Warsinger: Chapter Twenty-Six

In the vision, she had been nothing more than a sand-veiled silhouette striding through the desert, but the silhouette was unmistakable. She – it was somehow feminine – was rendered like a mechanical saint. She had a pair of curved golden swords crossed over her chest, and a great flaming halo that hung behind her narrow head. The Warsinger’s helmet was styled like a falling meteor, with an angled crest of spikes surrounding a single long tail, all of it swept back from an impassive angular face. A great flaming halo hung behind her head, and her feet were shrouded in fire. The artist had even detailed the engravings on the Warsinger’s armor. Roses twined around her hands, up her arms, across her chest and up her neck to either cheek, ending just beneath the baleful glowing grates of its eyes.

“The third aspect is the mantle of the Warsinger. It was the Warsingers who turned the tide against the Drachan and gave us time to create the Caul.”  The whispering, sweet voice of Lahati turned over in my memory. “You already know of one of them: Sachara Ha’Shazir, the Demon Queen, pilot of the Warsinger Withering Rose and the Empress of the Shalid.”

“Withering Rose…” Was this… was this the tomb of Sachara? Surely there was no way.

I let my fingers hover over the image, barely daring to breathe, before I tore my eyes away and looked to the golden casket. It seemed to beckon to me, calling me to open it. As I had in Taltos, I just didn't feel right about opening the casket and disturbing the dead, but when I lay my hand on it, the air of the room seemed to sigh before settling into a heavy, expectant cloak around my shoulders. 

"Sorry, bro. Or sis. I don’t want to disturb you, but my Dark Lord compels me." Grimacing, I put my shoulder to the heavy lid, and pushed. 

The metal was lighter than it looked. It rasped as it slid over, and a pleasant earthy smell bloomed out of the sarcophagus. It smelled like cedar, woody and resinous. When I looked in, I saw a smaller wooden coffin. It was vaguely man-shaped, and painted with bright colors that looked barely fifty years old, not over a thousand. Feeling more awkward by the second, I pushed that lid aside, and in doing so, revealed the occupant.

The mummy was smaller than I'd expected, shrunken by time and desiccation. The body wasn’t bandaged up, but he seemed almost like he’d been magically cured, somehow. He lay in state, so perfectly preserved that I could still see the deep lines around his eyes. Dark leathery skin pulled back from twin rows of white teeth and clung tightly to the lines of his skull. 

“Not Sachara.” I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Something about the idea of an Empress being buried this close to a sewer just hadn’t seemed… right. This guy being here made more sense, because according to our minimap, we were about three hundred feet below the temple of Khors in the center of the university, and this man had definitely been a priest of Khors. The style of the robes, the cut and the length were all different, but the mummy’s clothing had once been a brilliant turquoise blue, and he wore a beautifully made toolbelt around his waist. He also had a magnificent false beard draped over his chest, woven from hair the same coppery metallic red of Suri's. It was made out of skillfully twisted rope braids capped with gold, perfectly preserved except for the strap that had held it onto his face. I glanced at the wisps of hair that clung to his scalp. They were black.

On his right hand, this ancient artificer wore the finest spellglove I'd ever seen. It was an intricate, graceful device made of the same strange brassy metal that the Tomb Guardian had been crafted from. The sleeve of it was patterned in a surprisingly-modern looking hexagonal matrix, fitting over the back of the hands with a series of artificial tendons that allowed for delicate movements of the fingers. I'd worn motorcycle gloves with that same design. The tendons formed ridges over your knuckles when you clenched your fists. They were fucking awesome for punching people with. 

The other hand was clutched around the haft of a golden hammer with an elegant, bird-like design, and over that, a large starburst medallion on a chain. The chain was tarnished, and so fragile that it crumbled when I brushed my fingers over it. The medallion itself, however, didn't have a single green spot on it. I picked it up carefully and stared at it until my HUD gave me a tooltip.

Ancient Medallion

+5 Intelligence

This ancient medallion is engraved with mysterious symbols in a language you do not understand. You will need to find someone capable of understanding its significance.

“Is that all?” I frowned, puzzled. This guy had obviously been someone important, but that artifact seemed… well. It was basic. The hammer and spellglove, on the other hand, were not.

Aurum Workhammer

+2 Strength

+15 to Metalshaping skills

+20% Stamina while Crafting

A hammer of ancient design wrought out of incorruptible aurum metal. Aurum tools can be used to forge Aurum parts. Can only be used by Artificers (All).

The hammer was much heavier than it looked. I didn't have to be a genius to figure this thing was really fucking valuable. I stowed it in my Inventory, and then gently tried to slide the spellglove free. His elbow crackled and dislodged, and I winced as my fingers slipped and accidentally hit a button on the inside of his arm. The raised hexagon panel slid soundlessly into the gauntlet, and then the entire thing folded down from his elbow to his wrist, shuunk-shuunk-shuunk, until it was just a small fingerless glove encircled by a large golden manacle.

"Wow." I eased it off the mummy's hand, and tried it on. As soon as I pulled the glove onto my hand, the plates, tendons, and liquid crystal tubules unfolded, perfectly molding to the shape of my body. I flexed my fingers and grinned, then blinked as an item description appeared without me asking.

Gauntlet of the Arch-Smith

Soul-bound Magical Weapon

Slot: Spellglove

Item Class: Relic

Item Quality: Legendary

Mana Capacity: 2000

Mana Discharge Rate: 97%

Durability: 4%

Weight: 1lb

Special: Soul-Bound, Level Restriction (Level 40+), Class Restriction (Mages (all) and Artificers (all)).

Crafted from the rare legendary metal aurum, this legendary spell-glove bears an unusual maker’s mark.

Curious, I hit the switch and watched as the gauntlet unfolded itself along my arm. When I could slip it off, I went hunting for the Maker’s Mark. It was on the inside pad of the ring finger: a triangle with a double-barred cross underneath it. Didn’t seem that unusual to me.

“Hmm. Maybe Rin or Ebisa would know what it means.” Even though I couldn't use the gauntlet myself, I was pleased. This thing was a god-tier artifact, and unlike the Spear - it wasn't cursed to shit by some fuckwad admin. Rin would explode into a cloud of glitter when she saw it. "Man... what is this place? And who are you, epic beard dude?"

The mummy did not reply. I was grateful for that - but then, I remembered something. I could call shades now.

“Hmm.” My eyes narrowed. I ran my tongue over my teeth while I switched the un-useable epic mage gauntlet for my much shabbier novice one. Then I raised my hand over the sarcophagus, concentrated, and uttered the magic words. “Suund'karon, Karalt, Binah!”

[This corpse is too old to be used to raise a Shadow.]

“Meh.” I sighed, and put the glove away. “Worth a shot.”

"Hector, I just felt magic. What happened? Did you find anything?" Karalti stuck her head in, and her eyes widened when she saw the paintings. "Woah. Pictures."

“Yeah. Hella pictures.” I gestured around, still a little shocked to see it all myself. “I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m guessing he was an artificer that worked on this Warsinger. Do you know what this means?”

“Nope!” Karalti said happily.

“It means that, for some reason, the queen of frigging Dakhdir was here, in Karhad.” I gestured up at the painting. “This place is about two thousand years old. This tomb must have been built here when the fifth Triad – Grigori and Lirenian, Sachara and Withering Rose, Phaedra and Zarya – came to Myszno to repair Matir’s Dragon Gate.”

Karalti’s eyes widened. “Ohhhh.”

“But you know what this means?” I continued. “Nocturne Lament might not be the only Warsinger in Myszno. Your great-grandma five times removed said that Nocturne was the least of them… so what if Withering Rose is here, buried somewhere right under our feet? We could be sitting on it and not even know.”

“Then we better find her and kick Baldr’s ass, huh?” Karalti leaned over the edge of the coffin and sniffed curiously. “We need to be careful in here, though. There's heaps of books, and scrolls, and magic stuff, and mana that's not... like... in great condition. If we disturbed something, it could start a fire, or make this place too toxic for archeologists to go in and out.”

“Yeah, for sure.” I strung the medallion on some leather, hung it around my neck, and waited to feel smart. After a couple of seconds without some major Steven Hawking-style revelation about mathematics or space-time, I shrugged and turned back to the image over the tomb. "But you know what we are going to do?"

"What?"

"We're gonna grab that paper and charcoal and take rubbings of that engraved text outside," I said. “And then we’re going to find someone who can translate it, because I’m pretty damn sure it’ll take us to where we need to go next.”