—— ? ——

  Simon and Kaelalin hurried up the massive steps that led to the landing. Step after step, they moved closer toward the source of the strange voice.

  They reached the threshold of the landing and stopped. A shimmering rainbow of magic lay before them. The barrier protecting the landing sparked and swirled.

  “This is just… Incredible” Kaelalin said with a breath.

  Simon only nodded in response as the colors danced before his eyes. He had seen various magic since landing in this new world, but nothing like this. The barrier gleamed with beauty and danger.

  Without a sound, an arch appeared and created a way to pass through the shimmering magic.

  Simon looked at Kaelalin. “Do we go in?”

  She bit her lip in thought, then nodded back.

  With held breaths, they moved through the barrier. As soon as they crossed, it made a jolting sound. Simon whirled around and saw the arch had vanished.

  He inhaled sharply, but then let out a sigh of relief. As he stared at the spot they had entered, and unconsciously took a step towards it, a new archway began to form.

  “Okay. So we can leave. That’s a relief.” He then turned back to Kaelalin. The frost-kin was staring towards the center of the landing and completely ignoring him.

  Simon followed her gaze and then it was his turn to stare.

  Before them, a glowing ripple was expanding. The ripple expanded into a cylinder then continued to grow. With every second the energy continued to condense.

  It solidified into the outline of a massive, reptilian creature. Plates of dull bronze shimmered where skin might have been, and dark black eyes regarded them. It wore flowing leather clothing that was a mixture of blacks and blues.

  The figure’s chest rose and fell as though it breathed, though no true air moved. Its scaled jaw opened, and a layered voice rumbled out, rough as stone dragged across stone.

  “Strangers. You stand within the Tower of Stabilization. If you hear this, then my breath is gone, yet my words remain. Attend, for time is not merciful, and the molten hunger stalks us all.”

  The construct’s eyes flickered, and the floor beneath them shimmered. The landing was swept away in a rush of vision. Simon staggered as heatless fire bloomed around them. A world of red stone, dark black foliage, and slow winding rivers of some unknown liquid unfolded. As the vista opened, people appeared. Towering, reptilian figures like the avatar before them.

  The figures strode across the landscape with deliberate power, each twice Simon’s height. Their scales gleamed in hues of copper, iron, and silver, their long tails swaying for balance as they carried tools wrought from blackened stone and rune-etched steel. Some walked in small groups, chanting as molten sparks danced between their hands, while others bent the rivers of strange liquid into arcs and channels with gestures that seemed more ritual than labor.

  Kaelalin’s mouth parted. “It’s… a recording.”

  The tall creature before them smiled a toothy grin. “You are partially correct. This is a memory of our world. Or at least a created memory of how our race began.”

  He paused, then inclined his head.

  But before we begin, let me give you my name. I am known as Zerathis of the Tower. Once a novice researcher of this place, chosen for my control of the arcane and the depth of my reserves. I was young, and untested. And yet… I am the last keeper of our final work.”

  Zerathis raised his clawed hand. “So let us begin.”

  The vision shifted.

  Towering cities of obsidian and bronze bloomed across volcanic valleys, their spires glowing with runes. Vast bridges stretched between cliffs, and forges the size of palaces poured rivers of molten ore into channels that cut through the earth. The air shimmered with power, resonant with chants that thrummed like the heartbeat of the world itself.

  “We were the children of fire,” the construct intoned. “Our bones were tempered by heat, our blood sang with metal. In time, our craft touched every seam and every mountain. We thought there was nothing beyond our reach.”

  Zerathis gave a sad smile.

  “But growth was not endless. The strongest of us reached a height and could rise no further. Power bled from our cores. Our souls grew thin. We learned the truth. that something beneath us drank our strength. A hunger older than we were.”

  The vision plunged downward, and the cities above dimmed. Simon’s stomach lurched as the ground peeled away to reveal vast, spiraling tunnels that drilled into the planet’s heart. The smooth walls gleamed in the darkness.

  Figures descended the shafts in steady processions, their scaled bodies reinforced with plates of alloy, tools and measuring rods in hand. Every few steps, they etched marks into the grooves, taking readings, adjusting instruments.

  The Zerathis’s voice rumbled like a grinding stone.

  “So we dug deeper. The further we descended, the denser the energy became. The more stable our constructs, the more potent our calculations. Yet the deeper we worked, the greater the strain upon us. We believed it was a cost of progress… a pressure to be endured. But not by all.”

  He scowled. “Among our people, those with power deemed that the depths were to be kept to themselves.”

  The vision expanded. For a moment Simon and Kaelalin floated between two worlds at once. Above, sunlight broke through violet skies, glinting off the simple halls and workshops of those left on the surface. Their dwellings were coarse but open to the air, families working together in communal yards.

  Below, the tunnels thrummed with brilliance. Tiered chambers opened into vast laboratories and foundries. Their scales gleamed with alloys etched into the flesh itself, their voices raised in argument over theorems and schematics. Arcane devices hung from ceilings like chandeliers, pulsing with captured energy.

  Zerathis's tone hardened.

  “Those who could endure the pressure claimed it was their right. They called themselves the Forged.” A snarl leaked from his mouth that made Kaelalin and Simon jump. The reptilian creature continued.

  “They called themselves ‘the pinnacle of our people’. The surface became a place for the lesser. Farmers. Gatherers. The ones who could not withstand the density below were left to tend the soil and sky.”

  “We told ourselves it was mercy,” Zerathis growled, voice vibrating through the chamber. “Those above were spared the strain. That their lives were simpler, free of burden. But it was pride. We hoarded knowledge. We hoarded power. We made it the goal of all of our people to become one of the forged.”

  The vision shifted again. Surface villages stood half-empty, their strongest drawn down into the spirals.

  “It was never enough. Every child above dreamt of joining us. Every parent offered their brightest to the shafts.”

  A laugh escaped from his lips as he watched the scene with Kaelalin and Simon.

  “By the time we realized the truth of this world, almost all of our kind had descended into the depths. This was when we discovered it. Our world's horrible secret.”

  The vision darkened, the scarlet skies above fading to black as the scene plunged into the depths. The spirals stretched wider, their grooves glowing with a faint inner light. The Forged descended with confidence, their tools gleaming, their voices loud. But at the bottom, something else pulsed.

  Molten light throbbed through cracks in the rock until the whole vision shuddered. A colossal core revealed itself. A seething mass of living metal, glowing veins winding outward like arteries. It pulsed once, and Simon felt it in his teeth.

  Zerathis’s grin faded, replaced by a grimace.

  “At the heart of our world, the source of the dense magic was no gift. It was a hideous creature of hunger. It fed on our magic. As the forged grew in power and control, they exuded magic from their very souls. This abomination hidden in our world pulled on each and every one of us. With every pull of its breath, it condensed our magic into itself. To this day we do not know why. Perhaps it is just its nature. But with every magical art, every magical device, it grew from its prison. It grew and reached for us.”

  The vision warped around them. Figures of the Forged stood in great circles, performing experiments and constructing magical devices. Yet with every flare of brilliance, invisible strands of light tore free from their bodies, drawn inexorably into the core. Some stumbled, scales dimming, their frames trembling under the strain.

  The molten core swelled, and the vision shook again. Veins of living metal forced their way up into the tunnels, creeping along walls and floors. Where they touched, runes guttered and died.

  Kaelalin spoke up. “But, why hadn’t this happened before? When your people were on the surface?”

  The avatar of Zerathis turned its heavy head toward her, black eyes glinting with sorrow.

  “Because the surface bled into the void. When we lived above, what we exuded was dispersed into the great silence beyond the sky. The world could vent itself, slowly, naturally. The hunger at its heart could feed only in fragments.”

  The vision shifted again. Surface dwellers plowed soil under violet light, their simple tools glowing faintly with residue. Trails of energy lifted like smoke from their bodies and fields, drifting upward until they thinned and vanished into the endless expanse above.

  “But when we became the Forged, when nearly all of us sank into the depths, we cut the world off from its release. We could no longer act as a way for the world to vent to the void. We were no longer part of our world's balance. As each new member of our race joined the ranks, another energy source arrived for the core to feed on.”

  Zerathis spread his clawed hands, as if holding the memory itself together.

  “This was when the debates began. Some few of us argued for retreat, to return to the surface and let the world breathe. To abandon what we had built and yield our pride. Some discussed creating a way to stabilize the new world we had designed. Create a way to stabilize our tunnels and cities below the earth. But then there was the final group of our kind…” His teeth bared, a snarl of remembered fury. “They sought another way. To carve a vent straight into the core, to force the world to release its pressure by our design. They called it genius. They called it salvation.”

  The vision clarified, the vast chamber of debate ringing with voices. Groups of the Forged filled the tiers, their scales gleaming in bronze and steel hues, their voices layered with urgency.

  “I was among the second group,” the construct said, his tone heavy with regret. “We sought to stabilize. To craft devices that could hold back the hunger. To build bracing against the pressure, separate the elements of our world. We believed our ingenuity could preserve what we had wrought below.”

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  The vision shifted, showing his diagrams scorned and swept aside by louder voices. Gold-crested figures, the High Mages, traced their single great shaft in the air, a channel that bored straight into the core. Their illusions burst with light, their rhetoric triumphant.

  “Their voices drowned us out,” Zerathis rumbled. “The people wanted hope, not caution. They cheered for the vent, for the promise of abundance, for the lie of control.”

  His black eyes dimmed with sorrow.

  “I clung to my faith in our craft. I believed still that if we refined, if we built stronger, we could endure. But the fissures multiplied. The hunger only grew.”

  He spread his claws wide. “Then I knew. We could not hold it. Our designs would never be able to face the raw power beneath. I turned to those I once opposed and begged them to hear me. I joined the side of those that said we should ascend. We had to return to the surface. Let the world breathe again. Only then was there a chance.”

  The chamber blurred. The High Mages’ golden illusions blazed larger, the cheers of the Forged swelling until they shook the cavern.

  “But none would listen. They called me a coward. They said retreat was a failure. They chose pride. They chose the vent.”

  The vision fractured, showing massive drills boring down, glyphs blazing along their lengths.

  “And so they made a throat for the hunger beneath. Their great work took years, but they accomplished it. They cracked through the bottom layers and the world took its first, unobstructed breath.”

  He sighed.

  “And for a time, it worked.”

  The vision steadied. The massive drills were gone, replaced by a colossal shaft lined with runes. From its depths, waves of light pulsed upward, slow and rhythmic, like the breathing of a titan.

  The pulses broke through to the surface, washing over fields, villages and cities. Crops that had withered under violet skies sprang green again. Rivers once stagnant now glittered with motes of power. The air itself felt vibrant, charged.

  “For the first time in centuries,” Zerathis said, “the surface thrived. The Forged congratulated themselves, proclaiming their genius. Mana flooded upward in cycles, renewing the land. The High Mages were hailed as saviors, their names etched into every hall.”

  The vision showed crowds gathering at the mouths of the vents, their scales glowing brighter as the mana washed over them. Children reached for the air, laughing as sparks trailed from their hands. Smiths forged alloys never before possible. Scholars sketched designs in the dirt that came alive beneath their claws.

  Simon watched it all unfolding. He couldn’t help himself.

  “So, that's when the universe showed up to kick you in the teeth?”

  “Simon!” Kaelain chastised him, her expression mortified. “You know what we found in the pools.” she hissed.

  Simon just shrugged, palms up. “Yeah, I know. I’m just saying, any time something goes this well, something horrible is about to happen.”

  Zerathis’s dark eyes lingered on him for a long moment, then turned back to the vision.

  “You are correct, stranger.” the layered voice rumbled. “Something horrible did happen.”

  Zerathis's eyes filled with remorse and sadness. His visage seemed to age before them.

  “Our sky was sundered.”

  The vision tilted skyward. For the first time, Simon and Kaelalin saw it: a faint membrane stretched high above the world, shimmering like glass under strain. Each pulse of mana slammed into it, distorting the surface, making it bulge outward.

  “We had never known,” Zerathis continued, voice heavy, “that our world was veiled. The sky itself was a barrier, a shell that spared us from the storm beyond. In our pride, we pierced it.”

  The next pulse struck harder than the last. The membrane rippled, then cracked. Cheers from the crowds below turned to gasps.

  “On the other side,” the construct rasped, “was untold chaos.”

  The vision convulsed. The membrane shattered, and a torrent of raw, untamed mana poured downward. The mana poured down the shaft, popping runes along its surface as it descended.

  A tremor rippled through the vision. Deep below, the seething mass of living metal convulsed. It swelled, drank, and then heaved upward in fury.

  From the shaft’s mouth erupted a tidal surge of glowing metal. It wasn’t a river or geyser, but an ocean. Gold, copper, iron, and stranger alloys churned together, incandescent and furious. The vision rolled outward, showing the wave race across the land. Cities vanished. Landscapes glowed then melted. Mountains slumped like candles. Rivers boiled away in flashes of steam, then were replaced by gleaming channels of liquid bronze. The very crust of the world melted, folding into the incandescent ocean that spread over every horizon.

  The vision tilted downward again, showing the few strongholds buried in the depths. Their barrier wards blazed, buckling under the pressure but holding. Beyond their walls, the molten tide pressed endlessly, filling every cavern and vein, turning the world into a single, glowing sea.

  “Our world ended in that wave. The only remains of our people trapped away in metal. Locked in the tombs of our own making.”

  Zerathis bowed his head.

  “We had thought ourselves Forged. Pinnacle. Untouchable. Now we were doomed to see our world dissolve around us. If only our story had ended there, then maybe it would only be a sad tale. But the truth, like the core of our planet, is far more horrifying.”

  His voice rasped, harsh with memory.

  “For the metal did not only take the world. It took us. It drew in the energy of every creature it drowned. Not only their magic, but their essence. Their souls. All who fell above or below became part of it.”

  The reptilian let out a heavy sigh.

  “So began the last great work of the Forged. Our final duty. Free those trapped in their tombs of metal.”

  The vision widened, showing not one bastion but many. Dozens, then hundreds, scattered across the molten world like tiny sparks resisting a summer rainstorm. Between the stronghold, lines of energy appeared.

  “One among us,” Zerathis said, his tone softer now, “was born with a rare gift. A mind that could reach across space. Through them, our strongholds were joined through their thoughts. What we could no longer share in person, we shared through their gift.”

  Pulsing energy traced the lines of thought between the strongholds.

  “In those first days, there were still hundreds of us. Hundreds of fortresses holding against the tide. We thought perhaps we could endure. Perhaps we could find a way to free those that were lost. To let them ascend past the veil.”

  Zerathis’s voice rumbled low.

  “Some among us still labored to refine the work of release. To tear apart the alloy, to separate the soul from the prison, to let them ascend beyond the veil that now lay broken. I was among them. It was slow, dangerous, but it worked. A few were freed.”

  The vision replayed the image: streams of molten metal parting under the pressure of a great device, a shimmer of pale mist rising from it, voices faint but filled with relief as they slipped upward into the void.

  “But while we struggled to release, others sought to reclaim.”

  The golden-crested High Mages stood tall, their scales gleaming with etched alloys, their eyes burning with certainty. Around them hovered massive frames of blackened steel, their limbs jointed and empty, their chests carved with rune-matrices waiting to be filled.

  “They called them vessels. Shells strong enough to withstand hunger. Into these frames, they would draw the souls of the lost. To give them form again. To return them to us.”

  The reptilian giant turned to Simon and asked.

  “Would you perhaps be willing to guess which the majority of the forged chose?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Simon said, raising a hand like a student. “They went with the shiny metal zombie option. The one that made the assholes look good and would turn this whole disaster into some type of grand plan. A magical whoopsie on the way to evolution”

  Kaelalin groaned, dragging a hand down her face. “Simon…”

  The reptilian giant actually smiled, his expression edged with bitterness. Slowly, he gave a single nod.

  “You are correct.” Zerathis said. “The majority chose the vessels. They wanted their kin restored, their grief undone. And the High Mages basked in their adoration.”

  The vision shifted. A great hall filled with expectant Forged shimmered into view. At its center stood one of the towering frames of black steel, runes glowing along its chest. Pale mist was drawn screaming from the molten tide, funneled into the vessel.

  The alloy frame convulsed once, then steadied. Its eyes flared with dim light. When it spoke, the voice was broken but slowly became clearer. The golden-crested high mages wept and celebrated.

  Then the clear voice slowly started to change. Each word grated over the next. They spilled out with growing speed, one after the other. Then the construct convulsed and a new sound emerged.

  A sound Simon and Kaelalin knew well.

  The sound tore through the vision, reverberating like steel grinding against steel, sharp enough to set Simon’s teeth on edge. Kaelalin stiffened beside him, eyes wide.

  The hall in the vision erupted into chaos. Families that had been rushing forward now recoiled, their joy curdling into horror.

  Zerathis’s teeth bared in a snarl, his voice trembling with fury.

  “That sound became the anthem of our ruin. The voices of the lost, corroded and broken, bound to cages of alloy. We had not resurrected them. We had forged the Reliquaries.”

  The constructs charged into the crowds, slaughtering them. The High Mages, exhausted from the creation, were murdered by the very things they created. Then when there were no living beings to consume, the monsters moved to the cracks in the barriers the mages had made to pull in the molten metal. They slowly consumed the metal, suffering with every consumption.

  “At this time, our tower was cut off from the web of thought. Too late did we realize what the High Mages had done. In their arrogance, they had created a grand magical device. One that created these abominations. A grand device to continually produce these monsters.”

  His voice deepened.

  “The Reliquaries did not only stop at the first strongholds. They learned. With every soul devoured, with every spark absorbed, they grew. The frames twisted, reshaping themselves into nightmares. By the time our Tower was reconnected to the web of thought, there were less than fifty remaining. Each had fallen to these creatures. Then finally our tower's day came. The oldest among these constructs arrived with an army to break into our sanctum."

  The vision convulsed, and the walls of the Tower fell away. In their place yawned a vast space.

  The same mile-wide cavern Simon and Kaelalin had walked through only hours before.

  Only now it was not empty.

  Shapes filled every surface, crowding the floor, clinging to the walls, even hanging from the ceiling like twisted molten husks.

  The sound was unbearable. Metal on metal, a cacophony of shrieks layered on shrieks, the very noise Simon and Kaelalin had learned to dread in the molten tunnels. Here, magnified by thousands, it became a storm of agony.

  Simon staggered, covering his ears. “Oh fuck no. No wonder this place feels cursed.”

  “Yes. This was our world’s last chorus. The Reliquaries gathered at our gates, an army of our own making. Each one a soul twisted, each one screaming for release they would never find. They came for us in endless waves, and the cavern itself became their graveyard.”

  The vision showed the Tower of Stabilization standing at the cavern’s heart, its wards blazing against the tide, the constructs slamming themselves against it without end.

  “And it was here,” Zerathis said, his eyes hollow, “that we made our last stand.”

  A great magical device floated into the air. Beside it, stood a more ‘living’ version of the avatar of Zerathis. All around him, red scaled beings held onto glowing metal cubes covered with glyphs. With every wave of constructs that crashed into the barrier, those reptiles slowly dimmed then turned to ash, still grasping the metal glyphs until their scaled hands turned to dust.

  At the Tower’s steps, the younger version of the Zerathis raised his arms, face grim, eyes burning with desperate resolve. The great device beside him pulsed, arcs of energy sparking from its frame. With every moment, the pulsing device grew in power. With every moment, one of his fellow defenders turned to ash. The vision shook as another wave of Reliquaries slammed against the barrier. The young Zerathis wept as each gave their lives, but his hands never left the device. The arcs of energy around it grew blinding, twisting the air into a maelstrom of power.

  The reptilian’s voice cut through the roar, ragged with grief.

  “I begged them to stop. I told them the prototype was incomplete. That it was not meant to be used this way. But they all chose to die so at least one of us could live. They left me to finish the great work of our kind.”

  The young Zerathis roared, his voice lost beneath the storm. He pressed his clawed hands to the glowing surface. The device detonated, and the surroundings turned white drowning sound and sight.

  Then the wave rolled outward.

  Every Reliquary caught in its path convulsed. The constructs burst apart, turning to globs of metal. The metal sloughed to the ground then split further. Wisps of pale light tore free and streamed upwards in great torrents.

  Young Zerathis stood at the heart of it, his claws still pressed to the blazing device, tears streaking down his scaled face as the storm consumed all. Only a small bubble surrounding the device saved him as the wave cleansed the cavern.

  The magical scene faded and Simon and Kaelalin were left standing on the platform. Only the glowing avatar of the much older Zerathis remained.

  The memory construct bowed his head, his layered voice trembling.

  ““That day, I freed them. Every soul they had collected so far and bound in metal, every voice twisted into torment. The Reliquaries were scattered, the eldest of them destroyed. But the high mages device remained active, and they returned. No where near their power and intellect as before, but they are still growing in number. The device was damaged beyond my skill to repair despite my efforts.”

  He raised his head and stared deeply at Simon and Kaelalin.

  “I aged, and I felt my life coming to an end. I choose to leave this memory construct and burn my very essence to power the wards. So that our people's last bastion would remain. I hoped there were other strongholds that would one day make their way here. But too much time has passed. None of the strongholds survived.”

  Zerathis got to his knees and looked at them with pleading eyes.

  “ I do not know where you come from strangers. You owe us nothing, and we have nothing to give. But I beg you.”

  He bowed his head towards them.

  “Free the souls of my people. Free this doomed world.”

  —— ? ——

  — AUTHOR NOTICE —

  ~TheBusyBard

  Harmony is offered, growth is earned, Limits are unknown.

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