Author's Note: Thank you to those of you who reviewed! They make my day each time. BTW, since my scene changing mark thingies didn't show last time, I will just make the first three words of each next scene in all caps, 'kay?
THE DOOR TO the black smith's shop opened and Vorador looked around. It was huge. The ceiling was nearly a hundred feet high; for the smoke, Vorador assumed. The walls were lined with more metal working tools than he could have ever imagined. Everything glowed slightly from an extraordinary large furnace that severed as a forge.
It was only after he had been gazing at the tools and the magnificent set up of the workshop that he was to work in for some time did he notice the sound of someone beating cold steel. He set down the box he had tucked under his arm and made his way to the back of the shop, the sound getting louder with each step. He stopped and just watched as the most unique looking Ancient he had ever seen that dipped the metal into a bowl of water; steam rose from the surface and surrounded the two like a cloud of smoke. Only after the steam cleared did Vorador really see the smith he was to work with, this Baal.
The Ancient that looked at him had long hair, passed his elbows. Very long and the color of the night sky. It was not smooth like the others winged creatures that he had come across, but slightly bunched like dread locks. The length of the hair might have become a problem if he did not tie it back. Baal was not wearing a shirt and Vorador could see the lean muscle that was stretched across his frame.
They eyed each other until the sound of someone coming distracted Vorador. He looked up and saw it was Izual.
"Hello, Vorador. I see you have found the shop well enough," he said nodding to the young man. Then to Baal he said, "Tal Rasha would like a word with you. Now," he added when he saw that the smith was not going to go anywhere unless told it was an immediate order. To this summoning, Baal gave his friend that quite clearly said, 'Not until this … fledgling is out of my space!' Sighing he grabbed Baal by the arm and dragged him out of the room. Before he left, Baal shot a look back at Vorador that just as clearly said, 'If anything is out of place when I get back, I'm going to incorporate your skull in my next project.' Then he was gone.
Vorador stayed looking at the door for some time before he sighed and started to set up the section that Baal had made for him.
TAL RASHA WAS waiting for them in his ridiculously placed quarters in the upper most reaches of the Citadel. He smiled and nodded to Izual and Baal as they stepped over the threshold. Izual nodded in reply and left.
"Amazing boy, that Izual is," Tal Rasha commented. "So young, so immature, and yet so mature at the same time. This war has changed him. This war. This war is why Janos' fledgling is in your workspace. This war needs to end. He will pave the way." He looked at Baal, who did not appear to be listening to a work that he had just said. Tal Rasha knew better. Baal listened to everything; the wind, the birds, his fellow Ancients, the humans, and, for some reason that no one seemed to have figured out how, time.
Baal watched as the tapestries fluttered in the air coming from the open window. Tal Rasha watched Baal. "What do the winds tell you, child?" Baal closed his eyes and breathed in. "What do you hear?" He moved his head ever so slightly to the side. Softly Tal Rasha asked again, "What do you see?"
Baal opened his eyes and walked slowly over to his Elder. Never glancing in his direction, he pointed out of the window to the grave yard that housed the fallen.
"Death?" Tal Rasha asked. "Do you see death?"
He never received an answer. Baal left the room then, leaving Tal Rasha to ponder what he had found out.
VORADOR HAD FINISHED setting up his workspace and had started heating the metals he would need. Small bits of each material he would use to make the instrument that his sire told him would end the war.
"They have been pushed back. Into another dimension. Pushed back and as good as gone and defeated, but we still need something to finish the job. Something to lock them away forever. Can you do this?"
All things considered, he thought about what Janos had said and he realized, no, he can not do this. Hope was failing the Ancients.
They say that hope is the most powerful thing in this world next to love, conviction, and mercy. Vorador thought that death should also be on that list, but it was not for whatever reason.
His thoughts were interrupted but the sound of ringing metal against metal. He looked up to see Baal. 'When did he get back?' he asked himself. It didn't seem to be significant; Baal just picked up a hammer and started where he left off.
Vorador looked down at his own projected; the metals had finished melding together. He would need to start folding them if he wanted them to mix properly. He picked up his tongs and lifted the soft medals to the anvil. Setting down the tongs, he picked up a wedge and hammer. He indented the matter in two places and folded them along the soft divide. Again he picked up the tongs and held the medal in place as he hammered it more or less flat. Then he shoved it back into the forge.
TAL RASHA WALKED down the steps to the courtyard in front of the Citadel. He breathed in the fresh air around him. Smiling, he started off in the direction of a chamber that rested far below his own rooms. The door was locked when he reached it; he frowned.
"Kashya!" he called. In next to no time, a young woman appeared at his side.
"Yes, Tal Rasha?" Kashya was tall and lean, as was nearly all the Ancients. She was wearing a white dress that had no sleeves and was cut very high up her thigh.
"Why is this door lock? It is to remain open to all."
She nodded and said, "We did not lock it, sire."
"…What?"
"As you said, it is to remain open, but it has been locked. We fear that He has left us for good." Tal Rasha looked on as Kashya spoke, not quite taking it all in. "Sire?"
"That can't be…" He gazed off into the nothingness of space. "He would not do that unless…" Fear came into his eyes. "The Hylden…"
"It can not be them; they have been pushed back, as good as gone."
"The curse… They had the same curse on them. This blood thirst. This…" Tal Rasha could not finish the words until his eyes came to focus on Kashya. "This immortality…"
"No," Kashya said flatly. "No. Tal Rasha, you don't know what you are talking about. Something has just distracted Him. He will return."
Tal Rasha shook his head. "Don't you see? We've… we've… We have been cast from the Wheel." He straightened. "I need hold a meeting. Find Janos and Izual. I want to see the three of you in my chambers at once." With that he turned and fled back to his rooms.
Kashya looked at the locked door to the Oracle's chamber. Despair overwhelmed her. But Tal Rasha had given her something to do and she was not about to ignore the command. She sighed and went off to find Izual and Janos Audron.