Shadows of the Forge: Prologue
Shadows of the Forge
I’m going to start releasing sections of my book, Shadows of the Forge, on my Substack. These do not represent the final versions, and the eventual published copy will undergo substantial revisions (or even entire rewrites), but my hope is that publishing here and getting feedback and comments will keep me going! So please, comment!
Shadows of the Forge is the first in my planned series, Intuitive Rust.
The acrid stench of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air of the decaying laboratory, worming through the frigid Siberian air like a drunken, wounded snake. “Dangerous knowledge, Marsya,” the agent mumbled, tapping ashes onto the floor. “Best left buried.” He held the dog-eared book aloft, his knuckles white with cold.
Dr. Marcus Roth lunged forward, his exile-worn clothes hanging in tatters from his wiry, feral frame. “Put that down!” His voice cracked with desperation. “That tome is over twelve hundred years old. It didn’t survive a millennium just to be ruined by your greasy mitts, Anton Dmitrivitch. You won’t comprehend a word, but I do!”
The agent, a bear of a man, easily shrugged off Roth’s feeble attempt to retrieve the book with a stiff, hairy arm. Dr. Roth could smell the drink on the bigger man, and lamented how far the Union had fallen from the proud decorum of years long gone. Military men would always drink, Russian military men more than the rest, but it would be hard to imagine a waste of a uniform like Anton Dmitrivitch Fyodorov making it so far under a more stringent regime.
Smirking, then squinting, the agent flipped through the pages with callous disregard. Some sheaves came loose and fluttered to the ground like wounded birds. Roth scrambled to his knees to gather them up, his fingers quickly numbed against the icy, dirty concrete.
“It’s decadence, Roth,” the agent drawled against the Siberian wind buffeting the research facility’s thin walls. “Western decadence.” He gestured absently with the Zoroastrian tome toward the bank of computers assembled on Roth’s metal desk like a pair of beige-armored, green-screened idols. The tome’s ancient pages whispered in the flickering candlelight. “Western decadence and Eastern superstition. Two evils, Marsya.”
“Not superstition, Fyodorov. Power.” Roth squared up to the man, his jaw set in defiance. Even as he stretched to his full height, he barely reached the agent’s chin, but the fire in the Doctor’s eyes refused to be extinguished. “Power the likes of which you and your gray masters can only fear, for lack of understanding.” He flicked his wrist, and the candles on his workbench seemed to sputter to life, their flames dancing in an unnatural pattern. “Power in code and divine fire, and I’ll be the one to ignite it.”
Fyodorov looked at Roth for a moment. His eyes slid sideways, noting the now-flickering flame with the barest bit of apprehension playing at his brow.
Then he barked a harsh laugh, knocking a C++ book off of the scientist’s desk. A schoolyard bully’s trick from a thug who never went to school.
“Marsya, you are a funny man, and you fill me with joy!” Anton Dmitrivitch’s rich, bounding voice filled the room, chasing away the shadows in a heartbeat. He turned and walked toward one of the metal rolling chairs nearby, reaching into his jacket pocket as he went. “That was a nice trick! Have your Western toys and your Eastern fantasies. None of it will matter now.”
The agent produced a small glass bottle with a blue plastic screw top, opened it, and took a swig of cheap vodka, not deigning to wince at its acrid taste. He plunked down into the chair with an audible grunt, recovered, then took another swig.
“Nothing matters in Soviet Union anymore...” Fyodorov trailed off, disappearing into his bottle and his thoughts.
Roth shrank back to his desk, shivering as he cocooned around his bootleg programming book. The decaying lab wasn’t built for warmth. The bitter cold seeped through its crumbling walls, the dying embers of an empire on the brink of collapse.
Fyodorov, who had exchanged his bottle for a pack of cigarettes and a small metal lighter, settled in his creaky chair, his eyes flickering with the light of the television screen. Their Soviet relay broadcast made the picture grainy and gray, but the spacecraft stood poised for launch, gleaming with American ambition and pride.
Fyodorov dragged on his cigarette as he leaned back. “Schoolteacher, can you believe it?” Puff, puff. “Roth, I said, can you believe it?” Fyodorov scoffed, shaking his head derisively. “Schoolteacher. Americans send civilians into space like it’s a carnival ride.”
On the screen, the camera panned across the faces of the Challenger crew, their expressions bright with anticipation. The young teacher, pretty, with a feathered mane of light brown curls, smiled as she prepared to make history. Roth glanced up at the screen, a pang of unease twisting in his gut, before turning back to his terminal. After a deep exhalation, his fingers were once again flying across the keys, eyes scanning the Farsi text of the dusty old book.
Fyodorov snorted derisively, then waggled his cigarette at the television. “They think that’s glory. They put their faith in these undeserving amateurs, in smiling women with shiny teeth. Bah!” He stood suddenly, striding across the lab to a shelf with an old radio and cranked up the volume. The tinny speakers crackled to life with the grand, sweeping strains of “Slav’sya.” The chorus swelled, Fyodorov adding his gruff voice to a hundred others raised in proud defiance:
“Glory, glory, Heroes of the soldiers, The homeland of our brave sons. C’mon Marsya, get up and dance with me!” Fyodorov swayed with the music, his eyes glinting with a fierce and desperate pride. But Roth barely registered the song, his attention focused solely on the flickering screen of his computer terminal.
Roth’s fingers clacked and clattered their way across the keyboard, inputting his final lines of code. He scanned through his notes and flicked through the ancient text, which he repeated mentally as he had done hundreds of times before.
I shall now speak with the twin spirits which have existed since the creation's dawn.
Romanov continued to take in the glow of the television. The Space Shuttle Challenger, poised for launch, billowed hot steam and jet vapor as it approached its final countdown.
Of the two spirits did the Holy one speak, and of his twin, the evil one.
"And what do you put your faith in, Fyodorov?" Roth asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "The State? The Party? The empty promises of a crumbling empire?"
Fyodorov’s eyes narrowed, his scarred jaw clenching tight. "I put my faith in order, in the way things are meant to be. Not in this chaos and madness that you seek to unleash." The chorus continued to blast on the radio without him. Bright day, cheerful has come for us! A joyful day has come for us!
But something Romanov had said made Roth’s mind twitch. “You said it won’t matter. What did you mean?”
Romanov’s boot kicked the side of some derelict Soviet computing equipment. He laughed again, huge and laconic, until his joy crumbled to a hacking, wet cough. He hawked and spat, “What, you didn’t know? Program’s been shut down. Gorbachev’s orders. It’s all over.”
The unearthly green light of the terminal lit Roth’s face. Over? The counterintelligence agent's words wormed their way into his mind, stoking the embers of a long-buried rage. The words of the Ushtavad Gatha played in his mind, and under his tongue.
Between us two, neither thoughts, nor teachings, neither will, nor beliefs, neither words, nor inner selves accord.
Canceled.
Roth looked at his code. Tens of thousands of lines of C++. He had given up so much. His home. His family. His youth and reputation and career. And now it would be gone. His fingers danced across the keyboard. Clack. Clack. He removed a flag from his code. And on the television, the countdown to launch began, the numbers echoing through the lab like a tolling bell.
…nine, eight, seven…
Roth's finger hovered over the final key, his heart pounding in time with the countdown. He looked at Fyodorov, drunk and dancing to the broken empire’s glory. He thought of the Americans, of their wild dreams and aspirations, and his heart twisted. Rage surged through him, the fury at all that had been taken from him, all that he had sacrificed. His finger descended, and the world held its breath.
Roth pressed the final key. His code started to build. He would finish his work. The candles surrounding his Zoroastrian tome seemed to swell. No, this was no seeming: they began to burn brighter. Their cycling colors danced across Fyodorov’s face. The shuttle lifted off from the launch pad, and the world seemed to hold its breath.
A column of fire and smoke blazed against the Florida sky. And in the cold, dark heart of Siberia, an ancient evil stirred to life, summoned by the power of forbidden code and the all-consuming hunger of the Ahriman. The radio crooned,
“Enemies, encroached on Native land,
Strike down mercilessly with a mighty hand.”
As the code compiled, the air in the lab grew heavy, charged with unseen energy. The words of the Gatha poured into Roth’s mind. Not just into his mind. Out of his mouth. Slowly at first, softly, then louder.
Fyodorov’s eyes, hard and cynical, widened in growing disbelief as he took in the scene before him: the flickering candles, the scattered occult symbols, and the manic figure of Dr. Roth, hunched over his keyboard, a man possessed.
“Roth!” the agent growled, his voice mixed with the music and the chanting. “What is this? What do you think you’re doing?”
But Roth didn’t hear him, lost in the throes of his dark ritual. The windows shattered, and cold wind rushed through the decrepit lab. “That’s enough, Marcus. This ends. Now!” Fyodorov shouted as he reached out toward Roth. Rays of violet, indigo, and tyrian purple shot forth from the candles, the computers, the windows, the television seemingly from everywhere at once, flinging him back against the magnetic tapes and vacuum tubes lining the walls.
The code compiled, and executed itself as Roth had instructed just moments before. The power of the Ahriman, the all-evil, surged through the room like a physical force, whipping the candles into a frenzy of blazing fire and sending papers swirling through the air. Roth felt nothing but intense rage toward the man crumpled into the computer equipment. Nothing but a searing, white hot hatred of him, of everything that held Roth back over the years. Toward the Americans: everything he could have been, achieving what he could have done.
The television screen flickered and warped, the image of the ascending shuttle twisting into something grotesque and horrible.
The counterintelligence agent clawed his way free of the twisted wreckage of metal, plastic, and shattered glass. His once-pristine uniform was now a tattered ruin, shredded and blood-stained. Shards of glass and jagged metal tore at his skin as he stumbled forward, his eyes wide with primal terror. The energy in the room roiled geometrically with will and purpose, and it surged toward him, leaving trails of sickly violet light, grasping and hungry.
Fyodorov’s scream choked before it escaped his mouth. Instead what emerged was an inhuman wail of agony and despair. His eyes locked with Roth’s as something silent and desperate was communicated between them.
Roth found he couldn’t look away. He watched the life leave Fyodorov as the agent’s form flickered and faded like a corrupted video feed. The dark energy blossomed inward, consuming him from the outside in, not burning the man so much as negating his existence. Fyodorov’s chest crumpled inward, slamming his face down into his sternum. His limbs twitched and jerked impossibly as they were consumed into the crackling void.
Roth retched involuntarily as the stench of burning hair and flesh filled the room. The agent's skin sloughed away in sickening, wet slaps, revealing glistening muscle and pulsing veins beneath. Layer by layer, Fyodorov’s form unraveled before the scientist’s eyes, flesh and bone and sinew peeling away like the pages of an ancient book consumed by fire. His organs streamed out onto the floor, steaming and pulsing in the cold Siberian air. But the energy consumed even these, leaving nothing behind.
And then it was over and the agent’s body was gone, leaving nothing behind among the ruined tape decks and vacuum tubes. It was as if he had never existed at all, a negative space where a man once stood, now an outline of his final, tortured moments.
Roth stood, horrified. The hate was gone, now. He just stared at the spot where the agent had been only moments before, his mind reeling with the magnitude of what had happened. Had he done this? The energy still spiraled out fractally into the air around him, as he dodged behind his desk and shut his eyes from the horror. But he found that the words of the Ahriman were still alive in his mouth, chanting with tenacious, pulsing rhythm.
Somehow, he had to stop this. He could want vengeance in the abstract but this was too much. But when he reached for his keyboard it was too hot - he burned his hand deeply, reeling back. Pain screeched up his left arm, swirling up his face to his forehead. His vision turned half-red with the blood that trickled down the left side of his face.
Smoke poured from his computer, and he watched helplessly as it swirled and stretched toward the grainy television image, swelling and distorted like it was ravaged with starvation. Toward the tiny pencil-shaped white ship with the plume of gray jet behind it.
“No, not…” But every energy source in the room flashed, and then with a final, breathless gasp, the Challenger erupted in a ball of fire, a silent scream of destruction that echoed through the emptiness of the lab.
The craft, its crew, gone in a moment. Roth’s eyes burned with horror. The realization that he had done this, crept slowly into his mind.
In the silence that followed, broken only by the muffled crackle of static from the burned-out television, Roth scanned the scene. Fyodorov had vanished before his eyes. His lab was destroyed. He flipped through his now empty notebooks. His notes, which had been scrawled across boards and walls and papers across the room, were all gone, like they had been meticulously erased by an unseen hand. His hand ached with searing pain where he had burned it trying to abort the program. His computer terminal was now dead, smoking and sparking. A geometric burn was etched into his skin, glowing a deep indigo like ice in a Siberian sea. The radio had gone silent.
Roth trembled as he reached out to the device in the middle of his desk, covered with runes, its surface pulsing with an otherworldly glow. His fingers traced the cool metal, the same intricate design he now found on his hand. The coded brand. The mark of the Fractal Veil.
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