113. [Carina] Everywhere Ashes

Thus, with the rise of the blue moon, the First Granting reached its end.

King Mudt and the rest of the Orvesian champions were dead, their wish thwarted. Infinzel would stand.

Only one of the pyramidal city’s champions had fallen, but not by the blade of any Orvesian. Instead, Infinzel’s champion was struck down by Sulk, the former Orvesian who now existed under a symbol all of his own. In their effort to defeat Infinzel and stop the annihilation to come, all of Sulk’s fellow Shield Bearers had been slain.

So, too, had been Sulk. But he rose again.

The gods returned Sulk to the streets of Beacon where his newly founded Ministry would soon take root. The healers of Beacon rushed to him, pouring their energies into their leader, even at the brutal cost of an arcane bargain turned impossibly greedy. One woman stood out from the rest as she set to work on Sulk with needles and tubes and sutures, the symbol of a gear upon her neck.

While this transpired around him, Sulk wept.

“I have failed,” he said. “Again and again, I have failed.”  

And yet, with one dead champion of Infinzel, Sulk saved thousands, your humble scribe included. One wonders if that let Sulk rest easier in the short years he had left to live. Did he comfort himself with the faces of those he saved? Or did he dwell on the ones he could not? A pile of the dead at Sulk’s feet, limbs tangled, pressed forever between him and the walls of Infinzel.

Did the siege ever truly end for Sulk?

One wonders.  

What became of those killed upon the island? Mudt and his followers. The rest. What did the gods do with the bodies? Are they still there, in the twisting dirt? Every year since, the island has reshaped itself, wrung the blood and bones clean from its land, the gods squeezing a washcloth dry so that champions could bleed anew. Does King Mudt continue there? Forever a part of the game he so detested, which he played so poorly?

One wonders.

Like Sulk, the champions and their Quills returned home. They made a new calendar and began to count the days. They had seen their enemies now, and knew them better. From the salty palaces of the Bay to the frozen north, plans were laid. The people lived in peace under the gods’ protection, and yet none felt safer as time passed. They had heard tales of what befell the vast and powerful Orvesis and knew that if such a fate could befall that powerful land, then their lives meant little, were worth only what a champion might be willing to pay. They whispered of annihilation and wondered.

We need not wonder.

It must be told, then, in conclusion, that not all Quills returned home with their champions.

And so, we come to King Hectore of Infinzel, who wished for annihilation.

Glassy-eyed, sweating, the fat king of Infinzel found himself high on a hilltop. Beneath him, grasslands and animals grazing, and at the heart of it all the city of Krupt, the most populated of all Orvesis, only now coming to life with the dawn. Here were the wives and sisters and elders and children left behind by King Mudt’s roving armies. Here was the library where your author brewed his morning tea, in the backroom his wife, newborn suckling at her breast.

Quiet.

Quiet and so far from the island. So far from these kings and their gods.

“What?” King Hectore asked. “What is this?”

He felt the shimmer of the gods beside him. A throbbing pressure, a stitch in reality, such that his watery eyes could not quite fix upon them.  

“Orvesis,” the gods intoned.

King Hectore shook his head. Far from his pyramid now. He had never desired to see our grasslands. He tried not to imagine his enemies in such ways.

“Yes,” King Hectore replied, with his regal surety trembling. “But why?”

“Three of your champions survived the Granting.”

“My brother?”

“Amongst them.”

King Hectore nodded. “Then…?”

“We shall grant you three-fourths of your wish,” the gods said. “You wished to see Orvesis annihilated.”

“I…” King Hectore rubbed his eyes. “If that is to be their fate, so be it. I take you at your word.”

“But, King Hectore,” the gods said, “you wished to see.”

ASHES.

ASHES EVERYWHERE.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS MADE INTO ASHES TREES AND BRICKS AND MY WIFE AND THE TASTE OF HER BURNT THE GRASS ITSELF THE INSECTS THE CHILDREN’S DOLLS AND I AM CRAWLING I AM CRAWLING THROUGH IT AND PULLING THE BABY THE ONE SURVIVOR TO MY CHEST AND THERE IS A KING SCREAMING IN THE ASHES THE ASHES EVERYWHERE.

EVERYWHERE ASHES.

In the artificial night that now hung over Orvesis, King Hectore clawed at his face and screamed until his throat bled. Hours passed and he knelt there atop his hill, choking on the horror of his own wish. Until, at last, in an effort to see no more, King Hectore grabbed handfuls of the ash that was once proud Orvesis and ground the remains into his eyes.

“No more,” King Hectore murmured. “I have witnessed enough.”

Upon his neck, a stain, a blackbird.

Thus comes the Dawn of the Second Age and the birth of the Orvesian Witnesses.

All kings must burn.

All gods must die.

--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age

Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis

***

Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 4th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, building something new

Reed Rose, a Gadgeteer of no particular renown, last of an old crew

***

23 Clocksend, 61 AW

A warehouse in Beacon, South Continent

7 days until the next Granting

A bead of sweat curled down Carina's nose, hung at the tip, and dropped. Without thinking, she caught it on her tongue, like a frog would a fly. Even the slightest moisture could disrupt the delicate rune-work she applied to the brick. She was only using ink now—the plain black kind, nothing special—filling in the grooves she’d made with a chisel and pick. Carina practiced as if the work was done in chanic, as if one mistake might bring collapse. The rune-work was real enough, either way. A symbol that would detect motion chained to a set of runes that would produce artificial light. The old ways imbued into her art, pulling at her.

Carina’s hand trembled. The muscles in her knuckles felt like they were starting to shrivel. At the same moment, she sensed [Artificer] fade on her chest. The cost was too high to keep going like this, but gods she was so close.

The door to the warehouse screeched open. That meant it was morning. Carina had worked through the night again. She exhaled, smelling the stale quality of her own breath, and tossed her tools down on the table beside her. She stepped back, massaging the small of her back and allowing her sweat to drop wherever it might. Surveying her progress, she shook her head. Every day, she filled these walls with more symbols, etched links between them, or scratched them out when she found a simpler way. The designs were almost there; she could at least give herself that. 

It was the power source that she still hadn’t quite figured out. A source of energy that didn’t rely upon the eternal youth of a king and his offspring.

She had only one idea that she knew would work. It could only be temporary, though. Too dangerous to get reliant on the stuff, too many unknowns. Carina rubbed her chest—the crimson-flecked Ink feeling like bindings beneath her sweat-soaked tunic.

After one more stretch, Carina dropped onto her hands and knees and crawled through the dog-sized door where Infinzel's training pit would be. The air outside the model was cooler. She stood up, brushed herself off, and gazed up at the recreation of Infinzel. The pyramid stood thirty feet tall, right up to the warehouse's ceiling, with a hinged cross-section on the southwest corner so that Carina could peel the pyramid open and observe her work if she so wished. At the moment, she did not. Her pupils vibrated in her skull and she made three slow blinks, counting down her heartbeats.

Reed Rose tapped her arm with a canister of juice, the same one that he brought for Carina every morning. She took the container from him and gulped down half, growing thirstier as she drank. The concoction was part spinach and part apple, and then some crushed-up vitamins that the Gadgeteers had balanced to manage the side effects of kafette overuse. The drink was popular here in the city of innovation, especially with Gadgeteers who had been taken by the insatiable urge to create.

“How's progress?” Reed asked while she drank. He held out a handkerchief for her to blot her mouth with.

“I won't be done in time,” Carina said. “Critical functions I think I can manage, so long as nothing goes wrong and draws too much power. But the comforts, the indulgences, the gods damned–” She waved her hand at the pyramid. “The elevators. The expense of it all. Those things might take some time. A painful transition like that will only create chaos, which will create risk for critical functions, which starts a spiral of collapse…”

“That's more progress than you made in the old days,” Reed said. He tapped his temple. “I still think on those sketches of yours, time to time.”

“Still not enough.”

“More progress than I've seen anyone else make, too,” the Gadgeteer continued. “Still a popular game, you know? Deconstructing the secrets of Infinzel. Every few months, someone takes a shot. It's why the model was so easy to get on short notice.”

Carina handed his handkerchief back. “Thank you again, Reed.”

He nodded as he folded the fabric over, then used it to dab at his own eye where moisture had built up. The eyelid was half-gone on that side of his face, the skin on his cheek puckered with burn scars. His blonde hair prematurely receded where the skin turned taut and pink.

“You’re paying me,” Reed replied. “All the gratitude I need.”

Reed didn't have those scars when Carina got to know him during her first tenure in Beacon. He had been the only contact of hers from the old days that was immediately available. Lately, Reed hadn't much luck finding steady work. The Gadgeteers didn't like to be reminded of failures and Reed's scars were exactly that. They called him ‘Roasted’ Reed Rose now, he told her. His specialty had been in explosives. Often, that meant illicit jobs, the kind of ‘night-work’ that Gadgeteers frowned upon in public but still took eagerly if it meant progress. Apparently, one of Reed's jobs had blown up in his face. The Ministry had asked too many questions about what he'd been doing—and who with—and so refused him healing. Carina hadn’t asked Reed for more details and she tried not to stare at his scars, just like he tried not to stare at her Ink. Both had undergone their changes.

“You want breakfast?” Reed asked.

Carina nodded. “And to stretch my legs.”

“It’s Demo Day,” Reed said. “You want to go to the beach? See your competitors?”

Carina lit up. She had a hard time keeping track of the calendar when she was in this mode, but she’d always loved Demo Day. It was when the Gadgeteers took to the beach outside Beacon to show off their latest creations. This close to the Granting, she was sure that the Gadgeteer champions would be there, too, ready to accept any last minute gifts that might help them survive the island.

“Is it still Gaetano in the armor?” she asked.

“You already know it is,” Reed replied.

Carina smirked. “I had such a crush on him when I was a girl.”

“Never thought you had time for crushes,” Reed replied. He smoothed his hair across his head, an attempt to cover his burns. “The man’s only gotten more handsome, actually. It’s a bit unfair.”

“Demo Day, then,” Carina said. “For sure.”

Reed handed her a satchel. “Fresh laundry.”

He made a point of stepping toward the model, dusting off one of the pyramid’s ledges while Carina got changed. Reed was easy to work with. He made things simple for Carina. He kept to her schedule, did what she asked, and didn’t nag her about overworking herself. He didn’t chide her for moving too fast. He wasn’t inclined to try to sleep with her. Carina couldn’t imagine how unproductive these last weeks in Beacon would have been if Traveon had come along as intended.

At the thought, Carina took a deep, shuddering inhale, blew it out, and hoped that Reed hadn’t heard. The bleak feelings came on whenever she thought of Traveon and why he’d turned back from their journey when they reached Noyega. Bel Guydemion was dead. The Quill of Soldier’s Rest, the man who had basically raised Carina after she lost her parents. He was dead and Carina had no doubt why. Because Cizco Salvado wanted it to be so. If she’d gone back to Infinzel instead of fleeing to Beacon, she might have done something to save him.

Or, she might have ended up just as dead as the old man.

What had happened back home? It was hard to get reliable news from across the ocean and Traveon hadn’t written to her like he promised. He was the Quill now, as improbable as that seemed. What fate had befallen the others? Watts? Cortland? She’d heard rumors of shipments from Infinzel getting delayed, of ships being turned back downriver. Any change in the city’s routine meant trouble.

Carina swallowed. She would have her answers in a week’s time. And, by then, she needed to have answers for them, too. She needed to have a plan for Infinzel. An alternative that she could pitch as a way to free King Cizco from his bondage to Infinzel, but that would also free Infinzel from him.

Chanic. With such limited time, it was the only option Carina had.

“Any word from our Gen'bi?” Carina asked as she loosed her hair from its knot. “He was supposed to be here two days ago.”

“They're not the most reliable people. You know that. Asperonto was the sanest one I've met and even he had his peculiarities.”

Carina frowned as she remembered Asperonto. The Gen'bi had lumbered through the streets of Beacon, twitching his head and shouting at the pavement. She had bought her first vial of chanic from that man at a rate that felt extortionate at the time, but which she gladly would've paid now. When Carina had set out to bribe her way into the Magelab with a boat's worth of chanic, it had been Asperonto who had tipped her to the Crucifalian supply she would eventually make disappear from the manifest of a merchant gellezza. She'd paid him handsomely for that bit of information, though she never quite understood what use the nomads had for money. They had all gotten away clean, a little richer for the trouble, and Carina had gone off to Magelab with her spoils.

“How did he die?” Carina asked. 

Reed shrugged. “How do any of them die? Rode off into the desert and never came back. His apprentice took over the business. Never liked him much. Dresses himself up like a scoundrel from the Bay.”

Carina barely remembered the younger Gen'bi whose primary function seemed to be watering Asperonto’s strange animals and getting slapped in the back of the head by his master. In her memory, he was jittery and leering, and she vaguely remembered some trouble about him stealing a bracelet from a market stand. A background character that she now had to deal with like he mattered. 

“Let’s say he doesn’t show,” Carina said. “Where else can I get chanic?”

Reed held the warehouse door open for her. “In the quantity you’re after? With your timeline? Even if you emptied your accounts, I’m not sure we’d find a seller.”

“Paying is the path of least resistance,” Carina said. “But it’s not the only way.”

“No,” Reed agreed. “It’s not.”

As Reed locked the door behind them, Carina took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. Palm trees swayed overhead, planted at perfect increments on the paved thoroughfare. Although it was early, Carina could still hear the hum of foundries, the languid chatter from taverns that never closed, and the crank of gears. Someone was always at work in Beacon. Across the way, an umbo from the Ministry shuffled his way down the street, sweeping the gutters. Further down the block, two young Gadgeteers tinkered with a lamppost that had been dark the night before. A city dedicated to service and progress, in equal measure. Carina had enjoyed her time here. Life here felt simple and productive compared to the toxic politics she had endured while in Penchenne, and the exacting academia she would later find in Magelab. Sometimes, she envisioned a gear on her neck instead of the pyramid. That would've been easier. 

They walked north toward the sea, out from the warehouses and workshops, and onto a street where all the buildings were chunky blocks with windows slotted like judgmental eyes. Turn a corner in Beacon and you would find a change in architecture, each new stretch brought forth from the imagination of a different Gadgeteer, improved upon by another, and then another. Only the massive stone fortress belonging to the Ministry of Sulk remained unchanging. Carina could see it from here, in the gap between buildings—a scene of verdant farmland carved into the great granite walls, a quote from Sulk himself ringing the rooftop. From her vantage point, Carina could see only the word ‘enemy’ but she knew the whole thing: Those who wish harm onto others, we will make you our enemy.

A good policy, if you never wanted to run out of enemies.

“Hypothetically,” Carina said. “Let’s talk robberies.”

Reed frowned. “How long did we spend getting the last one set?”

“Months,” Carina said.

“Almost a year,” Reed replied. “Now, you’re talking a week.”

“I have advantages that I didn’t have last time,” Carina said. “Just walk me through our options.”

“All your old friends,” Reed said. “Merchants have the quantity but run things out of the Bay, mostly. Only reason they might move a shipment through here is if it’s bound for Magelab and you know how seriously they take security. Crucifalia is still a soft target but I hear their deposits are running dry. Been a little tense with them in Beacon. A dispute with Gadgeteer management, I hear. Unpaid contracts.”

None of this sounded good to Carina. She considered reaching for her [Future Sight] but stopped herself. The possibilities were too varied, too thin—she’d do nothing but make herself crazy trying to shuffle through them all.

“What I need is a stash,” Carina said. “All I need is to get close. Then, I’ll see myself in, and see myself out.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be as complicated as all that, after all,” Reed said. He pointed his chin down the street. “Better late than never, huh?”

The first thing Carina noticed was the nomad’s bright white hat. It shone like the sun, unnaturally clean compared to the rest of the young man. Too ironic by half, that touch. Even at a distance, she could see the jewels sparkling on the Gen’bi. A garish little man who rode right down the middle of the street, his shoulders loose and rolling with the movement of his beast—a tall, gazelle-like creature with legs like bolts of lightning. He wore his shirt open and, thirty yards away, Carina could see the whorls of Ink.

Peplucaria. The name returned to Carina. They used to call him Peppy behind his back.

“You didn’t tell me he was a champion,” Carina said.

“I didn’t know,” Reed replied. “The Gen’bi Quill must be malfunctioning.”

“It’s interesting,” Carina replied. “I can use it.”

As they watched, Peplucaria turned his head to say something to his companion, a joke probably, by the way the Gen’bi laughed. His companion didn’t respond. At first, Carina took the boy to be another Gen’bi, an apprentice probably, much like Peplucaria had once been for Asperonto. But, upon closer inspection, he had the skin and hair of an islander, and a scimitar strapped to the side of his mount. Carina squinted.

“Well, let’s say hello,” Reed said and started to step into the street.

Carina stopped him. She pulled Reed under the archway of the building at their back. He raised an eyebrow which she ignored. A low warning buzzed in the back of her head.

[Alert].

They let Peplucaria and his companion ride on. The islander boy slumped in his saddle, looking exhausted, although his eyes flicked across Beacon’s architecture with an earnest wonderment. A child seeing his first real city. He looked like nothing. Like nobody.

So, why did he scream danger?

Why did he make the flecks of red on Carina’s chest turn hot and itchy?  

“I know him,” Carina said. “The other one.”

“From where?” Reed asked.

“From…”

From a painting in Ink made by a sentient gargoyle in the tunnels under Infinzel. The boy looked slightly older now, his features hardened, his hair bigger and unkempt. But, she had no doubt, it was the face from the wall.

“Uicha de Orak,” Carina said. “What are you doing here?”