Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

Suri grunted. “Wouldn’t count on it.”

“It’s not just the dragons I’m worried about.” I began taking out the sheaves of wax rubbings we’d made at the tomb, laying them out along the table. “I want them, or at least their technology, to fight the Drachan if or when they break out of their cage. They were made specifically to fight Void creatures. How they do that, exactly, we don’t know, but every story, myth, and old wives’ tale we’ve read agrees with the historical accounts.”

“Hmm.” Istvan sucked on one of his teeth, then nodded. “Fair enough. But I remain skeptical. The one you found was able to be defeated by a single Starborn – you – and you didn’t even have Karalti with you to help.”

“Nocturne Lament was, in Lahati’s words, the ‘smallest and weakest’ of the Warsingers,” I said. “It was in bad shape. The only reason it was moving at all was because it was also a revenant. Each one of the Warsingers has an… uh… animating spirit in it. This one’s spirit had somehow managed to seize control of the artifact and was puppeteering it around, but it was dumb as shit and I was able to trick it into destroying itself. I can assure you that if Nocturne had been piloted by a human being while I was fighting it, I’d be so fucking dead right now. That thing was horrifying.”

“Istvan raises a good point, though.” Ebisa gestured with a hand. “We’ve had a chance to examine Nocturne Lament, and about eighty percent of it will have to be rebuilt from scratch if we were to salvage it. All Artifacts with moving parts experience entropy. If the remaining Warsingers are between two to five thousand years old, they are almost certainly both obsolete and too damaged to be used.”

“That depends on who made it and how well it was made. For example, Exhibit A.” I removed the Gauntlet of the Arch-Smith and the Hammer from my Inventory, and leaned over to hand them to Rin. “We didn’t take much from the tomb before resealing it, but we grabbed these. That glove is two thousand years old, and it works perfectly at four percent durability.”

Rin turned the gauntlet over in her hands, lips parted. “Oh look at this… the Gauntlet of the Arch-Smith, mrr mrr mrr… Oh my god. This is a legendary relic!?”

“Yeah. The hammer is pretty good, too.”

“Yes, it is, but this thing has TWENTY mana slots?! I can’t use it for nineteen more levels, but…” Rin’s eyes widened to the size of saucers as she eagerly slid it on. She, Istvan, and Ebisa all jumped as the hexagonal plates unlocked and clacked their way into place along her arm. Suri’s eyebrows shot up, and Karalti stopped chewing for a moment. “Wow! Hector, this thing is amazing! Look at that craftsmanship! It’s so simple, but to execute this so it can lock into place and form to someone’s limb while keeping that kind of mana capacity and flexibility and…”

“And it’s made of pure aurum.” Ebisa caught her by the wrist and pulled her arm over, scrutinizing it. When she found the button, she pushed it, and we all watched as it folded back down. “There might only be four or five aurum artifacts like this in the world, Hector.”

“Aurum being…?” Istvan motioned to the glove.

“Aurum is an extremely durable, incorruptible non-ferrous arcane superalloy with exceptionally low ductility and exceptionally high hardness,” Rin replied absent-mindedly. Her voice was quick, fussy and flat now, and she didn’t look up at Istvan as she studied the surface of it. “Its mana toxicity rating is fifteen-point-two, it has to be smelted at two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-four-degrees kelvin in a tungsten crucible and can only be worked with diamond-edged tools with a minimum enchantment of plus five...”

“So it’s very hard and very strong and magical enough that no normal human being wants anything to do with it.” Istvan watched on with amusement as Rin took out a small screwdriver from somewhere, and began to poke and pry at the gauntlet.

Rin nodded. “Yes, and the Warsinger painting Hector saw showed a gold-colored Warsinger, right? If the Warsingers were made of aurum, or even lambidium…?”

“Either metal would preserve for that length of time, yes, but that doesn’t mean all the Warsinger’s components would be made of superalloys capable of weathering five thousand years of attrition,” Ebisa rasped. “If so, aurum is more likely. I don’t know if there’s enough lambidium in the world to produce even one machine the size and complexity of the one we recovered.”

“Could it be rare because our ancestors dug it all up to make a bunch of Warsingers, maybe?” Suri drawled.

Istvan snerked.

“I need to take this to my workshop like, right away. Oh my god.” Rin flexed her hand and arm with a happy sound, bouncing on her seat. “It feels so natural! Like it’s part of my arm!”

Istvan’s expression turned wistful. “If only Vash could get an arm like that.”

Rin flushed blue, and shoved her hands into her lap with a rueful grimace. “Oh… sorry… I didn’t mean to flash it around like that…”

“No, no, journeywoman. I wasn’t criticizing you.” Istvan chuckled, and waved a hand. “Just the idle musings of a man who frets too much. You lose one partner, you worry about them all.”

“You… lost your partner?” Rin’s brows furrowed. “Like… your…?”

“Yes. My wife, my daughter, and our household all died when this city was taken by the Demon, along with many other people and creatures I cared about.” Istvan’s humor faded, and he turned his eyes up to the faded green banners that fluttered from the ceiling. “But that was another life. We need to focus on what we are here for: planning our next steps on the path to finding this Warsinger.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Suri pulled the big leather-bound book I’d borrowed for her and thumped it down on the table. “So, we’ve basically got a lead