Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

Chapter 12

  The Forge

  Saan’s group was past the cathedral and walking in hallways built out of old deep-red bricks that had lost much of their sharpness of color over time. Diode lanterns turned to a medium setting emitted plenty of light as her team walked, making the shadows smallish and the cobwebs very visible. The animal baying and calling had stopped when they left the area with the benches and busts, but their path, despite the generous width of this connected hallway, was quite a bit worse for a fight against wild animals. Thankfully This corridor had no turns, and if Dastou was ahead they would not get lost on their way to him. The only door they passed was for a large dressing room with two impressively-sized vanities, both the mirrors broken and grimey. She guessed the furniture was for whoever the speaker or speakers would be in the cathedral.

  The wide passage fed the trio to a flight of steps leading up. They were shallow steps, the same width as the hall, and they did not slow down as they went up, the DSF agents both ignoring safety precautions for areas in which an enemy might lurk around any corner. There had been not a single person here thus far despite the footprints embedded in thick dust along the normal walking path, and maybe that was making them careless. The plastic-against-plastic clicking noises that Trenna’s pack full of those cuboids was making bounced off walls and could have been muffled by stuffing some cloth into the sack, yet it didn’t seem to matter.

  At the top of the single flight of steps, they reached a vestibule area that split into two hallways, all of it with high ceilings. On the wide section of wall separating the paths, directly in front of the group, was a display with two partitions built into the wall with smaller pieces of brickwork. The bottom segment was empty, but the top featured a map. It was faded, dusty, though not nearly as much as it should have been.

  Nes tilted his head and squinted at the incredibly convenient find. “Am I on something? Because that seems far too easy.”

  “Hmph,” Saan said with an air of suspicion. “It looks like cloth; we may have to be careful removing it.”

  She walked up to the display and reached for a zipper in her backpack where she kept a scalpel, thinking to cut the map loose gently. Saan got her surgical blade ready and handed Nes the hard plastic blade protector. She cut the map out of place by the edges, sending dust and cloth fragments into the air as she went corner to corner. It took a lot of strength to tear the ancient fabric off the frame, much more than she expected using such a sharp implement. When the whole of the item was loose, she coated the scalpel with a fast-dissolving disinfectant from a tiny spray bottle, replaced the plastic protector while the blade was still wet, and put the surgical tool and aerosol back in her bag. Saan turned the square diagram she removed in her hands, pulled at it from the sides to see that it held together and looked like it could take plenty more pressure.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Nes because she was glaring at the fabric.

  “It feels a lot like filament armor,” Saan said as she stroked the map, studying the cloth’s surface. “The patterns in the weave are similar, though the material is some interconnected set of three fabrics I cannot guess at. It is resilient, to be sure. You saw that I had to stress to cut it with an unused scalpel.”

  “Not really shocking – everything down here seems to be some combination of stuff we’ve never seen.”

  Saan laid the map on the floor, and all three knelt for a closer look. They got the gist of the place quickly thanks to clear symbols and writing in the common tongue, many of the words featuring archaic spellings. There were small sleeping quarters for over fifty people, including ten for guests. Other spaces were mostly large craft rooms marked for things like sewing and candle-making, the second-largest being a forge.

  “I don’t get it. What is this place?” asked Nes.

  “It might be something called a ‘monastery,’ another of Dewark’s dreamed-up places,” Saan said, again thinking about the book with all of that Saints’ notes and drawings on non-existent cultures. She may have to revise her thoughts on that book to it being about possibly existing cultures. “If what he wrote matches, people would live here leading simple and secluded lives.”

  “Basically this is a home for monks, then?” Trenna asked.

  “Any monks I know of,” Nes responded, “worship as openly as they can, not in a hidden community like this. They go about their business, leaving gifts if a Saint comes along, or travelling to where they know one is around.”

  “I thought you said you don’t know much about cultures?” Trenna teased.

  Nes shrugged. “You know I’ve been to Davranis North’s Art Quarter a lot, right? Well, there’s a home for monks there that I sometimes visited. Good people, and I learned a little about monks from other places.”

  Saan looked at the names of the rooms on the map again, all marked. “I would say this monastery served another specific purpose according to these room names,” she said. “This was a place to make goods to share or sell, not only live in.”

  “You mean like the Djolal Points?” wondered Trenna. “Those are places where people leave offerings for a nearby monk or purchase their goods or produce, helping them can continue to survive and worship. But those places are usually for no more than a handful of people, just a big house or cabin in the wilderness.”

  “Never heard of a ‘Djolal Point,’” Nes continued, his concentration also on the map, making his words sound half-focused. “Are they common?”

  “No,” Trenna told him, “and they’re incredibly secret. The monks you said you knew either didn’t know about them or wouldn’t want you to know. Saints were known to promise to keep them secret, too.”

  Saan agreed with Trenna’s assessment, but was also concerned about how big this place was. While the rooms were compact for their purposes, there were many different types of products that could be made here – to start, ceramics, clothing, and metals according to the names of the rooms – that it was pointless for it to be underground at all. Lines on the map did ventilation or water supplies, but how did they get food down here regularly, or supplies in bulk?

  For now, Saan forced herself to ignore the multitude of questions trying to fight their way to the top of her thoughts. Instead, she looked up at the hallways open to them. Both featured fresh footprints on the ground, therefore they could not choose their way from positing where their enemies would have recently trekked. Taking a look at the map again, she made her decision to take the rightmost path.

  “We will go to the forge,” Saan said. “It would need stronger ventilation than anywhere else and a constant water source under operation, which are also needed for anyone to reside here or for prisoners to be held. Dastou would not be underestimated, held under heavy guard, and the forge is a start.”

  She started to the point at the forge on the map before noticing one of her short nails was partially broken. She stopped what she was doing, wanted to bite the rest of the nail down to an even length on instinct, but her hands were dirty. Nes snickered at her after noticing her raised and quickly lowered hand. She rolled her eyes and went back to pointing out their route-to-be.

  “At the very least it is a straight line from here to the forge and from there to the living area,” she said as she tapped each destination on the cloth map. “A quick search, and then we turn toward the other, less likely path. Dastou will be here somewhere, and the circular path means we will find him. If not him, someone who may be able to tell us where to go next.”

  If that “someone” was here, why wasn’t Saan speaking in code to her fellow agent and letting Trenna follow their lead quietly as before? That thought evaporated nearly as soon as it arrived.

  “Sure thing, Sarge,” Nes said with a half-hearted salute.

  “Sarge” stood up, map in hand. The others got up, too, and the map was folded into a small square and stuffed into Trenna’s backpack, placed atop the cuboids. Taking point and responsibility for where they were headed, Saan strolled into the right-side corridor.<
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  Once again there was plenty of light from lanterns along the walls. Whoever was here seemed fastidious when it came to revealing everything in sight, which was bad for a team sneaking in. They had no advantage in knowing the area, were unable to use shadows to move about, could not camouflage sound, and were dealing with an armed, trigger-happy enemy. It was almost everything they were trained to avoid during an encounter in which stealth was preferred, but this was a special case. In fact, this whole day was full of special cases, from the bombs, to Trenna, to the subway, to here. Saan couldn’t help but wonder how a span of just a few hours could contain it all.

  On the way to the forge, they passed several doors on their right, which according to the map were storage for different types of tools and supplies. On their left, twenty meters into the hall, was a single door that led to the sewing room, its door partially open and revealing some of what was inside. The map had shown that the sewing room was the biggest by a decent margin and took up a large part of the middle space between corridors.

  Before passing the room by, Saan opened the door further and poked her head inside, realizing quickly why the space was so large. Massive spools for thread – no exaggeration needed, as they were almost as long as Saan was tall – some partly full and some empty, lined crevices built into one of the brick walls. Large, complex looms were on the opposite wall of the spool housing, and she made a mental note to tell Dastou about them. The Social Cypher had a tendency to recycle older equipment, which meant outdated technology was nearly impossible to find in full working order. Saints could simply access the Null Bank and recreate anything they wanted to study, but there was something about having genuinely old contraptions that always appealed to them. She left the door open and moved on.

  The team reached the thick, wooden, metal-reinforced double doors of the forge, which were open a hair’s breadth. With a head nod and two pointed fingers, Saan told Nes to open the doors while she covered him. The way things went so far, she’d be extremely surprised if there was anyone at all in there – this place seemed abandoned. What kind of a group of killers and criminals leaves no sentinels anywhere in their hiding spot after they get away with some terrible deed?

  In the two seconds of thought Saan had lost herself in, Nes had waved Trenna back and gotten to the door. He was half-kneeling, and Saan drew her weapon before taking her spot. She placed a forearm across the back of his shoulders and the machine pistol above his head, interlocked at the wrist with the other hand, which held her multi-diode bulb flashlight. The staff sergeant tapped Corporal Jaydef on the shoulder, and he shoved hard against the double doors.

  The doors flew open, Nes rushed in as he pulled up his rifle to a firing position, and kept himself in a half-crouch. Saan glided in close behind him and swept her gun and flashlight combination from one side of the room to the other. It was as black in here as the soup restaurant, and but her light was strong enough to reach the entire open space, highlighting curves and edges of equipment and furniture that she didn’t want to identify with certainty for now. Nes was also moving his light all over, trying to find something, and there was no one here.

  “Clear,” Saan called out, lowering her weapon.

  “No surprise there,” was Nes’ response, confirming that he was suspicious of the monastery’s emptiness as well.

  Saan almost holstered her weapon, but froze while listening to some intricate-sounding gearworks fill the air with mechanical noise, hollow but close. After a moment, a series of small metal scrapes came from above accompanied by bright orange sparks that for about a second, then they both stopped at the same time that ten oil lamps hanging from the ceiling came on, providing an abundance of visibility. That new light confirmed that this place was empty of anyone that wasn’t her or Nes, and she holstered her weapon and flashlight.

  “Creepy lights,” Nes said. “They match the ambiance, at least.”

  Trenna walked into the room and past Nes since he was focused on the door.

  “The wood looks treated,” he said, “like the other doors so far.” He hadn’t mentioned that he was paying attention to that, but it wasn’t a shock. “I thought further in it might be in worse shape, but whatever coating they used was meant to last.”

  Nes was then distracted by something else, and he stared at the floor, intrigued.

  “There’s a floor trigger,” Nes said, examining a barely-there pedal a slightly different shade of dark, ruddy stone than the rest of the floor. “It gets depressed by one of the doors when they open. The gears were activated by that, then… mechanisms tied in beneath the floor, up a wall, spreading out via more gears on top of us.” He looked up at the lanterns. “Uh huh, little metal hooks with flat circular spinners coming out above each lamp, flint wheels. They spin, fire off sparks, light wicks that are separated from the oil by metal borders. That is intricate.”

  “Wow. Sounds like something a Saint would make,” commented Trenna.

  “Actually, yes, it does,” Saan agreed. “Normal lamps would do just fine. This level of unnecessary, show-off efficiency is very Saint-like.”

  “The people who actively worship Saints where I come from, they always thought of Saints that way too. A showy group with a kind of pointless but fun bigness.”

  No mention of exactly where that place was from Trenna, and Saan wondered if the girl would say anything about her origin without being prompted.

  “’Bigness’ isn’t a word,” Nes said matter-of-factly. “I think. And very few were really like that, the vain type of Saint I mean, but those got a lot of attention because they wanted it.” He glanced around the room now, the same as the others were doing. “Most are pretty normal a lot of the time, that’s why they hate being worshipped.”

  “Because they don’t, er, didn’t feel special, deserving of it?” asked Trenna.

  “Yeah. I think they were maybe a little ashamed, too,” guessed Nes, “that they couldn’t do anything about the Social Cypher. Damnit... my head.” He started rubbing his temple with a pair of fingers.

  “Are you alright?” asked Saan.

  “I think so,” he said as he stopped massaging the ache. “Don’t know why, but I got a sharp pain out of nowhere. I’m fine.”

  Saan didn’t say anything further, but she also felt the start of a throbbing in the same area. It was while Nes talked to Trenna just now, and she began to wonder why they were so relaxed and talkative when they were supposedly pressed for time. The pain cranked up momentarily when she realized that she didn’t bother with breaching into the sewing room when looking into it, and that no one pointed it out. Saan let her suspicions drop as they were not in harm’s way for the moment, and studied the room as her headache waned.

  This metal-working space was fully equipped which was, again, difficult to fathom for an underground facility. Against one wall was a hearth, a coal room next to it. Some of the solid fuel was piled up like a tiny black mountain as it bled out of the unblocked door to that smaller secondary room, the old black chunks not filling the room with very much of their distinctive scent. The hearth itself was huge and bulbous, definitely not something meant for the occasional small project, rather for multiple items worth of molten metal when in use. A pipe came down from the ceiling, connected to a hand-cranked fan, and went into the hearth’s centered furnace; it would be for controlling the amount of air feeding the fire. That round pipe had three slits at chest level, where sliding compartments a couple of centimeters tall could be placed or removed.

  Four anvils were what Saan would likely consider a standard distance from the hearth – close enough to be able to put an item in and out of the fire using tongs, but far enough to keep the metalworker safe outside of getting a good sweat going. A long trough featured meter-long sections angled to surround the anvils. The trough made the work area almost completely separate space from the rest of the room. This forge was similar to Ornadais Academy’s, but much more compact. The school’s massive metalworking facility featured four such
setups, digital temperature readouts, automated controls, a local-area communication system, and so on.

  Saan paid more attention to the three uncovered slits in the air channel. Several mesh screens with handles that would fit into any of those openings sat on a workbench nearby. “Nes, what would those filters be for?” Saan asked.

  “I noticed them, too, and I’m not completely sure. I’ve seen Dastou experiment with adding compounds into air before it got funneled into a furnace to partially cool the metal before drowning it.”

  Everything he said went faintly over Saan’s head. Her aptitude was more in situation management and, somehow, bookkeeping. Not to mention training people how to shoot, break bones, avoid being shot, avoid getting bones broken, and keep good books.

  Nes walked to the knee-high, bone-dry trough. The corporal knew what he was doing, what he was looking for, and was deep in thought. When Saan decided to come to the subway and see what was happening, she had almost brought others with her to replace Nes and send him back to the Caravan. He was sometimes too silly, too loose to be taken seriously, but this was one of those times that she was reminded of how good, how motivated, he could be.

  Nes was walking quickly all around the room, with Saan standing next to Trenna and wondering what he was putting together in his head. He went from the big hearth and furnace, to the workbench near it with the filters, to another table with tool boxes and other supplies, to the other side of the room. There, he opened a barrel with a warped lid next to three other similar containers, a confused look on his face after seeing what was inside. He almost reached in to touch whatever was in there with an ungloved hand, then thought better of it and put the lid back on the wooden barrel. Next, he went to what could only be called a display wall on the opposite side of the room as the hearth. On it were about a hundred different items hanging on hooks, ranging from weapons to common tools to jewelry. Some of the weapons were lavishly detailed, featuring intricate patterns and design elements. All of them featured an animal motif or shape to complement their deadly or symbolic purpose.

  As a fan of bladed weapons, Saan was desperate to grab the prettiest sword or knife and take it home. Or, on the off chance they could get out of here with Dastou and return another time, take all of them. She actually started rearranging the weaponry in her mind, ignoring the other items. Would she organize by size or shape? And what about color? Oh! A glass-covered display area would be perfect against the east wall in her living room. The living room of the house that was also only in her head since she currently lived at the Academy, working sixty or seventy hour weeks. When Nes began to take another tour and Trenna spoke, Saan was yanked out of her indulgent daydream.

  “Uh, what’s he doing?” Trenna asked.

  “I have absolutely no idea, but this is one of his areas of expertise. We may as well relax while he works,” replied Saan.

  “Right.” Then, after a slight hesitation, “So, how are you, then?”

  They weren’t looking at each other while talking. Instead, they swiveled their heads, keeping their focus on Nes as he went from place to place in the large forge, making ooh and aah faces.

  “I am well,” Saan replied. “I am fortunate to have been through far less today than Dastou or Nes. And you? You seem to have injured yourself, your gait is off.”

  “Oh, yeah I got hurt, but I’m better. I think the medicine he gave me must be wearing off since I’m starting to feel the pain a little more.”

  Saan was reminded of something in her runner’s backpack and hoisted it off her shoulder. She knew exactly which of the five outer pockets it was in, and took the small medicine bottle out without looking, keeping her eyes on Nes as he oh’d and hmm’d his way back to the anvils for the third time.

  “It was never our plan to do much more than search for evidence in the subway,” Saan said, “and Nes would have packed lightly. As a team medic, I have to pack better for treatment than he does.” She handed Trenna the bottle and a miniature canteen with purified water. “Take two of those, please.”

  “Oh, uh, sure. Thanks a lot.” The girl took one pill at a time along with a sip of water before trying to hand the small canteen back.

  “Keep it, I have another.”

  “Thanks,” Trenna said, then stuffed the canteen in her own backpack. “Can I ask you something?” Saan nodded and the girl continued. “Are you and Nes really high up in the army you guys are in?”

  “We are not,” Saan explained without bothering to correct the use of the word army, which was touchy phrasing at the Academy complex. “There are seven ranks. I am halfway, he is one below me. However, because the school and DSF are only a handful of years old, there are not many above us in rank.”

  “Are the old entourage people the ones taking up those ranks? They’d have been there longer because of their relationships with other Saints.”

  “Indeed. Very few recruits have earned higher ranks than myself, though I was accelerated by Dastou in order to be his administrator for personnel.”

  “Oh, you’re pretty important then?”

  “I, hmm…” Saan started, trying to be humble and finding no way around it. “You could say that, as I fill many roles, including as an occasional replacement instructor. A man like Captain Hays however, is a better leader and teacher than I will ever be.”

  “He did seem really smart,” Trenna said of Hays, the two having spoken as he figured out whether to call for her confinement or not. “Is he the highest rank?”

  “No, he is one higher than I am, and has refused promotion because it would take him away from being as personally involved with new recruits, which is his passion.”

  “I see, thanks. I have to ask, though, are you, um... feeling not so worried right now? I was freaking out when we started coming down at first, and in that place from Dewark’s drawing, but I’m pretty relaxed now.”

  Saan had been thinking the same thing. “Yes, the longer we are here, I feel somehow less worried about Dastou.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Do you think that’s strange? We’re here for a reason, but I feel safe here.”

  “Ah hah!” barked Nes suddenly.

  “Time to indulge his ego,” Saan whispered to Trenna.

  Nes jogged over to them, excited to share whatever it is he found out about this place during his scrounging.

  “This place is a forge, sure, but it uses a technique that Dastou has been trying to perfect for years now,” he revealed.

  “Hmmm?” uttered Saan, lifting an eyebrow and wanting more information. Nes was about to give it anyway and just wanted the prodding.

  “He’s been trying to introduce different compounds into metals. One way he was trying was adding a powder layering to the metal when it was completely molten using the air duct into the furnace. It always destabilized the alloys, though. That’s what those filters are: each is lined with a different powdered compound, and put in place when said compound is in use. The compounds are in those barrels over there.”

  Nes walked to the big three-quarter-circle trough again. He spoke quickly, excitedly, pointing or gesturing as to what part of this forge he was talking about during his lecture.

  “To be honest, I always thought it was a terrible idea. Might as well work on better alloys. But here’s the proof that it works. There’s probably a ridiculously thin layer of the powder on some of this stuff,” he said while pointing out the display wall, “giving the alloy or metal some additional property or another. Dastou’s experiments were for things like friction, heat, or cold resistance, and I bet we can find examples of each here. The easier to figure out coatings are a waxy topcoat that would do the same job, like the protective polish on a vehicle, but super-advanced compared to that.”

  Saan still had not much of a clue about Dastou’s metalworking experiments, though from the way Nes spoke, he was in jealous awe of this forge.

  “Are you saying that these people,” Saan said, “the ones who used this place when it was active how
ever long ago, likely centuries, figured that out?”

  “Exactly,” Nes replied in a reverent tone, then faced the display wall. “It’s not just the powder experiment that’s impressive. The items there,” he said while pointing at the wall, “none of them are made of a compound I recognize offhand. Without further testing all I can do is assume based on what Dastou was working on, but some of those metals look crazy strong. You see that pair of cufflinks, middle of the wall and halfway down, with other jewelry?”

  “Yes, the silvery-amber-toned ones.”

  “The material those are made from looks similar to something I tried to invent with Dastou a few months back. The tiny flecks of brown and green are the giveaway. It was an unmitigated failure, almost embarrassing, and those cufflinks look like the purest form possible for that alloy. I’d bet anything that if you shoot it at mid-range it’ll be, at worst, lightly scratched. The bullet itself would take more damage.”

  He had glanced at Saan plaintively, and she rolled her eyes at the obvious permission-asking. “Yes, you can take one or two things to study. Small, preferably.”

  “Why small?” he asked, already hurrying over to the wall to pick something out.

  “Because we are already filling up Trenna’s pack, and too much more might slow her down if we have to rush out. Small,” she repeated.

  Saan went to the display wall for a closer inspection and saw what Nes saw: the metals of every single object here were strange, sometimes off-putting. Very few of them were rusty under the dust of age and abandonment. Some had a shine on their cleaner areas that split light off into different colors, like a prism. Others appeared to be steel at first, but the coloring was off, like with the cufflinks. She took a short, slightly curved sword from the wall and wiped it clean against her forearm. Its shine was beautifully pearlescent, colors swooning and shifting on the surface of the blade. She cleaved the air with it a few times, and it was light to the point that it almost slipped from her hand as she swung; there must only be a little metal in the blade for structure, the rest a layer of ultra-light, ultra-dense powder like Nes said. Saan put the edge of the blade against one of the now empty rungs that it was displayed on and pushed, and the weapon dug into the rung with little force, cutting metal as if it was plastic. It was as amazing as it was frightening, and absolutely worthy of study. The staff sergeant took the belt sheath for the sword, on display below where she took the weapon from, and slung it around her waist before slipping the sword into place. She turned around to face the others, who were now in the middle of the room and waiting on her. Nes was giving her a dirty look as he stuffed the cufflinks, a small dagger, and a dark metal ring into empty slots of his combat belt.

  “I said you could take something small,” she told him while walking back toward the door. “I want this pretty thing.”

  “Well, you’re weakness for pretty things is well known. What was the last one’s name? Pastria. Oh, she was a lovely little vixen.” He curled up a side of his mouth in a knowing smile.

  Saan cleared her throat meaningfully to keep him from mentioning any of her other past dalliances. “Clearly no one has been kept here. We will continue to the living quarters.”

  But why had she bothered to stop here at all? What was the point of slowing down again? The pain at her temple grew, a tiny needle slowly digging into the side of her head, reaching the backs of her eyes, but she could ignore it for now. She walked quickly to the open double doors of the forge.

  Nes rushed to her. “Wait!” he called.

  Saan was already at the doorway when Nes caught up and put a hand on her shoulder. She halted but didn’t turn.

  “You feel it, too, don’t you?” he asked. “This place, it’s messing with our heads. It makes us feel safe here.”

  Saan-Hu turned around slowly to face Nes. She almost said that Dastou would be fine. That this monastery was harmless. But then she noticed some words mixed into her thoughts, lingering like morning fog.

  “’Safe here,’” Saan repeated in a whisper. “Yes, that is the phrase exactly. I do not know what that means for us, that we are thinking the same thing.”

  Trenna met the other two at the doorway. Saan could tell from Nes’ eyes that he had a guess as to what was happening to them.

  “This is a Stitch, isn’t it?” asked Nes. “Thinking the same thing, the same way, with repetition. It’s group hypnotism.”

  “I feel it, too,” Trenna said, “but only a little. The words ‘safe here’ are in my head just like you guys. For me it’s more distracting, something annoying giving me goose bumps every few minutes.”

  When the Stitch skill was first developed, it came with the knowledge that direct interaction with whatever contained the suggestion would break it. It could be proven by writing a Stitch that said “touch this” and showing it to someone. Obviously, the subject of the test touched the slip of paper, then immediately let it go as if zapped by static electricity. That loop ended in one turn, with that same hypnotic suggestion unable to be used on that person for a few hours. In this instance, with no idea what was being used to hypnotize them, they would not be able to touch or destroy it and set themselves free. Had they passed by something written somewhere? How long ago could that have been?

  Before Saan could think of an idea or ask for suggestions, the yowling animal noises returned. First there were several at once, then a pattern of one after another. Each shriek lasted a few seconds and was louder than in the cathedral. The sounds were bone-chilling at the same time they brought a disturbing warmth to her face, and worse, she couldn’t figure out how many of these animals there could be. The trio stood dead silent, waiting for something else, anything else, to happen. Another series of loud, nerve-wracking cries filled the air, and the floor and walls vibrated under their power, stirring dust and making cobwebs quiver. Saan, Nes, and Trenna looked at each other, the same fact visible in all of their wide, frightened eyes: those things were close.

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