Delve

Tallheart stood in icy, shin-deep water in the lowest deck of the Adamant Empire vessel. The only light came from the flashlighter Ellis was holding, pointed at the hull where Tallheart was working. A metal grating beneath his feet gave him a secure surface to stand upon, rather than forcing him to wedge himself against the tapering hull. Thick bulkheads spanned the width of the ship to fore and aft, making this into an enclosed space, accessible only through tunnel-like doors set into them. Both were open at the moment. Through the door to the stern, he could hear the echoing murmur of conversation between Rain and Staavo, who were discussing how best to propel the ship in the absence of its journey core.

This room had housed it, once. The likely-boulder-sized crystal had shattered into thousands of shards, doubtless torn apart by its own internal energies when it had been bisected. Rain and Ameliah had collected the inert fragments, but there would be no putting it back together. Fusing the hull back into one piece was simple by comparison, but only by comparison.

“There,” Tallheart said, lowering his bare hands. His gauntlets hung at his waist where he had tied them, having needed direct contact with the metal. An ugly seam ran through it, visible even to the naked eye, circling all the way around the compartment. Tallheart took a step back to get a better look at it, straightening as much as he could, which was not much. It went without saying that the Adamants had not designed their vessel with cervidians in mind.

“Will it hold this time?” Ellis asked. His voice was tight, likely from the frigid water. He swept the flashlighter’s beam up the wall, inspecting the damage for himself.

“I do not know,” Tallheart replied, shaking his head slowly. This was the second time his weld had broken open. The second time they had tried to free the ship from its icy scaffold, only to halt in a panic.

The problem was the metal.

The ship was not adamant.

It was something else. Something Tallheart would have had no name for if not for Rain.

Titanium.

“You don’t have to keep beating yourself up about it,” Ellis said, interrupting Tallheart’s thoughts. There was the beginning of a shiver in the human’s voice from the cold. He reached out, running his hand across the metal. “You’ll figure out the rune eventually, and then you can fix the enchantments. It’ll be like it was never broken.”

Tallheart shook his head slowly. “Eventually is not good enough.”

Titanium was unprecedented.

That was the word.

It was not deepened, yet it rivaled steel in mundane strength while weighing significantly less. Rain had told him of the metal before, of course, as well as many others. Aluminum was a good example. There, Rain had known where it could be found as ore and how it was refined, if only in the most general sense. He had not known these things for titanium. He called it a ‘brain hole,’ an inexplicable gap in his experience that no amount of overmana could fill. That he was nevertheless correct about the metal’s properties was only mildly surprising. Even after the incident with the headlight fluid, Tallheart had learned not to doubt Rain’s otherworldly knowledge. No, the true revelation was titanium’s affinity for strengthening enchantments. It was exceptional. Beyond steel. Something he had thought impossible.

An echoing shout made Tallheart glance toward the stern. It appeared that Rain and Staavo’s argument was becoming heated.

“Whose idea do you think is better?” Ellis asked, seeing where Tallheart was looking.

“Rain’s,” Tallheart said immediately, turning toward the bow and beginning to trudge through the frigid, knee-deep water. Beyond the bulkhead was a set of stairs that would take him up to the next level.

“Really?” Ellis asked, moving after him. “How is a tiny metal fan going to move this enormous thing? I also don’t like the idea of there needing to be a hole through the hull. Isn’t that what you literally just finished fixing?”

Tallheart snorted, carefully negotiating his antlers through the door. “Enormous, piston-driven oars would be better? I should not need to tell you how ridiculous that idea is.”

“Nothing seems ridiculous to me these days,” Ellis said, a tiny shiver in his voice telling Tallheart that the cold was getting to him.

Tallheart rumbled noncommittally, not remotely in the mood for conversation.

Reaching the stairwell, he began to climb slowly, tracing a bare hand along the wall. Even here, on an interior piece of plating, he could feel strange and unfamiliar runes inlaid just below the surface. The shapes of Durability and Hardness were easy to pick out, even twisted as they were to suit titanium’s alien intrinsic rune. They, however, were the exception rather than the rule. It was unsettling, not knowing what all of the runes did, but he did not have the time to tear them all out and replace them with his own. Nor did he have the expertise. The linking runes, for example, he could identify by their placement, but how they functioned was a mystery. The Adamants’ mana-distribution network was astonishing. It was far more efficient at storing energy and transmitting it over long distances than anything he had ever seen.

Another impossibility.

To distract himself as he climbed, Tallheart focused on identifying each hull-plate by the number he had assigned its maker.

Five. Three. Three. Five. One.

Before it had been broken, the ship would have appeared as one seamless whole, at least to someone without his skills. The truth was that it had been built in pieces. Each plate was distinguishable by variations in the runes, just as one might identify a scribe by their handwriting. The variations were tiny, but to Tallheart, they were as good as a signature. The smiths who had made this ship had been working as one, with one goal, with a level of precision that was unheard of on this scale. The design was rigid. Angular. It spoke of brutal order. Of uniformity, enforced by uncompromising power.

It spoke of the Empire itself.

If they are now able to create something such as this...

What else have they made while I have been hiding?

Tallheart rumbled unhappily, taking his hand away from the wall. Sensing the runes was not making him feel better. It was far from the distraction he had wanted.

He emerged from the stairwell into a heavily-fortified chamber, mercifully with a higher ceiling that did not force him to bend his neck. The flat deck plating had been dry, but the water dripping from his armor made his footing precarious with the gentle swaying of the ship. The room was lit by a pair of oil lanterns. Evertorches would have lasted scarcely longer than mundane ones with this much metal around. The imperials had used inscribed crystal plates for light, integrated right into the ship’s mana-distribution network. Such things were fragile, however. None had survived, destroyed either by the shock of the impact, feedback reverberating through the sliced mana network, or simply by the inrushing water.

The fist-sized gem before him, though, had survived, resting at waist height atop a heavily-inscribed titanium altar.

There had been four gems like this originally, spaced evenly along the ship. Only two remained intact, this one and the one at the stern. The two amidships had shattered, much like the journey core. Like its surviving twin, the gem before him was purple, perfectly smooth and spherical, resting in its socket. The gem did not glow on its own, but the polished surface shimmered in the light of oil lamps. As Tallheart approached, he saw his own reflection looking back at him.

As far as anyone had been able to determine, these gems were responsible for the veil that shielded the vessel from Divination. None of the runes he had seen in the hull could have achieved that effect. He did not need to understand them fully to know, as they lacked the required power. The mysterious gem before him, though, apparently blazed to Mana Sight.

Tallheart rumbled, staring at his reflection and seeing nothing more. The gem was not metal. His skills were useless here.

Another mystery that will take us too long to solve.

One theory was that the gems were some type of Crysts above even GranCrysts. The other was that they were the crystalline cores of lairs, somehow removed intact, refined, and twisted into adopting the ship as their new domain. The second theory had come from Rain, as if there could have been any doubt given its sheer ridiculousness. And yet, Tallheart was again inclined not to doubt him. His Detection and Ruce’s Eavesdrop reacted to the ship’s hull exactly as they would to a lair’s envelope. From within the vessel, such magic worked normally, but from without, it registered only the continuation of the surroundings. It was if the vessel had been edited out of reality, replaced by a near-perfect patch of water, ice, and air.

“Tallheart?” Ellis asked. There was concern in the human’s voice. “You didn’t sleep again last night, did you? Are you okay?”

“I am fine,” Tallheart said, realizing that he had been pondering his reflection in the gem for some time. He turned, leaving the room and entering a hallway that passed through a series of bunkrooms that must have belonged to combat party leaders and other minor officers. The rooms were unlit at the moment, but he knew them to be small and cramped, containing little more than waterlogged bedding and the odd personal possession. The bodies, of course, had been removed. Like enchanted crystal, humans were fragile. Those who had been near the center of the ship had not fared well, awakened or not. Protected by magic, or not.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Ellis said without prompting, still trailing after him with the flashlighter. “I know everyone else is too busy to notice, but I haven’t seen you sit still for more than thirty minutes in the past two days. Not since Halgrave got here. You didn’t even come to the planning meeting yesterday. Don’t you care where we’re going?”

Tallheart ignored the human. There was nothing to say. Nothing to decide. Ascension would leave. Wherever they went, it would be better than here. Whenever they left, it would not be soon enough.

Ellis sighed as they entered another gem compartment, sweeping the flashlighter’s beam around at the piles of equipment. The gem altar was empty, of course, but the room had been put to use storing the weapons and armor that Rain and Ameliah had recovered from the seafloor, as well as that which had been stripped from the bodies. There was quite a bit of it, even knowing that much more had made its way to the vaults of the Barge King. Unlike the ship, however, the equipment’s quality was more in line with Tallheart’s expectations.

Unimpressive.

The Adamant Empire did not waste GranTel outfitting their common soldiers. The entire philosophy of the Empire centered on creating strength from weakness through hyperspecialization. The average soldier was mid-bronze, with mass-produced weapons and armor to match. Through their formations, the Adamants boosted themselves to fight on par with silvers, even golds, but this understandably took a toll. When a soldier’s equipment inevitably failed from the strain, it would simply be replaced. The same was true of the soldier.

The items were generally enchanted, though. And unbound, obviously, given the manner of their use.

Tallheart was of two minds on what to do with it all. Part of him wanted to throw the lot into his smelter. There would be significant value in the materials and great satisfaction in the act. Another part of him acknowledged that every weapon in the hands of an Ascension member was another weapon turned against the Empire and the other evils of the world. Though shoddy and tainted by its origin, this gear would help end the aspirants’ incessant begging. As if he had time to make customized gear for everyone that asked. Or the inclination.

Leaving the makeshift armory, Tallheart walked through another section of bunks before entering the command room, what Rain called the ‘bridge.’ Situated directly above the room that had held the now-broken journey core, this compartment, too, had been bisected in the attack. Tallheart only glanced at the ugly seam briefly to verify that it had not split anywhere before heading for a side door. He was concerned with the integrity of the ship’s skin, more so than its interior spaces. Ellis followed in judgmental silence, bringing the light.

The Cento’s suite of private chambers occupied the entire space between the command hub and outer hull on the port side. The main room had been taken over to serve as Ascension’s new council chamber, and Tallheart had to move aside a stuffed armchair to access the weld. The metal was dry, which was a good sign. This level was still below the waterline, so if there had been a leak, it had been a small one. Pressing his hands against the hull to either side of the split, he closed his eyes, checking the bond more thoroughly with his skills. He hadn’t tried to reconnect the two halves of the Adamants’ mana network. Fusing the unfamiliar metal itself was challenge enough. He could hardly heat the entire ship, then place it upon an anvil to hammer it together with brute force. He also got the sense that such a technique would have ended poorly, even had he been trying to mend nothing more than a kitchen knife. As wondrous as titanium was, what little he had gleaned of its rune had already told him it would be fiendishly challenging to work. It did not help that the alloy the Adamants had used was only ninety percent pure.

When Tallheart finished his inspection, finding that here at least, the bond had held, he passed back through the command area. There were two suites on the starboard side, not one, each doubtless having belonged to one of the Sereni. Each suite had a large main room, much the same as the Cento’s quarters, but with fewer side rooms. A hallway ran between the suites. The one on the left had been allocated to Rain and Ameliah to double as lodging and the captain’s private office. The suite on the right, meanwhile, was to be Ascension’s new workshop. Tallheart had claimed one of the side rooms there as his own private quarters, but he did not enter now. The cut ran along the hallway between the two suites, and that was what he was interested in. Not rest. And so, he passed the door, laying his hands again against the wall.

When he finished and turned away, he was only mildly surprised to find that Ellis had opened the door to the workshop and was standing beside it, blocking the hallway back to the bridge. Tallheart frowned and began walking toward him, but was forced to stop when Ellis failed to move.

The human crossed his arms. “Let me finish the rest of the inspection.”

Tallheart shook his head. “No.” Gently, he flexed his hands. They were already beginning to cramp after being free of his gauntlets for this long. “Excuse me.”

“I’m not—“ Ellis began stubbornly, but Tallheart spoke over him.

“Have you progressed with your skills enough to rival your namesake?” He tilted his head, leaning forward to stare into the human’s eyes. “Have you perhaps mastered the rune for titanium and not told me?”

“No, but I don’t need to master the rune to tell if there’s a great big hole in the side of the ship,” Ellis said, not backing down. “There’s no need to snap at me, grumpy.”

“I am not grumpy,” Tallheart grumped, straightening. “This task is mine, and I will see it done.”

Ellis gave him a look. “At least take a break before you get back to it. The ship’s not going to sink if you lie down for an hour. If it was leaking anywhere, someone would have come running to get us by now.”

“I do not want to lie down,” Tallheart said. He rumbled a warning deep in his chest. “Move.”

Ellis’s mouth made a hard line, and Tallheart prepared to simply walk through him. Before that became necessary, the human stepped out of the way, switching off the flashlighter with a mechanical click. “Fine, be that way, but I’m keeping the flashlighter.”

Tallheart merely walked past him, flexing his hands again. He had allowed the man to hold the light in hopes that he might learn something, not because he actually needed help. He had his enchanted glasses if sight in darkness was required. He heard Ellis sigh behind him, but he put the human out of his mind. No one but Rain seemed to appreciate the urgency of their departure, and Rain was busy. As captain, he spent most of his time making sure everyone got a chance to share their opinions. On everything.

Human herding.

Tallheart rolled his eyes as he climbed the stairs to the next deck. He did not envy Rain the task.

Emerging from the stairwell, Tallheart was forced to hunch again so his antlers did not scrape the ceiling or tangle in the titanium ribbing. Only the command deck had sufficient headroom, and barely at that. This had been a crew deck. The Adamants hadn’t bothered to install proper beds, furniture, or even walls. It was open but for the supports, allowing him to see from bow to stern. Various Ascension members milled about, stringing light bulbs from the ribbing, stowing supplies, and chivying slimes out of their way as needed. He, too, found that his path was blocked, a Greater Crystal Slime sitting atop the seam precisely in his way.

In no mood to walk around, he extended a finger, then sharply prodded the creature. It did not react other than to suck the rest of his hand in through its membrane. Tallheart frowned, then pulled. The slime let him go easily enough, jiggling in indifference.

It did not, however, move.

Tallheart narrowed his eyes.

Fortunately for the slime, Kettel came walking by at that moment. “Hang on, I got ye,” the flame-haired teen said, grinning at Tallheart over the crate of junk he was carrying. Without stopping, he loudly hocked up a glob of phlegm and spat near his feet. Before it even hit the floor, the Greater Crystal Slime pounced like a jungle cat, quivering with gelatinous fury.

Kettel laughed, then swore as the slime rolled right over the glob of phlegm, leaving spotless decking in its wake. Kettel cursed again, scrambling away as the monster chased after him. “I forgot tha’ the big’uns get mad!”

Shaking his head at teenage foolishness, Tallheart resumed following the seam to the outer hull, finding that it was holding together well enough. The other side, however, turned out to need some adjustment. When he finished with that, he clenched and unclenched his fists, the stiffness continuing to build. He did not replace his gauntlets, however, heading instead for the stairs. The next deck was functionally identical. He checked it in the same way, though paying attention to the ceiling this time, given that it was the underside of the exterior deck. Finally finished, he untied his gauntlets and slipped them back on.

It will hold. It must hold.

His neck aching almost as badly as his hands, Tallheart made again for the stairs, climbing up past coming-and-going humans and out into daylight. He breathed deeply of the ocean breeze, bending his neck from side to side and flexing his hands until his knuckles cracked and popped. Gradually, the discomfort began to fade. He had been working to improve his synchronization, but it was a slow, painful process.

Yet another thing I do not have time for.

Tallheart sighed, then looked sternward, to where he had last seen Clubbs. Instead of a sterncastle, the Fistof Progress had an open wooden platform, held aloft by thick wooden beams sunken into sockets in the deck. The platform had clearly served to elevate the Adamants’ mages above the spell-disrupting influence of their craft, allowing them to strike without the metal disrupting their aim. A few splintered planks on that platform were the only evidence of damage to the ship other than that caused by Velika. The splinters had been the Darkmane’s doing, as Tallheart understood it. During the battle, the old pirate had managed to blast a few Adamants from the platform with high-pressure water before the Adamants had killed her in retaliation. The Empire did not take kindly to having its barriers pierced.

Tallheart’s jaw tightened, not seeing Ascension’s much-less-capable Hydromancer where he had left him. The man had probably gone below to begin draining the water with Internal Reservoir. There was no sense going to find him. Once he returned to dump the water overboard, Tallheart would stop him and tell him to be more cautious in chipping away the ice this time. Likewise, Tallheart would need to ensure that Mahria remained nearby to put it back in case of another issue. Her magic was superior to Rain’s when it came to overcoming the hull’s influence in a focused area, especially with the staff he had made her.

Not seeing either of the mages he wanted atop the platform, Tallheart looked toward the bow, and his jaw tightened further until it creaked. Mahria was there, as he’d hoped, but she was standing beside her father. The former Guildleader’s ostentatious blue armor was brilliant compared to the waves.

With effort, Tallheart forced himself to relax. The pair were looking out at the horizon to the north, watching the receding sail of one of the merchant vessels. That ship, Tallheart knew, was packed with humans fleeing their broken city for the so-called safety of the DKE. Humans that would talk. As they always did. If Citizen Barstone did not already know of Ascension, he soon would, and shortly thereafter, the entirety of the DKE would know as well. They would know of the Adamant Empire’s vessel, now in their possession. They would know about titanium, aluminum, electricity, radio...

...

They would know about him.

Tallheart sighed deeply. There was one silver lining to the ship’s departure, at least. Onboard were Jamus’s ex, her new husband, and most of the other useless Vestvallan nobles. The confrontation between Karilla and Jamus when she had learned her children intended to stay with Ascension had been marvelous. Tallheart was proud that he was no longer the only member of Ascension to have yeeted someone into the sea.

Good riddance.

Tallheart’s eyes flicked back to Halgrave, and once more, his mood darkened. The nobles would talk, as would all the others. Whether they told the truth or lies, it scarcely mattered. The world was coming for Ascension, and they were not ready. Even if they escaped the Empire, there would be no escaping this fact.

Turning away, Tallheart walked to the starboard rail to look at the city while he waited for Clubbs, though his thoughts were still on Halgrave. So far, the former Guildleader had respected Ascension’s secrets and had not tried to assert dominance over anyone save his daughter. But he could. He could demand to be allowed belowdecks. He could demand to know the secrets of the ship, of the generators, of Ascension’s equipment. Tallheart had not missed the man looking, his eyes lingering on enchanted rings, on aluminum swords, on armor... Rain’s. Ameliah’s. His own.

If Halgrave decided to take from Ascension, no one would be able to stop him. No one, save the other goldplate. The one hiding in the city. The one that would kill everyone here in a second if she thought they would betray her to the DKE.

Tallheart’s neck was aching again, and not because of the memory of low ceilings.

“Woof.”

Startled, Tallheart looked to the side to see a smiling canine face staring up at him from within a frizzy cloud of fur. The moment their eyes met, the well-named dog nosed forward, pressing his head into Tallheart’s hand.

Tallheart retracted his arm with a rumble, but the animal only became more insistent. He had to grip the railing with his other hand to avoid being knocked over. His boots had begun to slip against the smooth decking. The traction problem was another issue he hadn’t yet had time to solve.

“Stop this,” Tallheart said tiredly as the uncommonly-large dog continued to press against his legs. “I do not have any food.”

Cloud chuffed as if insulted. He pressed harder still, then wagged his tail once.

“Did Meloni put you up to this?” Tallheart asked, looking around. No one was watching that he saw.

Cloud just blinked at him with too-intelligent eyes. His tail wagged again, and he seemed to take on a pleading expression.

“You are not fooling anyone,” Tallheart said.

Again, a single wag, almost lost beneath the cloud of fur.

“Fine,” Tallheart said with a sigh, laying his hand atop the dog’s head and scratching him behind the ears.

Cloud chuffed again, the restrained tail-wagging exploding into full-body wiggle. Again, Tallheart had to clutch the railing to avoid being knocked over. As he kept scratching, the dog eventually calmed, and Tallheart loosened his grip on the railing and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath then let it out slowly.

He knew he was afraid. Knew that fear and worry was driving him to act even more foolishly than the most foolish of humans. He could not help it. This was not how he and Lilly had operated. Not out in the open. There was no choice, however. There was no choice unless he wanted to run again. To hide. To be alone.

That, he would not do.

He stopped scratching.

If the world came for him—for any of them—he would stand his ground. He would fight for all he was worth.

And with that, he knew what they would rename the ship. Temerity.

Tallheart rumbled to himself in satisfaction, opening his eyes again and looking out at the waves. If discovery was inevitable, there was no gain from worry. They would be bold.

“Woof!”

The corner of Tallheart’s mouth twitched. He looked down, then resumed scratching. “Yes, yes.”

Rain smiled, pulling his head back from peeking out of the hatch.

“Is it working?” Ellis whispered.

Rain turned, seeing the man anxiously watching from further down the stairs. It was quite cramped back there, actually, what with Ameliah, Jamus, Meloni, Staavo, and Kettel all crammed in the stairwell behind the apprentice blacksmith. Rain chuckled, then gave them a thumbs up. “Like a charm.”