The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [61]
Watch and learn. It was the woman’s voice again, maddeningly familiar.
Lei drifted behind the silent child. She had forgotten how somber she had been. Lei studied her young counterpart. Nine years old, perhaps?
The girl moved cautiously down the hall. She might be silent by nature, but Lei could see that she was taking extra care to be stealthy. When a pair of magewrights entered the hallway, the child slipped into an open door, hiding until the researchers passed by. Where was she going? Lei tried to remember the layout of the building, but the passage of years had worn down her memories.
As the girl moved deeper into the forgehold, Lei heard noises ahead, the clash of steel on steel. Battle! For a moment, she thought that the building was under attack, but then she remembered the work that went on at the forgehold. Combat training. Blacklion had a virtual arena, where the warforged fought one another to draw their latent combat skills to the surface.
Lei knew what day this was.
Many levels of the forgehold were off-limits to her, butLei’s thirst for knowledge prodded her to see all of the forbidden zones, to learn everything that went on in the forgehold. She had memorized the patterns of the guards and magewrights, finding hiding places that would let her slip past patrols. She was usually caught, but every so often she managed to reach one of the restricted regions. As she had today.
She watched her younger self move closer to the source of the sounds. She entered an armory filled with racks of weapons and shields, and she slipped past a man who was checking the inventory. Creeping across the room, she walked through a large archway.
And onto a battlefield.
The war chamber mimicked conditions of battle. Physical props were combined with magical illusions to create scenarios for the soldiers in training. The girl was unaware of this; she knew only that this was a place that was forbidden to her. And so she was unprepared for the chaotic scene. She found herself in the ruins of a city, in the foundations of a building broken by a mighty siege engine. She was surrounded by rubble and dirt. The clash of steel grew louder. Lei’s curiosity drew her forward, treading lightly over the ruined ground. Soon she crouched behind a shattered wall. The sounds of violence were just beyond, and had she ever known battle, fear might have driven her back. Instead she peered over the wall, desperate to see what lay beyond.
Two warforged were locked in battle. One was a shock trooper, a heavily armored warrior built to drive deep into enemy forces. He bore a massive tower shield on his left arm, and held a morningstar studded with vicious spikes. As Lei looked on, he landed a solid blow on his opponent, denting his enemy’s armor and sending the smaller warforged staggering backward.
This opponent, a lighter model of warrior designed for stealth, was surely faster than his foe and should never have let his enemy close the distance between them, but he lacked experience, and he hadn’t realized how seriously outmatched he was in close combat. The young Lei gasped as the dark warforged landed another blow, a powerful stroke that sent his opponent crashing to the ground. The victor looked down on his foe, searching for any signs of motion; when his victim remained still, he strode off into the ruins, in search of a new enemy.
The girl scrambled over the wall and rushed to the side of the stricken scout. The morningstar had punched a hole through his chestplate, revealing a mass of metal and stone surrounded by torn tendrils. Watching as a ghost, the elder Lei could see that the scout was simply inert. While he was unconscious, his condition was stable and he was in no real danger. But the child didn’t know this. She only saw the wound, and she was certain the creature was dying. She reached out, desperate to comfort him, to save him. She laid a hand on the warforged, and she stiffened in shock. Lei remembered that moment, the very first time she had seen the web of energy