The Path of Steam - Part I

[Stefan Dornkirk]

19th Searing, 124

Stefan walked into his most private sanctuary. It was quiet. Quiet, but not silent.

It was never silent on the Sky Islands. The streets teamed with life, at the Windworks a hundred projects, large and small, for the good of Zaichaer were going at any given time. Airships sped by or swooped between the ground and the docks, taxiing supplies to the workers and folk to work or home. Even at night when the docks stopped operating and the Windworks was still the sound of the Islands themselves remained. Wind whipped clouds by, and sometimes through, the city blocks that hovered above the capital city. On rare nights when there was little wind one could close their eyes and hear the hum of the vast engines that kept them all aloft, murmuring always in the background.

Even in the secret laboratory where the First Minister kept the two most sensitive and dangerous objects he possessed, deep underground, as far from the open air as one could be on the Islands, he could hear the engines, like a throb in the walls. Ever present, it was something felt more than heard.

The government was expanded, filled out with ministers for every quarter, foreign and domestic. Each member of the First Minister's cabinet was stretching their wings, testing their power and finding out where they fit in the moving reality of the machines of governance. There was talk of forming a parliament from which new ministers would be chosen in the future. Elections would be held, in the years to come, however the final form of the new system ended up. The people were, however, for the moment, content. There was food for every mouth, clothing for every back, and work for every hand. Important work that each citizen knew was vital for their survival or their future ability to thrive. The city itself was back up and running, airships flew to every corner of the land claimed as Zaichaeri, bringing supplies back and forth as they were needed. Foreign trade was starting again, food and raw materials exported, finished goods and especially livestock, imported.

So much of the wildlife was dead, devastated by first the Mist Storm and then the Eclipse, that the ecologists were deeply worried. Ensuring the health of the land for future planting seasons and generations to come was one of the top priorities for the government, taking a backseat only to the safety and health of the human survivors. With the excess of food being created between the Negation greenhouses that the Order had set up throughout the nation and the aid of both the ecology department and the Kindred coven, the population losses had finally turned around. There were more births than deaths for the first time in years. In this effort too, the First Minister was doing his part, now the father of three healthy children. If the birth of his twins had been fraught, none outside the family circle knew of his personal troubles. 'The Glade Princes' his sons were being called, though Zaichaer held to no notion of nobility in a familial sense, Stefan knew that his family was seen as something of unofficial royalty by the populous. In time, he hoped, the idea would fade, though it was more than could be hoped that he would ever be allowed to live the quiet life of a family man and engineer.

With the diminished public schedule afforded him by no longer being the sole government minister, he was giving himself time to return to the hobby that had once been his job and remained his dream. The prototype armored suits that he had made and implemented to great effect during the restoration of the city were being recreated now, as supplies became available that were not needed for the more important repair of either the city or the airships that protected it. Some of the limited free time he had gained was going to training airmen in their use. Having small groups of the suits with specially trained soldiers to pilot them on every major battleship would offer a significant advantage. He had also helped work out the engineering of the message relays that connected the capital to all the major forts on the four borders. Now anyone who needed to could send and receive back instructions, supply orders and even limited personal messages in mere minutes. The messaging idea had combined with Eitan's Negation innovations, which had led to the Warding Stations. The stations were set up all across the city. They contained a smaller version of the messaging network, and were staffed by Order officers to ensure the protection of all citizens within the city. This was useful and good, but it was not what made the Warding stations innovations. The aetherically entangled stations created a network of Negation wards that, when working correctly, blocked entry to the city by any creature, physical or aetheric. The gateways to the city could be opened or closed from the great bubble of protection to allow normal traffic and trade in and out, but in an emergency, they could also be closed. In times of great danger, such as another rift or Mist Storm, there were protocols that would place strong Order Negationists at each of the Warding Stations to continuously renew and support the wards. All but the highest level of outside influence would be rebuffed.

A sense of safety had restored order to the city, which, now cleansed of the disaster, was beginning to thrive. The mines would reopen soon, and the factories roar to life once more. Zaichaer, like the Sky Islands, would rise, stronger than ever.

So, Stefan had the most unusual of things, an evening in which he was not needed. The door and walls of the sanctuary which felt more like a tomb, were as heavily warded as Eitan's grand mastery could afford them. It was a discipline in which Stefan was only theoretically knowledgeable, but even he could see, through his Aether-glass spectacles, the complexity of the woven aether. Being in a room so thoroughly infused with magic would once have made him feel on edge, but he was so used to it now that it only felt like being protected by the intention of his brother-in-law.

The room felt like a tomb because of the two corpses that resided within. One was that of the person he had, for the majority of his life, loved most. The other was that of the creature which still held his greatest despise. At least, he hoped that Lyra was dead in her prison. There were times that he imagined he could feel her malignancy in the very air of the room, which was one of the reasons it was so heavily warded. Certain sectors of the Order had now sent requests to study the shard and its inhabitant, living or dead. It was being considered, but Stefan was leaving the decision to the Order. He would give up the demonstone for study if asked, for, while he feared it, he held no love of its ownership. Over the time since he had obtained the cursed gem, he had done significant experiments of his own, discovering that he held a great deal of potential energy, fuel enough to power the entire Sky Islands complex. He had even gone so far as to build a contraption to extract the energy, should it be needed in an emergency. Better to use the remains of an enemy that let the Sky Islands crash to the ground, if it ever came to that.

The second set of remains was significantly more obvious than the first. Brenner's skeleton stood on a special stand in a niche in the wall. The niche looked funereal by design. Stefan's brother deserved reverence but Stefan had not been able to bring himself to bury or otherwise let go of the remains and only the lesser reasoning behind this choice was personal. The main reason to keep the bones was that they were not, in fact, bone. They held, in places, the shape of human bones, but they were not made of bone. At first, he had believed that metal encased the bones, but, after carefully experimenting he had discovered that the original matter had been entirely replaced by an alloy that he had never encountered before. Additionally, there was connective tissue, almost like muscle or tendons, also of mental, throughout the structure. It was as if something had been reshaping his brother from the inside out, but had not been finished at the time of his death.

After many examinations and even taking a small sample of the metal for testing, Stefan had attempted to see what would happen if he ran a small current of electrical power into one of the skeletal fingers. Nothing had happened. Even with repeated attempts. Once this failure had been fully documented, he tried to use a tiny piece of Aetherite to power the remains. This had led to an exceptionally minor movement in the finger. Even as minor as it had been, and even though his scientific mind had been hoping for it, it had still startled him so badly to see the movement that it had been several weeks before he had returned to attempt the experiment again. The implications of what he was doing, he kept at all times, carefully at bay. If it was just science, just engineering, then there was nothing to either hope nor fear.

After trying several types of dragonshards and discovering no difference between the exceptionally minor reactions, the thought had occurred to him to use the hated demonstone. The implications of such an idea, he refused to acknowledge even as they poured into his mind with the knowledge of how both fitting and apt they were.

This was what he was there that evening to try. Grounding wires had been attached to the skeletal hand, ensuring that whatever came from the shard could pass no further than the wrist (the last thing he wanted was to release some Lyra ghost into what remained of his brother's form). Stefan's boots and elbow-length gloves were coated in both rubber and wards that would ground aether as well as most types of energy, harmlessly, into the floor. His goggles were aether glass and warded against heat and blinding light. Precautions were taken, and this he would use as an excuse to his family if anything went wrong, for he had not told anyone of this particular experiment, nor any of other others involving the metal remains. It was private; like grieving, secret; like grave robbing. It was his and no one else's. Brenner was his.

The contraption that allowed for power to be pulled from the demonstone was attached, and, in due time, switched on. For a moment, nothing happened. No sound at all for a pause before Stefan released his held breath in a sigh of disappointment. Then, the hand moved. Not the spasmodic movement of electricity through circuits, but movements that looked quite like there was intention behind them. The fingers stretched, then curled into a fist. They remained thus for a time and then they stretched back out, each moving a little separately from the others. The hand looked, for all the world as though it were reaching out for something, or someone.

[Eitan Angevin]

Searing, Year 124 of Steel

They had never told him, or he had never imagined, when he was young that leadership would more often entail a sore arse from sitting and a headache from reading fine-printed reports more often than flying into enemy fire and risking his life for his fellow soldier-citizens. He had done the latter; now, though, it was more often the former and he didn't feel as though he could complain. How many of their honored dead would have died for such safety—had died.

Admiral Angevin spent more time with his feet on the ground than on the shifting deck of an airship, even though he was nominal captain of Searing Victory, the armada's flagship. High Sentinel Angevin spent more time with logistics than ferreting out secrets or protecting the people. Ah, well, he thought; he was a husband now, a father, an uncle, and one pillar of the triumvirate keeping the High City's head high, and he delegated so much that it was absurd.

While not holding up the High City, he remained the paragon of a blue blood. The old stain on his blood was all but forgotten, and the town house he had purchased for himself now floated serenely above other homes on the West End half the time to be a visible reminder to the people of potential fulfilled; the rest of the time, it rested at its old address, showing how down-to-earth the new family Angevin was. They could fly above, but they remained grounded. It was also easier for the servants to fetch groceries and other supplies that way.

Most of the grounds remained arable farmland, the wine cellar full of experimental hydroponics and magical growth. The Angevins provided for their neighbors, great and unknown. His beautiful wife continued her education at the Institute while having a hand in civilian government and caring for him and for their two young sons. And while he was a vocal supporter of gender equality, a dark part of him smirked with superiority thinking of his fallen father, whose wife had only given him daughters. His Schande had earned his admiralty so much younger, while also rising to the pinnacle of the Order, and when generations of the future spoke of an Admiral Angevin, it would be Eitan rather than Leir whom they venerated.

They called the Dornkirk twins the Glade Princes, but Eitan was the uncrowned king. He knew how to work around Stefan when he couldn't just nudge him where he wanted to go. If his wife whispered about His Majesty in the sultry dark of their marriage bed, he wasn't going to tell anyone how that settled in his heart and in his loins.

King Eitan Angevin, first of his name. It had a ring to it.

The steel nib of his fountain pen scratched quietly in the lamp light. The work was unending, and so if he fantasized about the power, well, he only had a little time for that.

With the captains of the Air Defense Corps' support, that corps was rapidly realigning to the new paradigm, more efficient than before, though they were still training recruits as quickly as they were able. They were a unified bloc any time Grand Marshall Lang disagreed with him on Air Defense Corps business, which was rare. For the most part, he seemed content to give Admiral Angevin enough rope to hang himself, but if Eitan was young, he had been trained for this from his youth. He realized now that his father had been training him in his own spiteful way from the very beginning. This only complicated already complicated feelings for the dead man. Sometimes he considered having some Grymalka go to the half-ruined Angevin Manor to raise his shade, but no, he wouldn't trust a witch with his father's soul even for closure.

No, better to focus on everything on his plate. He needed to schedule a tour of the riverland forts to see to their wards and align them with the southron defenses of the city proper. While he was only beginning to study scrivening, which was more science than magic, really, he was learning how geometry could make his wards greater without taxing his soul overmuch. Granted, he had quite a few young warders under him now, some of which he tutored when there was time—there was never time, but sometimes he made the time.

For now, better scriveners did the work for him, but he was learning about the geometry of energy fields—resonance, calibration; it was another level of complexity, but his Warders were excited. There had never been a Warder so powerful as him, at least not in memory or those records that remained. Between his power and Zaichaeri ingenuity, they might even lock down their magical protections better even than the fabled paling of Sol'Valen.

There remained things he couldn't ward against—yet. When the letter had come to Stefan from someone claiming to be Dreyfus Monteliyet, he had replied with Eitan's input and editing. As yet, no response was forthcoming. But it was no matter of grave import. The covens at least nominally belonged to him now, and he had his Order. Questions had been asked, and answers had been found. Agents were already en route to the old Monteliyet country estate. Soon enough, they would return with intelligence and Eitan would make a decision. He would probably tell Stefan about it, but even if he only told him what had been done after the fact, that was within his purview as the leader of the new Order.

Either a new asset would be arranged or a potential threat would be eradicated. Either way.

But while all these things took up most of his time, there were also two quiet things that weighed upon his heart and his shoulders.

Secrets. But he was the master of secrets in Zaichaer between the Order, his 'Internal Affairs' officers, and his key contacts within the coalescing civilian government as well. Matters had finally come down from a rolling boil to a simmer so he could reestablish more fully the chapterhouses in other Karnorian cities, as well as the Imperium, who made friendly overtures while making threatening gestures. And perhaps he would reach out to Solunarium in time. There had been the beginnings of a rapport before all went to shit, and he wouldn't wonder if Zaichaer couldn't help them excise the Orkhan taint of their continent in exchange for support in pulling the free cities of Karnor into at the very least a confederation under Zaichaeri control

Two secrets. One dangerous, and one tragedy coupling with the demon-bitch Hope.

The first was a shard of the Kalzasern witch Lyra, though his agents informed him that she was older than Kalzasi, an ancient elf from the Boundless Empire whose corruption did not end in death but hopped from body to body. He strongly counseled Stefan to draw as much power from her shard as possible, to keep her in a weakened state while fueling the High City. He also wove another layer of warding around that prison every time he examined it. While he was confident in his abilities, he knew that she would not have survived so long if her cunning wasn't infernal. Eventually, he predicted she would escape. The best they could do was weaken her so that when she escaped, they could destroy or, at the very least, banish her with a minimal loss of Zaichaeri life.

The second was Brenner—not his son, who was—blessed Progress—closer to two years of age than one, but his fallen friend.

Only a handful of people were aware that his remains had been retrieved from the ruins of the Dornkirk Estate. Those were the people who also knew that it had been made of metal.

Eitan knew that Stefan spent time with it and not all of that time was spent in experimentation. He knew that Stefan hoped to bring him back to life somehow, and Eitan secretly hoped for that too. Perhaps between his magical engineering—the which Eitan didn't have the heart to tell him was outright artificing even if he wasn't creating self-aware vessels (yet)—and the necromantic healers of the Order and the Grymalka witches, they could add flesh to metal bone and recall his soul from the purview of the blighted gods or wherever it had gone after death. He certainly hoped so.

Certainly, he spent some time with Brenner's metallic remains, wishing his presence and his friendship were enough to galvanize them back to a semblance of life.

"He was the best of us, Lessnau," he said after emerging from the top secret storage.

"If you hold him in such esteem, High Sentinel, then I must, perforce, assume he was an exemplar of Zaichaeri manhood."

"He was."

"Sir, I mean no disrespect, but if I could semble his remains, I might be of some help."

"I will have to bring it up with the First Minister."

"Of course, sir. Or you have but to say the word and I will initiate and instruct you in the Rune of Semblance that you may divine the nature of his remains for yourself."

"I would rather have you do it, Lessnau," he said, "and Stefan be willing. Some might call it cowardice, but I consider it a strategic decision not to take on another Rune. I can study scrivening to support my warding and to subvert any witchery I come across... but I cannot risk the High Sentinel and first Admiral of the Air Defense Corps to a Rune that could warp how I perceive the world. No, I would rather have you, my trusted Sentinel, to sense what I cannot."

The man swelled with pride. "And I am proud to be so trusted. I trust you to ensure that I never lose myself to the aether."

"We have to look out for each other, Lessnau. Watchers of Purity, men of Zaichaer."

"Just so, sir," he said with a very real fervor. Lucrece called him a sycophant behind closed doors, but Eitan didn't mind. He needed that level of loyalty in order to do what the State and his family required of him.