Gwendolyn
She had never heard a Crafter utter a threat before.
She had heard stories of them. They were some of the best, and some of the worst childhood stories. At once used to inspire awe as they devastated fields of Gloamtaken and brought down Golems, and fear as legends of their rage and madness left buildings in ruin and entire communities in ash. Every story, though, agreed that the Crafters were the greatest power in the City.
But to hear one threaten someone, even another Crafter, nearly made Gwendolyn's heart stop. Her hand, of its own accord, rested on the handle of her knife.
"Easy," someone whispered on her right, and a hand rested on top of her own. She turned her eyes to see a weathered man with a cross-stitch of burns on the side of his face. He met her gaze, and shook his head. "This is just blowing smoke for a Crafter. Nothing to be afraid of."
Gwendolyn nodded, and let her fingers pull away from the handle of her knife. "You're a shadow?"
"Yep. I've seen their rage before. And believe me, kid, when I say that this isn't it," the shadow said, and he stepped away and followed the rest of the procession.
But before the shadow slipped away, he glanced back and gave her a small nod. "Nice hat."
Gwendolyn was at a loss at how to take that.
She followed silently as the apprentice continued to take notes by burning words onto the paper, occasionally stopping to blow on the page and brush away a few flecks of ash. Beside him, the Crafter with the thick glasses now dangling from her coat pocket was smiling as she clasped her hands behind her back. Beside the Crafter, Valen was trying his best to be polite and engage in the conversation, but that beautiful fool of hers was entirely too frightened of the Crafter to do more than nod politely and agree with whatever the woman was saying.
It occurred to Gwendolyn that the Crafter's interest in Valen might be more than the passing fancy, or wasting time before her task. For anyone afraid of what they had to face, the presence of someone like Corporal Redgrave could feel like a warm coat in the middle of a cold night.
She would know. The night would have swallowed her without him.
"Hey, shadow," Gwnedolyn said, as she jogged up to the shadow who had seen her panic and stopped it without making a scene. Quietly, she asked "when should I be worried about them?"
The shadow gave her a careful glance, and frowned. "What is it? Afraid Crafter Polden is looking at the dashing swordsman with a few too many sighs and batted eyelashes?"
Gwendolyn scowled when she saw the shadow's self-satisfied smile. "Don't be a small-minded prick. These Crafters are about to fight a Golem. I don't need to be in Oversight to know that's going to strain them to their limits. I'm just wondering when it looks like they've put themselves past those limits."
"It will look like someone pushed you into the Spire," the shadow replied.
"Don't be glib. I'm asking a serious question."
"And I'm giving you a serious answer. If you wait to see a Crafter's madness, there'll be nothing left of you but smoke," the shadow said. He sighed, rolled his shoulders beneath his coat, and shook his head. "Part of the reason we're out here like this, is to minimize the collateral damage of their failure. Or their success."
"Spit and simmering ash," Gwendolyn muttered. "That isn't comforting."
"I couldn't agree more," the shadow replied.
"So you and the other shadows here are partnered up with these Crafters, so that you'll know if they start to lose themselves," Gwnedolyn nodded to herself. "I expect you're here because you know these Crafters fairly well, so you'll see the signs before most people would."
The shadow hesitated, cringed, and turned away. All things Gwendolyn was expecting, and dreading.
"So none of you actually know the Crafters you're expected to keep from killing us?" Gwendolyn asked. "That seems cruel."
"I'm not happy about it either," the shadow said.
"Cruel for them," Gwendolyn said, pointing at the Crafter still conversing with Valen. "I understand the need for your role, but to not even know someone well enough to tell when they've lost some part of who they were? When you can't even tell their madness apart from a frayed temper because they're tired or angry or grieving? And your Bureau is okay with this?"
The shadow surprised her. Her accusations were meant to sting, but the shadow only smiled sadly and nodded. "You know, you'd make a good shadow. You'd fit in Oversight like a broken foot into a too-small boot, but you'd be good at the job."
The shadow turned, and held out his hand. "Mackaroy O'Fallow."
"Gwendolyn Aranhall."
The next few moments passed in silence, but there was little opportunity for that quiet to become awkward. Up ahead, the older Crafter Gwendolyn presumed to be the leader reached Mildred and Hendricks.
"This is the spot," Valen called out, detaching himself from the conversation he was in, and moving ahead to join Mildred.
"Good," the lead Crafter said, and he pointed to the spot he was standing at. "Then let's get prepped. Drower, start at the end. Leave each of us about twenty yards of space to work. Keep your heat haze up. Prioritize concussive force."
"Well, that's my cue," Mackaroy said, and he started to follow the Crafter. "And who knows. This might even go well."
Three Crafters marched past him in turn. As Crafter Saval passed, he followed her a little ways down the wall, at which point he chose a spot and stopped. "We'll wait for the Golem to get within a half-mile. Until then, keep your heat hazes up, and be ready for anything."
"Burn brightly!" One of the other Crafters called out, and the others took up the call.
It was the creed of their guild, and words then City had survived by for centuries. But hearing them from these coddled, overconfident aristocrats as they seemed to refuse to take the danger seriously, left Gwendolyn with a cold dread.
That fear was mollified, somewhat, by the screams of the wind as the Crafters applied their will. A gale of scalding hot wind whipped by Gwendolyn, and she coughed and closed her eyes to try and shield herself from the now frighteningly hot air. An orchestra of cracks and blasts rattled her head and made her teeth chatter. She put a hand on her head, and stepped away.
But as quickly as it started, it stopped. The heat vanished, the orchestra of pummelled air was silent, the air almost unnaturally still. More than still, as if the air were being held in place.
Gwendolyn opened her eyes to the sudden and profound peace that now surrounded her. The air still carried waves of bright red light, and explosions pounded the dust off the walls and tossed it about. But she saw it as if she were watching it through a glass window, somehow severed from the cacophony of violence and fire.
Someone stepped up beside her, and rested a hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?" someone asked. Gwendolyn recognized him, the apprentice who had accompanied the Crafters. Vincent, she recalled.
"I'm okay," Gwendolyn said, straightening up and tilting her hat back. "I just wasn't expecting that."
"Hardly anyone ever does," Vincent said, and he pointed behind him, where the other soldiers were gathered. "If you'd wait over there with the others, I'd like to contract my heat haze, and keep us out of the way as much as possible."
"Right, that makes sense," Gwendolyn agreed, and she walked in the direction Vincent was pointing, towards where Valen and the others were now grouped. Valen waved once, weakly, barely attempting to draw his attention from what was happening behind her.
And she understood why, once she turned. The air around the Crafters was now a cacophony of colour, as fire and heat warped the air. Even the steps of the oncoming Golem were drowned out as the wall rumbled.
"Burn me," Gwendolyn whispered, as the air crackled, and fire whirled between the domes of what Vincent had described as their 'heat haze'.
The Golem's advance had crossed the miles of field with surprising speed, and the realization that it was now barely a mile from the wall seemed to have occurred to the Crafters as well. One of them raised his arm and pointed to it.
Light exploded in front of the Golem, bright enough to force Gwendolyn to tilt her hat over her eyes, and she felt the blast as it shook the wall beneath her feet. The explosive force threw back the Gloam, and what wasn't immediately devoured in the flame shied away for nearly a mile. The trees were knocked to the ground, the crops still standing in the fields were flattened, and the steam sucked from the soil was so thick it could rival the invading mists.
But at the heart of that devastation, the Golem still stood, as if that cataclysm of a blast were no more danger to it than the rain.
The Golem took another step as fire bloomed all around it. Explosions chorused in a cacophonous mass of deafening fury and searing light, bright and bombastic. What was left of the orchards around the Golem's feet was torn into ash by cascading waves of fire, crops transformed into smoke, and the ground crumbled and cracked as the water in the soil turned to steam and baked the dirt.
Gwendolyn witnessed all of this as if she were watching it through a window. The explosions only gently rattled the wall she stood on, and the swirling winds crashed impotently against the haze of hot air that enveloped them as firmly as the stone she stood on.
She turned her eyes away from the exploding light to look at their protector. An apprentice, astonishingly young, the shadow of stubble barely extending beyond his lips and chin. Almost too young for the hard, focused expression on his face as he watched the other Crafters rend the air as they battered at the Golem. Gwendolyn noticed, after considering his expression for a moment, that Vincent looked troubled.
Nervous. But not about his own safety. There was no look of strain, or surprise, on his face. And the haze of heat surrounded them seemed to move even less than the walls beneath the explosive forces shaking the earth.
"You look like something's worrying you," Gwendolyn said to Vincent, stepping up next to him and holding her hat titled low over her face. "Is it the Crafters?"
"No," Vincent replied without looking at her. There was something profoundly confident in his statement, the simplicity of his answer. As if he witnessed the astonishing power, and felt himself equal to it.
Which, to Gwendolyn, made a great deal of sense. At least one of those Crafters felt he was worthy of being here.
"It doesn't even stumble," Vincent continued. "What you just saw could have punched a hole in the wall, or levelled one of the towers of High Central."
"Did you expect it to fall?" Gwendolyn asked.
"Not fall, no," Vincent conceded. "But flinch? Stumble? Take a shorter step or lean a little like you or I would do in a windstorm? Under that power, I thought I might see something."
"How did they stop the Golems before?"
"No one knows. No Crafter that has ever fought a Golem has lived to share the story."
The cacophony of explosions was interrupted in steady intervals by the single droning note of the Golem's next footstep. Each note brought it closer, and signalled its uninterrupted march.
Gwendolyn looked to the Crafters, whose assault continued without faltering. The one talking to Valen now had her hands in her pockets, her hair shimmering with orange light. The haze of light around her whirled and shimmered, and her expression was hard and focused.
Near her, the leader of this Crafter team was the only one among them to look nervous. His eyes were wide, and each thunderous footstep of the Golem made him shudder.
But just past him was a sight that made Gwendolyn's heart stutter. The woman just one spot down the wall from Breckan Howel was smiling, wide-eyed, and her hair low looked more like a cascade of fire waving in the open air behind her. Her heat haze crackled, and strangle lights bloomed around her.
Worse still, Gwendolyn could hear, despite the cacophony of explosions and raging fire, a noise just beginning to prick at the edges of her hearing. A short, brief laugh, that perfectly marched the crafter's open mouth as her smile grew manic and menacing.