Page 26 of Chaos and Crowns

“He doesn’t have much hair to hold back though,” Odelle said, picturing Thad’s close-cropped hair, curled tightly to his head.

“He’s had many phases. In his earlier years, he loved having long braids. Said his hair could hold more gold beads that way.” Antony’s wistful smile laced his words with fondness. She enjoyed the image of him and his friends enjoying their youth, far more than she liked imagining him on a battlefield. It suited his delicate smiles better.

Odelle chuckled, positioning her bare legs towards the fire to warm. Despite learning horrifying truths about the Shadow and having vomited in the middle of the conversation, talking with Antony lessened some of the weight on her conscience. Even if Antony wasn’t too terribly fond of her, at least she wasn’t alone in the tundra. And she wasn’t entirely responsible for the plan imploding and a man’s death. Although, ending up stranded in the frigid wilderness was completely on her.

“You should get a little more sleep,” Antony advised after a few minutes of companionable silence. “Get some rest while we have warmth. Who knows how long of a trek we have ahead of us to find civilization again.”

Odelle nodded, lowering herself onto her side, curling around the fire to retain as much heat as she could without embers singeing her coat. As she let her body rest once more, she tried not to think about Antony gently stroking her hair away from her face. She failed.

11

Antony sweated profusely as he stoked the flames even hotter, melting the bronze ingot that would be his next creation. The only noise in the workshop was the roar of the fire and his own panting, the rest of the Smith’s having retired for the evening. Now it was well past sunset, but this was the only time Antony had to work, given that he spent his days embroiled in council meetings.

Today’s meeting had been as unproductive as ever, the table of people arguing in circles about what to do about the growing power of the Shadow. Antony remained mostly quiet during the meetings, not wanting to encourage a battle when he himself wouldn’t be the one fighting. He knew though, that the Commander favored a head-on battle. She had told him she believed that succumbing to fear and hiding in the Sanctuary would be playing into the Shadow’s hand. If it came to a vote, Antony knew he would support her and vote for an assault, despite his reservations. The Commander had always believed in him. He believed in her leadership abilities in return.

Now though, Antony pressed himself to produce as many weapons as he could before any battle could take place. If Antony was going to vote for the Warriors to fight, then he would put the best spears he could create in their hands. Tonight, however, he was making a sword.

Aediene approached him a week ago, asking him if he would make a sword for her husband. He had jumped at the opportunity, anxious to make something beyond the dozens of identical spears he had been turning out recently. Few people understood that a weapon with special meaning was often more powerful than the standard issue variety.

Xander’s sword would exist because of the love of his wife, and that alone would bring it Light. Beyond that, Antony could create this sword with the couple in mind, attuning it to them. Antony was fond of the young couple. Well, young in comparison to him, even though they had worked their way into the senior ranks of the Eteria. They had been trained by Ezra, having joined after the former training master, Bakhos, was corrupted and killed by the Shadow. While Ezra was just as big and burly, his gentler hand produced more compassionate fighters. Neither Xander or Aediene ever looked down on Antony for preferring to remain in his workshop, although that may have had something to do with Xander’s tendency to spend the majority of his time in the library.

Antony kept the couple in mind as he used tongs to pull the crucible of molten bronze from the fire. He envisioned them even as he let the Light pour through him, creating the outline of the Xiphos before him. The Light shaped into a mold as Antony formed the details of the sword he wanted to create in his mind: a balanced hilt, a perfectly symmetrical blade, and the requested inscription down the side.

Through the darkest night.

With that sentiment in his mind, he poured the bronze into the mold of pure Light to cast the sword. Setting the crucible aside, he concentrated on the mold, holding it perfectly steady in his mind as the molten metal began to solidify within. The most interior layer of Light melted into the bronze as planned, imbuing it with magical strength and solidifying it beyond the normal capacities of metal. This was why the Smiths preferred to work with bronze, a metal that could be cast instead of forged. The molds of pure Light gave them infinite control, and the process imbued more power than could be done when folding and tempering steel.

Even now that the metal had solidified within the mold, Antony kept pouring Light into the form. The longer the sword stayed in the casing of Light, the stronger it would be. Antony would not let anybody die because a weapon gave out on them. If Xander were to die on the battlefield, it would not be because his weapon failed him. Minutes morphed into hours, and still, Antony held onto the Light, sweat dripping down and stinging his eyes. At this rate, the sword would last thousands of years, perhaps even past the existence of the Eteria. Every time Antony moved to release the Light though, he pictured the sword shattering in Xander’s hand, and he pushed on just a little bit longer.

Antony didn’t realize he had lost the strength to stand until pain lanced through his knees from hitting the stone floor. As his vision started to blur, he finally released his grasp on the Light. The finished sword clattered to the floor even as Antony himself slumped forward. His cheek pressed against the ground, he could just see the deadly blade out of the corner of his eye, and he sighed in satisfaction.

Right before the darkness overtook Antony, he mused that his neck would be stiff when Elias found him here in the morning, just as he had every morning for the past week.

12

The moment Odelle closed her eyes, Antony shook her awake again. The fire burned down to embers before her suggested otherwise, though. Odelle squinted at the sky, trying to gauge the time of day, but with the sun refusing to fully crest the horizon, she couldn’t say. The permanent gray tinge to the landscape only deepened the feeling of exhaustion.

“We should get moving,” Antony said.

Odelle scrubbed the sleep from her eyes, cursing inwardly as she once again forgot about the eye makeup smeared across her face, and pushed herself to sit up. A groan escaped her lips as she twisted, trying to relieve some of the stiffness from her spine. Her joints cracked several times even as her muscles creaked in protest. She couldn’t tell whether her soreness stemmed from sleeping on the ground or tensing her muscles against the icy wind. It was probably both.

“Where are we getting moving to?” Odelle asked Antony as he passed her the now dry thermoplastic socks.

Antony jerked his gaze away from Odelle as she hiked up her dress to roll the fabric up her thigh. He cleared his throat.

“Well, anywhere that isn’t here sounds like a good place to start. We don’t have anything to help us get home, so anything we find is an advantage.”

“You make being stranded in the wilderness sound so positive.” Odelle snorted.

“Well, it can’t—”

“Don’t you dare say it can’t get any worse,” Odelle scolded as she pushed to her feet, shifting her weight from foot to foot to press any extra air out of her sockets. “You’ll summon a bear to maul us at that rate.”

“I was actually going to say that it can’t hurt to think positively, but alright.”

Antony kicked some snow over the ashes of the fire as Odelle poked her head out of their alcove. The cold wind didn’t smack in her in the face like it had before, raising her spirits a tad.

“Which way?” Odelle questioned as Antony stepped out of the rock beside her.