Chapter 31: Diamond Implications

Note: Thanks to WRC 264 for beta reading this!

Sven Falk – Az, Princedom of Kivoneth, The Strifelands of Zeutch

Despite her armor, holding Nathalie to my side didn’t feel awkward. She had her arm around my waist, her armor clinking as she trembled against me. She had a look of pale shock on her face, the exhilaration of battle fading out of her.

“You did good,” I told her, my hand clutching to the pauldron of her armor, the metal warm from the magic coursing through it.

With these armors we’d found in the vault, we’d prevailed against our enemies. Prince Meinard and the monsters of Biomancer Vebrin were working together. I shouldn’t be surprised that the power-mad man would work with the foul things. He enslaved his own people and used their souls to move his army of constructs. He wanted to conquer the world.

He’d enchanted his own daughter so he could breed an heir.

We walked down the street, the citizens of Az peering out of alleyways, staring at the street where monsters rampaged. There were dead men and women scattered around the street, killed by Prince Meinard and his new “allies.” The bastard attacked his own people. He ruled Az. This city numbered among the largest in the world, and was the most populace in his country. It was a center of culture and learning, a jewel, and he defiled it.

Ava’s feyhound proxy padded up beside us, the wicker body creaking. She glanced up at me. I nodded at her and placed my hand on her head. I stroked the woven branches. She shuddered, her tail wagging. She held herself in a pleased manner. Somehow, she’d defeated her father’s iron proxy, shutting down that monstrosity of metal.

We walked to the Temple of Krab. The doors lay battered open by the monsters. We climbed the stairs. My stomach tensed, sobbing echoing. Were all my other women fine? We passed into the threshold, leaving behind the dwindling twilight of the outside into the darker interior. Carsina sobbed over the mangled body lying in a puddle of water. The entire sanctum was flooded, water flowing around my feet as it drained out at the corners.

Zanyia, splattered in black ichor, looked pleased as she crouched atop a dead monster, her tawny ears twitching. My sister stood by Ealaín, a perplexed look on Kora’s face. Greta hovered by them, the busty sex slave looking hale.

Everyone save for Master Theophil looked hale and whole.

“What happened?” I asked my sister as she stared down at the water. There was something mixed in it, a thick gunk. A formless ooze?

“The ooze acted weird, brother mine,” she said. “It stopped fighting us when it shouldn’t have.”

“Really?” I asked. “That’s strange.”

Ealaín nodded her head, her armor glowing a little brighter as she moved, making her skin almost negate light, drinking it in, a void glad in radiance. Her light spilled over my sister, crimson reflecting between her tits. “It bought us time for Greta to kill it.”

Carsina looked up and said, “Kora told it to stop.”

“Yeah, but, I didn’t do anything to it,” Kora said, shaking her head. “I was just making illusions and shouting out of fear. I don’t have the power to control monsters. It was that diamond hammer. You hit it and then it stopped.”

Carsina frowned. She glanced down at the diamond hammer we found in the vault with the armor. It rested on her lap. She picked it up. Brilliance flared in its center, a fiery reflection of the light pouring off Ealaín’s armor.

“Look what the hammer did to Greta’s armor,” Kora continued. “How it energized it and made all this water. That hammer has power.”

“Is that what happened?” Ava asked, her voice coming from the doorway that led deeper into the temple. I glanced at my side and saw the feyhound proxy lying unmoving. Then Ava and Aingeal emerged into the room, Ava running fingers through her strawberry-blonde locks. “I felt the hammer surging with power. I used that energy to sever my father’s connection to his proxy.

“Maybe,” Carsina said, frowning. “I suppose we could think of the monsters as devices. I mean, they were designed by the Biomancer, and the hammer was created to be used on artificial constructs. It empowers them or destroys them.”

Kora clutched at the ruby amulet I cursed her to wear when I gave it to her as a gift.

“It was created to be used at the Altar of souls, right?” Ava said, stepping up beside Carsina. “And left here for me.”

Carsina nodded. She rose and handed over the hammer to the princess.

“Why?” Ava asked. “Why did Krab leave this here?”

“He has his reasons,” Carsina said. “He builds things for a purpose, even if only he sees it.”

Zanyia

Carsina put the final stone in place, entombing her master in the small garden at the rear of the temple. It was a place of beauty that I was surprised to find here. It was a carefully constructed garden, the plants placed with care, many sculpted into topiaries, shaped into strange, abstract designs. Paths of crushed marble wound through them. She had worked all night on the tomb.

It was such a beautiful thing. Each granite stone fit with care. She had skill in making things.

“Krab, accept Master Theophil into your apprenticeship,” Carsina prayed as she knelt before it. “Share with him all the secrets you have learned. He devoted his life to his craft. He learned all he could in this world and is ready to study the techniques of the next. Your time will not be wasted, Krab. He will drink in all you know. He will work hard to master your techniques, to devise and construct machines for the use and benefit of all.”

My tail twitched. What a strange thing to pray for the dead.

“He will be accepted, Carsina,” Princess Ava said. She had a soft smile on her lips, the morning sun highlighting the red in her light hair. She hugged the trembling girl. Then she broke away.

“He was a good man,” Master said, his voice soft. He gave the journeyman a nod and she shivered, looking down at her Master’s tomb.

My head cocked. I breathed in, parsing through all the scents in the air: the perfume of flowers, earthy loam, the musks of my husband and wives, the confused welter of emotions pouring off of Carsina. It spiced the world my nose sensed. An owl hooted as I sorted through them, my tail swaying back and forth as I crouched in my armor of banded, leather strips.

My family filtered out of the garden when it was over, Kora clinging to our husband, Aingeal and Ava holding hands, my fellow sex slaves leaning on each other. Carsina, however, stayed staring at her master’s tomb, rubbing her hands on her leather work clothes. I inhaled through my nose, my ears twitching as I processed the riotous aromas of her emotions.