Runeforged Reinforcement, Part I
Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 7:06 pm
1st Day of Searing, 124th Year of the Age of Steel
The dampness in the ceiling overwhelmed the ancient granite stones enough to drop a steady drip of water onto the cobblestones next to his head. Occasionally a dash of water touched his cheekbone just under his eye. Eyes closed, Masagh was pretending the drip was his heartbeat as he pondered the significance of time. It was an imperfect metaphor.
The dripping stopped. After moment there was a breathy and light laugh.
He opened his eyes and was greeted with Indira’s grin haloed in her pure white hair staring down at him. “It feels weird!” She said with glee.
The ghost had taken to Materializing herself to feel simple sensations, like the dripping of water or the brush of the flowers she herself had planted all over the Creth compound. It was endearing, and made his own house arrest more bearable. Where he was imprisoned with the mundanity of his day to day, she had been liberated by it. Gone was her solitude and her sorrow at it. While life amongst the ghouls of House Creth had not been a life she had wanted, Indira had found she could still have a place. As it turned out, that had been enough for her to heal enough to smile.
He stared balefully up at her.
“Why are you lying on the floor?” Indira asked, tilting her head slightly and raising an eyebrow.
“I am waiting.” Masagh rasped out, sitting up and gazing down the sewer river.
“Ah, for the Knights to return from their mission?” Indira inferred, crossing her legs and sitting next to him.
Masagh continued to stare down the dank, unmoving sewer tunnel. “That, or the world to end, or a Mistlord to come tear apart my soul.” Masagh muttered flatly. “Whichever happens first.”
Indira laughed again. “Ah I understand.” She said, stretching as though she needed it. “You are feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I am not.” Masagh lied, sounding like a child even to his own ears. “I am being confined as a child would be. Arthur keeps setting me menial tasks of Runeforging to distract me from my lack of duties, as if I am content to while away my existence here in the safety of the Creth compound.”
Indira looked up at the low ceiling to the sewer room that the Creth family used as a dock. “Or.” She said, pausing for significance. “Perhaps he knows a profound and disturbing secret about you I have also come to realize.” He heard exasperation in her words. Might as well indulge her.
“Yes?”
“You are a fool.” Indira said as though it was the simplest truth that had ever been.
“Ah, I had not weighed that in my calculations. Thank you.” Masagh responded, rolling his head around on his shoulders.
“What happened to building something great? What happened to mastering magics in order to achieve our goals?” Indira went on, ignoring his sarcasm as she almost always did. “He knows that eventually you will realize that a mother’s ire is not enough to keep you here. Perhaps he wants to teach you as much as he can before then. Perhaps he worries you will not be prepared when you finally do act.”
“Hmph.” Masagh grunted, rubbing at his gaunt cheeks with one hand.
Sensing weakened prey, Indira pounced. “His insistence on you making your own tools, on mastering the basics. He is the one who made you that enchanted bag, isn’t he?” She whispered, leaning in conspiratorially.
Masagh blinked and turned to the pale, translucent ghost. She was looking at him with her eyebrows raised. He blinked at her again.
He had just opened his mouth to respond when he heard the echo of water rippling from down the tunnel. They both turned towards the sewer, the flat green sheen of water stirring in waves. A moment later one of the family boats came into view, a figure swaying with the push stick.
“Ah, brother.” Sabrione said when she came into view, all lean and deadly in her black armor and sword. “Come to give me a welcome home hug? How cute.”
Riah winced from behind her where she sat with the crates they had been sent to retrieve from the Goblin King. Masagh frowned at his sister as she turned her brittle smile on Indira. “Ah, Indira, hello. Trying to keep my brother from finding a way to drown himself in redvein excrement?” Indira gave an uncomfortable smile.
Sabrione had been happy to have him return, but had been decidedly more cold and distant with him since his return with Indira. As a result, Indira had caught much of the anger she threw at Masagh as well. Betrayal was a bitter and lasting pain.
Masagh stood and coughed. Sabrione had seen his hidden investigation into Lithicirus and his year long absence as a betrayal, he knew. It was not that he had been gone for a year. Sabrione was angry that he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her anything about it. Sabrione was slow to trust, and kept those she was loyal to close. Never in his life had Masagh not been amongst those loyalties until the past few seasons. He felt the loss of his sister’s closeness like an ache in his soul.
It exacerbated his feelings of confinement and shame.
He pushed himself up. “No, Weaponmaster. I thought I could offer to carry the supplies back to the laboratory, since I’m headed that way anyway.” He said, eyeing the crate rather than meeting her flinty gaze.
“Fantastic.” Sabrione hopped off the boat and tied it off on the dock. “Riah, let’s go debrief my mother.” And she was stepping around him without a second look. Riah had climbed out of the boat and gave him an apologetic look before following her.
“Well, I guess we should be getting that crate to Arthur, hmm?” Indira said brightly into the silence. “And by we, I of course mean you. On account of me being tragically dead and unable to carry anything.” She explained.
Masagh bent and lifted the crate of dragon shards from the boat and led the way through the compound towards the laboratory. He took the long way and avoided the great hall so as to avoid his family. Indira said nothing about that.
“Perhaps after I am done in the lab today we can go to the library and you can practice your possession in order to write some more.” Masagh ventured as he shoved open the door to the laboratory.
“Oh, yes!” Indira said, looking happy at the prospect. “Perhaps I can start making copies of some of the most useful books and references we will need in… our future exploits.” The last bit she whispered, leaning close.
Masagh nodded, smiling for what felt like the first time in days. Approaching this as a preparation period for whatever lay ahead felt better than purgatory. He had no idea what lay ahead of them, but the prospect of doing it with someone else felt better than a further betrayal of his mother alone.
“Good idea.” Masagh said, setting the crate down on a table in front of where Arthur was sketching out a schematic for some complex necrotic ritual. The Bonecaster glanced up at him and pointed a finger towards the Runeforging side of the lab.
“Armor reinforcement. If you ever get let off the leash again, or if Sabrione manages to fill her vacancies, your mother wants better defenses for her knights.” He said in his gruff voice as an explanation of Masagh’s next task.
“Got it.” Masagh said without hesitation or complaint. Familiar shame creeping up inside him at the contrast it made to his usual sulking. It was worsened when Arthur looked up in surprise at his lack of snark.
He turned away from the Bonecaster and made his way over to the now familiar workstation. Masagh looked down and found an old and well worn schematic and recipe for reinforced and twice light plate armor. The metalwork and plates were as complex as anything, but Masagh was a master blacksmith. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the nine paragraphs in old Imperial about the process of imbuing the armor with light weight and durability. He skimmed over the Scrivening explanation, frowning at the point in which it described the linked trifecta of glyphs meant to be the nexus of the enchantment.
He was only a passable Runesmith and a negligent Scrivener. This was going to be the most ambitious project he had undertaken by far.
“Better take this one one step at a time.” Indira said brightly, reading over his shoulder and lounging in the air. She had materialized just her hair so it flopped down over his head. Masagh batted her hair away in agitation, but she was incorporeal before he managed it.
One of the ways in which he had been diverting himself from his own imprisonment on the Creth Compound had been teaching the ghost to read the ancient undead language. She had been a quick study.
“You know haunting doesn’t mean you have to always be with me right?” He muttered, retrieving the ingredients needed for the viscerite first. He pulled the small Aetherite dragonshard out of the box of supplies on the shelf and set it on the table with the flexible leather sheets. It was cured and cut in squares. Mezelev’s law of power to mass ratio meant that it was enough leather to make the spaulder he was starting with, but it was not actually cut for the design. Then he finally moved over to the steel ingots that served as the base for much of their armor and weaponry work. Masagh ran his finger along the worn and faded size labels, squinting down at them until he found the recommended size.
It was heavy, but not more than any of his weapons. Once he had gathered the materials on the workbench he lit the soot blackened Aether Forge carefully. Indira watched from where she lounged in midair.
“Can you check the priorities list for material components in the forge?” Masagh asked as he turned back to his work.
“Eh? You don’t know it by heart?” She asked, spinning around midair to glance at the open book.
“First is the base catalyst, our Aetherite.” Masagh began reciting. “Second is the material to be worked and third are the materials to be absorbed?” He finished, finally getting the old forge lit. He slid back and turned to Indira.
“So you did know it.” She said brightly. Indira loved their work in the laboratory. Masagh was sure it was a far sight better than the macabre tortures Lithicirus had subjected his victims to in his own lab.
“Just wanted to make sure.” He said.
Masagh read over the recipe as he waited for the forge to heat up enough. Indira had drifted back over to pester Arthur a bit. She had recently come out of her shell more and spoke to others like Riah and Arthur without Masagh prompting the conversation. He thought this should be noted as progress for her.
When the forge was hot enough Masagh donned the bulky gloves and clasped the Aetherite in the tongs with a practiced grace. After placing it carefully in the forge he waited again until it had liquidized, tendrils of magic swirling in it. Then he brought the steel ingot over and placed it longways on top of the liquid. It was a careful and boring process to melt down the materials. It you were negligent about watching over their state things could end badly for you. An exploding kiln was a mistake few survived.
He watched the steel heat and lose its shape, ignoring the searing heat on his face. His ghostly assistant had drifted back over and materialized to roll up fetch the leather for him. She walked over to him with a swaying grace distinct from that of mere corporeal mortals. He plucked the wrapped leather with the tongs and set it carefully over the heated liquid in the bottom of the forge.
“Shit!” He exclaimed, as the leather sizzled. Indira raised her eyebrows at him but Masagh was already spinning towards the materials.
He fervently searched the shelf of battered gem boxes and found the diamonds. He removed a pair and brought them back over to the forge, showing her. “Can’t very well reinforce the thing without the reagent for hardness.” He bent and watched the last of the leather disperse into aether liquid. Then he carefully added the tiny diamonds to the mix.
“Good catch.” Indira said. “Would have hated having to go haunt someone else when you were turned into a puddle.” She ran her finger down the recipe. “It says you hammer it into shape and engrave the inside?”
Masagh nodded, fetching the mold and pouring the the molten mix into it. Arcane vapors swirled in complex patterns above the red hot metal mixture. It had the characteristic oily gleam of material infused with Aetherite. “Yes, inside so blows don’t break up the glyphs if you need to repair it.”
Indira looked up at him as he finished the pour and watched the metal quickly cool in the mold. It would just be the small plate of the spaulder, but represented quite a bit of magical investment. “Do you know how to hammer it?”
Masagh smiled, still watching the metal cool. “That, I am good at.” He found the runeforging hammer of suitable size, one he had created in the first months when Arthur had made him craft his own tools. It was neither the best nor the worst of its kind, but he found he was overly fond of it and all its brethren. “Before I worked any world magics I worked metal here with my sister. After swordcraft it was my first lessons.”
He popped the enchanted metal out of the mold and set it atop the curved horn of the anvil. Holding it with another set of tongs he began to hammer the metal into an all too familiar shape. He let the hammer fall rather than bringing it down, letting gravity do his work.
As his hands fell to familiar work, his mind was left to wander. He glanced at Indira where she sat perusing a recipe book for Runeforging. Had the ghost been right about Arthur? Had the man seen a time when Masagh left the compound? It seemed inevitable the more he thought on it now.
His mother had been set in her ways for far longer than he had been alive. She would not take the kind of risks Masagh felt they needed. His boldness was recklessness in her eyes. But if she wasn’t going to change and he could not stand to stay here in perpetuity, what else was there. He would have to go against her wishes. He had promised Indira that he would build something where she had a real place. He had dedicated so much to finding the lich, to gaining the power needed. What had he gained for all that effort? A stripping of his duties and a house arrest.
No.
He had Indira. He had the Fademantle, a powerful magic item. And he had a rumor of a another necromancer in Ecith. As the sounds of the hammer falling filled the room, Masagh found himself planning once again.
Continues here...