“Hey, Kai,” the voice whispered, and I shuddered, twitching anxiously awake.
I blinked, staring up at the face above me. Who was… oh. “April?”
“Yeah,” she said, breathing heavily. She had beads of sweat dotting her forehead, and she looked quite tired. “Come on, I’m sick of pedalling. I’m doing a last check. Then, I’ll just try bashing it with a hammer.”
Over beside the forge, the bellows-bike was slowing to a stop. Ah, she’d been trying to get the fire hotter. Meanwhile, I’d fallen asleep. Great.
Groggily, I wobbled to my feet. I couldn’t have been asleep long, because my head hurt like hell. Clearly, my body wanted more sleep than what I’d just given it.
April gestured to the bricks we were using as the forge’s door. “Can you get those?”
“Sure.”
Taking a nearby pair of big fire-resistant gloves, I followed her to the forge. Carefully, I moved the hot bricks out of the way, opening a portal into a miniature version of hell. The furnace blasted my face with heat, but with the night being so cold, it was actually kinda nice.
April shuffled in beside me and gingerly extended the tongs into the furnace. When she was sure she had a good grip, she pulled the crucible out and we eagerly peered inside, only to be met with more disappointment. The squiron plates were happily glowing… and very much not a liquid.
“Yeah. I figured,” April said wearily, placing the crucible on the ground. “Well, I guess I should get to working this stuff.”
“Hold on, hold on,” I said, raising a hand. “Maybe we need to do this in a… less mundane fashion.”
She gave me a look. “What does that mean?”
“Well… your class is metalworker, right? Do you have any abilities you can use?”
April paused. “I… forgot to check.”
Shit. I forgot to check.
My friend closed her eyes, and I did the same, feeling for my Tinker class. It was there, inert but happy, with my Fallen Angel class sitting inside of it.
“Huh, I feel… something but it’s not… it’s like a blob of… I don’t know, potential?” April murmured. “For me, at least, it feels like it’s just below the class.”
“I think what you’ll find that the sensation is, indeed, potential.” Cynath’s voice was quiet, like she was talking to us through a pillow or something. It still had that undeniable impact, though.
April, wide eyed, glanced around. “Who was that?”
“Um, that was Cynath. She’s the goddess who, uh… ‘sponsors’ Silver, I guess,” I said, alarmed. Cynath just… talking sometimes was a bit intense.
“Yes. ‘Tis I, Cynath!” The goddess giggled. Hearing her giggle was alarming. “Now, my dears, the process to acquire a crafting ability is a little more involved than it is with combat classes — or so I’m led to believe. April, my dear, if you could be so kind, could you attempt to touch the heated metal with bare skin?”
April didn’t look particularly excited about Cynath’s request, and didn’t move.
“Come on dear, don’t be shy. It’s just a little—” Cynath cut off mid-sentence.
Staring at each other in confused silence, April and I waited… and waited. A minute must have passed before Cynath’s voice suddenly abruptly burst into the moment again. “April, my dear, could you— Stop interrupting me! I’m attempting to communicate with a follower!”
It sounded, honest to god, like she’d put her hand over a phone to talk to someone nearby. I was so, deeply confused.
Sounding thoroughly frustrated now, Cynath said, “Venus is such a damned pest. I told her, if she wants her husband to satisfy her, she needs to communicate, but does she do that? No. She plays coy, trying to get him to somehow telepathically understand what she wants. Poor man is a bit simple, he’s very much the slash-and-burn war god, no strategy. Of course, I had to show weakness one time, and now she’s after a repeat! I told her it would only happen once, too, but—”
“Um… Cynath?” I said in a hushed whisper. “Why did you want April to stick her hand in the fire?”
“What? Oh, yes. Initial crafting abilities have to be activated by doing something wild or ridiculous. If April wants her skin to be immune to harmful amounts of heat, then she should stick her hand in the fire while thinking about her potential ability slot. Get it? Oh, blast it, she’s back again— Venus… oh my. Dear, where are your clothes?”
Cynath was gone again.
I watched April’s throat bob as she swallowed. “Uh. Wow. She’s a little…”
“That’s the first time she’s been like that, but… yeah, she kinda rambles. It’s a lot, having a goddess babbling about random crap in your ear,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat with embarrassment.
April giggled softly, shaking her head in confusion. Her attention fell on the forge fire again, and she raised her hand. “Can we trust her?”
“She hasn’t done anything bad so far.”
“Well, may as well do it before I lose my nerve,” April said, flashing me a terrified smile in the same moment that she shoved her hand quickly in and out of the flame.
My gut dropped to the floor, and I scrambled forward, terrified for her hand. Except, as she held it up… there was a little soot, but no burns. I gaped at her, astonished. I was ready to become Silver right there to heal her.
“You just… you just went and did it, huh?” I squeaked, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the trust she’d just placed in Cynath’s words.
April’s face was white, and her laugh was a little hysterical when she said, “Yeah. Wow. Crazy. It uh, it worked, though!”
“You got an ability?” I gasped, reaching out to grab her hand. “Do it again?”
“Can’t do it if you’re holding it,” she said with a wink.
I dropped it quickly. “Right. Sorry.”
She briefly considered the fire, but then she looked down at the crucible full of glowing red squiron plates. Taking a deep breath, she reached down and picked one up. It didn’t burn her, and slowly, a grin formed on her face. “Oh, fuck yes.”
Then, like a lightning bolt, I remembered something else.
Frantically, I searched around in my pockets until I found it — the ability orb. I offered it to her with a grin. “Here!”
“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing it with suspicion.
“It’s an ability orb. That one gives an ability that lets you force an object to retain heat for longer,” I explained, pushing it towards her again. “Got it earlier today, figured it would be really useful for you.”
“Yeah, actually,” she agreed, putting the squiron plate down so she could receive the orb with both hands. “Oh, I can feel how to—”
The orb melted into her hand like cotton candy dissolving in water, and she gasped. “Oh, damn! Yeah, it really is a heat-retention ability. Wow. That’s so cool. I can…”
She trailed off as an idea visibly hit her. “I only have a certain amount of mana I can expend to keep my skin from burning. Same with the heat retention, but… I think I have an idea.”
Grabbing the crucible with one hand, she carefully knelt and reached into the forge. Nestling the crucible in the hottest concentration of coals, she gestured to the bricks. “Get those in around my arm. My skin is heat-resistant, but my clothes aren’t.”
“What are you doing? What’s the idea?” I asked, even as I used the big flame-resistant gloves to move the bricks into place around her.
As if I’d hit a switch on a certain kind of toy, April began to vibrate with glee. “It’s crazy. Shouldn’t work. Probably won’t, but… I’m testing what happens when you tell an object to retain heat while it’s actively receiving heat. Theoretically, it should get hotter than the fire can normally make it, right?”
I blinked, considering the idea. She wasn’t wrong. It made sense, kinda. “Can you affect the squiron through the crucible?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. My range is like, three inches. Jump on the bike, would you? I don’t think I have enough mana to do this without the bellows running.”
Eagerly, I lunged for the bellows-bike and hopped on. I was going to pedal so hard.
While my legs were doing their best to become a blur, I looked inwards. I had a crafting class too, and I wanted to poke around a little. There were two potential ability slots that I could see around my Tinker class. Then flickered and shifted, like old TVs skipping between channels too fast. Taking one in my mental hands, I turned it over, wondering—
A weird grinding sound began to sound from the bike, and I slowed my pedalling, staring down. What was wrong? Where— the rear axle, it was glowing a soft, insistent red. It wasn’t lit up with any heat or anything, though. It was magic, I could see it, and… oh!
I could feel the ability that I’d been holding. It had changed, turning into something more. I tried to parse what it was, and was quickly rewarded with a series of impressions and sensations. Straining metal, hot from stress… the ability could tell me what parts within a contraption were taking too much strain. It showed me how the load was travelling through it. The rear axle of the bike had shifted slightly, and now the pipe that connected it to the fan was grinding against the housing. With a small kick, I shoved the axle back into place.
I should probably figure out a solution to that little issue. If I had to guess, the axle was going to keep unravelling itself like that. Wait a second, what if I took the other ability slot I had and tried to think of a solution to making the bike better?
With the second ability slot held firmly in my mind’s eye, I stared at the axle and willed something to happen. How do I make this contraption work better?
It happened. My ability slot shifted, twisted, whirled, and then popped, becoming an ability. An ability that nudged me towards a more permanent fix for my grinding problem. The frame I’d made was rattling against the pipe, which vibrated down to the axle, causing it to very slowly pop loose. I could fix it with some sheet metal and some grease.
“What are you doing?” April hissed, her expression etched with concentration. “Pedal faster!”
“Right, right!” I said. The fix to the bellows-bike could happen later. I gave her an apologetic smile. “Was figuring out my abilities. I had two slots. Do you? Or did that orb take the other one?”
“No, I have it, I just don’t know what to do with it,” she said, closing her eyes. “It’s getting harder to keep the heat in the metal, and I’m running out of mana in my heat-resistance ability. I don’t think this is going to work.”
“Can you turn your other slot into a heat multiplier or something? Make the fire burn hotter? I was able to actively tell it what to be when I concentrated,” I said quickly, while my legs furiously pumped air into the forge.
April’s brows knit closer together, and her breathing started to come faster and faster. Then, they snapped open and her eyes blazed with an inner reddish glow, like a cat’s eyes catching the light of a flashlight. “Yes! I can!”
The forge roared, and flame belched from the small chimney. It continued like that, throwing sparks up into the sky.
“I’m running out of mana, I’m running out, but… yes! Yes! I can sense it melting,” she gasped, her eyes popping open and a grin spreading over her face. “Just a little more… come on…”
Suddenly, she was ripping the bricks out of the way and dragging the crucible out of the forge. “Off the bike! Get the dagger mold — oh, and uh… shit, we need ingot molds! I didn’t think this would work.”
Leaping off the bike, I hurried over and dragged the knife mold over to her.
Wasting no time, April began to pour molten metal down into the mold. It sizzled and bubbled for several seconds until molten metal refused to go down the hole and started to spill.
“Quick, over in the corner there, the ingot molds. Grab them,” April said, nodding into the workshop.
Following where she was looking, I dashed for the back corner. Charles and Dan were chatting while they stared at a disassembled clock. Charles gave me a super weird look when I hurried past, but otherwise didn’t comment.
Grabbing four ingot molds I hurried back to the forge and quickly placed them down in front of April. She’d shoved the crucible back into the flames for a second, but she pulled it out again and began to pour. Unlike the knife mold, these things were made of a dark, slightly glossy material.
With careful, but swift pours, she filled three of the molds completely, while the fourth only got halfway before she ran out of metal.
With a deep breath and a groan, April dumped the crucible onto the ground and sat, panting. “Holy shit. Holy shit, we actually melted iron down. That’s insane.”
“Magic,” I grinned, wiggling my fingers like I was casting a spell.
She snorted and kicked my foot. “Yeah. So… I’m going to catch my breath, recover my mana, and then we’re going to do this again. It was hard, but I know what I’m doing, and if we focus, I’m pretty sure we can do that without so much… stress.”
“I think so too,” I said, sitting down beside her again. “Phew. What a rush.”
**
Together, we churned out ten ingots of squiron before I began to beg for a longer rest. My poor legs were dying from the constant cycling, and I think April had singed her top in a few places.
The process was tough, but it was so cool that it worked. We shared a high five. April laughed. “Man. We actually did it.”
A cascade of angry shouting robbed us of the moment, and we turned to peer anxiously over towards the rear gymnasium doors. They’d been flung wide, and a stream of furious people were tumbling out into the blisteringly cold night. The snow and wind had eased considerably, but they were still present. The heat from the crowd’s anger was probably more than enough to keep them warm.
Backing away from them were two firefighters, the Captain and Sean, the squad leader who’d brought ‘Silver’ in earlier today.
“Look at them,” one man said, throwing an accusatory finger in our direction. "My wife is dead and they are having fun."
"Nobody is having fun, Mr Wilcolm," the Captain said placatingly. "Everyone is taking this situation very seriously, and we are deeply saddened by the death of people’s loved ones. The answer remains the same, however — It is still extremely dangerous beyond the school walls. We cannot allow anyone to leave, even to retrieve the bodies of loved ones."
“Really? Really?” A woman cried. "Hell is here. Demons are here! They're… they're eating the bodies, Carter — Captain."
Sean stepped forward, trying to look both intimidating and placating. “Mrs Kellan, please! I know it's hard, but—”
“Don't you please me, Sean!” She hissed, stabbing him in the chest with a finger. “Some of us need our medication, too! Not want, need.”
The crowd quivered as people added their screamed additions, and I instinctively took a step closer to April. They were so angry — teetering on the brink of violence. Red faces and wild gestures were everywhere. Half of the things they were shouting made no sense, and the other half were an escalating tirade of fear.
“Please, please everyone!” The Captain shouted, and… and if I could hear the tension, the rising panic in his voice, then so could the crowd.
“‘Please,’ won't bring my wife back!” The widower from earlier howled, face red as she pushed his way into the firefighter's personal space.
Mrs Kellan shoved up beside him, adding, “‘Please’ won't get me my medication… and, and… you have no legal right to keep us here. You can't!”
The Captain, realising he was really losing control of the situation now, put a hand on the man's chest to gently push him away. "Please—"
As if in slow motion, April and I watched as the man wound his arm back and punched the Captain right in the face. The firefighter staggered backwards, clutching his nose while blood flew everywhere. Beside him, the squad leader reached forwards, grabbed the widower by the collar, and pulled him out of the crowd and onto the ground. His head hit the pavement with a hideous wet crack.
A hush fell over the crowd as everyone stared at the body on the ground. Blood glistened, pooling out from the point where skull had met hard concrete.
"You killed him!" Someone screamed, and all hell broke loose.
Distantly, muffled by the angrier shouts, I heard someone call, “He’s still alive. We need the medics!”
"We're leaving," April said, grabbing the box we'd just put the ingots in. In a daze, I followed her lead on autopilot, taking the dagger blank and the tools. I could go help. If I transformed, I could heal him. I was closer than the healers. I’d be giving myself away, though. April made the decision for me, dragging me into the workshop and locked the door.
Damn it. Damn it, I could help. That man needed help, but I didn’t want to give myself away. Shit, this sucked.
"What's all the commotion?" Charles asked, grumpily ambling over. His harmless, grouchy countenance was so at odds with the shock of the violence outside.
"Angry crowd out there with the captain," April explained, voice shaking. "Got violent. Some guy hit the pavement head-first. Accident… but…"
Charles' expression turned grim and, I think, protective. "Christ almighty. Stay here, sit tight kids."
Without another word, he grabbed a hammer and sheet of steel that was laying against the wall. "Let ol' Charles go sort the problem."