“Master Percival, are you certain I cannot take your place?” Calbern asked, eyes fixed on the new bike.
“Yep,” I said, not bothering to hide my grin.
Much as Calbern wanted to volunteer to drive the new motorcycle up the winding stems and pedals of Hellbrand Spire, the crafters had to be the ones to pilot their inventions. I’d be ascending the spire myself.
In a way I was glad I couldn't offload the responsibility. This sort of high-speed maneuver wasn't nearly as dangerous as it would have been before I became Hydra-souled. Was kinda looking forward to it, though there was a touch of trepidation.
My gaze travelled up the twisted mess of stem-like towers and the clustered platforms that had looked like leaves from a distance.
Much of it was open space, with only those ‘petals’ having workshops on them.
While we’d been doing the design work, someone else had marked out our route. There were several glowing rings of oscilating metal placed and the bottom and top of each stem we had to pass through on our way up. A bit like one of those racing games I’d seen in online videos.
Except the rings were physical, of course.
Those rings were the closest we had to guardrails, despite racing up a structure that stretched thousands of feet into the air.
Yet the course had been something Calamity had kept in mind during our design phase. I hadn't understood a lot of the safety features she'd insisted on, such as the magnetic grapple or the thrusters that would allow us to adjust course and return to solid land. I honestly thought we were just doing it to out cool the other team.
“You must be truly desperate for their help if you're willing to do something this foolish,” Starbreaker said as I was testing the brakes at the starting line.
“I mean it's not just about their help. It's about getting credibility with the engineers,” I said, glancing over at the competition.
The other team's captain, the one who'd originally challenged Calamity, was already strapped into their device. Their arms were out to the sides, plugged directly into the control mechanisms, something that wasn't even an option for me. Calamity had chosen to forego it on her own bike, ‘to prove it could be done with a less efficient interface.’
Those had been her words. Still, she seemed to be more attached to her humanoid form than the rest of the Forgeborn, so I doubted it was the whole truth.
“You do not need their respect.” Starbreaker shook his head. “You are already Hydra-souled, far more powerful than these clankers will ever be.”
“Yeah, didn't think you'd be one to understand respect,” I said, nodding at him as I moved the bike into position for the race, “but maybe you'll figure out why some people believe in it.”
Starbreaker rolled his eyes before disappearing in a fold of starlight. It was even more striking down in the Abyssal Depths where you couldn’t see the sky through the thick soot overhead.
“He's got a rod jammed so far up his backside he has a hard time seeing his feet, don’t he?” Calamity asked, shooting me a half smile.
“Shouldn't have even been in the here,” I grumbled. Calbern, Tresla, and Inertia were all waiting to the side on the airship where they could watch the entire race. A similar enchantment to the one that hid the seams on the observation deck would allow them to pierce through the smog.
For whatever reason, Starbreaker had felt the need to come and throw some last-second shade in my direction. On reflection, coming from him, they were almost encouraging.
Didn’t matter.
Was time to race. The Forgeborn didn’t use a buzzer or lights to announce the start of the race. No, one of the ‘neutral judges’ brought down a hammer onto an anvil.
The clang of the two metals colliding was met by our own engines roaring to life. And it felt a lot more like an engine between my legs as the rubber gripped steel, and I lurched forward. Leaning into the sudden pull as my bike accelerated, I let the front wheel come off the ground. Been a long time since I'd popped a wheelie.
With the thrusters we'd added it was even easier to steer than it should’ve been with only one wheel on the ground. Even so, I brought it forward after the initial straight stretch towards the first upward curving stem-like piping. Even if my agility and neural dynamics were far beyond what they’d been as a mere mortal, the bike still worked better with two wheels in contact with the surface.
Calamity and I got an early lead, though it didn't last as long as I'd expected.
Once we started going through some of the tight corners leading up around the spire, we slowed down a lot. Especially when we took a blast of soot to the faces, causing us to nearly collide with each other. We both laughed, but had to stop and turn around to take the correct stem we’d overshot amidst the thick soot.
Our competitor had managed to get ahead during our little overshoot. As I passed them, one disadvantage that hadn't occurred to me was what would happen if they rammed into us. The big two-wheeled monstrosity the Forgeborn was driving was big. I had considerably less mass on my end. Since I hadn't expected them to be so willing to just knock me off the edge, it sent me flying.
I was only a couple hundred feet up, yet the empty air below me still seemed daunting for a second. I nearly ended up forgetting about the safety features we'd added and just tugging on my aura.
Relying on my magic for the race would’ve implied a failure in our crafting though. The only magic we were allowed to use was that built into the bikes.
It was only once I was upside down I remembered to activate the magnetic grapple. With a pull I felt all the way up my arms, the bike got sucked right back up along the bottom of the stem we’d been racing along.
The look on the Forgeborn's face when I emerged in front of them at the next metallic race ring was worth being thrown off.
Didn’t take long before the next obstacle got in the way. Molten splashes of metal from the tower, solidified into spikes that could tear the rubber wheels apart. Our competitor’s wheels were built solidly enough they just smashed through.
On our end, we flipped the magnetic grapple. It slowed us down, but it pushed the bikes upward long enough to clear the debris.
Again, we raced past the other Forgeborn, though this time they weren’t surprised.
The next few loops of the ascent were mostly uneventful. Wasn’t long before Calamity and I were nearly half the Spire ahead. Of course, that was when Calamity called out at me, "What do you say we make the rest of this more interesting?"
“Not sure I could handle more interesting,” I shot back.
“I'm going to take that as a yes,” Calamity said, despite me very much implying the opposite. Her wings spread and she lifted up, skipping ahead. “See if you can catch me!”
I was certain, if Bevel was here, she would’ve totally done something similar. We were technically disallowed from using our magic during the race, so what she had done had been within the rules, if only just.
After my earlier maneuver, I did have an idea: the safety feature. I launched myself off one of the pedals, making sure to pop my wheel up before hand. Only this time I tilted back far enough my back was about to drag against the metal before I reached open air.
Which, of course, is when I fired the grapples. They sucked the bike up to the stem above me, right to the ring. My teeth rattled as the bike suspension was pushed to its limits as I shot past Calamity.
Then I was racing upwards, regularly riding along underneath, grinning wildly. Definitely a good way to recruit a few engineers.
Despite my creative use of the magnetic grapple, Calamity still made it to the top of the Hellbrand Spire before me. She had wings and the grapple, afterall.
Even so, she was only a hundred feet or so ahead of me by the time she pulled into the finish line.
“Did better than I expected.” Calamity shook her head, her wirewrought hair tinkling softly as it came free of the bun she’d tied it in. “Thought I had you there. Quick thinking.”
“Not my first race against a cheater.”
“That was very much within the rules, I’ll have you know.”
“Sure, sure.”
We continued light heartedly bantering until the dual-wheeled Forgeborn pulled up. It had taken them nearly a full five minutes to catch up.
The judges announced our victory. Despite arriving at the top first, it had only been one of a half dozen categories.
“What even is conversion rating?” the one category we’d lost in.
“Fancy way of saying how well does it redirect the total mass,” Calamity said even as she waved me after her. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s take a look at their design.”
“Is that allowed?” I asked even as our competitor and their team swarmed over our bikes. “I guess it is.”
“Of course. It’s half the reason I even accept these silly challenges.” Calamity was already squating next to the heavy machine, running one of her humanoid hands over it. “They do good work, they just went up against the best.”
Didn’t take long for me to agree. I could see a lot of potential in their design too. A whole lot of things we could do with the wheels. The gyroscopic enchantment was the most interesting part, though. It could be used for a lot of things other than the frankly awkward design they'd chosen.
It was as Calamity and I were comparing notes, still inspecting the design, that a much larger Forgeborn arrived. Them blotting out the sun kinda got my attention, causing me to look up. And up.
They were easily larger than the Iron Curtain. In fact, they resembled Bahama. Not just in size, but in shape as well. A dragon of steel and steam.
They stared down at us for several long seconds, eyes larger than the ten-foot tires blinking with a shuddering clink.
Not long after several other Forgeborn arrived, including the neutral judge who’d signaled the start of the competition. No one said anything in the presence of the Forgelord.
At least, I couldn't see this massive Forgeborn being anything but a Forgelord.
The silence became almost palpable, even more noticeable in a place where every minor shift of a limb was normally cause for a hiss or whistle. It wasn't until Inertia and Tresla came down from the Iron Curtain it was broken.
Inertia let loose a string of Forgespeak that I was pretty sure roughly translated to ‘property of a creation that never falters’ followed by a string of curses I’d recently heard describing her own ancestors.
“Creation,” Calamity whispered to me, chuckling softly. “Eldest of the Forgelords.”
I’d heard Inertia referred to as a Forgelord, though she’d heartily decried the title. She was a Forgeborn, not a lord.
Still, I was starting to figure out it had less to do with ruling over their people, and more to do with the fact that the Forgeborn themselves considered their Forgelords more. In the case of Creation, it appeared that more was a tad more literal than for Inertia.
There was a bit of a back and forth between Creation and Inertia, with Calamity and Tresla giving me a blow by blow. I was thankful for it, because the two Forgelords were breaking out words and phrases I’d never heard before.
“Creation’s complaining about us taking away Forgeborn during a time of crisis,” Calamity whispered, rolling her mechanical eyes with a whirr.
Tresla’s hood bobbed, the new cloth brighter than the old, less gray and closer to pure white. It’d been like that since they’d finished their new bond. “And Inertia has reminded him that the Forgeborn don’t need a few engineers who they don’t listen to anyway.”
“Oh, Creation just pulled out the big one. How does she intend to protect the Forgeborn if she doesn’t intend to take up the mantle of Forgelord again.”
“And Inertia has said that...” Tresla trailed off. Hood shifting in my direction.
"Said what?" I asked, keeping my voice low, suspecting I wasn't going to like the answer.
Tresla's hood moved in a bit of a shrug. “She said she'd make sure that you got to Djinn-souled. All it would take is defeating the right monsters.”
I looked up just in time to realize both Creation and Inertia were staring straight at me.
Slowly, Inertia raised her thumb.
There was part of me that wanted to be angry about Inertia throwing me under the bus-sized Forgeborn like that, but really, they were right. If the big guy wanted proof… my hand ran over the work of the Forgeborn. Something they’d put together in three days without a pre-existing design or time inside Memory Palace.
Yep, what was a Magus Protectus who couldn't protect their people?