The Fall of the Illistarta Read online

do realise that was carrying a soul?” and the short man responsible for charging me was looking at me as though he understood the words leaving my lips. Fear was written across our faces as they watched the glimmer of glass roll into the red light of the furnace. A harrowing silence befell the furnace as Pol came out with the rest of his students to see the crowds running away from the furnace. Then I was plucked out of the chaos by my Master, “Where is the vial?” he barked. “One of the slaves knocked it into the furnace.” “You better hadn’t have lied about this.” Pol then spoke the language of the short men as though he was one of them and they stopped running. “He was one of the newcomers, Master Pol.” That bad day would only lead to worse and because of it happening, I see and hear that event vividly every time I think of it.

  Those imbecilic short men looked at each other saying the name Pol with respect and looked at the Master Physician with awe and surprise. Pol looked at me in anger, immediately he looked back towards the crowd of short men. Again he spoke the tongues of the short men. But none responded to his words until the howls from the infected forge fires were enough to send even the most stoic of the academics and slaves into a senseless rout. Evacuating the Preparatory none cared what would happen or had happened, they only cared for saving themselves.

  Only one was left within the building and that poor soul was never heard or seen alive ever again. The Master Blacksmith was the first to return to the preparatory foundries and use the infected metal. Unprecedented and unforeseeable, the metal was a soulless black and moulded into an anvil. When the blacksmith failed to return, Pol and I investigated to see a lifeless corpse with one arm resting high onto the anvil with a hammer in his hand while his body lay face down and bloodied from the floor.

  From that anvil, the spawn of our doom arose. There were others whom discovered the properties of the anvil as they attempted to destroy it. The soul within rebelled and stole their spirit, such an apparition of death could not be justified a description only that none deserved such an act to occur to them. I meanwhile continued my studies to become one of many Physicians. Like all things vile committed in history, it had begun as a simple generous act that was twisted by the fearful and greedy.”

  Seven years later, months after the anniversary of the anvil’s creation, many lived in fear of the omen. It had stolen peoples’ souls and the more heinous crime had been that it was selective over the victims. The artefact had been locked away from the world on many occasions, but it had always managed to escape confinement with some help. None knew who or what helped it but, rumour ran around that there were sightings of armour which was possessed by the very souls the anvil had stolen.

  Quillis Olgatin Advanced Physician as I had been known then was one of the earliest to report sightings to witness the armour fill with some mystical force and move on its own accord for a short time. It was the clanks and bangs of the plated armour that were haunting most, and then there were the howls of the energy controlling that puppet. The time at the preparatory taught me more about the power of the spirit and how that abomination created years ago could condemn them all. Whispers in the streets also told that as time aged, the anvil had grown in size and shape. Whatever vile form of life essence lurked within had now become calm and unnoticed. The recent weeks without rumour and incident had been met with fear and superstition.

  It stood mockingly in a plaza in the centre of the Preparatory, basking in the sunlight then cooling off under the moon and stars. Only one person was allowed to touch it, the adolescent was a relatively unknown student. He was one of the strange ones, he talked to it as though it were a real person going through the daily rituals of conversation. None cared for his name as he was the only Illistarta denizen to interact with the anvil with any form of kindness.

  Some students even reported the adolescent had actually used the anvil for its main function, to shape the metal from the foundries into the steam driven vehicles. After the machine’s parts had been completed and constructed into a carry cart for the mines, it came to life when the fires were lit and the steam powered vehicle functioned normally for several days. Quillis and his fellow former Preparatory friends waited patiently for any sign that the anvil was stirring.

  He waited for days on end as the unnamed man had continually cleaned and polished the anvil. Out of the streets came a cry for help. Crowds congregated toward the source of the pleas and to everyone’s astonishment that it was a carry cart harassing a resident. The reasoning was unknown at the time and when Quillis investigated whom the harassed resident’s identity was, he was shocked to discover it. “Excuse me, are you alright?” “Of course I’m not alright. If you hadn’t already noticed, that THING just attacked me. It was like it had something within it. Something alive and horrifying. I don’t need this, I already have the remainder of my life to grieve and I don’t want any more forsaken objects like that in my life! One of them already took my love...” She slammed the door and ran back inside while tears flooded from her eyes.

  She was one of the families, the ones that had lost their Patriarch to the anvil. Another burden for my conscience to carry for the remainder of my life, another memory judging in favour for oblivion. In that moment my mind then pictured something I hadn’t thought about beforehand. It was a burning question that forced an action I never truly thought thoroughly through. Reading the name of the family whom owned the house, the Physician I claimed to be then looked for the mysterious carry cart.

  “You! Patriarch of house Mert, Are you the Patriarch of house Mert?” I called into the line of mine carry carts. He waited for a response, none returned, then he cried out again with the same message while pointing to random carry carts. Failure after failure was tearing down hope of ever seeing that mysterious cart.

  Nearly a day went as I talked to our creations and then as I turned away, there it was. Calm and controlled, without a pilot or a tether to a pulley cart. That was the day I discovered the power the Binding Anvil had. Children, you are luck never to have seen the power it wielded nor its power to blind us. Youthful in mind and body, my fear of its creation is what inevitably drove the horror of our doom to be forged. Regret is all that remains in this old man and you are left with my Legacy and for that I am sorry.”

  After uncovering what I thought was the identity of the carry cart’s erratic behaviour, this may have found a way to remove the souls from within the dreaded anvil. I thought may have been the right push needed to force the hand of the Council of the nation to free all of the horded souls trapped inside the anvil.

  Once in the chambers of discussion and hierarchy, this Physician prepared his argument for the destruction of the anvil. “Lords, Nobles and Chancellors; I have come today to make a plea, a plea to end the omen.” Then one of the lords rose from his seat “What omen is this? If you are talking about that accursed anvil, then you are wasting your time.” “But my Lords! I have made an intriguing discovery about the nature of the anvil. It can release the souls it had trapped within to inanimate objects worked on its form, I wish to conduct an experiment to see whether it can grant those spirits passage back to the flesh...” “Enough, where is your proof? Before any of us consider touching that smear on our civilisation.”

  Rolling in sheepishly upon the steam driven wheels, the carry cart successfully navigated its way to where I stood within the chamber without knocking into any of the seats or stands surrounding it. The Lords and Nobles at first thought it was some kind of trick, they thought it was some form of magic used to guide the vehicle to his position. They soon saw the truth when the machine was making strange whistles and screams as it was begging to make some form of contact. Awe befell the council as they saw some use in this marvel of accidental science.

  “Send for that boy who works with the anvil!”

  That was the last word allowed to be uttered that day in those chambers. The young man was soon enslaved to the orders of the lords and forced to build men of metal. At first glance, the early forged were hollow and te
rrifying, as the boy’s skill aged with his body the automatons took a far more appealing form. Every man, woman and child was spared the ills of labouring within the mines and construction. The souls within were willing participants during the early days of their production and had been content serving the Empire of Illistarta.

  Like any of the civilised beings scurrying around the world for their own self importance, warmongers saw potential from the metal men. It could be an army of unstoppable warriors that would never tire nor degrade the same way with age. The high Warlord soon demanded that two hundred soldier forms should be made and dispatched equally to the eight cities. The problem at the time was that the boy was overworked and had died before the first orders could come through to him. Panic was nowhere as rational men such as myself were forced into an exile of silence or threatened to become members of the new army.

  A force of blacksmiths churned out the two hundred empty armour bodies each using gear, pulleys and pistons all driven by steam boilers for controlling limbs and movement. Next arrived its new victims, willing veterans asking for another chance of