Your writing vlog this week – nothing happened and it’s kinda frustrating.
A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Fifteen
There were more floors to von Nighburg’s hidden world than the one they arrived on. They found stairs leading downward in the room just outside the central chamber and, after a brief deliberation, Johan ruled out exploring them until they had gone through everything on that floor. The room with the stairs looked very much like a kitchen. There wasn’t anything like a place to cook but there were cupboards and cabinets with dried food and dishes in them. A pitcher of water stood on the corner of the counter by a tin sink.
The other two rooms on that floor proved equally mundane. Riker and Tanner wanted to split up and search them as quickly as possible but Johan put his foot down and insisted that they move together so he could keep an eye out for arcane meddling from the master of the manse. By the time they actually descended the stairs into the bottom floor he was starting to share their impatience.
If not for the fact that he’d had to spend a good ten minutes breaking the wards and traps on the mirror gate between the Cove lighthouse and this place Johan could have easily mistaken the building for a simple house in the countryside. There were no windows but the storage room, kitchen and small reading room they’d seen on the main floor were painfully mundane. It wasn’t until he peeked around the switchback in the stairway and saw the mirrors that the illusion of normalcy faded.
The bottom floor consisted of two rooms. One formed a large ring around the outside of the manse, the other was a circular room on the interior. The part of the outer room where the stairs let out was mostly empty but an open door to the interior stood just to the right of the last step. The inner walls of that room were lined with mirrors. Unnerved, Johan carefully peeked in the door, confirmed it was empty, then gingerly closed it.
“Something wrong?” Riker asked.
“Not as such, although I have a bad feeling about what I saw.” Johan started forward, hustling to get around the outer ring as fast as he could while still acting with prudence.
“More mirrors than a funhouse,” Tanner muttered. “What does a black hearted murderer want with a place like that?”
“Most likely he stored the children there, in moon prisms, when he wasn’t using them for whatever he used them for,” Johan said. “A mirrored box is a good way to store magic based on light while maximizing its longevity. My own lightbox functions on similar principles.”
“But the room was empty,” Riker protested.
“Which means he’s most likely taken your daughter out for some reason.”
“Such as?” A dark done filled Samson Riker’s question.
“Hopefully we find her before we find out.”
Further discussion was cut off when they rounded the bend to the final quadrant of the outer ring and found it stuffed to the gills with blacksmith’s tools. The ringlike corridor was a good fifteen feet wide and the central room added an equal distance to the diameter. So there was plenty of room in the outer space for all kinds of things. Johan was not an expert on the craft but even he recognized an anvil, several different kinds of hammers and tongs, a post for beating out bowls or helmets and a sulfurite powered forge suitable for smelting metal a few ounces at a time.
“Dust and ashes,” Tanner muttered. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
Johan ignored the old sailor’s words and focused on the lit candle Sheriff Warwick had given him before they stepped through the mirror. It took a moment to tune in on the sheriff, which was an odd sensation. He’d expected the experience to be like talking to someone else except in his mind and the constant buzzing of Tyson’s Nine in the back of his head had reinforced that impression. It shouldn’t have.
In reality he found himself sharing loose sensations and glimpses of vision with the sheriff and, once Warwick understood what he’d found, Roy in other parts of the manse. It took a bit for Johan to make Roy understand what he’d found and ask if he thought it was significant. Unfortunately neither of them knew for sure. However a quick look told Johan there was no iron in the area where as he did find several small ingots of silver and brass. Ultimately they agreed there probably wasn’t anything there of consequence.
After that Warwick expressed curiosity about whether they’d found signs of von Nighburg yet. He was growing concerned that their quarry might have created a second exit to the manse and used it to slip out past them. Johan tried to show that it was impossible to build two entrances into a shallowing. A second gap in the walls of the space would weaken it to the point of collapse, which he tried to show the others. It didn’t seem like they understood but he got a sense they were willing to take his word for it. After that they broke contact.
Johan blew out a sigh and stood up from the crate full of brass he’d been sitting on, wondering where they should move next. Tanner was examining the end of the hallway where the stairs came down from above. He’d poked and prodded the floor and walls there but came away empty. “If there’s another floor below this one the entrance isn’t here and, structurally speaking, it’s the best place for it.”
“What about the mirror room?” Riker asked.
“It’s worth looking at, I suppose,” Johan said, “although my gut tells me he’s not here. If he was I don’t know how he got past-”
The constant hum in the back of his mind cut out abruptly. For a split second he wasn’t sure what had changed, Johan had basically tuned it out by that point, but then he realized the candle magic was gone. “Riker,” he said, voice suddenly hoarse, “get ahold of Brandon by tap.”
The big man grunted and rapped out a pattern on his bracelet. “Something wrong?”
“Cassie’s song just cut out and we need to figure out why.” He unlocked the panels of his lightbox then readied one of his two remaining spare mirrors in his off hand. “We should head back to the central chamber.”
Tanner glanced from him to Riker. “We haven’t heard back from them yet.”
“We can start moving that way, won’t hurt anything so long as we keep an eye out.”
“Ears open, too,” Riker added.
“Fair, that.”
Knowing the layout of the tower made the return trip shorter, but only marginally so. Something was afoot in the tower now so Johan made it a point to use his mirror to carefully glance through each doorway and stairway before they went through. By the time they got to the kitchen they were all wound pretty tight. Hearing Sheriff Warwick laughing on the other side of the door did very little to help them relax and Johan saw that Tanner, in particular, got very tense.
However Johan wasn’t expecting Riker to push past the two of them and through the door before he could check it. The big man didn’t speak much and took his time moving around. In that moment Johan realized he’d foolishly conflated that with a steady and deliberate personality. Maybe Samson Riker was such a man. Even if he was in most cases Johan should have been ready for erratic behavior in matters pertaining to his daughter. His usual deliberate pace was gone as well, replaced with a speed surprising for a man of his size.
Johan snapped his lightbox open and hurried in Riker’s wake. Their rearguard were scattered through the central sanctum in various states of unreadiness. Over by the entry room, Brandon stared at the bookshelves with an inscrutable look on his face while the sheriff leaned against the table, still laughing. Cassandra crouched by the door opposite Brandon, eyes wild. The door to the entrance stood open.
Tanner pointed to a loose pile of clay bits and a broken string on the floor. “Look!”
Riker did not look, instead making a beeline for the open door. Johan stayed with him, dragging Tanner along by one arm. “I see it but there’s no time.”
“What about the sheriff?” Tanner demanded.
Johan continued to tug on his arm as he spoke. “I tried to counter that laughter once and nothing worked. Proud Elk and Cassie have the strongest gifts against this hex and if their arts haven’t helped I can’t. Can you?”
The sailor finally relented and let himself be taken along by the other’s insistent pull and they scrambled into the antechamber with the mirror. Riker had at least had the foresight to stop and wait for them. He gestured once at the mirror and looked at Johan. “Is it open?”
There wasn’t time for a detailed investigation but he’d already confirmed the safety of the portal once and hopefully von Nighburg hadn’t had time to do anything else with it in the few moments he’d had before they arrived. “It should be. But we can only go one at a time so I should go-”
However Samson Riker was not willing to wait for him to go first and immediately slapped his hand onto the glass pane and was drawn into the reflective surface.
“Coalstoking idiot.” Johan waited three seconds for the image in the glass to change from distorted smears roughly the same color as Riker’s clothing back to a clear reflection of the room they were in. As soon as the image stabilized he slapped his own hand down and made the trip himself.
He’d been ready to see just about anything except an empty room. There was no battle under way, no corpse or corpses of dead men or, worse, a dead girl. Just the sounds of footsteps on metal stairs. There were times he wished the Sons of Harmon had learned some of the famous magics from other traditions that made people physically stronger and more enduring. Struggling up three flights of stairs, trying to catch up to Riker’s dead sprint, was one of them.
Johan was about as tall as Riker and his stride was a bit longer but the big man was leaning far forward, dragging himself upwards via the railing with all his strength of arm and Johan just couldn’t close the gap. If anything, he fell a few steps behind. Riker reached the top of the stairs while Johan was still halfway down and this time he didn’t wait for anyone to catch up.
Once Riker left the tower silence fell like a guillotine. With only his and Tanner’s clanking footsteps on the stairs and the breath wheezing in his throat there was little to keep Johan’s foreboding at bay. It was his own fault, really. He hadn’t been thinking about how a father would act when his daughter was in danger so he hadn’t been ready for Riker’s erratic behavior. Of course, he wasn’t a father yet himself. That didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d missed something important, something he owed to Roy and even his own wife to understand about leading a family. It wasn’t until the second wave of guilt built up to roll over him that he realized what was really happening.
Johan’s lightbox snapped open and the mirrors angled to give him a look in all directions. He’d placed his sunstone back in the center of the box after the events by the docks that morning and added a couple of charms to the box itself so he could see into the places beside. The places you could just see out of the corner of your eye, where the nastiest things in old tales lived. For a brief moment Johan caught a glimpse of something in the mirrors. He couldn’t say what it was with certainty, there was only a brief impression of a massive head that seemed to be covering its face with its hands in guilt. Or maybe its hands were merging with its face, he couldn’t tell. Then the glass shattered and the lightbox became useless.
With an effort of will Johan pushed back on the unnatural emotions while he clamped the remnants of his lightbox under his off arm then pried the sunstone out of it. He discarded the shards of the box and it clattered away down the stairs. Somewhere behind him Tanner gave a yelp as he dodged out of the way but Johan didn’t have the time or breath to apologize to him. There were still another twenty to thirty stairs to climb.
Stopping to pry the sunstone out was a mistake, starting up again took far more energy than it should have. As he dragged his feet into motion again Johan tried to think of a plan. The creature von Nighburg used to attack their minds was on the move while the eclipse was probably already underway. He had one sunstone and one mirror to work with. He wasn’t an accomplished duelist, like Roy, but maybe Riker could accomplish something through pure mass. Tanner had a cutlass on him but he hadn’t drawn it yet. Roy made him sound like a privateer of some sort but that didn’t necessarily make him a dangerous fighter. It would have to be enough. If it wasn’t then Heinrich von Nighburg was going to get away with whatever he was trying to do and that just wasn’t acceptable.
None of it was acceptable. With another exertion of effort Johan dragged his thoughts away from those emotions and focused on sketching a new pattern on his surviving mirror. A few seconds later he reached the top of the lighthouse. He nearly tripped over Samson Riker when he burst out into the beacon room. The big man was collapsed on the roof, sobbing, his face twisted into such an exaggerated state of grief it would’ve been comical if it wasn’t Johan’s fault.
The air rushed out of him as the futility of his efforts rushed over him. He felt his footsteps slow and his exhaustion drag him down to the floor. Johan let the mirror slip out of his fingers as the futility of trying to make up for his failures this way finally became clear to him. Von Nighburg was taking a girl with a blank expression by the hand and helping her climb up onto the central platform where the lighthouse beacon burned. Far overhead the moon faded to a sliver. The blackguard would be done with his task soon but Johan felt that long before that he would be crushed under the weight of his own guilt…
Writing Vlog – 08-16-2023
A few words on the many projects this week. Not much new to report on any of them but you may find some of the rambling about technique interesting.
A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Fourteen
There were four doors out of the Array’s room and Brandon made it a point to check on each of them every five minutes. He wasn’t sure what he expected to change about them. However that didn’t stop him from walking the perimeter of the room, listening at each door and making sure they were still unlocked. It was the best he could do.
Sheriff Warwick and Cassie were both wrapped up in keeping the lines of communication between the two search teams open. That didn’t leave him with much to do as he made his slow circuit of the room. To pass the time he picked up various pieces of paraphernalia from the shelves and examined them as he walked, putting them down where he was when he lost interest. He could tell by his sister’s wrinkled brow she didn’t approve. Based on what he’d seen so far, Brandon thought leaving von Nighburg’s sanctum in disarray was the mildest possible rebuke the blackguard could get so he didn’t feel bad about doing it.
He’d just started his second loop around the room when Warrwick stirred and said, “Your sister wants to know what’s so interesting about the books.”
It was a little annoying to have Cassie’s messages relayed to him but Tyson’s Nine didn’t harmonize with him nor was he adept with thistledown candles so they had little choice at the moment. “Just checking the titles,” Brandon answered. “The fact that Mr. Harper is checking von Nighburg’s books in the other rooms doesn’t mean we can’t look through his materials here.”
A few seconds of silence passed then Warwick asked, “Do you see anything interesting?”
“Mostly the kinds of advanced Teutonic texts you might expect,” Brandon said. “Verner von Stuttgard’s Introduction to Higher Symmetry. A Brief History of Attempted Solutions to the Tesseract Problem by Herman Bernbach. That kind of thing.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Warwick said dryly. “Never heard of either of those myself.”
Brandon paused at a thin volume bound in blue cloth with a surprising number of slips of paper jutting out of the worn pages. The spine wasn’t wide enough for a title so he opened it to the first page. “How about A History of Black Sun Mesa? I don’t see an author listed here.”
“I’ve heard of the mesa but not the book,” Warwick replied. “It’s about three hundred miles northeast of here, near the border of the Treaty Lands. The Sanna swear up and down it’s a place of evil. I hear they were almost giddy to shove it over onto our side of the border although I’ve never heard of anything coming from there and going after our people so maybe whatever’s there only hates the Sanna.”
“I wonder why von Nighburg thought it was important…” Brandon started to set it back then changed his mind and slipped it into his coat pocket before proceeding onwards. It was a mystery and one that perked his interest enough to look into, later. The door across from where they’d arrived was unlocked and quiet. Brandon continued forward, passing a stack of what looked like spare parts for the thing Warwick called an Immelmann Array. Brandon was very tempted to take them away, too. He didn’t know whether the sheriff’s story about the shield of winter and Stonehenge’s Founders was true or not but if it was the Array wasn’t a thing they should leave lying around.
Also, he still had access to the leaders of Stonehenge. Although Brandon hadn’t reached a level where they would tell him about such things of their own volition they might choose to tell him how true Warwick’s claims were. Showing them the parts would lend credence to the story and increase his chances of an answer. If there were such things as a shield of winter being made in Columbia, Brandon wanted to be on guard for them. However, there wasn’t any point burdening himself with them until they were ready to leave.
“More Teutonic texts,” Brandon continued, pausing to pick up an object the size of a book but with no spine or pages that he could detect. The letters on the front looked similar to Avalon’s but were just different enough he had to struggle. “An Introduction to Particle Technologies. What kind of techniques involve particles?”
“Maybe the Teutonic tradition found some way to successfully embed sulfurite particles in the human body like Arthur did,” Warwick suggested.
Brandon pulled on the ends of the short sides of the object, wondering if it would open up like a scroll. However, after half a minute of fiddling he failed to get the thing open so he put it back. He passed the next door, listened and moved on. “There’s a lot here but, outside of the Array, I don’t see much that you couldn’t find in a well stocked magical library in Avalon. Disappointing, really.”
“It’s unusual, to say the least.”
“I know you have library’s here in Columbia, sheriff.”
Warwick was quiet for a few minutes. “Sorry, van der Klein’s group found a metal shop and he and Harper were debating whether it was used for steel or not.”
“Any signs of the man himself there?”
“No.” Warwick frowned. “Seen from the outside it doesn’t look like a huge shallowing. Perhaps he has a second exit and he’s slipped around us. Van der Klein doesn’t find that likely, something about the inherent structure, but I know if I had an otherworldly bolt hole I’d want two exits no matter what the structure wanted.”
“I don’t think it works that way.” Brandon picked up a book with Cyrillic characters and thumbed through it. The whole thing was in Slavic and that was a language he’d never picked up in written or spoken form and, while that suggested where von Nighburg had learned to create ghouls, there wasn’t much more that he could glean from it.
“My point was, it’s unusual to find such a large collection of esoterica in private hands, especially this far west. Even in Palmyra, the availability of texts from outside the druidic traditions is pretty limited.” Warwick paused as he picked out a new candle from his bag and carefully lit it from the old, then extinguished the stub of the first candle in the traditional form. “I was once considered for advancement to our Founder’s Circle but I’ve never heard of any of those books. Morainhenge had a strong emphasis on military readiness and less of a scholarly bent. There’s a year set aside during squiring for studying what’s known about Sanna magic but that’s about all we look outside our own spellcraft.”
Brandon became very interested in the bindings of the books in front of them, a vague feeling of frustration settling in his gut. “That’s not surprising. All the studious druids stayed in Stonehenge, all the proactive ones set out for the other Henges. We hardly ever go out on errantry now.”
“Present company excepted, of course.”
“Of course.” He wished he didn’t taste bitterness as he said it. Everyone seemed to default to the thought that he was he on a task of his own, the first knight sent out to seek the Secrets of Steel in generations. In truth, he’s just been sent to take care of his little sister. Even his father had seen fit to remind him he’d only ever sing harmony before they’d left, the same insipid warning he’d given so many times in the past. The Fairchilds could trace their line back even further than the great candlemaker families. However, he hadn’t inherited his father’s gift for stonesong and so, it seemed, all the honor of that lineage was destined to bypass him and settle on Cassie.
“Brandon.”
Warwick’s voice cut through his thoughts like a knife and Brandon whirled to face him. “What?”
The sheriff reached one hand up and carefully pointed at the beads around his neck. Brandon repeated the gesture, his fingers brushing against the small clay spheres, only to feel them crumble in spite of his light touch. The quiet drone of Cassie’s song faltered. Annoyed, Brandon grabbed the string and yanked it off, snapping the thin threads and sending the remaining beads clattering to the floor in clouds of dust. “Worthless junk.”
Cassie abruptly stopped humming. “Brandon, what are you doing?”
“What business is it of yours?” Somehow he’d started yelling without realizing it. It felt quite cathartic.
His sister hurried towards him, her eyes wide as saucers. “Brandon you need that to protect-”
“Don’t lecture me, Cassandra, the last thing I need is more of your constant smug talk!” Brandon waved her off as she tried to pass him her own string of beads. She flinched away from his flailing hand. “Look at you, always acting like you know what’s best simply because father had time for you that he never had for anyone else in the family. Some days it seemed more like he was married to you than mother!”
“I-I-” she stuttered before rallying, “Brandon, I had to learn the repertoire and proper control, you know that.”
There was a soft clank as Warwick set his candle down on the table bedside the Array. In spite of how quiet the noise was Cassie still jumped and whirled to look at him, eyes wild. He held up his hands in a calming gesture, saying, “Let’s slow down, you two. You’re probably feeling some really wild emotions now that Proud Elk’s charms have broken. Why don’t we-”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Brandon hissed. “This is a family matter.”
“Doesn’t concern me?” Warwick shook his head in annoyance. “We’re in the middle of hostile territory looking for the most dangerous man I’ve seen in my five years out west, we all need to be working together. Don’t be absuh-”
The sheriff guffawed mid word. Cassie slowly backed away from him, shaking like a leaf, as his shoulders shook and a second deep laugh burst out of him. “You’re so foolish, both of you.”
Finally the laughter broke through in earnest and he slumped against the table and slid down to the floor, cackling uncontrollably. Cassie backed into a bookshelf and dropped to the floor herself. Brandon watched it all then snorted and spat in contempt, turning to stalk to the opposite side of the room with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. It felt like he was on the eve of his fifteenth birthday again, standing in his father’s library.
Theodore Fairchild had called him there to warn him that he was past the age where the gift of stone song could manifest. Cassandra was the only one who could carry on that legacy, now. “It’s not surprising,” his father had said. “There’s no melody to you, Brandon, no driving tempo or clever improvisation. You’re the harmony to our family. We must have you, I suppose, so you’ll stay with us but the center of stage isn’t for you.”
It was a cruel thing to say to a child about to become an adult and Brandon had turned his back on his father just like he did now, ignoring his father until he left the room. When the door closed behind him some part of Brandon was aware that there shouldn’t have been anyone going through it. Certainly not his father, who was thousands of miles away. However he was too wrapped up in his own bitterness to turn and see who it was and that was exactly what Heinrich von Nighburg had wanted in the first place.
Writing Vlog – 08-09-2023
A ramble about writing and publishing in this week’s writing vlog:
A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Thirteen
The town was quiet through the early evening. For a moment, if a man looked at the Cove through the corner of his eye, he might think everything was normal. The statue of Jonathan Riker had no such grace. Its eyes stared straight down on the town, unblinking, and watched the people head home early and bar their doors. The Mayor walked the streets every hour, making sure things were quiet. The full moon rose overhead, its bright, baleful light casting the streets in unsettling shadow.
It was a bad night to be about and all could sense it. When the dark shadow of Earth moved over the moon’s face even Mayor Hughes went home and locked the door. Only the statue was there to watch as Low Noon moved it. The fell mood didn’t bother Jonathan Riker in the least.
It watched as the sky slowly turned dark without flinching, heard the wild laughter without answering and saw the lighthouse bend and stretch up towards the sky without comment. The world changed in the small circle of the bay. When the moon slipped entirely out of view the strange voices echoing faintly over the water grew more numerous and more varied. Then the the lighthouse and the water around it for a hundred feet froze, locked behind the irregular facets of an otherworldly prism.
The second room of Heinrich von Nighburg’s hidden fortress was circular, like the lighthouse it was connected to. Stone floor and ceiling sandwiched tall shelves stacked with books, tools and paraphernalia. Bronze lines, about the width of a man’s hand, ran across the floor in every direction. Seven of them converged on the table at the center of the room where the strange geometric lattice, mesh globe and golden orb sat pulsing with arcane power.
Experience told Roy it was best to work out what to do about the mad wizard’s magic before anything else. “All right, Warwick,” he said, stepping through the doorway from the portal room to the Array. “I think it’s finally time a druid explained what’s so coalstoking dangerous about these things.”
Brandon cleared his throat. “Maybe you could explain what an Immelmann Array is, first?”
“It’s a shield of winter,” Avery said.
Roy felt himself start in shock, a rookie response he immediately regretted. “You’re not serious.”
“Isn’t that one of the godly weapons of the Mated Pair?” Proud Elk asked, studying the array with a skeptical eye. “This does not look very godly, Bright Coals.”
“We say the Lord in Raging Skies carries winter as his shield but I honestly don’t know what the connection is between one of these and the saying,” Avery replied. “However, there are ancient records in the Stone Circle that say Arthur Phoenixborn took a magic weapon much like this into his last battle with the Seventh Son of Eternity. Whether or not he actually wiped out Eternity’s Armies in one day, Arthur’s victory was decisive. The Forever Wars ended very soon after with Eternity’s allied nations on the Continent surrendering two years later. By that point the Circle’s Founders had already forbidden anyone building a shield of winter.”
“Why?” Roy asked. “They sound pretty handy.”
“Well, if it’s true that Arthur swept the Armies of Eternity from the world all at once and if he used a shield of winter to do it, the prevailing theory is that the shield is actually a kind of key.” Avery waved a hand to encompass the strange space around them. “The records suggest Arthur used it to lock out or lock away the Seventh Son and his forces and placed himself in the doorway to ensure they never came this way again. The concern is that using another key will reopen that door and pave the way for them to return. While there’s questions about the veracity of those records the possibility that someone could start up the Forever War again is daunting enough the Founders didn’t want to take the chance.”
That seemed like a reasonable enough motive to forbid them to Roy. “Is there a way to turn it harmless without doing that?”
“Not that I know of. Our Founders taught us to recognize them but Morainehenge was setup in a rather informal way and we didn’t have complete details on… well, anything. If there’s a safe way to deal with an Array, the secret stayed in Stonehenge.”
All eyes turned to Brandon. He held up his hands defensively. “No help here, lads. I’ve never heard of Immelmann Arrays or shields of winter and I honestly don’t think most knights ever do. That sounds like something usually confined to the Founder’s Circle. Our Founders, that is. Why did yours think it wise to spread the knowledge to the whole rank and file?”
Avery’s expression turned surly. “We couldn’t be sure Immelmann hadn’t produced them by the dozen and turned them over to the Columbians! We had to be ready to counter them.”
“He wasn’t a weaponsmith, Warwick, he was a skytrain engineer,” Roy snapped. “He was just trying to improve their furnace design. I don’t know that turning one into a weapon every occurred to anyone, unless you count skytrains as weapons.”
“Which you could,” Brandon said.
Roy shot him a glare. “Not my point.”
Avery jabbed a finger at the Array. “That is not something you create accidentally while trying to innovate on a skytrain furnace. He was dabbling with something he shouldn’t have, just like von Nighburg, that’s why we had to step in and confiscate the Array.”
A pulsing flash of anger shot across Roy’s vision and took up residence in the front of his mind. “You robbed a man of his life’s work, over the objections of your own druid there in town-”
“Harwick?” Avery practically spat the name. “He turned his back on the Circle and never showed his face again. Who cares about his opinion?”
A brief glimpse of a man, dead on the side of a lonely mountain in a forgotten corner of Tetzlan, rose from Roy’s memories. It was already fading when Roy closed his grip on the front of Avery’s coat and pulled the man down to eye level. “Brennan Harwick was a better man than you could ever hope to be.”
Roy’s own fury was mirrored in the other man’s eyes. “Then maybe he’ll find the fortitude to come back and answer for his actions!”
A dozen acid tongued replies rose up but before Roy could pick one a double loop of blue and gold painted beads dropped around his neck and the unnatural pressure on his emotions vanished. He hadn’t realized he was being manipulated a second ago. Now that Proud Elk’s beads were around him it was obvious that something similar to the laughter from that morning had come over him.
Brandon was prying the two of them apart as the Sanna man looped another set of beads around the sheriff. The same shock and disorientation was clear on his face. Roy cleared his throat. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Avery replied. “I supervised some of Brennan’s training when we were squired, I always thought he was a man of respectable intentions. I didn’t understand his choices after the Avengard incident but I was never angry about them. Except just now. It was like I couldn’t feel anything besides anger… I don’t understand it.”
“But you use thistledown candles,” Cassie said. “Surely you were exposed to all kinds of magic that inflict confusion and arouse unnatural emotions as a part of your training.”
“I was. There was still nothing like this among what I experienced.” The sheriff shook himself and straightened up. “Something very strange is going on here.”
Roy shook himself off, clearing his head, and loosened his falcatta in its sheath. “No doubt. Otherworldly forces and all that. Proud Elk, how long is this going to protect us?”
The Sanna man gave a helpless shrug. “This is something far beyond my experience as well, Bright Coals. A Calming Shoal necklace prevents powerful emotions from overwhelming your mind but it doesn’t remove them and it isn’t meant for creatures that prey on feelings in this way. I made them after what we saw this morning but I wasn’t sure they’d work. I don’t know how long they will keep working. We could have minutes or hours before they fail or are circumvented by the enemy.”
“Wonderful.”
Avery straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. “We’ve felt this twice now and there’s a real sense of change in mental equilibrium when that thing moves against us. Everyone be alert for it. If you feel that change again try pricking a finger with a knife – physical pain can counteract mental influence. Once we have the link through the candles established Miss Fairchild’s song may provide some level of defense, too. I’ll try and counter any influence from the mindscape as well.”
“We’ll cut through the problem, then,” Roy said. The room had four doors out and he picked one of the three they hadn’t been through yet. “Proud Elk, we’ll start by going that way. Johan, take your boys and go the opposite. We’ll meet in the middle if we don’t find what we’re looking for or move to support Avery’s team if they get in trouble. Let’s go.”
“Wait.” Avery gave him a curious look. “You said Brennan-”
“Not now.”
For a moment the sheriff looked like he would protest but then he nodded his agreement. “When this is over, then.”
Roy left the obvious caveat unsaid. Instead he held up the beaded bracelet Proud Elk had given him and said, “Final check, make sure the taps are coming through.” Suiting actions to words, Roy tapped the large, central diamond in the bracelet’s pattern and waited until he felt answering taps from the beads on the opposite side, matching the taps Brandon and Samson made. “Everything’s working here. Miss Fairchild?”
She began to hum the slow, mournful notes of Tyson’s Nine under her breath as Avery lit his candle. Roy had initially been grateful to learn she didn’t have to sing the words to make her magic work. Now he found it didn’t matter. The melody brought the first lines to mind unbidden.
When spring turns to winter face the bitter hard truth
’bout the gnawing teeth of the famine
No woman or man has the strength to withstand when
icy cold fear puts its hand in
Roy had always found the rank sentiment and simple lyrics of the song distasteful, to say nothing of the way it seemed to miss all the things that had actually made the mill in Tyson’s Run frightening, lonely and miserable. However, as the smoke of Avery’s candle wafted into the air he found other opinions mixing with his own. Brandon found them quaint and charming. Tanner didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about, since the tune was far older than the West and the words were the kind of thing sailors sang at sea all the time. Johan found Roy’s annoyance far more amusing than anything about the lyrics.
Most interesting of all, Samson took profound satisfaction from them. Roy thought he caught a brief glimpse of a younger Jonathan Riker in an unfamiliar house, speaking with a woman he didn’t recognize. Then, something directed their thoughts away from that memory. He had a sudden sense that he’d seen something private and anyway, there were more pressing matters at hand. “It’s two hours until the eclipse starts,” Roy said. “Whatever else happens we have to cripple the plans von Nighburg has for Low Noon. Sheriff, if he takes out our group and Johan’s, or if Low Noon comes and we’re not back, destroy the Immelmann Array and go back to the Cove. Hopefully that sends us over the horizon and into whatever place Arthur put the Seventh Son. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s likely better than the alternative.”
“Count on it,” Avery replied.
“Should I stand ready to assist you or Johan if you wind up over your head?” Brandon asked.
“Normally I’d be thrilled having a Knight of the Stone Circle as our reserve,” Roy said. “But after what just happened I’m not sure you should. I think it’s more likely that you’d be lured out by some kind of phantom sensations like what we just experienced than that you’d actually hear us in distress and respond in time to assist.”
“We can’t spend all our time worried about the enemy’s stratagems or we’ll never act when we have the chance,” Johan said. “Let the man stand ready if he wants.”
Roy hesitated for a moment, thinking it over. “Very well. If that’s what you want, Brandon, be ready to back us up if needed. But stay here until you get a message from us by candle or tap, understand?”
“I understand.”
“Stay safe.” Roy turned to the other search group. “Johan, Samson, Tanner. Good hunting.”
Then he and Proud Elk turned and headed down their own route into von Nighburg’s fortress.
A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Twelve
“Are you certain?” Brandon demanded as he rushed forward, his sister a half step behind him.
“I’ve only seen it the one time,” Harper replied. “But it’s got the same look and magic around it acts funny, although in a different way from the last time I saw it. That could be something to do with the mirror itself or the shape of this thing, though.”
Sheriff Warwick joined them by the reflector, a hard look on his face. “If it is steel we could have a problem on our hands. When I looked into Stu’s memories von Nighburg had a staff made of this stuff with him when Stu was abducted. Which means our blackguard has a steel weapon.”
“If I may ask,” Proud Elk said, interrupting their careful examination of the reflector’s frame. “What is steel?”
“It’s a mythical metal,” Brandon said, carefully touching the cool metal with his bare fingers. “Supposedly the strongest metal ever forged. When the Armies of Eternity marched over the horizon, eight hundred years ago, and began the Forever War they carried weapons made of it. There are a few left, in the great armories of the Continent. No one ever discovered how they were made.”
Harper patted the hilt of his sword in a strange, almost ritual fashion. “That one told me his sword was made of steel and that it was a kind of refined iron, if you can believe it.”
“Iron scorns all magic,” Proud Elk said. “Thus you cannot refine or forge it with fire, so I find that difficult to believe. Yet if he said it, it may be possible.”
“He did,” Johan replied. “I was there when Roy asked about it.”
Brandon laughed. “The three of you talk like he’s standing around the corner, waiting to burst in when you say his name. Why are you so nervous about it?”
“Because we’ve seen him work,” Harper replied. “Enough about this. We can take this thing apart if you two want to keep it, I suppose, or we can sell it to cover our expenses later. Right now I think we leave it where it is. Johan, am I right in guessing this is the way into wherever von Nighburg is?”
“Almost certainly.” He was already setting up his own mirror opposite the reflector. “I’ll need a few minutes to assess how its defended and what exact mechanism its built on before we can go through. However, the fact that it is a mirror rather than a ring or something even more exotic helps.”
Harper nodded and looked around. “Riker, Tanner, grab one of those barrels and help me burn that foul shelled thing in case von Nighburg can use it again.”
The two locals dumped the barrel of oil over the biggest lobster Brandon had ever seen then Harper lit it with a spark from his lantern. Under normal circumstances it would take twenty minutes or so for something that size to burn. However, at some point Harper had learned to make things burn faster than they ought and he was able to reduce the creature to ashes in a matter of twenty or thirty seconds. Brandon had only seen this trick a few times before, and only from one firemind. That didn’t mean it was unique to Harper, Stonehenge druids were very secretive about the particulars of their abilities, but the fact that it worked on human bodies suggested it could also work on yew wood.
That was something Brandon felt it best to be prepared for. While Roy Harper seemed an honorable man there were many other fireminds out there, from within the druidic orders and from without, who were not. Sadly, he hadn’t been able to figure out how one might counter that trick yet.
Disposing of the lobster took Harper less time than it took Johan to analyze the reflector and Brandon found himself examining the lighthouse as he waited. The structure was some seventy feet tall but the third floor was slightly less than half that height. A rickety metal stair wound up the inside of the remaining tower up to the top floor, where the reflectors and oil burner were housed. There were no windows. Several iron hooks stuck out of the walls along the stairway, so presumably the lighthouse keepers used lanterns to make their way up or down.
A light touch at his elbow drew his attention downward. Cassie leaned in and softly asked, “Do you think this von Nighburg knows the secrets of steel?”
“I’d doubt it,” Brandon said. “Far more likely he’s found some old relics he’s labored long to understand. Isn’t that typically the way things go in the records? Someone finds a long forgotten piece of magic from the Forever Wars and, in trying to understand it, begins to tamper with forces we were not meant to deal with?”
Cassie nodded. “At the same time, he may have discovered writings the Armies of Eternity left behind. He could have learned the technique for forging steel from them.”
“Yes, I wondered about that as well. Whether von Nighburg created that steel himself or discovered it in an ancient armory is something we’ll have to determine at some point. Given how dangerous the man acts, I’m afraid it will have to wait until he’s dealt with.”
He could tell that notion didn’t thrill his sister but she nodded her agreement with it. “I was just thinking we should mention it to Mr. Harper. We’ll be staying by the entrance of von Nighburg’s manse and there’s no saying we’ll be able to go to and from it freely after he’s out of the picture. If Mr. Harper finds something and has the chance…”
There was merit to that point as well. “I’ll mention it to him.”
Whether he’d been listening while he watched the lobster burn or he’d just anticipated the issue, it turned out Harper didn’t need it mentioned. When Brandon approached him the firespinner preempted the issue. “I’ll keep an eye out for anything related to steel or the Forever Wars,” he said when he spotted the other coming. “Don’t know how much importance we can put on it, though. The other guy gets a say in how things play out.”
“I understand,” Brandon replied. “I appreciate your consideration.”
It took a few more minutes for Johan to finish his work with the reflector and set up one of his own mirrors opposite it. “There,” he said, “the doorway is open. Unfortunately von Nighburg has made visibility through the door one way so I can’t tell you what’s waiting on the other side. We’ll have to send someone well defended through first.”
“That’s pretty much what we cultivate the yew for,” Brandon said, his shift already underway. The layers of bark quickly grew over his body, already primed from his earlier use, and the roots of the plant stretched out through his muscles give him strength far beyond the human norm. Thus defended and empowered Brandon stepped up to the reflector. “Is there anything that needs done on the other side?”
“I would just look through and then report what you see,” Proud Elk replied, digging through his own bag of magical tricks. “Is that possible?”
“No, you have to go all the way through this kind of portal before you can come back. The literature stresses that’s a key part of making them function, as is making sure only one person uses it at a time.” Johan shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s true or the old wizards just thought it was a good way to slow down invaders trying to breach a sanctum.”
“Maybe,” Harper said, studying the reflector, then Brandon. “Go through, check it out and report back. We’ll check on you if you don’t come back in sixty seconds. You got another of those barrier breaker things, Johan?”
“Give me a second.”
It was more like a minute but eventually he handed Brandon a duplicate of the mirror he’d given the sheriff a while before. For Brandon it was starting to feel like they were taking too long. They’d entered the tower in late afternoon, as the sun was setting, giving them about five hours before the eclipse started. They’d already lost about an hour, fumbling through von Nighburg’s defenses. Under normal circumstances he probably would have insisted on a better plan for what would happen next but given the proximity of Low Noon Brandon knew they had to move as fast as possible.
He took a moment to test his right knee. With the yew fully awakened he didn’t expect any issues with it and, for the moment, he didn’t find any. Still, he didn’t want it to fold during what was likely to be his only contribution to the expedition.
“Stay safe,” Cassie said as he stepped forward.
That wasn’t likely but he kept that to himself. Instead he touched his brow in salute and stepped up to the reflector and touched his hand to it. He was drawn in as soon as he made contact with it and for a moment all he could see was rippling, prismatic colors, then he found himself in a much different room. He caught a glimpse of a small, enclosed space before the floor under him flew up and smashed him into the ceiling.
That was a clever place to put a barrier.
Fortunately yew wood was both tough and flexible and it absorbed most of the impact. He already had the counter charm in his hands and it didn’t break when he hit the ceiling. Brandon wound up crunched into a ball, pressed against the ceiling, a little pained but intact. The mirror Johan gave him wound up clutched to his chest and it took quite a bit of work in order to get it down, past his knees, and into direct contact with the barrier. At that point the spell shattered, just like the previous one, and he dropped to the ground again.
The room was little more than a square box with a polished oval mirror secured to the wall behind him. A quick glance told Brandon the mirror’s frame was identical to the one he’d come through. Opposite it was another door which Brandon quickly tested and confirmed was locked. He wasn’t an expert but it looked like that lock was made of steel. The rest of the room was featureless stone without windows, furniture or decoration, a quintessential antechamber and deathtrap hybrid. No other traps hit him so Brandon quelled the yew and stepped back through the mirror.
The others were gearing up to follow him when he returned, or so Brandon guessed from the slew of weapons they pointed at him when he emerged through the reflector in the lighthouse. He quickly gave them a rundown of what he saw then crossed back with Proud Elk in tow. To Brandon’s surprise, it took the Sanna man all of five seconds to pick the door lock using the narrow, almost prehensile end of his whip club.
Johan set a mirror on the floor by the door and they slowly opened it a sliver so the next room appeared in the reflective surface. To Brandon’s glee, it looked like a typical sanctum. There were bookshelves on the far wall and a large table in the center with some kind of magical contraption on top of it. A series of bronze or brass struts held up a gleaming silver mesh orb. Within it was a smaller, solid gold orb with strange, glowing pinpricks of light scattered around it in an indiscernible pattern. In the reflection it was hard to determine how big it was.
“Dust and ashes.”
Brandon glanced over his shoulder to find Sheriff Warwick staring at the mirror in horror. “What’s the matter?”
“That’s an Immelmann Array.”
Weekly Writing Vlog – 7-26-2023
This week’s writing vlog: Hyping up Anvil #2! And a couple of other things I’m writing.
Take a Look at Anvil Magazine!
Hey, folks!
I sold a short story to Anvil Magazine that is due to come out in October. How can you read it?
Well, the magazine is currently crowdfunding. You can get it in digital or physical formats! If you like independent fiction or just want to support my work give it a look!
https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/197/anvil-iron-age-magazine-issue-2
A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Eleven
Avery unlocked the lighthouse door and stuck the skeleton key back in his pocket. “Last time he didn’t have any traps on the door but there was some kind of complex barrier about ten feet in that stopped us cold. He got Ron Wheeler, the other deputy, by crushing him with it while we were trying to break through. We did break it eventually but von Nighburg may very well have put it back.”
“What kind of barrier was it? A series of interlocking triangles?” Van der Klein asked.
“No, I’ve seen those before and it definitely wasn’t one of those. It was much more chaotic, almost like that pasta stuff they serve out East, except all the lines were straight and the corners square.” Avery squiggled the tip of his finger in twisting patterns that didn’t really match his description. “It was strange and that doesn’t describe it well, but…”
“That’s okay, I know what you’re talking about.” He handed Avery a mirror with several marks on the surface written in waxy chalk. “If you see another barrier like that, place the glass flat against it. Then back up, those barriers tend to throw off a lot of excess heat when they fail.”
“Will your mirror be alright?”
“That charm is a one use trick, so don’t worry about it.”
The mirror was in a bronze frame with a beveled edge and there were signs it had been removed from hinges, like it was originally in a larger frame meant to sit on a table or desk. At a guess, Avery priced it at ten silver marks. “Pretty expensive for a one use charm.”
“Eight marks to keep us alive is a bargain in my book.”
“Won’t argue that.” Avery leaned out a bit so he could look past van der Klein, Samson and Tanner to where Harper waited in the middle of the line that stretched along the narrow stone path beneath the lighthouse. “If von Nighburg cuts us off I’d go ahead and use your skiff to get up to the top.”
“Not sure dividing our forces is the best call at this point,” Harper replied. “But I’ll think about it. If we really wanted to shut all this down we’d have brought iron like I said in the first place.”
“We’d never get through to the hidden space if we used iron, Roy,” van der Klein said. “If we’d done that the girl would be lost for good.”
Harper snorted. “Just open the door before the sun sets entirely.”
The door opened on well oiled hinges, which was surprising since no one had been out to maintain the building in months and the sea air was hard even on good brass fittings. Avery hadn’t thought about it on his first visit but now the fact stood out to him. Had von Nighburg been using the children as housekeepers in addition to whatever else he did with them? An odd choice.
If so he hadn’t tasked them to keep the rest of the building clean. When the door opened a wave of dank, fetid air rolled out to greet them. The dark, rust red stain flecked with pieces of molding, rotted flesh made it clear where it came from. They’d pulled Wheeler’s body out of the front room and left it on the path during the last, abortive raid but the place he’d died was much as it was before. Sheriff Breen’s body was still somewhere on the next floor, doubtless adding to the smell.
Unless von Nighburg had found some dark use for that.
There was a moment’s pause as they pulled out handkerchiefs or scarves to fix over their faces and Cassandra passed a bottle of perfume forward to sprinkle on them. It wasn’t a perfect solution but it did help with the smell. Then Avery lit his candle and carefully stepped into the room, his senses alert for any potential trap or ambush.
So far the lighthouse’s uninvited guest hadn’t ever engaged in direct combat. Before he’d examined Stu Strathmore’s memories Avery had only seen the blackguard’s face in the sketch on his wanted poster. Instead he’d left a number of deadly pushing and crushing traps for interlopers. At least, based on what Avery had seen on his last visit. Johan van der Klein had added a long list of other potential tricks von Nighburg might play with moon prisms and other Teutonic spells added to the mix, including poison gasses and something called madman patterns.
In theory, as a fully trained Son of Harmon, van der Klein could counter these traps. That was why he was the second in line. In practice Avery was deeply uncomfortable relying on that. Wheeler claimed he’d been a magical sapper during the Lakeshire War, a master of booby traps and rigged structures, but he’d been the first one to die last time. Avery figured it was best he rely on his own intuition as much as anything else. After all it worked last time.
The bottom floor of the lighthouse was the living area and the splintered remnants of the table and chairs that had once dominated it were still tossed around the room. Avery’s candle sputtered in the stale air. However the telltale spark of the barriers he’d encountered last time didn’t appear and no stray thoughts met Avery’s questing candle magic as he went looking for the threats. Moving cautiously, the sheriff moved through the twenty foot by twenty foot space, looking back and forth warily. Van der Klein followed behind, pausing a moment to examine the brick stove. It squatted in the far corner, across from the narrow wooden stairway, almost a ladder, that led up to the second floor.
“Anything interesting?” Avery asked as the other man poked at the metal grate and old ashes.
“Looks like the anchor point for the booby trap you encountered earlier.” Van der Klein dusted his hands off and went over to look up the stairway. “Very unorthodox hand. I’m not an expert but I’m fairly sure our blackguard wasn’t trained by anyone in Columbia. There’s still only a few major styles represented over here. His work doesn’t have any of the flourishes I’d expect from those schools.”
“Trained by a continental, then?” Roy asked, joining the two of them at the stairs.
“So I’d surmise. I don’t see any signs of tampering with the stairway but give me a moment.” He set a mirror down on the bottom step of the stairs then another on the highest step he could reach, only one step below the opening in the ceiling. After a little adjusting they had a clear view of the ceiling above and the short hallway that led to the lighthouse’s sleeping quarters. The door off to the side of the opening was barely visible. However they could see enough to make out the strange, repeating pattern that described a large circle painted on the door in blue paint. Van der Klein frowned. “Was that there on your last visit, sheriff?”
“No it was not.”
“Isn’t that a stasis trap?” Harper asked.
“Hard to tell from here but it could be,” van der Klein said. He carefully climbed up on the stairs and moved the top mirror a step higher, then adjusted everything so they had a better look at the design. “Yes, the outer tier is a stasis trap. There’s a second spell nested in there but it’s not anything I recognize, or if it is then he’s drawn the pattern in such an idiosyncratic way that I can’t make sense of it. Very strange.”
“Why’s that?” Brandon asked. The rest of the group had examined the room and congregated by the stairs while van der Klein was tinkering with his mirrors.
“A stasis trap is kind of like a lesser version of the moon prism.” He stowed one mirror and started writing on the other with his wax chalk. “It changes the way time works in a small area. Problem is, if you slow time you also slow down most other magic and thus combining stasis with other kinds of magic generally doesn’t work well.”
“Can you counter it without knowing what the second spell does?” Proud Elk asked.
“Yes. The nested spell will be dependent on the stasis spell working unless von Nighburg has discovered some revolutionary way to perform Teutonic magic.” He finished his work and was about to start up the stairs again when Harper put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll take that. On the off chance you’re wrong about those spells I’d rather not have to explain to your wife why you never came back.” Van der Klein clearly thought about refusing but ultimately turned the warded mirror over to Harper without comment.
The firespinner took the mirror in one hand and unclipped a lantern with two comically large sulfurite crystals in a bronze cage from his pack with the other. Then he carefully climbed the stairs, keeping the mirror facing the trapped door. As his shoulders disappeared through the ceiling there was a sudden flash of blue light and the sound of cracking glass. Harper paused a moment.
“Looks like that worked, Johan,” he called. A strange moaning sound cut off anything else he had to say and the firespinner’s lower body shifted and pivoted, suddenly leaning to the right and bracing against the opening in the floor. A roar of fire, a wave of heat and a surge of yellow orange light poured down around Harper. It was accompanied by sizzling sounds and the sickening sweet smell of burning rot while the groaning noises continued unabated. That lasted about five seconds. Harper looked back and forth once then climbed the rest of the way up. “Wait until I check in.”
The second floor wasn’t any bigger than the first and it took Harper all of fifteen seconds to finish his sweep before his head appeared in the opening. “All clear now. Von Nighburg left a ghoul of some sort for us but I cooked it down fast enough.”
“A ghoul?” Avery climbed up the stairs briskly and found the second floor much unchanged since his last visit. The two bedroom doors stood open giving a brief glimpse of two beds with unkempt linens and little else. A pile of ash and burnt bones lay at the entrance of the room to the left. “Well, I suppose we won’t be sending Sheriff Breen off on his pyre.”
“My apologies.” To Avery’s surprise Harper actually sounded apologetic about it. “It’s usually better to burn a ghoul rather than dismember it but it is a pity he won’t have the normal rites. Raising things like that isn’t usually a Teutonic spell, is it?”
“No,” van der Klein said, cresting the top of the stairs himself. “That’s generally Slavic or Mesopotamian stuff. I think the Nubian traditions have similar spells but that’s far outside my knowledge. Our von Nighburg has an interesting mix of tricks to play, it seems.”
“Why didn’t we hear it until now?” Avery asked. “Ghouls are supposed to be noisy creatures.”
Van der Klein took one step over to the marked door and gave it a look over. “Hard to say for sure but I’d guess whatever spell was nested in the stasis trap also slowed the ghoul somehow. When the stasis spell changed its target to Roy the ghoul was set free. I don’t know much about that kind of magic so I can’t be sure.”
“Dust and ashes,” Tanner muttered, following right behind van der Klein and eyeing Breen’s remains warily. “I’d say ghouls are horrible but I saw what Hank looked like after that blackguard finished with him. Y’don’t suppose he was actually dead and turned into a ghoul, do you?”
“Sure.” Harper’s tone suggested he believed just the opposite. “A ghoul. That’s very possible.”
The old sailor’s face fell and Avery suppressed a twinge of annoyance. Roy Harper was a lot of things but Avery wouldn’t count a good leader among them. In most circumstances the sheriff suspected that a firespinner who worked most jobs alone or with one or two trusted associates wouldn’t really need a good sense for people management. Hopefully van der Klein would be a better fit to managing two townies with little experience in practical violence.
Avery kept an eye on the skinny wizard as they carefully moved on to the next floor of the lighthouse. Von Nighburg left two more traps for them, one was another crushing trap on the ceiling by the next set of stairs which Avery countered with the mirror van der Klein gave him. When the barrier crashed into the mirror they both fractured into shards and scattered on the floor. The pieces of the barrier faded into heat. The shards of the mirror did not.
On the third floor the rotting ghoul of an enormous crustacean waited for them, its claws reaching from one side of the tower to the other. It launched itself at Avery as soon as he peaked over the top of the stairs. That was a poor choice because Avery was able to drop down to the second floor and the giant creature couldn’t follow him. It stuck a claw down trying to grab him and that sealed its fate.
Proud Elk wrapped one end of his whipclub around the claw then he, Samson and eventually Tanner hung on to it, holding the creature in place in spite of its increasingly frantic attempts to escape, while the others stabbed it to death with their weapons. Once the corpse was definitely a corpse again, Brandon used his remarkable strength to push it aside. On the top floor they found themselves in the storage room where barrels of oil, spare reflectors and other supplies to keep the lighthouse beacon lit were kept.
One of the spare reflectors sat in the center of a strange frame made of a gleaming, silvery metal. The frame fit poorly and was clearly not an original part of the reflector and the edges of the frame overlapped with it creating strange, twisting patterns full of odd curling designs marred by sharp spikes at seemingly random intervals. When he first saw it Avery thought it was some kind of silver because he thought he saw it squirming in the corner of his eye. Then Harper pushed past him, running a curious hand over the frame.
The firespinner examined the frame for a full five minutes without speaking, looking at the sides, back and base with incredible scrutiny. The whole time his frown grew deeper and deeper. Avery glanced at van der Klein, unsure why Harper’s handpicked expert wasn’t joining him in his work. From the other man’s expression, van der Klein wasn’t sure what was going on either. So Avery asked, “What’s wrong?”
Harper completed a full circuit around the reflector and folded his arms, head tilted to one side. “I’m not sure… but I think that frame is made of steel.”
Nate Chen Publications 