The Soul Forge (14 page)

“Well then, the first thing I’m going to do is wear some pants
,” she said. Thomas’ tongue betrayed him, as it got tied up right as he was about to reply.

“I
’m not a magic-caster,” she continued. “I can’t use magic.”

“If you say so,” Thomas replied evenly.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I remember when we first met.
When we first escaped the bandits. You wanted to go to Verdonti because they would protect
us.
I kind of think it was for the same reason. Maybe you don’t want to admit it, but yer a magic-caster too.”

Cynthia didn’t answer him, but the way she didn’t deny it convinced Thomas that he was correct.

“Well, I’m positive I ain’t a magic-caster,” Zach laughed, and the others joined him.

“
Then I guess you’ll just have to be the best swordsman of ‘em all,” Thomas laughed. Zach nodded, and the three of them started laughing wildly. It was only when they heard the Keeper’s voice that they quieted, though their smiles were impossible to wipe away.

“What’s all this?” the Keeper said the moment they were in earshot, “why are you dallying about?”

“We were waiting for you,” Thomas said, thinking on his feet, “we have more training to do.”

“Training?
What makes you think you’re worthy to be trained by me?”

“We’re still alive,” Thomas countered with his most charming smile. The Keeper seemed to think about it for a few
moment before he finally nodded.

“Well then. We begin at once.”

Three days of hard training both exhausted Thomas physically but energized him mentally. It felt so good to be doing hard work again, even if it was a work he was mostly unfamiliar with. From the moment the sun rose to about midday, the Keeper instructed the three of them in the way of the sword. Even Gilkor joined them sometimes, but a sword was far more up close and personal for his liking.

“Prefer my bow,” he said, “nice safe distance, nice safe skill.”
They would laugh, and the Keeper would shoo him away.

They would have a brief break to eat around midday before Gilkor trained them at the forge. Thomas was a fast learner, sustaining more burns but learning from his mistakes quickly.
Zach enjoyed smashing things with the hammer, though sometimes he got too enthusiastic and dented what he was supposed to be repairing. Cynthia was quiet usually, focusing with all of her might. Though Thomas wouldn’t admit it, he found it breathtaking.

After the forge, they would have another meal before Thomas and Cynthia would get yelled at for a few hours while Zach sat under a tree and laughed while reading a book. The fact that Zach was reading a book made Thomas a bit jealous, seeing as he no longer had time to, but he was learning magic-casting. Unfortunately, his progress in the field was much slower than
the others, and after three full days he wasn’t able to do much more than summon a flame with less effort.

The night of the third day came, and the three of them adjourned to their temporary living quarters.
Thomas collapsed in his makeshift bed, completely exhausted. He was about to fall fast asleep when someone sat on him.

“Getting’ a bit personal, ain’t we?” Thomas grunted, trying to shift whoever was on top of him off.

“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy,” Cynthia replied, wiggling her butt for emphasis. Thomas didn’t trust himself to comment, so he simply rolled over in an attempt to throw her to the floor. This succeeded in absolutely nothing save now she was sitting on his lap.

“I’m trying to sleep,” Thomas said. “Zach, help me out here.”

His plea fell on emptiness, because Thomas discovered as he looked around that only he and Cynthia were present in the room.

“Where’s Zach?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know,” Cynthia replied, “should we go look for him?”

“Well, this outpost is safe…”
Thomas said, brow furrowed. Despite how safe they were, Thomas was still worried about Zach. This wasn’t the first time that Zach had gone off on his own, and he was perfectly allowed to do so, but every time previously he had said something.

“Yeah, it’s not as if something could happen to him,” Cynthia replied, though her eyes didn’t back up her statement in the least.

“Yeah, let’s go find out what he’s up to
,” Thomas decided.

Together, they got up and walked back into the open air of the outpost. Things were winding down, meaning that the dwarves were starting to
begin their nightly celebrations. They drank to being alive, drank to their families, drank to those without their families… they liked to drink. More than once, Gilkor had asked the humans to join them, but Thomas had always refused due to being dead tired.

It didn’t look like there would be any escaping it tonight.
Taking a deep breath, Thomas took Cynthia’s hand and lead her into the first tavern they came across.

“Tom!”

Naturally,
Gilkor was in it, drinking away as if the world was going to end tomorrow. He called Thomas over, who initially shook his head but found Cynthia pushing him forward.

“Now’s not really the best time,” Thomas whispered, but she used the cover of the tavern noise to pretend she didn’t hear him.

“Well, finally decided to relax and have a pint, ey?” Gilkor said, summoning a flask from thin air. Thomas unwillingly took it, taking a sip. The pathetic tasting was noticed by both Cynthia and Gilkor, who insisted he take a drink like a real man.

“It’ll be but a sip compared to the dwarves, but hey, you’re only human
,” Gilkor laughed. Then they both drank. It tasted bitter at first, then sweeter than honey mixed with a spark of something foreign, like a sour berry. The liquid burned feeling deep into his veins, energizing him with something he strongly suspected was courage.

“Gilkor, do you know where Zach is?” Thomas asked.

“Can’t rightly say. Ain’t he normally with you?”

“Yeah, but he’s disappeared. Normally he says something before takin’ off.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. He’s mostly a grown man, ha!”

Thomas smiled, but Gilkor’s words offered him no comfort.
He couldn’t define why, but something seemed very off, and it made Thomas uneasy. He could feel his skin crawling from an indefinable worry. With nothing else to do but drink, he drained two or three flagon’s of all far faster than he should have.

“Why aren’t you drinkin’?” Thomas asked Cynthia, who only laughed.

“I serve the drinks, I don’t drink ‘em.”

“Well, you can now. You can do whatever you want. Hey, how come you were a barmaid, anyway?”

She shrugged and looked around, but no one was listening to them but Thomas. Gilkor was immersed in conversation with a female dwarf, and Thomas could practically smell the dwarf’s pick-up lines.

“It was my father’s pub,” Cynthia said, drawing Thomas’ attention back to her. “My mother worked it as a barmaid, and after she passed, I took her place. Then
my father passed, and I became the owner.”

“Oh. Good living?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, “I made it through all right.”

“How many magic-casters did they execute near your pub?”

Her eyes darkened, and Thomas immediately regretted asking the question. It had left his mouth before he could guard against it, and now it was just out there, an open question with dire consequences.

“You were the third,” she replied, and Thomas nodded. “The first one… I had no idea that’s what they had planned. I tried to warn the second one, but he ran away. They cut him down just outside of town. Then there
was you.”

She looked up at him and smiled, and he couldn’t resist smiling back.

“Well, thanks for the warnin’,”
Thomas said, “wouldn’t be here without ya.”

Cynthia rolled her eyes, though Thomas couldn’t even begin to guess why.
Unsure of anything else to do, he ordered another ale.

When he had at last drained the
last ounces of ale from the cup, he felt the world around him start to spin around.

“Ha!” Gilkor laughed, “lightweight!”

“Well, I’ve never had… this… before,” Thomas replied, the words in his brain not translating very well to his mouth. He became aware that Cynthia had an arm around his shoulders, and it was only when he couldn’t figure out what was itching in the back of his brain that he realized what it was.

“We still haven’t found Thomas!” Thomas said, suddenly jumping up.

“You ARE Thomas,” Cynthia laughed, shaking her head. “And think, you only had two or three!”

“Now you shush,” Thomas said, pointing at about three people before he realized where Cynthia was, “that is not…
imp… im… that don’t matter right now.”

He started to walk away, but tripped on fell on his face. Cynthia and Gilkor had to help him up, and Thomas closed his eyes for a few moments in order to try and clear his head.
When he opened them, he was in the outside world and the fresh air was starting to hurt his head.

“I don’t think Zach’s out here,” Thomas said, looking around just in case.

“He’s probably off on his own,” Cynthia laughed, “let’s just get you to bed before you hurt yourself.”

“No,” Thomas said, and this defiance held none of hid inebriation. He was serious. “Just in case something’s wrong, we need to be there for him. That’s all there is to it.”

Cynthia didn’t reply, simply helping him steady himself. Thomas shook his head, warding off the ale as he tried to get his center of balance back. Eventually, he was able to stand on his own two feet.

“Let’s get to looking.”

It about that moment when the entire outpost rumbled as if struck by an earthquake.

The sudden shaking did nothing to help Thomas’ already tenuous grasp on balance, and gravity pulled him to the ground. The ale kept him down, try as he did to stand.

“What’s going on?” Cynthia yelled, taking his hand and trying to pull him up. The ground shook all the harder, and Thomas ended up pulling her down to the floor with him.
Glass shattered and pots fell to the ground, covering the street with clay.

“C’mon you two, no time for snuggling now!”

Gilkor reached down and lifted both of them at the same time, putting them back on their feet.

“What’s happenin’, Gilkor?” Thomas asked, leaning heavily on the dwarf.

“I don’t know,” Gilkor replied with obvious concern, “it feels like a…”

“Rockslide?” Cynthia interjected, pointing to the mountains. Sure enough, stones the size of houses were falling towards them, shaking the ground as they approached. In Thomas’ addled brain, it appeared that the mountain was crumbling.

“We need to get out of here
,” Thomas said. Gilkor and Cynthia nodded, and the three of them turned and bolted towards the nearest shelter. The tavern they had just exited had emptied, the dwarves running for the mines. The three of them followed, trying and failing to stay standing as the rocks approached. The dwarves ushered everyone into the mines in hopes of escaping the stone flood.

“We’ve gotta find Zach!” Thomas shouted as they headed into the mine. Thomas wasn’t sure how safe a mine was going to be during a rockslide, but they didn’t have any other option.

No sooner had they pushed into the mine then a stone crushed the ground they had just been standing on. Thomas kept backpedaling, unsure of what was going on, what he should do. Gilkor pulled his arm, making sure he kept running in the right direction.

Finally, they were deep enough in the mine that Thomas wasn’t afraid of getting crushed outright. Instead, a new fear took its place almost instantly.
They were inside a mountain and rocks were tumbling down it, bashing in the mountain with every touch. What was going to keep the mountain from simply caving in, burying them all alive?

Thomas pulled Cynthia towards him, making sure she was close in case of anything. His eyes scanned the
crowd for a familiar face, but Zach was nowhere to be found. Fearing that his friend was still outside, Thomas was seized by the desire to run back out there and find him. As if sensing his thought, Cynthia gripped him so tight he felt like half of his ribs were sure to break.

Then the entrance to the mine was buried under what could have literally been a ton of rock.
Thomas’ jaw dropped as he watched the rocks create a wall of dust, blinding them all and momentarily putting out any light source they had.

S
ilence fell, broken only by the panicked cries and the pleas of children. Thomas looked around, but the mine was mostly dark and the only face he could make out was Cynthia’s.

“We need light,” someone shouted, “does anyone have a lighting stone?”

Thomas was about to shake his head before remembering the only useful thing his power could do.

He groped around the darkness, trying to find a torch that could be lit. After a few unsuccessful tries and a number of slaps to the face, he found the mine wall.

“Okay,” Thomas said to himself, “I’ve practiced his a thousand times…”

Taking a deep breath, he snapped his fingers.
Nothing happened.

“Gods damn it all,”
Thomas said, his temper reaching an unfamiliar boiling point. Forcing himself to stay calm, he took a deep breath and snapped his fingers again, harder.

This time a tiny flame
sprouted from the meeting place of his thumb and forefinger, small but very much a flame. Thomas couldn’t help but smile, but the sudden elation cost him his concentration and the flame went out.

A third snap sounded in the darkness, and finally Thomas managed to light the torch.
Other torches were brought, and in only a few minutes the entire mine was glowing with firelight.

The dwarves didn’t look quite so terrified now, probably because they were quite comfortable in a mine.
Thomas looked around, hoping that the calm would allow him to better see. It helped that the other residents of the mine were all shorter than the humans.

To his surprise, he didn’t see one person his height. He saw two.

Cynthia took his hand when Thomas motioned to them, and together they approached the other pair. Who they found was not who Thomas was expecting.

It was Zach all right, looking disheveled and upset. There was a woman with him, one with fiery red hair and
green eyes that reflected the torchlight in such a way they appeared to glow. Her dress had a slit in the side, revealing her leg up to her thigh, which she clearly had no qualms about.

“Miranda,” Thomas said, shaking his head in quiet disbelief.

“Well well. If it isn’t the brave stable boy. I had a feeling the boy Zach told me about was you.”

Thomas smiled, more pleased to see
she was alive than he could put into words.

“I see you’ve met,” Zach said, blushing slightly. Thomas nodded, chuckling at the red rising in Zach’s face.

“Yeah, she… enlisted me to do a job. Gods,” he continued, a new thought bursting into his brain, “it’s yer fault I’m in this mess to begin with!”

“Well,” she countered, “if it hadn’t been for me
the Priest would have gotten his staff, and the whole world would have been conquered by now.”

“Technically,” Thomas chuckled,
“I’m the one who made sure the Priest didn’t get his staff.”

They both stared at each other, a smirk on both of their faces.

“Team effort,” Zach interjected, and the four of them broke into a smile.

“What happened to the Twins? And… the other guy
,” Thomas asked, but her reply was in the darkness of her eyes falling. Clearly, they hadn’t made it.

“So, what
brings you to the city of the dwarves?” Cynthia asked Miranda, taking a seat next to her and stretching her legs. Miranda flipped her hair out of her face before making her reply.

“Well, I came to warn them about the Others,” she said.

“Inanis,” Thomas felt obliged to correct, “those things are actually called the Inanis. And where are the twins?”

“
They… they didn’t make it,” she said, her eyes dark. “How come the Dark Priest didn’t know their real names?” she asked.

“He’s not really the Dark Priest,” Zach smiled.

“And Thomas has the General’s sword…” Cynthia began to say before checking Thomas up and down. Thomas stared at her, confused, before realizing what she already had.

He had left the General’s sword back in their quarters.

Thomas ran both hands through his hair in frustration. He had left their only weapon in a now unreachable area!

“You didn’t know this was going to happen,” Cynthia said, “but we really need to get the sword.”

“What’s so important about the General’s sword?” Miranda asked, though Thomas suspected she already knew the answer.

“It can hurt the Inanis,” Zach replied, his voice softening
again. If Thomas wasn’t so furious at himself, he would have laughed at Zach’s clear liking of Miranda. If she hadn’t blackmailed him into getting involved in this whole adventure, he might have spurred him on.

“So you’ve met the other human!” a jolly voice sounded. It was Gilkor, and he was strangely happy despite the fact that they were trapped in a mine with no supplies and no way out.

Other human…

“Wait,” Thomas said. Something about the way Gilkor had said that made his brain unsteady.
“Where are the Keeper and Morando?”

“They couldn’t be…” Cynthia said, dread coloring her voice.

“We need to get this mine open. Now,” Thomas said.

“That’s going to take some time,” Gilkor replied, sounding less than cheerful for the first time, “it’s a big cave in.”

“Is there another way out?” Thomas asked, looking at the mine entrance. Dwarves had taken to it with pickaxes, but there weren’t many tools on the inside of the mine.

It was only when silence answered his question that
he looked back at Gilkor and found the dwarf wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“Gilkor, what is it? Is there another way?”

“A… aye, lad, but it’s not a way any of us should go.”

Thomas’ stomach dropped, and he found he really didn’t want the dwarf to continue. Unfortunately, Cynthia stole the chance from him.

“Why not? What’s down there?” she asked.

“It’s… the mine… is deep. It’s a deep place.”

Thomas cocked his head, thinking hard. He had heard that term before, he was sure of it. Where had he heard it…?

“It can’t be…”
Miranda said, and Thomas suddenly remembered where he had heard it. At the exact same moment, he felt a surge of fear freeze him to his toes.

“Zombies?”
Thomas hazarded, hoping he was wrong.

But Gilkor finally nodded, but his nod told Thomas that there was still more.

“Gilkor, tell us everything. What’s going on here?”

Gilkor looked stricken, but Thomas refused to back down.
His gaze didn’t divert from Gilkor’s face, and eventually the dwarf burst into speech.

“We were digging, same as any other day, digging for gold and metal and anything else.
Nothing interesting. Nothing more than usual. But then Fohor, he knocked down a pile of stone that was hiding a doorway. We thought it was interesting, so we followed it. There was a tunnel, already completely carved out. We didn’t suspect, we didn’t think…”

Thomas gulped, not wanting him to continue but unable to stop him now. “What did you find?” he asked.

“A necro-caster.”

The unfamiliar term fell strangely on Thomas’ ears,
who looked at Cynthia and Zach. Both of them looked back in utter confusion. Miranda, however, looked sad and angry at the word.

“What’s a necro-caster?” Thomas asked.

“It’s a corpse-defiler,” Miranda said, her hands balled into fists. They take the dead and they… they… turn them.”

“Turn them?” Zach said, sliding down next to her and putting an arm hesitantly around her. She didn’t throw it off.

“Five years ago, when King Ofan first introduced magic to the world, the other races were horrified,” she said, her words tumbling over each other, “they tried many ways to combat it, but every single way was unsuccessful. Finally, General Chromwell learned to wield magic, and the tables turned. Humans, elves and dwarves delved into the strange thing known as ‘magic.’” The last word held more bitterness than Thomas would have believed a voice could hold.

“The elves used it as a way of increasing their health and their knowledge. The dwarves used it to improve their weapons and their armor. The humans used it to fight fire with fire – literally.”

Thomas shifted on his feet, concerned as to where this was going. “And?”

“Then the war ended. We won. Elves studied magic. Dwarves didn’t really care about it. But humans… humans put anyone to death who practiced it.”

Cynthia shot a look at Thomas, a fleeting smile that Thomas felt out of place given their conversation.

“Those that weren’t caught, however, began to… react to the King’s order. Some planned to protest. Others… others planned an overthrow. One of them reached into the darkest, most nightmarish part of his soul and brought back a dead magic-caster.
”

“Brought back?” Thomas repeated, aghast. “As in resurrected?”

Miranda nodded. “But the process… it wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. He brought back the body, but the mind… the soul… it was gone. It was just a moving corpse.”

“Just like the
Inanis,” Thomas said, his mind flashing back to their previous conversation so very long ago. What a fool he had been not to ask, not to try and understand.

“Gilkor,” Cynthia said, “what happened?”

“We got to the end of the tunnel,” Gilkor continued as if he hadn’t paused, “and… there he was.”

“He?”
Zach asked.

“
He didn’t have a name. He didn’t say anything. He just raised his hand and lightning flew from his fingertips. Fohor was dead before I knew what was happening. And there were bodies… the bodies of our dead, our honored dead, standing there staring at me without eyes. They moaned… I thought they were crying, asking for help. But there was nothing I could do. I had to run. As soon as I made it back I closed the tunnel. Sealed him in.”

“Of course, Gilkor,” Cynthia said, placing a hand on his arm, “you’d have been killed too.”

“We built a door in front of it so that it would never be opened. Found the other entrance and sealed that up too. Locked him and his… things… down there. We haven’t gone into it since.”

Thomas nodded. “But there has to be a way out through there,” he said, “cause somehow the necro-caster got in.”