Magic, Dark Lords, and Other Lies From The Empire

Chapter 10

I walked through the halls of the Temple of Z'kyd'qa once again, making my way to the Holy Forge.

Even before I entered the room I noticed that it was much quieter than normal. Instead of the usual cacophony of striking hammers and quenching steel, only a single hammer could be heard. This wasn't too strange, Karrac had less than a dozen Mythsmiths, and that was more than enough for the few jobs in the city that needed their special skills.

Making my way past cold forges and empty basins, I found Father hammering a sheet of steel into the rough shape of a new gauntlet.

I nearly spoke up before I noticed the look of intense concentration on his face as if the metal would explode if he was off by a millimeter. Father was never one to slack on his work, but it was clear this next set was something special.

'Maybe one of the high commanders requested it?' I wondered as I watched him work. 'It looks close to High Commander Lyksu's size.'

"I suppose I lost track of time?" Father asked, not looking away from the metal.

"Just a bit," I said as I walked over to the vat of ichor, sitting on the warm stone edge. "Dinner will probably be ready by the time we get back."

He nodded as he continued working. A few more minutes passed before Father finally finished, setting the gauntlet into a quenching vat.

"How was the interview?" he asked, wiping sweat from his brow.

I shrugged. "More...intense than I thought...but I managed." I sighed. "They're making me go through some kind of special training before I can become an official paladin."

Father's normally neutral face scrunched up. "They're putting you through disciplinary training?"

"You know about it?"

He nodded. "I saw it once when my master brought me on a trip to The Holy City."

My eyes widened. "Do...you think I'll have to go there for training?"

"Most likely."

"That's...huh..." I knew that being a paladin would take me all over the empire, but I had thought that my training would at least be done within Karrac. 'And going to The Holy City... to Deqabes...'

"EEP!?" I squeak as Father roughly grabbed my shoulder, snapping me out of my thoughts. I realized that he was looking me over, his eyes slowly widening as he seemed to notice something. "Wh-what is it?"

"...They threatened to strip your aura?" he asked, sounding more shocked than I had ever heard before.

"You can tell? How?" I asked, curious.

"The process is very invasive. Even if they didn't follow through in performing it there will be traces of aura remaining in the target's body."

"What?" I closed my eyes and turned my focus inward. As I did, I began to sense tiny wisps of something foreign mixed in with my aura. "How did I not notice that..." Annoyed, I concentrated my aura on the wisps, flushing them out. I breathed a sigh of relief as I felt the chilling sensation that had followed me home disappear. I could still feel it a bit, but now it felt more like the uncomfortable sensation of remembering a past injury instead of that lingering cold. "That's better. Thank you."

"It's alright." His face relaxed for a moment before creasing in concern again. "What did you say to them?"

"What? I didn't-"

"Xara," Father said firmly. "Aura stripping isn't something they do for minor transgressions. If they were this close to subjecting you to it, it means you said something...important."