Four Horsemen: Chapter 12 Part 2 of 2

Valter kept himself relaxed, moving his limbs to warm them up.

A path had been cleared through the remains of the cathedral, wooden fortifications had been thrown up hastily.

“Alright past this point you’re only allowed to take your tools. Use that cart there to stack them. If you have storage devices put them into one of the boxes and then you can pick them up after you’re done.” The guard leading them said, staring at Valter.

“What kind of tools do we need?” Alan, asked. All of the smiths from his forge and the crews from three other shops were there.

“Carving tools, for silver.”

The altar?

Valter took off a pouch shaped storage device they’d looted, filled with random items and a few coins, he made it look like he was pulling his tools and apron from there.

He nicked his thumb with a chisel, bleeding on the pouch, soul binding it before he dropped the storage device into the lock-box. Alan and a few others did the same.

Valter pulled his apron on, putting his tools into its belt and pockets.

A guard picked up the storage device. “What the hell I can’t access it, open it up.”

“Soul bound laddie, didn’t want anyone getting into my gear,” Valter smiled. “Supposed to be holding it for us, don’t need to get access to it right?”

The young soldier grabbed the hilt of his sword, snarling and leaning forward.

“You’ll be in for a world of hurt.” An older guard held his arm. “He and his band defeated a stone, and two shadow golems, held the south eastern gate.”

Valter raised and eyebrow, the man looked familiar, his left side bandaged and others under his helmet.

“You were part of the catapult crew.”

“Aye, though with my current state they thought it best to put me on light duties.” He took his hand from the other guard’s arm.

He wore an armband, a snow capped mountain, the marking of Jorai. All the guards wore one. They weren’t wearing them this morning.

“Hurry up!” The guard leading the group of smiths yelled, his eyes darted to the wall, his face slackening. “Come on!”

Valter nodded to the two guards and moved after the other smiths. The guards could see it as clear as anyone, come morning their enemies with their reinforcements would smash against the walls until they broke in.

The crypts lay under rubble, a path had been cleared to the corridor into the mountain. Stains and scratches remained of Valter’s first battle.

A mobile crucible with a flame underneath bubbled at the entrance to the silver altar room. Priests poured in a white and grey concoction, like mouldy milk, and added silver. Others moved over the walls and the altar, tracing out lines and symbols across the room in chalk. Stone masons chipped along the lines. The altar was thick with the lines and runes, the center of whatever ritual they were working on.

Valter wished he could pull out his book on runes to figure out just what he was looking at.

“Alright your job is to carve out the runes and formations that the priests have lined the room with, then you have to fill in the lines carved into the ground with silver.” The guard with them said.

“You, you and you,” Alan pointed at Valter last. “You three with me, we’ll work on the altar top.” He turned to the others from the forge. “You two work on the far side, you two the close side, you and you on the top and bottom. Rest of you work on the metal plate under the altar. Remember, take out small amounts to start, ask if anything looks wrong, this is runecraft, everything needs to be perfect. You six work on pouring the silver into the grooves that the stone masons have made.”

Alan walked forward, the different groups breaking out.

Valter joined the group at the top of the Altar, the top was dense with runes.

“This is going to be one hell of a job.” One smith rubbed his unshaved face.

“You sure about him?” Another with a nose ring gestured at Valter.

“Hold up your chisel.” Alan said.

Valter did so.

The man with a nose ring grunted.

“Valter work on the small detail lines, Remin, you work on the smaller runes. I’ll work on the geometrics. Dula you do the interconnecting ones with the other sides.” Alan said.

“The hells got the church running around so much?” Dula the unshaved man asked.

“Heard that the wall ain’t looking too good.” Remin, the nose ring man looked at Valter.

“They’re coming over that wall unless the champion decides to jump in, or the priests can get talking to Jorai.”

“So what they said is true, Jorai isn’t answering prayers or giving blessings?” Remin asked.

“Didn’t see any blessings or signs of Jorai till the very end of the fighting. If it was me, I would’ve done those kinds of things earlier, save more lives, keep the wall intact.”

“Well now, are we here to chat among ourselves? Or get to work?” Alan snarled, he glanced at them and pulled out a large screwdriver, he popped a crystal into the rear of the screwdriver and turned it. The driver’s end spun with a whizzing noise. He applied it to the surface of the altar, tracing out the lines, careful to not remove the other chalk lines.

Valter bowed his head, studying the runes and pulling out a runed blade.

Power is linked to the runic pointed towards the city. He studied the mana gathering lines, they looked familiar, but he couldn’t decipher them. It was a mess of jumbled lines, interconnected and linked. His mind compared against thousands of other inscriptions, picking apart its function.

He let mana enter his blade, heating up the edge. He carefully traced out the thin lines around the center of the ritual.

He needed some time for everyone to sink into the rhythm.

Chisels and hammers rang out throughout the room, creating a din that was hard to hear over.

Valter’s eyes picked out combinations of runes and the formations they were placed in, familiar to him. Soul based.

There an outline for drawing in a soul, then another for combining it with something and sending it to another location?

His eyes flicked over the formation being engraved into the floor.

It was wholly new from the complex and dense inscriptions upon the altar.

Soul binding, drawing in, amplification, lots of amplification.

It would draw in a lot of souls from a large area and then feed it into the altar. He blew on a chisel mark, clearing away the silver.

The altar’s inscriptions are beyond me. The new stuff not so much. Cutting off most of the altar’s function. Reverse the draw of drawing in a soul from somewhere.

Souls coming in from a large area, then directed somewhere. Its just a big soul circuit. His eyes fell on the inscriptions along one side.

They screamed danger to him. Disconnected from the rest of the inscription-for now, that part of the inscription was nothing but destruction.

“If you can’t hold an objective, make sure the enemy never can.”

“What was that Valter?” Dula asked.

“Just muttering to myself, never seen something with so many runes on it.”

“Yeah, piece of silver this big. Well at least we know where our tithes have been going,” Dula snorted.

They sunk back into their work.

Here Valter added another line, there he changed the rune he was supposed to make. Small changes and alterations.

A full two thirds of his metal book was filled with inscriptions and thoughts on soul based inscriptions and magics.

If I could only study the altar. He menally clicked his tongue, going about defacing it and changing its properties and the added inscriptions subtly.

The others set to carving, not focused on the inscription unknown to them.

Silver was poured into the cut lines, the smell burning Valter’s nose.

“I gotta take a piss.” Remin said.

“Alright, I’m gonna check on the others.” Alan finished off his line as Remin walked off to talk to a guard.

Alan stepped away, checking the work around the altar.

Valter shifted his body to cover his work from the guards and other smiths. His blade moved at several times his previous speed, carving runes not written in chalk, hidden within another formation.

He quietly cut the side of his finger with his blood and ran it down the runes, a bit of mana speeding up the recovery. A smart blacksmith makes sure his weapons can never be used against him or his friends.

Alan came back from checking the others work.

“Close enough,” Alan muttered to himself and kept working on the runes.

Remin came a few minutes later and pulled out his tools.

“Huh, something is different.” He frowned studying the altar.

“Yeah we got more done without you.” Dula didn’t look up.

“I’m telling you that there is something different. He did something.” He pointed at Valter.

Valter frowned at him, shaking his head and kept working.

“Look I was working right next to him, he didn’t do nothing but his job. Man you’re a pain in the ass before you’ve got a tea into you.” Dula said.

“Fuck you too.” Remin growled.

“Quit ‘yer bitchin’ and get working, we’re burning hours. We’re all tired, get it done, or you want those heretics to get a hold of your younger sister huh?” Alan glared.

Remin screwed up his face. “Fucking bastards.”

“We got this job, don’t screw it up.” Alan softened his tone bending his head, back to work, closing down the argument.

All of them were doing what they could to survive the battle. Valter doubted that Jorai cared. His mind wandered down possibilities of the inscriptions and ways to counteract.

Damn this would be easier with the other’s help.