by Will Wight
When a knock thundered on the door, Petal screamed to stop the Champions from blasting it to splinters.
Rosephus and Tyria had leveled their weapons instnatly. Tyria’s silver needle was ignited with bright light and a ghostly red dagger rushed from behind Rosephus toward the door.
“WAIT!” Petal shouted. The dagger froze before hitting the door.
Both the Champions turned toward her.
“We don’t…we don’t know who it is.”
“I wasn’t going to stab anyone sight unseen,” Rosephus said. “But if this is an enemy who followed the Steward, they will blow this door off its hinges.”
Another knock followed, and Petal had to wipe her hands clean of Calder’s blood before she rushed from the back to open the door herself.
As she’d expected, Foster stood at the other end, glasses hanging on his beard and an irritated expression on his face. When he saw her, he pushed inside.
“Good, I’m in the right place. Thought I was going to knock until I—”
Petal threw her arms around him, sobbing.
He stiffened beneath her, but she didn’t care if he was uncomfortable. Too much had happened too quickly, and the relief of seeing someone familiar tore her apart.
Gradually, he melted, hugging her back.
“Let go, girl,” he said, but his voice was soft. “We have a life to save.”
She nodded, pulling away and swiping her sleeve at her eyes and nose.
Tyria still had her silver needle leveled at his chest. “How did you find us here?”
Foster glanced at her, but Petal had thought of this already. The Champions wouldn’t approve of her sending Lotta out, but it was already done. She would have taken responsibility…once she was in good enough shape to speak.
“Captain had an emergency signal for the crew,” Foster announced. “Bell only we could hear. He wouldn’t ring it unless he was in trouble, so lead me to him.”
Tyria and Rosephus exchanged glances but lowered their weapons.
When Petal led Foster into the back room, he shuddered at the sight of Calder with a sucking wound to the back, but he didn’t hesitate before laying a hand on the white metal and closing his eyes.
After a painful half-minute during which Petal left him to his Reading, Foster finally sighed and pulled his hand away.
“Just like I thought. The armor was invested by the Emperor himself to protect and preserve the life of the one wearing it. As long as he’s wearing it, he’ll stay alive, but the armor can’t tell the difference between surgery and a stabbing. Can’t fix him until we take him out, and the minute we take him out, he’s gone He’s just too weak.”
Petal got her breath under control and spoke. “Stronger. We can make…him stronger.” She hurriedly rushed over and grabbed some of her notes and held them out; he’d read them before. “They have Champion samples.”
One of the Champion’s Guild alchemists sighed from nearby. “Petal, I keep telling you it won’t work. The Champion treatment requires months. And that’s after years of conditioning.”
Petal had been trying to get them to read her research notes ever since Calder arrived, but they had all been busy. Now she flipped through her notes and found the relevant section, forcing it into the other alchemist’s face.
“I know you think you’ve found…hm. But making that an elixir, it wouldn’t…”
Petal forced another page onto her.
“…huh.”
Her partner shook his head. “I looked through them, Petal. It works in theory, but you’ve cut too many corners. Maybe with a few more years of development we could do something with this, but we’ll never make him a Champion with your formula.”
Foster looked at them like he was staring at a bunch of idiots. “Who said anything about a Champion? We want him sturdy enough that he won’t fall apart like a roast the second we pull him out of that breastplate.”
Too worked up to speak, Petal pointed to the gunner.
“Well…sure, but we don’t know what long-term effects it will have on him.”
“You think they’ll be worse than instant death?”
“Well…no...”
“I called for a Pilgrim who can be trusted,” Foster said, not noticing the death glares he immediately got from the Champions down the hall. “We need Calder to survive leaving the armor, and we need his heart not to stop when the Luminian heals him. Will this do it?”
The female alchemist handed a sheet of paper to her male counterpart, and they discussed something in low tones.
Finally, she blew out her cheeks. “We’ll have to make some adjustments, and of course we can’t know if it will work. But between our stock and what Petal brought, we have enough to try.”
Petal’s heart lifted so high that she felt like she would drift off her feet. She immediately rushed over to her equipment.
“You can’t hold us accountable for what happens,” the male alchemist warned. “Petal has followed some…unorthodox pathways. This is far different from any physical augmentation elixir we make, and it’s designed to have permanent effects. We don’t know what strain it will cause on his system.”
Foster glanced around the lab. “Petal, which of these things can I use to hit him with?”
After a moment considering which equipment wouldn’t break on impact or cause him permanent injury, Petal selected a long wire brush and handed it to him.
Foster brandished it like a sword, and he actually looked threatening as he advanced on the alchemist. “Every time you make an excuse instead of working to save a man’s life, it’s five lashes.”
“I just wanted you to know,” the man muttered. “This is stressful for me too.”
But they fell into line with Petal and got to work.
It was like pulling out his own bones to get the alchemists to answer any straight question, but Foster eventually figured out that brewing the elixir would be done in a matter of hours. Developing the formula and gathering the ingredients were the time-consuming parts of the process; actually putting it together was just the final step.
So Foster had time to prepare himself for Andel’s arrival.
When the knock came at the door, he was ready. He pulled it open, revealing Andel in his spotless white suit and hat with a jewelry box in one hand and Lotta at his side.
Foster addressed the girl first. “Looks like we put the right person on the job.”
Lotta gave him a salute and then ran deeper into the house, leaving Foster to face Andel.
“How is he?” Andel asked. He sounded as unaffected as always, as though he was asking for a weather report, but Foster knew better.
“Come on in. Prying eyes outside.”
In the middle of the night, the streets were lit by sunset-orange quicklamps, and the Capital was as noisy as ever. He didn’t see the traffic that he would expect at noon, but people crouched in every doorstep and around every corner, muttering to one another and holding weapons close.
It hadn’t been so bad only an hour before. News was spreading.
Andel strode in, pulling his hat off and hooking it onto a nearby rack. “If the Independents have taken the Palace, we don’t have long before they think to look here. If they haven’t yet, we should be safe at least until tomorrow.”
“Either way, we better get working,” Foster grumbled. Andel was about to walk down the hall, where he could clearly hear the alchemists working, but Foster held out a hand to stop him.
“You know why we need you here, don’t you?”
Andel craned his neck, looking into the room where Calder lay on a bed, but he should be able to see only a pair of white-armored legs. “I understand.”
“We have to strengthen his body so he’ll survive taking the armor off. They don’t know if their potions alone can do it.”
Andel held out a jewelry box and flipped open the lid. Within was a medallion identical in shape to the one hanging on his chest: a silver sun with a white diamond at its heart. Un
like the one Andel wore, the silver of this one was tarnished, and the diamond in the center pulsed with Intent.
Foster could feel it from a pace away: this White Sun medallion yearned to right the world, to bring light and restoration to the darkest corners. It was a true Beacon, a focus for the most powerful Pilgrims.
With the Luminian Order supporting the Independents, that left very few Soulbound capable of healing injuries. And the list of those Foster could trust was short.
In fact, it was only one name long.
But Andel had his reasons for leaving the Order, and Foster still wasn’t sure the man understood the full impact of what he needed to do.
Foster tapped the medallion with the back of his knuckles. “You know we can’t use that without you.”
“I’m aware.”
“And we need your connection to the one you’ve got on, but the power from this one. Which doesn’t know you at all, so it might fail.”
“Yes.”
“And if it doesn’t fail, it might not work like we want. Whatever I Awaken, you’re stuck with it in your head for the rest of your life. It could be a false Beacon, a horrible, twisted—”
“Dalton.” Andel met his eyes, then pulled off the second medallion from around his neck. He handed Foster one with each hand. “I said I get it.”
Foster examined the look in Andel’s eyes and grunted in approval. Then he took both medallions.
The Luminian Order had very strict regulations on which of their Pilgrims could possess the full power of a Soulbound. They had to serve the Guild for years, oppose a certain number of Elders, and heal dozens of people the old-fashioned way: with alchemy and medical skill. Their medallion, and the Pilgrim themselves, should be a symbol of protective and healing light.
Even then, it sometimes didn’t work.
Awakening was a process of blending Intent from three sources: the object, its owner, and the Reader doing the Awakening. Some Pilgrims could form barriers of light but couldn’t heal worth a mark, and others had their minds warped by the Awakening process so they gained a holy zeal toward the eradication of Elderspawn. Still others successfully Awakened their medallion but failed to bond to it.
Andel had passed none of the checks his former Guild usually required.
This was a gamble.
Maybe the alchemy will be enough, Foster thought as his floating tools pried the gem out of first one medallion, then the other. Maybe we’re kicking off too soon.
The tools slotted the empowered gem into the silver with the connection to Andel, then hammered arms of silver back around the sides of the diamond to hold it in place.
Easy part done. He could stop here until they knew if the alchemical process would work or not.
But it was better to be sure.
Besides, it’s not my mind we’re gambling with.
Andel had said he understood what he was getting into, and Foster hoped that was true, because he was about to push this boulder over a hill.
He sat down at a chair, set the newly combined medallion in front of him, and started making Andel a Soulbound.
Calder looked around. He was seated in a plush, well-furnished sitting room of an expensive Capital mansion.
…but at the same time, he also felt like it was a disgusting slaughterhouse. Blood was splattered over everything, bits of meat lying on the floor and sinking into the walls, the stench of blood and decay hanging in the air.
Everything had the hazy sense of a dream in which his surroundings weren’t fixed. Somehow he was both in a pristine sitting-room and the site of a violent slaughter.
Even his thoughts were dim, but one figure was clear and distinct: the Heartlander man seated opposite him, covered in luxurious gold jewelry, with the steel blindfold nailed to his face.
“I’m pleased to see you again, Reader of Memory,” Kelarac said. “Though not as pleased as you should be to see me.”
Chapter Seventeen
four years ago
Dalton Foster’s hands shook as he tapped into his Soulbound Vessel. Awls, chisels, tongs, and hammers floated around him, each fused with Kameira pieces of his own selection.
The tools drifted like a constellation around the project on his workbench: a half-assembled handgun. The shed skin of an infant Duskwinder was pinned to the grip and wound its way up along the barrel.
His hands had never shaken on any other project. Now, it was all he could do to keep himself steady, his eyes focused. He hadn’t slept in five days, running on coffee and alchemical stimulants. His workshop stank; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to bathe.
He worked without food, without sleep, on pure desperation. And hate.
The lives of his family depended on him.
On the far end of the workbench was a covered box. He tried not to look at it, to focus on his work through the reading glasses perched on his nose, but his eyes were drawn back to the box like iron filings to a magnet.
He drifted off, sinking into his all-too-real nightmare, and was almost surprised when his tools finished the job without him. The revolving chamber—a pet project of his that he had never gotten to work quite correctly—snapped into place.
Mechanically, he wasn’t there yet. He hadn’t completed the gun on pure skill; this was not a project that could be marketed. If he could finalize development, he could revolutionize firearms all over the Empire.
Instead, he counted on Awakening to cover up the imperfections in his craftsmanship.
Guns were infamously difficult to invest or Awaken for a few well-documented reasons. Any complex machinery tended to interact with Intent as a collection of parts rather than a single object, which made investment inefficient.
In addition, Awakening could transform the parts into a more aesthetically pleasing or powerful whole, but the parts could end up changing shape and working against each other mechanically, so the device might no longer function.
In the case of a pistol, that could result in an explosion that tore the user’s hand off. So Awakened firearms remained largely the stuff of myth.
But the man holding his family demanded the best. The best was what he would get.
Foster beat his overwrought mind into focus, diving into a Reader’s trance. His vision fuzzed as the trance settled on him, and his knees weakened.
Only the driving heat of rage, the icy grip of fear, and the lightning jolt of vengeance drove him forward.
Fragments of this gun remember being part of Crime Duke Telethia Derembor’s personal pistol when she executed her rebellious lieutenants. They are instruments of justice, of revenge, of bloody satisfaction.
Other pieces were designed for the Lost Daylight Regiment, a stranded unit of the Imperial army formed from the loved ones of soldiers who had been killed by rebels. Like their creators, these weapons hunger to be used in a righteous cause.
The Duskwinder sheds its skin in order to grow, but it has a singular focus: to destroy the man that killed its mother. It remembers, the offense carved deep into its Intent, and it will stop at nothing to sink its fangs into the human.
The Shade, an Elderspawn of Urg’naut, is not the most powerful of Elder-kind. It is not as ancient as the stars, or as wise as the being that gave it birth. It exists only as a parasite of humanity, feeding on their bloodlust and their desire for vengeance.
Its hunger for such cannot be sated.
Gathering the Intent took far longer than normal, and Foster almost lost the vision. He took a moment, holding the different images in his mind, combining them into a whole.
“You are a weapon of revenge,” he muttered to himself.
The brigands who had taken over his hometown waited outside the door, and they would be able to hear him if he spoke too loudly, but spoken words focused Intent.
“You are the blade that will pierce their hearts. For the blood that has been spilled, you will spill blood. You will turn from those who use you for cruelty and serve those who seek justice.”
> Like he was hauling up an anchor with his bare hands, Foster pulled the Intent steadily, bringing it up to the surface. He had gathered the materials for this weapon himself, selecting and collecting them over the years to store them in his workshop. They had significance to him.
But they had only been introduced to one another over the last week. They had very little connection between them.
This would cause a risk; the Awakening could ruin the gun, or it could turn the weapon into something he didn’t understand, or the Awakening could fail, and he would have to try again another day…
No. That was the worst of all outcomes. He squeezed his eyes tighter, determined not to open them and let them drift to the box with blood staining its corner.
He would finish this. Now. Today.
“Just…kill the bastards,” Foster growled.
He dug deep, hands tightening around the infant weapon, and the effort of focusing caused his head to pound in the beginnings of Reader burn. More and more with every breath, with every passing second, the pain dug into his skull like a drill.
He pushed, dragging on every memory, pushing them together. His grunt became a growl, became a long, low shout.
“You are my sword!” he declared, so loud that he was undoubtedly heard by the guard. “You will tear my enemies apart! My oath to eternity!”
Pain crashed like thunder behind his eyes and he knew nothing for an unknown time.
Foster shuddered awake when a boot nudged him in the shoulder.
His cheek was pressed against the floor, his reading glasses cracked. Every joint and muscle in his body ached, and none of it meant anything against the remaining echo of his massive headache.
His situation was a blur in his mind, so he followed the boots up to a pair of filthy pants that had probably once been a color other than brown. A similarly disgusting shirt and coat covered a short, round man in a bowler hat. He looked like he had once worked in a bank, but his eyes were streaked with the blue veins of an Anthem addict.