Still holding the goblin by the belt, Ravon growled, “Anybody want this sack of shit?”
The goblins fell silent, their grins fading to resentful scowls.
“No?” Ravon flung the creature aside and walked over to Finner. The formerly cheering slaves now looked properly ashamed. To watch a fellow slave savagely beaten… Ravon shook his head, glaring at them. The urge rose to slay two or three goblins before the others fell upon him. But then, that would be too much like the old Ravon and it was so much easier not to be him.
He helped Finner back to his private quarters-a rat hole with a slit for a window-and dumped him in a pile of straw.
Finner gazed up at him, but this time without the puppy look. The beating bashed the puppy out of him, no doubt. Still, there was that gratitude in his eyes.
“By the Dark Six, get some sleep,” Ravon muttered. Then, to escape Finner’s groveling, he stalked into the cell warrens, the walls secreting the usual bubbling pustules like a body with the plague. Eventually he found some solitude on a balcony used for dumping refuse. He sat until a glimmer of dawn seeped into the jungle and the blasted ground near the forge. Fumaroles in the cracked land coughed up sulfurous wisps. On the far side of the clearing, an early morning detail was hammering away on something. A reviewing stand. Getting on time for the end of the world. But if the genesis forge was ready to deliver itself of millions of arms, and if it took two years of accumulated magical dragonshards to create half a sword, where were the stockpiles, the hoards of powerful shards and objects of enchantment? He’d dared to ask a forge artificer once, in a rare hallway encounter. The elite mage had wrinkled his nose at Ravon’s odor and murmured, “Endless stocks, below. Endless.”
He meant the giant graveyard. But somehow Ravon doubted there was enough enchantment below for all that would soon be rolling out of the genesis forge.
A noise startled him. Nastra stood at the door.
He turned back to gaze out over jungle. “So did your goblins report me?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Well, they started it.”
There was nothing much to say to that, nor did she respond, but rather watched at Ravon’s side as the jungle brightened from black to sewage green.
Below them, Stonefist had come out onto the turning rims and with his henchmen flung a helpless gnome off the ring to his death four stories below. Then another. The guards’ laughter came trickling up.
“Stonefist’s at it early,” Ravon muttered.
Nastra remained silent for a moment, before saying, “How bad was Vedrim’s dungeon?”
“Not pleasant. No hot and cold running water. Lousy food.”
“I’ll bet the count has especially creative tortures.”
That was true, but he wasn’t going to give Nastra any pointers. “It’s an art with him.”
Another gnome went sailing off the ring to his death. Nastra murmured, “It can make a monster of you.”
He turned to her. “What can?”
She stared at him with cold, flat eyes. “Torture.”
Was she accusing him of monstrosity? He stifled a guffaw. “What’s your excuse, lady elf?”
“Each to his own, Captain.” She nodded at Stonefist and his entourage, below. “You could save a few gnomes, though, if you had a mind to.”
Ravon stood up, his peace shattered. “I’m not kicking them off the rings. That would be Stonefist, or are you blind as well as dumb?”
“Stonefist knows you’re up here. He’s throwing the workers off to goad you. Everybody has a breaking point. Our forge master wonders what yours is. Even the slaves are laying wagers.” Walking off, she said, “I’ve got a few coins in the game myself.”
When Ravon got back to his cell, Finner had washed out his second set of rags and hung them up to dry by the window slit. Ravon noted that the cell was newly swept as well. It almost looked decent.
Noting Ravon’s scowl, Finner said, “It’s what a steward does.” Then he turned to pound the dust out of Ravon’s mattress.
“Nine Hells.” Ravon was now thoroughly stuck with Finner, all four feet of him, including his racking cough and broken ribs.
Finner turned to leave. “I’ll fetch your breakfast.”
“No!” At the halfling’s wide-eyed look, Ravon muttered, “Tell them it’s my gruel, but bring it up here and eat it yourself.” Finner started to protest. “That’s an order. A steward does what he’s bloody well told.”
Finner grinned with what teeth he had left.
One night a storm lashed down on the forge. Lightning erupted as though Eberron itself were on fire. It ought to have cooled the forge down, but it only succeeded in turning the warrens into insufferable chambers of steam. Unable to sleep, Ravon left Finner to his exhausted slumbers and walked out to lean against a corridor wall. The thunder was loud enough to wake the dead giants underground. Between bellowing cracks he heard a familiar jangling sound and looked along the corridor to see Nastra heading down the north stairwell-again. He followed.
Ravon was not a small man, but he had long experience with silent tracking, all the easier when walking on stone stairs in iron halls. He followed Nastra down the steps, open at the top but increasingly narrower as they continued down. It was a reckless thing, to follow her. She carried a small dagger at her belt, and he’d seen her use it. A blade at the throat… the hundred and twelfth way to die, and not as bad as some. Still, Ravon had a hankering to die with a weapon in his hand. Call him sentimental. So Stonefist’s promise of a fight with a bunch of his henchmen was always in the back of his mind.
Nevertheless Ravon followed Nastra to see what villainy she was up to. If she broke the rules, he could use it against her when she tormented Finner.
The elf slipped around another turn of the stairs, the descent growing hotter. By now they had surely passed ground level. Ravon hadn’t thought there was anything past ground level, but down they climbed. Then, from around a landing, he heard a scraping noise.
Peering around the corner, he saw that Nastra had opened a door and, releasing the key back to her collection, she disappeared through it. The door clanged shut behind her.
He was not surprised when he couldn’t open it. What surprised him was that when he touched the door, it burned his fingers.
It was the way of the hellish forge that the most interesting things happened at night. Executions, rapes, orc berserker outbreaks-but this night’s entertainment was of a different sort.
A guard came for him, and Ravon tramped down to the bowel room at Stonefist’s order.
When he saw the purpose of the summons, his heart quickened. Stonefist and Nastra were leaning over the forge maw, as though crooning over a newborn baby.
The sword was complete. Its hilt was heavy with cladding, but nicely wrought. The blade, perfect; the length, a good four feet.
Stonefist lifted it from the receiving tray, holding it up and turning the blade to and fro. “Commmbaaat,” the gnoll rumbled. “Yah.” He turned his gaze on Ravon. “You hold.” He held the sword out, then withdrew it with a sly smile. “But not yet.”
“My time has come, then,” Ravon said, feeling a rush of relief like a window thrown open and fresh air wafting in.
The gnoll smiled. “When Stonefist say. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Stonefist choose.”
“But soon.”
Stonefist squinted at Ravon, handing the massive sword to Nastra. “But Captain’s death must be… special. Very sat-is-fying. Nothing…” Words failed him.
“Vulgar?” Ravon supplied.
“No vulgar!” the gnoll boomed gleefully, though Ravon doubted he knew what the word meant. “Nothing… quick,” Stonefist finished.
Nastra locked the blade away in an armory drawer. Ravon realized that she was thinner than ever, wasting away, in fact. Maybe she was sick. The night was just filled with happy thoughts.
With the main event of the evening, the first weapon from the genesis forge, concluded, Stonefist looked for other diversions.