Heat had spent her work shift annoyed, not because of the prior day’s events (she was in fact thrilled that Cold had managed to get them to move in with Sally, and the two had cuddled all night, leaving the sisters’ body better rested than usual), but because the chefs had been laughing among themselves about something they were hiding from her. Thankfully she wasn’t that worked up about it, so the dishwater didn’t boil so much as bubble a little… and bubble a little harder every time she caught them glancing at her. Still, she refused to let her coworkers ruin her good mood and worked hard, even as they piled more and more cookware near her dishwater basin. Eventually Heat had to go throw out and replace the dishwater, which had become so filled with debris and grease that it was becoming impossible to clean a dish in it. Heat simply dumped the water into a nearby sewer grate outside the Citadel kitchen, then went to a nearby water pump to fill it; for all that Last Stand didn’t have electricity or modern (by Heat’s standards) conveniences, they certainly made the most of what they did have, and Heat was very thankful to only need to use a manual pump instead of running a bucket down a well. But as she returned to the kitchen with her newly-refreshed basin, Bethany met her at the door.
“Don’t you worry about this, Heat, your shift is over,” said Bethany. “Allison told us all about how you two are supposed to be studying to become Spell Etchers, you just go on and do that with the other half of your shift. Goodness knows your talents will be better used for that than washing dishes.”
Heat was a little surprised but nodded her head and left towards the woodshops, eager to try out an idea they had read about. She only needed a few flattish chunks of wood, really- using clay tablets would be cheaper for testing, but flipping them over and etching something on the other side would just muss up the first etching. Thankfully the woodshops had plenty of scrap wood and were happy enough to give Heat a few small blocks of it. Taking it to her and Sally’s room, she placed the dozen blocks onto their desk alongside the clay tablet she had gotten permission to take yesterday and got to work.
First, Cold took control and started working on an etching on one end of the clay tablet; the symbol was an inverted sun, the six rays of light aimed towards the center of the circle. Cold focused on her power of energy absorption, on the comfort of the sun soaking her skin, on the drive and need to consume all before her to grow stronger and more whole. She couldn’t help but mutter, “Feed me,” as she concentrated, and the etched symbol before her became covered in shadow. She would have time to dwell on that feeling once they were finished.
Unfortunately, as Heat tried to perform her etching, the stylus simply clinked against the clay tablet, unable to mold its surface. Inspecting it, Heat realized that the tablet was now completely baked through, and worse, slowly heating up. She was sure this would be useful for something, but it definitely was not what she had intended. Cold switched over again and drained the energy from the etching, stopping it from heating up further, but unfortunately neither sister’s power really lent itself to reversing time or softening clay. Heat simply sighed inside their headspace as Cold put the tablet aside to give back to the librarian later in the hopes that someone else could fix it… or if not, figure out what to use it for; the etching was still intact, so they could always reapply it.
Cold picked up a wooden block and focused, spreading a thin layer of frost over it in a specific pattern; she concentrated very carefully on getting the symbol right, but thankfully a battery wasn’t that hard to draw, even when using her soul instead of her hand. As she focused on the symbol, her mind filled with the need to carefully keep what was given to her, cherishing a precious gift, protecting the people who mattered to her at any cost- and the ice glowed for a moment before returning to normal.
Cold made another temporary light-absorbing spell etching on a second block of wood, and Heat used a third to make another ‘light in the dark’ etching. As the light-absorbing one began to warm, Heat placed it against the battery etching, the light-absorbing etching began to cool down again, the battery etching seemingly staying the same. Heat grinned as she touched the light-producing etching to the other two then closed her room’s curtains, the array producing a bright light for a few minutes before running out of power.
Heat gathered the three etchings in her arms and made her way to Allison’s office where the Paladin officer was working. Allison looked up as Heat entered the office, saying, “Can I help you, Heat?”
“Cold and I have a proof of concept!” she replied, showing the wooden blocks to Allison and explaining how they worked.
Allison looked approvingly at Heat as she tested the etchings herself. “Ah, the Arabic method- I wasn’t expecting you to manage that so soon, but then again, you two have a habit of exceeding expectations. Here, let me write you a note for the smiths to have them start making streetlamps with your symbols engraved on them, then you can finish tying spells to the etchings. Just try not to overexert yourselves again, alright?”
Heat nodded as she picked back up her etchings and took the note, leaving Allison’s office only to duck her head back in for a moment. “Say, where exactly are the smiths?” she asked with a nervous grin on her face.
“Didn’t I suggest you bring that idea for a repeating crossbow to them the other month? Not that we need it, it turns out I was wrong about sulfur and saltpeter. The iron mine has been digging up sulfur deposits alongside iron ore, and the alchemists have been extracting saltpeter from our sewage for some time now, apparently to aid in food preservation and fertilizing our crops,” Allison grumbled before giving Heat directions.
Heat gave a small chuckle. “So it seems you’re not perfect after all, huh?”
“I’m an expeditionary officer,” Allison answered with a small laugh of her own, “not a quartermaster. My job is to help organize missions outside the city walls, why would I have perfect knowledge of resource management?”
Heat cheerfully left to follow Allison’s directions through the lightly snow-dusted streets, eventually arriving at the smithy where she could hear people hard at work. Heat ducked inside the stone building, seeing about two dozen people doing various tasks- keeping the forges hot with bellows, pouring molten iron into casts and molds, hammering away at various pieces of hot and cold iron, their results ranging from hundreds upon hundreds of nails and dozens upon dozens of hinges to a series of iron fittings and barrels that took Heat several moments to realize were gun parts.
One of the people working on forming nails noticed Heat and moved up to her, wiping sweat from his brow as he asked, “is there something you need? Uh, my name is John.” The boy couldn’t be older than sixteen, his face slightly pimply, his dark eyes covered in a pair of wire-frame glasses, and his body gangly and uneven in the way only someone in the throes of puberty can be, even underneath a heavy leather apron, thick sleeves and pants, and gloves.
“My name is Heat; I’m here to deliver a note from Paladin Allison about the etched lamp posts that need making, and some examples of the symbols needed,” Heat explained, offering the note and the etchings. The boy squinted as he read the note, then nodded and looked over the etchings.
“Uh… are these made with ice? I don’t know if that’s a good idea, even magic ice melts after a while, and it’s hot in here,” he murmured, his voice just barely able to be heard over the din. Heat grabbed the blocks one by one and seared the etching into them, leaving behind a trail of precise burn marks in the necessary shapes.
“Yeah, that’ll work. I’ll give these to the master smith, we’ll let Paladin Allison know when one is ready.”
Heat nodded, her eyes gazing over at the gun parts and sparkling with an idea. “Hey, so I had an idea for a personal firearm; I could use a spell etching on it to replace the gunpowder, and my sister Cold could generate a super-tough ball of ice to use instead of a bullet. Ideally we would use a repeater, or maybe a revolver…”
John shook his head with a sigh, wiping his gloved hands on his apron. “Like I told everyone else who asked about that, we still haven’t fully figured out how to recreate the mechanisms for them after the companies that designed them were wiped out. The best we can do is either a musket or a breech loader, and a breech loader is going to blast you with scorching air with every shot, etching or not.”
Heat nodded, then stuck her arm inside the furnace. John quickly scrambled to pull Heat’s arm out of the fires, swearing fiercely, only for Heat to have grabbed a still-burning hunk of charcoal, dancing it between her very much unburnt fingers before tossing it back into the furnace.
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“You could have just told me you were immune to flame and heat!” John shouted.
Heat shook her head with a small chuckle. “Yeah, but this was funnier; I’ll take the breech loader, a helmet, and a chestplate, thanks.”
John let out a long, winnowing sigh before grabbing a notebook and writing down Heat’s order. “Unless you have any other business here, I really need to get back to work.”
Heat nodded and left, deciding to go to the sparring arena for some practice when a loud clanging sound rang out, making Heat jump a little- the alarm bell. “Raid!” cried the person ringing it, their voice echoing through the town. “Raid! All Paladins report to the walls!”
Heat was sorely tempted to push her magic into her legs and make her run that much faster, but she knew that she would need her aether for the battle to come. As she dashed towards the walls, she heard a sudden shriek from nearby; she quickly dashed over to make sure everyone was okay, only to witness an Infected decked out in their signature crude armor and wielding a massive cleaver standing over a civilian who was bleeding from a cut to their forehead, cowering in fear at the once-human monster.
Heat immediately charged, her whole body charged with energy as she leapt into a flip-kick, her foot blazing with flame; the Infected immediately jolted, bringing its sword up to block, catching Heat’s foot on the flat of its blade. Heat stumbled a little but caught her footing, just barely ducking as the Infected’s cleaver swung around at her neck, then did a low kick at the Infected’s legs to try and trip it. It fell back a little, but ultimately stayed on its feet- but this at least gave Heat enough room to get her footing again. The civilian the Infected had been targeting finally got up and began to run, distracting the Infected for just long enough for Cold to swap over and form a quick and crude icy spear, stabbing the Infected through a gap in its armor at the neck and neatly killing it.
The sisters knew that an Infected within the walls of the city right as a siege started was no coincidence. The two charged out into the city, dashing off to the bell tower, combining their magics to scale the walls. At the top of the tower, instead of the bell ringer on overwatch, Heat and Cold only found a corpse with its guts spilling out; the smell was horrific, and the two’s body began to shake a little at the sight. They were broken out of their stupor at the sound of screams, and the two began to ring the bell as hard as they could, yelling as loud as they could, “Infected inside the walls! Infected inside the walls! The attack on the walls is a diversion!” before facing a palm towards the dead guard and incinerating his corpse to ensure he wouldn’t rise again.
As the two began to descend once more, sliding down the vertical wall of the bell tower by turning just enough of the energy of their fall into horizontal energy pressing them against the wall, they saw Anders peeking out of a ripple in the air, staring at the sisters descending and the torn-open and burnt body left behind before disappearing.
Heat pumped her magic into their legs as they ran off towards the scream, her legs pumping in a rhythm faster than she had ever managed before. As she turned a corner, Cold formed a polearm in their hands, its blade long and sharp and thin with two prongs coming off of it, copied from a weapon she had seen in the armory once. Around the bend were two Infected, garbed in similarly crude heavy armor and wielding a pitchfork and a war scythe. They were trying to break down a locked door, and already the wood was covered in cracks and splinters. Heat charged, her ranseur stabbing the infected on the left in the neck. The one on the right simply moved to face Heat, its war scythe swinging overhead, but Heat simply dodged to the side and stabbed out again. The Infected ducked and what would have taken off its head instead dented its iron helmet, stunning it for long enough for Heat to recover and punch, the ice ranseur reforming around her fist as a pair of spiked knuckles. The Infected’s helmet was pressed nearly flat from the force of the strike, its brain oozing out from the metal.
Heat had to take a moment to simply breathe, her lungs filling with precious air. The Infected hadn’t been to hard to defeat, she had fought plenty more before even without Allison helping her, so why-
It suddenly hit her that she had been climbing and crushing as if Allison was boosting her. She and Cold had reacted on instinct and panic, drawing their magic the same way they had with Allison, and now they were paying the price for it.
Heat saw that repairman she had met once, Graham, walk out of the alleyway, looking slightly injured and dazed but still alive. “Hey, you need to get to safety!” she cried, her lungs burning a little from the exertion and the stench of blood that was wafting around the air, but Graham’s only response was to stare at her as he slowly walked forward, a small hatchet clutched in his hand.
“Graham, this isn’t funny, get going!” Heat begged, not wanting to accept the dawning, grim realization. Graham simply charged, his hatchet held high. Cold reformed the ranseur in Heat’s hands, aiming it at the workman, and Heat’s hands began to shake. Graham charged on, willingly impaling himself upon the polearm’s blade as his arm threw the hatchet. The hatchet’s handle hit Heat on the bare head with a bit of force, but she barely noticed it compared to the wide, mocking grin on his face.
The ranseur shattered into a flurry, Graham’s body slumping to the ground dead, and Heat fell to her knees with a sob.
“I barely even knew him… I only ever talked to him once or twice, he wasn’t even a friend, but…” Heat cried, her eyes burning with unshed tears.
“We will have time to mourn the dead later,” Cold insisted from headspace, her voice barely hiding her own grief. “We need to focus on protecting the ones who are still alive!”
Heat nodded with a sniffle, standing to her feet as her tears shed. But beyond the sorrow, beyond the pain, she felt furious. Her power flooded through her body like never before, a burning sensation she couldn’t hold back, and she used it, running onwards without a plan or an idea beyond the need to kill every single Infected she came across. Her boots pounded the cobblestones, leaving behind molten footprints with every step, and her body burst into flame as she screamed a battlecry, charging a group of invading Infected and landing a high kick across the first one’s face, leaving it to fall to the ground as its skull caved in and its hair caught fire, then did a spinning double kick against the next two, catching them in the chest with the sound of breaking ribcages.
On and on she fought, less a woman and more a demon possessed. The Infected were mostly scattered, attacking whoever they could find or catch, and more than a few civilians had risen again. She recognized one of the weavers who had worked on the spider silk, and a cook from her kitchen whose name she couldn’t remember, and even a child who couldn’t have been more than six, all of them covered in blood and trudging with makeshift weapons in their hands. All of them were turned to ash, the burning sensation in Heat’s chest growing with every single former worker she killed. She couldn’t help but idly realize that most Infected were former workers, that’s just how the population spread worked, that every single zombie she fought had once had homes and jobs and families just like the people of Last Stand, the burning spreading from her chest to her limbs.
As Heat charged on, she came across another Infected standing in the middle of the town square. They could have looked like one of the higher-ranking Paladins if not for their ridiculously ornamental, ostentatious armor and weapon, full blackened plate with gold trim and gilded filigree marking a symbol Heat didn’t recognize or care about, and matched by a longsword with a floral golden guard and pommel.
“Who do you even think you are?” the Infected groaned out, its voice strained and hoarse from lack of use. Heat couldn’t bring herself to even care about an Infected speaking and simply charged from across the square, her hands readied.
“Not only do these accursed Paladins take what is mine, but you- at every critical juncture for the past several months, you have been the one to stop my soldiers. You help kill my scouting party, you burn my sneak attack, you take my mine, you cripple my thief, and now you’ve alerted this entire accursed city to my invasion! How many of your friends and neighbors do I have to send at you for you to simply lie down and DIE?!” the Infected caterwauled, its tone making it sound more like a spoiled child than anything else.
Heat didn’t respond. Even if she wanted to- and right now, she very much didn’t- the air in her lungs felt like it was on fire with every breath, her limbs heavy, but on she charged. The puppeted Infected readied its blade with clumsy hands, entering a stance straight out of a stage play choreographed by someone who didn’t know how to use a weapon, and Heat dodged around its swing, jabbing her open palm against its chestplate, melting a hole in its armor and then, nearly unable to stay conscious, Heat swapped out with Cold, the blaze around their body beginning to die.
A piercing icicle speared out from Cold’s hand, jabbing into the Infected’s exposed gut. It tried to swing its sword down at her but its arms simply fell off, razor-sharp disks of ice emerging from what once was its shoulders. The Infected couldn’t even speak anymore, it simply glared at Cold hatefully as its body began to freeze over. Cold said nothing, simply sighing in relief as the energy, warmth, and life stolen from the Infected soothed her worn body.
The rage inside still burned, a tight coal nestled in their chest ready to spring forth at a moment’s notice, but overlapping it was its frozen sister, icy loathing and fiery hatred spiraling around one another.
Sally found Cold still in the plaza, sitting down and barely able to move, staring at the lifeless puppet and what it had represented with dead eyes.
write, but the stakes have been raised and Heat and Cold understand better the real cost of war and an apocalypse. Invasions and zombies won't wait for you to have the best weapons and defenses, and the scariest foe is one who can and will throw away hundreds of soldiers to lull you into a false sense of security.
https://www.patreon.com/c/storyteller , if you feel like reading it early, feel free to tip me. As of writing this, the patreon is just barely 2 chapters ahead.
