Fall Ceramic Dm™ - Winner!

I left my judgement notes at work, will send in tomorrow

I thought it was fun! And using an opponents name in the story is an interesting form of taunting...

mythago said:

Breathe a little--they will go up tonight

Click to expand...

Whew. Thanks. I was beginning to feel woozy...

maxfieldjadenfox said:

I thought it was fun! And using an opponents name in the story is an interesting form of taunting...

Click to expand...

[sblock]that was my thought. if I couldn't beat them on the battlefield, I'd beat them in my story.[/sblock]

Lawrence struggled to ignore Leone’s murmuring voice, wanting to focus on Kasvarina’s movements. This was his favorite part of visiting the Crisillyir branch. Indeed, it was the only thing that made the journey from Risur tolerable.

From the tray between them, Leone scraped asiago cheese onto a cracker, and quickly ate it, then poured himself wine, preparing for his wife’s appearance.

On the subterranean theater’s stage, Kasvarina Varal, one of the few surviving women of the Elfaivar race, was to perform a dance for the Obscurati that few humans had ever lived to see. She strode onto stage as a beautiful young woman, clad in a white sari trimmed with gold thread, her face and arms adorned with jewels more ancient than the city of Alais Primos above them. She gleamed, and her virginal smile stirred even the oldest, most dark-hearted members of the secret order.

Leone leaned close to Lawrence and whispered, “The Elfaivar believe that the stronger a person is, the more souls he or she has. A woman can have as many as three. ‘Cfamrah,’ the virgin.”

Kasvarina drew an unmatched pair of swords from the sheaths and her hips, both curved and subtly lined with magical flames. Lawrence drew in a breath at the sight of such fearless sorcery, and then his breath caught in his throat as Kasvarina spun slowly, dipping and swinging her swords in long, graceful arcs, trailing tails of flame. Her dance slowly increased in speed, and as she flourished the blades the gems across her beautiful body snapped a metallic percussion, creating her own music.

From side to side across the cracked wooden stage, her dance filled the theater with flaring firelight. Where she stepped, the beams of the stage seemed to heal, nourished to the youthful gleam of live wood. The spinning blades snapped across each other with steady, driving clangs, and her spinning rose to a whirling, disorienting swiftness, the individual movements of body and blades impossible to see.

Then, when there seemed to be nothing but a whirling pillar of flame, the noise stopped, and Kasvarina leapt from the flames, her arms thrown back, the swords falling behind her, etched with flaming feathers.

The blades imbedded in the stage behind her, and Kasvarina landed on her knees, in profile to the audience. But she was changed. Her body was more rounded, her smile no longer enticing, but nurturing and reliable. The sari and gems seemed worn, but she was still beautiful.

“‘Janivshu,’” Leone continued proudly, “the mother.”

The illusion was startling, but Lawrence found himself drawn into Kasvarina’s song. He knew only a few words of the ancient Elfaivar tongue, but the joy in the woman’s voice was unmistakeable. She stepped a slow figure-eight between her two swords, stuck hilt up in the stage. Her song was classic, the story of an Elfaivar woman, mother to many children over many hundreds of years, always cherishing her children. Kasvarina’s voice lilted deeply and lovingly, and her sorrowful eyes often strayed across the audience to Lawrence.

He knew that she was really looking at Leone, her husband, but caught in her words, Lawrence could not help wanting to protect her. And Leone, he was sure, was one of the more frightful men in the theater. If only she knew, Lawrence thought.

The song turned dark, and Kasvarina’s steps faltered, her gaze dropping to the blades, which suddenly seemed dappled in blood. She pulled one from the floor and held it in a shaking hand for a moment before casting it to her feet. Wracking with sobs, her back to the audience, she seemed to shrink as the last words of her song shuddered raggedly over them all.

“And ‘Abiva,’” Leone concluded, “the Crone.”

[imager]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22387[/imager]Kasvarina, with three unsteady steps, turned to face the crowd. Her eyes were dark, her clothes dim and commanding. She raised her hands and smiled mockingly. Spiteful words dripped from her lips as she scoured the crowd with her eyes. Leone’s enraptured voice translated into Lawrence’s ear.

“When my first child died in war, the crone rose within me, though I thought my heart still alive. It is a painful thing to die from within, because, ever looking outward to the beauty still around you, you do not see that death is already within you.

“But worse, far worse, is to surround yourself with death. More honest, perhaps, my children. But hidden as you are, out in the darkness of your own creation, you have given yourself nothing to want to live for. While there is beauty without, one can still dream of youth, of wind and song, of the undying sky. But, trapped here as I am, I cannot fight the death within me.”

She raised both hands, and the two blades were again rimmed with fire. They rose, one from the hole it had pierced in the stage, one from where it was carelessly cast aside. And then the blades began to spin in the air, surrounding the motionless form of a woman who had forsaken life.

As before, the blades spun faster and faster. The elderly and the powerful in the subterranean theater of the Obscurati leaned forward to see what would happen, some perhaps hoping the Elfaivar witch would truly kill herself. Then the blades flared with blinding light, and the crowd’s darkness-weakened eyes turned away in pain. Lawrence forced himself to watch, his aged hands gripping the back of the seat in front of him so he could not look away.

Kasvarina began to cackle, the mad laugh of a dying woman, and Lawrence was certain that she was burning alive. A figure appeared, vague within the pillar of flame, six arms gripping six swords, flourishing them high with life, at the waist for the mother, and scraping the floor with a dying despair. The laugh changed, shifting upward to contentment, and finally to glee, and the flaming pillar burst outward, revealing the young Kasvarina again, the virgin, swathed in a burning cloak and dancing only final whirling flourish of blades.

For an instant, Lawrence was certain she had six arms, but she stopped suddenly, snapping her blades into their sheathes. She stood still for a moment, her head raised proudly, her hands at her waist, and in the shimmering heat her form seemed to waver briefly from maiden to mother to crone.

Then the fire faded completely, and she was herself. Kasvarina Varal, wife of Leone Quital the steelshaper, an aged crone.

An Elfaivar could only perform the dance once every hundred years. This was Kasvarina’s eighth. After a long minute of breathing awe, the audience erupted into applause. In Kasvarina’s eye, Lawrence thought he saw disdain.

“My lost,” Leone whispered, his eyes filled with tears. “If only I could have known her when she was young. Was she not the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, Lawrence?”

Lawrence Grapa, the mindmaker, felt nodding would belittle the moment.

* * *​

Lawrence had joined the project late, almost too late. Leone Quital, the steelshaper, and Tinker Oddcog, the gearbuilder, had thought the project would take their entire lives. Instead it had taken only seven years. In the last two years, the Obscurati had realized the creation itself would be useless if it had to be controlled directly, so they had come to Lawrence, seeking his expertise. He would help protect the world from war, they had said.

The steelshaper, the gearbuilder, and the mindmaker – the three most brilliant people in their fields – had created a monstrosity that might destroy the world.

Lawrence wished that he did not love his child. It would make this so much easier.

* * *​

“Eh?” Tinker asked, glancing over his shoulder nervously at Lawrence. “They don’t want any more changes, do they? Eh?”

“No,” Lawrence said.

“Good,” Tinker hissed. He continued to pack, his tiny gnome hands piling tiny gnome clothes into three tiny gnome suitcases. “Good. I told them, smaller, no no, smaller is what it has to be. They kept wanting big gears, but they didn’t understand, you know, eh?”

“Please finish packing,” Lawrence sighed. “The elders will use any excuse to take over the project from us. They’re waiting at the docks, Tink. Now the sooner we can get back to Flint and complete the project, the sooner they’ll leave, and the happier I’ll be.”

It was a lie. Honestly, if Lawrence thought he had a chance of sneaking out of Alais Primos and back to Flint without being caught by the Obscurati’s agents, he would have already left. But he was stuck here with a paranoid gnome mechanic and the powermad mage Leone. Of the two, Lawrence preferred Tinker.

Next to Lawrence, his companion golem, a hunched thing whose personality he had crafted based on a buddy from the war, chuckled and leaned toward the luggage Tinker had already packed, offering to pick it up.

“No!” Tinker said, suddenly hopping off his bed and scrambling next to the largest suitcase. “I’ll carry my own. Look, you, eh, you shouldn’t be here to watch me pack.”

“Golem,” Lawrence said, “please guard the door.”

The hunched golem nodded and closed the door, leaving Lawrence and the gnome alone.

“What?” Oddcog asked.

“Are you feeling alright, Tink?”

“Yes, excellent, yes, yes, excellent.”

Tinker held his large suitcase close, his hands idly rubbing it. Rumor was that much of Tinker Oddcog’s brilliance was the gift of an ancient, pre-Elfaivar artifact he had unearthed in Slate, the capital of Risur. Sometimes when Tinker was away from his room, Lawrence had thought he had heard a voice calling to him from inside the gnome’s room. In the catacombs that the Obscurati called their headquarters, however, Lawrence had learned it was not useful to pry.

“Tink,” Lawrence said, leaning low and putting his hands on his knees to look eye to eye with the gnome, “you’ve been getting worse. Is something bothering you?”

Tinker frowned, then hesitantly nodded. “It says, they’re going to take the Masterpiece away, and all my work . . . all the tiny, tiny gears, shrinking when I wasn’t looking . . . they’ll be lost to me.”

Suddenly Tinker stiffened, spinning around like he thought someone was watching. “But that’s all fine. Really, eh, yes. I wouldn’t want the elders to think, . . . yes.”

“Don’t worry,” Lawrence said. He straightened, his weary joints arguing briefly. “I won’t let them abuse Borne. I’ve raised him like a son, and I imagine he’s something similar for you, or as close as is possible. I pity you, Tink, you know?”

“Yes, smaller,” Tinker whispered, rubbing his suitcase again.

Lawrence sighed. He could leave now. At least, he knew, Oddcog would not oppose him.

* * *​

The project was divided across the Gutter Sea, between Risur and Crisillyir. Crisillyir had provided the technical genius to make the project possible, but the only city with enough raw industrial capacity to build the Colossus without attracting attention was Flint, in Risur.

Lawrence had spent the last two years almost entirely underground. Even sailing between the two nations was underground, in the primordial tunnels under the world. It was appropriate for the Obscurati, but Lawrence had once been a soldier. The sight of the cerulean sky overhead during a long march, or the starlit night sky while sleeping after a battle, had helped him keep sane during the war against Danor. Far too often he and his unit had been camped in industrial ruins, surrounded just by steam and steel and festering rats.

Men had indeed gone mad in the war, including his old friend upon whom the hunched golem’s personality was based – a quiet, loyal man who in the end had betrayed their unit for the chance to desert and live a quiet, scornful life. After the war, Lawrence had taught himself the subtle magic of mind-making. If nothing else, he had decided, he wanted to ensure that future wars could be decided by metal creations, not flesh-and-blood men.

Flanked by two mighty iron golems and his unspeaking hunched servant, Lawrence stood on the oil-fire-lit docks of the Obscurati, waiting for the elders to arrive.

When they arrived, their pale faces, turned sickly orange by the oil fires, made Lawrence less disdainful of his own aging flesh. But with them was Leone, young and virile, and his wife, beautiful despite being eight hundred years old. She smiled to him, then embraced her husband for a farewell kiss.

The pumps that kept the tunnels from flooding hid their words from Lawrence’s ears, but her expression was loving. Lawrence could not imagine how she could love that man. As the steamship departed down the almost-black tunnel, Kasvarina watched until there was nothing to be seen, and perhaps long after.

* * *​

The most wretched of the elders opened the door to Lawrence’s quarters without knocking. His name was Vito, his family name something unpronouncably Crisillyir. Lawrence always thought of the rancid man as Vito Muerte, a living corpse. He wondered whether the man had to use magic to stay alive.

“Your report,” Vito coughed, “is disheartening. The Colossus must be a warrior, yet you coddle it, teach it stories instead of politics and military tactics. Have you been wasting these past two years, Grapa?”

Lawrence waited for a moment. A heart-shaped pendant lay in his hand, and he placed it in a drawer before replying.

“I know you lied to me when you said you wanted a creation that could keep peace. Call me naïve.”

“Now now,” Vito chuckled, “there’s enough of that behind closed doors. I have better things to say to your face.”

Lawrence huffed. “Regardless, when a mind is made, it takes a long while for it to mature. When transfering a mind the process is faster, but even then it takes a few days for every year of memory to return.”

Vito scoffed. He turned to look at the bookshelf Lawrence had in his cabin on the ship. “I’m quite aware of the effects of transfering a mind. You think is my first body, Grapa?”

Lawrence blanched. He wondered who the body had belonged to before Vito had claimed it as his own. Worse, judging by his current state, it was likely Vito would be in the market for another replacement soon.

“This is what you teach our Colossus?” Vito asked, gesturing at a shelf of histories, fairy tales, and art from three centuries ago, before the rise of industry.

“Don’t worry,” Lawrence said defiantly. “Your even-tempered staff has made sure to school the Colossus in matters of war. Think of my training as an attempt to make sure it doesn’t simply turn on us the moment we give it an ill-worded order. Even a machine needs a little humanity. I may have some free time, if you’d like to try it yourself.”

Vito chuckled, sounding like a death rattle. He started out the door, pausing long enough to say, “Just do not grow too attached to your ‘Borne,’ Grapa. He is ours.”

The door closed softly, with as much strength as the Obscurati elder could manage. It had the desired effect, however. Lawrence wondered how many spies were reporting to them, and who had paid close enough attention to know the name he had given the Colossus.

It was no matter, Lawrence decided. He pulled the pendant out from the drawer and returned to studying the spellbook on his desk.

* * *​

The crowd hustled through the scaffolding corridors of the Obscurati facility under Flint. After arriving they had wasted no time. The elders wanted to see their Colossus. Lawrence led them, Leone and Tinker at his side, the iron golems clearing a path ahead of them. The thirteen elders followed eagerly, whispering hungrily as they approached the main chamber, and the Colossus slowly came ever more into view. Rats scurried out of their way, the vermin that infested the massive complex somehow knowing that a great danger was approaching.

Electrical arc lights illuminated the Colossus from the top of a three-hundred foot shaft. Beneath their blue-green glare, the darksteel skin of the Colossus seemed to absorb the light, rather than reflect it. They were approaching its waist, a massive and masterfully-crafted interlocking series of drives and gears that held the mighty construct straight. The titan’s arms hung past them, each as much as thirty feet wide, with fused plating etched with antimagical wards and underlaid with regenerative mimetic polyalloys crafted by the steelshaper himself. Any injury dealt to the Colossus would be repaired in due time, and even if under-powered, they had calculated that the Colossus could withstand the combined fire of a thousand battlefleet cannons and remain functional.

This was his son, and it was going to be taken away by the Obscurati, used for their own malevolent ends.

A hundred feet above them, the Colossus’s blinking golden eyes turned down at their approach, and one arm shifted. Lawrence knew this was meant as a wave. The shaft where the Colossus was constructed and trained was too narrow for much movement, and only twice before had it been let out through the subterranean tunnels to move freely.

“Lawrence,” boomed the Colossus hopefully. “Steelshaper, Gearbuilder. My parents. Welcome.”

Tinker cringed under the behemoth’s gaze. Everything large frightened him.

Climbing into the lift with the rest of the elders, Leone called up to the Colossus. “Greet also your grandfathers.”

“Elders,” the Colossus breathed in awe, its voice churning with steam. “Have you come to give me a mission?”

Leone spoke into the loudspeaker and was busying telling the Colossus it needed wait just a little more, but very quietly behind him, Lawrence heard Vito chuckling. Lawrence discreetly turned to look.

“Yes,” Vito whispered, smiling to the other elders. “Oh yes.”

* * *​

“Follow me,” Lawrence told the hunched golem. And it followed.

The elders were distracted cooing over their new toy, and Lawrence could not stand the sight of it. He did not care if the spies spotted him and reported that he was breaching security. He needed fresh air.

It took nearly an hour to reach what he recognized as surface streets of Flint, and he marveled at how out of touch he had become. It was cold here, and in the cracks in the skyline, he could see glimpses of the vivid, crisp sky of winter. He wandered for nearly an hour until he found a clear view.

[imagel]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22388[/imagel] Flint had let industry take it over, digging deep into the granite earth beneath it for subtrain tunnels and electrical cables, growing upward in layers of steel and gears and pumps to keep the lower levels flush with hot, breathable air. There were few places where one could see the sky from within the city.

Looking up a shaft of glass-lined towers, the sky looked tiny and wasted, but it was free. Soft clouds blew by in the heavens, and Lawrence wept. The hunched golem waited silently, and finally Lawrence’s tears ended, and he composed himself. He looked up again at the sky, far beyond his reach, and he sighed.

“Did you know,” he said, “that before all . . . this, the people of Risur believed the stars could tell the future? You can’t even see the stars from this city anymore, can you?”

The hunched golem looked up and shrugged.

A clock clanged loudly, and all around Lawrence, massive gears churned, opening grates and vents. Steam poured from behind the dark windows of the towering shaft, and electrical lights along the clogged, mechanical street crackled to lurid life. Overhead, the sky was obscured by steam.

The hunched golem pointed away. Lawrence guessed what he meant.

“Yes, I could just leave. And they would track me down and kill me, or perhaps find something worse. I might not even mind it now. But there are some things I need to do, and I need time for them. Are you with me, old friend?”

* * *​

The news came a day later that Kasvarina had been abducted by agents of the Family, hired by Danor nobles as retribution. It threw Leone into a rage.

Three hundred years ago, the five nations – Risur, Danor, Ber, Drakr, and Crisillyir – had attempted to stamp out the Elfaivar race by hunting down and slaying ever female of the ancient, magically-gifted people. Tens of thousands of humans, gnomes, and other goodly races had died in the war, but in the aftermath there were left perhaps less than a hundred Elfaivar women, many of them slave brides of noble families. Passed down from generation to generation, these wives were perhaps the most precious commodity in the world. The leaders of the five nations would do anything to protect their trophies.

Fifteen years ago, in the latest pointless war between Danor and Risur, Leone Quital had left Crisillyir and sided with the Risur. From what stories Lawrence had heard from Kasvarina, Leone had been a surgeon working with the Risur army, and he had been witness to one of the most devastating battles, which left only a handful of survivors. Wandering the bloodied streets of Cherage in Danor, Leone had followed wailing cries until he had found Kasvarina, trapped in a sealed coffin with only an opening for air. Too prideful to let their trophy fall into Risur hands, but too greedy to slay the woman, the Danor nobles had imprisoned her and left her for dead.

Leone had long possessed steelshaping powers; it had been an easy task for him to bend the metal free from Kasvarina’s prison. He had freed her from her cell, and then had done the unprecedented: he had offered to free her entirely, and let her return home to the distant land of Elfaivar. He had gone with her, protecting her, and somehow, she had fallen in love with him.

Lawrence could only watch as Leone railed against the cruelty of the Danor. Hesitantly, with almost convincing reluctance, the elders of the Obscurati agreed that everything could be risked for the rescue of Leone’s beloved. The Colossus would be sent, Kasvarina would be retrieved, and the Danor who had dared strike against the Obscurati would be destroyed. Lawrence could almost believe it wasn’t scripted.

* * *​

In the darkness that passed for night in this timeless construction shaft, Lawrence snuck as quietly as his aged body could take him to the scaffolding next to Borne’s face.

“Borne,” he whispered.

The Colossus’s eyes opened, but they did not gleam. This was not the first time Lawrence had snuck out to talk to his son.

“Father.”

The mouth of the Colossus was twenty feet across, crafted of steel and silver and other metals of anathema, but it moved silently, it’s whisper scarcely louder than Lawrence’s own.

“Borne, my boy, how do you like the elders?”

“They are given much respect,” replied the Colossus, “more so than I, though I am much more powerful than they.”

“Yeah, you are,” Lawrence said with a smile. “But that’s not why you’re better than they are. You’re better because you actually care about people other than yourself. They care for nothing but advancing themselves.”

“They want me to rescue Kasvarina,” the Colossus said. “They seem to care about the Steelshaper . . . but something in their stances seemed cruel to me.”

“That’s my boy,” Lawrence said, patting the Colossus’s upper lip, an articulated shifting set of metal plates that could actually form expressions.

Of all of Tinker’s creations, Lawrence was most fond of the mouth he had crafted. It showed a subtle care for more than mere functionality. It made Borne more human.

“They’re right lying bastards,” Lawrence said. “They’re going to let you go, and while I know you’re made to do what they say – and by lost, I wish I could have found a way around that – you should look for ways you can leave. This will be your chance to be free.”

“What will I eat?” The Colossus sounded frightened.

Lawrence looked beyond Borne’s shoulder, to the massive gantries for lowering coal into the furnace on his back. Right now Borne was kept awake by the slow charge of electrical cables, but to move with any speed, he would need great amounts of coal to fuel him.

“Don’t you worry,” Lawrence assured him. “You can eat trees. Works just as well, really, for someone your size.”

“No father.” The Colossus sighed. “You say the elders are liars, that they do not care for others, and that I am better because I care. But you tell me to abandon Kasvarina. You make me sad, father. No father, I must do as they say. And . . . they told me not to tell you that they had told me not to listen to you.”

The Colossus smiled, proud of getting around the elders’ commandment. But then he frowned.

“I’m sorry, father. You told me before, you care about Kasvarina. I cannot abandon her, and I want to meet her.”

Lawrence looked into the mighty, gold-etched eyes of his son, and he smiled. This was why he had spent two years teaching and raising the metal creation: so that it could become a man.

* * *​

The elders confined Lawrence to his quarters for going to speak to Borne. There had been no doubt in his mind that he would be spotted, and it was just as well, anyway. He did not want to hear the reports of the destruction Borne would inevitably wreak, and he needed time to prepare his plan.

Almost mockingly, Leone had made sure to send him daily packages of cheese and crackers. The hunched golem delivered the packages each day, and from the silent construct’s body language, Lawrence inferred that Leone saw him as a traitor for trying to talk Borne out of rescuing Kasvarina.

Over the past two years, Lawrence had come to know more about Leone than the man suspected. Lawrence could not merely make minds, he could take thought as well, learn it and discover its secrets subtlely. One of those secrets was that Leone had not merely been ‘lucky’ to have rescued Kasvarina. He had planned the whole affair.

The man was a genius, in his own manipulative way. He had determined just the right amount of information to give to each side in the conflict to ensure they would slay each other to nearly the last man, and with his powers had protected himself from any swords or bullets aimed for him. He had wanted a way to get into the ranks of the Obscurati, and orchestrating the destruction of two small armies and the theft of a priceless Elfaivar wife had been more than enough to get the Obscurati’s attention.

The man was a genius, so Lawrence was very careful in his planning.

Day after day, he ate the spiteful cheese and sent the hunched golem away with instructions. One benefit of having a companion who could not speak was that most people assumed he was an unthinking automaton, and were unafraid of him running errands.

* * *​

The letter the hunched golem delivered on the eighth day was simple. “She has been returned. Elders pleased. Casualties – 1,300 Danor.”

Lawrence burned the sheet, sickened.

An hour later, Leone entered Lawrence’s quarters. His eyes were brimming with pride.

“You have lost your chance, my friend,” Leone said. He shook his head and sat across from Lawrence.

Lawrence tried to look impassive. “Did you plan this from the start, to have a mighty war machine? Or were you ever the peacekeeper that your beloved wife thinks you to be?”

“I am a man of power now,” Leone replied.

He gestured at a knife on Leone’s desk. The edge of the knife sharpened to a serrated edge, and the utensil floated above the block of cheese. It cut a piece, then reshaped into a thin tray, which hovered over to Leone. The Crisillyir man ate slowly, smiling at the taste.

“Yeah,” Lawrence laughed mirthlessly. “Great power. No cheese can stand against you.”

Leone sneered. “The Obscurati has a powerful new tool to control the power of the five nations. And I have been offered a position in the Obscurati as soon as one of the current members dies.”

“I’m sure you’ll get right on that.” Lawrence sighed. “Tell me, how is Borne?”

“The Colossus,” Leone said, “is repairing itself. It will be nonfunctional for at least a few hours. Once it is healed, you will be fortunate if the elders give you a chance to speak to your dear creation again.”

“Good,” Lawrence whispered. “I’m glad he’s alright.”

“Lost,” Leone swore. “Tell me. I must know. Why did you try to make the Colossus abandon my wife?”

“First, answer one of my questions.” Lawrence held up a hand when Leone started to object. “I’m old, so give me this request.”

Leone gestured for Lawrence to continue.

“I listened to your wife’s song, back in Alais Primos. We’ve surrounded ourselves with death, and I will not accept it. I intend to be free of you. But you still have a chance to live up to the . . . well, honestly, to the lies you’ve been feeding your wife.

“If you turn against the Obscurati, and see that using the monster we have created to reign terror is a vile sort of war, then I’ll let you keep what you love. If you do not, I will take what is most dear from you. I swear this to you.

“So my question is, Leone, would you give up power for the one you love?”

Leone looked confused. “You cannot turn the Colossus against me. I will have power.”

It took a moment for Lawrence to realize what the man had said, and what he had meant. Leone had thought that Lawrence was threatening the colossus, not Kasvarina. Lawrence could not help but laugh.

“I don’t believe I’m surprised,” Lawrence said, “but you are a low thing. You don’t love Kasvarina, do you? She’s just property, a trophy, a sign of the rank you feel you deserve.”

Leone stood and glared at Lawrence, and Lawrence cringed.

“Ah, then I suppose I just lost my bargaining chip.”

Leone demanded, “What do you mean?”

Lawrence looked down, then smirked at Leone. He handed the Steelshaper a glass bowl, a recording of thoughts he had made from the elders. “I had hoped this would anger you, but now I see that you really don’t care.”

Leone was impatient. “About what?”

“About the fact that the elders wanted a test of the Colossus’s power, so they were the ones who abducted Kasvarina. The proof’s all there, if you doubt me.”

Leone stepped back, looking at the glass recording bowl. He shook his head, trying to reconcile the information, and finally he leveled a finger at Lawrence. “If you lie. . . .”

The door opened telekinetically for Leone, then slammed shut as he departed. Lawrence took a moment to catch his breath.

He still wasn’t sure if Leone actually cared about his wife at all, but he was certain he had given himself a good hour of confusion to take advantage of. Now was the time to enact his plan.

He only regretted that he might never get a chance to see the sky again.

* * *​

The letter Lawrence left the hunched golem contained all the necessary instructions, several sheets long, stacked next to a piece of coal, a heart-shaped pendant, and a plate of asiago cheese. Lawrence had shot himself in the forehead with a double-barreled flintlock, leaving a spray of brains on the wall that would ensure the Obscurati could not reconstruct his memories and discover what he had done.

The hunched golem read the letter. Perhaps it considered betraying its master as the man upon whom it had been based once had. For two years the hunched golem had been spiteful that Lawrence had not simply transferred his mind to the Colossus, but now that its old friend was dead, the golem realized that, had it been given the power of the Colossus, it would have become as corrupt as the Obscurati.

Quietly brooding on all of this, the hunched golem nevertheless fulfilled the instructions.

The Mindmaker’s first request was challenging, as was always the case when the hunched golem had to deal with the Gearbuilder. Tinker Oddcog, always having a knack with machines, somehow knew when he saw the hunched golem that he needed to flee. The gnome had been reluctantly willing to perform one last duty for Lawrence before fleeing.

For the Mindmaker’s second request, the hunched golem had braved the eyes of the elders. The Colossus was powered down, however, so no one could notice a change when the hunched golem used the magic of its creator to remove the dark titan’s mind and place it in a mundane piece of coal. Within half an hour, the coal was tossed into a barrel of wine, sealed, and shipped off for an eventual burial at sea.

Kasvarina, the Mindmaker’s third request, was easier. The Mindmaker had wanted to leave a message for the Steelshaper, one easy to retrieve. So the hunched golem delivered a heart-shaped pendant to Kasvarina, and the moment she put it on, her mind was drawn from her body and trapped within the pendant. The hunched golem caught her slumping body and carried her to the surface.

He had barely made it to the glass tower shaft and its invisible, starless sky when Leone and his men reached them. In a fury for having his wife betrayed and abducted twice in as many weeks, the Steelshaper had simply torn the hunched golem apart, scattering his pieces across the icy streets of Flint. In the painful daze of dying, the hunched golem watched Leone show actual love for his seemingly lifeless wife.

“Kasvarina,” Leone whispered. “Please, wake up. Please-”

And then he spotted the pendant. Hesitantly, the Steelshaper opened the locket and read the instructions within. The hunched golem knew what it said:

She may yet be reborn. Place the pendant upon her lips, and kiss her forehead, and her memory will return. Consider this my mercy, bastard.​

​

With furious resolve, the Steelshaper clenched the locket in his hand, shivering in the cold for a moment before following the instructions. Snow fell down the glassy shaft, draping Leone and Kasvarina in a curtain of white as he leaned down and kissed his wife’s forehead.

She stirred. The hunched golem was fading, but he struggled to watch, knowing his creator would have wanted to witness this revenge.

“Kasvarina?” Leone asked. “Kasvarina, do you know who you are?”

The Elfaivar woman whimpered and flailed mindlessly. Leone’s men grabbed her and held her as Leone tried to figure out what was wrong, but then finally he realized what had happened.

“When a mind is made, it takes a long while for it to mature. When transfering a mind the process is faster, but even then it takes a few days for every year of memory to return.”​

Kasvarina was eight hundred years old. It would be a year or more before Kasvarina’s mind returned to her, and in that time she would have Leone as a stranger, remembering a time when her people were being slaughtered by humans.

The hunched golem chuckled, the only noise it could make. Leone glared at it, snarled, and tore its last remaining pieces to oblivion.

When he turned back to look at his wife, she was being held up two of Leone’s men. She had the mind of a child, and did not know her body, but she looked into the ice-glazed windows of the tower shaft, seeing a hint of a reflection.

“Kasvarina?” Leone pleaded. “Please, remember.”

[imager]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22389[/imager]She did not look at him, and instead reached out at her reflection. For a moment, she seemed to reach with three hands instead of one, and when she pulled her hand away, three palm prints had melted the ice from the glass.

Over each were two letters.

AB. CF. JA.

Abiva, the crone.

Cfamrah, the virgin.

Javishu, the mother.

They were the only names she knew.

* * *​

And what of the Mindmaker? True, he wished to hide the location of the Colossus’s mind from the Obscurati so they could never use the titan again, but he was not so hopeless as to truly kill himself.

Asiago cheese is often used as a component in healing potions, especially in Crisillyir. As Tinker fled, the hunched golem had offered him a chunk of cheese, to barter for safe passage. Even the hunched golem did not know the reason for this offer, so that there would be no chance the elders could track him, but Lawrence Grapa, the Mindmaker, hoped one day some poor soul would swallow a bit of his mind. He hoped he would live again.

His wish was granted, but not quite as he expected. Many months later, when the Obscurati agents caught up with Tinker and tortured him for information, all he could say was that as soon as he had gotten out of the city, left the steam and steel behind, and could see the stars, a voice has whispered to him that he had carried the burden far enough. He had dropped the cheese, leaving it to its own end under the undying sky.

Oh durn, a formatting error.

Well, I suppose it's time to see myself be mocked.

Commenting on my opponents. *grin*
[sblock]I am just giddy on two counts. One, Siala, I love your story. I enjoyed your earlier epics, but I must say I'm really digging the poetry of having such a short story this time. The last section about your writing really got to me. Thank you.

Two, yangnome. . . . *giggle* What a bizarre little story. I think if nothing else it will go down as the most original smack-talking the Ceramic DM competition has ever seen. Bravo![/sblock]

Mocked? Look at the showoff...embedding his photos directly into his post....

durned...WYSIWIG editor-savy...ranger-classed...Ewoks!!!!

:tries to use force choke....shakes head sadly::

A formatting error! I didn't notice. I was reading the great story...

Funeris said:

Mocked? Look at the showoff...embedding his photos directly into his post....

durned...WYSIWIG editor-savy...ranger-classed...Ewoks!!!!

:tries to use force choke....shakes head sadly::

Click to expand...

Didn't you know that Wangers are immune to force choking?

No, the 'mocked' comment was with regards to yangnome's story. A little gnome told me he might be making a few sidelong references to dark elf imaginary friends I may or may not have. *grin*