That would be advisable, she agreed, and Randall set off to do precisely that.
Midnight, 19-1-6-659
The Forge truly was one of the most magnificent structures ever created by humanity. Standing eight hundred feet tall, spanning five hundred feet at the widest point, and measuring nearly four hundred feet thick, the sheer size of it strained belief.
That it was crafted of fakestone and boulders pulled down from the nearby mountains was what made its creation possible at all, and even then it had required decades of effort by the Federation’s top engineers to complete it. By all official accounts, it was a dam the purpose of which had been to divert water from one river to another for the purposes of increasing agricultural output in the lands south of the Binding Chain.
But, as is usually the case, the official account was far from the complete story.
The agricultural boon which the Forge had caused in the midlands had, indeed, been a monumentally important step in convincing the locals of the Federation’s good intentions. The real purpose behind the Forge’s construction, however, lay hidden in plain sight: the dam’s name itself.
Buried deep beneath the fakestone edifice, brushing against the very edge of the Underworld itself, was a secret facility so old and secretive that only a few humans knew of its existence. It was this facility—the Forge—which had been the true reason why the Federation had constructed what was easily the most massive, labor-intensive, and expensive structure in its history.
And it was there, deep beneath the crushing weight of the water above, that Supreme Engineer Anatolia oversaw the Federation’s most important operation north of Blue Sands.
“The Forge does not want for power, Chief Sforza,” Anatolia said with chilling precision after reading her subordinate’s production report for the week. “But apparently it does lack determined operators…or perhaps it merely lacks sufficiently motivated Chiefs?”
“I have no excuses, Supreme,” Sforza bowed deeply. “I was unable to rekindle the spark in accordance with protocol.”
“The war with Fissalia goes badly, Chief,” Anatolia’s eyes narrowed as she reviewed the figures provided by one of her three department heads. “While our army gains victory wherever it goes, the damage the rebels do to our war machines—machines the production of which you and I are tasked with—is well beyond that which was expected by our military commanders.”
“Forgive me, Supreme,” Sforza straightened slowly from his deep bow, “but the sparks grow weaker every day. Each new machine we create from them represents a finite resource which must not be squandered.”
“We are the builders, Chief Sforza,” Anatolia rebuked, “not the breakers. The breakers do as they will and, as usual, the builders get blamed for the shortfall. I will not have my family suffer for your incompetence as yours may well suffer for it, is that clear?”
She locked gazes with the middle-aged Chief, who wisely held his tongue but did little to hide the anger which flared behind his eyes.
“Perfectly clear, Supreme,” he said stiffly.
“Good,” she nodded, “now get back to work. I expect these shortfalls to be erased—I don’t care if you have to double-shift your entire team for the next Judgment. We are at war, Chief Sforza, and it seems the time has come for each of us to feel the fire as acutely as our soldiers do. Dismissed.”
He saluted in the traditional manner of the Federation Engineering Corps: by forming a fist with his right hand and knocking against his skull just above the right ear. Clearly furious, but managing to control his anger at least long enough to leave her office, the Chief of Forge Team Two turned on his heel and left the Supreme Engineer’s office.
After the vault-like metal door closed behind him, Anatolia slinked back into her chair and regarded Sforza’s report with mixed disgust and dread. Sforza’s team, probably unbeknownst to him until the last few days, had been the last of the Forge’s three production teams to succumb to the delays which had seemingly infected every corner of the formerly well-oiled facility.
The delays had begun just a few short weeks ago, but they had grown at an exponential rate in both frequency and severity until entire Forge teams were placed on standby while the sparks—the central, most delicate components placed into the very heart of every war machine produced by the Forge—were forcibly rekindled by exhausting quantities of rare materials, chief among them the so-called ‘godstone,’ the value of which made Anatolia literally tremble when she was forced to contemplate them.
The Federation’s leadership had entrusted her with the continued production of the war machines which had allowed its armies to sweep across the world, spreading the light of humanity wherever they went. Those armies moved with such speed and ferocity that none of its opponents had managed anything more than a token defense, but it would all come to a grinding halt if she failed to meet her production deadlines.
As a mother to three and grandmother to eleven, it was often difficult to keep her thoughts from drifting to family. She had long since learned to use those thoughts to motivate herself and her people but in the end she was an engineer, not an idealist.
Something was going to have to give, or she would be forced to resign in shame, and the very family members whose faces so often filled her thoughts would be placed in harm’s way as her superiors sought a suitably severe punishment for her failure.
It was with these thoughts in mind that she made her way to the observation deck, which was built atop the dam itself. She knew that she could use the fresh air, and so she set off to the lift car which had carried her up and down its track one hundred and thirteen times during her career.
The guard posted outside her door made his obeisance, which she absently returned as she entered the lift car and pulled the lever which unlocked the counterweight attached to the other end of the cable system that raised and lowered the car.
Like any other feat of Federation engineering, it owed more of its value to the simplicity of its design and the quality of its materials than it did to any elaborate mechanisms or mysterious inner workings. It was a simple system which relied on extremely strong ropes made of tiny, metal wires bound tightly together into a cable. And that cable quickly brought her up from the depths of the near-Underworld to the top of the Forge’s upper dam, where the starlight easily illuminated the placed lake which that dam held back.
The lake was massive, measuring several miles across, with a pair of spillways which guided the overflow to a pair of rivers, one to the east and one to the west. The river to the east had been all but built by the Federation engineers using machines not entirely dissimilar to those which now fueled the Federation’s war effort in countries like Fissalia, located across the Rydian Sea.
She drew a deep, clean breath of night air in, closing her eyes and imagining for a moment that she was sailing across the Rydian Sea to Fissalia, where she had visited as a child. The cities, the architecture, the style of dress…all of it had been indelibly printed on her mind at such a young age that she could still smell the waxfruit her mother had sliced open for her the day they had arrived.
But her thoughts were soon torn from those peaceful, happy memories when a sound unlike anything she had ever heard filled her ears. It was soft and low, almost too low to hear, but there was no mistaking what it had been:
It was the sound of cracking fakestone.
“Impossible…” she breathed, walking briskly away from the lake-side of the dam, crossing the curved walkway atop the dam before looking down the gently sloping outer face of the Forge’s upper dam. At first she saw nothing untoward and thought she had imagined the sound much as one imagines hearing voices while on the edge of consciousness…but then she heard the same grinding, cracking sound—except this time it was significantly louder. “Impossible…” she repeated with paralyzing dread as a faint, hairline crack appeared midway up the dam’s outer wall.
Her eyes remained fixed on that crack as it grew steadily larger, eventually spider-we
bbing its way across the dam only to join with other hairline cracks. Something down the valley caught her attention, forcing her to drag her gaze away from an event which she herself had been convinced was utterly impossible.
Her eyes snagged on a strange, dim light near the edge of the tree-line. Her people had reported disturbances in the soil near that area a few days earlier, but the team she had tasked with investigating it had turned up nothing of consequence.
But now, looking down at the pair of orange, glowing orbs—orbs which looked like nothing so much as malevolent eyes in the dark—she knew that whatever was down there was not only the source of the disturbed dirt, but also the cause of the attack on the Forge.
She stopped herself short, unable to believe the thought that had just flitted through her mind. “Attack…we are under attack…” she whispered, too paralyzed with fear to do anything but look on in horror as the glowing, orange eyes at the edge of the forest grew in luminosity until they looked like raging bonfires.
The loudest, grating, cracking sound yet filled her ears, and it was that sound which broke her from her paralysis. Without thinking, she ran to the cable car and unlocked the brake, causing the car to descend to the bowels of the Forge.
“Come on…come on!” she cried as the car slowly lowered to the uppermost level of the Lower Forge. She threw open the door, seeing teams of off-duty engineers assembling in the corridors of the subterranean facility. “We are under attack!” she yelled. “Emergency drain all spillways and evacuate the sparks—now!” she screamed when her only reply was a collage of dumbfounded looks from her subordinates.
Her people quickly moved into action as she raced down the corridor which led to her office. She needed to retrieve the key to the Black Ship which had been stationed at the Forge in case of an emergency such as this one—someone needed to report to Federation High Command, and it had been several days since the long-range communication system had functioned at all.
Another loud, ominous, cracking sound reverberated overhead as she entered her office—and this one was powerful enough to shake the hewn stone beneath her feet. Keeping her focus as her aged heart threatened to beat through her increasingly frail chest, she entered the passkey to her office’s safe and was rewarded when it opened on the first try. She grabbed the key—a pentagonal piece of metal the inner workings of which even she could not guess at—and raced out of her office to find a suitable messenger.
“My team has already removed our spark and is en route to the upper dam. What would you have me do, Supreme?” she heard Sforza ask from her side, and she turned to see the same man she had just berated standing there with a dutiful look on his grim features.
“Take this,” she thrust the key into his hand, “and return to the Capitol City.”
“I cannot—" he began warily, making to move away.
“I command it,” she cut him off, “the loss of the Forge would be a catastrophic blow to our war effort, but the loss of the sparks would guarantee our armies’ defeat. Do you understand?” she demanded as the facility shook violently beneath their feet and, for a second, she feared the upper dam would come crashing down on them.
“I do,” he said diligently as he accepted the pentagonal key. In that moment, she saw the same measure of resolve and commitment to duty which had driven her to the many successes which had preceded her installation as the Supreme Engineer of the most important—and secretive—facility in the entire Federation.
“Go!” she ordered, and he wasted no time in making his way to his team—which carried the incalculably precious spark in its specially-designed, rare metal case—who followed him to the cargo lifter. They quickly boarded the cargo car and, after making eye contact with her one last time, Sforza closed the door and began his ascent to the upper dam.
“All spillways open, Supreme,” a nearby grease monkey reported. “But the cracks grow larger.”
“What of the other two sparks?” she demanded.
“One is in the process of division and cannot be moved,” the grease monkey shook her head, “the other is being extracted as we speak. They should have it out in ten minutes.”
“This facility will be dust and gravel in ten minutes,” Anatolia snapped. “Dispatch the Iron Walkers and tell them to investigate the eastern bank of the river near the edge of the forest—and tell them,” her lip curled hatefully, “to investigate with as much fire as they are capable.”
“Understood, Supreme,” the grease monkey nodded anxiously before setting off to carry out her orders.
“Everyone else,” Anatolia barked as a small assemblage quickly gathered around her, “assist with the extraction of the sparks—we cannot abandon them to the enemy!”
For six more minutes her people valiantly worked to carry out her orders, but ultimately it was to no avail as they were unable to extract the second spark.
As the Forge’s upper dam finally gave way and the crushing weight of fakestone and water destroyed both her command and her body, Supreme Engineer Anatolia’s took small comfort in the fact that her death in the line of duty—and the successful extraction of one of the three sparks placed in her custody—would, if fortune smiled upon her family, spare them some portion of the pain they would now suffer for her failure.
The fury of an Elder Spirit is utterly unknowable to a mortal—even one as long-lived as Lazeros. But as he watched from the western riverbank, and the Forest That Walks unleashed its age-old wrath upon those who had twisted and defiled every piece of nature they contacted, Lazeros felt a chill run down his spine at the awesome destruction he witnessed.
Its roots buried deep within the soil at the base of the mountains, the Forest That Walks had slowly grown its tendrils—some as thick as Lazeros was tall—toward the abomination of fakestone which had emptied the river which formerly flowed across its dry, barren stones.
The dam had several emergency spillways placed up and down its edges, and those spillways had been opened in panicked desperation by the Federation soldiers who manned the Forge and who had perverted its powers of creation for their own nefarious, unnatural ends. But it was to no avail, as it was not the pressure of water alone which had caused the dam to fail—it was the unstoppable growth of the Forest That Walks’ roots, which several days earlier had dug into the narrow cracks between the fakestone and the mountain itself.
Slowly, but inevitably, the Forest’s roots had spread throughout the tiny gaps and cracks in the dam’s fakestone buttresses, snaking hither and thither in preparation for the final act—an act which Lazeros watched with savage satisfaction as one of the thousands of small, seemingly insignificant cracks on the fakestone dam began to leak the crystal clear lake water down its unnaturally flat surface.
The False River, as the humans had come to call it, already flowed with raging current as the spillways worked in vain to relieve the pressure which, combined with the Forest’s subterranean effort, slowly began to tear the dam apart.
Another crack began to burble water forth, with enough of the life-giving liquid passing through it each second to sink the largest human-built ship straight to the bottom of the sea. Then another, and another, and soon a section of the dam at least thirty feet across gave out and a geyser of water blasted forth from behind it.
The slab of dislodged fakestone fell against the base of the dam, causing even more damage as new cracks formed instantly, and for a brief moment Lazeros had the previously unthinkable thought that perhaps they had gone too far.
The awesome destruction of the dam, as it quickly disintegrated a third of the way up its unnatural face, was unlike anything Lazeros had ever dreamed of. The sheer power on display as water turned man-made stone into gravel was a poignant reminder of just how weak humanity’s grip on the world truly was.
The river quickly overran its banks, sending water gushing outward which flooded the nearby forest to the east and plains to the west. Trees were swept away in the opening seconds, but even though it stood closest to the sou
rce, the Forest That Walks had sunk its roots too deep to be uprooted as its smaller brethren had been.
Lazeros knew that the Federation would learn of the Elder Spirit’s existence in the coming hours, and it would not take them long to surmise who had sent it against their most precious facility this far north of the Blue Sands. But for one night—one blessed, exhilarating, and righteous night—Lazeros cared not one whit for the humans’ eventual retribution.
“Let them come,” he seethed as he turned his back on the scene which still unfolded, “meanwhile, we will restore the land…and when they arrive, we will be ready for them.”
Rada’s eyes snapped open, finding nothing but the darkness of the Underworld—the same Underworld which had brought him to this overripe land.
For a moment he recalled nothing but his seemingly endless wandering in that Underworld. He had been little more than a vagabond then, a victim of his own foolishness who had been deposed from his rightful place at the head of a long-forgotten state whose name perished along with Rada’s mortality.
And for that brief instant, it was as though he had returned to those days, or weeks, or possibly even months of ceaseless wandering in the dark. His only companion then, as now, was the pulsing green lines of light which stretched into the darkness of the Underworld itself. It was there, deep beneath the world of men, that he had found the Rotting God’s heart and taken it unto himself.
Dross (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 2) Page 9