Warsinger: Chapter Twenty-Seven

I gathered the crew in Kalla Sahasi’s War Room, which was really just the ballroom but with a table. The castle’s actual war-room was missing its ceiling thanks to one of the Demon’s catapults, so we’d moved the castle’s dining table in here and had set it up for meetings. I’d taken screenshots of the fresco and set them to Suri and Rin, who were still looking off into space with expressions of curiosity and awe. Ebisa and Istvan couldn’t see them, so they had listened to our description. Karalti, who had seen it, was busily devouring an entire raw carp at the other end of the table.

“There were ten Warsingers, all created near the end of the Drachan War, and five Triads across a four-thousand-year span,” I said, looking around. “Each Triad is a team of six Starborn who have the ability to open the Dragon Gates and somehow access them to repair – or destroy – the Caul of Souls. The Caul itself incarnates the appropriate Starborn into Archemi if it’s being threatened with destruction.”

“Six people? Not three?” Istvan asked.

“The ‘Triad’ part of the Triad refers to the role each pair takes,” I replied. “The Paragon is a dragon and bonded rider pair in charge of the Spear of Nine Spheres.”

“I’m the dragon!” Karalti waved to him, her cheeks bulging as she chewed.

“The Artist pair are Artificers who manage the technical and mechanical aspects of the Gates, I guess,” I continued, looking to Rin and Ebisa, before my gaze slid over to Suri. “And the Warsinger pairing represents the Warsinger itself as well as the pilot who controls it.”

“I see.” Istvan rubbed his chin. “You have the Spear, so you and Karalti are obviously the Paragon pairing. Are Rin, Ebisa and Lady Suri…?”

“Dunno,” Suri said. “I doubt it. I don’t know shit about Artifacts. Can’t speak for Rin and Red over there.”

Ebisa, who had dressed in her red travelling leathers for the day, shook her head. “I’m not Starborn. I’m not an Artificer for that matter, either. My… creator ‘gifted’ me with his Artificing knowledge. I can tell people how to do something. Rin has to do all the actual work.”

“YOU fixed the Spear?” I cocked my head at Rin.

She nodded, brushing blue. “E-Ebisa did everything but hold the lathe, though! It was mostly her… I just… did what I was told!”

If Ebisa had any eyes, she would have rolled them. “Modesty does not become you, kitten.”

“I think I understand what this is about,” Istvan said. “But I have a question. Why are we searching for these Warsingers to fight Baldr, to the exclusion of other options? Vlachia is one of the most magically advanced civilizations in the world. Surely we can take down this man and his dragons.”

Suri grunted. “Wouldn’t count on it.”

“It’s not the dragons I’m worried about.” I began taking out the sheaves of wax rubbings we’d made at the tomb, laying them out along the table. “Firstly, we need at least one Warsinger to be able to open the Dragon Gates, and secondly, we need them to defeat the Drachan if or when they break out of their cage. They were made specifically to fight Void creatures. How they do that, exactly, we don’t know, but every story, myth, and old wives’ tale we’ve read agrees with the historical accounts.”

“Hmm.” Istvan sucked on one of his teeth, then nodded. “Fair enough. But I remain skeptical. The one you found was able to be defeated by a single Starborn – you – and you didn’t even have Karalti with you to help.”

“Nocturne Lament was, in Lahati’s words, the ‘smallest and weakest’ of the Warsingers,” I said. “It was a prototype, and it was in bad shape. The only reason it was moving at all was because it was also a revenant. Each one of the Warsingers has an… uh… animating spirit in it. This one’s spirit had somehow managed to seize control of the artifact and was puppeteering it around, but it was dumb as shit and I was able to trick it into destroying itself. I can assure you that if Nocturne had been piloted by a human being while I was fighting it, I’d be so fucking dead right now. That thing was horrifying.”

“Istvan raises a good point, though.” Ebisa gestured with a hand. “We’ve had a chance to examine Nocturne Lament, and about eighty percent of it will have to be rebuilt from scratch if we were to salvage it. All Artifacts with moving parts experience entropy. If the remaining Warsingers are between two to five thousand years old, they are almost certainly both obsolete and too damaged to be used.”

“That depends on who made it and how well it was made. For example, Exhibit A.” I removed the Gauntlet of the Arch-Smith and the Hammer from my Inventory, and leaned over to hand them to Rin. “We didn’t take much from the tomb before resealing it, but we grabbed these. That glove is two thousand years old, and it works perfectly at four percent durability.”

Rin turned the gauntlet over in her hands, lips parted. “Oh look at this… the Gauntlet of the Arch-Smith, mrr mrr mrr… Oh my god. This is a legendary relic!?”

“Yeah. The hammer is pretty good, too.”

“Yes, it is, but this thing has TWENTY mana slots?! I can’t use it for nineteen more levels, but…” Rin’s eyes widened to the size of saucers as she eagerly slid it on. She, Istvan and Ebisa all jumped as the hexagonal plates unlocked and clacked their way into place along her arm. Suri’s eyebrows shot up, and Karalti stopped chewing for a moment. “Wow! Hector, this thing is amazing! Look at that craftsmanship! It’s so simple, but to execute this so it can lock into place and form to someone’s limb while keeping that kind of mana capacity and flexibility and…”

“And it’s made of pure aurum.” Ebisa caught her by the wrist and pulled her arm over, running her fingers along the different parts. When she found the button, she pushed it, and we all watched as it folded back down. “There might only be four or five aurum artifacts like this in the world, Hector.”

“Aurum being…?” Istvan motioned to the glove.

“Aurum is an extremely durable, incorruptible non-ferrous arcane superalloy with exceptionally low ductility and exceptionally high hardness,” Rin replied absent-mindedly. Her voice was quick, fussy and flat now, and she didn’t look up at Istvan as she studied the surface of it. “Its mana toxicity rating is fifteen-point-two, it has to be smelted at two thousand nine hundred and four degrees kelvin in a tungsten crucible and can only be worked with diamond edged tools with a minimum enchantment of plus five...”

“So it’s very hard and very strong and magical enough that no normal human being wants anything to do with it.” Istvan watched on with amusement as Rin took out a small screwdriver from somewhere, and began to poke and pry at it. 

Rin nodded. “Yes, and the Warsinger painting Hector saw showed a gold-colored Warsinger, right? If the Warsingers were made of aurum, or even lambidium…?”

“Either metal would preserve for that length of time, yes, but that doesn’t mean all the Warsinger’s components would be made of superalloys capable of weathering that amount of time.” Ebisa rasped. “If so, aurum is more likely. I don’t know if there’s enough lambidium in the world to produce even one machine the size and complexity of the one we recovered.”

“Could it be rare because our ancestors dug it all up to make a bunch of Warsingers, maybe?” Suri drawled.

Istvan snerked.

“I need to take this to my workshop like, right away Oh my god.” Rin flexed her hand and arm with a happy sound, bouncing on her seat. “It feels so natural! Like it’s part of my arm!”

Istvan’s expression turned wistful. “If only Vash could get an arm like that.”

Rin flushed blue, and shoved her hands into her lap with a rueful grimace. “Oh… sorry… I didn’t mean to flash it around like that…”

“No, no, craftswoman. I wasn’t having a go at you.” Istvan chuckled, and waved a hand. “Just the idle musings of a man who frets too much. You lose one partner, you worry about them all.”

“You lost your partner?” Rin’s brows furrowed.

“Yes. My wife, my daughter, and our household all died when this city was taken by the Demon, along with… many other people and creatures I cared about.” Istvan’s humor faded, and he turned his eyes up to the faded green banners that fluttered from the ceiling. “But that was another life. We need to focus on what we are here for: planning our next steps on the path to finding this Warsinger.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Suri pulled the big leather-bound book I’d borrowed for her and thumped it down on the table. “So, we’ve basically got a lead on one Warsinger from the tomb Hector and Karalti found, and we’ve got another from that book you gave me. It has a chapter on Sachara, so good find on that one.”

“Do tell.” I batted my eyelashes at her.

Suri tapped the cover. “Not gonna lie: this Meewfolk scholar is a pretty fuckin’ dull read, but he knows his shit. According to him, Sachara was born in Dakhdir as a gladiatorial slave. Khors came to her in a dream, turned her Starborn, and told her that her destiny was to emancipate the humans, Mercurions, Lys, Dragons, and Meewfolk from the Aesari. Well, somehow she broke her chains and went and fuckin’ did it over the course of about fifty years. It says that Khors gifted Sachara five kinds of knowledge: The Knowledge of Kings, the Talent of the Smith, and the Sciences of the Magic, War and Medicine. She found the Spear of Nine Spheres in Napath and went north with it to reforge it in a volcanic forge temple to Khors, location unknown. However, after some un-specified adventures where she liberated a bunch of Mercurions, she returned to Dakhdir as a giantess who led a massive army of Meewfolk, dragons and humans against the Aesari in the Shalid. They won, eventually, but the Aesari nearly destroyed the Caul with their magic. The book doesn’t name a Triad: it just says ‘at the end of the greatest war known to this world, one Starborn from every race gathered at the tomb of Khors to calm the souls within the Caul and restore it to balance, and thus gave up their immortality’.”

“Their immortality?” I frowned.

“Yup. ‘After restoring the Caul, Sachara was no longer Starborn. She returned north as a mortal woman to the ‘the Great Grass Sea, the open lands of the plains-riders and the dragons’ to help them deal with the Aesari stragglers. She was planning to settle there, but returned to Dalim after, and I quote, ‘she found her lover fornicating with his mount’.”

Rin giggled. Istvan shot me a pointed look.

“If she was talking about Grigori, his mount was a dragon and she probably was like… totally into it,” I flushed, feeling maybe slightly called out after my brief experience with Karalti in the sewers.

“Mm hmm!” Karalti bobbed her head, sucking on her fingers. She had put away the entire fish, including the skin, bones and fins.

Suri cocked an eyebrow at her. “Anyway, after that, Sachara went back to Dalim, took a harem of nubile young gentlemen to cheer herself up, and apparently ruled wisely and well for the rest of her days. The historian notes, however, that when Grigori and his Queen were murdered-”

“Whoa.” I held up my hands. “Wait: the founder of the Order of St. Grigori was murdered?”

“Martyred, murdered, same diff,” Suri replied.

“Did it say how?”

“This book didn’t, no.” Suri shrugged. “Anyway, Sachara went to his funeral and shaved her head out of grief, and apparently never appeared in public ever again. Her daughters carried her bloodline on.”

“So the Fireblooded were the original inhabitants of Dakhdir?” Ebisa said. “Interesting.”

“Well, humans and Lys have only been on Archemi about five thousand years, and Mercurions only a little less than that,” Rin added. “That’s really possible.”

“For real?” Suri looked up sharply.

“Yes,” Ebisa replied. “Your kind were bought here by the Drachan. Humans hadn’t been here even two generations when the first of us were created.”

Rin pressed her lips together and nodded. “The Phaedra say humans were the slaves of the Drachan who broke free and joined the battle against their old masters. The Zaryans say humans remained loyal to the Drachan, and that’s why they hold them in contempt. 

“It was probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B,” I said. “Humans are dumb like that.”

“Why do you think I play a Mercurion?” Rin flashed me a shy crystal-toothed smile, which faded as she spotted something and cocked her head. “You said you took some more rubbings?”

“Yeah. Here.” I pulled them out of my inventory and spread them out. “I figured we wouldn’t be able to translate any of these-“

“That’s Tlaxi’ca,” Ebisa said quickly, leaning over the scroll with the weird spiral writing. “The Elder Script, the same language used by Mercurions today." 

"Can you understand it?" I asked, craning my neck.

"Yes.” Ebisa didn't have normal eyes: she had a row of six large red gems in a band across her face. She didn't blink, and she had to move her head to track the sentences as she read, her lipless mouth pressed into a thin line.

“And?” Suri craned her head in.

“This is a description of a battle,” she replied. "It picks up from the middle of it. 'We routed the Aesari through the pass and they fled out into the snows ahead of the Empress. She hounded them screaming and burning through the mountains, turning the snows to rivers and then turning the rivers red with the blood of the slavers. After the battle was concluded, the Diamond Queen and her Bonded returned to their land of Hyrsinii, parting from Her Eminence, who paid her respects at the grave of the Dark God and knelt here, in Karad, so the Burned Rose of Dakhdir might be repaired by her Artists, Phaedra and Zarya, and the Arch-Smith Malech Ba’nadi. To Khors we give praise and honor for our victory, victory led by his divine child, Taltas."

“Taltas again.” I scratched my jaw. “Could ‘Taltas’ be another name Sachara used?”

“It must be. Maybe she got turned into a man in the stories… wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.” Suri frowned. “Was there any more script? Anything we could use to date this, make sure it’s not about someone else entirely?”

“There’s plenty down there, but the books and scrolls were too fragile to touch. The only other thing I bought back was this.” I pulled the medallion off and held it out to her. 

Suri took it curiously, then paused, an odd expression crossing her face.

“What?” I asked.

“This thing just gave me a quest update.” She frowned, scanning her HUD. “I’m supposed to take it to the Morning Stars. Remember them? ‘This medallion, a relic of the era of the Demon Queen’, will be of extreme interest to the Morning Stars. Take it to them and learn more about its origins and purpose.’”

“Then I guess we’re going to Dakhdir,” I said. “Let’s take a couple days to level up, clear a few more local kingdom quests, and then head south before Suri’s quest gets any harder. All in favour?”

Suri silently put her hand up.

“Aye.” Istvan raised his hand. “Though I have to go and say my farewells, and make sure Vash stays in his damn bed.”

“I don’t know if we can go to Dakhdir. Ebisa and I need to go to Litvy so I can at least finish one of my projects, otherwise I won’t level up,” Rin said, deflating slightly. “I can be in reserve and join you if you find a Warsinger, but if I’m way behind on EXP. If I don’t power-level, I won’t be able to work on anything more complex than Lovelace and Hopper. I’m sorry to ask, but would it be possible to get a lift back to the RCE tonight?”

The RCE was the Royal College of Engineers. I motioned to my dragon. “That’s up to Karalti. I need to go take care of some Voivoiding, but after that..?”

“Sure!” Karalti chirped. “I don’t mind. I can change shape back and forth one more time today.”

“Now you mention it, there IS something in Litvy I want to do,” Suri said, with a small, sly smile. “But we’ll talk about that later. After you’re done Voivoding.”