Chapter 22 #2
"I am the Vanguard of the Solar-Crest," Vael said, her voice gaining a fraction of its old, commanding volume, fueled entirely by sheer, stubborn pride.
"I was sold by my father. I was betrayed by my instructors.
I will not die a victim of their architecture.
I demand an honorable death, Architect. By the blade we forged together. "
"I won't do it," Riven said, violently shaking his head. He pushed himself backward in the mud, putting distance between himself and the weapon. "I took this power to save us. I am not an executioner."
"You are a warlord!" Vael hissed, coughing a thick spray of blood that splattered against her pale chin. "Act like one! Do not let me rot in this hole! Give me the dignity of a clean end!"
"She doesn't have to end!"
The scream was shrill, desperate, and completely out of character.
Riven and Vael both snapped their heads toward Carys.
The Lore-Keeper was standing up. Her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides, her knuckles white. She looked completely unhinged, her eyes wide behind her cracked lenses, her chest heaving as she stared at the mangled, crushed armor covering Vael’s legs.
"What are you talking about, Carys?" Riven asked quietly, alarmed by the sudden, manic energy radiating from the scholar.
"The Lexicon," Carys babbled, pointing a shaking finger at Riven’s dead, unlit arm. "The rules of the Builder's magic. You manipulate density. You manipulate spatial compression. You shifted the raw, atomic structure of the Inquisitor plate to crush them, didn't you?"
"Yes," Riven said cautiously. "But I can't heal flesh. The Lexicon is architectural. It only speaks to stone and metal."
"Then stop treating her like flesh!" Carys yelled, her voice echoing wildly in the dark cavern.
She dropped to her knees beside Vael, her hands hovering frantically over the crushed golden armor.
"The Spireheart restorative fields failed because they only interact with biology," Carys explained rapidly, the brilliant, terrifying intellect of the scholar taking absolute control.
"But you aren't an academy healer, Riven.
You are an Architect. Her lower spine is destroyed.
The bone is gone. So we replace the bone. "
Vael stared at the scholar as if she had lost her mind. "You want to build me legs?"
"I want to graft the dungeon directly into your nervous system," Carys corrected, looking at Riven with a burning, desperate intensity.
"You forged the Abyssal Cleaver by fusing volatile antibody glass with meteoritic iron on a molecular level.
You acted as the living anvil. You forced two incompatible materials to bind. "
Carys pointed to Vael’s ruined waist.
"We have iron," Carys said. "The aqueducts are filled with the crushed runic plate of the Inquisitors you compressed. It’s high-density, aether-conductive steel. If you can smelt that metal... if you can force it to fuse with the healthy vertebrae of her upper spine... you can bridge the gap."
Riven stared at the mangled mess of Vael’s lower body. The sheer, horrific audacity of the idea made his stomach twist.
"Carys, that isn't surgery," Riven breathed, horrified. "That's butchery. The thermal runoff required to smelt runic iron directly over an open wound... the kinetic shock of binding dead metal to living nerves... the pain will kill her before the graft even takes."
"I am already dying, Architect," Vael said.
Riven looked down.
Vael’s golden eyes were locked onto his. The resignation was gone. The fierce, terrifying fire of the Vanguard had returned, burning brighter than ever in the face of impossible odds. She wasn't looking for a clean death anymore. She was looking for a way back to the war.
"If the alternative is lying in this mud until my heart stops," Vael whispered, her voice a razor-sharp blade in the dark, "then I choose the fire. Bolt the iron to my spine, Riven. Make me a monster."
Riven stared at her. He saw the absolute, unyielding demand in her eyes. She wasn't asking for salvation. She was asking for a weapon. She wanted her body to become the very thing the academy feared.
He didn't argue. He didn't hesitate.
Riven stood up. He turned away from the dying warrior and ran.
He sprinted back across the massive basin, his heavy boots pounding against the mud and crushed bone. He pushed his exhausted, aching body back up the jagged incline, leaving the dark cavern and entering the indestructible basalt tunnel where he had built the kill box.
The aqueduct was exactly as he had left it. A slaughterhouse of blood and crushed white-and-gold metal.
Riven didn't look at the gore. He moved methodically, grabbing the heavy, compressed spheres of the ruined Inquisitor armor.
The runic steel was dense, heavy, and perfect for bearing weight.
He gathered four of the massive, crumpled breastplates, hauling them into his arms, ignoring the slick blood coating the metal.
He carried the heavy load of iron back down into the basin, dropping the twisted armor into the mud at Vael’s side.
He picked up the Abyssal Cleaver. He knelt beside Vael, placing the heavy black haft in her hands.
"Hold this," Riven commanded, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
He was locking his empathy in a box. He had to be a machine to do this.
"The anti-magic gravity of the blade will act as a localized anesthetic.
It will siphon the erratic pain signals from your nervous system.
It won't stop the agony, but it might keep you from going into fatal shock. "
Vael wrapped her gauntleted fingers tightly around the black iron. She nodded once.
"Carys," Riven said, looking across Vael’s body at the trembling scholar. "Tear away the crushed gold armor. Expose the base of her intact spine. I need raw access to the vertebrae."