Chapter 37: The Iron Beast

The decanter hit the desk. Hard enough to slosh amber liquor over Roderick’s knuckles.

He ignored the sting. Lifted the glass. Swallowed half of it in one burn.

Marcus didn’t blink. The High Mage sat in the corner shadow of the study.

“A mercenary camp,” Roderick said. A rasp. “In the middle of the night. With one guard.”

“Elias is a bit more than a guard.”

“He’s thirteen.” Roderick slammed the glass down. The crack echoed off the stone walls. “My son. And you stood by while he walked into the dark.”

Marcus tilted his head. The hearth light caught the faint, glowing embers in his own eyes. “He survived. He conquered.” He brushed a speck of ash from his sleeve. “You’re shouting because he risked his life. Or maybe you’re avoiding the actual problem.”

Roderick scowled, rubbing his face. “He built a metal box. Secured our coal.”

“And his eyes are changing.”

Roderick froze.

“The hue. It’s subtle,” Marcus said, his tone deadpan. “I saw it. You saw it too. You’re just choosing to look at the floor.”

Silence.

The fire popped, scattering sparks against the iron grate.

“His core,” Roderick muttered. Barely a sound.

“Unsealed. Completely.” Marcus leaned forward, the shadow falling away from his face. “When a sealed core fractures, it bleeds mana. It’s violent. The boy didn’t fracture it. He bypassed the lock entirely. You felt the shift in the manor’s ambient aether weeks ago. You just drank to forget it.”

Roderick stared at his empty glass. A drop of liquor slowly slid down the inside. “The bloodline inheritance… it’ll tear him apart. It kills adults.”

“Normally. Yes.”

“He doesn’t even know what’s happening to his own body.”

“He knows enough to seek answers.” Marcus traced the leather spine of his own book with a calloused thumb. “The Codex Sanguinis. It’s no longer in the restricted archives.”

Roderick’s head snapped up.

“He took it. Two weeks ago.”

“The wards—”

“I dropped them.” Marcus met Roderick’s stare with absolute calm. “Faked sleep. Let him walk in, take the heaviest, most cursed text in our family’s history, and walk out.”

Roderick was out of his chair, hands flat on the desk. “Are you insane? The Codex drives readers mad just from the psychic pressure of the binding! It will burn his mind to ash.”

“It should have,” Marcus said softly.

A cold draft rattled the windowpanes.

“But it didn’t,” Marcus continued. “I checked his room yesterday. He hasn’t opened it. Probably can’t even see the text yet. But he keeps it hidden under his bed. Sleeps directly above it. No nightmares. No psychic bleeding.” Marcus paused, letting the weight of the words settle.

“The book is accepting him.”

Roderick slowly sank back into his chair. The wood groaned under his weight. He stared at the brass inkwell on his desk.

The ink was drying out.

“The book is accepting him,” Roderick repeated. The words tasted like copper.

“He is the candidate,” Marcus agreed. He stood up, smoothing his robes. “I’m going to check the foundry. Make sure he doesn’t blow himself up with whatever he’s building next.”

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Steam hissed. A sharp, high-pitched whistle.

A jet of white vapor shot from the riveted seam of the iron cylinder, cutting through the foundry’s gloom and scattering two apprentices.

Smith threw a heavy leather rag over the leak. Squeezed it tight with thick gloves.

The hiss turned into a wet sputter, then died as the pressure inside equalized with the room.

“It’s leaking,” Smith grunted. Soot stained his forehead. “Again.”

Arthur sat on an overturned bucket. His left arm throbbed against his ribs. The bandage was itchy with sweat and coal dust. He stared at the massive, ugly iron machine they’d spent the last ten hours hammering together.

A Savery pump. A glorified vacuum chamber. Fill it with steam. Cool the outside. The steam condenses, creates a vacuum, and sucks water up a pipe.

Simple thermodynamics.

Except medieval metallurgy sucked.

“We used lead for the gaskets,” Arthur muttered, rubbing his eyes with his good hand. “Pounded the rivets while they were white-hot.”

“Iron shrinks when it cools, my Lord.” Smith wiped his hands on his apron, leaving a streak of grease. “Not much. But enough. We can forge-weld swords. Armor. But a sealed box trying to hold back the air itself? It breathes. The joints will always have hairline cracks.”

Arthur stared at the wet puddle forming under the tank.

Smith was right. You can’t build a perfect pressure vessel without arc welding or rubber seals. The vacuum would bleed out through the rivets before it could lift a single drop of water from the lower mines.

He was trying to force a seventeenth-century solution onto thirteenth-century manufacturing.

It was failing.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Arthur chewed his lower lip.

If a bucket leaks, you fill it faster than it empties.

He looked down at his hands. Thought about the faint, barely-there thrum in his pathways.

“Smith,” Arthur stood up. His knees popped. “Drain the boiler.”

The blacksmith frowned. “We need to re-forge the seams. Add more lead—”

“We can’t afford to waste more time. The seams are fine. The cycle is just too slow.”

“Cycle?”

“We are waiting for a wood fire to boil the water,” Arthur said. He walked toward the machine, trailing a hand against the warm iron. “It builds pressure gradually. The steam escapes through the cracks before it reaches critical mass. But what if we don’t build it gradually?”

Master Smith crossed his massive arms. “Water boils when it boils, boy. You can’t yell at it to go faster.”

Arthur didn’t smile. He just stared at the iron belly of the boiler.

“I’m not going to yell at it.”

He didn’t need a perfect seal. He just needed violence. Flash-boiling.

If he pumped his own mana directly into the water, superheating it in a fraction of a second, the steam expansion would be explosive. The vacuum cycle would trigger before the air had time to leak.

He was going to use his own soul as a spark plug.

Arthur turned away from the machine. “Bolt the intake pipe. And get the cart.”

“But we haven’t fixed it, my Lord.”

“We’re fixing it at the drop,” Arthur ordered. His voice sounded hollow. Thin. “Load it up. We’re going to the mines.”

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Iron wheels ground against shale. A violent lurch.

The cart slid sideways on the icy incline, the massive boiler strapped to the wood groaning against the ropes.