Chapter 8: The City of Stormfall

Over the last four years, making these statues, Elias had devoted hours to chipping away at the stone to create a likeness of a being he could not comprehend.

Elias did not fully understand the structure of what he was carving, and he doubted that he ever would. Most of the job was made by an Alchemistry Crystal, and Elias was here to simply make sure that the proportion of the stone was in the right shape and proportions, then leave the rest for the crystal to complete.

He intensely hated this job because it was one thing that his mind could not understand, no matter how much he devoted to learning what was being made, and it was a daily reminder of everything he was lacking.

Every principle of its creation was attributed to the Alchemistry Crystal, and even though he could operate it, he did not understand how it worked, not until he reached the ranking of a Fury Forge, and so before then, he was just here to chip away the stones into the right proportions and allow the Alchemistry Crystal to finish the job.

Most people would be satisfied with just knowing that something works, not how it works, and Elias was not most people, and he would take apart everything to know how all the little pieces came together in harmony to create something new and different.

Four years of watching this mysterious process while engraving every single detail about its transformation without understanding what was happening was his personal hell.

Some days, it almost felt as if the Alchemistry Crystal was mocking him.

Elias still remembered the soft voice of Supervisor Chen as he spoke to him about his task in the underground passage, pointing into the mouth of the dark tunnel at the foot of the Palace Walls, and Elias had thought then that even though it was artfully built, it still resembled the open mouth of a slumbering beast.

“See here is a job not for the ambitious or the faint of heart, you will have to enter into the darkness, feeling the weight of millions of tons of rock over your head as you head deeper into that passage, and always beside you, as if watching you, would be the figure of Asulon. Not many can stand the presence of an Ascendant, even though this is a pale imitation of his statue. You got this job because your mind is strong even for a mortal.”

The Supervisor made a small bow at the mention of the name, Asulon. This bow was a familiar gesture made by all when the name of any great Ascendant was mentioned. Elias had also done the same, although he bowed deeper than the Supervisor, who was a powerful Siphon, and as a mortal, he could not be seen as paying less fealty before the name of an Ascendant.

“You have steady hands and steady eyes also; that is why I picked you for this task, not any fancy resume you threw at me about being a hard worker and a budding Scripts Smith. Are we clear about that?”

Elias nodded like a bird pecking rice, “Yes, Supervisor Chen, my work is not to think about what is all around me, I am simply a conductor, and that,” Elias pointed to the Alchemistry Crystal beside the Supervisor, “Is the true sculptor of these masterpieces.”

Supervisor Chen looked at him with a critical gaze, and then he laughed while stretching out his hand towards Elias in a handshake.

“You will do well here, Elias, and if you can touch the Lumina in the future, then I can assure you that with your dedication, I can put in a good word for you in the Alchemy Guild.”

Elias smiled and shook the hand of the Supervisor while smiling, his thoughts were unexpectedly calm,

’Ah, condemned to a lifetime of digging into the earth, this is acceptable, I can live a little bit longer like this.’

Elias had been fourteen.

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From that day forward, Elias has worked beneath the earth, carving stone into the right dimension and then setting the Alchemistry Crystal upon the roughly carved stone and watching as a faint blue light turned the stone into a vibrating liquid mass that slowly took the shape of the Ascendant over the course of six hours.

When sufficient stones were not available for him to use in this process, there was a synthetic paste that, when exposed to air, would harden after a few minutes, and it did not take long for Elias to figure out that he could hide the bodies of his victims inside the mold used to revere their Ascendants.

Would such an act draw condemnation? Yes, but only if he was discovered by the people who revered Asulon as a god; however, Elias did not fear the immortal, as he did not believe that Ascendants would leave their glorious thrones to punish a tiny mortal like him inside a forgotten city like Stormfall.

If he were wrong, well, his death would be spectacular.

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The paste where he had placed all of Josef’s body parts was now sufficiently hardened, and every indicator that the body of a man had once lain here was gone.

When the paste hardened, Elias hurriedly set the molds in place with the winches and levers around him, then skillfully slid them out of the hardened paste.

The weight of the paste ensured the structure did not collapse, and when it hardened, it would take on the rough form of a man. He had done this same process hundreds of times in the past, so he was not afraid of anything going wrong; he had calculated the weight of Josef’s body parts into the mix, and everything was well balanced.

Elias grabbed the Alchemistry Crystal from its opened box. It resembled a silver dice the size of an apple, and placed it against the stone. There was a slight indentation in the middle of the Alchemistry Crystal, and he slowly pressed it down until he felt a vibration growing within the crystal. He hurriedly brought his hand back.

’Careful hunter,’ he said to himself, ’feed it stone, not your finger.’

Alchemistry crystal could reshape flesh as easily as it could reshape stone, and some of his unlucky predecessors and many others before him using this particular tool had suffered the fate of losing limbs and even their entire bodies to it. Elias had always been careful, and he had never had an accident with this device; even knowing he would heal from any injuries quickly did not make him careless. Instead, he became more careful.

One of his greatest advantages in life was his ability to heal, and no one else was aware of this.

The tallest tree in the forest was most likely to be blown down by the wind. As a mortal with such an ability, not even considering how this ability was crucial in his hunt, if this power were revealed, then Elias would wish he were dead.

He did not know of the many tools that were available to those who had gone farther up in the path of a Siphon; he could barely understand the Alchemistry Crystal here, and he understood that if he were to fall into the hands of those who were interested in his talent, it would truly be over.

Every hunt he had ever made became a lesson in how to handle his terror at being discovered. He sated the monster inside of him, but he did not forget the risk that came with every venture.

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