Chapter 86 – Flywheel

Nod stood by his master on the wall, claws clenching and unclenching. A stack of bark was set next to him, both assistants positioned at the ready.

“Is everybody in their places?” asked Kairon.

“Ready!” confirmed Nod.

“Ready…” cooed Hush.

An exasperated sigh came from one final guest. “Ready, child,” said Sythara.

Kairon grinned. If this went wrong, the demoness was his backup plan. He’d learned from his mistakes. These callings were volatile, and she was perhaps the only entity that could rein them in.

With Sovereign Eye, he double-checked that Shiny had finished preparations. All the brood imps stood in a circle, the corpses piled in front of the massive crater. “Shiny,” he ordered through the eye. “Take at least fifteen steps back. Actually, make it thirty.”

Seeing them obey, Kairon nodded and turned his attention to Hush.

“Good! Okay. Hush, listen very carefully.” The demon pointed at the five void imps on the left. “You five are going to make a calling of brood. My desire is simple. I want the plane to feed right near the crater where the brood lies.” Kairon pointed the specific spot out on the horizon. “To eat the fuel that it needs to maintain the calling until it is complete. To consume.” That was exactly what brood was meant for. Their little eyes lit up in excitement. As one, the five began to run in tiny circles, squeaking in excitement.

“Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!”

“Consume! Call to consume! All consume!”

“Ah—yes, not quite call,” corrected Kairon. “Just consume what is required to maintain the calling until the forge is done. That is all.”

“Consume!!!”

“Consume!!! Consume until all!”

“Consume all!”

“No, no. Consume what is required,” corrected Kairon.

From the side, Sythara put a hand to her face. “Child, this cannot end well.”

“It’ll be fine! Trust me! Besides, the learning will be invaluable for future callings.”

“I get that you want to get this gold of yours as soon as possible, but it isn’t like those corpses are going anywhere. Why not take our time?” asked Sythara.

“That’s overly cautious of you. Aren’t you usually the one throwing that to the wind?”

Sythara snorted. “I am only curious.”

“Well, besides the fact that I think this positive feedback loop has a few very interesting opportunities, there are three primary reasons for this. First,” he held up one claw, “opportunity cost. It’s nearly a six-hour trek to get to that crater. With eighty brood imps, we might need to spend two weeks or more on hauling alone.”

The demoness shrugged. “So? Is that not what the little ones are for?”

“Sythara. If the little ones are doing nothing but dragging loot back here, who’s working the lumber? The fields? The feeding pits? I’ll tell you who. No one.”

“Perhaps.”

“Second,” Kairon went on, “even if I was willing to wait that long, we have a… visitor coming in just over two weeks. One that I don’t intend to meet with two rings. I want three. Strength is paramount in these types of things. Believe me. I’d know.”

Memories of meeting his old supervisors came flooding back. They were particularly more palatable once he’d gained his Senior Clerk title.

“Third, a small reason, but worth mentioning. I’m worried about the corpses. I don’t know how this all works, but my gut tells me that whatever worth they have to the plane might decay over time. Whether that’s days or weeks or months, I don’t know. But if baking in the sun for the two weeks it’s going to take us to haul them all back erodes their value… Well. We can’t have that.”

The demoness hummed thoughtfully at that. “Child. That all sounds very well and good. But I recognize that look. That’s your logic. But you have something deeper. A desire. A real desire for this, don’t you?”

Instead of a reply, Kairon only grinned.

Flourishing his red cape, he turned back to the void imps. “Now, as for the rest of you,” he said, motioning at Hush and the last four void imps. “You five will make the second calling simultaneously. This one will be a calling of forge. Of envy. I desire for the corruption and taint of men and metal to be reshaped into gold coins. Any questions?”

Kairon purposefully kept the information he shared simple. If this worked how he’d planned, there was a much more tasty ending to this feedback loop. One for his brood.

At his words, no questions came. The calling was initiated.

Something else the demon had found was that these callings could only contain so much detail. Unlike pacts and contracts, there was no fine print. This wasn’t a pact.

It was a desire, and it had to be treated as such. Anything else was just noise.

Kairon stood back, watching in excitement. Like last time, the calling brought down whispers from the plane. Only now, just he and Sythara had to bear them. The void imps were in calling and the brood was absent from the city.

He, with his shield of source, and Sythara, with her shapings and power of void. They managed.

As the calling grew, the presence of both forge and brood blossomed. The former of envy and its desire to remake, with the latter cultivating feelings of hunger and consumption.

The dual auras built and built, the chanting of the voidlings reaching into the sky. On instinct, Kairon called upon the power of his domain and re-focused his overhead view on the crater.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Twin jets of purple and green energy shot forth, barreling from the direction of the city. On and on they traveled, until with a flourish of rocks and debris, they impacted the crater itself.

“Here we go,” said Kairon.

***

Shiny felt the auras before they hit the crater. They told him to remake, then they told him to consume. It was confusing.

He shook his bald head, growling in frustration. “No, no, no! You not tell me what do! You no tell what brood do! Only master!”

Around him, his workers weren’t faring as well. Half a dozen had dropped to their knees, the hungry sensation making them try and eat the sand. Dumb. That was dumb.

Even Bean wasn’t digging in the sand, and he loved digging. He was just standing still, staring at the crater. He kept asking to go digging in it, but master had refused. Not yet. Shiny agreed. That hole was full of a scary aura even before master summoned the tornado.

To Shiny’s side, another brood imp started trying to shape the hellscape around him into some kind of dirt pie. “What! No! Stop that! Clod! Sing! Make them stop!”

As Shiny ensured his underlings obeyed, he reflected on what was happening. The brood were normally dumb, but not this dumb.

It only took him a minute to understand why.

It was the whispers.

The brood were strong together. But alone, they couldn’t fight those whispers. For some reason, only Shiny could shake them off.

Well, Bean seemed mostly okay too. Clod and Sing as well, to a lesser extent.

The more he thought about that, the more sense that made. Shiny was powerful.

And that wasn’t the only thing he was. He was hungry.

The whispers might not be able to penetrate his mind, but they were more than enough to stir it. To remind him of that growing pit of hunger that had been devouring at his stomach, no matter how much he ate.

Without really meaning to, he just sort of… sucked inwards. Like everything was some kind of misty soup he could slurp down.

One moment, the brood were lost in the motivations of creation and devouring, the next they weren’t. Part of that pit inside Shiny went away. Not all of it. But a big, big chunk.

He let out a satisfied smile. “All better!”

That was when the ravenous roar came.

***

Kairon knew it was working the moment he felt the sucking sensation. Not from Shiny—whatever that little monster did was fascinating but different—no, the sucking sensation he was feeling was different.

The power of brood and forge clashed, before mixing into some kind of green and purple typhoon. Sand, hellscape, and debris began to be drawn into it. Using the power called upon, tiny mouths and razor-sharp bony teeth sprouted along the tornado. The effect made it less of a storm and more of a creature.

A creature that wasn’t yet born. Merely called upon.

For a moment, Kairon sensed the corruption that had been generated from the voidlings begin to fade. The typhoon began to weaken nearly as soon as it’d begun, its vortex of hunger and creation nearly sputtering out.

What he was asking required an enormous amount of power. Far more than the ten void imps could normally call upon, let alone control.

“Shiny! Give it corpses! Feed it!” he screamed through Sovereign Eye. It needed fuel. It needed men. It needed corruption.

The little imp didn’t need to be told twice. He shouted something, and with the help of several brood dragged a fully intact golden corpse to the edge of the crater. With a heave, they let it topple inwards before scrambling away.

“Get back! Get back!” he ordered. “That’s enough!”

That body never found the bottom of the hellscape pit. Instead, the vortex sucked it inwards, its dozens of tiny maws tearing it apart like piranhas. Blood, flesh, bone, and metal were consumed in a shower of gore.

From within the typhoon, forge would not be outdone. It too had been called upon. The sounds of hammering steel and the sensation of dissatisfaction at a state of being were called forth.

“Oh, child! What have you made? I can feel it… It’s growing…” said Sythara. She’d pressed up to Kairon’s side, her shaping magnifying her gaze.

“No, Sythara. It’s feeding. This, my dear, is what we call a positive feedback loop. Behold!”

As he spoke, his words came true. Instead of sputtering out, the tornado used the corruption within the corpse to grow and grow. From five meters above the crater to ten. Several of the nearest corpses were sucked into the monsoon, fresh corruption adding to the chain.

Meanwhile, the hammers had gotten so loud that the explosion of ichor from the other night seemed timid. They were a cacophony of creation itself.

And create they did.

Dozens of golden coins began to spit out from the tornado, going in all directions.

Once the storm fed upon the other corpses it’d pulled, dozens of coins became hundreds.

But that wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

The storm was hungry. Tiny maws opened wide, and verdant energy spilled outwards. Cylindrical spirals blasted outwards, becoming homing missiles that sought out their next meal.

Luckily for them, a buffet had been prepared. A buffet that the storm found in mere seconds.

When it did, the real feast began.

“By The Pits! What is that?!” rumbled a deep voice. At some point, Vorathrex and a dozen wrath warriors had joined the gathering at the top of the wall. He pointed one giant fist outwards.

“It’s a positive feedback loop, fool!” snapped Sythara.

Vorathrex gaped. “What?! Fledgling, explain to me what this loop is for.”

“You’ll see,” said Kairon distractedly.

Nearby, the void imps were still chanting. Kairon found that interesting. He’d considered their part in the process more like a catalyst. Instead, it seemed they were more akin to gatekeepers. They maintained the opening.

Though, he did notice one tiny detail. The cowls on the void imps had begun curling inwards, veins of gold and orange energies tainting them. It wasn’t like the leash of energy Shiny and the others had gained, but rather a taint. Like his domain on these lands.

“The plane’s corrupting them,” he muttered. “Sythara! The void imps! The calling is corrupting them!” he shouted.

The demoness whirled about, cursing as she spotted what he had. “I’ll deal with it, child. I can do that much. For now.” A storm of darkness formed around her, and without another word she pounced into the fray of voidlings. Her tentacles spun off her body, each finding an imp and connecting to them.

Their chanting didn’t cease, but the growths and energies that had corrupted their skin began to fade.

“How long can you keep that up!” he called at her.

“Not long, child. Not long!”

Something he kept in mind as the storm grew. When he checked back on the crater’s progress, a part of him was stunned. The pile of corpses was gone. What must have been three hundred or more bodies. Vanished. Just like that.

That wasn’t all. The scattered remains. The scraps. It was all being drawn in or hunted by the mini tornados of brood energy.

The only pile that remained untouched was the carefully protected pile of weapons and metals that were in at least decent shape. Those still remained far enough from the crater to not be of concern.

But the gold. The gold… There was so, so, so much of it. A practical pool of brilliantly shining coins had formed around the crater, glittering green and purple against the lights of the storms.

“That,” whispered Kairon. “That’s the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever seen. A mint. It’s a mint that even the plane would approve of!”

“You know, child,” ground out Sythara from her position near the voidlings. “I think I agree!”

Part of Kairon knew she meant the creation of brood and forge, not the gold. But it didn’t matter. Together, they reveled in it.

Vorathrex didn’t have an ability to see and magnify what was happening in the distance, but he could feel it. The big guy was not happy. “Fledgling! Listen to me! That… I can smell something very, very strong on the winds. Far stronger than anything you have meddled with before!”

Kairon nearly dismissed the big guy. Nearly waved it off as Vorathrex’s strictness. But, for all the city lord’s love of experimentation and pushing boundaries, he’d learned that this world had bite. Real bite. To be a good leader, he needed to at least consider the advice of his best subordinates.

“I see,” he muttered. “Let’s let it keep going for now. But watch it closely and let me know what you feel. This is a careful balance. One I want to try and control.”

“Child…” said Sythara, her hands clasping Hush’s shoulders and squeezing the little imp mid-chant. “Just how do you intend to control this? I can help them bear it. I can not help them control it.”

“Well. The calling should be feeding on my desire.” And it was. The storm was forging gold from the blood of the corrupt faster than he could speak. “But I do have a plan. Trust me.”

He wasn’t lying. He did have a plan to play here. One that had a timer.

Kairon watched as the vortex did something new. It sucked a coin inside it. A coin it made. Then another. And another.

“Our timer’s begun,” he said. “It’s time for step two!”

“Child. What are you thinking?” hissed Sythara.

“I’m thinking that the brood is meant to consume. So maybe… Just maybe… Shiny!” he bellowed through Sovereign Eye. “Listen very carefully…”

***

Shiny listened to his master’s commands. Once he was done, he went over them again. Redundancy. Just to be sure.

Biting his lip, he glared at the tornado. Master was right. The stupid storm was going to steal their gold.

That was okay though. They had a plan. A way to make the storm pay for what it had done.

He jumped on a rock, facing the wave of brood. They were watching the storm, more fearful than anything.

“Two group! Form two group! Clod! Sing! You two with group one!”

It took some doing, but after a minute of shouting and waving, he managed to split the brood in half.

“Clod! Take group one! Retreat!”

Without needing to be told, nearly four dozen brood sprinted in the opposite direction from the storm. Only two paused to look back. Clod and Sing. They gave a single glance of uncertainty. “Boss…”

“No! You go!”

“But—”

“Go!” Shiny wasn’t budging on this.

Clod and Sing traded glances, before taking one last long look at him. Finally, they too turned tail and made a beeline to catch the others of group one.

Bean, however, did not go. And Shiny didn’t try to make him. Master had said not to. That felt at odds with the redundancy, but master always had a plan. Shiny knew that. He was smart.

The farm manager walked up next to Shiny, taking a perch atop the rock next to him. “I with you!” he said.

“Good. Good. Okay.” Turning, Shiny faced those that remained. Group two. They looked back, glancing in confusion at the retreating imps.

“Why go?!”

“Go too?”

“We leave!?”

Bean rolled his eyes. Since when had he become so tough?

As for the other imps… They weren’t. This wasn’t good. They wouldn’t be able to do what he and master had planned like that. He needed to call upon the strength of the brood. Not the fear.

Raising both claws, Shiny searched deep within himself. “Listen to me!” he called. The storm was loud, but his voice was louder.

Unbeknownst to him, it wasn’t just how loud he was shouting. His words carried. Really carried. They boomed throughout the hellscape.

“The brood is strong! The brood is one! We consume! We do not bow! We consume! You that remain! You strong! Strongest!”

Over forty pairs of orange pupils widened. “Consume?” asked one.

“Consume!” answered another.

“Consume!”

“Consume! Consume! Consume! Consume!”

Fear melded into hunger. The one emotion that every brood imp had at its very core. For this next part, Shiny really, really dug. He scraped through the excitement and chaos, shoveling it all to the side until he located the exact words he needed.

“Take the gold! Take it! To safety! The brood protects its meal!” he proclaimed.

“Protect meal!” roared the brood.

“Yes! Now forth, my friends! Go forth! Feed! Feed! Save… Environment… This.. Is… Environmental Reclamation!” Those last two words were said with such broodful hunger that massive jets of sand exploded beside Shiny. He paid it little mind. He only had attention for the gold. Gold that was not going to be eaten by any but his own.

They raised their little claws, before shrugging off the last of their uncertainty and sprinting headfirst into the storm of sand, gold, hunger, and creation itself.