Fortress Al-Mir

Agnete stood at the center of the Shadow Forge, frowning down into the swirling black mass that pooled within the crucible. She had always considered herself a creative person. During her downtime with the inquisitors, she often found herself left to her own devices. She liked to pass the time creating small sculptures, usually by turning sand to molten glass in her bare hands and then shaping the glass from there.

Since joining with Arkk, she had taken to spending time in the forge. At first, because it was a place where her natural, comfortable temperature went desired rather than shunned. Then she started to consider Arkk’s words regarding the source of her powers. The Burning Forge. A supposed god who had been shut out of this world.

A god of fire, manufacturing, and creativity.

She had joined with the blacksmiths, assisting as she learned the proper techniques of forging and manufacturing. Then she delved into her own projects. Ideas had sprung to her mind, often during dreams. Perhaps following the will of a dream was why none of her projects had yet turned out the way she had hoped. Nevertheless, she had ideas.

Those ideas only blossomed further when Arkk brought her to the Unilluminable Chamber in the Underworld. Just seeing the Shadow Forge was like a burst of inspiration. A thousand different ideas came to mind.

And yet, she found herself at a loss.

In the heart of the Unilluminable Chamber, Perr’ok dipped a ladle into the central crucible. The head blacksmith of Fortress Al-Mir had broad shoulders and hands calloused from years of crafting, but his hands moved with a practiced finesse as he carried the ladle exactly as Agnete had directed him.

She couldn’t help. She couldn’t even get close.

All the ideas in her mind and she couldn’t even get close. The liquid-like shadow did not enjoy the company of heat or light. The Unilluminable Chamber kept it safe from the latter but not the former. If she approached or even lost a little control, the shadow would begin to evaporate, ruining the product.

It was frustrating to watch Perr’ok pour the shadow into the mold they had found within the forge. Could she do it better? Perhaps not. Perr’ok was skilled. He didn’t spill a single drop. But she wouldn’t get the chance to test it for herself.

Perr’ok stepped back and grasped a lever on the wall. With a look to Agnete—she offered him a nod—he pulled the lever down.

The mechanism of the Shadow Forge activated. With a few ratcheting clicks, a hammer slammed down onto the mold. Each pull of the lever brought the thick slab of metal down with astounding force.

The process began. The rhythmic clanging of the hammer, interrupted occasionally to add liquid shadow to the mold, echoed through the chamber like a steady heartbeat. Agnete couldn’t quite comprehend how there were normal shadows in the Unilluminable Room and yet, as the mechanism continued its operation, the shadows of the room drew around the mold. The melding of the tangible and the intangible was a swirling vortex of darkness. Sparks of shadowfire cascaded down around the hammer as the process neared its conclusion.

With a final slam of the hammer, the magic of the room stilled.

Perr’ok reached in. He cracked apart the two halves of the mold. It was a blade. Long and curved, like that of a wheat scythe’s head. Although it bore a resemblance to farm equipment, it was a potent weapon.

He brought it over to Agnete, holding it out in both hands for inspection.

It wasn’t metal. It didn’t gleam with that metallic shine nor did it hold ridges as a more matte alloy might. It was a mass of shadow and material, rippling with an ever-shifting darkness. A darkness that would hold even out of this room and in the light of the sun. Now that it had completed the forging process, Agnete could safely hold it as long as she didn’t turn the heat up too much.

Lips pressed together, she offered a nod. “This would be the best we’ve produced. I can tell just by the trail it leaves behind as it moves.”

Perr’ok split his lips into a wide grin. “Gives new meaning to the term ‘blacksmith’, don’t it?”

Agnete gave him a look. Once upon a time, a purifier like her giving anyone a glare would have sent them running. Even if they didn’t know what she was, glowing eyes meant something was wrong with the one doing the glaring. Perr’ok, whether used to her in specific or used to people with glowing eyes in general, just laughed.

Must be losing my touch, Agnete thought, unable to stop a thin smile from touching her lips.

It was… nice. Compared to her time with the inquisitors, she had… people she could count on. A strange feeling, but not an unwelcome one.

“You wanna see if we can’t get this attached to that staff we made?” he asked.

Perr’ok carried the scythe head over to another station within the Shadow Forge, leaving a trail as he moved that was somehow darker than the rest of the Unilluminable Chamber. Agnete fetched a fairly simple wooden staff, long and narrow with brass caps on either end for a little weight. It could have worked as a simple quarterstaff. But one end held a twisted bit of shadowy material that they had forged earlier.

Holding it steady for him over the second station, Agnete waited while Perr’ok’s hands moved with a seasoned precision. The station came alive, this time with a flexible head that followed Perr’ok’s movements. Thin bolts slid through thin air, which the machine affixed with light whirring noises. In short order, the scythe head curved off the end of the staff like a proper scythe.

Except it didn’t actually touch the head. The shadowy blade hovered just a finger’s width away from the intricately twisted bit of shadowy material.

A strange mechanism. It would nonetheless assist with its usage.

Perr’ok handed over the scythe for Agnete to inspect. Satisfied with its quality, she carried it up and out of the Unilluminable Chamber.

She had to blink her eyes several times as she reemerged into the Underworld’s orange sunlight. It was almost blinding, although it was a far dimmer light compared to the real world’s sun.

In comparison, the blade of the scythe was like a trail of the night, slicing through the very world. The trail it left in its wake was a wound in the very air that took a second to heal.

“Wonderous. Most wonderous. Poor Lady Shadows must be pleased to see her techniques once again put to use.”

The Protector—one of them—stood out in the open just beyond the ruined and crumbling building that had once been a temple or church. The tall, carapace-covered being turned its head slowly, watching Agnete’s approach with its wide eyes. When she stopped a short distance away, it clasped one pair of its hands together while lowering the other pair to the ground, prostrating itself in front of her.

That made her uncomfortable. Agnete was used to people cowering away from her, looking at her with fear or hatred, or simply fleeing. Never showing such reverence. Even if it was reverence toward the scythe and not her, she couldn’t quite shake the sensation.

Shaking her head, deciding to ignore the Protector for the time being, she focused on the tall straw-stuffed dummies they had set up. A few were in pieces but one was still whole. It had a bit of armor equipped—worn and with a few holes in it from having seen combat.

Agnete stepped one foot forward, bringing the scythe around in a long, sweeping arc that trailed darkness behind its head. With a twist of her grip and a lever action between her arms, she pulled the scythe straight through the stuffed dummy.

The metal armor clanged to the ground in two pieces, the bound straw exploded outward, and the wooden stick holding it all up fell out from the middle.

Whipping it around again, she planted the bottom end in the dirt and stood with it at her side.

Perr’ok started clapping, unable to hold back his excitement at seeing their efforts work out. “The blade is incredibly dangerous,” he said with a wide grin. “I wish we had a more conventional weapon shape—anyone using these is going to have to do a lot of training—but what we’ve got is what we’ve got.”

“The blade is still stable,” Agnete said, looking at the swirling mass. “If we can keep up with this quality, we might be able to produce enough to make it worth training a few of the squads.”

“I’ll get a few of the blacksmith boys learning how to do it now that I’ve got it down. We’ll make plenty to use.”

Agnete pressed her lips together. Perhaps it was for the best that she couldn’t use the Shadow Forge for her projects. Production time was needed for the war.

But after, perhaps Perr’ok might be willing to hear out a few of her ideas.

“Read it back to me once again.”

Zullie sat in complete and total darkness. A darkness of her own making. No matter the spell she used, no matter the alchemical concoction, she couldn’t see the world around her. Her eyes were completely gone. Even Hale, with her strange prowess over the Flesh Weaving spell, could not regrow Zullie’s eyes.

So she sat with Gretchen, now returned from the temple expedition in the Underworld. While Zullie still knew how to write, she had trouble keeping lines of text separated while writing. Unwilling to let a little blindness keep her from publishing results, she had been dictating to Gretchen.

She had such results to publish now.

“Gretchen?” Zullie asked. “Are you there?”

“I am,” came the soft response.

Zullie turned her head to where she thought the sound had come from. She had heard rumors that those without eyes would develop enhanced hearing or even sixth senses for certain things. Thus far, Zullie had not been blessed with such changes. She had plans and spell possibilities for enhanced hearing churning in the back of her mind with everything else, but working on such a mundane problem just felt… unimportant.

“Why are you not reading what I wrote? You are literate, are you not?” Good help was hard to find. More so now that she couldn’t see to confirm that others were carrying out the tasks she assigned.

“I am. I just… Are you certain you are feeling well? Do you need another week of rest, perhaps?”

Zullie leaned back with a scowl. She folded her arms over her chest, drumming her fingers against the crook of her elbow. In the past, she would have narrowed her eyes—a flash of unease coursed through her at the thought. She tried not to think about her eyes. There was this… uncomfortable emptiness there. Like she could still feel her face around her eyes but there was no pressure against her facial muscles and skin. Just a vacancy.

Shaking her head, suppressing a shudder, she affixed her scowl firmly on her face. Rather, in the past, she wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place. This was what relying on others got her.

“Read it back.”

“It just… I admit I may not know as much as you do with regard to spell creation, but I did attend the Cliff Academy for three years. I even sat under some of your lectures. But this does not make sense. It’s such a far cry from the pristine work I’m used to from you that—”

“Stop,” Zullie said, holding up a hand. “You are dismissed.”

“I’m just worried—”

“I said you are dismissed, Gretchen. Leave the dictated transcription—if you even completed that simple task. Do not return. I don’t need an assistant who cannot follow simple directions.”

A long moment of silence followed before Zullie heard the scraping of a chair against the stone floor, a rustling of clothing, and the door to the library swinging open and closed. Letting out a long sigh, Zullie stood and shuffled her way across the library. She kept her feet on the ground, sliding one forward and then the other, all while keeping her hands out in front of her. Reaching the desk, she felt across the top, only to bump the back of her hand against an inkwell.

“Damn it all,” she hissed, feeling the liquid run across the surface of the desk. Gretchen must have left it uncapped.

Now it was all over the desk. If Gretchen had written down Zullie’s notes, they were surely ruined now. Not that it would have mattered. Zullie’s normal spell creation methodology involved writing down everything that popped into her mind so that she could review, add, and remove parts as she needed. Having everything laid out in front of her ensured that she wouldn’t miss something.

Trying to replicate that method with Gretchen was obviously a failure.

She needed a way to review her notes without being questioned over every little thing…

Could undead read and write?

“What is this supposed to do?”

Zullie yelped at the unexpected voice in the room with her. She whirled around to where she thought the voice had come from. One hand clamped against her chest where her heart had started hammering. Her other hand went to the wand she kept in the folds of her robes. Before she could actually grasp the wand, her mind registered a hint of recognition.

“Hale?” she asked. “You’re here?”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

Letting out a long sigh, Zullie kept patting at her chest. She hadn’t always been this easy to startle. The quiet girl, practically an ever-present fixture of the library, would never have surprised her before. Zullie would have seen her in the corner, filed that away, and gone about her duties. Now…

Zullie ran a hand down her face, taking care to avoid touching near her eyes even as she let out a relieved and exasperated sigh.

“Don’t startle me like that,” she said, feeling a little weak in the knees. Not knowing where the chair was, she forced herself to keep standing.

“I saved your notes,” Hale said. She must have waved them like a fan. Zullie felt the slight breeze from the motion against her face. “I don’t understand them either. What is the Key of Forbidden Knowledge?”

Zullie pressed her lips together. Hale might not be half as educated as Gretchen. Zullie might have to dictate a little more simply or comprehensively, but Hale was probably less likely to stubbornly refuse to respond out of misplaced concerns for her mental wellness.

Fumbling around, Zullie found the chair and quickly took a seat. She didn’t like standing much these days. Even though her sense of balance was still working, she still felt just a little unsteady on her feet.

“It isn’t a literal key, if that is confusing you,” Zullie said as she smoothed down the front of her robes. More of a nervous tick to still her beating heart than because they were wrinkled—she wouldn’t be able to tell if they were messy. “It is a metaphor for a concept I think I’ve come to understand. The Key of Forbidden Knowledge is required to access knowledge that… well, is forbidden.

“You see, I have had an epiphany. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, is said to be the god of boundaries, barriers, and separation, among a few other minor domains. That’s all well and good until you understand the breadth of her domain over boundaries. Both Arkk and I experienced it. The Lock and Key gave us information by manipulating the boundary between ignorance and knowledge. We mere mortals don’t normally think of something like that as having a boundary and yet I felt it. My knowledge shifted.

“If knowledge and ignorance is just one boundary that the Lock and Key can manipulate, what else might there be?” Zullie said, leaning forward as she got into her explanation. She had hardly seen Arkk—she wasn’t sure if he was upset with her, disappointed with her, or simply too busy with other matters—and discussing such a thing with anyone else in the fortress was… unappealing. “Is there a boundary between Spring and Summer? Inside and outside is a fairly obvious boundary. What about the boundary between youth and age? Between chaos and order? Between life and death?”

“Question,” Hale said. “What does it mean to manipulate the boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’? So if Xel’atriss decides to shift that boundary, what happens?”

“Maybe a hole in the world opens up that allows us to step from here to outside instantly. Like the portal room. Maybe all of reality collapses in on itself. I haven’t the slightest idea!” Zullie said with a laugh. “And who knows what other barriers a god can perceive that our mortal minds can’t begin to comprehend. The Key of Forbidden Knowledge will let us understand so much more.”

“Are you trying to get your mind burnt out along with your eyes?”

Zullie’s mouth clicked shut. “No?”

“It sure sounds like you are. Maybe try something a little smaller?”

Zullie propped an elbow up against the desk, tapping her fingers against the side of her chin. “I suppose you’re full of ideas, aren’t you? You didn’t see what I saw. You don’t know what I know—”

“Maybe not, but of the two of us, I’m the only one who can see how ridiculous you look.”

The tapping stopped as Zullie dropped her hand flat against the table. The elation at speaking her mind quickly died off. Of course, talking with others was, as ever, an exercise in tedium and frustration.

“Instead of some boundary between ignorance and all knowledge that you shouldn’t know, start with something we mere mortals can think of. Like the boundary between seeing and unseeing. Then you could look over your own notes, you’d have a foundation you could build on, and you’d be able to see yourself. The Key of Unseen Knowledge instead of Forbidden Knowledge.”

“Why do I need to see myself?” Zullie asked. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea. It was bad enough thinking about her loose eye sockets.

“Well, you’re—”

Hale stopped speaking as Arkk popped into the room. Zullie wasn’t exactly sure how she knew Arkk was there. Perhaps it was the way air just moved out of the way to make room for him. Perhaps it was those glowing red eyes that, even blind, she could feel turning her way.

“Gretchen said that you’re—” Arkk abruptly stopped. There was a brief beat where some anxiety started to well within Zullie, only for her to jerk back when he burst out laughing.

“What? What’s funny?”

“You’re… You’re covered in ink.”