Skyfarer by Joseph Brassey

Author:Joseph Brassey [Brassey, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
Goodreads: 35915125
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-07-05T18:30:00+00:00

Fifteen

Lord Of The Iron Mountain

Malfenshir’s armor made hardly a sound, enchanted as it was for silence. The technician in front of him was one of the bizarre caste of workers that maintained the immense, aeonian power source at the beating heart of the mountain of death. The tech was hairless, with gaunt limbs and hands like spiders. The elders said they were descended from the men that built the hulk and its nine brothers, that their needs had long ago grown alien to anyone that did not reside so close to the heart of their lovingly tended, utterly dependent god. This particular tech had long ago replaced his eyes with steel orbs.

“How soon,” Malfenshir repeated, “can the Scream be sounded?”

The tech cocked his head to the side, listening to an imperceptible sound. “A day at least, dread lord. Whether it is a man with needles in his hands or the god-sphere with its sacred call, a scream cannot be done without breathing in first.”

The technician’s neck abruptly twitched. “It will be winter soon. The rose will bloom in twenty-three hours, twelve minutes, and forty-two seconds.”

“Notify me the moment the Scream is ready,” Malfenshir replied. He didn’t comment on the rest of it. Nobody understood what the technicians said most of the time anyway.

The Iron Hulk – they said – had been in operation for a thousand years. Staring at its exterior walls, covered as they were in rust, dirt, and the forest of guns later added, perhaps a person might have guessed it, but nowhere was it more truly clear than in the one-hundred story, cavernous core of the fortress’s vast metadrive chamber. Standing upon a mystically suspended catwalk hundreds of feet above the churning orb of a mystic furnace hundreds of feet across, Malfenshir took a deep, reverent breath and bathed in the heat of its power.

A day.

He had one day to array everything before the Scream would tear this wretched continent apart, and he could watch as every man, woman, and child upon the ground whose bones were left unliquified, whose eyes were left unmelted, fell into the infinite black below. Chaos was Malfenshir’s only god, destruction his dearest lady love, and this would be his greatest offering yet. That they were simpering weak things that died was all the better. Life had taught Malfenshir early that those who could not hold their ground against strength and force didn’t deserve its protection. No amount of mewling philosophy could disprove that experience.

And the “civilized” world, just now, was infested with an overabundance of weakening compassion. A purging was long overdue.

He took his time circumnavigating the circular catwalks, observing the small swarm of technicians and workers about the beating heart of the monster he commanded in Azrael’s absence.

In Azrael’s absence.

When Malfenshir had been commanded by Lord Ogier to second the black knight in this illustrious mission, his master had left him with a specific instruction:

“Lord Roland’s protege must be watched, rigorously. Many are blinded by his seeming perfection and graceful efficacy, but the elders are worried.

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