Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “No, that it certainly wouldn’t,” I replied as I continued looking over the design, my eye shifting towards several notes that Léandre had left in the margins. “But I think I see now why you mentioned that you had an idea with the iron. We would need to figure out how to properly forge it before we could ever think to attempt building this thing.”

  “So we would,” Léandre agreed as he moved to reach for another sheet of paper, grabbing and handing it over to me. “Which is why I have come up with a list of theories we are to test and see if they give us any insight of how to forge the metal.”

  “A whole list, eh?” I replied as I took a look at the sheet and scanned over it, finding several suggestions and ideas that I would have never even thought of. “Huh, these are really good. How did you even come up with some of these?”

  “By turning them over and over in my head for the past few weeks while you were all fighting,” Léandre replied with a grin. “As well as speaking with our mages. Donovan in particular. He may not have understood all the questions I asked him, but his insight into how æther works was invaluable to my process.”

  “I can imagine,” I said, feeling more and more excited as read over the ideas on the paper and glanced at Léandre’s ballista concept.

  If we can get this to work… I said to myself, the thought trailing away as I began to imagine the possibilities, so much so that I lost track of how long I alternated between the ideas in my hand and the design on the drafting board. Eventually, after a polite cough brought the world back into focus, I turned my back head back to Léandre who met my eyes expectantly.

  “So?” he asked, clearly eager to hear my thoughts. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s amazing,” I replied, no better answer coming to my mind as I stared back at him, feeling my heart began to race in my chest. “Where do we start?”

  Chapter 54

  Wednesday, April 24th, 2047 – 6:45 a.m.

  Aldford – The Foundry

  “Shit! Jenkins! Try to hold it still!” I heard Léandre cry out in a panic from somewhere below me and out of sight. “I can’t catch it when it’s moving around so fast!”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” Jenkins’s voice responded angrily as a loud crash filled the air. “It doesn’t want to be—ah! Damn it! It bit me!”

  “Hey, are you guys doing okay down there?” I called out weakly, struggling to turn my head in the direction of the chaos below, the incredible weight holding me in place making it nearly impossible to move.

  “I think we’re pretty far from okay right now!” Jenkins shouted back to me as another crash echoed out throughout the foundry, followed closely behind by the sound of running feet. “There! Get him before he runs again!”

  “Rah!” Léandre grunted, the sound of water hitting the ground reaching my ears a moment later. “Gah! It’s too quick!”

  A second later, the burning silhouette of a large fox made entirely from azure-tinted flames rushed into view beneath me, its body gracefully sailing through the air as it leaped onto an anvil. Twisting, it then knocked the hammer that had been sitting on top of it to the ground before continuing onwards onto a nearby stone table full of empty molds, scattering them everywhere in its wake. Chasing it, I caught sight of both Jenkins and Léandre run by belatedly, the former holding a badly singed wooden chair in one hand and a length of chain in the other, while the latter struggled to keep up with a large bucket of water.

  “I’m going to try and corner—” Jenkins started to call out before the far door out of the Foundry suddenly opened followed by Aldwin’s voice calling out.

  “What the hell is going on in—ah!” he exclaimed, letting out a shout of surprise as he no doubt caught sight of the æther fox as it angled its flight directly towards him.

  “Close the door!” both Jenkins and Léandre shouted, prompting a second yelp from the older man as he lunged into the room and slammed the door behind him, reacting just fast enough to force the fox to abandon its route and dart out of sight.

  “Gods! What is that thing?” Aldwin shouted as he staggered away from the elemental, his eyes wide with shock. “What is going on in here? Where is Lyrian?”

  “I’m up here!” I called to the bann, seeing his eyes widen at the sound of my voice before snapping upwards towards my spread-eagled position on the foundry’s ceiling. “As for what’s going on, we’re running an…uh, experiment.”

  “Experiment,” Aldwin repeated completely deadpan, only to flinch as another loud crash echoed through the room, followed by cursing from both Léandre and Jenkins.

  “Damn it! So close!” Jenkins spat in an angry tone. “We could use your help here, Fredric! We need to catch this thing before it escapes and sets something on fire! Or worse!”

  “Uh, r-right!” Aldwin stuttered, taking his eyes off me to glance around him for something to use, his gaze eventually landing on a pair of long-handled tongs. Rushing over, the man grabbed the tool and disappeared outside my field of vision.

  The next few seconds afterward passed with a series of loud noises and shouts from the trio, culminating in the æther fox once more rushing into view. But this time, however, with three assailants to outwit instead of two, its streak of luck finally came to an end. Running away from Jenkins’s snapping chain whip, I saw the creature dive towards a table in an attempt to escape the smith, only to twist away at the last second thanks to Léandre, fleeing blindly to the side and directly into the path of the tongs held in Aldwin’s hands. With a loud snap, the metal tongs closed around the mischievous æther elemental’s shoulders and pinned it to the ground, Jenkins’s chair joining it a few seconds afterward and doing the same to its flailing rear.

  “Douse it!” Jenkins shouted desperately to Léandre as his chair began to smolder and spark. “Hurry!”

  “I’m coming, j-just hold on,” the architect called out, breathing heavily as he struggled to hold onto his heavy bucket while running around the table he’d been standing behind, sprinting directly towards Jenkins and Aldwin. In his rush, however, he neglected to look where he was putting his feet, stepping directly onto one of the several molds the fox had knocked to the ground and pitching forward with a yelp.

  An instant later, I saw a wave of water then crash over Jenkins, Aldwin, and the azure fox, the spray mercifully enough to douse the rogue elemental while also managing to completely soak the pair.

  “Oh, no!” I exclaimed, unable to keep myself breaking out in laughter at the sudden turn of events. But before I could even begin to properly enjoy my mirth, the force that was holding me to the ceiling abruptly vanished, sending me plummeting straight towards the ground where I landed with a heavy crash. “Oh, owww.”

  “Serves you right for laughing,” Jenkins’s voice called out a few seconds afterward as I rolled over onto my side.

  “Can anyone please explain to me what just happened?” Aldwin asked plaintively, his voice sounding both bewildered and defeated at the same time. “I was just walking by and heard shouting, so I came to investigate…and now I’m standing here, completely soaked to my britches.”

  “Ah, right,” I heard Léandre say contritely as I pushed myself up off the ground. “My apologies about that.”

  “Well,” I began as I turned to face the trio, spotting a panting Jenkins sitting on the chair he’d been carrying while Aldwin and Léandre stood around him, a small scorched ball of metal on the floor marking the spot where the elemental fox had been. “What happened is that we were trying to confirm that raw heat is not a factor at all when it comes to shaping æthertouched iron. Unfortunately, while we were confirming that, there was a…oh, what did we decide to call it? Oh, an unexpected magical event, then the next thing I knew I was falling. Towards the ceiling.”

  “I-I see,” Aldwin said, nodding slowly as if gravity suddenly reversing itself was an everyday occurrence. “And that fox that I saw? It just…sprang into existence somehow?”

  “Actually, the fox was the bar
of iron we were using for the test,” Jenkins answered, giving the bann a shrug as if that made perfect sense. “Right after Lyrian fell, it just shifted shapes, and, well…”

  The tired smith used a hand to indicate the chaos and disarray within the foundry.

  “Huh,” Aldwin grunted, his eyes briefly scanning over the room before finally landing back onto me. “Please do not take what I am about to say the wrong way, but I feel compelled to ask. Do you three even know what you are doing while working with this metal?”

  “Oh, gods, no,” Jenkins snorted.

  “Nope,” Léandre admitted a second afterward.

  “Not even a little bit,” I finished, giving the man a shrug. “But I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough now.”

  “Terrific,” Aldwin stated while exhaling deeply and bringing up a hand to rub his brow.

  “I know this all looks pretty chaotic, Fredric,” I said soothingly, once again nodding towards the chaos around us. “But as inconvenient as this trial and error is, none of it has been exceptionally dangerous. In fact, all of them have been pretty harmless now that I think about it.”

  “Says the man who would have fallen into the sky if it wasn’t for the ceiling,” Léandre added dryly.

  “Okay, so maybe that one would have been a little dangerous,” I admitted as a mental image of me hurtling through the air kilometers above Aldford popped into my head. “But we’re still all alive.”

  “Do you three at least have an idea of why these strange magical events are happening at least?” Aldwin asked plaintively.

  “Thanks to this last test, yes, actually,” I replied, waving a hand towards the ætherforge, which was blazing with a raging inferno of bright azure flames within. “From what we’ve been able to figure out so far, the æthertouched iron doesn’t actually react to heat at all like normal metals do, but instead, it reacts to the amount of mana that’s being infused into it. It’s only when it hits a certain threshold that it becomes malleable and easy to work with.

  “Unfortunately, however,” I said, pausing briefly before continuing. “There seems to be a fine line between it becoming malleable and being suffused with so much mana that it starts reproducing spell-like effects when we try to shape it—at least when it comes to larger objects. For some reason, smaller works don’t ever seem to reach that critical mass of mana needed for a reaction.”

  “There’s…too much mana in it?” Aldwin asked, raising an eyebrow towards me in question. “Well, if I remember right, you can drain mana from things, can’t you? Have you tried doing that?”

  “I did,” I answered with a nod. “Unfortunately, that didn’t work either. There’s simply just too much of it for my ability to make a difference, at least not before the mana stored within dissipates away naturally.”

  “And then what exactly happens to it when it dissipates?” Aldwin asked, glancing towards the forge and then back at me.

  “It just hardens again,” I answered. “At least until we put it back into the forge and saturate it with mana again.”

  “Which then causes the same problem to reoccur,” Aldwin said.

  “Normally, yes,” I agreed, despite holding up a single finger. “But I’m thinking that’s because of how we built this thing and how we’re currently using it.”

  “Hm?” Aldwin grunted in confusion, glancing over at the still-blazing furnace once more. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me there again. What do you mean?”

  “We built this forge with the same mindset that we use for our other forges,” I said, waving the bann over to me as I started to move towards the ætherforge. “We wanted it big, powerful, and most importantly hot, which…if our working theory is right, is actually what’s working against us.”

  “Because after your last ‘test’, you don’t think that the heat the forge produces matters,” Aldwin said, his earlier trepidation gradually vanishing and being replaced with curiosity.

  “Exactly,” I replied as we stopped right before the mouth of the glowing forge. “What we’re thinking now is that the intensity of the fire inside here is what affects the rate that the æther is converted into mana, which then, in turn, is what affects how quickly mana is absorbed by the æthertouched iron that we place inside it.

  “So with all of that now in mind,” I continued, “We’re thinking that if we reduce the intensity of the flames, it’ll slow the rate of mana suffusing the iron, giving us a longer period to work and shape it while it’s in that ‘sweet spot’ of malleability.”

  “That sounds…promising, yes?” Aldwin asked, uncertainty coloring his voice.

  “I sure think it does,” I said optimistically before indicating the forge. “Now unfortunately, this next part is going to involve a bit of waiting while we wait for the æther inside to burn off. We…learned the hard way that trying to put…well, anything into the forge when it’s this intense is A Bad Idea.”

  “Do I even want to know how you found that out?” Aldwin queried, giving me a pointed look as he posed the question.

  “No!” Jenkins exclaimed loudly, having overheard the bann’s query, the man glaring at both Léandre and me when we both broke into chuckles. “You do not!”

  Intrigued and now unwilling to leave, I then managed to successfully conscript Aldwin into our forging efforts, the four of us passing the time together and cleaning up the foundry while we waited for the æther to burn itself out. The work and short break afterward gave us all a chance to come down from our rather hectic experience with the rogue elemental as well as catch our breaths from what had already been a busy morning.

  And in Léandre’s and my case, an even busier night beforehand.

  After finishing my review of his design, we promptly jumped into work, breaking it down into the manageable steps that we’d need to take in order to actually build it. As we did, I saw that Léandre had spent a great deal of time in researching and refining the original ballista schematic that he’d based his ideas off, managing to enhance its potential by an order of magnitude. I had little doubt that if we were able to actually succeed in building what he’d sketched out, that it would be a terror to behold on the battlefield. But in order to do that, we had to figure out how to reliably forge the æthertouched iron that we had, the few tests that Léandre had been able to perform with the metal making it a better choice than just mundane iron. Thankfully, too, in anticipation of the need to experiment, Léandre had made sure to stockpile a fairly large supply of æther over the last few weeks, ensuring that we had plenty to work with as we tried to figure out the magical metal.

  So, to that end, after putting a plan of attack together for what we’d try to do first, we had gone to the foundry and begun to test the various theories that Léandre had managed to come up with. The process, much as this morning had been, turned out to be one fraught with trial and error, where error often meant a bizarre magical effect. For the most part, they were fortunately minor incidents, ranging from accidental levitation to sudden teleporting across the room or needing to endure being turned a bright purple in color for an hour until the magic wore off. Unfortunately, though, there was one particular incident that did end up costing Léandre and me a fair bit of time, which was when a particularly large ingot of æthertouched iron decided to cast a spell called [Greater Sleep] on us.

  Whether it was a subtle way of the game itself telling us to take a break or just random chance, we had ended up passed out on the floor of the foundry for several hours through the night. In fact, it wasn’t until Jenkins arrived first thing in the morning that he found us in front of the forge and woke us before anyone else did—at first thinking that we’d worked ourselves into exhaustion. To his credit though, when he actually found out what we’d been attempting to do, he didn’t decide to simply turn and run, but he stayed on to help us, his curiosity getting the better of him. It was then, with his help, that we resumed our experimenting, the unexpected sleep having at least served a useful purpose in making sure that we were rested.
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  “All right, that looks good,” I found myself saying a while later as Léandre slowly poured raw æther into a specially cut channel in the forge. “Let’s see if this next idea is the one that works.”

  “Here’s to hoping,” the Tul’Shar agreed eagerly, his optimism having remained steadily high as we ran test after test to figure out how to properly forge the magical metal.

  “Indeed,” Aldwin affirmed, watching me pick up an æthertouched iron bar with a tool and place it inside the now dimly burning forge, the azure flames within a pale shadow of what they’d been earlier. “If for no other reason than to steady my all-too-frayed nerves and know that all of your experimenting has finally come to an end.”

  “I’ll admit, it would be nice to forge something without worrying how it will go wrong,” I replied, carefully watching the metal inside the forge as it gradually began to glow, the process taking much longer than it had before.

  Waiting for several minutes as the iron slowly saturated itself with mana, I eventually saw its glow change, evening out to a solid azure hue throughout the entirety of the metal. Deciding that this was the moment that I was waiting for, I withdrew the bar from the forge and placed it on a nearby anvil.

  “Here goes nothing,” I announced, sparing a hopeful glance towards the others as I snatched up a hammer.

  Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I lifted the tool upwards to my shoulder before bringing it down heavily with a loud clang. Instantly, I felt the metal give beneath my blow, prompting me to follow it with a second, then a third, and a fourth, all without the bar shaping itself awkwardly from the impact or worse, triggering an unexpected magical effect. Encouraged, the next half-minute turned into a blur as I rained down a string of consecutive hits on the æthertouched iron, stopping when I noticed the glow of the metal begin to fade. Setting my hammer down, I picked up the partially shaped bar with a pair of tongs and turned to face the group, seeing their eyes immediately fixate on upon it.