Page 58 of Conflicted Fate
Immediately, I was on my feet, looking into the forge, trying to figure out how I was supposed to steal the piece of sword.
A length of steel glimmering with swirling green hues stared back at me, heated and practically glowing, but withemeraldfire, not red-orange flame.
There was no way I could pick it up. Frantically, I searched for something to grab it with. My eyes eventually landed on a pair of tongs. Inexpertly, I grabbed the handle and plunged them in, trying to drag the metal out.
A bar of pure steel descended around my neck and pulled tight, cutting off blood and oxygen flow. Gripped on either side by hands covered in black metal gauntlets, I was lifted free of the floor, my feet kicking and flailing wildly even as my grip on the tongs intensified and the length of green metal was pulled from the forge.
The Master Blacksmith took a step forward, changing his plans. His movement shoved the glowing length of metal deeper into the furnace—and I started to follow.
With a shout of fear, I struggled to free myself as the forge flared to life, releasing fresh heat that roiled out of the opening and across my skin. No matter how hard I fought, the blacksmith inched me inexorably closer to the heat and my doom.
Then, just like that, the pressure from around my throat was gone. I fell to the floor, landing hard on my side as Kiel tackled the blacksmith, the pair of them rolling away.
“Get the blade!” Kiel hollered, picking up the blacksmith and tossing the metal form at a pair of advancing guards. One of them fell under the weight of the black-armored form, while the other spun away under a glancing blow, only to fall into one of the rivers of liquid metal that flowed on either side of the walkway.
The dying screams of the soldier bounced off the walls, filling the room with his death cry. Thankfully, it was cut off abruptly as orange-red molten iron filled his mouth.
Getting to my feet I reached for the blade again—
Only to leap back as the Nehringi darted in, his sword nearly taking my head off. I lifted the tongs automatically into a guard position, saving my life as they stopped the blow inches from my neck.
Working in tandem, the Nehringi and the recovered blacksmith drove Kiel and me away from the Grand Forge, deeper into the ruins of the facility.
However, once we were far enough away, the blacksmith abruptly spun and marched back to his position next to the forge, where he stood unmoving. The Nehringi didn’t seem surprised, flowing smoothly into an attack, alternating between both of us. Tongs and hammer deflected his strikes, but it was an uneven fight.
My foot caught on something, and I fell backward with a cry.
The Nehringi came for me, but Kiel moved first. His hammer blasted a pipe, driving a cloud of fresh steam into the assassin’s face. The Nehringi jerked away, one arm coming up to protect his face even as the superheated water ate away at his protective leather gauntlet, melding it to the skin underneath.
“We’re not getting the blade,” I said as Kiel hauled me to my feet.
“I know,” he said. Then he hauled back and flung the hammer through the air.
It hit the Grand Forge head on, and the brick walls came apart, spilling coals as the entire face of it came apart under the impact. The hammer continued on through, blowing an even larger hole out the back.
“But now it’ll take them some time to fix it,” he growled. “Come on, we have to go.”
The Nehringi was already recovering but was forced to retreat momentarily under a barrage of makeshift missiles, several of which connected hard.
Kiel and I turned and bolted into the maze of machinery, much of it now broken and useless. Finding the unlit furnace we’d come from, Kiel dove in and began climbing as fast as he could. I was a moment behind him, shoving my back to the wall, my feet pressed against the far side while my hands stabilized me.
We shimmied up the soot-covered walls with all the speed we dared. It wasn’t as fast as I would have liked, but we had to balance speed with ensuring we didn’t slip.
Less than a quarter of the way up, by my best estimation, was where thingsreallybegan to go wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” I called up to Kiel, who was fifteen or twenty feet above me.
“Given our current situation, I fail to see how there could beanygood news,” he said. “Therefore, I petition to rename them to bad news andreallybad news.”
“Okay. I have bad news, and I have super-extra bad news,” I said, still easing my way up one step at a time.
“Sounds about right, given how everything has gone,” he muttered. “All right. What’s the regular old bad news?”
“The Nehringi isn’t going to come up after us,” I said cheerfully. “So, that’s nice.”
Kiel grunted. “Why do I feel like that’s not actually good news?”
