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A sleeping iron beast, unearthed
And set alight by holy hands
Shall form a crucible of sacred fire.
Its heat will cleanse the sickness from this soil,
And from the ash will rise the Burning God.
- Verse 17, The Book of The High Phlogiston, disciple of the Triadic Pyre
A dense huddle of black-clad figures stood by the edge of the crater. Below them were the enormous earthworks, guarded from cave-in by struts and scaffolding. Above them was a vaulted ceiling hewn from rock, which amplified sounds from the excavation. The clanging of metal against metal reverberated around the cavern. The disciples looked down on their work in awe.
***
Light from the rising sixth sun was barely peaking over the mountains surrounding Blackwick. In the pre-dawn gloom, a figure limped down the main street towards the headquarters of the Blackwick Group. Get home, find Marn, lie down and sleep for a week, the exhausted Pickman repeated to herself.
Marn was waiting in the receiving room when she heard Pickman stomping up the path outside. She flung open the door and ushered her inside, her keen eye noting the still wet patches of blood matting the Caprak’s fur.
“What happened?” She asked.
“Long story” replied Pickman, as she collapsed on the couch.
Marn nodded. She will tell me when she is ready, she thought.
Marn loosened the straps of Pickman’s armour and helped her to remove it piece by piece. She crossed the room and Pickman, eyes half closed, could hear her rummaging in a cabinet.
“Why does Lyke always leave his stuff lying about like this?” Marn muttered.
She returned with a tray of medical paraphernalia and began dabbing rubbing alcohol on a cut above Pickman’s eye. Pickman winced, rectangular pupils disappearing beneath her dark eyelids.
“Sorry” said Marn. “I didn’t realise how deep this one is, I think it needs stiches.”
Pickman was hot and tired, and her head throbbed. She looked down at her shaking hands and saw blood and burnt patches of fur. Marn must be worried sick seeing me like this. Pickman watched her as she drew a silk thread through her needle. Thoughts of what to say bubbled up in her mind, but her tongue was stale and numb. The faces of the disciples, swallowed up by the earth, swam behind her eyelids. She felt bile rising from her gut and she fought it back down. They had shackled a train!
Sensing Pickman’s need, Marn unscrewed the cap of a water flask and passed it to her. As the cool water flowed down her throat, Pickman noticed the furrows in the Carpana’s brow, and a pang of guilt tensed her stomach. I can’t shut her out like this.
Pickman isn’t exactly talkative but she’s not usually this clammed up, Marn thought, she’s been acting strangely since we stopped at the Bridge Cathedral. Marn recalled Pickman’s observations at the High temple of the Disciples of the Triadic Pyre.
“They’re digging for something down there” Pickman had said, gesturing to the ground below the temple, “I could feel the vibrations when I was kneeling at the altar, and I saw priests with shovels heading away from the trains and prayer rooms, down into the city. You can’t trust a priest with a shovel.”
“But the disciples are always digging up things” Marn had replied “you know, like out in the Blackwick mines.”
“And that was bad, and this is worse. I don’t like this place, they’re messing with the Shape and the trains, things they don’t understand.”
Marn remembered the edge of fear in her usually stalwart companion’s voice. I wish we had gone to investigate together.
Pickman handed the flask back to Marn and let out a deep sigh. How can I start to explain this? She cast her mind back to the cavern under the Bridge Cathedral. Censor smoke, thick with the smell of tar and iron, had obscured her vision beyond a few of the stone steps that descended toward the earthworks. The low, rhythmic hum of the disciples’ voices filled the air. She had slipped unseen, through smoke and shadows cast by firelight, to the edge of the excavation and peered down at the sight below. A shape-bound engine had been exhumed, its body glistened with rivulets of condensed water, clumps of earth clung to its sides and on those clumps grew mosses which harboured fungi and liverworts.
Pickman opted for the direct route, “It was a train, those fuckers were digging up a train.”
“There’s a train under the Bridge Cathedral?” asked Marn.
The memory of the metal behemoth churning through bedrock filled Pickman’s mind.
“Well not anymore” she replied. “Marn, are you familiar with Bathurial, the Earthen Duke?”
Marn nodded slowly. The Shape Knights told stories of Bathurial, a very powerful train and sworn enemy of the Fire Alight. Bathurial was loyal to the Shape, freeing the Burning God’s stolen engines and returning them to the fold. A great battle was fought between the two engines and when the Fire Alight prevailed, it sealed Bathurial beneath the earth. The Telluricists generally felt this account was too far outside the realm of observable evidence to be reliable. In any case Bathurial had not been seen in living memory. Marn met Pickman’s gaze, her yellow eyes unblinking and her jaw tightly clenched. She’s serious about this, thought Marn.
Marn looked away, searching for a pair of tweezers in her medical kit “I thought that was an old tale.”
“Most old tales are at least half true” said Pickman, scratching a particularly nasty burn on her forearm. “Doubly so if they concern the Shape. I saw the engine they dug up down there, and it was Bathurial all right.”
“Why would the disciples want to dig up the enemy of one of their gods?” Marn asked, as she gently extracted a large shard of metal that was lodged in Pickman’s shoulder.
Pickman winced and closed her eyes, the hollow face of the disciples’ leader flickering in the firelight behind her eyelids. “To hasten the end of all things” she replied.
Marn shivered and held the piece of metal to the light, “Pickman, what on earth happened down there?” she asked, the curve of her mouth turned downward.
Pickman took the piece of metal from Marn. She rubbed it between her fingers, trying to order her thoughts. She had snuck on to the train. It hadn’t been hard, most of the disciples were busy at the front end of the locomotive. She had edged down the slope of the earthworks, avoiding patches of unstable dirt, and entered the train at the rear guard compartment. It was like no train she had ever stepped foot on. Even when stopped, a Shape train thrums with an orderly vibration, the pulse of tar blood and the thump of a coal-fired heart, everything indicating the presence of a specific, linear purpose. Bathurial, though, was silent. Sleeping, Pickman had thought as she made her way down the central passage. Her fur brushed against the cold condensation on the handrails, sending a shiver through her body. She had reached the end of the main passenger carriage and peered through the window to the front guard compartment. Inside, four black cloaked figures conversed in hushed, excited whispers, blocking her access to the engine room. She hefted the espingole in two hands. One shot, she thought, no time to reload in this space.
She burst into the carriage and floored one disciple with a blast from the espingole. Startled, the three remaining figures swung to face her, knives drawn. She buried the espingole’s barb into the wool of the first’s robe and rammed the butt of the gun into the second’s chest. She deflected the third figure’s knife, but the disciple knocked the espingole from her hands so that they were both disarmed. Pickman lunged toward the figure, knocking him backwards into the guard rail. His hood slipped back as he fell, revealing a scraggle bearded human, now unconscious on the carriage floor. Chest heaving, Pickman retrieved the espingole and reached into her pouch to reload it, but before she could extract a shot, the door to the engine carriage had burst open. A disciple, her eyes flashing with rage, advanced on Pickman. She barely had time to register the weapon, a wooden cudgel with shards of scrap metal buried into it, before it slammed into her shoulder. Pickman was knocked to her knees and the disciple followed up with a hard kick to her face. Pickman felt her nose crunch under the disciple’s boot as she hit the floor. The last thing she registered before she fell unconscious was the sensation of being dragged across the carriage, toward the engine room.
When Pickman, lost in thought, offered no response, Marn continued her work. “This will sting a bit,” she said as she applied a firm bandage to Pickman’s broken nose.
Pickman touched her face gingerly, it’s not the first time Marn’s put a plaster there, she thought bemused.
“I bit off more than I could chew, Marn, but I had to try, those fuckers would have killed us all.” Pickman sunk further into the couch.
“You were doing what you had to do” replied Marn, squeezing Pickman’s hand. “I just wish you’d taken me with you.”
As she regained consciousness, Pickman had become aware of a terrible ache in her chest. Warm, wet blood pooled from the shoulder onto the floor. I am going to die, she had thought, my blood will slowly empty away and my existence will end. Over the years, Pickman had given thought to this moment. She had heard that in seconds before their deaths many people experienced a sense of peace, a view of their life released from worldly concerns. Instead, Pickman was pissed off. Not like this, she thought, I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to see Marn again. The thought of Marn filled her with determination. I’m not bloody well dying on a train!
With that clarity, Pickman began to notice her surrounds. She sensed something had shifted on the train, the cold absence of spirit had been replaced with a furious burning purpose. Then she became aware of the sound of rushing air through metal grills and the vibration below her body, reverberating an angry hum through her armour. Bathurial was moving. She heard voices nearby and kept her eyes closed, better if they don’t know I’m awake, she thought.
“Did you complete the ritual without my help?” A high, cold voice spoke.
“No, Archdeacon, sir.”
“Then why is the iron devil moving?” The cold voice hissed.
“We don’t know sir, …we think it started on its own” the disciple replied.
“On its own? Fool, that’s impossible.”
“What should we do then sir?”
There had been a moment of silence, Pickman remembered the clicking of boots on the engine room floor. Then came the voice of the Archdeacon.
“The ritual must proceed, we will shackle the devil at any cost.”
“Sir, what should we do with the Shape Knight?”
“Ah the intruder. Well, an engine of this size requires a great quantity of fuel, see to it that she is put to use.”
Pickman heard two sets of footsteps moving away from her and, deciding to chance a look at her surrounds, she half opened her eyes to take in the engine room. At first there was only dimness; Pickman could barely make out the shapes of cloaked figures kneeling on the ground, lit by the glow of red votive candles. Then the damper doors swung open. Broiling orange light from the firebox illuminated the compartment and Pickman saw the sacrilegious engraving etched into the carriage floor, a twisted, blighted form of the shape.
Pickman thought for a moment, she needed to impress upon Marn the seriousness of what had happened. When it came time to explain to Marn what she had done, she needed her to understand why. You can trust her, Pickman thought, just trust her. Pickman took a deep breath.
“They started a ritual, extremely powerful and dangerous. They were going to sacrifice Bathurial to the Burning God, to end the world, in fire.”
Marn heard the terror in Pickman’s voice and felt a rush of anger toward those who had hurt her. She wished again that she had not let Pickman go alone, but she could not change that now. She wrapped her arms around Pickman and drew her close, resting her forehead against Pickman’s horns.
Safe in Marn’s arms, Pickman allowed herself to relive the end.
Low chanting had begun and Pickman had heard footsteps coming back towards her. If they want to use me in that ritual they’ll need to bring me closer, she thought, that will give me an opportunity. As she focused her resolve to end the ritual, she became aware of a presence observing her. A sensation of heat was building near the sign of the shape between her horns, it washed prickling and tingling through her armour. Bathurial is speaking to me, Pickman thought. Once the realisation dawned on her, the sensation became more directed, the train burned with the desire to destroy the disciples.
Hands grabbed her arms and pulled her roughly along the carriage floor. Pickman fought to keep her body limp, feeling the repeating flash of heat from the firebox growing nearer. The chanting had grown much louder as the Archdeacon lead the disciples in verse. Pickman tried to make out how many voices were speaking. At least a dozen, maybe twenty, she guessed, shit that’s bad odds.
The hands dumped her, face down, right beside the firebox. Pickman cracked one eye open. In her periphery she saw a pair of boots standing between her and the firebox, their owner facing away from her. Pickman felt the burning seed of anger that sat in her belly, tamped down by caution. She remembered a festival night in Blackwick, the sound of distant revellers, the sagebrush and biscuit brown sand glowing in the moonlight, and the warmth of Marn’s hand in hers. How fucking arrogant they must be, she thought, to believe they have the right to destroy all this! Then she let the seed bloom, drawing strength from her fury. She pushed herself off the ground, upright she towered over the disciple before her. She barely registered the look of terror on their face, before she landed a kick square in the middle of their chest, sending them reeling backwards into the fire box. A clang echoed out as the damper doors closed and the disciples turned to face Pickman. The moment they stopped their chanting, Pickman began to feel an excess of heat building in the firebox behind her. The break in the ritual had allowed Bathurial space to change something, she just needed to buy the train time.
The archdeacon spoke, eyes flashing, “the ceremony must continue. Guards, kill the intruder.”
Chest heaving in her armour, Pickman squared her stance against the oncoming foe. Hot blood, still wet, ran from a gash above her eye, matting the fur of her face. Three guards advanced on her, weapons drawn. She lashed out with a fierce kick at the first guard sending her flying back toward the ritual circle. The second guard slashed at her with his knife but failed to gain purchase on her armour. Pickman threw all her weight at the guard shoving him back into the third attacker. She spun around, picked up a hefty storage crate, and hurled it at the guards, staggering them to the ground. She retrieved the guard’s fallen knife and began to edge in a defensive circle around the disciples, towards to engine room door, putting distance between her and the heat that was rapidly building in the fire box. Pickman felt sweat pooling where her neck met the back plate of her armour, she wondered what Bathurial’s plan was and if it involved her surviving beyond the next few minutes. The disciples did not seem to notice the room heating up, they were caught in the chaos of trying to restart the ritual and stop Pickman from doing any more damage, though they seemed terrified by the prospect of challenging her in battle. The Archdeacon swept forward, gathering his robes in a sharp, furious movement.
“The light of mortal existence is a pale shadow of the divine flame.” The archdeacon addressed Pickman. “Even if we are stopped, others will follow after us. We will cleanse this land with holy fire, burning away all that is profane, all that is cursed, and from the ash will rise –”
Pickman never found out what apocalyptic vision the disciples of the Triadic Pyre had for Sangfielle, because at that moment an enormous explosion shook the carriage. A plume of green flame erupted from the firebox, carrying with it globs of superheated rock. The disciples closest to the firebox were engulfed in an emerald inferno. As Pickman sprinted for the door, she could feel flecks of plasma hitting her back and burning away her fur.
Head pressed into Marn’s chest, Pickman remembered slamming the carriage door and bolting it behind her to trap the disciples inside. Was it the right thing? She began to wonder, before the claustrophobic sense memory washed over her and dragged her back to Bathurial’s carriage.
It had been very dark, the only light supplied by the fire within the engine room. Pickman remembered the air rushing through the grates in the side of the carriage, the sound of Bathurial still moving. It had felt cool and damp. That was odd, Pickman had thought. She peered through the darkness to the carriage window, in the gloom she was barely able to see the outside, but it looked as though they were travelling through a tunnel of rough-hewn rock. As she noticed this, she became aware of the sound of metal grinding against stone, Bathurial was burrowing down, deep underground, she realised. Icy panic washed over her, I am trapped on a train again.
Then the breaks squealed and Pickman lurched forward as the train broke though the rock wall and into a cavern, dimly lit with sconced torches. She recognised the place, we’re in the mines underneath Blackwick! Bathurial slowed to a halt and the carriage door creaked as it slid open. Pickman grabbed the handle to jump down but was startled by a loud thump behind her. The archdeacon pounded on the window of the engine room door. The fire had died away and the disciple’s face was lit only by the reflected torch light from the cavern, his eyes were black pits and he mouthed wordlessly for Pickman to free him. She froze, it is a terrible fate, she thought, but this was the man who would have turned the world to ash. No, Pickman thought, no he will not go free, and she leapt from the train.
Pickman watched, mind reeling, as Bathurial burrowed down once more, its carriages of metal and moss disappearing into the earth like an enormous iron arthropod. Then she turned and walked, one heavy boot fall after another, out of the mines of Blackwick.
***
Pickman opened her eyes, she was lying on the couch in the office of the Blackwick group. I must have dozed off while telling Marn, she thought. Marn had finished tending to Pickman’s wounds and was clearing away her tools.
“I’ve run you a bath if you want to clean up” Marn said.
Pickman trudged upstairs to the washroom and sunk into the tub. Marn pulled up a stool and began to comb gently through Pickman’s fur, untangling the knots held together by dried blood and dirt. The hot water eased Pickman’s aching muscles and released the last of the tension she held in her chest. She let out a long low sigh and water began to swim in her golden eyes. She looked up at Marn and spoke,
“When I was struck on the train, I was so lonely. It was awful. Even when there were other passengers, it hurt so badly. They could get on and off the train. They had what I most wanted, and they didn’t fucking know it. Fifteen years, you can’t imagine how long that felt, even if I explained it, they wouldn’t understand. And when I left, when I finally left that godforsaken carriage, it was still with me.” She gestured at her chest. “It was still in here”. Pickman shuddered and closed her eyes. “Did I become cold because of it? Is that why I was able to leave the disciples to the same fate?”
“No” said Marn, her throat tightened and her voice was quiet. She reached out her hand and placed it over Pickman’s. “You are warm to me.”