As they approached their destination, the grind of the carriage tracks shifted, and the steep grade leveled out into a smooth glide. The stale air of the Deep Roads gave way to a sharp draft with the distinct scents of brine and, in the background, the bitter tang of Silence.
I didn’t miss that, but I suppose it’d be too much to ask the Iron State to refrain from using it. We’ve adapted well enough, but it still holds us back. Without it, we would have washed them away in an unending tide of low-tier casters.
Through the carriage’s grated window, Orion watched as the pitch-black tunnel opened into an illuminated expanse.
The Sunken Hold was a fortress carved directly into the Adamantine Range's seaward face, with its lower half fully submerged. Its cavernous receiving yard opened to the churning western ocean, suspended hundreds of feet above the dark waves crashing against jagged breakwaters.
Their carriage rolled onto a wide platform and came to a halt. The doors unsealed with a loud clank.
After the Ironbreakers had gone down and completed their security checks, Daelin stepped out, followed by Team Obsidian.
Noise hit them like a wall, and it quickly became clear that while the siege had been broken and the Iron State pushed back from the immediate walls, this was still an active warzone.
Soldiers barked orders over the clatter of supply carts. Cranes lifted pallets of materials from storage vaults, swinging them toward the outer batteries.
The stone walls bore fresh scars from the recent battles. Deep gouges pitted the granite, sometimes still stained green where alchemical acid had eaten through the rock.
Before Orion could complete his inspection, a roaring cheer erupted from the lower ramps leading up from the beaches, and looking down, he saw the reason.
A dwarven battalion was marching back from battle. The warriors were caked in wet sand, soot, and smears of foul fluids, yet they held their weapons high, clearly victorious.
At their head strode a squat, broad-shouldered dwarf wearing a suit of dull gray plate armor. The metal lacked the polished sheen of steel but absorbed ambient light and, if his inspection was correct, was practically indestructible, as evidenced by the lack of dents and dings despite all the dirt caking it.
The dwarf also casually carried an oversized cleaver over his shoulder, the blade as thick as a man’s thigh and etched with glowing runes.
Orion fixed his gaze on him. The updated spell logic in his adamantine frames engaged effortlessly, filtering ambient interference and compiling the metadata for easy perusal.
Vargus Lazuli - First Prince of the Forgelands
Class: Deep Den Berserker [A-rank]
Level: 159
Mind: 870
Attunement: 1005
Body: 1544
Traits: Leader Instinct [A-rank]; Adamantine Flesh [A-rank]; Internal Mana Manipulation [A-rank]; Seismic Step [A-rank]; Wrath of the Berserker [A-rank]
Given his title, he had to be one of Daelin’s brothers and a Tier Four warrior at that. The royal family clearly did not lack powerhouses.
Daelin pushed through the milling soldiers, raising a hand. “Vargus!"
The armored prince turned, breaking into a toothy grin. He handed his great cleaver to an aide, who sagged under its weight, and closed the distance, wrapping his younger brother in a bruising embrace.
“The Hidden Heir finally shows his face," Vargus boomed, his voice carrying easily over the yard’s din. "Ragna finally let you out of the forge?”
“Not without a lot of insistence, but I managed to find a good time to press my luck,” Daelin replied. “Did you just return from battle?”
"Pushed them right back into the surf," Vargus declared with fierce pride. "We caught one of their amphibious dreadnoughts stalled in the shallows. A hundred feet of iron and brass, venting poison smoke and churning the sand with tracks the size of carts. The bastards thought they could crawl right up to the lower gates.”
"You sank it, then?” Daelin asked, his eyes gleaming.
"Boarded it," Vargus chuckled. "Shattered the drive shafts with the hammers, breached the hull, exposed the brains to the rushing water, and let the ocean and its monsters do the rest. The Iron State builds tough toys, but they sink just like anything else when you crack the shell.”
Vargus shifted his gaze, his dark eyes narrowing as he took in the humans, the dragonkin, and the vampire standing behind his brother. "And who are these strays? You usually travel lighter.”
"Envoys from the Magocracy," Daelin said, keeping the introduction brief. "They have important intelligence for the King. We need an audience.”
Vargus grunted, wiping a smear of fluid from his beard with a cloth another soldier handed him. "Bad timing. Father has been locked in the war room with the High Strategists, coordinating our response to the naval blockade. He won't see anyone for hours, maybe days, not even you. Take your guests to Kaelia in the infirmary. She has the authority to quarter them, and you can get that acid burn on your arm looked at.”
Daelin glanced at his forearm and noticed a small, sizzling patch on his leather apron for the first time, likely picked up from hugging his brother, given all the fluids he was covered in. He yelped and batted it away, drawing a round of laughter from the warriors.
Once he’d averted a disaster, he took hold of himself and nodded. “We’ll do that, brother. Enjoy your victory feast.”
Vargus turned back to his cheering battalion, shouting orders for rest and for rations.
Daelin led Team Obsidian away from the chaotic receiving yards, navigating the winding corridors deeper into the fortress with natural ease. The air grew heavier, and the sea breeze gave way to the tang of blood, boiled linens, and antiseptic salves.
The infirmary was a vast chamber lined with hundreds of cots. Healers moved swiftly among the wounded, their hands glowing with nature-aspected mana.
It was a contrast to the purity of Asteria’s pure magic, which effortlessly healed injuries and illnesses. Meanwhile, dwarven healers engaged in a gritty triage, repairing broken bones and neutralizing acid burns through persistent effort, supporting natural regrowth and bolstering the body’s defenses.
Even compared with Jordan’s methods, it was clearly less developed, but given that they were making do and holding their own, nobody dared say anything.
At the center of the ward stood a woman directing the flow of supplies. Kaelia Lazuli had a lithe, slender build, unusual for a dwarf, yet she held herself with the same imposing authority as Matriarch Ragna. She wore a white apron over practical leather armor, a ledger in one hand and a glowing crystal in the other, running a diagnostic spell through it.
She spotted Daelin, tilted her head in surprise, then strode over, scanning the group.
“I would normally be quite happy to see you, but this is a sterile zone, little brother," Kaelia said.
“We’ll get out of your hair as soon as we can. We need quarters, sister," Daelin requested. "Just until the King can receive my friends and a decision is made.”
Kaelia looked at Orion, her gaze lingering on his silver coat and the adamantine frames before shifting to Esmeralda. The vampire met her stare with a half-lidded one.
For a while, it seemed the two women would remain locked in their little stare-off, but eventually Kaelia snorted and looked away.
"I have two empty barracks in the eastern wing," she decided, tapping her crystal against her ledger. "The soldiers assigned there will not return from their missions for another week. You may use them, but keep your guests out of the wards. We are dealing with enough from the alchemical shells without adding undead complications to the mix.”
Esmeralda offered a slight, mocking curtsy. "Your hospitality is appreciated, Princess.”
Kaelia’s eyes narrowed seeing the meaning beneath the vampire's polite facade. "See that it is.”
She signaled for an orderly to guide them, then turned back to the chaos of the infirmary before Daelin could offer further thanks.
The eastern barracks were austere, carved directly into the bedrock. The room featured six stone bunks, woolen blankets, and a central iron stove. It was cold and functional, and, more importantly, it was away from the hustle and bustle of the fort, as private as possible in a place like this.
The moment the door shut behind the orderly, Orion drew a thread of mana from the Field and wove a multi-layered acoustic ward, sealing the room in a bubble of silence. He reinforced it with a secondary barrier to scramble scrying attempts, ensuring their conversation stayed strictly within the stone walls.
"We need a strategy," he said, turning to face the team. "The King is busy coordinating a naval war. Walking into his council and demanding his artillery battalions for a forest hundreds of miles away will fail, no matter how important the data we carry is."
Garrick dropped his pack onto a stone bunk. "The kid is right: the Matriarch’s seal only gets us through the door. We need more to convince the King, something that will help him materially.”
"He just lost men taking down a single dreadnought," Jordan added, sitting on the edge of a bunk. "If the Iron State fleet is still so strong, he’ll think he needs every cannon to keep them off the beaches.”
Esmeralda glided toward the iron stove, poking and prodding its mechanisms until she was satisfied they were as they appeared. "Then we must manipulate the levers around him. A king listens to his blood. Vargus is clearly a frontline commander, and Kaelia holds logistical oversight. We must offer them something they value more than the idle artillery in the safe zones.”
"The information about the Silence-alloy might get us a meeting, but I doubt it’d be more than that,” Orion said, pacing the length of the room. "We need an offensive bargaining chip.”
"The dreadnoughts," Daelin interjected. “I remember you telling me that your people fought several of them before coming to the Forgelands the first time, so you might be able to offer some intel there as well. The one Vargus boarded seems a bit different, but its strength shouldn’t be. Still, if the Iron State applies the Silence-alloy to the hulls, our weapons will splash off them like water. The fleet will sail right up to the breakwaters and level the Hold.”
"Then we’ll have to provide a solution," Orion agreed. "My data on the alloy includes its structural stress points. If we can calculate an optimal attack using my data, we can outline exactly how to crack a dreadnought's hull, even if it is plated in the new metal.”
“That would certainly get his attention,” Garrick muttered. “I doubt he’ll give us the time of day until its utility is proven, but we should be able to use the intel we have to bargain for time.”
“We’ll have to bring Vargus and Kaelia into the fold first," Esmeralda advised. "Let the Prince present the tactical offensive to his father, and let the Princess see the price of ignoring it. If the King's own heirs argue for the trade, the artillery is ours.”
A loud thud vibrated through the floor, rattling dust from the ceiling. A second impact followed, shaking the wooden door on its iron hinges.
Jordan jumped up. "They said the siege was broken!”
“Wait here!” Daelin ordered and slipped out of the room.
He returned a few moments later, his expression calm. "It is just the Iron State throwing a tantrum. They lost a dreadnought, so their rear-line ships are lobbing shells at the outer breakwaters in frustration. The fortress shields are holding. The fighting remains on the water.”
That eased some of the tension, though no one liked the idea of being so close to the enemy.
"While we wait for the war room to open," Orion said, looking at the dwarven Prince, "I have a requirement of my own. I need a high-density mana crystal capable of handling the processing for a Tier Three spell, possibly even more.”
Daelin rubbed his bearded chin. "The material I gave you for the glasses was deep-vault stock, but for something of that magnitude, you need a flawless gem. The kind we use to power the city-class wards.”
"Where do I acquire one?" Orion asked.
"You can’t just buy them," Daelin warned. "The royal vaults control the distribution of all high-tier stones. You will have to speak with the Gem-master General. If nothing has changed since I was last here two years ago, his name is Thraing. He runs the inner sanctum of the artificers here at the Hold.”
"Will he trade with a human?”
“He'd trade with a troll for the right price,” Daelin snorted. "He is an old, cranky bastard who cares nothing for politics and everything for the craft. If you can impress him, he might part with a stone. But be careful, Orion. Thraing is not like my aunt. If he thinks you are wasting his time, he will refuse to entertain you, and you’ll never change his mind.”