Apostles of Doom

“Apparently there was this sword golem that revealed him, and that led to a massive battle in the palace foyer with meteors, quakes, fires, a djinni and all sorts of mayhem!” Duranor told her.

“How many were injured? Killed?” Trevin asked.

“Minor wounds, from what we’ve heard.” Elraith said.

Trevin shook her head in amazement. “When did this happen?”

“About sixteen days ago. We learned of it perhaps a week ago,” Duranor said.

“And Exador?” Trevin asked.

“Plotting his revenge, I should imagine,” Prince Ariel replied.

Trevin closed her eyes for a moment, trying to process and make sense of this information.

“Back to my point. The wizards in the Council States and all over the world summon demons all the time, and you do not go invading their land,” Duranor told Prince Ariel.

“Yes, but those demons have never formed regular armies to battle us,” Ariel said.

“Technically, it was orcs summoning D’Orc armies, I should think,” Duranor said. “How is that different than wizards in armies summoning demons? You had no business in their territory. They had not left their land; they had not invaded yours.”

“It was only a matter of time. This has all been prophesied,” Prince Ariel stated calmly.

“Prophesied?” Trevin asked. She was not aware of such a prophecy.

“Yes. About one hundred years after Orcus was slain in the fields of Etterdam, the orcs received a prophecy of his return, and sometime later, a prophet of Nét released a counter-prophecy that the alvar would rise to stop him,” Prince Ariel said.

Trevin closed her eyes again. “This would have been useful information to have had sooner.”

Ariel shrugged on the other side of the mirror. “You and I have not had a mirroring since you left the Grove. The D’Orcs happened after that.”

Trevin sighed. “Agreed. We need to communicate more frequently.”

“So. Will you represent the alvar in getting the hostages back?” Prince Ariel asked.

“Of course,” Trevin said. “We are not that far from where the battle took place.”

Smithy of Doom: Late Sixth Period

Vaselle wiped the sweat off his brow. He was going to need a more powerful cooling system. This part of Doom was considerably warmer that most parts. Molten lava and various metals would do that. He had, with Tamarin’s help, managed to convince Völund to let him set up shop in one of the — well, forging studios, he supposed you would call it, down in the Smithy of Doom.

The smithy was actually quite large, and apparently at some point Völund had had quite a number of smith apprentices working for him. There was the main smithy, and then a good number of studio or workshop smithies. Currently there were only three D’Orc smiths working for him in the main smithy, and Phaestus’ team had taken over the two largest studios; however, there had been a number of midsized and smaller studios available, and after considerable amounts of — uhm — begging, he and Tamarin had managed to get the Smith of Doom to agree to his using one.

The funny thing was that a small studio for a D’Orc was still larger than his entire shop in Freehold. That reminded him; he was going to need to get some tools from his shop tomorrow. In fact, perhaps he would need to buy a second set of tools. There was a lot of good stuff here, but it was generally D’Orc-sized.

He shook his head, smiling broadly in joy. If he had not already achieved his life’s most unimaginable dream of being the lowly servant of one of the most powerful forces in the multiverse, Lord Tommus, he would have said having a laboratory next door to Völund the Smith would have been an unrealistic dream come true. As a craftsman of magical artifacts and devices, who better to learn from than Völund the Smith?

Of course, having access to the heating fires of a safely contained active volcano, and a nearly infinite supply of precious metals and gemstones, were also major benefits. He was, quite literally, in heaven! He could not believe his amazingly great fortune. Best of all, he had a purpose, a mission; to craft devices for his master.