Chương 105: The Stairway

Miriam's heart sank. Was Róise… being convinced by this charlatan? So what if Caolán Séarlait hated Shorinu too? How was that enough to trust a man who had engineered the horrific death of an entire city? Teilgcheárta was only a ghost town because Onóra had given the Overseer bad advice - very obviously at Caolán's order. Was Róise's need for vengeance so great that she could overlook the horrors a man like Caolán had caused?

"Miriam," a quiet voice said from behind her. Sol had sneaked around the battlefield while everyone else had been entranced by Caolán's impassioned speech.

"We can't let this guy get the Heart, right?" Miriam shook her head and replied as quietly as she could.

"Of course not. But I don't see a way out."

"Ferris and I have a plan," Sol said.

"It's a terrible plan, extremely risky. He and I will probably both die." Miriam looked at him incredulously.

"Then we won't do it." Sol smiled sadly.

"If you have an alternative, I would be happy to do that instead. Otherwise, I need a distraction to get Ferris and I in place." She looked out at the strange reunion of brother and sister with foreboding. Her mind ran through a dozen ideas of how to get them out of the grotto - none of them particularly good. And all of them left the Heart of Iron where it was, affixed to the altar, for Caolán Séarlait to use. An army of Iron Dead, killing indiscriminately through Shorinu. Well, perhaps not indiscriminately.

Onóra had used the Heart to instruct the Iron Dead to avoid the Searlaits somehow. They could target only the soldiers if they wanted to. Looking at Róise's face Miriam found herself hoping that Caolán could convince her too.

"Just wait a moment," Miriam told Sol desperately.

"Maybe… maybe something…" Róise folded her arms to her chest, as if she were hugging herself. The fire seemed to have drained out of her, defeated by the prospect of something much more dangerous: hope.

"You're... You're really against Shorinu?"

"You can't believe this… this… murderer!" Cormac shouted, a desperate look in his eyes.

"Shut your mouth, Bodac!" Caolán roared.

"Murderer? Of whom? A murderer of murderers isn't a criminal. He's the hand of justice."

"What about her?" Cormac said, stabbing his finger at Onóra, ignoring the metal tines poking his chest from the spears.

"She infiltrates Teilgcheárta and suddenly a whole city is dead. You're trying to say this wasn't on your orders?" Caolán snorted.

"Of course it was. It was a brilliant move. Now I have an army, sitting right in the middle of Shorinu. It's perfect."

"You sacrificed a whole city of innocent Crockern - not even Shorinu citizens. That's not murder?" Cormac shouted.

"That's perfect to you?" The pixie hovered a little higher.

"As close as it can be in this life." He turned to Ferris and the other Crockern.

"Róise… you lived in Shirren? You saw what it was like?" Looking dazed, Róise nodded.

"I did."

"Was it a fair place for Pixies, did you think?" Caolán sneered.

"A city founded by our kind, overrun with Bodacs and Banshees and Crockern… can you really claim they did Shirren any demonstrable good? We build a utopia and here come the bottom-feeders, clawing at our aprons until they drag us down into the muck. My plan for Shirren after I've burned every single Shorinu alive? I'll make it a beautiful city again. A fair city. A Pixie city! A city where an old woman can fly home in the dead of night and not fear Bodac robbers.

Where Banshee pickpockets don't phase your coins from your purse as you walk with your family." He flew close to Róise again.

"Imagine it, Róise. One day, if you decide to have children of your own - you'll be able to walk them through the squares downtown without fear. Swim in a river not polluted by Bodac shanties and drunken refuse. Complete unity is the price of paradise, Róise."

"Oh great," Cormac said.

"My old grandmother can just go live in the woods then, should she?"

"You're damn right!" Caolán roared.

"What did your ilk ever build - besides casinos? Cigar bars? Taverns? We built something wonderful and you just wandered in one day and said 'mine!' It's not yours! It's beyond time we took it back!" Róise's face was terrible to look at. She wanted this so badly. The hope she'd held was trying its best to persevere, but she couldn't discount the horrible things her brother was saying. He might actually be able to destroy Shorinu - something she wanted more than anything else in the world.

But what would the occupation of her city be replaced with? Was Cormac to be driven out with the gamblers and the drunks? Did the differences between Crockern and Pixie really justify the mass-murder of an entire city? Miriam knew that wasn't ever going to be something Róise could accept, but she was trying her hardest. Trying to be someone who could live with atrocities if it meant the right people suffered… even if some of the wrong ones did too. Trying what being a monster would be like on for size. She turned.

"Sol, are…" He was gone. Panic rising, her eyes darted around the grotto, trying to hunt for him without drawing attention. Ferris was gone too, his captors looking dazed - Sol had used a technique material of Seven Drunken Nights. How had he been so quiet?

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ferris's voice boomed out from the altar. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Miriam spun. How had they gotten behind her? Then she notices that parts of Sol and Ferris were still fading in. Eoin. At some point Sol had stolen an Invisible Mist from the Selkie. But when?

"We have come to the end of Teilgcheárta," Ferris announced solemnly.

"But its people will not be used as fodder in the army of the very scum who murdered them. Good men and women will be allowed to rest, as this city will, for all time to come." Caolán rolled his eyes.

"Fine. Use the Heart. What then? I will just kill you and take it back. This is grandstanding, nothing more." Ferris nodded gently at Sol, who walked forward. He locked eyes with Miriam and smiled.

"It's easier this way," he said softly, smiling sadly as he wrapped his hand around the Heart of Iron. With his other hand he clasped Ferris's iron-sick one.

"A way out, in so many ways."

"No!" Miriam yelled. Purple light erupted from the Heart and began to pour into Sol's body. Just as he had done with Maitiú's power, that same light began to pulse through his skin. His eyes burned with purple light. Where Ferris clasped his hand, a thick smoke began to billow. The Crocken screamed, but that didn't stop him from doing his part. He reached his other hand out and with a sickening, wet rip, tore the carbon from the very body of a Séarlait guard.

The pixie fell apart as the vital mineral was leached from his body and Ferris combined it with the unformed iron coursing through his own fórsa mesh. With the discipline of an Alloy Adept user at the height of his skill, he forged his specialty in midair - spikes of steel. Caolán shrieked orders to his men, but Ferris's spikes couldn't be stopped. A more substantial mimicry of Eoin and Onóra's water needles, they buried themselves into the troops surging towards them.

Immediately the soldiers fell to the ground, screaming as the iron in the steel began to burn them.

"My gods," Eoin whispered, standing next to Miriam, lenses layered four deep over his eye.

"I've never seen anything like it." From Ferris's outstretched hand some mass of whirling fórsa was forming. The wall behind him began to slough away as he pulled carbon from the stone, digging a new tunnel as the power of the Heart of Iron surged through him. Black smoke billowed from where his hand touched Sol's, and the smoke was climbing up to his elbow. Meanwhile Sol was glowing brighter and brighter, the light dampened by a network of darkness that cut through shine, running to his every limb.

Miriam couldn't even make out his face anymore.

"They're giving us a chance," Cormac said, sweat dripping off his brow. Miriam could see the golden threads dancing off his fingers as he put everything he had in giving Sol all the luck he could. His captors had been among those killed by the steel spikes, so he had just walked over to join them. The Séarlaits were cowering for the most part, terrified of the giant throwing iron. Miriam trembled in anger.

"And we need to give them one. Look." In the blazing purple glow, even someone hidden in mists wasn't totally invisible. Onóra was stalking towards Sol, her short swords in her hands, little more than an outline.

"I'll handle her," Eoin said grimly.

"The student needs to learn there's more the professor has to teach. You have your own challenge to deal with." He nodded to Róise. She stood unmoving, as if seeing nothing before her at all. She wasn't even trying to avoid the flying steel shrapnel, though none of it hit her.

"Róise," Miriam said, grabbing the Pixie by the shoulders.

"Róise! We have to get ready to go! Sol and Ferris are doing something. It's going to be our only chance!" Tears poured down Róise's face.

"He didn't know I was alive," she said.

"I could have had family all this time… but… no. He's a monster, Miriam, I know he is. But he didn't kill our family. He just… he hates more than I do. I… didn't think that was possible."

"Róise." Cormac's steady voice finally made her turn her head. He smiled sadly.

"You have had family all this time. And I know I'm a worthless, lazy fool who's done nothing but get you in trouble since the day we met, but I'm your fool. You're my sister, and that bigot with butterfly wings over there can piss off." Róise's lip trembled, but she still seemed locked in place.

"It's not enough to hate the same people when you can't agree on who to love." Miriam said.

"When you've torn the world down you have to make sure the people you're left standing with are the ones who deserve to rebuild it. And all of us are going to do it together." The tunnel behind Ferris collapsed into a waterfall of debris, all of which was shunted to the side by a scoop of steel that had grown up in front of them. Ferris's entire body was nothing but roiling smoke at this point and Sol was a light so brilliant that even the dark lines Miriam had seen earlier were impossible to see.

Dodging through the river of loose stone and cut rock was Eoin, gracefully battling Onóra. His exhausted movements from before were gone and Miriam recognized the moves of the dance he had taught her only months before in his steps. This time it was Onóra who couldn't keep up. Healing from Róise's wounds must have taken a lot of fórsa, while Eoin had been buoyed by Róisín Dubh. For her part, Miriam thought Eoin was just riding a high of curiosity.

This was something he had never experienced before, and from what she had learned of the Selkie, that was almost as good as fórsa to him. The mass of whirling fórsa behind Ferris finally took shape: a roll of shining steel, connected by chainlinks. With a bellow, Ferris pushed it up the tunnel, pushing any leftover debris out of the way. Then, a loud crack at the top and Miriam could swear in her Dryad bones that she felt sunlight calling her from above.

"GO!" Ferris called.

"I WILL COVER YOUR BACK." Sol's light abruptly winked out and he collapsed to the ground, smoking.

"I've got Sol," Cormac said.

"Róise. I'm sorry to do this, but it's time. Choose now. Us? Or Him." Róise closed her eyes and sighed softly. Then they blazed back open and Miriam could see a bit of the old Róise Séarlait return.

"With you, dummy," she said.

"It's always going to be you." Cormac scooped Sol onto his shoulder, hissing as the heat from his body burned the Bodac's skin through his clothes. Róise focused a Seven Drunken Nights on Onóra, angling to give Eoin an opening to disengage. Miriam ran up to Ferris, on whom the smoke was beginning to dissipate. When she reached him she gasped. His entire body had become steel.

Where the Iron Dead had been haphazard grafts of iron to Sidhe skeletons, Ferris was a shining statue, covered fully in his preferred material. He stood in a heroic pose, one arm pointed up at the escape tunnel he'd made for them. Only his face was free of the metal, but it was slowly growing towards his mouth like a fungus. Ferris huffed with a sickly laugh.

"My mother always said I was a piece of work. No better way to end things than as a work of art." Miriam nodded sadly.

"Thank you, Ferris. Teilgcheárta might be dead, but you've kept us all alive. Given us a chance." The Crockern grinned.

"All worth it just to see the look on that little arse's face." His own face contorted in pain.

"Better go. I can make it so they can't follow, but not if I get fully sculpted first. Tell Sol… ah. Just tell him he's a good man. Now go!" Together, Miriam, Róise, Eoin and Cormac, carrying the limp body of Sol, raced up the steel stairs towards the daylight. The climb was steep, but they were motivated and in only a few minutes clambered out of the top, collapsing in the middle of the Teilgcheárta marketplace, where an enormous sinkhole had opened up.

As soon as the last runner had taken their last step off the stairs, a muffled bellow rang out from below and the stairs shattered. Or… no. Only the carbon in the alloy fell away, leaving a deadly path of Iron. They stared down at an enormous flight of stairs no one would ever dare climb again.