Forgery of the Phoenix

by Michael Angel

  The lock popped open and Galen stood aside. I stepped inside and immediately felt for a light switch. In fact, a neat half-dozen were stacked against the wall by the door, but after a few seconds of flipping them up-and-down, I realized that nothing was going to happen.

  “Looks like they kept the power running for the exterior lights,” I remarked, “but they shut it down inside. It makes sense to keep it off the local grid when it’s not in use.”

  I switched on the flashlight. After waiting a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, I led the group down the first of several long, dark hallways.

  “Bide,” Liam whispered. His eyes gleamed in the beam of my flashlight. “I have it now. We need to ascend.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “Come on, guys. I see some stairs up ahead.”

  The outer ring of offices gave way to an inner work area, one where the tile floors gave way to metal walkways. It was hard not to cringe at the noise the four of us made clomping up first one, then a second flight of metal grid stairways. Galen and I at least wore soft-soled shoes. But Shaw’s talons scraped and grated on each step, while Liam’s hooves actually created an echo back from the darkness. A cool draft blew in from above and to our side.

  “If there is an echo, then there must be space enough for it to speak,” Galen said, as soon as we reached the third floor. “Dayna, if your light cannot cast far enough, perhaps I can, with a minimal use of my magic.”

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  Galen stepped to the edge of the walkway. He held up his hand, spoke a couple soft words, and tossed out a little blue globe of weirlight into the gloom. The sphere of light drifted out and down, hovering amidst the empty space. I let out a low whistle at the sight.

  A huge square open space lay below us, a version of the inner courtyard at Fitzwilliam’s palace. Two stories above, a dome of safety glass, supported by tendrils of metal scaffolding, had been erected to protect the plant’s mothballed innards from the weather. From the top story down, steel walkways wrapped around all four sides. They allowed a 360-degree view of the ground floor, which was dominated by a circular vessel sitting roughly in the center of the courtyard, easily wide enough to swallow a school bus.

  That wasn’t all. Off to one side of the vessel was a huge pile of scrap metal, mostly made up of rusted rebar or junked cars. I noticed that the pile lay directly underneath the crane jib. High overhead, an object the shape of an extra-thick manhole cover dangled from the jib, suspended by a network of massive chains and insulated cords.

  “That’s the reason behind the huge truck bays,” I said, half to myself.

  “How so?” Liam asked.

  “This is an electroslag plant. That means it takes large quantities of scrap metal and melts the material down for reuse.” I pointed to the jib overhead, and then to the pile of scrapped cars and junk. “See, the crane grabs up the scrap from that pile. Then it feeds the scrap into that round thing in the center of the room.”

  Galen scratched his head. “To what purpose?”

  “That vessel is actually the crucible to an electric arc furnace. I guess you could call it a forge of sorts.”

  The wizard looked impressed. “You’d need a lot of bellows and smiths to work something that size.”

  “That’s not all,” Shaw added. “‘Tis beyond my ken how one could ‘grab’ anything from that pile. I spy no hands, nor talons on it!”

  “Actually, both are run on that same channeled lightning that powers most of my world,” I said. The edge of my flashlight beam caught the gleam of a control panel, so I led the group over to it for a quick explanation. Buttons, knobs, and joystick controls jutted out of a well-worn plastic board. “The foreman can turn on the furnace and the crane from here. In order to lift metal from the scrap heap, you need to–”

  “Dayna,” Liam interrupted. My fayleene friend wore an excited expression. “This place is so large, it might take hours to search through it without lights. Given my success outside, I’m sure that I could channel energy through here to speed things up.”

  “I don’t know. Let me check something.”

  I swept my flashlight beam around until I found what I was looking for behind a nearby support pillar. One of the main electrical junctions ran through it, along with a panel inset containing four buttons in lollipop shades of blue, yellow, orange, and red. The blue button was labeled ‘Plant Wide Intercom’. The next was rigged to slam shut the safety doors all over the building at the same time. The third button carried the ‘emergency shutdown’ logo. Finally, the cherry-red button was labeled ‘OSHA REQUIRED SAFETY’.

  “Here we go,” I declared as soon as I saw the buttons. “This is going to come in handy. Liam, your idea is a sound one, and if you want to try it, here’s the best spot. It’s where you can channel the energy to power this plant the most efficiently.”

  I stepped out of the way as Liam walked up. The Protector put his head down and touched the points of his antlers to the junction box. He closed his eyes, and the same strange, charged feeling filled the air around him.

  “Stand away from me,” he cautioned, and we all took a couple of steps backward. “I haven’t done this sort of thing before. We’ll see if it works.”

  Emerald and turquoise glints of energy began to run up Liam’s hooves, like blue-green water droplets trickling upwards against gravity. They came together into streams where his legs merged with his body, then flowed with a jolt up through his antlers and into the plant’s circuitry.

  Lights began to flicker on around us. Galen, Shaw and I moved over to the railing overlooking the massive central space. All over the plant, banks of fluorescent hall and workshop lamps winked on, drowning out Galen’s little weirlight globe before the wizard extinguished it with a snap of his fingers.

  A series of hums and whirrs echoed from down below. To my surprise, the electric heating elements of the crucible began to glow in concentric red bands around the bottom of the vessel. The effect reminded me of a giant-sized version of the coil that served as the range element on an electric stove.

  This was followed by a clank from above. I looked up at the crane’s operator cab, which had been bolted to the base of the jib, near the top of the main tower. The interior of the cab was powered up and glowed a friendly green.

  This entire sequence of events made my jaw drop. Since becoming the Protector of the Forest, Liam’s magic had grown drastically stronger. He might not have been able to project energy in the same way as Galen, but I didn’t think the wizard could actually power up an entire smelting facility.

  “‘Ware, Dayna!” Shaw hissed. “I spot movement from above!”

  I never took one of Shaw’s admonitions to ‘beware’ lightly. I immediately crouched and brought my gun out. My eyes scanned the rooftop along the crane jib.

  “I don’t see anything by the crane,” I said.

  “Nay, look to the other tower!”

  I swung around, craning my neck. The secondary tower’s roofline looked as it had before. The flat-edged roof was lined with the silhouettes of jutting vents and stacks like crouching gargoyles.

  Then I saw it.

  One of the silhouettes moved.

  The squat shape unfolded as it detached from the tower. Then it ignited in a burst of crimson glory.

  Korr spread his wings as he plunged through the roof, a fiery meteor that shattered the glass and sent it flying. Pieces of scaffolding rained down like so many metallic toothpicks. The Seraphine let out a raucous shriek that vibrated through my skull like a fork’s tines on a blackboard.

  All right. Korr had tried his best to kill us before. That made this a grudge match.

  Which was fine by me. I didn’t like holding grudges.

  I wanted this whole damned thing with the Seraphine brought to an end, no matter the cost.

  Chapter Forty

  Korr flared his wings and hovered before us. His flame was on full, casting a relentless heat and golden-white light over all the surfaces that faced hi
m. I let go of the handrail in front of me and quickly backed off as the metal grew sizzling hot to the touch.

  The Seraphine’s voice roared like a cascade of liquid fire in my head.

  “What have you done with the Hearts of the Mother’s Body?”

  On the spur of the moment, I decided to roll with it. Maybe if I got him even angrier, he’d make a mistake.

  “You’ll never know,” I taunted. “Your people will return to ash in the wind before you ever see the Hearts!”

  A shriek erupted from the Seraphine’s beak as he lunged for me.

  Galen shouted a quick incantation as I got ready to dive out of the way. A square-shaped section of magical energy imposed itself between me and Korr at the last minute. With a tooth-loosening bang, the phoenix smashed into the barrier.

  A squawk, and Korr shook his head. In an instant, he was back at Galen’s makeshift shield, buckling it with blows from his mighty wings and beak. The Seraphine managed to shatter it, though not nearly as quickly as he’d made so much wreckage of the glass ceiling. He came at me again, propelling himself along the floor with his taloned feet and his wing joints like a giant, flaming bat.

  Heart pounding, I pulled my gun and went into my shooter’s stance. The scrape of the approaching Seraphine’s talons and the acrid stench of sulfur filled the air. I sighted on Korr’s bright scarlet head and squeezed the trigger.

  My first round impacted on Korr’s shoulder. The bullet didn’t leave a mark, as if it had penetrated hide or flesh. It disappeared into the Seraphine’s body with a metal-on-metal spang. Sweat beaded fiercely on my forehead as I squeezed off three more rounds.

  One struck Korr in the wing. Another in the leg. A third missed and made a furrow in one of the acoustic ceiling tiles. Each hit knocked Korr back a step or two and made his flame-feathers ripple in a way that made my skin crawl.

  I focused more intently as he drew closer. I sighted carefully and squeezed the trigger. My next round hit Korr high on the head. His long, plumed skull rocked backwards for a moment with the bullet’s impact.

  The Seraphine let out the hiss of a pissed-off jungle cat. Then his form leaped into the white brilliance of a fallen star as I fired at him again and again. The sweat evaporated from my forehead as the air turned furnace-hot. The rounds from my gun slagged to a kind of mush on Korr’s feathers, which then bubbled away in a dark gray mist.

  The sight felt like a punch in my gut, even as I felt the little hairs on the back of my hands shrivel and sear away. I blinked, trying to get water to my drying eyes, but nothing in my view changed what I was seeing.

  Korr was vaporizing my bullets.

  Galen’s voice sounded in my ear. “It is time, Grimshaw!”

  The griffin warrior let out his own feline roar as he leapt out from where he’d worked his way around to Korr’s side. My throat had gone dry in the heat, so nothing came out as I tried to stop Shaw from incinerating himself.

  Galen flicked his wrist, casting his Fire Shield on the drake. In mid-leap, Shaw’s form blurred for a second. Then the griffin smashed into the enemy’s flank. Korr let out a yelp of surprise as he went down and the drake rolled on top of him.

  The Seraphine’s white-hot flame vanished, to be replaced by the same gold-red color I’d seen back in Fitzwilliam’s court. Shaw’s fur didn’t so much as scorch as he held Korr down with one paw and soundly thrashed the Seraphine with the other. The griffin’s talons raked Korr’s head, opening up bloody red gashes, though no fluid spurted through.

  Galen circled the fight, keeping his hand outstretched towards Shaw, maintaining an iron grip over the magic that protected his friend from getting flame-broiled. Griffin and Seraphine battled each other along the edge of the railing, smashing office equipment and setting both furniture and ceiling ablaze. Choking black smoke began rising from the fires as plastic surfaces and synthetic cloth fiber either burned or melted into tacky brown blobs.

  Shaw dealt a mighty backhand to the Seraphine, sending the raptor skidding backwards for several feet. Korr made a desperate, convulsive thrust with his legs as the griffin moved in again. He tried to shred Grimshaw’s belly, but the griffin twisted away. The Seraphine’s talons grasped nothing but a twin handful of Shaw’s feathers, which flared and turned to ash once outside of the drake’s shield.

  In pulling away from Korr, Shaw opened himself up to the raptor’s counterstrike. The Seraphine used the edge of his wing as a cudgel to club Shaw at the base of his eagle neck. I winced in sympathy, for that was how Raisah had come within an ace of breaking my ribs.

  The blow sent Shaw sprawling against the red-hot iron railing. Korr struck Shaw a second time, and the drake tumbled from the railing and disappeared. From below came the crunch of a heavy mass as it landed on the pile of scrap metal below.

  Face marred and chest heaving, Korr turned wearily back towards me and Galen. The wizard moved to defend me, his hands aglow with magical fire. I stepped behind him and put my hand on his shoulder as I spoke.

  “Do what you can to distract Korr,” I said quickly. “Keep that Seraphine away from me and Liam, or there’s no way we’re going to beat him.”

  “Whatever you have in mind, I recommend doing it with alacrity,” Galen said. “While Korr’s power is diminished, I do not sense that he is close to running out of whatever is fueling him.”

  “Right,” I said, and I gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

  Galen fell back to his left as he cast one of his trademark lightning bolts. Korr let out a screech as the blast staggered him, but he kept on coming. I circled behind a cluster of cubicles before I came around to where Liam still stood, powering the plant’s junction box purely by his magic and his sheer will.

  “Stayed here. Because you needed lights,” Liam grunted, between his heavy breaths. “You want me to stop? Do the others...need help?”

  “Don’t stop,” I said hurriedly. “You’re going to help me fight this thing, and you don’t even have to move.”

  He let out a second deer-like grunt in acknowledgement, throwing himself back into the task of shooting magical electricity to all points of the building. I stepped to one side, returning to the control panel I’d first pointed out to the group only a couple of minutes ago. I took off my jacket and, for the second time in as many weeks, I wadded up part of my wardrobe and used it to swipe away shards of broken glass.

  Dry, dusty air swirled in from the now-shattered glass ceiling and tickled my nose. I ignored it as best I could as I listened to Galen hitting Korr with bolt after bolt of pure energy. I found the switches for POWER and CRANE CONTROL at the upper left of the banks of buttons. Above me, the crane’s jib came to life with a skeletal rattle and cough. I moved my hands to the joystick controls and had started to swing the jib around when Grimshaw appeared off to the side, climbing his way up the stairs.

  “Shaw!” I cried. “Are your wings hurt?”

  “Nay, nay,” he replied, as he ran a paw across the back of his neck. “‘Twas a good-sized blow I took to the head. Mine own eyes betrayed me for a few seconds, and saw everything twice over, so I could not fly to thee.”

  “If you can fly now, I need your help,” I said. He nodded, so I went on. “Galen’s keeping Korr busy right now, but we need to end this before anyone else shows up.”

  Of all things, Shaw made a damned bow to me.

  “If I must sacrifice myself nobly for thy cause, I am ready!”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, after I rolled my eyes. “Get Korr’s attention, then lure him out here, under the open area. I’ve got a nasty surprise waiting!”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Shaw’s eyes gleamed wickedly as he absorbed my directions. Then he spread his wings and dove down out of sight. At that moment, I spotted Korr across the open expanse of the building from me. The Seraphine snarled and spat at Galen, snapping at the wizard’s force shield as it pushed him back towards the third-story railing, almost directly opposite my control board.


  I let go of the joysticks. I moved one hand towards the crane’s RELEASE switch, and then rested my other on a big square green button labeled ACTIVATE. The burned skin on my hands tingled, with anticipation as much as pain.

  “Dayna,” Liam gasped, from where he still pressed his antlers to the power circuits. “I can’t keep this up for more than a couple more minutes.”

  “That should be enough,” I replied. “Just hang in there!”

  Shaw flew up from below and to one side of his quarry. He hovered in midair, holding something in both forepaws like a spear. Galen spotted his griffin friend, and with the required flick of the wrist he switched his magic to cast Fire Shield back on the drake.

  “Betrayer!” Grimshaw spat, his voice echoing through the open air.

  Korr whirled around as he heard the taunt. At just the right moment, Shaw made a predator-swift strike.

  A terrible, choked wail of pain and anger erupted from the Seraphine as the drake plunged a solid foot of steel rebar into Korr’s open beak.

  “Grimshaw, clear out!” Galen called.

  The griffin folded his wings and dove to one side in an instant. Galen shouted his incantation once more. Another bolt of lightning smacked into Korr’s chest, blasting the raptor into the open space.

  The Seraphine’s wings beat madly, trying to stay aloft. Korr was finally in the right place at the right time. At the last second, I mentally crossed my fingers that the chemical results of Pirr’s autopsy applied to Korr as well.

  I flicked the RELEASE switch. The object that resembled a manhole cover dropped on its long network of chains and cords from the crane jib and plunged down into the plant’s work space. The disk landed squarely across the Seraphine’s back and kept on going without pause.