A cold knot of dread tightened in Bastet's stomach, but the all-consuming panic he had known in the forest did not come. The Chaos Baron had burned that out of him. He pushed Lilian gently but firmly behind him. His hand went to Folly's Edge, but he did not draw it. Not yet.
Thomas and the other eleven figures stood in a semi-circle before them, their bodies unnaturally still despite their missing limbs. They made no move to attack. Thomas watched Bastet while the others waited in silence. "It's midday." Thomas broke the silence. "Let's go."
Bastet's eyes quickly scanned them for weapons. They each carried a heavy pickaxe, a tool, but a deadly weapon in its own right. Their skin glistened like polished stone.
"The wind," Bastet said, his eyes locked on Thomas. "It doesn't touch you." His voice was a low growl, devoid of the tremor he expected to hear.
Thomas glanced down at the edge of his tunic, untouched by the breeze, then back to Bastet. He tilted his head. "And what do you conclude from this observation?"
"You're monsters." Bastet's grip tightened around the hilt of Folly's Edge, and he drew it from its scabbard. The black metal shimmered without settling into a solid form.
"Monsters," Thomas repeated. "We accept you as one of our own, and offer you shelter, food, and work. And you draw your sword on us?" He shook his head. "No. You are the one who's a monster."
Bastet's mind reeled. His gaze quickly shifted to Lilian, seeking support. He had bargained with a god, but this exchange with a being of stone felt deeply unsettling.
"There are many who cross over," Lilian stepped forth from behind him, "yet there are only few with natures compatible with ours. How could we trust you?"
"And what is the difference between us, girl? That you are of flesh and bone, while we are made of stone? Why is your life worth more than ours, that you threaten us, twice? What claim do you have to matter, that my own voice could not throw back at you? We both think, and feel. Only you bleed, while we chip."
It was a strange feeling. His mind raced, grappling with the impossible reality before him. These things were not human. To have them plead their right to the world in front of him felt deeply wrong. They were stone, and he had no way of knowing their minds, their limits, their true intent. But then he remembered Thomas's challenge from earlier. He had asked them to give him an order, to prove that they were Wesian. The realization was a key turning in a lock. Thomas was bound by the oath, and Wesia only put chains on things that could think for themselves, things that might otherwise choose to disobey. The oath was not the mark of a monster, but the proof of a mind. And it was more than that. It was a leash—a leash they shared. For Thomas to harm him or Lilian would be against the interests of their masters. The oath would not allow it. A cold, grim comfort settled in his gut. He could not trust Thomas. But he could trust the chains on him. He slowly, deliberately, sheathed Folly's Edge.
The sound of the dark metal sliding home was unnervingly loud in the silent villa. The bitter taste of ash filled his mouth. It was a victory, but one won not with courage, but with the cold, familiar logic of a slave recognizing the bars of another's cage.
Thomas held Bastet's gaze. Some of the tension left his shoulders, and something ancient and weary surfaced in his blue eyes. Not surprise or respect, but recognition. He gave a slow, deliberate nod. Lilian looked from Thomas to Bastet. She had understood enough to know he had found some reason to lower the sword, though whatever guarantee he thought he possessed was lost on her.
"Lead the way," Bastet said, his voice flat.
Thomas gestured to two of the others. One was a broad, powerfully built figure missing its right leg, leaning on a pickaxe like a crutch. The other was a slender, graceful woman whose right arm was a stump of smoothly polished stone just below the elbow.
"Gaius," Thomas said to the larger figure. "Give the man a pickaxe, and take him to the high quarry. Show him the work. He is strong."
Then, he turned to the other. "Sybil. Take the girl to the Sculptor's workshop. Let him assess her talent."
Bastet saw the flicker of panic in Lilian's eyes as she was about to be separated from him. He couldn't explain it all now, not here. He met her gaze and gave a nod. She hesitated, then gave a small nod in return.
"Be careful," Bastet said, his voice a low murmur only she could hear.
"You too," Lilian whispered back, her eyes wide with a fear she was trying desperately to conceal. She allowed Sybil to lead her down a different marble path, disappearing behind a crumbling archway. Thomas and the others had gone towards the quarry, and Bastet was left alone with the hulking, one-legged Gaius.
Gaius gestured with his head toward a different alley. He moved with a strange, rhythmic grace, using the heavy pickaxe as a crutch. Bastet followed. They walked by villas with their insides gutted, their faded frescoes of dancing nymphs and heroic hunts now open to the sky. They did not talk. After a short walk, they arrived at a long, low building that might have once been a stable. Inside, dozens of pickaxes stood in wall racks, their iron heads free of rust, and coils of rope rested on old shelves. Gaius pointed to a pickaxe and a length of rope, and Bastet took them.
"You have a name?" Gaius asked, his voice low and resonant.
Bastet opened his mouth to say the one they had agreed upon, his father's, but the word caught in his throat like a shard of bone. He thought of his father's calloused hands, the smell of honest soil, the quiet dignity of a life lived without lies. He should not have chosen to bring that honorable name here, into this place. "Lucian," he said, the name feeling foreign and wrong on his tongue.
Gaius led him out of the toolshed and toward a steep, winding path that climbed the side of the mountain looming over the city. The ascent was grueling. The cold air grew thin, and Bastet's lungs burned, his muscles screaming in protest. Gaius, however, moved with the same relentless, effortless rhythm.
But Bastet's focus was not on the climb. His eyes scanned the scarred face of the city below, searching. The dream had been a chaotic nightmare, but one detail was seared into his memory: the lonely girl had been standing on a ledge of white marble, and just behind her, a single, twisted pine tree grew straight out of the rock, its shape like a grasping hand. He searched every ledge they passed for that tree, but found nothing. Pines clung to the mountain here and there, twisted by wind and poor soil, yet none resembled the shape from his dream. The absence bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
As they climbed, a rhythmic percussion reached them, faint at first, then growing steadily louder: dozens of pickaxes striking stone in unison. There were no shouts, no grunts of effort, no sounds of human labor. Just the clean, cold, metronomic sound of stone cracking.
They rounded a final corner, and the source of the sound was revealed. Bastet stopped, his breath catching in his throat. Before him was a vast, white scar gouged into the side of the mountain. It was an open-pit quarry of breathtaking scale. And across its terraced levels, dozens of stone figures worked the marble. Each one was maimed in some way—an arm missing, a leg gone, a torso cracked—but the blows of their pickaxes had fallen into an eerie common rhythm.
Upon descending into the quarry, Gaius pointed to an untouched section of the gleaming white rock face, then handed Bastet the pickaxe. This, at least, Bastet understood. He was a farmer. He knew physical labor. He set his feet, spat on his hands, and swung the heavy tool with all the force he could muster. The pickaxe struck the marble with a sharp crack. And a white-hot agony shot through his shoulder where the centipede had bitten him, radiating down through his bruised ribs. The stone chipped; his body screamed. He swung again, ignoring the pain, his muscles straining. A sizable chunk of marble, as large as a man's head, broke free and tumbled to the ground.
He felt a presence beside him. Gaius stood there, looking down at the piece Bastet had broken off. He shook his head slowly. "Too small," he said, his voice a low, resonant rumble. He pointed with his remaining hand to a massive block of marble being worked on by three others. It was easily eight feet long and several feet thick. "The Sculptor demands unbroken blocks. No fractures. The larger, the better."
Bastet stared, first at the small piece he had managed, then at the monumental block the others were carving from the mountain face. If they needed them to be large and in one piece, these likely weren't for construction. Would they be carved?
He had no time to ponder the question. Gaius gestured for him to join a team that was preparing to move one of the finished blocks. They wrapped the massive block in a net of thick ropes and hauled it toward a heavy, iron-reinforced wooden wagon resting on a set of tracks. The workers leaned into the ropes together, their strength making the immense weight seem trivial. Bastet added his own straining muscles to the effort, his feet slipping on the loose gravel, his every breath a ragged gasp. After they finished loading the stone, the wagon's rear doors were closed and sealed with the sword-and-chain sigil. It instantly made him think of the carts they saw leaving the city in the morning. Were they carrying marble blocks, just like these ones?
Gaius nudged him, and Bastet fell back into line. He swung his pickaxe, the pain in his shoulder a dull, rhythmic echo. Sweat stung his eyes. His body screamed for rest. But all around him, the stone-men worked on without pause, showing none of the fatigue that was tearing through Bastet. And as he toiled, the same question echoed in his mind with every strike. Why did Wesia need this stone? He did not understand. Yet somehow, a cold certainty washed over him. That this question was inseparably tied to the mystery of his dream.
***
Sybil led Lilian to a tall building that smelled of damp clay, wet stone, and the sharp tang of metal files. It was a workshop. The room was dominated by several massive, hulking forms covered by sheets. In the center of the room, a man stood working on a statue of a minotaur, its marble skin cracked along the length of its powerful arm. He was human, old and weary, with hands stained by decades of dust and clay. He did not look up as they entered, his focus entirely on the delicate work of filling the crack with a gray, clay-like paste.
"The new girl," Sybil announced. "Thomas sent her."
The old sculptor finished smoothing the paste with a wetted thumb before finally turning. His eyes were a pale brown. "Can you work?" he grunted.
"I can work," Lilian said, her voice steady.
"We'll see." He gestured to a pile of clay on a nearby table. "Show me first. Make something."
Lilian took a breath, her fingers testing the weight and cool texture of the damp clay. She had not held a sculptor's medium in what felt like a lifetime. For a moment, her mind was a blank slate. Then, the muscle memory of her lessons took over. Her thumbs found the form within the lump, pressing and shaping with a speed that surprised even herself. A few deft movements formed the body, while a delicate pinch created the head and the beak. With the edge of her fingernail, she etched the fine lines of feathers on a wing. In just a few minutes, a small bird sat in her palm. As a final, strange touch, she carved an opening into its beak, as if it were singing.
The old sculptor watched her, his expression unreadable. He walked over and examined the bird, then looked at her, a flicker of something new in his eyes. "You have talent," he admitted. "You feel the form." He set the bird down carefully on the table and then gestured to the minotaur. "But talent for creation is not what is needed here. The shipments from the coast are arriving with more damage than usual. This one's horn was chipped in transit. Fix it."
Lilian looked from the old man to the minotaur. The scale of it was breathtaking. She had been trained in sculpting by her father, working on small, intricate pieces, and she had learned in the Academy too. But this was a monster of a different order. She took a breath, gathered some clay, and approached the colossal head. She made a mistake on her first attempt, applying the clay too thickly. But she worked fast, her artist's instincts taking over, and began to shape the excess into a small, elegant scrollwork design, an ornament more beautiful than the original.
"No," the sculptor's voice was sharp, right behind her. "You are a restorer. Feel the line the first artist made. You are not creating; you are mending. Your work must be invisible." He took the tool from her hand and, with a few deft movements, scraped away her flourish and seamlessly blended the patch into the original horn. "The artistry was done elsewhere, long before this piece reached my workshop. If you modify it, you risk disrupting the whole."
His words hit her with the force of a physical blow. Done elsewhere? They had watched dozens of carts leave Statia when they arrived. Is this what they had brought in?
The old man watched her, and the sharpness in his eyes seemed to soften. He exhaled, the sound heavy with the dust of ages. "Forgive an old man's tongue," he said, his voice now quiet. "It is just… I see the fire in your work. An artist's fire. You have ideas of your own." He gestured around the cold, pragmatic workshop. "This is no place for that. This is a place for embers, not flames. A place for mending what is broken."
He ran a hand over his own tired face. "I, too, once tried to create. To see a soul in the heart of the mountain. But these times had no need for my art." He looked at the bird she had made, a flicker of something like envy in his eyes. "And yet, you make this. So effortlessly. To see your well-practiced hands makes an old man wonder. What is it for? What is it that I am not seeing?"
Lilian was taken aback by the raw weariness in his voice. This was not a test, like the questions from the priest or the Baron. This was a genuine plea from a man who had lost his way. "I am… no master," she said quietly, her voice losing its defensive edge. "I have only just begun my studies. I cannot say what it is you are not seeing." She paused, her gaze falling to the clay bird on the table. "But I can borrow my father's words. He used to say that our task is not truly to create, but to uncover what is already present under the stone."
Her eyes drifted to the colossal minotaur. "Within every block, there is already the god and the monster. The hero and the coward. They all lie underneath the surface, waiting. Every question ever asked, and every answer to be given. They're all in there." She placed her hand on the cold stone and ran it along its edge. "Our job is to follow the grain, and feel the faint whispers of what it wants to become. We listen, and carve out all that it is not. The job of a sculptor," she finished, her voice an earnest whisper, "is the revelation of a single soul."
A long, heavy silence filled the workshop. The old sculptor did not move. He simply stared at her, his eyes filling with a deep and ancient sorrow. He understood every word she had said. It was not a lack of knowledge that ailed him.
"He taught you well, child," the old man said finally, his voice a rattling rasp. He looked down at his own dust-caked, trembling hands. "A beautiful theory." He turned away from her then, his shoulders slumping with a weariness that seemed to settle in his very bones. "But the mountain has been silent for a very long time."
He picked up his tools without another word. Lilian watched him for a moment, a profound pity welling up inside her for the old, defeated artist. She then turned and picked up her own tools, and together, they went back to mending the monster.
***
Evening fell over the stone city. They returned to the villa to find a meal waiting for them on the finely carved table, which had been set upright. There was some bread, salted meat, and wine left by the workers.
They ate in a weary silence, the day's unsettling events a heavy weight between them. Bastet's muscles ached from the quarry, a deep, satisfying pain of honest labor put to a purpose he could not comprehend. Lilian's fingers were stiff from the delicate, repetitive work with the chisel.
But a faint tapping at the windowpane made her look up. A small clay bird perched on the outer ledge, silhouetted against the deep violet twilight sky. Lilian froze, her bread halfway to her mouth. It looked just like the one she had sculpted, with its beak wide open, as if it were singing. What was it doing here? As she stared, the bird turned its head with a faint, grating sound. It looked directly at her with eyes of blank, hardened clay. It had come to life.