Chương 33: 32. Coresmith's Workshop

Tavian sat up. He felt better. Not good. But better. His heart thumped weakly. At least it was still beating. The gate groaned as soldiers closed it. Men shouted, organizing themselves. A serving woman knelt beside Tavian.

"My lord, are you ill?" He stared up at her worn face, the look of genuine concern in her eyes.

"Tell them to secure the outer wall," he said.

"And stop Mandros." She looked up, looked around at the men who were already springing into action.

"They know what to do, sir. Can I get anything for you?"

"A little water, please?" Tavian gasped, straining to keep his eyes from closing. HIs lids were so heavy. Why was it so hard to breathe?

"And someone go get Calli for me!" A rush of activity dizzied Tavian, and he struggled to stay sitting. He had done what he could do, and now had to rely on the people around him to finish the job. A [Ruler] couldn't rule without people he could trust. The serving woman returned with water from somewhere, and Tavian drank it, greedily. His stomach growled, and he realized it had been some time since he'd eaten.

"Mandros," Tavian said.

"What of Mandros?" But nobody seemed to have answers for him. He kept his interface open; he did not feel the Core being damaged.

"Out of my way!" Calli snapped, pushing through to Tavian. She quickly tore the bandage from his side.

"Oh," she said, covering her mouth with a hand. The miasma had spread.

"Mandros?" Tavian asked weakly.

"You're alive, that's all that matters right now," Calli said, and would tell him nothing more. She got to work, extracting small gusts of miasma from the wound. The boundary between Life Essence and Death Essence in Tavian's body burned as the miasma was reduced, like warming cold fingers by a hot fire. The black stain on his skin did not recede, but it did seem to reduce slightly in pressure. As Calli worked, Tavian continued watching the map. He was right to be worried about the miasmic turbulence though.

Every few minutes, one of tiles—especially around his Core—would switch to neutral, losing Core essence equal to his Influence. Then, since the tile was fully surrounded, it would be reclaimed automatically. Tavian wanted to talk to Lea, but he was afraid of releasing the black dagger, not until Calli had done more work on his wound. Something about the dagger interfered with Lea's ability to communicate with him, even though he could still access the system interface. He didn't let go of the dagger.

Calli wiped sweat from her brow.

"It's not nearly enough," she said.

"It's just going to keep getting worse if we don't do something else." Calli looked exhausted. Her skin was grey, and dark circles framed her eyes.

"Thank you," Tavian said. He was feeling better. Not healed, but also not on the verge of collapse.

"I have an idea," Calli said, suddenly.

"Try not to hurt yourself anymore." She ran off. Tavian called after her, but she disappeared into the fortress. Bread was brought, and then a few of the household servants arrived with a makeshift palanquin; a chair supported by hewn timbers. Tavian was helped into the chair and then lifted up by two serving men.

"The fortress is ours, my lord!" one of the men exclaimed.

"We've won!"

"Take me to Erond," Tavian ordered.

"Yes, my lord," one of his bearers declared.

"We're heading back to the Core." Tavian was carried between the inner and outer wall, through the gate, and across the courtyard to the keep. They had to navigate around disguised pits that had been dug; some of them containing men impaled on stakes. The Life Gate stood open, now, and a flurry of activity consumed the inner courtyard. Tavian sighed with relief, to see that Erond had survived Mandros's counter attack. He shouldn't have expected anything less from the grizzled veteran.

His uncle was a master tactician. The chair carriers brought Tavian over to Erond. The old man reclined in his chair, just where Tavian had left him.

"Oh, that's a good idea," Erond said.

"I need to get myself some palanquin bearers."

"You held the courtyard," Tavian observed.

"Aye lad, that was the task you left me," Erond said with a look of mirth. His tone turned grave.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm doing better," Tavian said.

"How did you stop Mandros?"

"Thinking two steps ahead," Erond said.

"We took advantage of high Influence to add some extra defenses. You probably saw our disguised pits?"

"Not so disguised any longer," Tavian said.

"Working as intended. I figured that when Mandros realized you'd taken all your soldiers out to the walls, he'd come here for the Core. It's what you should do; knock out the enemy's Core any time you get a chance. He's a reasonable tactician. So I left the Life Gate ajar at let him think he'd caught us with our pants down. When he rushed in, we closed the gate and caught him."

"You caught him?"

"Aye," Erond said.

"And a dozen of his men. They're bound and locked in the tower now."

"I need to know what Anarvia is planning," Tavian said.

"I need to talk to him."

"Where's Braun?" Erond asked, looking nervous. Tavian scowled.

"He abandoned his post," he said. Erond's eyes widened, shocked.

"What?"

"He saw fighting near the Temple of Ishtoran, and took a dozen of my men to intercede," Tavian explained.

"He'll need to be punished for insubordination, if he's still alive." Understanding softened Erond's features, and he nodded grimly.

"He's worried about Anella," Erond said.

"The two of them—" If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Soldiers told me," Tavian said.

"They seem to think that Braun's worried about his heir." Erond scoffed.

"Soldiers are crude, man. I don't think there's a child in the picture. But there has been talk of a wedding." Tavian felt relieved, hearing that. He didn't like to think that Braun was indulging his own appetites without consideration for his princely duties.

"What are you going to do about that?" Erond asked, gesturing to Tavian bandaged side, and the blackness creeping out from beneath it. The miasma was now traveling down his arm, and had reached his wrist. Tavian still held the black dagger in his hand.

"Calli," Tavian said.

"She's helping it with me."

"Calli says your wound is far worse that the others," Erond said.

"She's been trying to help the other men with those injuries, but they're in bad shape. She's wearing herself down, trying to help you."

"The dagger eases the pain," Tavian said. Erond looked worried.

"A dangerous deal," he said.

"What are you giving up?"

"I don't know," Tavian said.

"But we have to go back down into the dungeons. Cormath is down there." He explained how Jarden had escaped, taking Cormath with him. Erond nodded in agreement, but did not offer any advice. A short time later a messenger page found Tavian. Calli wanted him. His bearers carried Tavian's chair through the palace, despite his protests. Tavian watched as his people moved like bees in a hive, all of the working, somehow knowing what they needed to do.

He saw the stairs down to the vault and felt a pull toward the dungeons below. I can help you, the voice said in his mind. Come to me. Tavian ignored it. They soon arrived at the coresmith workshop, where Master Halin trained his apprentices. The building was a large shed, against the inner wall of the fortress. Since coresmiths working in the workshop were known to occasionally blow the whole thing up, the structure was wisely placed away from the keep, and built simply of easily replaced wood.

Calli, while searching for valuables to sift to maintain the Core's Influence, had discovered several partially constructed spell modules.

"I think father was planning to sell them," Calli explained.

"I don't think he had enough essence to run them, and besides, what was he going to do with the elemental [Shield] ability?" Tavian examined the strange objects; sculptures of stone, metal, glass, and gems. They were constructed by Coresmiths in such a way as to channel essence and mana into structures usable by a kingdom Core.

"Do they work?" Tavian asked.

"What do they do?"

"Some of them probably work," Calli said.

"Some of them are close, but need work. I could probably get any one of them working by salvaging parts from the others." She pointed at the modules laid out on the table.

"This one is a basic elemental shield. It lets you create a temporary hardened wall, which evaporates after a few seconds." It wasn't an uncommon ability; Tavian had seen it several times in Endara.

"That would have been nice," Tavian said.

"We could have blocked arrows."

"This one is also pretty common," Calli said.

"It's an elemental bomb. It lets you lob a small explosive that detonates with an elemental blast on impact." Tavian nodded.

"That might be needed," he said.

"If we end up under siege again, we will want to knock down towers or other engines."

"It would have been helpful against that boltbreaker, too," Calli agreed, moving on to the next module.

"This one is unique. I'm not totally sure, but I think it's a kind of armor."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it could give you a spell that lets a person wrap themselves in a kind of mana armor," Calli said.

"But Master Halin didn't leave many notes, and I'm not familiar with the structure. Watch this." She laid both hands on the heavy structure of stone and metal. She closed her eyes, and her dark hair swayed in a gentle breeze as she began using her coresmith's spark to activate the module.

"What are you doin—" The module glowed, etched mana channels illuminating, and a thin, glass-like liquid crept over Calli's hands, oozing up to her elbows. Calli grunted, opening her eyes and lifting her hands.

"See?" she said.

"Armor." She wiggled her fingers, and the strange armor moved with her, not limiting her movement. She picked up a sharp awl, and laid one hand down on the table. She raised the awl into the air, and drove it down hard. The spike struck the back of her hand, and skipped off it like it was hard as diamond, embedding into the wooden worktop. She grinned at Tavian, the magical armor dissolving from her hands.

"Oh," Tavian said.

"I can think of a few uses for that." He was already envisioning an army of soldiers, coated in magical, diamond hard armor, cutting their way through Anarvia's Ghouls.

"I'll have to see if I can get any of them working," Calli said with a shrug.

"In theory, it should cover the whole body, and it should last a lot longer. I don't know, it's really something that Master Halin is much better at."

"Where is Master Halin, anyway?" Tavian asked, looking around the shop. He was afraid that the man had been killed in the fighting. Or worse, that he'd turned traitor. Halin was an old man, wise, jolly, and always cracking jokes. He had a few apprentices that he trained in the workshop, but none of them seemed to be present. Calli looked at the ground. The man had been training her, as well, before their trip to Endara.

"I don't know," she said.

"I'm worried about him."

"I'm sure he's just taken shelter somewhere," Tavian said.

"He might not have even been in the fortress. They're probably out on a gathering trip and don't even know what happened."

"Maybe," Calli said, her eyes damp.

"But I found something else here. This was the important thing I needed to show you." She produced another thing. It was constructed like a spell module, but it clearly was not one. An unfamiliar black metal wrapped around a glass sphere. The metal spiked out in various directions, giving it the look of a weapon or a trap of some sort.

"What is it?" Tavian asked.

"It's miasmic," Calli said.

"And I think… Didn't Jarden say he was trying to find a way to charge the relic with miasma faster?"

"He did," Tavian said, his pulse racing as he began connecting dots.

"I think that this is some kind of consolidator," she said.

"I think Master Halin was being forced to help Jarden somehow." Calli would never assume that Halin was choosing to betray them. But Tavian had seen enough to know that they couldn't count on anyone.

"That's bad," Tavian said.

"I just hope he's unharmed. I hope that they haven't hurt him."

"Halin is smart," Tavian said, trying to reassure her.

"I'm sure he's capable of fending for himself." If Halin was really working for the enemy, that was very bad news indeed. Tavian had more immediate problems to deal with, though.

"Thank you for showing me these, getting them online will be valuable—""Wait. There's more," Calli said, wiping a tear from her eye.

"I think we can make it work as an extractor as well." She hefted the spiky sphere, and didn't wait for him to speak.

"Here, let me try."

"No, Calli, wait," Tavian said, reaching out a hand to stop her. But he was unsure what his objection was. The miasma was killing him. It was hurting him, weakening him. I'm giving you power. She brought the wicked looking contraption toward him, determination on her face as she ignored his complaints. Carefully, Calli pressed it to the inky darkness of Tavian's side. The device hummed softly, and small channels within the structure glowed with a dark light. Tavian's body burned.

Everywhere the miasma had spread flared like he'd fallen into bonfire. He gritted his teeth, but couldn't keep from crying out. Calli did not relent, keeping the horrible device pressed to his flesh. Resist! Resist! You're loosing your ascension! A flash and a pop knocked Calli down, a dark spine of the strange sphere coming dangerously close to taking an eye out. Don't fight it. You can't stop it. You only cause needless delays. Tavian breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned back in his chair.

He held up his arm, and noted with surprise that the taint of miasma had receded back to his elbow. The glass sphere in the center of the device now swirled with a dark cloud.

"It was working!" Calli exclaimed, rising and examining Tavian's wound.

"We do that a dozen more times and you're going to feel much better." Turning her attention to the device, she began inspecting it.

"But we burned out this conduit…" A look of consternation covered her face as she muttered to herself.

"Good news!" she exclaimed.

"I can fix it. All the parts we need are here." She pointed to the other spell modules.

"I can strip them down and we can cure you and the others with this miasma extractor." Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a set of tools from the wall and moved to the workbench.

"Wait," Tavian said.

"Stop, Calli, we might need those modules!" Calli stopped, turning on him with a serious look.

"I'm not going to let you die," she said.

"It's not killing me right now," Tavian said.

"We have more urgent problems. Calli there are ghouls in the city." Calli scowled, and turned back to the workbench.

"We need to hold the fortress. Our Influence is low. Our ranks are thin. We need to think about this before we just rush blindly in!"

"Like Braun," Calli said.

"Like Braun," Tavian agreed. They sat in silence for a long moment. You've suffered a minor setback, the dark voice in Tavian's head said. But you need only embrace the transformation. Come back down to me. I can tell you what you want to know. What he wanted to know? I know what Anarvia is doing. I know where Cormath is. I know who betrayed your father. Stop resisting. Come to me. What happened to him if he let the miasma take over? You ascend. You gain a connection. The truth becomes clear. It felt like dying.

Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. You will not regret your transformation. Tavian's side ached. He was so tired. He wanted to rest; to have everything without the endless struggle. It would be so easy to just— But no. He'd had enough of mysterious voices listening into his thoughts, luring him down into dark dungeons. He wasn't going to be anyone's slave. With astonishing difficulty, he lifted the black dagger and slammed it down into the workbench. He tore his hand away from it, leaving it quivering.

The pain in his side exploded.

"Do it, Calli!"