Chapter 21 | Forge Elemental

Calid led them with the help of Shao Wen’s memories to the first of the Patriarch’s caches.

The forge complex sat in the hillside.

The entrance was a reinforced archway cut into limestone, wide enough for two people abreast, and the air that flowed out of it carried a temperature that made the surrounding forest reel back. The trees within twenty yards of the entrance were stunted, their bark cracked and darkened, their leaves curled at the edges in the permanent wince of vegetation that had spent years living next to something very, very hot.

Calid felt the fire elemental before he saw the entrance in the ambient Qi.

The fire elemental’s signature was unmistakable.

It was a dense and furious knot of energy that burned in his Qi sense the way a bonfire burned in peripheral vision. It was pushed against the formation arrays that Shao Wen’s memories identified as Patriarch-grade containment work, which meant they were excellent. It also meant they were also running on fumes and that the fire elemental was currently in the process of discovering that its cage had developed cracks and was exploring this development with enthusiasm.

“Everyone stays outside,” Calid said. “Minimum fifty yards from the entrance. Lin Mei, establish a perimeter. If the hillside starts glowing, move everyone back another hundred yards.”

“If the hillside starts glowing?” Lin Mei said.

The rest of the disciples matched her incredulous expression.

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

Lin Mei’s jaw did its wire-tight thing before she turned and began directing disciples without another moment of hesitation.

Calid moved toward the entrance, in the meanwhile, he placed a few matrices to cool the air and protect himself from the heat.

Then he entered the forge complex alone.

The interior was exactly what Shao Wen’s memories had described. It was a massive forges that had, regardless of the world they occupied, the energy they used, or the metaphysical principles they operated on, shared certain fundamental characteristics that all forges had.

They were hot.

Dark except where they were blindingly bright.

Smelled of metal, smoke, ash, and the acrid tang of materials being melted.

Calid surveyed the dark black stone and noticed the white lines of the containment formation.

It occupied the centre of the complex, a circle of inscribed stone dozens of feet across, ringed with formation flags that glowed a dull, angry red. Inside the circle, visible as a shimmer of heat distortion and the occasional tongue of flame that licked upward from the stone floor, the fire elemental seethed in its chains.

It was massive.

Calid had worked with fire elementals before, in his previous life and with his previous energy system. The Academy had maintained a small one for the Enchantment Department’s furnace, a creature roughly the size of a large dog that had been perfectly content with its arrangement because the Enchantment Department fed it high-grade mana crystals and let it sleep in a specially constructed hearth that was, by elemental standards, the equivalent of a luxury apartment.

This fire elemental was not the size of a large dog.

It was the size of a large room, and its contentment with its arrangement was approximately zero. It had no interest in discussing the matter through diplomatic channels was far more interested in expressing its displeasure through the medium of setting everything on fire.

It roared and made all the containment formations and flags scream with fire as it fought against its chains once it saw him.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Flexing and slamming itself against the limits of its mobility to reach him.

Calid gave it a wide berth and focused on the forge itself.

The forge’s output sat on racks along the walls. Weapons, mostly. Swords, spears, hammers, glaives, and a few items that Calid’s borrowed memories classified as speciality implements and his own assessment classified as things designed to make other things stop being alive.

All of them carried the faint white-flame Qi signature of the sect’s elite equipment, and all of them were very valuable.

He collected what he could carry and what his disciples could use–

Calid blinked as he looked deep into the forge that had mostly died and was waiting for someone to ignite it.

Sitting there deep within its belly were two shiny items that glistened.

Calid moved closer and used his Qi to guide the two objects, rings he discovered, to him. They floated in the ambient fire Qi until they made it and landed upon his palm.

Two plain bands of dark metal that looked unremarkable and were, by any reasonable assessment, among the most valuable objects in the entire complex. Spatial rings, according to Shao Wen’s memories, were storage artifacts that contained compressed pocket dimensions.

You put things in them and the things stayed in them.

The principle was simple.

The execution was not, requiring materials and craftsmanship that placed spatial rings firmly in the category of objects that sects fought wars over and that he best hide because they were not strong enough to fight others yet, much less other patriarchs in the Golden Core realm like their own.