Iron from the rock

The cliffs leading up to the seawall loom cold and dark above the Toxian Sea. Joah stands considering the rock face, her boots sinking into the wet sand. Extending one hand, she traces the stone with her fingertips before laying a palm on the rock, probing. A fiery light begins to spread from her hand causing the surface to glow, a white-hot ember. Legion’s words echo in her mind, “The song of creation, when sung in its complete harmony….” She begins singing softly as she works, a canticle high and sweet and other.

She steps away from the rock, lifting her hand slightly, but keeping her palm facing the cliff. A spongy mass of dark metal begins to bloom from the cliff’s surface as liquid slag drips down its face pooling in the sand. Joah watches the bloom grow, checking the formed mass against the design in her mind, the diagrams over which she had labored in the Library. As the impurities drip to the ground, the bloom swells: malleable and pure, but strong.

Joah extends both arms as if in prayer, glowing palms open under the bloom. Legion’s many voices whisper over the wind and the bloom bubbles out slightly. A portion separates, flattens and smooths. Joah spreads her fingers, tilting and turning her wrists, and flipping the floating slab over in the air. Etch marks appear at its edges as it curves and begins to take shape. A perfectly formed thigh-shaped plate falls to the ground and settles softly in the sand.

The process is repeated until the bloom is gone: a calf, a foot, the top of a hand, fingers, a jaw…over and over until the sand is littered with plates, pieces of an apparent marionette awaiting assembly. Joah’s hands drift to her side. She feels a stirring in the breeze and turns toward the gate in the seawall, Pontifex’s dark figure approaching silently. Meeting his eyes she says simply, “It is done.” He nods and bends low to lift one plate from the sand, then another. “To the Library,” he directs and Joah kneels to assist him.