9. The Union

She had thought there would be fire. She deserved fire. But death was bleak, dark and cold. Maybe it was not so bad after all, thought Rasputina.

She stood on a windswept mountain top, a cloud of snow swirling angrily about her. She saw, as once she had seen in a dream, a tribe of emaciated followers dancing around a towering effigy. She stood at its foot, consumed in its shadow, and touched by a chill that froze her heart. He was here, waiting for her, beyond the veil. “December,” Rasputina whispered. “I have failed you.”

Its voice was cruel and sharp, like jagged ice. "Rasputina. You have not died, and this is not the hell you fear. Lilith has failed to kill you, and even now your rescuers arrive. You risk my wrath with your weakness, but once again events conspire to favour me. The Device has never been closer."

This was another dream, Rasputina realized. Which meant she, and her hopes, were not yet dead. "Remember!” she cried. “You remember your promise to me."

The voice crackled on the wind. "I've not forgotten. The Device will serve both of us. Death will no longer bar either of us from that which we most desire." The voice paused for a moment, then issued a thunderous laughter.

Rasputina spun, fists raised. "December, do not toy with me."

"I do not." The mountaintop rumbled with another peal of laugher. "Lilith has been driven back. She did not even attempt a fight. Curious."

Rasputina felt her head spin. The snow in her dream began to swirl in her head, the shades of snow and shadow bleeding into each other.

"The man carries you." The voice of the effigy was slipping far away from her. The snowy mountaintop blew away into darkness, and she fell headlong into the black void beneath.

Reality came back to her slowly, but her body was unresponsive. She became aware of voices speaking around her. There was a woman of few words, but confident, with a wry humor. Another voice, a deep one, belonged to a man, thoughtful, passionate but guarded. The third voice, though, was the dominant one. This man sounded like a politician, Rasputina thought, one used to speaking to rooms full of other rich and powerful men.

The first man spoke. "It's the woman from the Guild's wanted posters. Rasputina. She's an escaped convict, sentenced for drowning her own child. They say she broke a man by the name of Phillip Tombers out of the sanitarium, and murdered him, too."

There was a small pause, the smoothly-oiled politician speaking next. "And you're sure, Marcus, that it was Lilith? Trying to kill this woman?"

"I know what I saw, Viktor, but her kind can confuse even my eyes. Myranda's senses never lie. Who was it, Myranda?"

The woman, Myranda, paused before answering "It was Lilith. This Phillip Tombers – you recognize the name, Victor?” It was less a question than it seemed. This Myranda was very sure of herself.

"Phillip Tombers, was a member of Professor Heilin’s Expedition.” That was Viktor again. He sounded cautious, as if unsure how much to reveal. “They crossed the swamp in one of my vessels. His name was all over the papers, although I doubt you pair keep up with those. Every member of his team either died at the research site or from a sickness upon returning. He was the only one to survive, only to be murdered. By our guest here, according to the Guild."

"Her wagon was headed toward the swamp," Marcus noted.

"She's awake," Myranda said. “And has been for a little while, is that not so, my dear?”

Rasputina could feel a tingling sensation spreading out from her core and down through her body. There was a static sensation that buzzed inside her. Her eyes flickered as she opened them, trying to filter the bright glow. Slowly, her surroundings came into focus and she could see a small milky-colored crystal glowing in the woman’s hand. Myranda held it over her body and a smoky energy billowed out of it, spilling over Rasputina's body and seeping into her blood, filling her with strange warmth.

Beside her, a tall, dark man who she was certain was Marcus stood with his arms crossed over a broad chest. The other man, Viktor, eased himself onto one knee beside Rasputina. He spoke kindly. "Hello, Rasputina, my name is Viktor Ramos. My associates found you in the wilds. You're now at Hollow Marsh. Do you understand?"

Rasputina could feel the strange jewel in her head, not dulling the pain but mending it, returning her normally sharp wits. Her voice was hoarse from screaming in the woods. "Yes, of course I understand."

"You've been talking in your sleep, and calling out for December. Is this a person? Is it someone we should reach, to inform of your accident?"

The mention of the name brought her back to clarity with a sudden force. She sat bolt upright, causing Ramos and Myranda to draw back. Wherever she was, it was some kind of factory. Giant iron girders sailed over the platform the quartet were gathered on, and below her was a labyrinth of cogs. The turning sounds of the gears were somehow muffled, allowing relatively easy conversation, here, in what seemed a makeshift triage.

"No,” she said. “You can't reach him. He was lost at the Kythera Ruins. I'm traveling there to place a remembrance."

"I see. I am sorry for your loss,” Ramos said.

"What is this wonderful place?" Rasputina asked, keen to avoid talking about her journey. She had clearly hit on the right subject, for Ramos gave an expansive, eager smile. "Ah, this is the Hollow Marsh Pumping Station. This facility, which I designed, services all the mines in the area, pumping them clear of water to keep the miners safe. It is also the headquarters of the Miners and Steamfitters Union."

Rasputina touched her fingers to her head, gingerly checking to see just how bad she was injured. Surprisingly, there was no wound to be found.

"You're fine,” said Myranda, standing and tucking the stone away into a pouch at her hip. She gave Rasputina an odd look. “You're very lucky she didn't kill you before we got there.”

Standing, Ramos offered Rasputina his hand. Leaving Myranda with a polite farewell, the two walked off together through the giant complex. Rasputina, overwhelmed by the vast structure and the contained, mechanized fury of its beating, mechanical heart, followed along without prompting. Even at Ridley Station she had never seen anything to compare with the sheer scale of this, and the assault on her senses, the deafening thunder of the pistons, the blinding showers of sparks, the oppressive odour of hot oil and burnt metal, the shimmering heat of the furnaces, was intense and unrelenting. The repetitive, percussive dance of so many different but intimately linked parts reminded her, for a moment, of her dream, but in whose shadow she stood here, she could not tell.

By the time the two arrived at Ramos’ office she was grateful for the relative peace and quiet. The room was filled with technical drawings, stacked on desks and stuffed in bookshelves. The walls were papered in schematics which, to Rasputina, looked like arcane symbols that could just as likely be the components for some magic ritual as they were for some mining machinery. One wall was covered in sketches of a small drilling machine, or possibly a very large mixing bowl.

Spread out on Ramos’s desk was a nest of highly technical drawings. She saw what she assumed to be a drawing of the facility’s outflow lagoon with a submerged structure at the bottom. Other drawings scattered nearby showed various components of what seemed an enormous machine. A single strut, an iron beam with an organic shape like an insect’s leg, measured twelve meters in length, suggesting a machine of truly mammoth proportions. Each of the drawings was labelled, “Project Leviathan.”

Ramos took a seat behind his desk and folded up the plans, shuffling them onto another desk piled with crumb-covered plates and forks. Rasputina saw one of the milky white crystals lying beneath the mess of papers.

“This?” said Ramos, noticing her gaze. “This mineral is called Soulstone. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’ve seen the industrial grade Soulstone at Ridley Station. It looked like little more than dust,” she replied.

Ramos took up the stone in his hand and, with a gesture, pointed it at an assortment of metal components sitting in the corner. Held within them, in an iron clamp, was a dull grey stone. A white cloud of energy billowed through the air from the stone in Ramos’ hand and washed over the clamp. The dull grey of the stone brightened as a light began to glow from within it. Soon the stone was that the same milky color. To Rasputina's surprise, the pile of iron parts lurched. As if suddenly imbued with life, the components gathered themselves together to form an intricate machine with long, spidery appendages. There was a whistle of steam as the machine’s boiler was fired by the heat of the freshly-charged Soulstone, and the machine rose up on a set of four mechanical legs. It skittered across the floor and climbed up onto the desk in front of Rasputina. She drew back in alarm, frost gathering on her fingertips, but it merely settled down like a soldier at ease.

“As you can see, this stone is of a higher grade.” There was no small amount of self-satisfaction in Ramos' words.

”And that woman, Myranda, used one to wake me. How? How did she do it?" She peered at the mechanical spider. "How did you just do that?”

Standing, Ramos' shadow fell over her as he held out the crystal. “I can show you. Members of the Arcanist Union have free access to these stones.”

Rasputina looked from the stone to the man beyond. Even if December was truly her friend, aligning with him had brought her enemies she could never have imagined. It was a simple calculation for any ex-convict – another pair of eyes to watch your back could never go amiss. But no-one helped her without wanting something in return. Nothing, and no-one, in this world was ever free.

She took the stone. As soon as she touched it, the magic inside her, that shard of winter she held inside her heart, swelled. Flowing out from inside her, a tide of energy swept through the room, leaving behind a thin film of frost on the walls.

Ramos flinched as that frigid wave washed over him, and she saw him look at her with a hunger in his eyes. So was she to be another piece of his great machine, more metal for him to bend to his purpose? Was this what fate had in store for her, beholden to one savior after another?

Rasputina turned the stone over and over in her hands, warmth returning slowly to the room. No matter what others intended for her, with enough of these she would be her own master. "Then show me.”