I have about an hour of writing time to start on today's chapter. Thinking 4 chapters left in Book 10...Epilogue will be Khrusos and Hephaestus

Chapter 591: Legendary Crafting

Hephaestus looked, but there was no concern. “How did they arrive?”

“Arrive?” Baelira asked, confused.

“The mage said they were all standing on a metallic-looking cloud,” Castile said, entering just seconds after Baelira. I found it interesting that Baelira had rushed to tell me as soon as she learned of the titan king’s arrival.

“Anamae is with him then. She can hold metallic dust into a solid cloud and move it with remarkable speed,” Hephaestus announced. He nodded to himself in deep thought. “Khrusos is locked out of the teleportation network. I will have time if that is how they are traveling. Did your people tell them where I was?”

“They lost communication with the mages and expedition. The storm giants descended from the sky demanding their surrender and your whereabouts. No other message sendings have come through,” Castile answered.

“They are either on their way here, or all your people are dead and they don’t know where I am,” Hephaestus said absently. Having stood before Khrusos, I knew it was unlikely he hadn’t pulled the information from someone.

“You are not concerned?” Baelira said incredulously to Hephaestus.

“The confrontation is inevitable,” Hephaestus said, emotionlessly. “I have been avoiding it for some time.” He returned to his work, but I think he started to work a little faster.

There was a brief silence before Castile turned to me. “The mage commanders are packing up this camp now and retreating to the capital with everything they can fit in the wagons. There will be no legionnaires remaining,” Castile informed me.

That would be a long caravan and easily spotted from the sky. Not where I wanted my friends to be. “Take the girls to Sobral. I will wait for the device and meet you there once it is complete,” I said to Castile.

Castile only hesitated for a moment before leaving in a rush. I didn’t think there was a need to rush, as Hephaestus said, flying still took time. “Where do you want me to go?” Baelira asked.

“You have the kettle of souls, stay in the city with the Death Sentinels and continue your work after the titan threat has passed. I don’t want the Empress pulling her forces for a breach of the agreement,” I said.

Baelira’s face twitched slightly. She probably wanted to be part of the fight, but her completion of this task, guaranteed the Empire’s aid. “Don’t hide in the undercity. Either go into the woodlands, or if you are caught in the city, go into the dungeon.” She nodded as she had been the one who told me of Hephaestus’s reign of destruction. Baelira left to inform the other Sentinels, leaving me with Hephaestus who was already back at work.

“Where is the pure mithril disc?” I asked.

“I have enough thread for what I am planning,” the titan said as he settled at another bench.

“That is not what I asked. Where is the disc?” I said more forcefully.

Hephaestus looked up, his face impassive. “I stored it. I might find a use for it.” I didn’t want to anger him, but that mithril was priceless. There was enough there to repair my mithril chain and then some.

“Fine,” I said, sitting down to watch him.

He returned to his work, and I asked questions as he prepped the difficult artificing. The matrix suspension he had prepared was an alloy of silver and three other metals, of which I was fairly certain one was titanium from his description. How he purified the metals was something he didn’t have time to explain. I didn’t have time to go into the dreamscape and compare old chemistry notes from Earth to confirm what the metals were by his explanations or even start to understand complex metallurgy. I don’t think I had any Earth references to draw on anyway. Maybe some of the Caelorian texts might, but this was not the time.

“This is the mold,” Hephaestus said proudly as he handed it to me. I think he just wanted me to stop asking him questions. Konstantin’s head poked into the tent stealthily. I looked up, and he nodded in a signal that they were leaving. I returned the nod and hoped I was not caught in a titanic fight.

The mold he had chosen was an ovaloid glove. There were no moving digits, and it was slightly too large for my hand. Hephaestus explained the design. “The artifact will function by reaching inside the glove and sending aether through each finger, activating four pathways at once. The thumb is not part of this, as its purpose is to hold the device in contact with the fingers.”

The artifact reminded me of something from my youth, and I reminisced wearing the toy. “Hulk smash,” I muttered.

Hephaestus stopped working and looked at me, confused. “I would not use the device for smashing. While it is not delicate, it could be damaged.”

“Understood,” I said, not explaining further.

I carefully put the mold down and watched him weave the spell form matrix. Hephaestus held up his hands six inches apart, and the spool of mithril thread was on a reel. In the air between his hands, the thread started to draw out familiar patterns. I recognized some of them, but then the titan rotated it to continue, and I quickly lost my focus on what I thought I was seeing.

Hephaestus continued to rotate and add layers to the wire matrix he was suspending with his magic. He was sweating in intense concentration, and I wondered how he remembered the patterns well enough to continue. He was turning the wire frame like a Rubik’s cube, adding and connecting more and more spell form. The complexity was staggering. Hours passed and I remained fixated on the show. Even though I could never match the speed at which he was working, the dreamscape should be able to recreate what I was witnessing, though it might take thousands of years to replicate in the real world.

“I am done,” Hephaestus said, clearly exhausted. “Hand me the mold,” he said, extending his hand, and I did so. He carefully closed the mold around the suspended structure. “Activate the crucible…” he told me.

Even though I was just an extra pair of hands, I actually felt honored to contribute anything to this masterwork in progress. I channeled aether into the crucible to melt the alloy and I immediately felt the heat emanating from it, but my hands were cool holding the vessel. There were a few silvery swirls in the mixture. “Activate the second set of runes around the lip to make sure it is a homogeneous mixture,” he commanded more sharply. I found them and watched as the molten metal swirled and coalesced into a single, consistent silver mass.

“Now pour slowly!” Hephaestus said excitedly. I did as commanded as he held the matrix he had woven in place within the mold. The mold slowly filled up, and when the first drips overflowed to the floor, he snapped, “Stop!”

“The cooling process is just as important as the other steps. If it is too fast, then it might deform the spell forms suspended within,” Hephaestus said slowly. With my aether sight, I could see him pulling heat from the mold with a spell form. His eyes were bloodshot as his intensity only increased.

Without warning, he slammed the mold down with both hands, and the shell crumbled neatly away to reveal a large, silvery, metallic fist. “It is done! Our bargain is complete.” He extended the silver fist to me. “Try it.”

It was a lot lighter than I expected. I looked into the eyes of the titan for any signs of betrayal, but picked up none. Holding it with my left hand, I slid my right hand into the newly crafted artifact. “I just channel aether to my fingertips? How does it work?”

“Each of the arrays you are activating harmonizes with a crucial element in the World Gates. One of them is the set of coordinates that identify the demon’s home world. The device should be so sensitive that even if the gate is not active, it should still locate the gate,” he said eagerly. He reminded me of a proud father anticipating a moment of validation.

I pooled aether in each of my fingers inside the warm gauntlet. All at once, I released all four flows. Instead of being pulled toward the World Gate I was searching for, my consciousness was ripped from me and zipped away. At first I thought Hephaestus had betrayed me, but that was not the case.

This was a form of ethereal projection. It was an out-of-body experience that was discomforting, because while I was doing it, I wasn’t aware of my body. My body was immobile and vulnerable. I still needed to know if the device worked, so I persisted.

My mind went south at incredible speeds, crossed the ocean, passed over the Belt of Storms in a blink, and arrived at the other continent. I passed over farmland and cities and then dove straight into the earth. And then I was there. An underground city inside a cave that being called a cave was a grave injustice. Hundreds of buildings carpeted the cavern and individuals looked like ants. Hundreds of thousands of people bustled through this city in the Endless Dark. Not only would we have to fight our way across the continent and into the Endless Dark, but we would also have to conquer this city to reach that…

In the very center of the city stood a stepped pyramid that rose nearly to the ceiling, with black stalactites hovering just above it, as if pointing to our objective. Dozens of Nashasari crawled over the gate that reminded me of the Telhian gates, just on a grander scale. It was large enough for a dragon to pass through, and I didn’t want to imagine what they planned to emerge from it.

The only good news was that it looked incomplete—though I didn’t know what a completed gate should look like. The top third of the circular gate was missing, and it looked like they were frantically building it. A Nashasari looked up and pointed. It took me a moment to realize his finger was pointing at me. He was screaming something in their language, and seconds later, lightning, fire, and arrows were launched in my direction.

I stopped channeling aether and vomited on Hephaestus’s shoes as I was yanked back to my body in a blink. “Did it work?” the titan asked, ignoring the splash of gastric acid covering his fur boots.

“I think so. I know where we need to go.” In the dreamscape, I should be able to trace my flight path and know exactly where on the continent the World Gate was. There was no way they could move something so monstrous. And if they tried to build another, this gauntlet would let me know where it was. “You have fulfilled your obligation,” I confirmed. “Will you travel back to Venere now?”

The titan looked tired and shook his head. “In time, I hope so. But she is not ready for me.” He let a small smile form on his face. “Khrusos is.”

The legendary artificer was not afraid of his mortality. “Do you care to make a trade?”

“I think our association is done. There is nothing you can offer me I want,” he said as he started growing.

A ring appeared in my hand. “I want the rest of the mithril disc for this!” I had to yell as he was now towering over me. When his brow furrowed, I explained. “Venere’s dungeon gave this to me. It will bring me back to her dungeon instantly.”

“Why would she give you that?” Suspicion and maybe jealousy laced his words.

“It was a reward from one of the dungeon rooms,” I explained hastily. “Do you wish to trade or not?”

Hephaestus could probably use his device to translocate back to the Arctic, but I was betting that since Venere had created this ring, he might be more inclined to bargain, plus it brought him into the dungeon itself. I was startled when the disc hit the ground to my left. When it settled, I took it into my space and tossed the ring up. It hung in the air for a moment as he studied it; then he was satisfied, and it vanished. “You should leave if you value your life human Eryk. It will not be long now. I sense a growing charge in the air.”

There was so much knowledge contained in the ancient artificer that it felt wrong leaving. I was smart enough to know any help I gave in a fight would be minimal. I took one step and asked a question that had bothered me for some time. “Before I go, is there a spell form that can disrupt a dimensional space and force its contents into the open?”

Hephaestus had been looking up at the tent ceiling, but then looked back at me. “A dimensional space is contained within an aether core. You would need to overcome that mage’s aether resistance and then fragment the containment.”

I shuddered, remembering how violating it had felt when Khrusos had exposed mine. I nodded, not thinking we needed more words, as Hephaestus reached up and tore the tent's roof down. More than a day had passed since he had started the forging. The sky was overcast, with thick gray clouds threatening rain, but it felt unnatural.

“You have time to run, but time is not infinite,” Hephaestus warned at my slowness. A low roll of thunder came from the east in warning. The clouds were darker in that direction as well.

I didn’t respond, bringing Ginger out of my space. Ginger was smart and could sense something unnatural and dangerous in the air. I mounted her and soothed her anxiety as I got her moving south toward Sobral. As we increased our pace along the trade road, the sky darkened behind us.

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