20th Day of Ash, 122th Year of the Age of Steel
“No no no.” Arthur’s grumble came from behind. Masagh lowered the hammer and turned to look expectantly at him.
“You’re using a hammer that’s too flat.” Arthur explained, indicating the hammer set against the thin bar of metal that would one day become the cross guard of a dagger. Masagh stared down at it. It was a hammer of the right size and weight, just new.
“What do you mean?” Masagh asked.
“Drift for the tang, Masagh.” Arthur said, rubbing his thumb across the flat head of the hammer. “Drift hammer for the tang.” Arthur said again. He pulled another hammer from the rack. It had a longer handle and a narrower head, and he brought another with a thinner head. “This is the drift, narrower for the blade tang, and longer handle to keep your hand away from the heat.”
“Ah.” Masagh said, reaching for the drift. Arthur pulled his hand back and frowned slightly. Then after a moment he held it out. “Did you make this hammer yourself?” Masagh asked, peering down at the old drift hammer.
“Yes. A good smith makes their tools.” Arthur said grumpily, eyeing the way Masagh held it. “Runeforging not common enough to avoid it. You make what you need…”
“I won’t damage it, Arthur.” Masagh assured him, watching his eyes.
The big Bonecaster grunted and stepped back towards the forge. “Hmm, remember keep the Elementalism script in the tang for the aether hold.” Arthur moved on. His decaying forearms twitched as he gripped the tongs and pulled the orange blade from the flames. “Tang for storing, then the fuller to distribute.”
“Right, I remember.” Masagh flicker his tongue and leaned in. He tapped the drift with the light hammer, flaking the red hot metal. The beginning of the first rune began to form in Nio Uvverece. “Elementalism is liquid, so needs to be kept to the fuller.” Masagh recited back to Arthur from memory.
“Elementalism is not liquid, aether carrying it is safeguarded like liquid. It is inherently a malleable casting, which needs to be limited in the blade.” Arthur lectured as Masagh tapped away at the first set of runes. “Can you think of any other reason to, generally, keep the script within the fuller on a blade?” It had the framing of a test.
Masagh paused in his work and the bar of iron that would become a dagger turned from orange to grey quickly. Neither he nor Arthur moved to return it to the fire. It was a logic question, something Arthur thought he should be able to deduce. “Because the blade is thickest in the middle and easier to take the script?” Masagh guessed, thinking about the process of honing the edge.
Arthur raised an eyebrow and nodded his head a bit. “Not a bad guess, but no. He etch runes in rings and sheet metal too, it is fine there. Perhaps it would damage the blade, but the more important and more expensive mistake that could be made is using a blade scripted on the edge. Such an enchantment would unravel very quickly when it was damaged. Any clash with another could damage the edge and destroy the enchantment. Or a whetstone could fade the runes, or the grinder here could do it.” Arthur said.
“Couldn’t you just add a script of endurance onto the blade.” Masagh asked.
“You could.” Arthur said. “And with it about one thousand gold avens and a few days of labor. We do it this way because it is the smart way, not because it is the only way.” Made sense. Runeforging projects were already cripplingly expensive. “Now you know, and now I go to heat the daggers again.” Arthur grabbed the bar of iron deftly with his tongs and shuffled off to the forge.
And so the work went. Eventually Masagh was able to finish the script for the tang. With a wave of one sweaty hand Arthur dismissed him. “Eh, I’ve got to assist in the animation they have planned.” He jutted his chin over his shoulder to the other end of the Laboratory where two of the other Bonecasters were preparing a necromancy circle.
“Right, Goodluck.” Masagh’s mind was already drifting to the library and the sea charts he had taken to pouring over in quiet hours. “I’ll go clean up then.”
The air was cool when he left the laboratory. It washed across his face with a pleasant chill as he walked the short distance down the tunnel to the library entrance. Beyond he could see Cleon and Sabrione sparring in the training ring. Masagh slipped into the library quickly. The reading area was empty. Great, some solitude would help his search. He found the maps and sea charts shelf with practiced efficiency.
“What brings you in here?” A familiar voice asked. Masagh turned quickly by instinct. He immediately wished he had the foresight to act casual.
“Hello, Mother.” Masagh said, smiling. “I was just thinking of looking around to learn more about the… Moonstones.” He finished. “I know they are new to us, but perhaps not so to some older Creth?” He held the smiles on his face.
Emerande Creth shifted her gaze from him to the shelves around. “I’m looking for something similar, an answer to this shadow eclipse that grips the sky.” She turned and walked down another aisle. Masagh followed, breathing a sigh of relief.
“There are a few old journals here in the hand of some of our worlds deepest delvers in magic.” Emerande said, pulling a grey leather bound book that bore some brass nameplate on the spine. “Tragically some of them are utter nonsense, given their writers lost their minds long before they lost the ability to write… But who knows, maybe I will find a diamond in the rough?” Emerande gave him a tight smile.
She pulled a second tome off the shelf, then a third. Stacking them in her arms she lead the way to one of the wooden reading tables. Masagh sat across from her and peered at them. “Morgenicus? Is that another dead relative?” The name was not familiar to him.
Emerande scoffed and gave an honest laugh. “Oh spirits no. Morgenicus was a half-addled lich who was nevertheless quite powerful.” She said without looking up from the book she was idly flipping through. The writing was small and cramped, but seemed to be familiar to her because she hardly paused on the first twenty or so pages.
“A lich? Like Quetharax was?” Curious that his mother would scoff at such a person at the same time as seeking advice in their journal.
“Quetharax is a singular being, not like any that have come since.” Emerande said. “And I hardly think it possible anything in this world has killed him. But no, they are mere shadows of his power.”
“So why are you looking for answers in the journals of weak undead?” Masagh finally asked.
“Weak?” She looked up at him with genuine surprise. “Masagh they may be shadows of Quetharax, but a lich is a powerful thing. Their magic is potent and long-lasting, even if they attain it through unnatural means.”
“What do you mean? How do they get it?” Curiosity peaked, Masagh had stopped looking through the grey book and stared up at her.
“I have no idea. I don’t possess any of their rituals.” Emerande said, waving a hand carelessly. “We have the pure blood of von Maxium by birth, it’s not something those born of the grace of the grave pursue typically. It’s a thing of upstarts.”
“But why, what’s the attraction?” Masagh asked.
“Immortality of a sort.” Emerande said. “Powerful necromancy the likes of which could compare to a whole cadre of Bonecasters.” She looked up at him through her eyelids. “Why I remember there was one that lived north of the city in some coastal ruin, kept a pair of undead wyverns to guard his audacious crypt.” She shook her head. “These liches thought that all that power and magic made them like us. But we are natural, stable, real. They would cut a territory away from the living and hold it for a time, but were hunted.” She held up a finger.
“Take Lithiricus, the lich that lived to the north. A smart one, able to raise undead by the cartload. Could have build himself a fortress and taken the entire region with the strength of his undead.” Masagh grunted to show he was listening as he idly flipped the pages of the journal. His mother could want when it came to her passion for the purity of undead. Born to it and anything you did was fine by her, brought to it and you were an upstart. “But no, the power gets to his head and he builds some macabre palace into the side of the cliff-face. Friezes of skeletal animals and depictions of himself, hardly a surprise they found his hideaway with that ostentatiousness.”
Masagh grunted again, then his head shot up and he stared at her. Emerande read on, flipping a page. She did not notice her son’s gaze or the intensity there. “What did you say?”
“I said he was ostentatious and it got him killed. We who have lived with the blessing our whole life conduct ourselves with more propriety.” She nodded to herself.
“No I mean, he had a palace decorated with skeletons?” Masagh prompted quickly.
“Yes.” Emerande looked up at him. “It was hardly subtle. The Imperium went and butchered him and caved in the entrance. It’s little more than a ruin now, and I doubt any remember it but us to be honest.” She watched him for a moment. “Are you alright, Masagh?” He had been staring into the near distance, his mind on a different book. The subtle searching edge in her voice brought him crashing back into the present. It had carried with it curiosity, something he needed to avoid.
“Yes, seems like he was a bit of a totter.” Masagh muttered, faking a yawn into his hand and turning back to the journal. “Advertising himself like that.”
“Yes, well, we know better don’t we?” Emerande watched him for a long moment after and then turned back to her book.
He grunted. What had the ship’s log said? Ruins depicting skeletal horses. He blinked down at the book in front of him, unseeing. It had been something at an ancient lich’s lair that had killed those sailors… His mother and the other old members of the family may be the only people who remember it, but he was sure that was what they had found. It took everything in him not to ask more questions about Lithiricus and his lair over the next few hours that he aided Emerande.
Instead he waited, feigning disinterest in the journal. He would have to find the ruined palace. It was with a conscious effort that he kept from spiriting off to his cell after Emerande dismissed him. When he did finally return to his cell he pulled the Ship’s Log from its hiding place under the mattress of his unused bed. Flipping to the final entry he read again:
”Old columns rose from the water and the men were uneasy. Ruins depicted skeletal horses and some believed it a cursed place.”
They had sailed into the lair of a long dead lich. What was more, only Masagh knew about it. He closed the log and stood, pacing the tiny cell. He needed to go there and see what he could find…
