The Abyssal Key: A Harem Fantasy (Master Of Runes Book 2), page 19
Her hammer made the barest contact and the whole thing burst into a cloud of dust, puffing out in all directions, including into our faces.
After we were done coughing, she brought out another stone. “Again.”
That one vibrated really hard for a while.
Another one dented.
Then one blew up again.
Then nothing.
Then nothing.
Another pebble shower.
Then…under the blow of her hammer, I felt the magic seep into the stone just right. With a few soft but quick and expert blows, there was a perfect ingot of wrought stone sitting in front of her.
“I did it!”
“You did,” she said with a huge smile. “The first step.” She shook her head and added, “But do not think the next will necessarily be successful.”
It was not. It blew up.
We kept at it for a while, and it was one of the most fun things I’d ever done in my life. We just stood at the table, obliterating a good ninety percent or more of the rocks we worked on, but the ones that were successful were amazing. I could feel the magic flowing through the material. Somehow, Oziin knew exactly where to hit it. There was no way she could feel the magic like I could, as far as I knew. She still struck with mind-boggling precision. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to replicate with a hundred years and the ability to sense the magic. “How…do you do it? How do you know where to hit? And what are you even doing?”
Her cheeks turned purple, and she softly said, “The energy courses through the stone, and each hit redirects it to where it needs to be. In this moment, the material is nearly infinitely malleable, and I shape it as I will it to be. How it works…I do not know.”
“You don’t know!?”
She crossed her arms and smiled. “I do not. Do you know how you sing? What it truly is, what it means? How it affects the runes? How and why they sing back to you?”
“I, um. I don’t. I just…do it.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh,” I said, but a torrent of emotion was swirling through my body. Something about this was almost…divine. Or something. Tivani had once told me that the runes were the building blocks of all creation, which I had heard at the time, but hadn’t understood. I was perhaps just then beginning to. “This…is beautiful.”
Oziin’s gaze whipped to mine, and the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her face was there. It crinkled her eyes, and she raised her chin and puffed out her chest. “It is!” She closed her eyes against the tears that were beginning to form and said, “Sularicana.”
I waited.
She opened her eyes and said, “It means…well, it is difficult to describe. It’s an act, and activity, a joyous thing that,” she waved her hands around, trying to find the words. “That makes your soul burn bright, that…makes your blood sing, but not like singing, or…singing.” She laughed, shrugged, and held out her hands. “No one but the Sendi, my people, has such a word. Perhaps their souls do not burn. That is a joke, by the way.”
“Say it again. The word.”
“Sularicana.”
“That’s beautiful too.”
“I am pleased you think so. About it and the act of making wrought stone. Not everyone can see the beauty in such things. They see the practical side and their sight ends there. I believe you and I will get along very well.”
“I think so too.”
Wordlessly, but with twin smiles, we went back to work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hours flowed by like minutes. The shadows from the sunlight streaming through the window had shifted greatly by the time Tivani stuck her head in the door. “Hey, you two!” Her grin turned quickly into a grimace when she saw how much of the entire room was covered in dust and pebbles. “Uh, been up to some…things, huh?”
“I’ve been learning how to sing to make wrought stone,” I said.
She gave me the most pained smile I’d ever seen and said, “Uh huh…going…good?”
Oziin doubled over on the table laughing. After she got control of herself, she said, “Alex is doing very well, yes. A promising student. We have made many successful ingots.” She gave me her own pained smile and added, “However, perhaps I was a little too hasty in saying that Tuniri will not be needed in order to make your plate and mace in time. We could do it, but…”
“Oh no,” I said. “It’s fine. I’d rather it be done right. I’m going to get the hang of this, but for now, I wouldn’t mind watching the two of you work your magic instead.”
Some of the tension flowed out of her shoulders and she said, “Ah, very good then. You are making good progress. Truly. But with the time constraints…”
I put my hand on hers and said, “Really, it’s no problem. I understand.” Turning to Tivani, I asked, “Is it lunch time?”
“Ha! No. It’s dinnertime.”
“Oh.”
“You two were really going at it. We just let you go, figuring you’d come out when you needed to.”
Before we left, we all cleaned up the massive amount of dust and rock that had accumulated around the room and threw it all out the window. Tivani helped and wouldn’t take no for an answer when we said it wasn’t necessary.
Dinner was, as always, an array of weird and amazing dishes. I still asked about none of it and no one said a thing.
“We’re around five days from reaching Seren,” Vsara said.
I looked over to Oziin in a mild panic. She just smiled and said, “Plenty of time.”
“With Tuniri’s help,” I said.
“Yes.”
Tuniri raised an eyebrow, and Oziin leaned over to explain. “Oh. I see. Yes. Plenty of time for that, highrunes and all, I’m sure.”
“Well, I very much look forward to seeing the two of you work.”
“You had better,” Oziin said, “As you will be needed constantly for measurements and fine tuning.”
I turned to Vsara and asked, “So, what’s the plan once we actually arrive?”
“It depends entirely on whether Stonecore has actually blockaded the archipelago. I’m just not thinking that’s going to be the case.”
“Why not?”
Leena barked a laugh. “Stonecore focuses more on land forces than ships.”
“This is one of the reasons,” Vsara said, “that Seren is what and where it is. The Ulinar have the best ships in the world.”
Leena nodded but added, “The best, but not the most. As with pretty much everything, Stonecore makes up for its massive failings in a lot of places with overwhelming numbers. The Ulinar’s best ship will still lose against twenty of Stonecore’s floating pieces of shit.”
Suli snorted and nearly spit out her tea.
“That being said, it takes a while to build a ship. Even longer to build a lot of them,” Leena said. “Although they did build that thing we dumped off of Longspan.”
Vsara groaned and said, “Yes, precisely. There could be a ridiculous armada surrounding Seren already, absolutely nothing on the horizon, or anything in between.”
“Well,” I said, “at least we can plan accordingly.”
There was a bit of laughter around the table before Vsara continued, “According to Tivani’s calculations and what we’ve been seeing, the Melodia could potentially outrun anything except Seren’s fastest ships. So if there is an armada of enemy ships, we can still get away from them.”
“But getting into Seren is, uh, extremely important,” I said.
“Indeed. But if the options are run and live or stay and die, I’m in favor of the first one. As said, though, it’s unlikely that Stonecore will have the place surrounded.”
“Are we just going to ignore,” I asked, “What Rilahn said about it?”
“A valid point,” Vsara said. “But she did imply that it wasn’t already blockaded and that we had time. I’ve no idea if she would know how fast the Melodia would travel. Based solely on the thing our mortal enemy said while taunting us,” she said, eyeing me hard, “we should have more than enough time to get there before Stonecore’s full armada does.”
“And then I get the ruinsong, and…then what?”
Vsara shook her head and said, “Oh, I’d rather not speculate on things after that. So much of what happens next not only relies on what happens when we arrive, but also what we find out once we do. Stonecore’s ostensibly marching on much of the world. I couldn’t possibly formulate the next step of our plan without up-to-date information.”
“Not to mention if we can find out where the Abyssal Key is, and what it is, I guess,” I said.
“Indeed.”
“Well,” I said, digging into the brightly colored meat and sauce on my plate, “We’ll get it done. We’ll fuck up Stonecore’s shitty ships if we have to, barge our way in and…oh hey, here’s a question: Is Seren going to be half as inviting as Highreach was? I mean, I just walked in there and Samuud was all, ‘shit yeah you can attune to the highsong here.’ What’re things like in Seren?”
It took her a few very uncharacteristic seconds as Vsara had to suppress a smile.
“Oh shit,” Tivani said. “What’s that mean!?”
Vsara frowned, clearly displeased with herself. “There are things that have been happening in Seren for a long time that will — how do I say this — be very beneficial to our endeavors. No, that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”
“They’ve been violating the Deadpact,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Super hard too, I’m guessing,” Tivani added.
Vsara raised her eyebrows at us but said nothing else.
“Is it really that risky telling us?” I asked.
“Perhaps not, but still, I shan’t be saying a word on the matter. You can all assume whatever you like. The truth will come once we get there.”
“Violating the shit out of it,” I stage-whispered to Tivani, and we both laughed.
The next morning, I heard some soft hammerings while I was lying in bed, which were expressly forbidden by my royal, or at least lordly, edict. They hadn’t woken Tivani up, so I quickly dressed and headed down to the forge. I found Leena standing there in her firstsong plate.
Oziin gave me a rictus of a smile when I sauntered in. She said, “Forgive me. I know I shouldn’t be hammering so early.”
Tuniri stared at me as if I was about to start yelling.
“Oh, it’s fine. As long as it’s not an all the time thing. Fixing Leena’s plate?”
“She was,” Leena said, flexing the fingers of her new gauntlet. “And shit, we waited two hours after we normally would’ve been working.”
“Uh huh. Spare me your early-riser speech. If I have to hear it, I’m gonna take Oziin’s hammer and just slam it against your door after you go to bed. But anyway, how’s the armor?”
Leena scoffed and said, “Never seen a stonewright work so fast. She’s even made some adjustments to the rest of it. It’s even better than new. I’m going to go try it out right now.”
After she’d left, Oziin smiled and waved me over to her side of the table. “Come. We might as well start, since you’re here. There’s some things we can do for a while that won’t make any noise.” She and Tuniri proceeded to take my measurements, which were very thorough. I expected some blushing and awkwardness, but they’d clearly done this all a hundred times. They were quick and efficient. The measurements included everything, up to and including the lengths of each knuckle, ankle circumference, and all of my joints, both extended and flexed.
“What color do you want it to be?” Oziin asked.
“What do I want what now? Color? Do I have choices? Are you going to paint it too?”
Leena’s plate had been the dull gray of a random rock. She’d painted designs over it on occasion, even though they tended to get heavily scuffed.
“No. No paint. With the variety of materials we scavenged from the mines, we can blend in many different minerals for a wide selection of hues, all without sacrificing any integrity.”
“Neat. Can I think about it?”
“Of course. We will also be starting your armor today. Once we’ve made the base, you’ll need to come back and inscribe the highrunes.”
“Come back? I wanted to watch you work.”
“Ah. In that case, have a seat.”
They did a half-hour of prep work, getting the materials ready and laying out guidelines on the table, but when they started…holy shit.
“Sing for me and I’ll sing for you,” Oziin said with a huge smile.
It had been amazing enough watching them make the ingots the other day, but this was something else entirely. The magic coursed through the stone like lightning, Oziin’s hammer predicting every single path it would take while she sang a bright and joyous melody.
Her blows and Tuniri’s staccato runic singing came together at the exact right seconds in time with Oziin’s wordless song. The stone transformed right before my eyes, morphing in such odd and unexpected ways. I couldn’t make the slightest bit of sense of it. Oziin’s hammer blows set the stone in motion, forming it into strange little shapes that didn’t make sense until later, when the armor fitting started.
They locked together in brilliant ways, the design the most impressive thing I might have ever seen in my life. The pieces looked like they’d fall right apart, but they clicked together and then bam, there was a gauntlet.
There was a little trial and error getting it to fit snugly, but the alterations were just the same as the creation of the stone, done in seconds.
Tivani eventually stuck her head in and told us we shouldn’t skip lunch again.
The next few days fell quickly into a routine.
I sat in on Oziin and Tuniri’s work as much as I could, and they created the first stage of my mace on that first afternoon. Loathe as I was to do it, I tore myself away from watching them and practiced with it. After they had finished their part, I inscribed a single highrune, along with a few firstrunes, onto it. They instructed me as to the best placement for it. I didn’t see how such a thing would really matter, but I wasn’t about to question the experts.
Leena helped me get the basics of swinging a mace, which was alarmingly different than using a sword. After pieces of my armor were done enough to test, we worked on that too. “It’d be better if we had months for this,” she said. She echoed the same sentiment she’d brought up as she’d trained me as much as she could for the battle at Longspan Bridge. “But as long as you don’t kill yourself with all this equipment, that’ll be enough. Even though you’re still little more than a novice, this place and this fancy-ass mace you’ve got it is going to more than make up for it. Plus, you’re…not a complete dumbass too, and that makes so much more of a difference than you’d think.”
“That’s the least complimentary compliment I’ve ever got, Leena.”
She slapped me hard on the back — we were both wearing at least some of our plate — and said, “Oh come on now. You’ve met people. Is that really so little of a compliment?”
I nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”
Tivani and Suli took over the maintenance of the Melodia, only calling Oziin in when they found something that needed her attention. In a bit of good luck, the Melodia only sprung two leaks during our trip. They were both very minor and caught early.
Suli kept up the cooking, of course. She liked it, and no one else seemed to want to do it.
Vsara bounced around during the trip, sometimes reading, sometimes checking in on everyone, and sometimes pacing wildly.
During one of the latter events, I cornered her and asked, “Getting anxious?”
She snorted, rolled her eyes, and said, “How could you tell?”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“Oh, Alex, spare me the worthless platitudes,” she said, but she was smiling at me all the same. “But yes, you’re correct. I don’t do well with the waiting like this. Or I don’t do well with not knowing. I can be as patient as a stone if I know what’s coming. But…we’re still a day or so away from long range communication from Seren.”
Oh that’s right. Cerenis has Morse code.
When I asked about it, Vsara said, “Yes, it’s as you describe. An alphabet made of small tones to convey short messages. As I’ve said before, true long-range communication existed before the Contagion, but this is what we have now. We’ll be able to find out something soon. I don’t even really care what it is as long as we’re not completely blocked from entering Seren’s protection.”
“Think it’ll be like Longspan? We’re kinda too late, but only sort of?”
She deflated and sank into a nearby chair in the sitting room I’d found her in. “I wish I could even guess. Seriously, the options range from they haven’t seen a single ship to the entire place has been laid waste to.”
I grimaced. “You don’t think that last one’s likely, do you?”
“No. But it’s possible, based on what I know. Which is nothing. Also, literally anything in between is possible as well.”
“Like that they’ve made a floating war machine like the one we dumped?”
She groaned and said, “Even more unlikely. But…not impossible, no.”
I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to your worrying. But you should really come hang out with us and not be alone.”
She nodded and sighed heavily. “Yes. You’re right. I’ll be along.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Later the next day, I was training alone, swinging my nearly weightless weapon and slamming the training dummies all the way across the room. Vsara rushed into the room and did a cartwheel.
On one hand, I knew she was agile enough to do one. She could do standing flips and pull things like that off in battle. It was, yet again, so intensely out of character that I completely blue-screened at her, my still incomplete mace hanging loosely from my fingers.
“What?” she asked.
“Uh, good news?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed with a bright smile. “I heard from home!” It was the first time I’d ever heard her call Seren that as far as I could remember, and I loved hearing it.
“And it’s not completely blockaded, then?”
After we were done coughing, she brought out another stone. “Again.”
That one vibrated really hard for a while.
Another one dented.
Then one blew up again.
Then nothing.
Then nothing.
Another pebble shower.
Then…under the blow of her hammer, I felt the magic seep into the stone just right. With a few soft but quick and expert blows, there was a perfect ingot of wrought stone sitting in front of her.
“I did it!”
“You did,” she said with a huge smile. “The first step.” She shook her head and added, “But do not think the next will necessarily be successful.”
It was not. It blew up.
We kept at it for a while, and it was one of the most fun things I’d ever done in my life. We just stood at the table, obliterating a good ninety percent or more of the rocks we worked on, but the ones that were successful were amazing. I could feel the magic flowing through the material. Somehow, Oziin knew exactly where to hit it. There was no way she could feel the magic like I could, as far as I knew. She still struck with mind-boggling precision. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to replicate with a hundred years and the ability to sense the magic. “How…do you do it? How do you know where to hit? And what are you even doing?”
Her cheeks turned purple, and she softly said, “The energy courses through the stone, and each hit redirects it to where it needs to be. In this moment, the material is nearly infinitely malleable, and I shape it as I will it to be. How it works…I do not know.”
“You don’t know!?”
She crossed her arms and smiled. “I do not. Do you know how you sing? What it truly is, what it means? How it affects the runes? How and why they sing back to you?”
“I, um. I don’t. I just…do it.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh,” I said, but a torrent of emotion was swirling through my body. Something about this was almost…divine. Or something. Tivani had once told me that the runes were the building blocks of all creation, which I had heard at the time, but hadn’t understood. I was perhaps just then beginning to. “This…is beautiful.”
Oziin’s gaze whipped to mine, and the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her face was there. It crinkled her eyes, and she raised her chin and puffed out her chest. “It is!” She closed her eyes against the tears that were beginning to form and said, “Sularicana.”
I waited.
She opened her eyes and said, “It means…well, it is difficult to describe. It’s an act, and activity, a joyous thing that,” she waved her hands around, trying to find the words. “That makes your soul burn bright, that…makes your blood sing, but not like singing, or…singing.” She laughed, shrugged, and held out her hands. “No one but the Sendi, my people, has such a word. Perhaps their souls do not burn. That is a joke, by the way.”
“Say it again. The word.”
“Sularicana.”
“That’s beautiful too.”
“I am pleased you think so. About it and the act of making wrought stone. Not everyone can see the beauty in such things. They see the practical side and their sight ends there. I believe you and I will get along very well.”
“I think so too.”
Wordlessly, but with twin smiles, we went back to work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hours flowed by like minutes. The shadows from the sunlight streaming through the window had shifted greatly by the time Tivani stuck her head in the door. “Hey, you two!” Her grin turned quickly into a grimace when she saw how much of the entire room was covered in dust and pebbles. “Uh, been up to some…things, huh?”
“I’ve been learning how to sing to make wrought stone,” I said.
She gave me the most pained smile I’d ever seen and said, “Uh huh…going…good?”
Oziin doubled over on the table laughing. After she got control of herself, she said, “Alex is doing very well, yes. A promising student. We have made many successful ingots.” She gave me her own pained smile and added, “However, perhaps I was a little too hasty in saying that Tuniri will not be needed in order to make your plate and mace in time. We could do it, but…”
“Oh no,” I said. “It’s fine. I’d rather it be done right. I’m going to get the hang of this, but for now, I wouldn’t mind watching the two of you work your magic instead.”
Some of the tension flowed out of her shoulders and she said, “Ah, very good then. You are making good progress. Truly. But with the time constraints…”
I put my hand on hers and said, “Really, it’s no problem. I understand.” Turning to Tivani, I asked, “Is it lunch time?”
“Ha! No. It’s dinnertime.”
“Oh.”
“You two were really going at it. We just let you go, figuring you’d come out when you needed to.”
Before we left, we all cleaned up the massive amount of dust and rock that had accumulated around the room and threw it all out the window. Tivani helped and wouldn’t take no for an answer when we said it wasn’t necessary.
Dinner was, as always, an array of weird and amazing dishes. I still asked about none of it and no one said a thing.
“We’re around five days from reaching Seren,” Vsara said.
I looked over to Oziin in a mild panic. She just smiled and said, “Plenty of time.”
“With Tuniri’s help,” I said.
“Yes.”
Tuniri raised an eyebrow, and Oziin leaned over to explain. “Oh. I see. Yes. Plenty of time for that, highrunes and all, I’m sure.”
“Well, I very much look forward to seeing the two of you work.”
“You had better,” Oziin said, “As you will be needed constantly for measurements and fine tuning.”
I turned to Vsara and asked, “So, what’s the plan once we actually arrive?”
“It depends entirely on whether Stonecore has actually blockaded the archipelago. I’m just not thinking that’s going to be the case.”
“Why not?”
Leena barked a laugh. “Stonecore focuses more on land forces than ships.”
“This is one of the reasons,” Vsara said, “that Seren is what and where it is. The Ulinar have the best ships in the world.”
Leena nodded but added, “The best, but not the most. As with pretty much everything, Stonecore makes up for its massive failings in a lot of places with overwhelming numbers. The Ulinar’s best ship will still lose against twenty of Stonecore’s floating pieces of shit.”
Suli snorted and nearly spit out her tea.
“That being said, it takes a while to build a ship. Even longer to build a lot of them,” Leena said. “Although they did build that thing we dumped off of Longspan.”
Vsara groaned and said, “Yes, precisely. There could be a ridiculous armada surrounding Seren already, absolutely nothing on the horizon, or anything in between.”
“Well,” I said, “at least we can plan accordingly.”
There was a bit of laughter around the table before Vsara continued, “According to Tivani’s calculations and what we’ve been seeing, the Melodia could potentially outrun anything except Seren’s fastest ships. So if there is an armada of enemy ships, we can still get away from them.”
“But getting into Seren is, uh, extremely important,” I said.
“Indeed. But if the options are run and live or stay and die, I’m in favor of the first one. As said, though, it’s unlikely that Stonecore will have the place surrounded.”
“Are we just going to ignore,” I asked, “What Rilahn said about it?”
“A valid point,” Vsara said. “But she did imply that it wasn’t already blockaded and that we had time. I’ve no idea if she would know how fast the Melodia would travel. Based solely on the thing our mortal enemy said while taunting us,” she said, eyeing me hard, “we should have more than enough time to get there before Stonecore’s full armada does.”
“And then I get the ruinsong, and…then what?”
Vsara shook her head and said, “Oh, I’d rather not speculate on things after that. So much of what happens next not only relies on what happens when we arrive, but also what we find out once we do. Stonecore’s ostensibly marching on much of the world. I couldn’t possibly formulate the next step of our plan without up-to-date information.”
“Not to mention if we can find out where the Abyssal Key is, and what it is, I guess,” I said.
“Indeed.”
“Well,” I said, digging into the brightly colored meat and sauce on my plate, “We’ll get it done. We’ll fuck up Stonecore’s shitty ships if we have to, barge our way in and…oh hey, here’s a question: Is Seren going to be half as inviting as Highreach was? I mean, I just walked in there and Samuud was all, ‘shit yeah you can attune to the highsong here.’ What’re things like in Seren?”
It took her a few very uncharacteristic seconds as Vsara had to suppress a smile.
“Oh shit,” Tivani said. “What’s that mean!?”
Vsara frowned, clearly displeased with herself. “There are things that have been happening in Seren for a long time that will — how do I say this — be very beneficial to our endeavors. No, that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”
“They’ve been violating the Deadpact,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Super hard too, I’m guessing,” Tivani added.
Vsara raised her eyebrows at us but said nothing else.
“Is it really that risky telling us?” I asked.
“Perhaps not, but still, I shan’t be saying a word on the matter. You can all assume whatever you like. The truth will come once we get there.”
“Violating the shit out of it,” I stage-whispered to Tivani, and we both laughed.
The next morning, I heard some soft hammerings while I was lying in bed, which were expressly forbidden by my royal, or at least lordly, edict. They hadn’t woken Tivani up, so I quickly dressed and headed down to the forge. I found Leena standing there in her firstsong plate.
Oziin gave me a rictus of a smile when I sauntered in. She said, “Forgive me. I know I shouldn’t be hammering so early.”
Tuniri stared at me as if I was about to start yelling.
“Oh, it’s fine. As long as it’s not an all the time thing. Fixing Leena’s plate?”
“She was,” Leena said, flexing the fingers of her new gauntlet. “And shit, we waited two hours after we normally would’ve been working.”
“Uh huh. Spare me your early-riser speech. If I have to hear it, I’m gonna take Oziin’s hammer and just slam it against your door after you go to bed. But anyway, how’s the armor?”
Leena scoffed and said, “Never seen a stonewright work so fast. She’s even made some adjustments to the rest of it. It’s even better than new. I’m going to go try it out right now.”
After she’d left, Oziin smiled and waved me over to her side of the table. “Come. We might as well start, since you’re here. There’s some things we can do for a while that won’t make any noise.” She and Tuniri proceeded to take my measurements, which were very thorough. I expected some blushing and awkwardness, but they’d clearly done this all a hundred times. They were quick and efficient. The measurements included everything, up to and including the lengths of each knuckle, ankle circumference, and all of my joints, both extended and flexed.
“What color do you want it to be?” Oziin asked.
“What do I want what now? Color? Do I have choices? Are you going to paint it too?”
Leena’s plate had been the dull gray of a random rock. She’d painted designs over it on occasion, even though they tended to get heavily scuffed.
“No. No paint. With the variety of materials we scavenged from the mines, we can blend in many different minerals for a wide selection of hues, all without sacrificing any integrity.”
“Neat. Can I think about it?”
“Of course. We will also be starting your armor today. Once we’ve made the base, you’ll need to come back and inscribe the highrunes.”
“Come back? I wanted to watch you work.”
“Ah. In that case, have a seat.”
They did a half-hour of prep work, getting the materials ready and laying out guidelines on the table, but when they started…holy shit.
“Sing for me and I’ll sing for you,” Oziin said with a huge smile.
It had been amazing enough watching them make the ingots the other day, but this was something else entirely. The magic coursed through the stone like lightning, Oziin’s hammer predicting every single path it would take while she sang a bright and joyous melody.
Her blows and Tuniri’s staccato runic singing came together at the exact right seconds in time with Oziin’s wordless song. The stone transformed right before my eyes, morphing in such odd and unexpected ways. I couldn’t make the slightest bit of sense of it. Oziin’s hammer blows set the stone in motion, forming it into strange little shapes that didn’t make sense until later, when the armor fitting started.
They locked together in brilliant ways, the design the most impressive thing I might have ever seen in my life. The pieces looked like they’d fall right apart, but they clicked together and then bam, there was a gauntlet.
There was a little trial and error getting it to fit snugly, but the alterations were just the same as the creation of the stone, done in seconds.
Tivani eventually stuck her head in and told us we shouldn’t skip lunch again.
The next few days fell quickly into a routine.
I sat in on Oziin and Tuniri’s work as much as I could, and they created the first stage of my mace on that first afternoon. Loathe as I was to do it, I tore myself away from watching them and practiced with it. After they had finished their part, I inscribed a single highrune, along with a few firstrunes, onto it. They instructed me as to the best placement for it. I didn’t see how such a thing would really matter, but I wasn’t about to question the experts.
Leena helped me get the basics of swinging a mace, which was alarmingly different than using a sword. After pieces of my armor were done enough to test, we worked on that too. “It’d be better if we had months for this,” she said. She echoed the same sentiment she’d brought up as she’d trained me as much as she could for the battle at Longspan Bridge. “But as long as you don’t kill yourself with all this equipment, that’ll be enough. Even though you’re still little more than a novice, this place and this fancy-ass mace you’ve got it is going to more than make up for it. Plus, you’re…not a complete dumbass too, and that makes so much more of a difference than you’d think.”
“That’s the least complimentary compliment I’ve ever got, Leena.”
She slapped me hard on the back — we were both wearing at least some of our plate — and said, “Oh come on now. You’ve met people. Is that really so little of a compliment?”
I nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”
Tivani and Suli took over the maintenance of the Melodia, only calling Oziin in when they found something that needed her attention. In a bit of good luck, the Melodia only sprung two leaks during our trip. They were both very minor and caught early.
Suli kept up the cooking, of course. She liked it, and no one else seemed to want to do it.
Vsara bounced around during the trip, sometimes reading, sometimes checking in on everyone, and sometimes pacing wildly.
During one of the latter events, I cornered her and asked, “Getting anxious?”
She snorted, rolled her eyes, and said, “How could you tell?”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“Oh, Alex, spare me the worthless platitudes,” she said, but she was smiling at me all the same. “But yes, you’re correct. I don’t do well with the waiting like this. Or I don’t do well with not knowing. I can be as patient as a stone if I know what’s coming. But…we’re still a day or so away from long range communication from Seren.”
Oh that’s right. Cerenis has Morse code.
When I asked about it, Vsara said, “Yes, it’s as you describe. An alphabet made of small tones to convey short messages. As I’ve said before, true long-range communication existed before the Contagion, but this is what we have now. We’ll be able to find out something soon. I don’t even really care what it is as long as we’re not completely blocked from entering Seren’s protection.”
“Think it’ll be like Longspan? We’re kinda too late, but only sort of?”
She deflated and sank into a nearby chair in the sitting room I’d found her in. “I wish I could even guess. Seriously, the options range from they haven’t seen a single ship to the entire place has been laid waste to.”
I grimaced. “You don’t think that last one’s likely, do you?”
“No. But it’s possible, based on what I know. Which is nothing. Also, literally anything in between is possible as well.”
“Like that they’ve made a floating war machine like the one we dumped?”
She groaned and said, “Even more unlikely. But…not impossible, no.”
I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to your worrying. But you should really come hang out with us and not be alone.”
She nodded and sighed heavily. “Yes. You’re right. I’ll be along.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Later the next day, I was training alone, swinging my nearly weightless weapon and slamming the training dummies all the way across the room. Vsara rushed into the room and did a cartwheel.
On one hand, I knew she was agile enough to do one. She could do standing flips and pull things like that off in battle. It was, yet again, so intensely out of character that I completely blue-screened at her, my still incomplete mace hanging loosely from my fingers.
“What?” she asked.
“Uh, good news?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed with a bright smile. “I heard from home!” It was the first time I’d ever heard her call Seren that as far as I could remember, and I loved hearing it.
“And it’s not completely blockaded, then?”
