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 Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:56 pm
One Abyss
"Mars" Area. He waited as long as he could wait. Allowed himself to fuel the structure as long as was tenable. He knew that their forces were inside – that they were led by the most formidable and capable of the Negaverse, and protected by their best combatants, and equipped with the most technologically savvy that numbered their ranks. If there were secrets to find in this strange place, the teams would locate them. Faustite understood that – abided that.
But he couldn't deny his own nature. He wasn't built to idle patiently in a crucible, burning himself up to power the place like a reactor. Still, he hadn't many places to go. As he looked about his prison, he noted that it wasn't built for a living power source; the only areas open to him were thin tubules that connected to his small chamber. They undoubtedly migrated to other parts of the facility where power was integral to operations, but that hadn't guaranteed any way for Faustite to escape his confines. And while there was someone at the ready by the terminal, waiting for his signal to release him from confinement, Faustite suspected it would trap their teams inside if the power supply was formally disengaged.
"Captain," he called out, and he waited for the agent loitering near the terminal to respond to him. While belated, he saw the woman's head tilt up to regard him. "You said this place has some way to store power. Are you certain?"
"Very." The smartly dressed woman reached out and began tapping the terminal screen. "Our Mauvians haven't been able to salvage the databanks, but they've begun analyzing this building's systems in their own way. There's at least three generators somewhere in the building that store power. Do you need to take a rest, Sir?"
At this, the senshi-turned-medic that remained in the room with them had stood and approached the glass tube where Faustite was confined. He lacked a way to perform a physical examination for any signs of collapse, but he thought Faustite looked hale enough. It hadn't been terribly long since the teams disembarked on their missions, and he'd only eaten a handful of snacks yet. If anything, the General's famous urge to pace might be getting the better of him.
Faustite pursed his lips. "I'm bored," he admitted. "Tell me – do we know how much power it's stored?"
Frowning in concentration, the Captain first typed on the terminal, then on her tablet. Then it was transformed back into its pen form and she had begun a conversation with one of the Mauvians topside. Finally, she answered. "Enough to last about a couple of hours."
"Mm. I'll be back." While the attending agent began to sputter out a where are you going, Faustite flickered into living flame.
With no need for a solid form, the flaming General dispersed into delicate, engraved tubes far too small for anything greater than the width of a finger. He traveled in the company of his own spent flame as it carried down and raveled out among all the power-hungry locales in the building. As flame followed tubule-bound flame, he saw Aquamarine and Kamacite in passing, pausing only briefly to observe them in his travels.
He knew, however, that he was timed – that his ability wouldn't last long enough for him to watch over the teams in their treks through the facility. Should his energy for maintaining that form run out, he couldn't say if it would result in his instant end, or if he'd shatter one of the tubes supplying power to an integral area. So he kept on without as much as a word or a spark in the direction of that team.
Faustite traveled to the count of seconds in his head, mentally cataloging how long he'd been traveling and how much time he had left. He hadn't found any offshoots yet; the energy grid for this place seemed tightly closed and carefully separated. Even as he counted past the halfway marker for his form shift, he hadn't yet begun worrying; the place was exposed by an earthquake, after all, and they had already seen evidence of its damage in the first chamber. He expected that these carefully spun tubules, thin and delicate as they were, would have broken off deeper down in the facility. He simply had to find them.
Further down he went, past another two rooms, with eight seconds left in his mental count. It was then that he spied a broken tubule spitting fire – likely a leak in the system that caused it to default to low power mode – and shot through the open hole. Living flame coalesced back into Faustite, who immediately sucked in a heaving ********," he wheezed breathlessly. "It's hotter than my own a** in here."
And, for the first time since breaching this place, he felt youma.
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Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2022 6:07 pm
Each breath burned on the intake. It was a familiar feeling for the fiery agent, but not one he relished. The heat stung his eyes enough that he needed to shut them for several seconds while he waited for his body to acclimate to the onrush of blistering, sweltering heat. Even as he did, he felt sweat begin pouring out onto his skin and soaking his clothes, turning his cuffs and collar black with each passing second.
Faustite decided, immediately, that this room would've been better suited to Amazonite. But as he squinted about, spying tall walls, smoky ceilings, and floors coated in molten material, Faustite wondered if she even had a chance to get here.
As he looked back, he noted that his entry point was still spewing fire behind him. Ripping off his sleeves, he balled the material up and corked the broken tubule. Faustite suspected that the building would inform him when it used up most of its firepower, so he needn't worry about knowing when to get back.
So he turned his attention to the room itself. It was difficult to discern the nature of the room with so much backlit smoke and molten material, but he could tell he stood atop a structure into which his exit tubule should have fed. Whatever it was, it was built heavy and had a rounded shape. Peering off the side informed him that the structure was quite tall, certainly taller than him, but the floor around it was suffused with gelatinous substance that would most certainly melt his metal heels in an instant.
It wasn't the only structure like it, either. Several of them lined the walls, each featuring a single opening at its fore. Small, square apertures at about Faustite's chest height, and many of them were lit from the inside. He heard the crackle of his own fires above a deep and foreboding bubbling. To him, they looked like volcanic tombs from a time far in the future – ringed with glass and gold, anchored into the wall with luminescent piping and hovered over by inert, but delicate-looking contraptions. As he squinted up into the smoke, he saw glass and thin rods with more of that same luminescent piping. They looked like an unearthly type of crane, though few of them held any cargo.
Toward the back, surrounded by more overheated sludge, was a floating desk – quite literally floating, for it hovered above its minimalist glass stand – and he saw it was a complete circle with no way to enter or exit the empty center. A light hung above it, one made of rounded metal rings with more luminescent material embedded inside. The light it shone was bright but not overly so, clear with the slightest tint of gold. Somehow, it cleared that work area of the orange tints from his flames that suffused the structure.
With few clues to the nature of the place and no terminals to inform him, Faustite leapt down from the coffinesque structure to a patch of clear floor. The floor reminded him of obsidian – a beautiful, bleaming black with high tolerance to the standing pools of slag. He wove his way across, looking all the while at the apertures to the fiery hells around him.
His fire had been powering them. To a purpose unknown.
When he reached the desk at the far end, he expected to find some clue to their use – anything to satisfy his curiosity about the building on a whole and how this floor fit into its purpose. Yet, when he squinted through the smoke and saw its contents, he only found tools the likes of which he hadn't seen. Many looked like ornate handles out of a displaced time, anachronisms with recesses for attachments that never were. Faustite reached for a handle that reminded him of a weapon hilt and examined its craftsmanship. Why have so many handles?
Something roused behind the desk and Faustite froze, waiting. Flame eyes watched as a form emerged, first coming into view as a pair of human arms, well-muscled and callused, then robust shoulders. Then more shoulders, more arms. Then enough pairs of arms that all areas of the circular work surface were covered in waiting hands. Faustite saw that they were black as the floor, with forged bangles around their wrists and biceps, and luminescent cords connected those bangles to a hole in the floor. Emerging last was a many-sided head, each side looking more like a forged mask than a human face. This hovered at the top of the many-armed torso, where it oscillated slowly. Once it settled on a face with thin slats for eye holes and a slat for a mouth, it halted its rotation.
Beyond it – between Faustite and itself, bisecting the table, was a translucent red barrier. Licking flame appeared to dance across its surface.
Faustite took in the figure before him. "You're a youma."
The creature with the iron head did not move at his statement. The holes in the mask brightened, briefly, with a red glow. "Yes."
"How did you get here?"
"I have always been here." The mask flashed, flickered and glowed with each word.
"Introduce yourself."
Its robust, warbled voice carried richly through the room. "My General calls me the Forgemaster."
Telling name, he supposed. Faustite drew a breath, then began to pace. "Faustite," he responded as he began to walk revolutions around the circular workstation. All the while, the floating head turned with his movements. "Where are the other youma?"
The figure boomed out a grunt. Several of its arms raised and pointed, each in a different direction, each at the several structures in the room. "They follow standing orders, Faustite. But they – and I – cannot complete the instructions."
"What instructions? Why?"
"I am bound. As are they. We cannot complete my General's wishes. We remain until the way is clear."
"Bound," Faustite echoed, pausing. "This?" A thin claw gestured to the ethereal barrier surrounding the youma.
"Correct." Its hands rested on the circular table once more.
Faustite crouched down, following the line of the barrier to the floor. Engraved around its projection was a thick, circular recession all but burned into the floor. Limned with a soft, white light and speckled with microscopic stars, its appearance was decidedly out of place for what looked like a production plant from one of Hina's sci-fi shooters. Faustite touched the engraving and drew back from the same brilliant, soul-searing burn that he felt from the symbol guarding the entrance to the building. Straightening up, he followed the curve of the bizarre magic to another line that shot off perpendicular to it. This one looked like an arrow that pointed outward, and a small but curiously-shaped symbol lingered near it. While Faustite followed its trajectory with his gaze, he saw nothing of note apart from more of the coffin-like structures. Inside, he thought he glimpsed that lamp salesman youma from the Scar.
He turned back to face the Forgemaster, who watched him negotiate the brand on the floor. It hadn't moved, yet it hadn't offered any guidance for dealing with its binding, either. Faustite's frown of concentration deepened as he crouched back down to examine the starlets seeping out of the gouge in the floor.
"You are a General, correct?" Boomed the youma above him.
"Yes." Black claws traced the wound before they snatched a few of the starlets from the air. When he opened his hands, however, they were gone.
"May I speak plainly?"
"Yes."
A beat elapsed between them. Then the Forgemaster shifted, dropping down into a squat so that it may view Faustite from beneath its work desk. "I have never seen a General like you. Will you tell me about yourself? I wish to know how you came to be."
Faustite stared up at the creature, then blinked away his disbelief. "Fine. Talk while I work." He stood again, then followed the arrow in a careful, plodding manner, wary of the molten spills covering the floor.
"Was a normal Lieutenant – everything about me was human. My General brought me into the Negaverse because he saw an opportunity to test a theory. Thought that, if he broke me enough and got me addicted to starseeds, I'd be a more devoted soldier." Faustite ducked a gather of cables that had fallen from their straps. An elegant arc to an overhead crane caught the firelight in a beautiful, thriving pattern. Nothing about it, however, indicated how he could break the barrier.
"I didn't know it at the time. Didn't know anything. Saw this – all of this – as an opportunity to escape the doldrums of daily life. So I followed his commands, trained with him, fought for him. Used him for my freedom as much as he used me for an experiment. Each time he trained me, he'd break me. Then he'd give me a starseed. Then he'd teach me to go find my own.
"Carried that on for months." Faustite sidestepped some of the slag and peered into the molten hole of one of the structures. Surely enough, it contained the salesman youma, who appeared to be inert and unmoving. Faustite rapped his knuckles on the metal container, but it did not respond. "Broke my wrist one day. Had a spat with him after; he left me to find starseeds on my own. Went down into an alley, found a lone man walking away from me. Saw it as an opportunity, so I took his starseed. Ate it.
"Turned out to be my General's."
Faustite heard a sharp rustle behind him. Something like a gasp, as if something that didn't need to breathe was emulating it.
"Was enough to corrupt my humanity. Gave me a headache so violent that I thought my head was splitting. Thought my fingers were burning up, too. At the time, I thought I got the freedom I wanted in the worst way possible." Faustite paused, stared up at the burning structure.
Silence fell for a time. Then a rumble erupted from the Forgemaster. "Do you regret it?"
Turning away from the contraption, Faustite started back toward the Forgemaster's captivity. He hopped over some of the slag as he went, careful to avoid melting his shoes in an already sweltering environment. "Not anymore.
"Now I wouldn't trade it for the world. Guard yourself," he instructed as he spread his hands apart. His burning core grew brilliant and furious as heat warped the air around him. Convection raised his hair and swirled his clothes before fire burst out from him and licked over the barrier, the workbench, the luminous engraving on the floor. The Forgemaster ducked below the bench, yet his fire swept harmlessly over top of him as the barrier remained defiant.
Frustrated, Faustite brought a fist down (on) a strange P near the arrow portion of the seal. A percussive blast resounded in the air, leaving his ears ringing. And while the barrier hadn't collapsed, the glittering stars had faded and foreign figures stood in a circle around him.
"It shall be done," one said, as he bowed low to another, who was taller and draped in elegant swathes of white fabric.
"At your command, this one is sealed." The figure growled out his ire, summoning forth a bo staff that he slammed into the ground. Ethereal light poured out at a slow, volcanic pace, tracing a sigil into the floor. Fire erupted forth and formed a great dome that cooled into an impassable barrier. "Now – should they ever call upon them again, these forges will burn themselves to slag!
"Stand ready!" The figure shouted to the rest, and more flickering figures approached the coffin-like structures.
The vision cut, caught, and replayed as the same soft light from before. When Faustite removed his hand, the figures evaporated, leaving behind no trace or explanation for what had just transpired.
"Forgemaster," Faustite spoke breathlessly. "Need more information from you. About everything."
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Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2022 7:08 pm
"I will assist you, General. What information do you seek?"
Faustite looked back at the structures that the ethereal figure had called forges. "Need to know what you do here."
A silence fell between them, thick as the smoke in the air. "My duty is to inspect and finish the weapons."
"What weapons?"
The lights within the tri-faced mask dimmed, and the youma's many shoulders drooped as it seemed to consider the question. "I do not understand."
Faustite paused in his pacing, then watched the mask carefully. "Don't see any weapons here. Lot of forges sitting idle. Don't see you inspecting anything, either." He turned, then spread his hands on the desk just beyond the barrier. "Haven't seen a single weapon from this place since I joined the Negaverse five years ago. If your General has you making weapons, where are they?"
The light in the mask grew dim again. Then the youma straightened, stirred by an answer coming to mind. "We were interrupted."
"By whom."
The creature dimmed again. "General, with all due respect, it may be better to speak with my General for a better understanding of our war efforts."
"Where can I find them?"
"General Galvorn's office is on the top floor. He is in." The youma sounded certain in its answer,
to which Faustite raised a quizzical eyebrow. He had never heard of a General Galvorn, nor had he known anyone that referenced one. And while Jet was present in the structure, he thought better of asking him to perform a deep dive into the Database on a name that Faustite hadn't recognized. He expected that, whatever personnel files remained for this one, it would not answer the myriad questions that poured forth from this admittedly pointless conversation.
"How has your General been surviving the Rift?"
The creature was silent.
Faustite's brows shifted downward, furrowing. He felt the skin on his arms tighten with gooseflesh. "This building. This… Forge. It's in the Rift. Stuck in a hole that opened up recently. All those youma in the forges – they came from the Rift."
"I do not understand," The Forgemaster answered, looking on intently.
"Who is Arnaud and where can I find their password?"
The Forgemaster's brow furrowed. "That is my General's other name. I cannot give you his password. I do not know it."
Sighing through his nose, Faustite resumed pacing. The youma's answers only yielded more questions – ceaseless questions for which Faustite couldn't supply any answers. By the Forgemaster's name and admission, they crafted weapons in this area. Whether it was the purpose of the entire structure or not, Faustite couldn't say, but he assumed it was the main purpose if the General on the top floor committed his personal youma to finishing their products. While he knew some youma had a propensity to lie, Faustite doubted that the youma would lie about its own name, or the structures that a strange vision had corroborated as forges.
But Faustite was certain he had never seen a weapon produced by this location. He never read about any structures in the Rift that produced weapons, nor any method to producing weapons for agents. There was no need, as far as he was concerned, as they manifested on their own when someone was brought into the Negaverse.
None of his Generals mentioned this place. Axinite hadn't mentioned it. Jet hadn't mentioned it. The Queen hadn't mentioned it.
Given its technological advancement, Faustite could assume the place was a new structure – one of the myriad projects the Queen had underway, perhaps. That theory might have stood up to scrutiny were it not for Jet's complete lack of knowledge concerning the place; Faustite was certain he wouldn't have allowed the mission if he had any insight into the area.
Likewise, there was a possibility of the place bewitching the area's youma and imparting the idea they crafted weapons. This seemed just as likely. He wondered if the strange vision he witnessed was part of a spell like that. This theory lined up with what he knew of senshi magic being largely illusory, but it was at odds with their limited duration. He'd never known any senshi or knight's magic to last for months like this – not even their pinnacles of power like Ganymede or Ida.
And none of that truly explained why this structure existed or what its significance was. "Why are these other youma here?" He ventured again.
"We have standing orders from my General to manufacture weapons. 'All youma in the vicinity are to report to the Factory and facilitate production with haste'. General, forgive my forwardness, but I assumed your arrival meant we were resuming production. However, it is not my place to inquire after your purposes."
Faustite waved a hand at the thought, dismissing it and silencing the youma. He paused at the edge of the workbench, talons deftly lighted on the edge, as he stared down at the sigil by his feet. He remained silent for a minute, then two, then five. Without looking up, he asked, "If you have standing orders to produce more weapons, then what stopped production?"
"I do not know."
"Why is this sigil on the floor? Why is there a barrier? Who were the people I just saw?"
"I do not know."
"What do you remember?"
"Making weapons."
Faustite dragged his hands down his face. "Oh, ******** me," he muttered in a puff of smoke.
"Pardon?"
"It isn't important."
Faustite turned from the table entirely and started toward the perimeter of the room. He had to mind his steps – slag covered the floor in great swaths, with some areas of the room entirely impassable. As he wandered, he peered through the smoke and soot at the walls, the ceiling, the mobile workbenches that hovered just above the floor with a similar eerie blue light to the cranes above. He looked for terminals similar to the one that he and Tama used at the entrance, but none were visible.
Faustite returned to the center of the room. As he looked out around it, he noted that parts of the room looked somehow displaced, as if they were far more intact for reasons he couldn't explain. Sometimes he saw threads of bright light, no more than inches in diameter, surrounded by an accompaniment of stars. "Tell me about the last weapon you finished," Faustite commanded as he approached one of these strange threads.
They grew dimmer as he approached, which explained why he hadn't seen one when he was closer. As he reached out to them, they oscillated around the thread, gaining speed, until the thread itself slowly transformed. Eventually the thread was wound into a modified P or a backwards g, and the burning General swiped at it.
"Cast the ward."
"But what about –" The magic shimmered and unwound around him, before finally coalescing again.
"... Don't need it back. Cast the ward."
"What the ******** are these?" Faustite asked himself. "What wards?" Did that explain the sigil on the floor by the Forgemaster? Were they related?
Had he just glimpsed some kind of degraded recordkeeping? If so, what was the purpose of the message? What were they trying to preserve? And what did it have to do with an evidently defunct forge area?
A voice boomed from behind him. "General, permission to speak plainly?"
"Granted." Faustite's attention remained on the room, searching for other sigils.
"Do you have subordinates?"
Faustite had wandered to one of the forges, then squatted down to peer into its aperture. "Yes. Many." He squinted against the dry heat that belched out at him from the forge's inner workings. Deep inside, a sweltering and overtaxed youma struggled to troubleshoot its inability to produce a higher temperature, and had not heeded his attempts to arrest its attention.
"They follow your orders?"
"Yes." Faustite rapped his knuckles on the outer shell of the furnace.
"Do they 'look up' to you?"
Sighing, the General shifted back and forth for a better view into the forge. He caught sight of something that looked like a sigil. "Some of them." He reached inside –
"Will you tell me a story about one of them?"
"Mm." He touched the sigil, waited, but felt nothing but a brief jolt of static. Like something was there, something he might be able to access, but like the rest of the facility, it lacked the power to manifest. The General scoffed.
"Didn't have any subordinates for a long time after my first. Then a drifting Basic asked to be mine. Took him in, started training him. Was struggling at the time, though – had just lost my personal youma during my last mission."
"My condolences."
Faustite sighed through his nose, the smoke blending in with his surroundings. "Wanted to train his skill in battle. Teach him to count the seconds of his magic, know its reach, know how to use it. Wanted him to learn to pick his battles, too – know when to retreat. But, in trying to push him, I pushed myself too hard." He rested his hands on the lip of the furnace, staring into it, while he contemplated that sliver of sigil inside. Contemplated the youma, too; this one wasn't in his part of the Scar, but he had heard the feathered snake got involved elsewhere. Enough to make it into the report, at least.
"Collapsed at the end of it. Came on suddenly, too. But, my subordinate…" Faustite paused, smiled. 'He brought me to a warehouse to recuperate. Kept an eye on me until I woke. Got me food when I needed it."
"He cares about your well-being?"
"Enough that he's my husband now." Faustite stood, then, and embarked on a systematic check of the remaining forges.
"Your husband." The youma fell silent for a time, mulling over what it was told. Then it nodded. "Thank you for telling me, General. It was a welcome story."
And a needed one, Faustite suspected. He had his hunches that he wasn't always a curiosity to the youma that he encountered; to some, he might be something inspirational in that an officer with youma traits can be respected and accepted into the Negaverse ranks as no different from a fully human officer. Few were the youma he met that saw him this way, however; to meet one now, in a place like this, was both peculiar and curious. "You wanted to know that youma can be respected – even in part."
To this, the Forgemaster did not respond. However, Faustite took its silence as confirmation; there was no question inherent in the burning General's statement.
"Don't know the life you've led. Don't know how General Galvorn treats you. But agents and senshi both understand the utility that youma provide – even if they don't know their stories. And I've done my part to ensure your stories are known."
"Thank you, General."
Faustite had reached the last forge, peered inside, found a mark. A last check of his surroundings confirmed no other woven pieces of light. Silent now, Faustite's form flickered into pure fire that licked and braided into the nearest forge, touching its symbol. Then it roared out and into the next forge, then the next, then the next, until he touched on every ethereal fleck of light during the time he could spend in that form.
The room thundered and rumbled beneath their feet. The building groaned, dumping loosened rubble into the slag piles and splashing more molten material onto the already sparing catwalks and walkways. Seconds afterward, ethereal threads left each of the furnaces and entwined with each other to lay wholesale over the area, and within the confines of that strange color-devoid space, Faustite saw the area precisely as it was. He remained still, reticent to step in slag due to his new view of what he assumed was the past, and waited for what may follow.
"Let this be a message that we will not relent." The figure from before faced him, and strode forward until he passed through the fiery General. "We will not stand down. We will not be deterred. And we will not allow them to continue using and abusing what was once ours. Tonight, we strike a blow so deep that they will feel it in the ages to come. And while it is with great regret to face what we once cherished, we must accept these sacrifices to secure our victory.
"They've crafted their last weapons with these infernal machines. Everyone, you know what to do."
Faustite released a held breath, eyeing the figure as the man shifted almost imperceptibly. He looked back, and for but a moment, his lip peeled back into a snarl. Faustite steeled himself, stared into the eyes of an older man garbed in Mars's proud symbols, but the man did not come for him.
"If your master calls for you, creature, tell him that his last weapon will be priceless."
The scene evaporated like stardust, leaving Faustite awash in the peculiar glow of a hundred thousand captive stars before they, too, faded. When he was surrounded by nothing but slag and heat and smoke, he turned once again, and looked upon the Forgemaster. "They gave you a message."
The floating, masked head tilted forward, then straightened. "I do not understand it."
Faustite approached slowly, stepping over piles of slag as he traveled. A veritable river of it had covered his pathway, forcing him to leap to the catwalks before descending to the raised area that housed the youma's workstation. "Think it means they rigged the place. Next weapon you make will be the last one to come from here. Have to see about those seals, first."
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Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2022 8:34 pm
And there was very little he could do without touching the seals. He tried draining them, but there was no energy to drain; he tried attacking them, but there was no corporeal part of them to take damage; he tried overloading them with his own abilities, but they did not yield. He was running out of options, and he hadn't access to the rest of his team to brainstorm solutions.
So he kicked the forge, and the metal-on-metal clang echoed through the manufacturing area. Faustite represented the youma by half, like all other youmafied officers, and yet he couldn't free them from bondage that he still hadn't fully understood. With a sigh, he took to pacing on one of the raised catwalks.
He reminded himself to reiterate his findings. He learned that the facility was some kind of manufacturing plant, and that this arm of it focused on weaponry. He knew the head General gave standing orders for youma to occupy the forges and manufacture more weapons. At some point in the history of this place, there were knights that sabotaged the forges with their magic. No amount of questioning elucidated a time period for when this happened, yet the magic hadn't faded, and he already spent several minutes in the area. Whatever they did, he assumed it was a more permanent solution that wouldn't fade with time.
Intentional or not, they had left him a message. They made their declaration of war on this place.
"Forgemaster," he said at last. "Need one of your tools." He descended from the catwalk with a few rattling clangs, then approached the creature's desk.
The Forgemaster opened up his hands, as if in offering. "You are welcome to them. I do not know if they are still charged."
Staring at the worksurface, Faustite selected one that looked like an industrial stapler from five hundred years in the future. Mounted with crystals and fitted with similar glass tubes to those he navigated before, it matched the sleek design of the factory. It felt heavy in his hand, however, and pulling the trigger did nothing.
A low rumble came from the youma. "It is a spot welder, General. You must hold it against the surface, first."
Faustite leveled a look at the youma, but accepted the advice. He knelt down next to the sigil on the floor and pressed the tool against the curious P. As he tried to pull the trigger, he felt pressure build until he overpowered it, but nothing happened. No pneumatic pop, no high-powered blast of welding material. As Faustite's attention swept over the dull, lifeless crystals on the back, he assumed the youma was right about the state of its tools. Breathing a sigh, he straightened up and went back to the workbench.
He checked one that looked like a handle, but its crystals were dead. Another looked like a screwdriver, if a screwdriver had another six functions, but that one was also dead. One reminded him of a nailgun that had been engineered for violence, and it was likewise dead. One had a cord made of pure light, but something had happened to make it jam. All that remained available to him was a claw hammer that was made of a material he didn't recognize. He took it up by the handle when a hand reached out and dusted itself against the barrier.
The Forgemaster groaned, curling the fist that lost half its fingers. "Please do not use that tool. If you would slide it to me…"
After a pause, Faustite nodded silently. He let the head of the hammer clank down against the table and bopped the end of the handle with the back of his fist, sending it through the barrier harmlessly. That, too, was a curiosity.
"Anything else that might work?" Faustite asked, watching the Forgemaster. "Running out of options for disarming these things. Seem impervious to anything I can do."
"Their magic is powerful," the youma agreed, still cradling its half-erased hand. "I believe there are only the youma and their abilities ********." Faustite shook his head, his gestures taking up his aggravation as he spoke. "Can't get them to do anything. Tried talking to them, commanding them, but it's like they don't even hear me."
"Standing orders," the Forgemaster echoed.
"I know. I know," he urged, slamming a hand against the workbench. "But there has to be something else."
The youma bowed its floating head, then the mask lit up again. "General, if I may –"
Faustite held up a supinated hand.
"You seemed surprised when I said we make weapons here. But you are a General, and you surely understand how the Negaverse functions. Will you tell me how weapons are made, if they are not made here?"
Faustite dipped his head as he considered the question, cocked it to the side while he tried to weigh the question and its respective answer for what they were worth – for why they were asked. Then his mouth pressed into a thin line, his shoulders stiffened as if under a great weight. He half-turned to speak to the youma, but his attention remained on the hand that he had splayed against the work surface.
"Don't know for certain. Think they're made with the magic we use to awaken new agents. Or – they're something that manifests when Metallia forges a connection with the new officer. Only know that they manifest when an agent is minted, and they grow in strength and deadliness as the agent gains rank. Never needed to go find a weapon, purchase one, reforge one – they were always a part of the agent, impossible to lose."
The Forgemaster nodded. "Where is yours?"
"Don't have one."
"But you are a General."
It was Faustite's turn to nod perfunctorily. "Lost it when I became part-youma. Got abilities similar to magic instead. The rest was observation from the agents that gained rank around me."
"I understand. I am satisfied with that answer."
Faustite did not respond. His expression grew more severe.
"If the weapon is born with and bound to the agent, then our weaponcraft is no longer needed," it explained. "We do not need to protect the forges."
"... You want to light them. And dust yourselves."
"We are bound here by our orders. We must fulfill a task that is no longer needed, but we are blocked by magic we cannot dispel. I do not know how long I have been trapped behind this barrier. I do not know how long it has been since I handled a weapon in my hands, General. These wards have made our toil meaningless." It uncurled its half-dusted hand, exposing the sharp ends that were seared off by the barrier.
Faustite loosed a slow sigh. Shutting his eyes, he smiled sardonically. When he opened them again, he looked out at each of the forges, knowing that a youma struggled to remove the sigil in each of them, on their own, in a neverending impossible task. The hand on the table curled into a fist.
"General, if I may – let me use my hammer one last time. Let us craft."
"Even if it ******** kills you," Faustite seethed.
The General departed from the workbench, leaping up to crest on one of the catwalks. Though it swayed under the sudden addition of his weight, it held fast, and granted him an aerial view of the myriad forges. "Youma," he projected to the room. "Revised your standing orders. Effective immediately, you are to resume work in the forges. Pay no heed to the sigils. I repeat – resume your work as you normally would." When he finished, he shot a bitter glare down at the Forgemaster through the glass latticework in the metal platform.
But the Forgemaster's attention was on the forges. Each of them, one after the other, grew bright before fresh slag burst through its aperture and out the glass tubules in the top. Atop that slag was a sea of dust that rode out onto the already sloppy floor. And yet, in grim sequence, cranes powered by glowing strands descended from the ceiling and reached inside the forges. Each of them extracted a shriveled, warped chunk of metal that was placed on a conveyor that materialized as the lump of shrapnel touched it. This conveyor, spun from light and crafted glass, carried each piece down the line of forges and delivered it to the Forgemaster's circular workbench.
Faustite's attention lit on each forge as white-hot slag burst from it, filling the room with more smoke. Even the high-powered forges could not withstand that heat, he noticed, as their thick outer shells cracked and spilled more of the bright, viscous material. "What a waste," he murmured to himself. His attention followed the last useless piece of scrap as it made its way along the lightforged bend to the desk that lay below and behind him. Now, with the room so filled with wasted manufacturing material, only the Forgemaster's raised platform and the catwalks were free from any caustic sludge.
"General," came the urgent call from below.
Faustite turned and dropped off the catwalk, landing on the narrow circular wedge that housed the Forgemaster's desk. He regarded the gathered material with all the contempt it deserved – all the undue pain and wasted energy as the captive youma reformed themselves in the Rift could never have been worth what came from those crucibles.
"I know I must be quick," the Forgemaster explained as it took up its glowing hammer. It motioned for the General to push the pieces beyond the barrier, to which he acquiesced. The youma hammered them together as he spoke, and each strike exuded a cold blue light that hummed through the metal. "General Faustite, we have not known each other long, but you have respected my every request. You told me story after story about yourself, your subordinates, and what you know of our weapons."
The barrier glowed with an imposing sizzle, With each strike of the hammer, it grew more opaque.
"You are a youmafied agent. The first youmafied agent I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. You represent more than I have ever expected."
By now, the Forgemaster struggled to speak over the hiss. His actions, now mere motions beneath the barrier, slowed with each swing. The hammer struck the metal with less and less certainty, sometimes missing altogether.
But his words had yet to falter. "Your General was right. However reprehensible his deeds, he crafted a most devoted soldier. That you can live as you are is an achievement worth crowning. Please –"
Faustite waited, so tense that his bones creaked under the pressure, but no words came through the completely opaque barrier. Then it collapsed in a blink, leaving a pile of dust at the center of the workstation, and a pile of twisted shrapnel fashioned into a laurel crown. Then he reached out and took it up, expecting some unbearable heat or hum of power, but felt nothing but its dead weight against his palm. Shaking his head, he banished it to subspace.
He faced the lake of molten slag that bubbled and frothed as it dominated the floor. As he stepped toward the edge, the burning General's body dissolved into flame, form now broken, and his twisting gouts of fire braided over themselves as they crossed the hellish lake. The choking heat in the room rose to unbearable limits, causing more of the glass tubules to burst in a rain of splintered glass while he wound his way to the other side. As he passed the other forges, their tubules had collapsed, or melted, or had gotten covered with superheated material.
Living flame rushed atop the furthest forge, then pooled into its tubule shortly before the end had melted, sealing off the area permanently. From there, he retraced his numerous twists and turns, backtracking but once, then twice, as his frazzled thoughts shunted him back through that labyrinth to the storage vessel for the structure's central power supply.
The now embittered General vented through the floor of the device and took shape, then solidified as his ability wore off. The room was as he left it, albeit with that Captain having a panicked meltdown by the control panel.
Faustite was left to wonder if he'd done the right thing. If there was a right thing. If it was anything more than choosing between bad and worse for people who weren't people anymore.
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