process this information. But if she could just let go of her thoughts and feel, she could There.
The invisible guardian was perfectly still, but Thorn had a clear image of it in her mind. An armored figure. Likely a warforged. Taller than a troll. Long, razor-sharp blades extended from each arm. Merrix had lowered the cloaking magic to show the guardian to his son, and according to Daine both armor and blades were made of adamantine, one of the hardest metals ever produced. A single stroke would cleave through bone, and Steel could never pierce the armored plates. But if she let her senses paint a picture, Thorn could see the gaps in the construct’s armor, the places where joints exposed fibrous bundles. Warforged anatomy was quite different from human, but they still had their weaknesses. And over the last thirty years, the assassins of the Citadel had made sure to learn them. Mouthing a silent prayer to Olladra, Thorn flung Steel.
The dagger flew straight and true, catching the invisible guardian in the neck. The enchantments woven into Steel pulled him back to Thorn’s hand, and viscous fluid began flowing from the gaping wound. The guardian turned to Thorn, but it was moving slowly, disoriented by the blow. It staggered as it looked for its enemy.
Instead, it found Xu’sasar. The dark elf’s senses weren’t quite as sharp as Thorn’s, but she’d been trained to fight in absolute darkness. Now that her enemy was moving, she could track it by sound alone. Xu’sasar wielded her macabre weapon with its blade like a long, curved tooth set atop a haft of bone. Despite its appearance, Xu’sasar easily parried the blows of the adamantine blades with her strange glaive, and her return strike drove straight through the construct and impaled it against the wall. It struggled, waving its arms and trying to strike at the dark elf, but she danced out of its reach. It was left to Thorn to finish it. She struck with Steel, slashing away at the leathery cords binding its head to its body. Alchemical fluids poured down across its chest, and it finally flickered into view as the magic of its life-force faded.
The battle had taken less than a minute. If they were lucky, the first disorienting blow had kept the guardian from alerting its masters. They’d find out soon enough. As Xu’sasar pulled her weapon free from the metal corpse, Thorn jogged back along the corridor, signaling to the rest of the strike force. Move up!
Moments later, they were gathered outside the main gate. Thorn would have preferred a stealthy approach, but there were no other options. The forgehold had no windows. Its walls were thick stone hardened by mystical rituals. And if there were any other entrances, their young informant hadn’t been aware of them. There was only one option for the Tarkanans: the front gate. And this would take more than a simple word to bypass. Safe passage required an enchanted amulet, a form of key. But there were always other alternatives.
Daine gestured at the wall. “Scrapper. Thorn.”
Scrapper was a dwarf, an excoriate of House Kundarak. As Thorn had guessed, she was the one who maintained the wards protecting the Tarkanan fortress. Her aberrant mark helped her shatter spells-a potent gift, though it took a toll on her body. A touch of her hand was all it took to disperse the illusionary wall, revealing the adamantine door that lay beyond. Warding runes covered the gate, and the air around it rippled with mystical power.
“Sister?” Scrapper whispered. Her voice was raspy and dry, as if there was something unfinished in her throat.
Thorn stepped up to the gate, and the two set to work on the overlapping layers of defensive magic. Thorn was impressed by the quality. It was mostly Kundarak work, but clever dragonshard focusing lenses amplified the energies. If Thorn was reading the runes correctly, the wards would completely disintegrate anyone who triggered the trap. Apparently Lord Merrix was perfectly willing to sacrifice innocents to preserve his privacy. Fortunately Thorn and Scrapper were quite good at what they did. Runes began to glow, a flickering pattern of words blazing along the rim of the double doors. The runes blinked and burned and flared into brilliant light-then faded completely.
Scrapper nodded, and the two of them stepped back. It was time for others to take the lead. Brom took his place in the center as the door began to slide open. He was wearing his massive battle gauntlet and grinning as he prepared for his charge. To his left, the gnome Ash smirked and flexed his fingers. Black flames rippled along his scarred skin. Dreck stood to Brom’s right, and emerald energy flickered around his metal fingers as his mark glowed.
Guards stood just within the hall-six identical warforged, slender soldiers carrying silvered halberds. But it seemed that no alarms had been sounded. The guards weren’t even looking at the Tarkanans as the gates opened. They certainly weren’t prepared for the brutal attack that followed. Dreck shattered his victims with bolts of green light. Ash cackled maniacally as he sprayed streams of fire across two more guardians, metal melting and leather burning beneath his mystical flames. Brom took the direct approach, loping across the floor and slamming into the first of his targets with such astonishing force that he knocked its head and right arm from its body. The last of the sentries tried to respond, but their efforts were too little and far too late. Brom swatted the halberd aside with a casual blow, then grabbed hold of the guardian with his huge hand and dashed the warforged to the ground, again and again. Within seconds, the room was silent and still.
Daine strode into the room. His sword gleamed in the light of the cold fire lanterns, while his dragonmark crackled and burned around his left arm. “Break into your teams, brothers and sisters. You know your tasks. Be swift, and show your enemies no mercy-for they will show none to you. To work!”
Dreck took point with Thorn’s team. The aberrant warforged had memorized the plans of the building. He knew the path to the creation forge. Their task was to destroy the forge itself. Daine had taken Xu’sasar, Scrapper, and four of the others and had headed elsewhere in the base. Thorn didn’t know what he was up to.
“Be not afraid,” Dreck said. “The greatest dangers are past. This is a workshop, a place for research. It might have been hidden and hard to enter, but there should be no deadly traps within.”
“You’re placing your trust in the memories of a child-and a toy child at that,” Thorn said. “I’d be cautious.”
She wondered how long the forge had been operating in the depths of Sharn. It was an impressive facility. Surely they’d used one of the structures from the ancient undercity as the foundation of the hold. Still, to do something like this without alerting the local authorities would take time. Of course, this was Sharn. It was quite possible that a few well-greased palms had ensured that records of goods and transportation were conveniently lost, or that suspicious activities were ignored. Thorn knew that there were all too many in this wretched place who put love of gold above their duty to the nation. The time could come when the houses would just buy the Five Nations, Thorn thought glumly.
The sharp sound of metal against metal drew her from her reverie. Up ahead, the hallway widened into a large chamber in which every surface was painted an unblemished white.
“Testing chamber,” Dreck said softly. “Battle ready.”
Once again, the battle was brutal and swift. Two Cannith magewrights were working with three warforged. The constructs were a strange design, something Thorn had never seen before. They were covered in thick armor, with barely any gaps she could take advantage of. Beyond this, each warforged warrior possessed four arms. The upper two arms ended in hands and gripped weapons. The lower two terminated in spiked maceheads, clearly capable of dealing massive damage.
Had the warforged been fresh, it could have been quite a challenging fight. But the Tarkanans had arrived at the end of the magewrights’ trial. One of the warforged was already stretched out on the floor, his armor split open to expose a mass of fibrous muscles and alchemical fluids. Another had lost one of his mace arms, and another limb was crippled and useless. Both survivors were covered with dents and moved unsteadily.
Thorn didn’t hesitate. The magewrights were the greater threat. There was no telling what mystical abilities they might possess. And although they were human, they were knowingly operating an illegal facility in her nation.
The female magewright gasped as Steel’s point emerged from her partner’s throat. She reached for a wand at her belt, but before she could pull it free, she cried out and dropped to her knees. This was the work of Koyna, a Tarkanan whose mark attacked its victims with their own worst fears. Thorn sprinted forward, finishing the woman as quickly as she could. She was prepared to kill, but the gruesome powers of Koyna and Ash still turned her stomach.
One of the battered juggernauts turned to Thorn as she severed the magewright’s spine. It moved surprisingly quickly, considering the amount of damage it had sustained. She saw a blur of motion, an iron giant bearing down on her with murder on its mind. Then Brom slammed into it, sending the construct spinning sideways. His war gauntlet rose and fell, each blow denting the armor of the warforged. It lashed out with a spiked mace,
