Chapter 7 - Part 7

It was nightfall, and Iron Orphan stood at a window on the northern edge of the building, thinking about what he had read. The writings of her sect were not simply things to be memorized, they required thought and analysis. They discussed willpower and the finding of the unconscious mind as superior to general analytical skills. He was not sure that he agreed with that, but he thought the two were at least equally valid.

What is thought? Iron Orphan wondered. What is intellect? What is ‘smart’? How much of it is tied to the soul? How much of it ties into magic? Magic was an item of commerce to House Cannith. To the warforged who stared into the night sky from his spacious prison, it was a mystery. He had been seeking a power within himself, a power that he had steadily been identifying. Was that magic? Was it his soul? Was there a difference?

His eyes tracked the familiar shapes of the buildings around the manor. The manor grounds were longer north-south than they were east-west, so there was more detail. The contents of the view had not changed in the time he had been held here, but his vision had. His training had not been all wrestling, jumping, and battle. Both Monti and now Visha had focused on differentiating sensory input, focusing on the ability to notice things. His hearing was far more in tune with this than his vision, but he was nonetheless able to pick out guards standing quietly on rooftops, decorative statues that shifted and turned with the change of the hour, and behind the grain silo, the hulking shape that was the warforged titan. The titan was the one thing that truly concerned him. If not for the gargantuan device, one of the most dangerous things on the terrible raging battlefields around the world, he would seriously have considered escape. He was not sure if the titan was part of Cannith’s general security measures, or if it was for him. It made no difference either way, he was still a prisoner.

As if sensing his thoughts, the titan shifted, its massive feet churning up the turf. It raised its axe hand, a thing as wide as a cart, and waved it in the air. It then settled back into place.

Iron Orphan tapped the windowpane in response, the small sound of it loud in his solitude, and more akin to tapping brick. Artificers had strengthened the glass, but he didn’t think they had infused magical alarms into place. To truly contain him they would have had to hire the dwarves of House Kundarak, and the need for secrecy would have prevented that.

Of course Cannith spellcasters can guard a place just as well as Kundarak, he thought to himself. Perhaps I am casting about for hope where there is none.

A movement caught his eye.

He looked downwards, and saw a squirrel darting towards his building. The little thing disappeared from view due to the angle of the building, and he heard its tiny feet scrambling up the side of the wall.

“No acorns here, little fellow,” he whispered.

Less than a minute later the squirrel appeared on the other side of the window, staring steadily at him. It pushed on the glass with its paws, and twitched its whiskers.

Iron Orphan was surprised. He had never seen a squirrel act this way. It was almost as if the animal was looking for him personally.

No sooner did he come to that realization than the squirrel darted up around the edge of the window and went out of his field of vision. He followed the sound of its claws going up and up, ascending to the top of the peaked roof, and then scrabbling through the ventilation window.

The animal gave a high-pitched squeal as it lost its grip, tumbling through the air with a frightened mien. Iron Orphan was already moving, jumping into the air and catching the animal gently and perfectly. He curled into a fetal position around the squirrel in his hands as he tumbled and somersaulted to the floor.

He slowly opened his hands and let the terrified animal onto the mats. It had urinated in its fear, but he did not mind. Wiping his hands on a mat that was already permeated with years of sweat, he peered at the little creature.

The squirrel sat up on its hind legs, briefly studying his face. No, Iron Orphan realized. Not my face, my ghulra. Every warforged had a unique mark on their forehead like the fingerprints of the living races. Their subtle markings were as fine as fingerprints as well, and identification and differentiation of the different ghulra was only possible under close scrutiny, which was why Cannith had resorted to the easier-to-notice branding of numbers and letters.

Satisfied, the animal pushed at its hind leg. The warforged suddenly realized that it had a very small piece of paper tied to it. The squirrel kicked the paper off, and then scampered over to the nearest wall, scrambling back up towards the ventilation window.

The little animal eventually did make it out of the building on its own, but the warforged was too engrossed in the small piece of paper to notice. The writing was barely discernable, but he could see that it said “IO, W, mid, P.”

He puzzled over this for some time. ‘IO’ was clearly he, Iron Orphan. So the opening of the tiny note was a salutation to him. The rest of it involved directions of some sort. He did not understand it at first, until it dawned on him that ‘W’ meant ‘west,’ and ‘mid’ meant midnight. So what was ‘P’?

Then it clicked as he thought about the strange little squirrel. ‘P’ can’t be her. How had Phantom enchanted a squirrel to do her bidding? She was no spellcaster, even if she had puzzled out how to use magical gadgets. He supposed she had gotten ahold of another scroll or something.

If he was right, nothing was happening until midnight. He had hours to go.

He tried to pass the time in various ways. First he practiced his acrobatics. Then he went through his balancing exercises. Then he shadowboxed. For a while he paced and tried to read or think about the sheaf of pages that Visha had given him.

He looked at the visible moons. It was not even halfway to midnight.

He began practicing throwing daggers, sais, and shiruken. He got bored of that and he lifted away a mat to continue an elaborate carving in the wood floor that he had been working on for some time. He eventually tossed the dagger aside and threw the mat back into place when the carving no longer distracted him.

I am growing mad with impatience, he thought. Two hours, or perhaps one and a-half, were left until midnight. I need to meditate. He forced himself to go through the mental exercises. It was hard at first, because all of the advice he had been given involved starting with controlling one’s breathing. He did not breathe to gain oxygen, so that was moot for him. Forcing air in and out of his throat was only done for talking or for using the dim warforged sense of smell.

At first he was unsuccessful, his customary techniques wilting under his desire to know what would happen at midnight. Finally he tried a method that had been detailed in the papers from Visha.

An iron cow climbs a hundred-foot pole, he began, working his mind around the first riddle.

Soon he found the space in between the logic, the place where the windows to his inner mind were hidden. He thought at a glacially slow pace, carefully examining everything he knew. There was no hurry. He would persevere.

Abruptly he snapped out of his meditation. It was midnight, and there was a faint tapping from the western wall of the building. He slowly walked up to it, and tapped back.

There was a shimmer, and then a steady glow that widened over the dressed stone of the wall. Before Iron Orphan’s astonished eyes, a circular section of the wall measuring some fifteen feet across collapsed into soft mud, flowing around his feet. The night air blew in, and the world was open in front of him.

A few feet away, on the other side of where the wall had once been, was Pienna.

“Pienna!” he cried, splashing forward in the mud, and grabbing her in a great hug.

“Not so loud,” Pienna laughed in his ear. “I didn’t come to free you so that we could both be caught!” But she hugged him back, and after their embrace he studied her face. She had not changed much in the weeks since he had last seen her, except to perhaps look more tired. “Come, we must flee!”

She ran, and he ran after her. A shout went up as a guard spotted them, but she gestured, and that man was grabbing by a bush that he was standing by. “What have you been doing?” he asked, as she conjured a misty cloud around some rooftop archers.

“Avoiding being murdered by an act of sabotage, spying on my cousin to find that he was truly grieving over my ‘death,’ battling minions of a warforged criminal who was behind the attack on me, consulting with Oalian, and hunting you down,” she said in a rush. She tapped him while chanting and he felt strength rush through his limbs. “That won’t last long, but you are temporarily stronger.” Another spell and she touched him again. “And that should stop most fire spells thrown at you.” She quickly pulled him around a building and cast two more spells, creating a series of stony spikes by the opening to the main building, and then blocking its windows with more mist.

“Sabotage? Oalian?” Iron Orphan asked, confused. “What’s going on?”

“Sh!” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time! Okay, run that way!”

“That’s out in the open, the titan will see me!”

“I know! Go!”

He bolted, putting his trust in her, and sure enough the huge construct saw him and its gears squealed. He heard the spring and felt the vibrations as it jumped into the air and landed behind him. In seconds its great maul and long axe would be turning him to scrap.

Then he heard the squishing. He looked behind him, to see that Pienna had turned the earth under the titan’s feet to soft mud, and she had done to the wall of his prison. The titan had sunk immediately, and was trying to pull itself out. That got considerably more difficult as Pienna cast a second spell and the mud around the titan’s feet turned into solid rock. Stuck in place, the titan roared and banged away with its weapons. The noise was waking the entire area up.

“Keep moving!” Pienna yelled to him. He turned back and ran as fast as he could. He heard crossbows twanging, but they were firing blind, and the deadly bolts came nowhere near him. Pienna circled around, well out of reach of the titan, creating sleet storms, ordering plants to grab sleepy, stumbling soldiers, and conjuring a wall of wind that blocked any more crossbow bolts.

He entered the trees, running as fast as he could. Dodging and twisting, he finally came to a stop about a quarter-mile from the manor area. Not because he was tired, but because he now had so little light to see by he was worried about tripping on the uneven ground and damaging his ankle socket.

His sharp ears picked up a noise and he froze. “Pienna?” he said.

There was nothing more, and he slowly turned, peering in all directions.

An eagle flew overhead, and then circled the warforged. The eagle then plummeted to the ground, unfurling its wings at the last second to become Pienna. She took a stone out of a leather pouch, a stone enchanted with a light spell.

“All right, they are disoriented,” she said. She stroked his arm. “It is good to see you.”

“And good to see you!” he said. “I cannot thank you enough for freeing me.”

“You have already repaid me properly,” she said. “You have stayed true, they could not break your spirit.” She then quickly cast another spell, causing his outer skin to thicken like footman’s armor. “I only wish that you and I could talk longer. Listen to me, we haven’t much time, we have to get out of here safely and then I can answer more of your questions, all right?”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“A small warforged brought me a letter supposedly from my cousin. With it were traveling papers and first-class tickets on the lightning rail into Breland. The letter was sealed and signed by Du’Bray. The train was then derailed by sabotage, and a small group of warforged started to slaughter the survivors. I only escaped by turning myself into a fish and hiding in a nearby pond. I then returned to Eston and spied on House Cannith. I saw that my cousin’s grief and rage were real, but I also saw that there were several warforged with personal access to his private office.”

“A warforged used to visit me in my cell in Eston,” Iron Orphan interjected. “He was the other party I was in communication with. I never knew his name or saw his shoulder number.”

“I suspected something like that, but I thank you for the details,” she said. “Orphan, someone – I have yet to find out who – had you forged with special programming without official Cannith sanction. They attempted to have me killed for getting too close to the truth. I suspect they are slipping mildly paranoia-inducing drugs into Du’Bray’s food – not much, just enough to get under the spells to detect poison. I traveled back to the Eldeen Reaches to consult with Oalian, the greatpine druid. His conclusion was the same as the mine. There is a significant group of renegade warforged with their own agenda, which is a very xenophobic one.”

“Oalian?” he asked.

“Yes, technically he does not head my order but I go to him for advice. Now quickly, have you seen any oddly acting warforged here?”

He nodded. “Yes, her name is Phantom, she is very good at moving around undetected.”

“‘She?’” She shook her head before he could explain. “Never mind, we have to head east from here.” She cast a quick spell. “Ah, that way. Here.” She pressed the lit stone into his hand. “In animal form my eyes are sharper, I will fly up and see if there are pursuers. Go for about two miles, there will be a creek. Follow it downstream until you come to a pair of wild apple trees bridging the creek. Visha is waiting there for you.”

“Sensei Visha?” he asked.

“Yes, she is an old friend. You go with her, I will – will – will –” Pienna was stammering, looking at the point of the sword that was suddenly protruding from her chest.

“Filthy breather,” hissed Phantom as she materialized behind the druid. “He will join us, not your midget fleshbag friend!” The female personality warforged had actually struck Pienna twice in rapid succession before either Pienna or Iron Orphan could react.

Phantom whipped the sword free and swung it around again at Pienna’s neck, but the druidess fell forward, grabbing her bleeding chest, trying to get a spell out of her mouth that would close up her wounds. Phantom’s decapitation attempt missed, and Iron Orphan reached in under her guard, grabbing her arm.

“If she dies, you do as well!” Orphan snarled, forgetting all concept of respecting one’s enemy. His magical strength was still with him, and his fists and feet hammered her mercilessly. She struggled to get her sword around, but he twisted her wrists, forcing the point away.

“Traitor!” Phantom slammed an elbow into his face. It stung the metal, but his newly thickened skin blunted it and he did not let go of her. He rabbit-punched her in the side, and then chopped at her shoulder sockets. They wrestled, and he overpowered her. Soon he had his arms under her armpits, and was pressing his hands against the back of her neck. “Stop!” she yelled in fear. “You cannot! I am one of you!”

There was a terrific snap, and the darkwood frame under her mithril plating gave way. He continued to push, tearing the cords and fibers that held her together, separating the plates of light metal that was both her armor and her form. He felt her shudder as the magical field of life that animated her limbs was shattered. He continued to push and tear after she was dead, until her head was torn loose of her lifeless body, clutched in his powerful hands. Not for the first time, he wished he could cry.

“Orphan,” came a weak cough.

He dropped Phantom’s head, and rushed to Pienna’s side. The druidess had pulled out a pair of potions. The first one had closed the hole in her chest, and she was now drinking the second.

“Pienna,” he said. “Are you well again?”

“Wait,” she said, casting a spell on herself. When she was done a healthy color was in her cheeks again. “I had to neutralize the poison that was on that blade. I will be alright.” She stood with his assistance, and stared at the headless warforged. “Was this Phantom?” He nodded. “A shame.” She then noticed something about him, peering at the edges of his jaw and eyes. “This bothers you, it is your first kill!” He nodded. “But in Eston –”

“The warforged leader dispatched the two assassins,” Orphan explained. “He pointed out that humans were attacking me and he was helping me.”

“For all you know this ‘leader’ hired them to kill you so that he could find favor in your eyes by rescuing you,” she pointed out. “Du’Bray never did definitively find out who was behind it.”

Distant shouts came their way, along with a thudding of feet. “The titan has been let loose,” he said. “It is looking for us.”

“Go,” she told him. “I will distract and mislead them.”

“Pienna, you are not strong enough to take them on!” he protested.

“To quote a very brash half-orc archer I met once, ‘Range beats numbers every time,’” she said. “My spells work through nature’s power, and nature’s power reaches far. They will not even see me as I divert them.”

“Will you follow the sensei and I?” he asked plaintively. “You are the only one that I call friend.”

“We will meet again, but not soon,” she said. “I have my own responsibilities to ancient seals on the underground world that I have been neglecting. Fare you well,
Iron Orphan.”

“And you,” he said.

She shape-shifted into a fleet-footed deer and took off. After only a moment he turned the other way and headed east.