the strange words it used. “ᚨᚱᛖ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚢᛈᛋᛖᛏ? ᛞᛁᛞ ᛁ ᛞᛟ ᛋᛟᛗᛖᛏᚺᛁᚾᚷ ᚹᚱᛟᚾᚷ?”

Agnete ignored the creature, looking outside the window once again.

She felt… hotter than usual. Not as hot as when she actively used her flames, but the outside air was warming up. The windows of this vessel were positioned on its sides, negating her ability to look where they were headed. Nevertheless, she could see a red glow staining the forward side of the factory around her. The morning sun? Or evening sun? The dark clouds overhead reflected a lot of the factory lights which made it difficult to tell the time. If there was something akin to the time of day. The Underworld lacked any semblance of a day-night cycle.

But the red-orange at the front of the craft didn’t look like any morning she had ever seen. It was more like the flickering of a campfire against the trees of a thick forest. Except far more intense. A better analogy would be Agnete’s own flames against the brick walls of Elmshadow during her assault on the burg.

Was it one of the great furnaces? Agnete had seen several while atop the moving pathways. Other moving pathways, assisted by mechanical grabber arms, carried massive loads of raw ore to the furnaces. A steady stream of ore went into them and came out the other side as shiny ingots, all of which ended up transported elsewhere.

But none of those furnaces had been quite so bright as the light ahead of the vessel.

Agnete stood, wanting again to move to the head of the craft, this time to look at where they were headed and the magic that propelled them forward.

The mechanical creature latched its many-jointed hand onto Agnete’s wrist.

The heat in Agnete’s core flared and, for a moment, she thought of simply melting the creature to scrap. It kept getting in her way, dragging her through this place, all without even a hint at where they were headed or what they wanted from her. But something stopped her. Some strange feeling deep in her chest.

She wasn’t quite sure why, nor was she sure how, but the way those mechanical cogs turned on the creature’s face struck a chord somewhere inside Agnete. It was looking at her with… worry? Agnete didn’t understand how she could read any part of its expression.

“ᚨᚷᚾᛖᛏᛖ,” it said, trying to repeat her name. “ᚨᚷ… ᚨᚷ… Agnᛖᛏᛖ…”

Agnete raised an eyebrow. It almost got it right.

Releasing Agnete’s wrist, it pointed a finger in her direction. “Agneᛏe.”

Agnete slowly nodded her head.

The construct turned that finger on itself. Agnete adopted a preemptive frown, fully expecting it to repeat her name while pointing at itself.

“ᚹᚺᛟ.”

Agnete raised her other eyebrow. “Who?” she repeated. “I don’t know. That’s what I was asking you.”

“ᚹᚺᛟ,” it repeated again, moving its finger from its chest to its face. “ᚹᚺ… ᚹᚺ… Wᚺo.”

“Oh.” Agnete stared at the mechanical construct that looked so similar to herself yet so alien at the same time. With a sigh, she clasped a hand to her face and ran her fingers down her cheeks. “Oh no.”

“Wᚺo,” it said, then pointed to Agnete. “Agneᛏe. Wᚺo. Agneᛏe. ᛁ ᚨᛗ Wᚺo. ᛃᛟᚢ ᚨᚱᛖ Agneᛏe. ᛁ ᚢᚾᛞᛖᚱᛋᛏᚨᚾᛞ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛗᛖᚨᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᚾᛟᚹ.”

“I still have no clue what you’re saying,” Agnete said, shaking her head. “Unless you can tell me where—”

Agnete jerked as an ear-splittingly loud whistle sounded somewhere above them. She heard the familiar screech of metal against metal. Almost immediately, the vessel lurched. It would have thrown her forward had the construct not grasped hold of her shoulders to steady her.

Her first thoughts were of violence. Already running hot, her flames flared brighter in her chest, fearing that they had somehow come under attack. Only the utter calm of the construct made her think that everything was going as expected.

Outside the window, the scenery slowed from the blur it had been as the vessel came to a stop.

Only when it finally finished moving did the construct rise to its feet. “ᚹᛖ ᚺᚨᚹᛖ ᚨᚱᚱᛁᚠᛖᛞ. ᛏᚺᛖ ᛒᚢᚱᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛃᚢᛞᚷᛖ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᚹᛟᚱᛏᚺᛁᚾᛖᛋᛋ ᛏᛟ ᚺᛟᛚᛞ ᚺᛖᚱ ᚠᛚᚨᛗᛖᛋ.”

“What…”

The construct looked to her again, gears meshing together in obvious thought. “Agneᛏe,” it said, pointing a finger toward her. It then pointed toward the carriage door as it hissed open with a gout of steam. “ᛗᛖᛖᛏ. [Eternal Engine]/[Molten Artisan]/[Burning Forge].”

Agnete’s breath hitched as she snapped her head to the construct. It spoke in that language. The one she had heard only rarely coming from Vezta’s mouth. The one that was less a language and more a way of forcing concepts into other people’s heads.

And Agnete just had the concept of a god shoved into her mind.

“The Prince is sending a few thousand soldiers to help with the defense,” Arkk said. “Including a full detachment of spellcasters who can help operate both magical protections and bombardments. They’re stopping in Cliff first before coming here, so it will be a while. Perr’ok will have ten of his… prototypes ready before the army is expected to arrive. Leda’s tower is nearly complete and ready to move, though it is still understaffed. Our tower has extended its influence about as far as possible through burrowed tunnels all around Elmshadow. We have a countermeasure for the avatar of gold—”

“Untested and with a limited range.”

Arkk nodded at Rekk’ar’s assessment. “True, but that is still more than we had before. I’m not going to say that this battle is going to be easy but I don’t think we’ve ever been more prepared. And if it works, we might be able to end everything once and for all.”

“And yet, their army still approaches. They are either fools or they’ve got plans of their own.” Rekk’ar leaned over his plate of steak, prepared by Larry, with a heavy glower. “I wouldn’t bet on them being fools if I were you, no matter how nice of a surprise it would be.”

“It’s the Eternal Empire. Nobody I’ve spoken to knows much of anything about them, other than their utter dominance of the continent across the seas. They rule over a land larger than the Kingdom of Chernlock, Evestani, the Tetrarchy, and the Beastmen Tribes combined without any dissident or even banditry.”

“Allegedly. Wouldn’t put it past some king to say their land is one of peace and unity while the truth couldn’t be further in reality.”

Arkk nodded in agreement. “Then there is that thing you saw. Still can’t find any evidence of it with the crystal ball—”

“I know what I saw,” Rekk’ar said, thumping his fist against the table. The plate rattled as it settled.

“Not calling you a liar. Just saying that I can’t see what you saw.”

Arkk had half a mind to head out on a scouting mission of his own. Unfortunately, that was too dangerous. In Gleeful Burg, the avatar had been able to detect him, roughly at least. He wasn’t sure if it was the teleportation or just his presence. Either way, approaching that army was too great a risk. So he just had to trust in Rekk’ar’s words. His and a handful of others he had sent out to double-check.

A few scouts had reported the same thing Rekk’ar had. A few others hadn’t noticed anything amiss. All that told Arkk was that whatever Rekk’ar had seen, it wasn’t always with the main army.

“Any updates on getting that purifier back?”

Arkk frowned, shifting his focus to Agnete. The area she was traveling through was hot enough that a bright orange glow washed out just about everything. Although looking through the link was purely in his mind, it still made him want to squint.

The lesser servant was on its own, conducting a mission on Arkk’s orders that would hopefully bring Agnete back home. The distances it had to traverse, all while keeping hidden and out of sight of those mechanical eyes and flying serpents, meant it wasn’t making as much progress as Arkk would have hoped.

If it failed…

Well, Agnete would well and truly be on her own.

“For now, I believe we’ll just have to trust her to figure things out for herself. She is an avatar of that world’s god and, based on everything I’ve seen through the link, she is being treated… well?”

“I’m less interested in how she is being treated and more interested in finding someone else capable of standing up to that avatar. Your little countermeasure doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

“We just need to figure out how to use it properly,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “But you might be right. We can’t assume we’ll have Agnete for this battle.”

What did it mean to meet a god?

Agnete, as a purifier of the Inquisition of the Light, had been expected to uphold the values of the Abbey of the Light. They sought to enlighten the common populace, encourage harmony, preach the word of the Light, and otherwise advance the influence of the Abbey. More realistically, Agnete was only called in when situations devolved to the point of violence. Abnormal magics and their wielders failing to fall in line with the Abbey, heretics threatening common people, and monsters rising against the innocent. Agnete could count how many actual sermons she had attended on one hand and have fingers left over. She knew exceedingly little about the actual Light or what it wanted, if such things could even be comprehended by mere mortals.

Nobody met the Light. The Ecclesiarch was said to converse with the Light, but she hadn’t ever met him. Only once had she been in the presence of an oracle and she hadn’t been allowed to speak to the seer for fear of tampering with future visions. The closest she had was Darius Vrox and if the Light was anything like him, she imagined the world would have been a far more… orderly place.

To Agnete, her serving the Light had been no different than a common mercenary following his captain. A captain of a mercenary team went wherever they were paid to go and Agnete went wherever she was told to go.

Arkk had described the experience of encountering Xel’atriss to Agnete once upon a time. The way Vezta practically tackled him to the ground, covering his eyes out of fear that merely seeing a god would break his mind. He then described what effectively was a vision, seeing the god as it interacted with him. He spoke of awe, fear, and eventual calm as he realized that the being hadn’t intended him harm.

Yet, despite the actual encounter with such a being, Arkk didn’t seem all that reverent toward them. If Agnete had to put a single word to his demeanor towards the Pantheon, it would be annoyance. Which, she supposed, was understandable. Vezta had given him a task to fix what the gods had ruined. A practically insurmountable problem for any normal person. But to Arkk, it was just another problem he had to solve to fulfill a promise. And the gods were the cause of that problem, making them all something of an irritant.

The Protector, on the other hand, had never spoken with or properly encountered the Lady Shadows. Yet, alone and isolated for uncountable years, it had developed an intense devotion to its god. One that rivaled even the most pious devotees of the Light that Agnete had seen. Even greater than the fanatics of the Golden Order. Agnete was fairly certain it had built up an image of the Cloak of Shadows in its mind that was far greater than the actual being could possibly be, given the sorry state of the Underworld.

Vezta was the only other example of someone truly serving the Pantheon that she could think of. While Vezta’s devotion didn’t go as far as the Protector’s, she still revered them. Often with a special emphasis on Xel’atriss. But in Vezta’s eyes, the Pantheon as a whole had been wronged by the whims of three of their number. The entire group, crippled by the traitors, needed mortal hands to help them get back to their former glory.

That always struck Agnete as an oddity. How could gods end up diminished to such a point, especially the majority of them? She might have been able to understand it if all the rest fought against one, but as it was now? Agnete wasn’t sure the title of god was fitting for a being who needed aid from mortals. It wasn’t just the current situation that sent that thought through her mind.

Avatars had always existed in some form or other, according to Vezta. Beings granted slivers of the Pantheon’s power, presumably to carry out their will. That implied that these so-called gods had always needed help.

And she was one of them.

What did that mean? Was she expected to bow down and kiss the floor her god walked upon? To follow along with its every command without question? Agnete might not be the most assertive person. With the inquisitors, she had been pointed at a target and threatened with ice if she dared to deviate. With Arkk, though more willing, she still ended up aimed in a direction and told to carry out tasks. Now, she stood before grand iron doors that stretched up high enough that she had to lean back to see the top and wide enough to fit an entire warehouse, she had to wonder what awaited her in the next chamber.

More strings for the puppet?

At least with Arkk, Agnete got the impression that she could burn away her strings and he wouldn’t try to reattach them. She doubted the same could be said here. Or, rather, the very flames she wielded with such freedom lately were her strings.

“ᛏᚺᛖᛃ ᚨᚱᛖ ᚹᚨᛁᛏᛁᚾᚷ ᚠᛟᚱ ᛃᛟᚢ, Agneᛏe.”

Agnete’s eyes flicked to the mechanical version of herself. Her own creation, minus that black box of gears and steam. It simply stood in an uncannily stiff stance that almost perfectly mirrored the one Agnete held.

Turning back to the door, Agnete’s black hair whipped about her with a sudden rush of air. The air came from her back, slammed into the door, and rocketed upwards to join with a column of twisting flame that stretched high enough to reach the smoggy clouds overhead. Gears on the tall tower turned in smooth motions, some driven by pistons on the outside, others driven by internal mechanics. The rhythmic thumping of metal against metal sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking over and over again. It was loud enough to resound throughout the factory, drowning out every other noise that cropped up during the long pauses between strikes.

Agnete drew in a breath, feeling the heat rush into her chest with the hot air. She took a step forward, leaving her mechanical clone behind.

The great doors shifted. Long metal bars withdrew from the doorframe, pulled along metal tracks by the rotation of cogs, ratcheting and clicking with every moment. The doors cracked open.

An inferno rushed out from the thin gap, enveloping Agnete in familiar flames.

 

 

 

“This is it?”

Arkk leaned over Zullie’s desk, frowning at the object clasped between the metal claws. It… wasn’t exactly what he had expected.

His researchers had been hard at work. Since they couldn’t try to connect to the Anvil until the scrying team found another portal archway, Sylvara, Zullie, and the others went back to the binding agent project to oppose the avatar of the Heart of Gold. This binding agent was constructed using items recovered from the Silence. Although several plant clippings had been brought back, the two main items of note had been a hammock and those flowers that put people to sleep. So, he had expected rope or a flower to sit on top of the table. Or, failing that, a skull to represent the Eternal Silence’s other dominion.

Instead, he got… that.

A horrifying bundle of dried twigs and grass, tied with thin strings into a rough, humanoid shape. The entire thing looked like it had been dipped into a vat of molten gold—which might have explained a minor deficit in the treasury—but the dipping job had been poor enough that the somewhat charred plants were still visible at various points and the gold was flaking off. It looked like a haphazard mess, far from the quality he had come to expect from most of Zullie’s work.

Arkk folded his arms, looking around the assembled group. Sylvara sat with heavy eyelids, clearly trying to use pure frustration to stay awake. The witch in the next seat around the table wasn’t even trying. She was stretched back in her seat, head resting on one shoulder. Savren hadn’t shown up at all. Morvin and Gretchen had their backs to one another, both fast asleep. Only Hale was looking at Arkk, frowning slightly but not any more than normal.

“It isn’t affecting you?” the youngest of his research team asked before breaking out into a long yawn.

And when had Hale joined the research team properly? At some point, she had just become a fixture of the group and Arkk hadn’t questioned it. Did she contribute or just observe?

She took in all the magic around her and just made it work so easily? He had struggled for years. It wasn’t until he contracted with an ancient magical artifact that he found himself able to control his magic enough to utilize it. It was true that she had proper books and even a tutor in the form of Zullie rather than just what he had gleaned from passing travelers… If he were being honest… seeing her like that made him feel like he could never compete. There just wasn’t a point in trying further. He really should just lie down and quit…

Arkk’s thoughts jerked to a stop. He looked around the room at everyone’s lethargic state before his eyes settled on the gold effigy. With a thought, he teleported it off to a secure vault down in the lower reaches of Fortress Al-Mir.

The instant it was gone, it was like the air itself became lighter. Hunched shoulders relaxed, droopy eyes picked up, and Morvin and Gretchen shifted but failed to wake.

Arkk looked at Hale again.

She shifted, looking uncomfortable. “What?”

Smiling, Arkk reached out and ruffled her hair, prompting a brief shout and a sudden scramble to get away.

It was a good thing he had checked in on them. Or, rather, it was a good thing Hale had tugged on the employee link. He hadn’t been paying attention to what they were doing. A dangerous prospect. If they had been left to sit in that thing’s presence, who knew how it would end up.

“So,” Arkk said, knocking the tip of his boot into Zullie’s chair, startling her awake. “Apathy? Or sleep inducement?” Arkk looked to Sylvara. “Is that going to work on the avatar? You were fighting it off.”

“It was a test,” Sylvara snapped, her fingers digging into the table’s edge. “If I can resist it then the avatar can too.”

“It’s fine,” Zullie said as she lazily waved a hand back and forth. She was still fully reclined in her chair, not even able to muster the energy to look at anyone else. “I proved it gets stronger with proximity. Couldn’t even get close enough to touch it.”

Arkk pursed his lips into a frown. “If we have to touch the avatar with it, I might as well hit him with a lightning bolt.”

“Ah! But that’s the beauty of it,” Zullie said, snapping her fingers. “Allow me to explain…”

“We should bombard them now.”

Rekk’ar slowly shook his head, lowering the looking glass. The motion made the thin cloak of shadow draped over his prone body shift uncomfortably. He tried to adjust it without moving too much only to find a twig digging into his side in the new position.

“Think about it, all we have to do is move that magic thing out here, activate it a few times, and then run away. Come back a day later and do the same thing. They can’t march while protected by the golden dome so they have to take it down at some point. We slow them down and, by the time they even reach Elmshadow, they’re beaten down to a tenth of what they are.”

“Being out here like this is a risk as it is,” Rekk’ar grunted, pulling the twig from his side. “Maybe it works once. Try it a second time and the bombardment team will be eating one of those golden beams. I guarantee it.”

Dakka scowled, shooting him a glare. With the shadow cloak in the way, her face was little more than a haze against the forest backdrop. He knew her well enough to fill in the gaps. “Maybe once would be enough. Get them wary and sluggish. Wait a few days until they think they’re safe and then do it again.”

“You want to? Be my guest. You have Arkk’s ear. I’m sure you can figure out the words to convince him—if he isn’t already planning something similar on his own.” Rekk’ar grunted as he pulled up the spyglass again. “But don’t come haunting me when you get your name scrawled up on that memorial wall of his.”

The wide open plains made Rekk’ar uneasy. Five steps forward and there would be nowhere to hide even with these shadow cloaks. The army had lookouts specifically on guard for anything out of the ordinary.

The army itself stretched long in several serpentine lines of soldiers, horses, and wagons. All looked out of place in this landscape. Their armor glinted in the fading light as their banners fluttered in the weak breeze. There were two distinct banners among the lines of soldiers. One of Evestani, encrusted in gold. The other were simple black banners bearing a ring of white blades—the so-called Eternal Empire.

The lines began to bunch up as the sun set, all gathering around the campfires that sprung up in their midst. He could make out the figures of soldiers setting up tents in a methodical, practiced way, just as they had every night since invading Mystakeen. A group of their scouts returned, speaking in tones too distant to hear to an individual who seemed to command respect; they were tall and imposing even among the Eternal Empire’s already tall men.

“So?” Dakka said, whispering as the night fell. “What’s your plan?”

“Plan?”

“You didn’t come out here just to watch, did you? I sure didn’t volunteer to join you just to sit around.”

Rekk’ar lowered the spyglass. Peering into those tiny crystal balls strained both his back and his eyes. Seeing things in person had a value of its own. Not that he expected Dakka to understand. “Didn’t ask for your presence,” he said with a grunt. “You want to tag along? Fine. But don’t complain about my job.”

It didn’t help that he didn’t trust those crystal balls. Sure, they worked fine for random scrying, but an army like this knew they were being watched. They weren’t using that white mist to obscure their forces this time, at least not while marching. There wasn’t much point. A blob of white fog or a blob of men, both were obvious.

Information allowed them to plan. The enemy knew that. They wouldn’t march directly toward Elmshadow without a plan of their own. Simple logic dictated that they would try to conceal crucial aspects of their plan just as Arkk burrowed his secrets beneath the ground.

“So what is it?” Rekk’ar grumbled to himself. “Is it a larger army than we expected?”

It was hard to tell the size of the opposing force. Scrying was typically conducted from overhead, allowing them to look down on the entire enemy army. His position now only afforded him a look from a lower angle. Even still, he didn’t think there was a significant difference between what he had seen in the crystal balls versus what he was seeing now.

Was it their carts? There were a number of siege engines in the army. Wheeled catapults and trebuchets capable of launching alchemical bombs or even just stones if the situation called for it. Some of the covered carts were magically protected against scrying, showing nothing more than a black void. Arkk’s current theory was that those carts carried magical bombardment arrays much like the one he had stolen from Evestani in the first defense of Elmshadow. Unless Rekk’ar was willing to venture forth and leave the safety of the forest, venturing straight into the center of the enemy encampment, he wouldn’t be able to ascertain the accuracy of Arkk’s theory.

That was a little too risky. Perhaps the gremlin would manage with her light feet and stealthy spells. Neither Rekk’ar nor Dakka would make it far enough to peek inside those carts, let alone escape with the information.

Even still, that didn’t feel like the answer either. Arkk was likely correct about the contents of most of those carts. If only because of the absence of such magics elsewhere in the army.

“The stars are strange tonight.”

Rekk’ar shuddered as he lowered his spyglass once again. Olatt’an had muttered some words like that before they got themselves into this whole mess. Despite himself, he craned his neck and looked up.

Night had only fallen a short while ago, during their little stake-out. The sky wasn’t totally dark yet. An orange hue struck the undersides of distant clouds, looking an awful lot like the Underworld’s persistent lighting. But directly above, in a cloudless section of the sky, Rekk’ar could see the faint dots of light gleaming down.

He was about to roll his eyes and focus back on the army when one of the stars winked out. That, on its own, wasn’t particularly odd. Stars twinkled. They brightened and dimmed depending on their whims. With the light still in the sky, even if it wasn’t on the ground, he could easily imagine a star being washed out.

But that wasn’t what happened. It had been one of the brightest lights in the sky. Now it was simply gone.

And it wasn’t the only one. Another star disappeared, not far from the first. And another. And another. All in a rough line. There was simply a void where those stars had been.

Except, a short distance back, a star appeared. It popped into existence like it had never left. And another. And another. Even the bright star reappeared after a moment.

Rekk’ar rolled onto his back, staring up with the aid of the spyglass. He aimed it directly at the next star that should disappear if the pattern held up. And sure enough, it did. But it didn’t disappear all at once. Though it was a tiny dot even in the spyglass, he could still see it disappear from one side to the other. As if something crossed between him and the stars above.

Realizing that, he mentally traced out the pattern of missing stars. It was like a leaf. Pointed at one end, wider in the middle, pointed at the other end. Oblong.

Or… not a leaf.

A slight chill ran down Rekk’ar’s spine. That…

That wasn’t possible.

No. Thinking something was impossible was foolhardy. A year ago, he would have said everything about Fortress Al-Mir was impossible. He would have said other worlds were impossible. He would have said monsters like Vezta weren’t possible. Just a few months ago and he would have said giant walking towers were impossible.

“We need to get back,” Rekk’ar said. He had a report to make.

“My father’s armies will finally be arriving within the week.”

Katja tensed, fearing the next words from the Prince’s mouth. Thus far, most of their interactions had been cordial. Even accepting. Which was exactly what Katja had been aiming for.

It honestly felt like she was a slave again, putting on the polite smile to avoid her master’s beatings. The entire charade made her sick. If only the Prince had died like he was supposed to have, she wouldn’t have to suffer through this. The only thing that kept her from snapping was the knowledge that it wasn’t a permanent situation.

She wasn’t a slave. He wasn’t her master. The situation was more akin to that of an employer that she needed to appease.

And the reward for her patience? A chance to take his position. To be named the reagent of Mystakeen, whether that was as Duchess, Countess, or whatever other title she might be able to scramble and scrape for.

But there was always that fear that the Prince or his father might have someone else in mind. And if an army was approaching, so too was the possibility that a less deserving replacement for her was on its way.

The way Prince Cedric was drawing out the conversation did not fill her with confidence. He sat on the former Duke’s throne, surrounded by aides and advisors, of which Katja had effectively become one. She wasn’t quite sure why, but the Prince had seen fit to assign her to a position of effective honor, directly on his left. His right-hand man was, naturally, one of his chief adjutants.

Katja eyed the adjutant with envy. More than once, she had pondered the possible changes to her position should the bearded man fall victim to an assassin from the Eternal Empire. Never enough to engage in any plotting. Given her earlier… actions, she didn’t want to tread through any dangerous waters at the moment. Not when things looked to be going so well.

She held a respected position. In no part due to her intimate knowledge of the territory Evestani currently occupied. Moonshine Burg and its surroundings had been her own territory at one point. What she didn’t know personally, she knew from Arkk. The information he fed her ensured she always appeared ready and competent. Indispensable, in other words. There was no need to vie for a position with the Prince’s clear favorite.

The adjutant—Mack or something to that effect—turned his head toward her and smiled just a little too wide. It was a polite and agreeable smile, but it just widened at the corners of the lips a little too much. He always smiled like that at her. She might have thought he fancied her if not for the look in his eyes. The way he stared always made her feel like she had been speaking her thoughts aloud.

“My lord?” Katja said, prompting the Prince as she looked away from the adjutant. “You don’t sound pleased with that. Is the army a problem?”

With a small scowl, Prince Cedric lowered the letter he had been reading. “Only eight thousand strong. Less than what I requested. With the chaos in Mystakeen, my father wants to ensure that no section of the border between it and Chernlock goes undefended.”

There was something in his words. Some odd hint that he wasn’t quite telling everything he knew. It wasn’t anything big, but Katja had well learned how to spot a liar. “Did you not have your own army in Vaales?” Katja asked, gently prodding. She wasn’t about to call him out for lying. The Prince obviously had his own secrets and she liked her head attached to her shoulders too much to question his plans.

“Only the elites I brought with me.” Cedric drummed his fingers on the throne’s armrest. “Vaales has little need for a standing army. We have other methods for dealing with our problems.”

The adjutant’s smile grew ever so slightly wider at the Prince’s words.

“No,” Cedric continued. “The problem now is what to do with them. I intended to send a detachment about as large as we are getting to Arkk for the defense of the realm, contingent on an in-person meeting with the man. But that plan involved a much larger force that I would direct at my will. With only eight thousand… I either send them all and risk feeding a man with already too much power the notion that he can use them for his own goals, keep them all for myself and risk another incursion through Elmshadow, or split them and potentially fail in all regards due to low manpower across the map.”

He feared lending the full army to Arkk and having Arkk turn around to try to conquer the land with them. Arkk, Katja knew, wouldn’t do that. He had shoved this job off on her, after all, when he easily could have taken it for himself. Of course, perhaps he foresaw the problems that would come with usurping the Duke’s throne right out from under the King’s nose, but, simpleton as he was, Katja doubted that. It was still a reasonable worry for someone who didn’t know the man…

“But wouldn’t the men remain loyal to you? Or your father, at the very least. Just because they would fight with Arkk against Evestani—”

“Company Al-Mir has accrued a large amount of power in a very short amount of time. Not in the least because of a seemingly endless supply of gold that Arkk uncovered somewhere.”

Katja had to hide her scowl. It wasn’t endless. She knew that. A large portion of the gold he used was her gold. Not that she could say that aloud.

“I imagine many soldiers would be loyal. But many more wouldn’t. Never underestimate the greed that lies within the hearts of men.”

“My liege,” the adjutant said. “Why not entrust the army to me? I will march them to Arkk—or rather, to Elmshadow. They will not be under his command, but mine. We will defend the realm, and even continue the march all the way through Evestani until there is nothing left of it.”

“If eight thousand were enough to destroy a nation, no nation would exist,” Katja said with a scoff.

“Eight thousand alone? No. But Eight thousand with unprecedented magical might at their backs?”

Katja pursed her lips into a frown. If Arkk’s fortress could manage that, he surely would have already.

Or perhaps not. Reclaiming Elmshadow had taken about two thousand men. Most of whom had been under Hawkwood’s command, all of whom had pulled back immediately after the battle because of the Prince. Arkk had been left with nothing but his own few men.

Hawkwood, at the moment, was running an errand for Prince Cedric. Katja had not been privy to the details. Another secret. Maybe related to the other lies Cedric was telling?

“If he continues to ignore a meeting with me,” Prince Cedric said slowly, trailing off without finishing his thought. It wasn’t hard to guess at his meaning, however.

Katja slowly drew in a breath. Arkk had been planning on meeting with the Prince. He had sent her letters stating so. But then some emergency cropped up with his men and had been forced to delay. And now…

Katja’s eyes narrowed as she looked to the adjutant. The way he had phrased his plan… March with the magical might at their backs, but not necessarily Arkk. Was he planning on taking Arkk’s power for himself? Katja had abandoned those plans early on in her stay with Arkk, if only because that monstrosity kept killing the men she sent out into the restricted areas of the fortress. It had to be the source of Arkk’s power and it was clearly loyal to him.

A sly grin spread across Katja’s face. If the adjutant wanted to try for himself… who was she to stop him? And if he left Cliff, all the better. She would be here, alone, with the Prince.

“Your adjutant makes an astute point,” Katja said. “Keeping control of the soldiers through a trusted subordinate seems ideal given the situation.”

Cedric turned his head, eying her with a piercing look. “You would nominate yourself?”

Katja let out a short laugh. “No, absolutely not. I am self-conscious of my position. I’m well aware that you would never trust me with an army like that at this stage. But your adjutant suggested himself. I can see how much you trust him. Unless there is a more ideal candidate that I am unaware of…”

The Prince shot a look at his adjutant. Almost a glare, for which he got an even wider smile in return.

Katja made sure to keep her own smile restricted to dainty, no matter what kind of grin she wore inside.

 

 

“ᛈᛚᛖᚨᛊᛖ ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ.”

Agnete jerked her head at the voice. The background thrum of the Anvil hammered away, clacking and clanging and whirring and grinding. It had been overwhelming in the first few moments. Agnete wasn’t sure if she had adjusted to it or if her magic was at work, but it felt like a mere distant noise now.

But that voice had not.

As a living human who, on occasion, interacted with others, Agnete had heard voices before. In her time with the inquisitors, she hadn’t often been called upon to speak, but she still heard. Lords and serfs, priests and traders, all had slightly different ways of speaking. There was a difference between a bombastic baron throwing his authority around with every word and a humble toymaker speaking excitedly over a newly fashioned doll.

Each word in the voice that now addressed her, coming from the large orb hanging from the gantry, was not natural. Not born of flesh and breath. It had a cold, metallic timbre. Each word was sharp and clear, she could tell that even without understanding the words, yet the precision was too much. It was unfeeling to the point where it sent shivers down her spine.

“ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ,” it said again. There was a strange crackling behind the crisp words that only served to make them more apparent, further drowning out the background voices. Like the hiss and pop of a fire but more erratic. “ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ.”

The metal eye swung away from Agnete. As it did so, the entire landscape began rearranging itself. Panels swung down on large mechanical arms, forming steps. The walls of a nearby building peeled back as if made from mobile bricks. One of the moving pathways, perpendicular to the steps, slid into place. The gantry moved the metal eye directly over the moving pathway.

Agnete flicked her gaze upward. A half dozen of those flying serpents were lazily drifting about overhead. They weren’t attacking. Rather, they looked calm. The lightning bolts hopping between the nodes on their backs even felt subdued. They were just watching.

She turned back to the large metal eye with a small frown.

Its words were unintelligible but the meaning was anything but. It wanted her to follow.

Agnete looked back. The portal wasn’t working. Even though she was far from a capable spellcaster, the reason was obvious. A mechanical arm had removed the keystone, depositing it into a bank of similar rune-covered crystalline stones. She could try to get it operational again. She didn’t know which of those crystals was the right one, but it wouldn’t be hard to test them one at a time. All she had to do was get her escorts off her back. From what she saw of those flying serpents, she doubted they would be able to withstand her flames. The lightning could be dangerous, but with nothing else here that she had to care about, she could go all out.

Arkk’s lesser servant coiled around her boot. Agnete frowned, looking down at it. Was it trying to say something? Was Arkk still controlling it or was it just latching on to her on its own?

“ᛇᛟᚢ ᚲᚨᚱᚱᛇ ᚨ ᛊᛚᛁᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚠᛚᚨᛗᛖᛊ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ. ᚹᛖ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛏᛖᛊᛏ ᛃᚢᚱ ᚹᛟᚱᚦᛁᚾᛖᛊᛊ.”

Agnete looked up to the eye again. It was trying to communicate with her in that deep, vibrating bass tone.

Agnete stepped forward, climbing the panels toward the moving pathway. A year ago, she likely wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from burning the entire place down to slag. She very well might have boiled away the crystalline archway in a blind fury. Were this anywhere else, she might have done so anyway.

But there was something about this place. A connection that resonated somewhere deep in her chest. It was like when she had first agreed to work with Arkk and found that connection to his fortress. Except this was on a whole other level.

Once she stepped on the moving platform, the stairs she had climbed moved back, pulled to their resting spots to make way for some kind of horseless carriage transporting a load of rocks in its back. A moment later, the moving platform began actually moving, ferrying her away from the portal fast enough to pull her hair back, whipping it around.

This was the Anvil of All Worlds. The home of her supposed patron. It was time to see just what it had in store for her.

“Can’t make heads or tails of them. Sorry about that.”

“Thank you for trying, Perr’ok.”

The orc blacksmith dipped his head in an apologetic nod. If he were being completely honest with himself, he hadn’t expected much. The blacksmiths working for him were skilled in arms and armor. Even more mundane things like door hinges and locks weren’t beyond them. But a door hinge was a far cry from those mechanical serpents. They were akin to living beings, albeit made from metal and lightning.

Arkk pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. Agnete was still over in the Anvil. She was the only one who would have been able to… dissect those creatures with a chance at understanding them. At least she was safe. Thus far, nothing over there had tried attacking her. Arkk wasn’t quite sure what the denizens of that land intended, but they had brought her to one of the largest structures and then effectively shoved her into a room.

It wasn’t a prison. Arkk thought it might have been at first, given how minimalistic it was. There was a simple iron bed, raised off the floor, and a similar chair built into one of the walls. But a whole side of the room was a kind of workshop, one filled with equipment and yet more machines whose purposes eluded Arkk. Agnete, on the other hand, seemed to have an idea of how to work them. For the last full day, she had sat in front of one of them, constantly moving back and forth between various tools at the station as she worked on… something.

Arkk wasn’t sure what it was. It was based around some dark cube that had been sitting on the workbench when Agnete arrived. A black box with a multitude of gears jutting off it at odd angles, pipes strewn across its surface that occasionally emitted puffs of steam, and even sparking nodes of electricity. Its gears whirred on their own, somehow powered from within the box that was no bigger than Arkk’s torso.

Inside each of the flying serpents, they had found similar black boxes. With the serpents broken apart and damaged as they were, the boxes were the only parts still moving.

He almost wondered if she was being ordered to replace the serpents that he had killed.

It was somewhat strange that she seemed to be complying with everything around her. There might have been some communication going on that Arkk couldn’t hear through the employee link that had convinced Agnete to cooperate. Either that or she was doing so willingly in the hopes of learning more about the Burning Forge and her powers.

Whatever it was, Arkk was stressing over the fear that the cooperation wouldn’t last. Those serpents had attacked Olatt’an’s team, killing two and injuring more. Agnete was powerful. Her flames could deflect the golden rays of the Heart of Gold’s avatar. But if she were caught unawares by one of those serpents who suddenly took a dislike to her…

There was nothing he could do about it for the moment. Zullie, despite her best efforts, had been unable to connect the portal to the Anvil portal that they had opened before. The scrying teams could see the anvil, although they could only see it through a static haze that indicated an overabundance of magic, but they had yet to locate any additional portal structures to try to connect to.

A heavy clearing of a throat had Arkk opening his eyes.

Perr’ok was still here, standing in front of his desk. “Was there something else?” Arkk asked, already dreading what problems might have arisen.

Was Agnete’s absence causing problems in the smithy? He knew that she was a common fixture down there, one very much appreciated by all the blacksmiths even if she wasn’t contributing to their work. Or had the Shadow Forge suffered problems in her absence? She was the one who taught everyone else how to work it. If something unexpected came up…

“Those metal hulks we dragged over from the Underworld were simpler to understand.”

Arkk blinked, taking a moment to remember. With his mind occupied by Agnete and those serpents, it took a second. A quick glimpse into the foundry confirmed his thoughts.

They had salvaged a few items from the orc homelands before Zullie reset the portals to how they normally were while she worked on how to get back to Agnete. One of those pieces of salvage were the large metal… hulks. Arkk wasn’t sure how else to describe them. They were large, standing at least three times as tall as an orc with boxy metal torsos and a pair of somewhat stubby legs. Unlike the serpents, they were at least as old as the rest of the ruins in the area. The wear and rust were evidence of that.

“You understood their construction? Or what they were for?”

“What they were for is obvious,” Perr’ok said. “Nothing gets that much armor if it isn’t intended for battle. Their arms were like swords with little teeth on them that could move about, ripping and tearing at whatever they hit. As for understanding… I wouldn’t be able to build one from nothing, but if it is recreating the rusted-over parts and copying the designs exactly? I think we could do that. Nothing like those black gearboxes the serpents had.”

Arkk clasped his fingers together on his desk, staring at Perr’ok while using Fortress Al-Mir to stare at the hulking machine that was strung up by chains down in the depths. “You want to recreate one? What of our other projects? This will take away from them.”

Perr’ok scratched at his chin. “With the Shadow Forge providing armor, we actually have something of a surplus. At least for orc-sized gear. We haven’t made any new orc armor in the regular forge since we started using the Shadow Forge. That’s left it partially unused. Manpower is a problem, as we still have to staff both forges, but if you can hire… five good smiths to take over regular armor production? I think I could get a small team to reconstruct one of these things in a week or two.”

Arkk tapped his fingers against his desk. Two weeks would be just in time for the first of his planned encounters with Evestani’s renewed force that was marching across Mystakeen. Any later than that and it would be too late. At least for this battle.

Was it worth it?

Gold was relatively thin at the moment, but he could hire a hundred if he wanted. The real limitation to his gold reserves came in the form of creating new walking fortresses or other large projects like that. “Would ten new hires complete the project faster? Or would you start tripping over each other’s feet?”

“These hulks are big enough that we could set everyone on different components. Might need to expand the smithy to make room. Otherwise, yes. It should be faster.”

“I’ll see what I can do, then. Draw up a routine and plans for ten people to work on this project.”

A single war machine, unless it was far more capable than he thought it would be, wouldn’t be worth it, but he was already reconfiguring some of his plans. Specifically his plans for Leda’s fortress. Staffing it with soldiers wasn’t something he could easily do without taking away from elsewhere. That was why he had sent his letter to the Prince, requesting aid in dealing with Evestani’s army. He needed men here so that he could send his own men to Leda.

But if one of these war machines was worth even ten men…

Perr’ok flashed his tusks, not in anger or rage, but in pride. He offered a shallow bow before he turned and left Arkk’s office.

One was a prototype. A test. If that one turned out to be worth the time and manpower, not to mention whatever gold he had to spend on it, he could redirect more manpower toward manufacturing more of them. There were plenty of displaced people from the war. Plenty of local smiths that now lacked a forge. He could recruit. A quarter of a gold coin a month would be a windfall for many, not to mention guaranteed food and housing.

Arkk closed his eyes again, focusing on Agnete. If only she were present. Her mere existence generally made things run smoother down in the smithy.

But… Of all the Pantheon, the Burning Forge was the one god he thought would be the most willing to assist them. He had thought that long before they opened the portal with Xel’atriss. That belief mostly came from the fact that Agnete was working with him. And she still was an employee of his, as evidenced by his ability to look in on her.

If she could convince the Burning Forge, or even the denizens of that realm, to lend their assistance…

Arkk wondered what answer the Golden Order would come up with to a swarm of those lightning serpents flying over the battlefield…

Agnete staggered back from the workbench, grasping a hand to her head. She felt dizzy. Weak. Her arms were shaking in a way that reminded her of the week she went without food or sleep while on a mission with the inquisitors. But it couldn’t have been that long. The moving pathway brought her here and just left her in the room. She had seen the workbench… All the ideas she hadn’t been able to bring to fruition with the Shadow Forge came surging back and…

And…

Agnete, leaning forward as she sat on the edge of the metal bed, looked up at the workbench. At what she had created.

At its core, the black box that had been sitting on the workbench, waiting for her arrival. The moment she laid eyes on that labyrinth of gears, pipes, and tubes, inspiration had struck. All the ideas she had, all the experience she had built up in Al-Mir’s forges, had come flooding out. She could see the efforts that had gone into building Katt’am new legs here as well, expanded upon to a fully formed human.

Or… not a human at all.

The silhouette it cast was disturbingly humanoid. Yet, in every other aspect, it was not. Limbs, if they could be called that, jutted out awkwardly and bent, jointed, at odd angles. Steam hissed from its joints and the occasional puff of acrid smoke seeped out from hidden valves, filling the air with the scent of burnt metal and oil.

The vague outline of its head was an utter abomination. An amalgamation of rotating cogs and the odd flickering lights, devoid of any facial features. Vezta was a beautiful woman in comparison. Even the lesser servants were more appealing to look at.

It sat on the workbench like a toymaker’s doll, head hanging to one side and arms limp, resting on the bench. But, as Agnete stared at her creation, the gears in the black box began to turn.

With a sudden creak and grind that quickly smoothed out, its limbs snapped forward. Fingers with far too many joints grasped the edge of the workbench and pushed it off. Its feet caught the ground and thumping pistons in its legs kept it upright.

Agnete got back to her feet. With the adrenaline flooding through her body, she could hardly feel the effects of hunger or fatigue. The temperature of the room started rising.

It slowly straightened its head, turning it in a full circle as if it were observing its surroundings with its eyeless face.

It could observe its surroundings, Agnete realized. Not in the way any human or beastman could, but that black box had feedback mechanisms. Mechanisms that she had hooked up in her hazy fugue of inspiration. As its head reached its second full revolution, it stopped on Agnete. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but she knew it was staring at her.

With it standing like that, arms at its side, it almost looked more human. The many joints in its limbs and hands were invisible unless it actuated them.

Worse than looking human, some vague part of it made Agnete feel like she was looking into a mirror. Like she had designed the mechanical monstrosity after herself. It stood at equal height to her. If it kept its arms steady, the defined lines of Agnete’s muscles and shoulders matched with the creation, as did its legs and torso. If garbed in the inquisitorial uniform—and one avoided looking at its face—it might even fool Vrox.

“ᛏᚺᛖ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛒᚢᚱᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᛟᚾᛖ ᚱᛖᛊᛏᛊ ᛁᚾ ᛃᚢᚹ ᚺᛖᚨᚱᛏ, ᚺᛟᚾᛟᚱᛖᛞ ᚷᚢᛖᛊᛏ. ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹ, ᛈᛚᛖᚨᛊᛖ.”

Both Agnete and the creation jolted, snapping their heads toward the chamber’s door. A small glowing yellow eye, metal like the larger one on the gantry, sat embedded in the wall. Agnete still didn’t know what the words were. Without the changing platforms creating a stairway for her providing some context clues, she couldn’t even guess at this one.

The same did not appear to be true for her mechanical clone. It turned fully—first its head, then its torso swiveled, then its legs moved to follow—and approached the door. It slid open with a steam-emitting hiss without the machine even touching it, much like the doors in Fortress Al-Mir. It didn’t leave the room, however. It paused at the threshold, turned its head, and held out an arm with the palm of its hand facing upward.

“ᛇᛟᚢ ᛈᚨᛊᛊᛖᛞ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛏᛖᛊᛏ,” it said, emitting the words through steam-filled pipes deep within its chest. It didn’t sound as deep and reverberating as the metal eyes, but it still had that same tone to it. “ᛏᚺᛖ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ ᛟᚠ ᚲᚱᚨᛖᛏᛁᛟᚾ ᚨᚹᚨᛁᛏᛊ.”

This time, with its hand out, Agnete had enough context clues to know it was asking for her to follow. Agnete hesitated a moment, first looking around for the lesser servant. It was nowhere to be seen, but there was a small trail of black oil leading to a narrow vent near the bed. Taking a breath, she looked back to the humanoid construct.

“Fine.” She stepped forward. Although there were some hunger pangs in her stomach, her curiosity won out. “Lead the way.”

 

 

Arkk stared at the crystalline archway with a mild nervousness. He couldn’t stop sweating. Granted, part of that was Agnete at his side, running a little hotter than normal, but at least a little came from worries over what might come through that portal.

The former orc homeland was a wide and, as with all of the Underworld, desolate place. A few days of labor had rebuilt some of the ruins around, providing shelter and, more importantly, fortifications around the portal. Flying, lightning-spewing machines wouldn’t take them by surprise again. Not to mention, Arkk was present and completely ready to cast slowing spells, explosions, haste spells, and whatever else might help bring such an opponent down enough for Agnete, Claire, or Dakka’s crew to dismantle them.

The most unnerving thing about the situation wasn’t the thought of monsters on the other side of the portal coming through. It was that he might not be able to return if something went wrong. Zullie had assured him that nothing would. They had effectively tested shutting down and reactivating the Fortress Al-Mir portal both in rescuing Olatt’an’s expeditionary team and a few times since then just to make sure it hadn’t been a fluke.

But, while the portal was inactive and the orc homeland portal redirected to the Anvil, Arkk would be entirely cut off from his home world.

A thin membrane of translucent liquid stretched across the interior of the archway. Arkk felt a prickle of magic against his skin, not unlike the sensation of walking into a spiderweb. It wasn’t pleasant. Was that normal? It hadn’t happened when they had rescued Olatt’an. It could just be a product of stress-induced imagination.

He exchanged a glance with Agnete. The flame witch stood stoic and impassive as always, but the embers in her eyes betrayed a hint of the same anxiety that he felt.

“Worried?”

“Excited,” she said, her tone flat. Maybe it wasn’t anxiety then. “Though, perhaps I am somewhat concerned. I don’t… I wanted to know why I am the way I am ever since you told me about the Burning Forge. Why or how I was chosen, who They are, what reasons They have for creating purifiers like me. But now that we’re here, ready to step foot into the world of my patron, I feel like I’m not sure I want to know. What if the answers are lacking? Or nonexistent. It isn’t like we’ve had an audience with the Cloak of Shadows here. The gods might simply not wish to speak to mortals.”

Definitely anxiety then.

Pressing his lips into a thin smile, Arkk nodded, understanding Agnete’s mix of emotions. Frankly, he had been feeling roughly the same since encountering Vezta for the first time. Or, maybe even before then.

“Isn’t that just life?” he said, not quite meaning to say it aloud. Agnete looked over at him, making him shift in mild discomfort. He bought a moment of thought by clearing his throat. “I mean, why are any of us here? Why am I the first to stumble across the fortress in a millennium? Would a massive war have broken out if someone like Hale had come across it or am I at direct fault for that? Or you and Vrox—you probably would have destroyed it, right? What might the world have looked like then?

“Answers might… No, whatever answers you get, if any, will undoubtedly be disappointing compared to any expectations you have built up in your mind,” Arkk said. “Based on what I know of the Pantheon, none of them operate on human-level thought. Listen to the Protector talk of the Lady Shadows and how she doesn’t understand that living beings are different from the shadows she turned them into.”

Agnete’s black lips twisted into a tight frown. “If you mean to comfort or reassure me, you are performing poorly.”

Arkk chuckled, clapping a hand on Agnete’s shoulders. It burned a little, even through her clothing, but not so bad that he pulled back. “I guess I’m just saying not to worry too much about it. Regardless of what answers you find, if any, you have a place here with us.”

Agnete’s frown softened somewhat at his words, prompting him to give a firm and hopefully reassuring squeeze of her shoulder before letting go. He tried to subtly waft his hand behind his back to cool it back down. Judging by the faint smile that graced her lips, he wasn’t too successful.

“A place here,” she mused. “I believe that is a line I have heard coming from ramblemen and bards more often than not when their stories involve people uncovering uncomfortable truths.”

“Langleey got the occasional bard but I was always more interested in stories the adventurers, mercenaries, and bounty hunters had to tell. And learning what little magic they could teach in their short visits to the village.”

“Really? Didn’t just copy one of their lines?” she said with… teasing in her tone? That was unusual. Agnete must have been feeling quite excited. Or anxious. Both.

The conversation trailed off as a ripple spread through the portal. The shimmering membrane, looking like a vertical pool of liquid silver, shifted and spread out into a view of yet another world.

This one was unlike anything he had seen before. The Underworld was a desolate wasteland, much like a desert or the Cursed Forest. The Silence looked like a lush forest; though colored strangely, it hadn’t been anything out of the norm. His world had a whole variety of landscapes and biomes from mountainous forests to sweeping planes and wide oceans. Perhaps that was why those gods had fought over it all those years ago. The variety.

Then again, he had only seen very small slices of both the Underworld and the Silence. They could easily have more variety further out.

But the world before him now was…

It hardly looked like a world at all.

It was a landscape dominated by a monstrous edifice of gears, pipes, and towering metal buildings. Massive stretches of moving pathways snaked back and forth between, through, and around the buildings, carrying an endless stream of glowing rocks, metal ingots, and manufactured creations that Arkk couldn’t begin to name. The pathways fed the materials into hulking machines that belched smoke and hissed steam. Elsewhere, giant arms made of grime-covered metal and bristling with tools moved with precise, eerie efficiency. They lifted components from the pathways with exacting accuracy, assembling intricate devices that whirred to life as soon as they were completed.

Sparks flew from grinding wheels. Furnaces roared with an intensity that could only be matched by Agnete at her highest, though he couldn’t feel them from this side of the portal. Small, boxy carts zipped along narrow rails as they carried more materials throughout the world. Black tar spewed from the open end of a pipe in brief yet intense spurts. Flames at the top of narrow towers burned bright, lighting the horizon.

There were creatures there as well. Monsters, more like. High in the air, he could see a pair of those lightning serpents patrolling about, the crackling electricity on their backs was blatantly obvious against the black clouds in the sky. Neither seemed to have noticed the open portal just yet.

Other creatures moved about. He was pretty sure that they were living beings… but they could well be more artificial constructs. Human-like creatures fully enclosed in tight-fitting suits. They carried tools that emitted a multitude of lights as if they were covered with dozens of tiny glowstones. They seemed to oversee the operation of the machinery around them, walking along on high catwalks that crisscrossed above, around, and between the moving pathways and turning gears.

There was so much to see, so much movement in every speck of Arkk’s vision that he felt utterly overwhelmed. Every time he looked back over a spot that he had already moved on from, he saw something new there. One of the buildings was even moving on massive treads like it was trying to copy a Walking Fortress.

He was far from the only one overwhelmed. It took effort, but he dragged his gaze back to his employees. They were all staring, most with wide eyes and equally wide mouths. The only ones somewhat unaffected were those who had been part of Olatt’an’s expedition. They had obviously seen the other side before and even they still stared.

Agnete started to step forward. Arkk held her back with a much firmer hand on her shoulder.

“Let the lesser servant go first,” Arkk said, looking over to where a servant bubbled and glopped. One of its eyes burst, only to be replaced by a fresh one. In the new eye, he saw mild resignation as he gave the command for it to move forward.

The moment the servant crossed over the threshold, the entire atmosphere on the other side changed. First, mounted atop a massive moving gantry, a spherical orb rushed through the air. A single ray of off-yellow light danced in the smoggy air. As the gantry came to a stop in front of the portal, metal plates on the orb constricted, tightening the beam of light to a thin ray that swept over the lesser servant.

The eye-like orb stared for just a moment.

Spinning red lights lit up at the corners of every building, several of the nearby mechanical arms and moving pathways jerked to a stop, and the two lightning serpents turned and plummeted from the sky. The more human-like figures on the catwalks stopped and turned toward the portal, stared for a moment, and then immediately took off in hasty sprints toward the nearest building.

Arkk didn’t even get a chance to try to pull back the lesser servant before a bolt of electricity splattered it across the smooth surface on the other side of the portal. The serpent that hadn’t fried the servant slithered through the portal high in the air. It opened its metal maw as lightning coursed up and down its spine.

But it didn’t get a chance to attack. The portal structure was low enough that Dakka, leaping even in her armor, managed to bisect it with her scythe. The two halves crashed to the ground.

If the serpents had any sort of self-preservation instincts, the second one didn’t show it. It came through the portal on the tail of the first, stopped over the assembled crowd of soldiers like the first, and promptly got bisected by Raff’el’s scythe as he copied Dakka’s attack. With Dakka’s team here, it seemed the greatest threat they posed was their bodies landing on someone.

“Excellent work you two,” Arkk called out. “Keep ready. We don’t know if there are more.”

He couldn’t see any others, but he could only see one side of the portal. There could be an entire swarm of them behind the portal or more on their way. It wasn’t like he could see all that far with the massive buildings and columns of black smoke. The red spinning lights were still running and none of the humanoids had returned, still hiding. If Arkk could just convey to them that he had come in peace…

With a small sigh, he summoned up another lesser servant and directed it through the portal. It didn’t die instantly, which he took as a good sign, though that mechanical eye mounted on the gantry stared and stared. He had it move around a little on the large circular platform that surrounded the portal. It was about the only space on the other side that wasn’t in motion.

“I’m going to take a quick step over, just to see what I see,” Arkk said when the servant managed to survive for a good three minutes. He took a breath and chanted a brief spell. “Xel’atriss Pargon Bankorok Santak Pargon.”

A swirling void wrapped around Arkk, curling tight against his skin. It let him see out, but it was a bit hazy. This was a perfected version of the spell that had taken Zullie’s eyes. It called upon Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s dominion over barriers and separation to effectively cut Arkk off from the rest of the world, though only partially. It should keep him safe—it worked on most magic and all physical weapons—though they had never actually tested it against lightning. Or the shadow scythes, for that matter.

Testing it was, unfortunately, a bit dangerous. With it wrapped around his skin, there wasn’t much margin for error. If something pierced the shield, it would pierce him too. He couldn’t even have Priscilla use it to test stronger weapons against her tougher body. Thus far, no one had been able to cast it without instantly collapsing aside from Arkk. The drain on their magic was just too great. And he couldn’t cast it on anyone else, it was a personal spell only.

At least she had worked out a better incantation. It wasn’t as short as Electro Deus, but it wasn’t as long as modern magic.

The moment Arkk stepped through the portal, he staggered in shock.

There were three things that the barrier did not stop that they knew of. It didn’t stop light, allowing him to see. It didn’t stop sound, allowing him to hear. And it didn’t stop air, allowing him to breathe.

All three hit him at once.

The lights, he had expected. There were flashing and blinking lights everywhere in the other world, on buildings, on catwalks, on the moving pathways, and on the machinery. Flames topped tall towers and massive furnaces ate raw ore, belching out sparks and more flame.

The light of the gantry’s eye settled over him, though it did nothing to attack or flee. It simply watched.

While he had expected the lights to be a little more intense, he hadn’t expected the sound.

The noise was overwhelming—a cacophony of clanging metal, hissing steam, and the rhythmic thumping of pistons. Arkk clapped his hands over his ears, but with the barrier in place, he couldn’t quite seal the sound off. Not that he expected it would have helped. The whirring of movement around him and the crackling of electricity somewhere beyond where he could see was noisy to the point that it surely would have made it through his hands. The entire place vibrated like it was some kind of living being. A massive mechanical cat purring loud enough to shake him apart. To top it all off, a truly deafening whining drone heightened in pitch before falling and then rising again, incessantly whining as it oscillated.

And even the sound was nothing compared to the smell.

A potent blend of metallic tang, caustic musk, and acrid burning coal and hot metal. Arkk had once thought that being in the Darkwood alchemist’s workshop had been the worst smell he had ever experienced but even Morford’s most potent concoctions were like flowers compared to this. The smell alone left a greasy, oily feel that lingered in the back of his throat. The occasional whiff of sulfur in the smoke only made his nausea worse.

Arkk wasn’t sure how long he stood there, gaping in shock at the sounds and smells. It could have only been seconds and yet, staggering back into the Underworld coughing and sputtering, it felt like it had been an eternity since he breathed fresh air. The air in the Underworld wasn’t exactly the kind found on a crisp morning in a lush forest and yet he couldn’t get enough of it.

He fully emptied his lungs, canceling the protective spell as he did so, and drew in a completely fresh breath of air until he couldn’t breathe in anymore. The air was stale but somehow oh-so-refreshing.

“Are you alright?” Agnete asked, looking concerned.

“Fine,” Arkk said before breathing a few more times, just to make sure he wasn’t about to throw up. “I don’t know that we can…” He trailed off, breathing again. Air certainly was nice, wasn’t it? He steadied himself and shook his head to try to focus.

“I don’t know that we can do anything over there,” Arkk continued. “It’s worse than the Silence. The air is vile. I’d rather stick my face over a forge’s flume and breathe nothing but that for a week than take another breath inside that place. And the sound…” He wiggled a finger in his ear, opening his jaw as wide as it could before he heard a popping sound.

Agnete stared at him, keeping up her usual impassive look but tainted with a hint of disappointment. She looked away, frowning at the portal. “Would it be alright if I stepped over?”

Arkk waved a hand toward the portal as Ilya found her way to his side, lightly patting his back. She could see for herself.

Agnete gave him a curt nod and, hands tense at her sides, she stepped up alongside the lesser servant on the smooth platform through the portal.

Arkk narrowed his eyes at the bubbling slop of oily tendrils. The lesser servant didn’t seem to care about the air or the noise. The traitor. It could have warned him.

Agnete, on the other side of the portal, appeared to be handling the situation much better than Arkk had. She stood straight, clearly wrinkling her nose but not hacking and coughing. Maybe the forewarning helped. Or maybe her avatarness was helping out in a way that Arkk lacked. She even took another step forward as the gantry eye swiveled over to focus on her.

As soon as it did, the other world changed. The red lights stopped spinning, going dark again. The gantry shifted, its gears twisting in a rapid spin. The orb dropped down, lowered on a series of thick black cables. Agnete tensed as the orb came to a stop directly in front of her. A glowing pane of glass on its surface constricted like an eye, staring directly at her. It waited a long moment before shifting its gaze to the portal.

The membrane popped like a soapy bubble, leaving a space in the crystalline archway.

The shock wore off quickly. He could still see Agnete if he followed her employee link. She was unharmed. So far. Several more of those lightning serpents were coming in from above, but they weren’t attacking just yet. Shaking his head, Arkk turned.

“Zullie,” he called out. “What happened?”

“I… I don’t know! It wasn’t supposed to do that!”

“Get it open again,” Arkk ordered.

Zullie hesitated before rushing up to the crystalline archway. Even sightless, she quickly found the runes in the crystal as if she could see them without trouble. She ran her fingers over the nearest before moving to the next. Calling over the Protector, she got it to lift her where she could continue inspecting the higher ones. It took a few minutes, the entire time Arkk sat tense as the serpents drew closer to Agnete.

Agnete didn’t look all that upset with the situation. She stared up at the serpents, wary but unconcerned. Flames coiled between her fingers, but she wasn’t attacking. They weren’t attacking either.

Did they recognize her for what she was?

“Nothing is wrong with it,” Zullie said as she finished the inspection. Her voice was strained, worried. Which weren’t usually emotions Arkk would have ascribed to Zullie if something went wrong with one of her experiments. Even losing her eyes, after she had recovered enough to speak, she had sounded… excited with what she had learned. “It should be active. This portal is fine,” she said, this time with some amount of relief. “The only reason it isn’t working… if it got cut off at the other end.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. Glaring at Zullie didn’t help. Both because it wasn’t a productive action and because Zullie, though she could somehow see the runes on the portal, couldn’t actually see him. “Solutions?”

“We… know the planar coordinates to the Anvil now. We could try to force a connection to a different portal just like we changed the Fortress Al-Mir-to-Underworld portal to get here.”

“How long?”

“Without you able to give me the coordinates like you did last time? It’ll take a bit… If we can scry over there… I wasn’t able to take magical level readings, but if it was like the Silence rather than the Underworld, they might be low enough that scrying works.”

Arkk closed his eyes. The crystal balls were back at Elmshadow and Fortress Al-Mir. “Get the portal connected to the fortress again,” he said, trying not to snap. “As fast as possible.”

Agnete was alright for now. The large orb hanging from the gantry had moved aside, leaving a short opening to one of the moving pathways. The serpents seemed like they were escorting her toward it, though she was somewhat reluctant to get aboard.

The lesser servant was still over there. It was still alive at Agnete’s side. For a moment, Arkk debated. He could command it to stay by the portal. Perhaps it could repair it on that end if the serpents continued to leave it alone. There was no guarantee of that given how the first servant had fared. And that assumed this portal could even be repaired. It was also his only method of communicating with Agnete. He could see her through the link but without the servant, he might not be able to direct her toward another portal if they got one working.

Agnete reached the moving pathway. She hesitated but stepped up.

Arkk had the servant coil its tendril around her leg, following her on as the pathway began moving, carrying them off through the massive machine that was the Anvil of All Worlds.