Lord Three hadn’t told Lady Neria of his plan. He stayed far from the main Dominion army, accumulating Essence and preparing to annihilate the king. The boy wouldn’t escape this time, and she would thank him later.

  She probably still thought he was chasing after the boy, though, all across the countryside, and that a potential enemy Wildflame was far from here.

  Lord Three knew better. Even as he looked on the city of Northvel from the base of the Sheercliff, he sensed the boy’s Essence spiking a few times. And, while mortal eyes might not have noticed, he picked out a bright blue flash from the gate of the city, high up near the top. One of the boy’s Embercore techniques.

  If Lord Three engaged the boy now, though, their battle would eradicate the mortal armies below them, doing more harm to the Dominion’s siege efforts than usual. No, the Dominion had to break open the wall. Then Lord Three would attack.

  He could try to speed up the process, but in revealing himself, he’d become a target for the king, and before he could blast open Northvel’s gates, the battle would take place again over the Dominion army.

  So Lord Three waited, accumulating Essence, and, in a roundabout way, serving his Lady’s interests.

  ~ ~ ~

  Pirin, Nomad, and Gray sprinted back through the caverns beneath the palace, regardless of the slippery floor. Pirin’s boots skidded on slick stone, and he barely got any traction, but a couple tactical pushes of wind kept him on his feet and kept him moving.

  The Dominion scouts grew louder, until finally, Pirin could hear them. He veiled his core to hide from the wizards, but it was too late. They would already have sensed a weight of some sort, whether they could identify its power or not. They’d be chasing after him.

  When he reached the torchlit caverns again, Gray said, Do you think they know it’s you? And if they do, why are they still coming after us?

  Pirin replied, “Perhaps they think their numbers will help them.”

  “Their numbers will help them, I reckon,” Nomad replied. “But not as much as they think. No matter what tier of Flares they are, I doubt they’re as strong as you were when you were their level.”

  “I wasn’t that—”

  Yes, you were! Gray chided. No more Mr. Humble.

  “Dragon still in there?”

  If it is, it’s not in control.

  Of course, he could see the wraith was still a part of her—she had twigs and feathers along her wings and back—but it didn’t have control, and it never would. “Good. Keep…uh, keep up the good work!”

  How do you go from turning an entire city to your favour to a stammering fool in a matter of seconds? she teased.

  “I was thinking about that speech for a while…not the encouragement I’d give you on a moment’s notice.”

  They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a party of Dominion soldiers. Ostal, in thick plate armour, with white cloaks and swords. At the back of them was a wizard—a Flare, of course, with a fox Familiar on his shoulder. He shouted orders, then called down the hallway, but Pirin launched a Winged Fist and cut him off.

  The Winged Fist tore down the hallway and scattered the mortal soldiers, flinging them into walls or the ceiling. The wizard held his ground, but Pirin switched back to his Embercore form, pulling off his mask, and struck the wizard with two consecutive Shattered Palms.

  Flat on his back, the wizard gasped. His fox pounced, but Gray swatted it away with her wing.

  The wizard would follow them back to the surface if Pirin did nothing. He drew the stub of his sword, then drove it through the wizard’s chest before he could attack again.

  “Hop into Gray’s saddle!” Pirin instructed Nomad. “We need to be faster than them!”

  Nomad did without hesitation, and even Gray didn’t complain. Then, he and Gray sprinted back through the caverns, letting their enhanced bodies work for them this time. The wound around corners and up slopes, until finally, they arrived at the kitchen entrance. The masons had almost chiseled all the way through the pillars, but there were still ridges of stone at the center.

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  With a crack and a crunch, the ceiling shuddered. Dust rained down, and masons deeper in the cavern retreated, shielding their heads with their hands.

  “Collapse the cavern!” Pirin shouted. “Collapse it now!” He reached the stoned floor of the kitchen and skittered to a halt, then turned to the Sirdian guard in charge of the masons. “If you don’t collapse it, the Dominion will get through. Leave the rest of the food!”

  The guard relayed his orders, and the masons struck their pillars with greater speed and fervour. Pirin annihilated a weakened pillar with a Shattered Palm, and, within the minute, the rest of the masons cleaved through.

  The ceiling cracked and crumbled, and an avalanche of boulders and dirt poured down from the ceiling. Dust coughed out into the kitchen, along with a wave of air, and it doused a few of the nearest fires. Ahead of them now lay a wall of boulders and rock, a hundred feet thick. No one was getting through there any easier than through the outer wall.

  Pirin, Gray, and Nomad ran back through the palace halls, until they crashed into a flustered guard who’d apparently been looking for them. “My lord!” he called. “The ringforge is ready, as you requested. Do you need it immediately?”

  “Get the blaze as hot as you can,” Pirin said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  He recalled vaguely the palace’s on-site forge. It was a small facility, originally for repairing guards’ tools and weapons, or for items around the palace, but it was the best Pirin would get. There were probably better forges in Vel Aerdeil, but he’d make do.

  Besides, it was often said that a tool’s quality was up to the smith’s skill and his ingredients, not the forge.

  Pirin followed the guard up through the hallways of the palace, ascending until they reached the top of the palace’s main dome. It was there, where a chimney would be most effective at dispersing smoke, that the palace’s forge rested.

  He pushed open the forge’s doors and stepped inside, to find three guards heaping wood on the fire, preparing quenching fluid, and laying out tools that Pirin had no idea how to use. Gray couldn’t fit inside; the doorway was too small and the interior was too cramped, but Nomad stepped in a few seconds later, then pulled a sheet off the anvil. He asked, “What’s your plan with the sword?”

  Pirin searched the shelves at the edge of the room until he found a small steel vat about the size of a pickling jar. He opened his void pendant and withdrew the shards of Neria’s dagger, then dumped them in. An apparatus hung above the hearth with metal hoops of many sizes. He lodged the tiny vat in the smallest hop and let it hang above the flame.

  “Keep that as hot as you can, please,” he said. “I need to melt that metal.”

  “That’s Ichor-steel,” Nomad said. “It’ll melt, but it’ll take days.”

  “Then the city needs to last for a few days.”

  Next, Pirin found a wooden box with sand in it. It was a shallow rectangle, and long enough to fit most swords in it. Probably a mould for decorative swords—at least, for the first step—but he could use it.

  He retrieved the shards of Nynhar from his own void pendant and set them down in a sword-shaped ridge at the center of the sand. Like he was piecing together a puzzle, he lined up the shards as best he could, until he had a mostly full sword with only a few cracks between it.

  “If I fill the cracks with Ichor-steel,” he began, “will I still have a connection with it? Reign-wise?”

  “It’s still mostly the same sword,” said Nomad. “As long as you don’t start seeing it as a different blade—like reforging it would—you will maintain your Reign.”

  Pirin nodded. “It’s a strong, arcane material, then? What…what benefit does it have for the sword?”

  “You’ll be giving it an arcane base, just like your armour has,” Nomad explained. “It’s a good thing you took the sword Charges, too.”

  “I suspected we’d need them. Wasn’t sure when, but…”

  “Indeed. What do they do?”

  Pirin retrieved both the sword Charges from his void pendant and set them down on the anvil. They clinked like glass, and their central rune circles were small enough to fit on the flat block at the center of Pirin’s sword’s hilt.

  “This one,” Pirin said, motioning to the darker circle, “holds the sword in the sheath tighter, and ejects it quickly to aid the user in drawing quickly.”

  “Useful for a swordsman like Kovar,” Nomad lamented. “If he’d been able to fuel it, that is.”

  “And the other…took all the cracks and damage along a sword’s edge, though the course of a fight, and filled it with wind, keeping the blade in one piece despite its damage.”

  “One’s clearly more useful,” said Nomad. “For your situation, that is.”

  “But it’ll just make it stronger…”

  “It makes the blade hold its form when you activate it.”

  Pirin raised his eyebrows, and a couple ideas spilled into his mind. “Alright, so, I patch up the sword with Ichor-steel, turn it into an artifact, and then imprint it once it has its form…”

  “And fuel it. I have a suspicion of what will happen, just looking at the runes, but you’re welcome to experiment.”

  Pirin retrieved the armour Charges from his void pendant and set them down on the table, then placed the sections of his armour in the holding clamps around the forge. Within the clamps’ grips, he placed the piece of armour and its assigned Charge, then tightened the clamps until the embossed runes pressed perfectly into the flat planes of the armour. Already, the Charges began cracking and bending, and they struggled to hold their perfect, sharp shape as they dug into the leather. They spent their manifested Essence maintaining the runic patterns, and though it wouldn’t give the runes any inherent power, they were perfect. Pirin could fuel them on a whim and enjoy their full effect.

  “Give it a few days to settle in,” Nomad said. “And a few days for the ichor-steel to melt. Then you’ll have your armour.”

  Pirin nodded. “We’ve got a siege to hold off, then. I think we can last a few days.”