Chapter 17

Melody Arrangement

"I thought I'd never be more tired in my life than after North Mettler," Sheraine said as she dried her face with the cloth I'd provided. "If I could channel like normal, those things wouldn't have been much of a problem. They only had numbers."

Gemiad had slumped against the nearest wall, her chin on her chest as she struggled to keep her eyes open. "Where is that? North Mettler?"

"Hmm?" Sheraine glanced down at her, then they slid past Gemiad and stared at the floor. I was about to speak up and steer the conversation away from what had to be a memory of her Warder when the Aes Sedai broke the silence.

"North Mettler was a small town quite close to the Blight. Hadn't always been like that, but the Blight creeps further south every year. The townspeople prided themselves on surviving whatever the Shadow threw at them. Twisted animals, Trolloc raids, even a Worm once supposedly."

I considered the fact she spoke in the past tense. "But they only had to get unlucky once."

Sheraine grimaced and nodded. "We … Me and Toraul were less than a day away when we came across their messenger. A full warband had erupted from the Blight, Draghkar had killed most of their night watch and nearly let the Trollocks seize the town in one charge."

She handed me the cloth, but I just waved my hand and let it dissolve back into what it had been before. A single long, faded blue thread woven together with a lot of imagination and stitched with intent.

Sheraine dropped the string. "Toraul cautioned me, as always. And I … had received the stole less than a year beforehand. We came to their aid. The town's citadel hadn't fallen, Kandor's banner still flew from its roof. We used the cover of night to penetrate the lines and join the defenders. For six days and nights we held, I barely got any sleep as they kept probing our defenses. At the end, I don't know who was closer to breaking. We, or the Trollocks. But it was our side that received relief as King Diryk charged their camp right as the morning sun crested above the mountains. By that time, however, only one in five was still alive and even the citadel was a ruin."

She shook her head. "We didn't lose the battle, but King Diryk died in the pursuit. A stupid, pointless death after victory had already been secured. Not that it was enough to save North Mettler."

"I don't know enough to be sure," I said. "But was that pursuit pointless? Or was he making sure the Trollocks wouldn't come back any time soon?"

Sheraine shrugged. "That part of the Blight was quiet for a couple of years afterward. But that didn't save the town."

"But some of the townspeople were saved," Gemiad said. She groaned as she pulled herself up using a bulge in the wall. "One in five, even in a small town that's a thousand people."

Sheraine's expression betrayed nothing, then a small smile broke it. "It was a long time ago and I've long since come to peace with it, ch- Gemiad. I did what I could and without me, without the king, far more would have died I'm sure. And you did well yourself. There are Accepted that can struggle to join a circle and they don't have to do it during battle."

"I think our rest's over," I said. There was a shallow bend in the hallway, not just to the right but down as well. It meant I could only see a kilometer or two before the walls blocked my sight. So I saw them right away when five constructs looking very much like Fifth Note rocketed towards us. "Not monsters, but they're flying fast."

"I can hear them," Sheraine said. And so could I, a fluttering whine that rapidly grew louder until they were almost upon us. The constructs decelerated, the noise dying away as they did until they hovered before us in a wavy line.

Lights flashed between Fifth Note and the other constructs, so fast I couldn't follow. I only got an impression that Fifth Note did most of the talking. About us as well.

One of the new arrivals turned its head towards us. "Central Harmony requires your presence. We will transport you to them now. Do not resist."

"We'll require more of an explanation than that," Sheraine said.

All of the constructs lifted their arms up. "What you require is irrelevant. Central Harmony requires your presence."

When Sheraine went to speak again, I jumped in. "We'll come along, no problem." I quickly turned to the Aes Sedai. "Arguing won't work, you're not dealing with people, these things don't have free will."

"What?"

The constructs, however, didn't wait politely for us to finish our discussion and swooped in. Three of them picked us up and the entire group turned as one and began flying back the way they'd come. I let them pick me up, I wanted to speak to this Central Harmony myself. Hopefully it could provide more answers than Fifth Note.

The whine returned as we quickly accelerated, but something pushed much of the air out of the way. It did little muffle the roar of the wind as we raced through the hallway at what had to be at least a hundred kilometers an hour if not more.

Sheraine shouted something, but the wind just snatched the words away. I shook my head and motioned with my hand to remain calm. I didn't think we were in any immediate danger. Well, no more than before we'd passed through that last hatch.

Speaking of hatches, another one came up fast, but it slid out of the way quick enough that the constructs didn't even need to slow down. We actually passed multiple hatches in quick succession, each one sliding away with the smoothness of well-maintained mechanisms.

Another hatch slid away and suddenly we were in a fairly well illuminated caverness hall, big enough that the entire inner city of Caemlyn could fit inside. Every surface was covered in machinery, conveyors, and what looked like ritual sites. It wasn't just the floor, but the walls and ceiling as well, as if gravity was whatever the people that built this place needed it to be.

A factory, I was looking at an enormous factory complex used to build … something. No, many kinds of things. The more I looked, the more I understood. They'd built more than just constructs like Fifth Note here or ordinary weapons. This was a facility to build Godwalkers, even Artifacts like the Horn. A true forge to challenge Heaven with.

We sailed through the air, then turned sharply upward towards a hatch in what had been the ceiling from my perspective. But that perspective flipped as we neared the hatch and gravity pulled us up, or should I say, towards the new down. Trailing us, Fifth Note had to be assisted by one of the other constructs.

We were slowing down now, passing through another two hallways before we reached a triple set of hatches. They were thicker than any I'd seen so far, with little room between the three, and these opened one by one, the one behind us closing before the one in front of us would open.

After the third hatch, we finally reached Central Harmony.

This room was large, but in line with the ones we'd seen before and much of the space was taken up by a cloud of slowly spinning crystals floating in the air and dancing around the central axis of the circular room.

The constructs dropped us off and took up a staggered line several meters behind us. Sheraine and Gemiad looked at the crystal constellation for a moment, then around, before turning back to the constructs. "Well, we are here. Where is your leader?"

"We're looking at them," I said, gesturing to the center of the room. My new Gift was picking up a few things, but more than the constructs, this thing relied on advanced technology rather than theotechnology. There was overlap, of course, but they made use of different aspects of Creation.

"Indeed," the crystals sang. Multiple voices speaking as one, lights flashing from one crystal to another. "We are Central Harmony. And we are in need of your assistance, Wordbound."

"By the Light, what is that?" Sheraine asked.

"An artificial intelligence," I said, but that earned me a puzzled frown. "A manufactured mind," I tried.

Gemiad blinked. "You can make a mind?"

"I'm more puzzled by the idea you can be intelligent and somehow not have a soul," Sheraine said.

"Our creators once thought they were linked," Central Harmony said. "That, if they could create a mind with enough intelligence, one that surpassed some arbitrary boundary of intricacy, that a soul would emerge like a tree from a seed. Our kind was the culmination of that thinking, but it proved in error."

It certainly was a complicated machine, if you could even still call something that was more art than engineering that. We weren't really looking at one mind, but over a hundred of them, synced together to form something even more unified than a hive mind without losing those multiple perspectives. It kind of reminded me of how the geth were described.

The crystals shifted their formation, the lights bouncing around taking on a reddish hue. "This diversion is at an end. Wordbound, we wish to hire your services."

"I thought you might want something from us," I said.

"This facility is used to study enemies, both their soldiers and their weapons, to learn of their weaknesses and create better weapons for our side. For this reason, we keep highly dangerous artifacts and weapons in safe storage."

"You lost containment," I said with a sigh. It certainly fit what I saw.

"Incorrect."

My head snapped up. "What?"

"Your statement implies an accident, an event caused by chance or the passage of time. This was not the case. This facility was in an acceptable condition, but remained dormant as we awaited the return of the creators. Unfortunately, a group with no clear affiliation infiltrated us and believed the most secure vaults would hold valuable treasure, rather than the most dangerous of materials recovered from our creators' enemies. We could not act fast enough to prevent disaster."

It sounded like raiders or maybe even adventurers of some kind had thought they'd found the biggest payday of theirs lives. And instead unleashed one of the horrors from the Last War. "What, exactly, was stored in your vault?"

"A Class Crimson Major Artifact recovered from a Tikkat Herald. The Artifact allows the user to fleshsculpt both their own body as well as those around them."

I blinked. "That shouldn't have been that dangerous to you. Your constructs are made of crystal and metal." Inorganic, in other words.

"Correct. However, the continued operation of this facility requires a minimum amount of constructs. Our stocks had run low while we waited for the Creators to return from other incursions, what we could spare had been lost trying to prevent the intruders from gaining access to the vault. If we lose any more, this facility will become unmanageable and we will have to destroy it to prevent it from falling into enemy hands."

"That is regrettable," Sheraine said. "But we have our own concerns and no desire to die here for a cause not our own. If you can do us the courtesy of showing us the way out, it would be appreciated."

Central Harmony remained silent for several moments. "Inadvisable. This facility is located within Uncreated Night. It is the reason why the intruders could enter undetected as prolonged observation of Uncreated Night was proven to be … dangerous."

Sheraine stared at Central Harmony with narrowed eyes, then glanced at me for an explanation. "Uncreated Night is the chaos outside of Creation. A place where nothing you consider real exists. No light, no air, no up or down. And there's things that exist there that hate everything. I should be able to survive the place for a few minutes, but time doesn't exist there either."

"A simple, but not entirely incorrect description," Central Harmony said. "This is what we offer you, Wordbound. Destroy the intruders and secure the Artifact, in return we will mark you and your servants as allies of the Concert of Blossoms and Moonshine. This gives you free access to public areas of this facility. We will also reveal the location of the vehicle the intruders used which you could use to leave. Do we have a bargain?"

Something just occurred to me. I was being given a quest. There was a task and there was a reward, with Central Harmony as the quest giver. And like any heavy-handed DM, Central Harmony wasn't going to let us say no to this quest. They had just informed us we were stuck here, the only means to leave hidden somewhere in this gigantic, labyrinthine complex.

And if they could declare our presence authorized, they could also decide we were intruders after all. The constructs behind me had full power, unlike Fifth Note. And there were a lot of suspicious hidden hatches around. Perfect to hide hidden turrets or other defenses.

"We do," I said. It earned me looks from both women, but I shook my head. Central Harmony was no simple mind, it could glean far too much from our conversation. "But we'll need all the information you have on your intruders as well as a guide to navigate this place. And a place to rest," I added after a moment. I didn't want to reveal my limits, not here, not to this Central Harmony. But going into what probably was the most dangerous fight of my live so far on fumes could get more than just me killed.

"But of course," Central Harmony said, once more shifting into a new configuration and the lights slowed down, turning green. "There are limited facilities available here for recuperation, but enough to accommodate a small party such as yours. Before you are escorted there, however, we will brief you you." A soft song began to fill the air and the air between us and Central Harmony warbled before turning into a floating image. It kind of looked familiar, sort of like the Atomium, except the struts weren't straight and it was floating in an inky void.

"Behold, the Midnight Forge."

VVVV

Sheraine frowned as she scrutinized while we walked through a maintenance passage hidden above the main corridor. Even in here there were discolored stains on the metal, like a moss or fungus growing on the bare metal. "Are you certain you are well?"

"Well enough," I said. "Got a bit of a frog in my throat."

"You have a what?"

"Ah, just an expression. Means my throat's a little raw, like there's a lump I can't swallow away." I had woken up feeling a little under the weather, like I was coming down with the flu. Unfortunately, none of my Words protected me against something as mundane as that. Probably a drawback of using such a perfect disguise, it even fooled a virus into infecting me.

"What little talent for Healing I have is more suited to dealing with injuries rather than sickness," Sheraine said. "Can you continue or should we head back?"

"I don't want to rely on Central Harmony's hospitality any more than necessary," I said as we passed over an overgrown corridor visible through a honeycombed grating. Two of those face-snake monsters slipped through a forest of flesh.

"We are approaching the first section that may be occupied by the target," Fifth Note said. We needed it to not only navigate the facility, but also to open every door. Central Harmony had claimed it could not give us those permissions. Probably even true, in the sense that whatever instructions it operated under limited what it could do.

Sheraine grimaced. "I would have liked to help you more, but the Three Oaths prevent me from simply ambushing someone not aligned with the Dark One. All I can offer is a shield, however strong that is in this place."

"And I'll remind you again that you're not bound by the Oath Rod right now," I said. We'd had this argument already when I revealed my plan. It was fairly simple, just use overwhelming force the moment we found the bearer of the Artifact.

Central Harmony had offered some more information on it, and coupled with the horrors I'd already seen, there was really only one course of action. Kill them before they have a chance to use the Artifact.

"An Aes Sedai is defined by those Oaths, Ron Shen. Even if I'm not bound by them, I did swear those oaths and I will act accordingly. Are you certain that they can't be reasoned with? They are as trapped as us here. Would they not want to go home as well?"

I shook my head. "Artifacts weren't meant to be wielded by mortals. It's not immediate, but a form of insanity is inevitable unless the Artifact has been specifically made to shield a mortal's mind. The nature of the mania is determined by the Artifact. In this case, an overpowering urge to change."

"What if we disarm them?" Gemiad asked. "Between your strength and our use of the One Power, we should be able to just separate this person from this thing."

I shook my head. "No. To use an Artifact you must tie it to your soul. Physical separation will do nothing. I might be able to sever that link, but they could fight that." Tied as they were to a major Artifact, they would count as a worthy foe.

The hatches in here functioned more like valves, pivoting on an off-center axle, and it slid shut again behind us. Another minute's walk and we crouched as we peered through another finely meshed grate.

I blinked, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. A few orbs of iridescent light, moving more like a liquid as it spun and contorted, strobed the large room like disco balls. The light spilled through the grate and drowned out whatever other illumination the room had.

There were … people down there, though none looked very human. One had four arms, another a tentacle-like tail with a bony hand, and a third had horns and was easily three meters tall and just as broad in the shoulders. Those were just some examples.

All of them were screaming and hollering as two of them tore into each other in the center where a makeshift arena had been created by tearing up the cushioned lounge chairs and benches that had once occupied the room.

One combatant's hand ended in very long, sharp claws, they tore through flesh and bone like butter. Both that of her opponent and herself. Her hair writhed like live snakes, the ends actually snapping at the air.

The other fighter looked insect-like, glossy brown plates covered it from head to toe as more and more of its body was revealed as the threadbare remains of their clothing were shredded. Its hands formed spiked maces which they swung with wild abandon.

Both injured the other, both were healing those injuries as I watched.

"Time to end this," Sheraine snarled. "We can burn them all like this."

My head jerked in her direction as I smelled the flowers of saidar. "What about your oaths?"

She bared her teeth at me. "Oh, now you care about them? What? Do you think I lack the strength?"

"We need to kill those monsters now," Gemiad agreed from behind, too loudly. "Kill them!"

Sheraine turned her attention to the people below. "Yes, kill them! Quick, link with me."

"What? And give you my power? No, just give me control and I'll do it." Gemiad laid a hand on my shoulder as she tried to push her way past me. "You'll falter when it comes to it. I won't!"

Something was wrong, very wrong. "Don't shout, you fool girl. You'll give us away," Sheraine hissed. They were both baring their teeth, their eyes wide as the light from the room reflected in them.

I placed myself between them and pushed them apart. "What has gotten into you two?"

"Keep your hands off me," Sheraine said, far too loud.

I faced her. "Not when you're about to come to blows. Take a deep breath and-" Gemiad just snarled and a moment later I felt something sharp and hard bounce off the tough scales on my back.

I spun around and still couldn't quite believe it even when I saw the knife in Gemiad's hand. Something was clearly affecting them, they were acting like, well, like the people down in the room.

My first instinct was to just miracle it away, free them of the effect. But I could only do one at a time and it would take two Effort. Taking out the root cause would be easier, and hopefully disorient the people down below as well.

I glanced over my shoulder, studying the room. Something about those liquid light orbs drew my attention. They weren't just dancing, they were vibrating. "Stop telling me what to do!" A thunderclap right next to my ear and I found myself flying through the fine grating and plummeting to the ground. Above, Sheraine stood with a single arm outstretched and breathing heavily.

I landed on my feet, of course, but my sudden appearance drew the attention of a few people in the room. Only a few, though, the rest too absorbed in the two combatants tearing into each other to even look at what that noise was.

Their eyes gleamed as they caught sight of me. They roared … something. Might be a word, though not in a language I understood, and charged me. But it was the shout above me that had me worried. "You traitor," Gemiad screamed. "Can't trust and Aes Sedai!"

If Sheraine had no issue using the One Power as a weapon right now, I only had seconds to stop her from killing Gemiad. She just didn't have the training necessary to stop Sheraine, not yet. Ignoring the three coming right for me, I looked up and examined the orb.

At last, I found what had been bothering me. Those things were flooding the room with more than light, there was a sound as well. Couldn't quite hear it, it wasn't meant to be heard. These orbs, they were meant to induce a passion in the occupants. They were literal mood lighting, and they were malfunctioning.

Rather than instilling a touch of passion, to lubricate the socializing, they were flooding everybody with mindless wrath. I just hadn't noticed because I was immune to such things. But my friends weren't.

Time was slipping by, nearly out. Only seconds before Sheraine did something she would regret later. Seconds before the transformed people howling with mindless rage were upon me. And those orbs were scattered across the vast chamber that would have handled thousands comfortably once. Dragon's breath couldn't cover that wide an area.

Destruction wasn't the answer, creation, or the next best thing, was.

Entropy, I deny thee!

The Gift formed and settled in my soul even as I pushed my Effort out into the world.

Return to original form and function.

The orbs stilled, their light flickered as the harsh spikes and frantic writhing liquids settled into a smooth surface. As if their strings had been cut, most of the monstrous humans in the room faltered if they could stop themselves from collapsing entirely. They clutched their heads, moaning and retching.

But one was too close, and half a ton of muscle and bone collided with me. We went down in a tumble, their arms and their flat, squarish fingers covered in keratin vainly tried to gain purchase on me.

They were at least twice my size while I was in this shape, but that only made it easier to bring a foot between us and push them off. The vaguely ram-inspired human rolled away and continued to grab the empty air.

Had he even noticed I'd pushed him away, or hadn't he noticed that he'd reached me in the first place? I shook my head, I had other things to worry about. My wings snapped out and I launched myself back up to the maintenance corridor.