by Sain Artwell
The two warriors stumbled to regain their footing. Alron re-materialized and caught Sofi in his arms. He wasn’t fast enough with Living Fire yet. The warriors had time to regain their bearing before his wings were solid once more. Still, it was comforting to have regained a fraction of his old strength.
“Fei, devour them.”
“Yes!” The sail-sized blanket of invisible flames that had coated Alron burst into a bright azure hue of soulfire. Fei dove inside the exhaust-tubes of the armored warriors. Mechanics popped and hissed. The two warriors clawed at their masks, collapsing into writhing heaps. Fei slipped out of them and sauntered back to Alron’s side. Maintaining a body of pure soulfire, she licked her burning claw. “Delicious young vis. Shouldn’t we just call the subterfuge quits here and take them all on?”
“We’ve agreed to follow the broad strokes of Sofi’s plan, so let us do so for as long as it does not interfere with progress,” said Alron, wrenching the metal door to upstairs off its hinges.
“Apologies but…” Sofi stared at some blank vista in the distance. She sighed. “Nevermind…”
Fei returned to veil them, and the group made their way up eight flights of stairs before an interruption. A nearby voice-pipe blared with deafening volume.
“AN INTRUDER IN THE WESTERN STAIRWAYS. TEN LOWER FLOORS ARE ENTERING LOCKDOWN. DO NOT CHALLENGE HER WITHOUT AN AWAKENED MASTER. LABOURERS, CONTINUE WORKING, AND FOLLOW THE ORDERS OF YOUR SUPERVISORS.”
With a thundering screech of metal and a slam that shook the stairs, a two-foot thick slab of metal slammed down from the ceiling, blocking the stairs up.
Alron crouched, slipped his claws between the floor and the door, and drew everything his heartstrings were willing to give. His muscles snapped to full tension. Joints popped in his spine. He heaved the slab up off the ground and gave it a final toss to raise it overhead.
“After you, my loves,” Alron said.
Fei gave him a smile, and a lingering flirty look. “Thank you.”
“Uh… Thanks?” Sofi made an attempt at a smile.
Going forward, their ascent slowed significantly. Every single floor was blocked, as was every door leading out of the staircase. There were military fortresses with lesser defenses. While holding the door open for the thirteenth floor, Alron asked Sofi why a simple forge would have such high security.
“Think of them as clan strongholds rather than simple places of industry. Highest floors are akin to large towns or small cities. They have indoor gardens, fresh water, schools, houses for the clan servants, and mansions for the oldblood families. The Ministry has banned larger clan conflicts, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying to destroy each other whenever they can,” Sofi explained. “Hence this.” She gestured at the door.
One hundred years could change many things, but not clan politics.
Alron heaved another door onto his shoulders, opening a clear path for thirty mini-cannons to fire at them. A cascade of booms sent forth a hail of metal. He struck a wing down. Bullets ricocheted off his scales.
Fei flew forth and extended her ethereal claws of flame into the crevices of the heavily armored troops. Six fell before one of the armored figures pulled the tube-mask off her mouth and breathed dragonfire. She buried the hallway in a stark crimson inferno of bone-melting heat. A blink before the flames engulfed him, Alron wrapped his wings around Sofi.
The fires receded to reveal a charred corridor. Cheaper metals on the walls and ductwork were in a half-molten state, and drooled down in fat viscous droplets. Air was thin and scorching. One of the broken pipes spewed out a fountain of water. Fei had been blasted backwards all the way to Alron’s side.
“A dragonfire awakened master,” Fei said, smiling. “She’s old and powerful.”
The woman placed her mask back on her mouth, fell onto one knee, and discharged a shoulder-cannon the size of a small tree.
Alron sliced the projectile in half with his glaive. Its splinters dug into the wall.
She and her surviving subordinates discarded their cannons. Alron waited for them to draw long two-handed warpicks and rally into a tight formation. After all, this sealed corridor provided a welcome opportunity to study these dragonfire-powered armors, which the Blackmetal Clans of this age seemed to rely on more than their draconic vestiges.
And why should they not? If assimilating a simple fire-vent could grant the physical might of an awakened master with multiple vestiges of thew, a nigh impenetrable defence of blackmetal, and an ability to unleash projectiles traveling at hundreds of paces per second, why waste decades mastering vestiges of thew, or even risk your life in the precarious process of forging a dragon-core?
The first five armored wyrmkin charged. Pneumatics hissed and mechanisms whirred loud inside their suits. Their movements were unexpectedly fluid and natural. Though their vestiges focused on dragonfire, these wyrmkin were still warriors to scale and bone.
Vapor and smoke parted as the hooked claws of their warpicks swung at Alron. He raised a wing to receive them. Sparks flew. Scales cracked.
Two hooks pierced his wing. All five braced against Alron and pushed as one, attempting to pin his wing down. Black exhaust geysered from their armors as they struggled against his strength. Alron dug his foot-claws in the metal floor and leaned against them. His wing trembled. Such impressive offensive power. But how does their defense fare?
With explosive steps that tore wounds in the floor, Alron became a blur of scarlet death, darting from one warrior to the next.
First, he took measure of the helmets’ capabilities. They required roughly as much strength to pierce with his claw as a leaping bone-shark’s skull, or the scale carapace of an awakened master who has cultivated multiple vestiges to grow true-dragonhide. Caving the helmets in with blunt trauma was of similar difficulty as cracking deepiron-nuts. Indeed, even the crunching screeches sounded similar.
In the end, ripping the helmet-encased heads out of their sockets turned out to be the most time-efficient method of slaughter. The close second contender was dragonizing the helms, and commanding the metal to compress upon the skull. Alron ran out of warriors before he could experiment more.
The awakened master proved far more competent.
Her armor’s exhausts spat smoke and fire. Where her blows landed, they landed with power to rend metal, and bit deep into Alron’s dragonized scales. In her hands, the armored suit and two warpicks were a beast of blackmetal.
“Not once have I met a dragonfire awakened master as adept in physical combat as you,” Alron said.
He punched her in the chest. She flew ten yards into a wall. The wall dented with a deafening crack, and she groaned.
“Would you care to tell me your name, so I may remember the woman who so valiantly resisted my strength?”
Using one warpick as a cane, she struggled to stand straight. Something popped inside the armor, and black fumes began to sputter violently from the neck-vents.
The mask distorted her voice. “Olga of Invignar, awakened master of the Rosefire.”
“I am Alron.”
“Thought I recognized you from somewhere.” She coughed.
Alron raised a brow. “Carrion War?”
“Mobile cannoneer. Saw you end a god at dragonfall.” Olda raised her warpicks.
“Thank you for the support.”
“You’re welcome.” She nodded, and charged at Alron.
Alron fell into a low stance, lunged, and punched her chestplate inwards with a jab that cracked the air. Her heart was crushed instantly.
A steady stream of armored warriors further slowed Alron’s march upstairs, though less so than the doors.
After ten floors, Sofi located a narrow emergency ladder, which lacked the heavy security doors. Veiled by Fei, with Sofi in his arms, Alron ran up the tunnel. Right as he removed the door to the forty-first floor, the constant yodeling of alarm was interrupted by another announcement.
“MULTIPLE INTRUDERS IN THE WESTERN BLOCK. DEATH METAL IN
DUSTRIES IS IN LOCKDOWN. AWAKENED MASTERS, REGROUP. LABOURERS, CONTINUE WORKING, AND FOLLOW THE ORDERS OF YOUR SUPERVISORS.”
“Sofi, which of these structures is the spin-core?” Alron asked.
This was a domed hall as tall as the foundry level, though not a tenth the width. Howling pipes and racketing machines crowded the edges like stacked houses of a slum. In the middle of it all, a white-haired young man was shouting at scores of wyrmkin, who breathed dragonfire into ten house-sized furnaces. All manner of contraptions hung from the ceiling, pulsing and humming like metal organs.
“Up there! The large sphere hanging from the ceiling,” said Sofi.
“You will have to be more specific.”
She pointed her new claw upwards, and when she did, a faint glow grew within its scarlet surface. “That one, the one with engravings around it.”
With five strikes of his tattered wings, Alron landed on the sphere.
Thick pipes and chains attached it to the ceiling. Deep grooves and odd wiring encircled its body of some unknown brown-red metal. Evenly spaced around its girth were four portholes of thick glass. The air within shimmered. Hot. Bright. It burned Alron’s eyes just to glance at the flaming sphere spinning at its center.
“Poor poor Mlev! Oh, what have they done with her bones?” Fei stared, eyes wide, into the miniature sun.
Sofi winced away from the window. “Ack!”
“Fret not, we’ll get her out of there.” Alron dug his claws into the metal shell.
“STOP!” Sofi shrieked.
Alron stopped too late. The infernal heat spewed onto him. It was hotter than any dragonfire he’d ever been bathed in, hotter even than the magma lake in which Knights of Myrwing were baptised in their second year as knight aspirants. White substance neither liquid nor gaseous trickled from the diminutive hole between his claws. It trickled down his palm and elbow. His scales burned into fragile black glass and the flesh beneath them roasted to char. Alron grunted.
Sofi stopped his hand. “Don’t pull out!”
Alron steadied his breath, enduring the fire. “Explain then, and be swift.”
“Apologies, the vestige’s memories are a little fuzzy still, but…”
“Sift.”
“…this is an old idea of Mlevanosk’s. Ever since awakening her dragon-core and tying the Abyssmaw’s bones to her skeleton, she had had this idea of finding similarly malleable material—something that could change its hardness, density, and vis-conductivity. An idea of the perfect spin-core. One that could, theoretically, store infinite spin-energy and convert it back to dragonfire, or other forms of energy.”
“Fascinating,” Alron commented wryly.
“Apologies! You can’t let go, or it may explode, and whilst you might survive it, I certainly won’t. To disassemble… Hmm…” Sofi’s eyes flicked over the device, in search of something. “I need to get to the top. There should be an emergency vent valve. Then we just wait for the heat to evaporate, and the spin-core should stop on its own. Could you lift me up?”
With his free hand, Alron helped Sofi crawl up the round surface. She began tapping the pipes softly, searching for the vent valve.
Smoldering scales sloughed off of Alron’s arm. Flesh beneath blistered and boiled. Waves of hot pain washed over him. He did not notice a group of people enter the chamber, until Fei pointed them out.
“Now’s the time they decide to come searching?” she hissed.
Seven individuals entered, five of them armored in variant models of those bulky suits. While most of the group sprouted various dragonmarks common in awakened masters, the unarmored man and woman each had multiple sets of tails, wings, and black horns.
The man’s skin was a marbleized mosaic of gray and burning orange. Ancient laugh lines framed his expressionless face, as the man who could be no one but the patriarch of Invigar himself marched to interrogate the foreman. Hissing and the clanking drowned out their conversation. The other awakened masters dispersed to investigate the room.
“Sofi, I will need my arm shortly,” said Alron.
She was crawling in the middle of the thicket of pipe and chain. “A moment! The valve is in a really inconvenient spot,” she said, placing a wrench in her mouth to retrieve another tool. “Let me just…”
Something popped. Twice the volume of phosphorus flames gushed against Alron’s hand. The spillage gathered into a droplet on his elbow, which dropped, falling straight for the patriarch.
Alron caught it with his foot, and breathed deep to inhale a curse before it escaped his lips.
“Apologies!”
“Be swift…”
The trickling continued. Liquid fire bore a hole into Alron’s foot and arm. Pain slowed down time. The distance between instants lengthened from moments into journeys of slowly intensifying fire and rapidly accumulating damage.
This is not good. If my foot gets burned through, it may be difficult to face all seven without the spear.
What would you have me do, Alron? They will find us, Fei thought.
A difficult question. Not because of its complexity, but because even the wise solution was less than ideal.
“Sofi! Don’t release all of the heat, just enough for you to survive the explosion. We’ll collect Mlevanosk’s bones afterwards.”
“I can’t survive it!”
“Do what you can to delay the detonation then. I will carry us out of its range.”
“I…” Sofi cursed, then began working. “Two seconds. That’s all I can promise. Is that enough?”
“Plenty,” or else Alron would have to arrange a new vessel for Mlevanosk.
“I’m ready to set it to explode.”
The moment Sofi said it, one of the awakened masters looked straight at them, alerting the rest. Fei’s veil may have been par none, but smoke and fire still dodged around their mass.
The winged ones took flight. The two unarmored elders burst into flames, and dark smoldering lava replaced their flesh. Four grounded wyrmkin spewed various shades of dragonfire from the openings of their armors, and shaped the flames into serpentine missiles.
“Now,” said Alron.
Sofi loosened a bolt.
Alron swept her in his arms, and dove into a descent. One second had passed, and they landed. Alron’s feet dented the partially dragonized floor in the middle of a group of surprised awakened masters. His legs and tattered wings strained to redirect the speed of his dive towards the open door. The last second expired when he was halfway through.
The spin-core exploded, though to call it a mere explosion would’ve done disservice to the engine of destruction Mlevanosk had wrought into being.
Streaks of liquid hotter and brighter than the high noon sun of summer splattered across the room, melting metal and wyrmking alike. Even blackmetal, an alloy tempered in the hottest dragonfire, turned into wax when it touched a droplet of that liquid sunlight.
Alron lost the scales on his back, and his wings all but evaporated. Fei’s agonized scream filled his mind as her flames sputtered around them. Any screams of the people still in the room were drowned beneath the sound of sizzling metal, currents of electricity, cascading booms of machinery erupting, and the sound of metal against metal. Alron’s flight blundered into a rolling tumble. They crashed into the ladders.
What Alron saw, when he raised his eyes towards the chamber behind them, gave him a pause. Only once had he witnessed power such as what that head-sized miniature sun released, when it zapped down from the ceiling, tearing a seven-yard-wide conical hole through the floor, and the two and a half awakened masters who had stood below it. A bisected half of one of the awakened masters showed a smoldering mass of charred meat wrapped in molten intestines of an armored suit.
Fei, keep Sofi safe. Alron stood, finding his legs shaky for the first time in recent memory.
Fei moved what remained of her flames over Sofi, who’d been knocked unconscious. Be careful, it is made by Mlevanosk.
I know.
Alro
n wobbled back in. The room resembled a dome lathered with goops of molasses. Everything had melted. Everything except four of the awakened masters, who lay scattered around the hole. Alron peered down. The hole went straight through forty-one stories, several basement levels, and layers of buildings beneath.
A surge of pride and cheer swelled inside of him. Whatever Mlevanosk’s masterpiece was, it might just grant them the strength they needed to bring down the Ascendancy. Alron could scarcely wait to see it be completed and used in battle.
“Fei,” he called back, “Come to me.” He did not see her, but through their bond felt her approach.
“Stars… Quite impressive.”
“Quite impressive,” Alron agreed. He undid the dragonization on his remaining clothes, wrapped the torn pants and shirt over shoulder, and dragonized them back into small wings.
“Veil us. We’d best hurry before Rasdrev’s oracles begin sweeping the area.”
“Hmm? Sure you don’t wish to give them a glimpse of something to behold?” Her soulfire fingers brushed over his now nude cock.
“And you called me out on my humour?” Alron sighed, dropping into the opening.
“I never made a snark against your humour, but the melodrama of your speech,” Fei said, as floors of the grandforge whipped past them at an increasing speed. “Though if you claim there is nothing amusing in the Sovereign’s oracle glimpsing your naked form amidst fallen foes, perhaps I should be worried.”
“There’s nothing amusing in death. There can be relief, triumph, and sadistic relishing in death, but it is never funny.”
“Meh. Stiffscale.”
They plummeted. Bridges, buildings, and layers of Blackmetal City sped past. Alron spread his small tattered wings to break the fall, scraping metal beams, concrete, and finally solid black bedrock that made up the majority of Abyssmaw’s corpse.
Embedded in the stone was a stone gray skeleton curled up in a fetal position, compressed into the size of a small melon. It was nearly spherical, aside from the ridges added by the tail, limbs, and horns.