Galharath-or, as he thought of himself, Gal of the lineage of Harath, his original quori ancestor-had fought against the Inspired all his life. He had become a psionic artificer to discover and develop new weapons that might be used in his people's struggle for survival. When Cathmore approached him with an offer-working at a 'site of singular interest to one of your kind,' as the old man had put it-Galharath accepted without hesitation, especially since he'd been able to read the particulars of Cathmore's offer in his thoughts. Cathmore might have no greater vision for the psi-forge than producing mindslayers, but Galharath hoped to learn enough about the device in order to recreate it-or something very much like it-to construct beings that would fight the Inspired alongside the kalashtar.
'Do you think the stories are true?' Galharath asked. 'Has Diran Bastiaan forsaken the ways of the Brotherhood of the Blade for priesthood within the Silver Flame? Or is it merely a ruse and he has come to Perhata to track you down and slay you once and for all?'
'Why do you bother asking questions when you already know the answers?' Cathmore said. 'I hired you for your psionic abilities, and I have no illusion that you refrain from employing them on me. You'd be a fool not to.'
Galharath's estimation of Cathmore went up a notch. 'Then permit me to say this: I am well aware that yours is not the only spirit that inhabits your body. That much, at least, we have in common, but whereas my spirit is inextricably bound to that of my ancestor's, yours exists alongside a darker spirit that you allowed to be implanted within your body. Two spirits, connected but at the same time separate.'
'So?'
'So your darker half knows that it has nearly used up your body and is hoping to find a replacement.'
Cathmore turned away from the window again, but this time a darkness lurked in his eyes, and his smile was cold and feral. When he spoke, it sounded as if he did so in two distinct voices. 'Of course. Why do you think we're so interested in being reunited with Diran-young, strong, healthy Diran-once more?'
Cathmore laughed, the sound dry and brittle as ancient bone, before returning his attention to the darkness that lay beyond the window, a darkness, Galharath thought, that was bright as the sun compared to what dwelled inside the old man.
'I have something to tell you.' Cathmore's voice had returned to normal, though it was no less chilling for that. 'The spirit within me is sensitive to the unseen world. It's one of the reasons that the Brotherhood of the Blade uses them, and mine is whispering to me that we are not alone in this room.'
Galharath frowned, his psionic senses sweeping through the chamber, and while he was normally acutely aware of his surroundings, this time he paid far closer attention to its minute details. At first, he detected nothing out the ordinary, and he began to wonder if perhaps Cathmore's dark spirit hadn't corrupted his mind to the point where the old man was starting to take leave of his senses, but then he found it: the merest flicker of a mental presence, so infinitesimal that even the most skilled psionicist would have been hard-pressed to notice it without conducting a careful search. The physical nexus for the presence lay in the far corner of the observation chamber. Galharath got a firm mental fix on the presence to make certain that it couldn't conceal itself from him once more, and then turned in its direction.
'We know you're there, and there's no way that you will be able to hide from me again. Show yourself.'
At first nothing happened, and Galharath was contemplating a psionic strike against the presence when the air in the corner rippled, and a hulking stone and wood being with numerous multicolored crystals affixed to its body appeared. Galharath instantly recognized what he was looking at, though he wasn't sure he believed it. This was an artificial being produced by the crystalline forge that lay at the heart of Mount Luster. This was a psi-forged.
'How interesting,' Cathmore said. If the master assassin was surprised by the sudden appearance of the psi-forged, Galharath couldn't tell it from the calm tone of his voice. 'I wasn't aware that the forge was ever operational.'
Galharath was intrigued, for there was so much they could learn about the forge and its processes from this being that had been born within its mystic fires, but he was also cautious. It was clear that the psi-forged was powerful, or else it wouldn't have been able to cloak itself from Galharath's perception for so long, and if Cathmore's dark spirit hadn't detected it, allowing Galharath to search for the creature, there was a good chance he might never have discovered it. That meant the psi-forged was extremely strong-and therefore extremely dangerous.
Galharath felt an itching sensation, as if hundreds of ants had somehow found their way into his skull and were crawling over the surface of his brain. The psi-forged was attempting to probe his mind. The technique was clumsy at best, but there was no denying the power behind the probe. The creature had been able to penetrate Galharath's standard defenses as easily as his physical body could pass through air. Already the itching sensation was beginning to hurt as the psi-forged intensified its probe. It now felt as if the ants were sinking their mandibles into the tender, moist flesh of his brain and tearing away chunks to devour. At this rate, if Galharath allowed the creature to persist in its attempt to explore his mind, there was a chance he would suffer significant brain damage.
Galharath concentrated on strengthening his psionic defenses, visualizing his head surrounded by an impenetrable globe of blazing light. He drew additional power from the psi-crystals he wore on his gloves and chest, as well as those shards woven into his hair. He used this power to increase the globe's density, adding layer upon layer to it, each layer vibrating at a different frequency, exponentially strengthening the whole. Galharath felt the pain of the psi-forged's mental probe begin to subside, and then it was gone. Before the psi-forged could renew its efforts to penetrate Galharath's defenses, the kalashtar went on the attack, both in an attempt to distract the creature as well as to conduct a probe of his own. His vision shifted, and he now saw the psi-forged not as a physical creature of darkwood, silver, obsidian, and stone but rather as a luminous being composed entirely of various hues of light.
And what light! Galharath's psychic vision was dazzled by the array of colors that comprised the creature's astral form: fiery reds, pulsating blues, glowing oranges, warm yellows, cool greens, and so many, many more- colors that Galharath had never seen, colors which he wasn't sure even had names… All were interwoven in a complex pattern that formed the true core of the psi-forged's self, what-for a lack of better term-could be called the creature's soul.
Galharath pictured tendrils of energy emerging from the globe surrounding his head like pseudopods. The tendrils lengthened and extended toward the multicolored patchwork of energy that was the psi-forged. The ends of the tendrils waved in the air around the creature's astral form, tentatively probing its outer defenses, searching for a weak point that might allow entry. No matter where the tendrils looked, they could find no weaknesses in the psi- forged's defenses, but Galharath did sense something odd about this creature…
He recoiled as images, thoughts, emotions, and sensations assaulted his mind. He tried to shut them out, to deny them entrance, but they crashed through the protective globe of mental energy protecting his brain as if it were the most fragile of glass. Galharath clasped his head in his hands and screamed.
The pieces had been crafted and assembled into a rough approximation of a humanoid shape. Now all that remained was to infuse the creature with the spark of life. The construct lay motionless atop a crystalline table in the middle of the spherical structure that was the psi-forge's main chamber. The crystal struts that connected the sphere to the cavern's ceiling and floor pulsated with soft illumination as they drew upon the vast thermal energies contained beneath the mountain, and the runes carved into the sides of the table glowed with eerie eldritch light. The atmosphere of the cavern was charged with the sensation of building power to the point where the air crackled with barely restrained energy.
Four people wearing protective crystal-lens goggles watched closely as the forge continued siphoning the mountain's power into itself. Three of them stood close to the forge's main chamber so that they might more closely observe the device's first test-and intervene in the unlikely event that anything went wrong. The fourth stood much farther back, almost with his back against the cavern's far wall. In addition to his goggles, this cautious individual wore a heavy cloak imbued with nearly a dozen different enchantments designed to safeguard the wearer from all harm, whether physical or mystical. This was Karnil of House Cannith, high-ranking member of the Fabricators Guild and overseer of this installation. He was a short man, though he thought himself of medium height. Ever since childhood he had endured jokes from people inquiring if he had any halfling blood in his ancestry, which was perhaps why his face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. House Cannith carried the Mark of Making, and during its long and illustrious history, the House was responsible for some of Khorvaire's greatest achievements, including the towers of Sharn, the lightning rail, and the warforged.
It had been Karnil's task to shepherd this project from its inception to this moment, when the psi-forge was
