“Yours, maybe. Not his.”
“But it’s not…” She trailed off, thinking. Limitless power… Could that have anything to do with the magic the ghostsmiths dug so deep for? Julian said new undead continued to rise as revenants. Did that mean whatever magic they found emanated from the Breach? Could it have touched Locke somehow? Changed him? But no one had ever told her anything like that… Of course, her father never told her anything, full stop. It was Odile who had told Wren the most about the Uprising, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about Locke, though she did mention something dark and evil living there…
But if it was true, if her uncle Locke was to blame for… for this… Wren suddenly understood why her father never wanted to discuss it. Why they had chosen to paint him a hero rather than tell the truth.
All she could see was death. But even that wasn’t true. This was worse than death. This was not-death. This was eternal damnation.
Julian wandered toward the edges of the battlefield, staring intently at the iron-armored corpses there, as if he wanted to go near but feared the haze of undead swirling about.
Wren took her sword and swiped it carefully through the mist. It swirled, parted… but there was no reaction.
“They won’t attack,” she said softly, coming up behind him. “They can’t. They’re too… disconnected from their bodies, from their lives. They just… are.”
He glanced her way, then knelt over the nearest body.
It wore iron armor, like most of them did, its condition pristine despite the years and elements that had attempted to weather it.
Given Julian’s reaction to Wren wanting to loot the corpses of the bandits, she was unsurprised that he made no move to take anything.
But what had he said? That since the Breach, they couldn’t afford to waste iron on anything but weapons and armor? It made sense given that they’d had to close the mines and were forbidden from reopening them.
And yet here was a field of it, just waiting to be taken and reused…
He glanced up, and somehow he seemed to know what she was thinking.
“Once an ironsmith wears their armor in battle, it’s considered ‘blooded,’ and a bond forms between the smith and the armor. They say it strengthens the magic, and the more battles fought, the stronger that bond. It’s familiarity, basically—the cornerstone of all smith magic.”
Wren nodded. The more time a smith spent with their material, the stronger their power became. Both specifically—as in the case of personal armor and weapons like Julian was describing—and generally, with years of training encouraging magical talent to grow over time.
In fact, the very first smiths in existence developed their abilities based on where they lived. The first woodsmiths had lived in the forested regions to the north, the first stonesmiths, in the western highlands and rocky shores. All the metalsmiths found themselves conveniently living near large deposits of iron or veins of gold, and the first bonesmith had been one in a long line of gravediggers, toiling in the dirt. The first ghostsmith had apparently owned a cemetery.
“But it’s more than that,” Julian continued, frowning as he struggled to find the words. “It represents struggle, I think. Like, nothing good should come easy, and power should be earned.”
Wren tilted her head, considering. She liked the idea. That a person was rewarded for their hard work, even if magic—like power—was something some people were born with.
“When an ironsmith dies,” Julian continued, getting to his feet, “they are buried with their armor. Weapons can be repurposed, especially in families. The bonds can pass through bloodlines to create powerful magical connections. But armor? It’s made especially for the wearer. It’s… personal.”
“I suppose this is why you didn’t appreciate my corpse-looting before?” Wren asked, feeling a twinge of shame.
“No,” he said hastily, apparently wanting to make her feel better for some reason. “It was… You were just being pragmatic.”
“I think, sometimes, it’s hard for me to see bones and bodies as sacred. They’re a part of my everyday life.”
Peering out across the field, she spotted several bodies in Dominion colors, too, their steel rusted red and damaged. Whoever had done this had indeed attacked both sides, though whether that was on purpose or not…
Julian soon moved on to the next ironsmith body, and the next, carefully avoiding the pockets of greenish haze, though their spirits were so weak, they’d be unlikely to give him a head cold, never mind deathrot.
It was clear he wasn’t paying respects or taking in the sad sight. He was looking for something. Or someone.
“Julian,” Wren said, following him into the wreckage. She saw flashes of bone armor and broken bone swords but didn’t stop to investigate.
Julian didn’t respond to his name, but when he stood to make for the next body, Wren grabbed his arm.
He looked at her, but his gaze was distant, and his expression lacked its usual sharpness. His brows were high, not lowered in a scowl, and his mouth was a thin line, his lips trembling ever so slightly.
“We need to get moving,” Wren said, as gently as she could. “We don’t have time for this.”
He blinked as if coming back to himself. “I thought,” he began, his voice slightly hoarse. “I hoped…” He looked over his shoulder at the seemingly endless mass of bodies.
He was obviously searching for his father, for answers, but he would not find any he liked here.
“You could look for years, and you might never find him,” Wren said. “Even if you did… you wouldn’t know him. He’s dead, Julian. Your father is dead.”
Some people, in their grief, didn’t hire bonesmiths for death rites. They wanted their dead loved ones to rise again. Unable to say goodbye and hoping, maybe, that the ones they lost could remain in their lives in some way. It never ended well. While ghosts might remember something of their former lives, they could never truly reclaim them. They suffered in their half state—not alive, not dead—and eventually they lashed out, hurting the very people they’d once loved. Their melancholy was able to infect the living almost as surely as deathrot. That was why people often described ghosts as cold. It was the effect the presence of the undead had on the living spirit.
Besides, ghosts made for poor company. They couldn’t talk, think, or communicate… But even as Wren thought it, she amended the statement. Normally. Normally they couldn’t talk, think, or communicate. But like everything else so far, that had been different here in the Breachlands.
“No,” Julian said, his voice hard once more. “He’s undead, doomed to wander, to exist here in this—this hell—forever.”
“If we don’t get out of here soon, you’ll be joining him.”
“I need to know—”
“You can’t,” Wren snapped, her patience fraying. The clouds were moving in their direction, bringing early night with them, and the bridge was a long walk away. “That’s death. You can’t always know. You think I don’t wish, that I don’t wonder—” She cut herself off. She had a dead parent of her own, after all. But now wasn’t the time.