by Tim Waggoner
"We know you're there, and there's no way that you will be able to hide from me again. Show yourself."
At first nothing happened, and Galharath was contemplating a psionic strike against the presence when the air in the corner rippled, and a hulking stone and wood being with numerous multicolored crystals affixed to its body appeared. Galharath instantly recognized what he was looking at, though he wasn't sure he believed it. This was an artificial being produced by the crystalline forge that lay at the heart of Mount Luster. This was a psi-forged.
"How interesting," Cathmore said. If the master assassin was surprised by the sudden appearance of the psi-forged, Galharath couldn't tell it from the calm tone of his voice. "I wasn't aware that the forge was ever operational."
Galharath was intrigued, for there was so much they could learn about the forge and its processes from this being that had been born within its mystic fires, but he was also cautious. It was clear that the psi-forged was powerful, or else it wouldn't have been able to cloak itself from Galharath's perception for so long, and if Cathmore's dark spirit hadn't detected it, allowing Galharath to search for the creature, there was a good chance he might never have discovered it. That meant the psi-forged was extremely strong-and therefore extremely dangerous.
Galharath felt an itching sensation, as if hundreds of ants had somehow found their way into his skull and were crawling over the surface of his brain. The psi-forged was attempting to probe his mind. The technique was clumsy at best, but there was no denying the power behind the probe. The creature had been able to penetrate Galharath's standard defenses as easily as his physical body could pass through air. Already the itching sensation was beginning to hurt as the psi-forged intensified its probe. It now felt as if the ants were sinking their mandibles into the tender, moist flesh of his brain and tearing away chunks to devour. At this rate, if Galharath allowed the creature to persist in its attempt to explore his mind, there was a chance he would suffer significant brain damage.
Galharath concentrated on strengthening his psionic defenses, visualizing his head surrounded by an impenetrable globe of blazing light. He drew additional power from the psi-crystals he wore on his gloves and chest, as well as those shards woven into his hair. He used this power to increase the globe's density, adding layer upon layer to it, each layer vibrating at a different frequency, exponentially strengthening the whole. Galharath felt the pain of the psi-forged's mental probe begin to subside, and then it was gone. Before the psi-forged could renew its efforts to penetrate Galharath's defenses, the kalashtar went on the attack, both in an attempt to distract the creature as well as to conduct a probe of his own. His vision shifted, and he now saw the psi-forged not as a physical creature of darkwood, silver, obsidian, and stone but rather as a luminous being composed entirely of various hues of light.
And what light! Galharath's psychic vision was dazzled by the array of colors that comprised the creature's astral form: fiery reds, pulsating blues, glowing oranges, warm yellows, cool greens, and so many, many more-colors that Galharath had never seen, colors which he wasn't sure even had names… All were interwoven in a complex pattern that formed the true core of the psi-forged's self, what-for a lack of better term-could be called the creature's soul.
Galharath pictured tendrils of energy emerging from the globe surrounding his head like pseudopods. The tendrils lengthened and extended toward the multicolored patchwork of energy that was the psi-forged. The ends of the tendrils waved in the air around the creature's astral form, tentatively probing its outer defenses, searching for a weak point that might allow entry. No matter where the tendrils looked, they could find no weaknesses in the psi-forged's defenses, but Galharath did sense something odd about this creature…
He recoiled as images, thoughts, emotions, and sensations assaulted his mind. He tried to shut them out, to deny them entrance, but they crashed through the protective globe of mental energy protecting his brain as if it were the most fragile of glass. Galharath clasped his head in his hands and screamed.
The pieces had been crafted and assembled into a rough approximation of a humanoid shape. Now all that remained was to infuse the creature with the spark of life. The construct lay motionless atop a crystalline table in the middle of the spherical structure that was the psi-forge's main chamber. The crystal struts that connected the sphere to the cavern's ceiling and floor pulsated with soft illumination as they drew upon the vast thermal energies contained beneath the mountain, and the runes carved into the sides of the table glowed with eerie eldritch light. The atmosphere of the cavern was charged with the sensation of building power to the point where the air crackled with barely restrained energy.
Four people wearing protective crystal-lens goggles watched closely as the forge continued siphoning the mountain's power into itself. Three of them stood close to the forge's main chamber so that they might more closely observe the device's first test-and intervene in the unlikely event that anything went wrong. The fourth stood much farther back, almost with his back against the cavern's far wall. In addition to his goggles, this cautious individual wore a heavy cloak imbued with nearly a dozen different enchantments designed to safeguard the wearer from all harm, whether physical or mystical. This was Karnil of House Cannith, high-ranking member of the Fabricators Guild and overseer of this installation. He was a short man, though he thought himself of medium height. Ever since childhood he had endured jokes from people inquiring if he had any halfling blood in his ancestry, which was perhaps why his face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. House Cannith carried the Mark of Making, and during its long and illustrious history, the House was responsible for some of Khorvaire's greatest achievements, including the towers of Sharn, the lightning rail, and the warforged.
It had been Karnil's task to shepherd this project from its inception to this moment, when the psi-forge was ready to become fully operational. It had taken a great deal of time to get to this point, and Karnil felt both pride and trepidation. If the psi-forge worked properly, House Cannith would be able to produce warriors the like of which Khorvaire had never seen, and his status within the House would rise immeasurably, but if the forge failed… Karnil thrust the thought away, lest he somehow jinx today's test by allowing his doubts to fully form in his mind. He rubbed the dragonmark on the back of his hand for luck, an unconscious habit he'd had most of his life. The forge would work because it had to work, he told himself. Simple as that.
The trio standing close to the forge were just as responsible for the device's creation as Karnil, but where he had served in primarily an administrative capacity, these three-kalashtar all-were the ones who'd done the actual design and construction. In their minds, that made the psi-forge theirs, but they wisely kept this feeling to themselves.
The first kalashtar's name was Banain, a telekineticist who specialized in animation psionics. He wore a silken robe of fiery red that rippled as if stirred by a gentle breeze, though the cavern air was still. This wasn't the first creation forge he had helped build, but it was certainly the most complex and challenging. If it worked, it would be the crowning achievement in a long, and if he did say so himself, distinguished career. His face betrayed none of the excitement that he felt, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.
Next to Banain stood Evalina, a psionic artificer. She wore only a sleeveless black tunic and sandals, but her flesh was so covered with tattoos and piercings that it appeared she was clad in a multicolored body stocking from head to toe. She specialized in the miniaturization of psionic objects, and the myriad metal rings, studs, and pins embedded in her flesh were all devices of her own creation, each allowing her to perform psionic feats of various kinds. She had also developed a process-known only to herself-of mixing tiny shards of psionic crystals with ink, and the tattoos that adorned her skin were also powerful psionic devices in their own right. Evalina had a single driving purpose in her life: to do that which others thought impossible. Though this wasn't the first psi-forge ever built in the
history of Khorvaire, all of the others had been failures and quite disastrous ones at that, but she had helped create this forge, therefore she knew it would work. In Evalina's mind, the only true impossibility in existence was that she could ever fail at something she attempted, so she waited for the psi-forge's successful activation, which in her mind was a certainty, a smug smile on her lips.
Turi was the last kalashtar's name, and he was a highly skilled and most powerful psionicist. He possessed no hair anywhere on his body, which was cadaverously thin. His only article of clothing was a white breech cloth, and it was all he ever wore, regardless of the climate. Turi sought to transcend his physical form and become a being of pure thought, and to this end he traveled the length and breadth of Khorvaire learning everything he could about the nature and practice of psionics. He had helped to create House Cannith's psi-forge not because he cared about the House's fortunes, and not because he cared who won the long war that had ravaged Khorvaire. He had done it for the knowledge he'd gained throughout the process, and because he saw the constructs the forge would produce as being a major step toward true psionic transcendence. If psi-forged could be born, perhaps he, Turi, could at last discover a way to achieve the apotheosis he so desired.
Banain, Evalina, and Turi monitored the complex interplay of energies-both mystical and psionic, visible and invisible-that coruscated across the psi-forge's surface. A few more seconds, and the forge would be up to full power, and then…
A burst of brilliant white light poured forth from the forge's main chamber, so intense that even though they wore protective goggles, the four in attendance were forced to avert their faces lest they risk blindness. They could feel the vast energies released by the forge as it worked to imbue the construct with life. Of the four, only Karnil knew that the true process by which life was granted to constructs remained a mystery. Oh, the Fabricators Guild pretended it understood, that House Cannith were the masters of the creation forges, but in reality the ultimate nature of how an inanimate being made of stone, metal, and wood became a living, sentient being was as much a mystery to them as to anyone else. Thus Karnil watched through eyes squeezed almost shut as the blazing light of life itself poured into the cavern, his heart filled with both awe and terror at the fearsome energies unleashed.
Then like a storm whose peak fury had passed, the light began to dim. A few moments more, and it had diminished to the point where the four could once more look upon the psi-forge. The crystalline structure continued to pulse with soft light, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of released energy, like after a lightning strike. More, each of the observers experienced a nauseating sensation of vertigo, though only Turi wasn't bothered by it. The dizziness was a result of energies that had rippled through the localized psi-scape as the forge discharged its power, affecting the mental equilibrium of the observers in the process. Turi was unconcerned; he knew the effect would soon pass.
The four waited, their gazes locked on the construct lying motionless upon the crystalline table inside the forge's main chamber. Several moments passed, during which the forge ceased to glow, and the vertiginous sensation in the observers subsided, but still the construct did not move. Karnil ground his teeth together in frustration. After all this time-all the careful preparation, all the exacting work-they couldn't have failed! He started forward, intending to enter the chamber and check on the construct himself, when the creature's left hand twitched.
Karnil froze, a hesitant smile on his lips. Had he imagined it or-There! The hand moved again!
Slowly, awkwardly, the construct sat up. It looked at the four observers, tiny pinpoints of light, of life, flickering deep within its eyes.
"We've done it!" Banain shouted. "It's alive!"
But before the others could echo the telekineticist's feeling of triumph, the crystals embedded in the psi-forged's body began to glow with multicolored light. The four observers screamed in a single voice, shrieking at the top of their lungs. Even after their bodies collapsed lifeless to the cavern floor, their minds continued screaming, only now the sound emerged from the throat of the newborn creature that stumbled forth from the crystalline forge.
Though it took every ounce of will and every iota of knowledge he possessed, Galharath managed to separate his awareness from the psi-forged's mind. Before the creature could pull him in again, he reached up to one of his braids and removed a small green crystal. He flicked it at the psi-forged, and as the shard flew, Galharath took hold of it in a telekinetic grip and drove it straight into the psi-forged's forehead. The creature's anguished bellow came out of its mouth in a blend of five different voices, then the crystals affixed to its body stopped glowing and the psi-forged froze, motionless as a statue. The shard that Galharath had struck the creature with, however, continued to glow a soft but steady green.
A wave of weakness washed over the kalashtar, and he collapsed to his knees, lungs heaving, heart pounding, body slick with sweat. He'd survived but it had been a near thing… too near.
"Have you neutralized it?" Cathmore's tone was casual, as if he were asking Galharath what time it was.
The master assassin didn't offer to help Galharath up, and the psionic artificer struggled to his feet on his own.
"For now. The shard I used enabled me to redirect the creature's higher brain functions inward." He wiped sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. "Eventually he'll be able to free himself. How long it'll take, I can't say. Not long. He's extremely powerful."
Cathmore stepped up to the motionless psi-forged, displaying no fear of the creature whatsoever, but then Galharath knew the man didn't experience fear, thanks to the dark spirit that shared his body. "I assume this construct was produced by the psi-forge."
Galharath nodded. "The first and only one. The facility's original builders succeeded in creating a psi-forged, but they failed to take one thing into account: an organic psionicist is born as an infant, with parents to shepherd its mental development. They place psychic safeguards and blocks within the infant's mind to help protect the child-and those around it-as it grows and learns to master its abilities. The psi-forged was born fully developed in terms of power, but it was as an infant in terms of control. Its psychic abilities manifested wildly in the first few moments of its life, slaying its makers, or rather, their bodies. Their minds, their souls, if you will, were absorbed by the creature and still dwell within it to this day." Galharath stared at the motionless psi-forged. "What you see before you is five separate beings trapped within a single form."
It would have been six if Galharath hadn't managed to resist the psi-forged's power. As it was, the creature had nearly claimed his mind as well.
Cathmore looked into the psi-forged's eyes. The sockets were dark now and would remain so until Galharath freed the construct from the psychic trap that ensnared it.
"Fascinating," the old man said in a voice barely above a whisper. "In a sense, this is a child, isn't it?" He smiled. "How appropriate. I've always been good with the young ones." He turned to Galharath. "Did you learn anything else about our new friend?"
"A few things. He calls himself Solus. When representatives of House Cannith came to investigate why they'd ceased to receive communications from this facility, Solus hid, cloaking himself from their perceptions, just as he did with us. They found the bodies of the others, decided the project was a failure, and closed down the facility. They departed, unaware of Solus's existence. Solus has remained within Mount Luster ever since, rarely venturing outside. I'm not certain, but I got the sense that he's been trying to learn how to control his abilities so that he won't endanger anyone else. He has obtained a modicum of mastery over the years, but he still has quite a way to go."
Cathmore reached out and placed an arthritic claw on Galharath's shoulder. The assassin's touch was cold as ice. "Excellent, Galharath. Well done." The old man turned to regard Solus once more. "Remember what I told you about Fate? It appears that Fate has granted us an opportunity to learn more ab
out psi-forged before we begin producing our own. There is much we can learn from our new friend. Much indeed."
If he doesn't destroy us first, Galharath thought.
CHAPTER TEN
Rocking, swaying… wood creaking, wind howling, cold seeping into his bones, slowly turning them to ice. A ship-they were on a ship.
Diran struggled to open his eyes, but whatever drug the Coldhearts had used upon him and Ghaji was strong, and its hold was not easily broken. He fought to escape the black numbness that held him in its grip, but like a drowning man on the verge of going down for the third and final time, he was too weak. Despite his efforts he felt himself sink back down into nothingness.
"Do you know why I summoned you here?" Cathmore asked.
Diran shook his head. He hadn't been in his new home long, but he'd already learned through painful experience that if he didn't know the right answer to a question, it was better not to say anything at all. He felt an urge to reach up and touch the bruised and swollen flesh of his face, but he resisted, not wishing to risk adding another injury by displaying weakness before Cathmore.
The two of them-man and boy-stood within a large room located on one of the lower levels of Emon Gorsedd's manor home. Diran had never been here before, but he'd heard of this place from the other students. It was called the Proving Room, though why it was named so, or what took place inside, no one would say. The ceiling was high, the walls and floor wooden and bereft of decoration of any sort. They weren't even painted. The only features in the room save for the cold fire globes hovering near the ceiling were a door on the far wall opposite from the one through which Diran had entered and a wide mahogany chest with double doors set against one wall.