Clank!

  The sound was faint and distant, but it was there. Sudden and metallic with a tiny bit of echo. Zachary hiked back up the dim tunnel, using the railway ties as stairs. At the fork he took the second path, and then activated his wind-aspect sound amplification weave. He waited. Nothing.

  "Switch the track heaven-ward," Zachary said.

  Sir Torrey flipped the lever in the nearby cabin. The light switched from green to indigo and the railway switch adjusted accordingly. The other man jogged out of the darkness a few moments later, just as Zachary was approaching the parked mine train. Dame Jill Aden and the oculomancer named Fia sat in the second car. Zachary kicked the brakes off and then smoothly leapt over the sidewall to join Sir Torrey in the forward car. It creaked forward into the heaven-ward shaft.

  The mine train quickly picked up speed as it plummeted into the howling dark. Sometimes they passed maw-like caverns of glowing blue ethersteel, accented with rainbow shades of crystal. Eventually the cavern opened up into a chamber filled with colorful and bubbling craters of muddy water. The mine cart caught the brakes and ground to a halt beside an empty station platform. In the silence, Zachary could finally hear the clank sound again. It was much louder and more clear, which meant that they were very close to the source.

  "I hear it now," Dame Jill said. "What is it?"

  "Something Renna didn't want us to find," Fia replied. "We are not far. Come, this way."

  There were several exits along the edge of the loading platform. Fia began marching toward the path behind them, down a small ledge, nestled between two columns of shining green crystal. It was, Zachary realized, not unlike the green crystal tree in the University Fjord at White Chasm. The knights followed the oculomancer.

  "How do you know which way to go?" Sir Torrey asked.

  "I can see auras this way."

  Beyond the crystal columns the narrow cavern was snake-like, twisting back and forth and in places it was so narrow that Zachary and Sir Torrey were forced to climb to a height where their armor could slip through. When they reached the end of the path the way opened up into a vast cylindrical chamber. It was hot and smokey and lit by the pulsing red-orange light of an ocean of lava far below.

  An entire city had been constructed over the lava pit, mostly cut into the walls of the cylinder but with some structures suspended over the void by sturdy chains. Two circular platforms rose from the lava, and from that height Zachary mistook them for the breasts of some great sunken statue. In the center of each platform there was a circular anvil, as tall as a man, and as wide as the long side of a railway boxcar. Ethermancers scurried about upon each platform, protected from the heat and the smoke by wind-aspect barriers. They appeared to be hauling crates of ethersteel ore to the anvils.

  "BEHOLD!" the voice of an old man bellowed. "The Lawgiver blesses us! The Lawgiver guides us!"

  He stood upon a half-circle platform jutting out over the span. He was clad in robes of the dark green color which was common to the Theocracy. His arms were lifted, outstretched, and, with his long white hair and beard, Zachary got the impression the man was some type of prophet.

  "WITNESS!"

  The ethermancers scurried away, leaving the two platforms empty. Metal gates at the perimeters trembled and rose, animated by metal-aspect ethermancy. Lava poured into maze-like channels in the platforms, pouring in toward the center. After a few moments the anvil began to steam. The whole chamber began to quake.

  Sudden motion overhead startled Zachary. As fast as a bullet they descended, two columns of pure stone terminating in broad metal hammerheads. CLANK! They slammed into the anvils hard enough to send wavy walls of lava streaming into the air above the maze-like pattern. When the two hammers ascended again they brought the centers of the platforms with them, pulling away the anvils along with smaller circular sheets. Housed within metallic depressions, steaming and red-hot, there rested the things being forged.

  "OUR SALVATION!"

  The two things levitated into the air, where they rotated in three dimensions before marrying in the center of the chamber. Zachary had never seen such a thing before, but his first instinct told him it was some type of exotic sea craft with two pairs of bone-folder extensions on either side, one pair long, one pair shorter. The upper half appeared to have a hole where a person might fit.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Damn," Fia hissed. "They are mass producing airplanes!"

  "What's an airplane?" Sir Torrey asked.

  "Not now! Sir Zachary, you and your knights need to kill that man! Quickly!"

  "There's something you're not telling us," Zachary said. "Even across that span, he is more than close enough to my sword. He should not be able to use ethermancy at this distance."

  Fia sighed. "As I said, conditions have changed. That man is not an ethermancer. He is a witch. A relatively weak witch, yes, but his powers still work in spite of your sword."

  "Is there a reason you didn't tell us there was a witch hiding down here?" Sir Torrey asked. It was a fair question and one which Zachary was considering as well.

  "This is an emergency situation," Fia explained.

  "That doesn't make any sense," Dame Jill Aden said. "Don't the oculomancers have several weeks of warning before a witch develops their powers?"

  "Not this one," Fia replied. "We don't know why. He developed his powers instantly, just a few hours ago. I have done my best to prevent the spire witches from using a bunker buster to destroy this entire mountain."

  What the hell is a bunker buster? Zachary wondered. He said: "We will kill him now."

  "Shouldn't we try to figure out why he suddenly gained his powers?" Dame Jill asked.

  "He needs killing, we kill him," Zachary said flatly. "Spread out. Dame Jill, go heaven-ward. Sir Torrey, go life-ward. Create a distraction, then I'll leap across the middle."

  Any further protests squashed, the other knights did as they were told. With a swish of her red robes, Dame Jill leapt away and vanished into the gloom of the cobblestone streets heaven-ward. The oculomancer Fia followed. Dark silhouettes regarded them from the verandas and windows of the false front buildings. Pistols were drawn, but the knight and the oculomancer were too quick. Blood-red lines of light marked the passing of Dame Jill's spirit-lattice ethersteel short sword. Shouts were cut short as men died in the dark.

  Meanwhile, Sir Torrey dropped off the ledge and began negotiating the metal gantries and cranes life-ward. Zachary crouched and waited. Workers in hard hats began to scramble and flee, which might have saved them if they had anywhere to run. Sir Torrey executed a rapid sequence of reckless overhead swings with his war axes, which had the effect of splitting their hats and their skulls into thirds. One desperate man leapt from the gantry and tumbled toward the lava far below, limbs flailing, screaming. This appeared to draw the ire of the witch-prophet on the platform across the span.

  Zachary crouched, grasped Renna's Blade with one hand, and activated the life-ward weave which vastly enhanced his strength.

  "WHAT IS THIS?" The prophet bellowed, his voice amplified by wind-aspect weaves. "Who dares challenge the might of the Lawgiver! I am His chosen champion! I am Messiah to His people!"

  With one great leap Zachary launched himself clear across the chamber, through the vast shimmering heat, all the way to the Messiah's platform. Even as he was landing he was beginning to transition Renna's Blade in a sweeping horizontal arc. The tip cleaved straight through the old man's arm and lodged itself in the center of his heart. His eyes went wide, and for a moment Zachary was certain he was dead.

  The familiar green light of a life-aspect healing weave erupted from the man, enveloping his entire body. The streams of blood flowing from his stump seemed to reach out and reconnect with the severed arm as it fell, and with a sinuous twist the thing reattached itself. His face too seemed to come alive as the wounds in his chest healed, even while Zachary's greatsword occupied the space where his heart would have been.

  "A Varelion," the Messiah said. "Of course. I should have expected that the Blue Wolf would be involved."

  Zachary said nothing. He ripped Renna's Blade from the man's chest and hurled him backward. Then Zachary advanced, slashing and stepping and slashing again, too fast for the other man to react. With a low spinning sweep he took off the man's feet at the ankles. He followed up this attack with a crushing overhead slash that smashed the man's eyes out of his skull. Once again, a burst of green light brought this expanding gore together in a network of bloody tendrils. He reformed and staggered, and Zachary pressed the attack.

  "You can't kill me!" the Messiah proclaimed. "The Lawgiver..."

  Zachary struck the man with the tip of the hilt hard enough to shatter his jaw. By then he had pushed the man all the way off the platform to the veranda of the false front building directly opposite. The next slash of his sword hit the wood so hard that the entire structure buckled and collapsed on the hapless witch. As the Messiah was rising from the splintered ruins a shadow appeared, flowing wraith-like through the dark places with glowing purple eyes. A flash of silver. A hissing, steamy release. Magenta fluid sprayed in a quartet of slashes in the air, right through the Messiah's throat. He struggled for a step, then collapsed into the wooden wreck and did not move.

  Fia, daughter of Fjenna, loomed over the seizing body of the Messiah. One hand was shining silver, dripping blood and some strange magenta liquid. She spat.

  "Excellent work," she said. She gazed up toward the blackness of the cylinder's roof. Her eyes relaxed as if in a trance. "Spire Renna has been informed. The etherborn has been subjugated. No further actions are required. Sir Zachary, you just saved my ass."

  Zachary reached one finger into his mouth and began to fiddle with one molar that was aching. He chewed a few times and then spat in turn. "So then where is Maxius the Younger?"

  Fia pointed to the wall heaven-ward from where they now stood. Workers were busy tugging the odd craft through a small gap in the stone by the chains which bound it. "We follow the airplanes," she said. "That will either lead us to Maxius or Quinn. Most likely Quinn."

  "And if we don't find Maxius," Zachary said. "Then we follow Quinn until we find him."