Malekor Ironjaw's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Malekor Ironjaw bent a brass bar across his knee until it snapped. He dropped the pieces on the workbench with the dozen other failures. Common brass warped every time his demon half flared, and his flesh could not hold metal that soft. He needed something that would fuse with him instead of melting against him. He wanted to build an augmentation that joined his demon blood to his machine, a fighting form no one could break. But first he had to find metal that would not quit the moment he burned. The left side of his chest was already gone. A steampunk rig of brass and pressure valves filled the hole, hissing with each breath. It kept him alive. He pressed a scrap of new alloy against the exposed edge and let his demon half rise. Heat bloomed under his skin. The metal buckled and slid off, useless. He had tried nine alloys that night. All nine had failed the same way. The barn door opened without a knock. Crystalline Mortis stepped inside, her see-through body catching the lamplight in shifting colors. She was the strongest shapeshifter alive, and she wore a body she had stolen and scrubbed clean of its first owner. She did not trust anyone, and she made sure everyone knew it. She looked at the pile of broken brass on his bench. "Soft metal for a hot man," she said. "You're wasting your flame." "Then tell me what holds," Malekor said. He did not turn around. Mortis walked to the far wall, where an old barn leaned stacked with books in strange scripts. She pulled one down, read a line, and set it back. "The dead write everything down," she said. "Demons burn out normal steel. But crystal does not warp. It takes heat and gives it back." She raised her own crystal arm. The lamplight split through it. She crossed to the corner and lifted a weapon left behind by a shifter who had fled MukMuk. A battle ax, its head cut from faceted crystal, throwing color across the ceiling. She held it out, handle first. "Melt this into your rig," she said. "It won't quit on you." Malekor took the ax. He pressed the crystal head to the raw edge of his chest and let his demon half flare hotter than before. The crystal glowed. It did not buckle. It sank into the brass seam and set, binding to his flesh as the heat passed through it instead of fighting it. For the first time the metal held. He breathed. The new seam pulsed with faint color beneath his skin. "It works," he said. Mortis watched the glow travel across his chest. "It works too well," she said. "Crystal remembers everything it touches. Your demon half is in it now. So is whatever that blade carried before." Malekor felt the pressure gauge on his left shiver. Something moved inside the crystal that was not his own.