“Shavara Denth,” Voshari said, his voice a flat, emotionless statement. “Your old forge. It now belongs to me.” My left brow arched in brazen challenge. “Does it now, Voshari? And here I thought the Denth forge was rather like a stubborn stain: difficult to remove and prone to reappear at the most inconvenient times.” The familiar scent of oil, metal, and latent magic was a heady perfume. This wasn't just a workshop; it was my inheritance, my sanctuary, my proving ground. He wouldn’t pry it from me with a single declaration, no matter how sharp his obsidian blade. His grey eyes, usually as placid as a frozen lake, flickered with something I couldn’t quite decipher—a frustration, perhaps, or a deeply buried surprise. “The Denth line lay dormant for two years, Shavara. The guild allocated its resources to active masters. I claimed it, fairly.” He gestured with his glass blade, its edge catching the slivers of light. “The kilns are tuned to my hand, the work tables configured for my automatons. This space is no longer yours.” “Fairly?” I scoffed, stepping further into the dusty, echoing hall. My boots crunched on ceramic shards. “You, Voshari Fenn, the man who once spent a week trying to prove my glass-feathered griffon was actually a very confused, very flightless chicken, speak of fairness? The Denth forge is a legacy, not a lost coin to be picked up by the nearest opportunist.” I surveyed the modified workspace, noting the heavier-duty lifting cranes, the wider tempering basins—all designed for the colossal, stoic beasts he favored. “And frankly, your aesthetic is entirely too… functional.” He didn’t rise to the bait, merely watching me with that unnerving stillness. “I have a commission, Denth. A series of siege golems for the city guard. I require this space.” “And I,” I purred, my gaze lingering on the glint of his obsidian blade, “have a much grander commission: the Imperial Menagerie. A giant glass dragon, Voshari. Something you, with your penchant for brick-like beasts, could never hope to conjure.” I walked to the central working dais, running a finger along the smooth, cool stone. “We both know how these things are settled in the Forges, don’t we?” His head tilted fractionally. “A duel of creation?” “Indeed. The forge’s hearth decides. The victor claims the space. Unless, of course, you’ve grown rusty in my absence?” I picked up a small, unworked lump of Vitric clay, rolling it between my fingers. “Or perhaps you always preferred to take what you couldn’t earn?” The air thickened, charged with the challenge. Voshari’s grip on his glass blade tightened, knuckles stark white against the dark material. “Set your terms, Denth.” “Simple,” I declared, tossing the clay onto a workbench with a soft thud. “Two hours. A single creation. The more intricate, the more dynamic, the more alive wins. The loser packs their bags and finds a less… historically significant workshop.” Voshari sheathed his blade with a soft *shiiing*. “Agreed.” He strode to the largest kiln, its mouth a perpetually glowing orange, and began to ready his materials. I moved to my own preferred station, a smaller, older kiln whose magic I knew intimately. The duel was on. I began with a core of purified silica sand, shaping it with a precise stream of arcane energy, drawing from the wellspring of Vitromancy within me. The sand coalesced, heating, hardening, forming the initial skeletal structure of an adder. Glass rods, fine as spun sugar, stretched and curved, defining its musculature. I worked with a frantic grace, my mind alive with the coiled spine, the flash of overlapping plates, the predatory grace of a creature of myth. My hands, guided by years of practice, moved with liquid speed, carving, fusing, breathing. I infused the glass with a subtle shimmer, a chromatic shift that would make it seem to glide through water. Voshari, on the other side of the forge, worked with a focused intensity, his movements economical, powerful. His figure took shape quickly: a dense, coiled viper, its outer plates thick, its fangs already long, wicked spikes of pure malachite glass. It lacked the ethereal beauty of my nascent creation, but possessed a raw, intimidating power. Two hours evaporated like steam from a molten crucible. Our creations stood before us, bathed in the dancing light of the kilns. Mine was a slender, elegant leviathan, its body an iridescent ribbon of sapphire and amethyst glass, its fins like woven light. It seemed to undulate, held in poised immobility. Voshari’s viper was a coiled threat, its onyx plates duller, heavier, but infused with an undeniable, simmering aggression. “Begin the animation,” I commanded, my voice tight with anticipation. We each placed our hands on our constructs. I drew a deep breath, focusing the flow of Vitromantic energy. The sapphire sea-beast rippled, its head rising, its glass eyes, flecked with gold, seeming to fix on an unseen prey. It uncoiled with a whisper of shifting glass, its tail lashing, a soundless, graceful dance of life. Voshari’s viper, in contrast, erupted. Its heavy plates grated against each other, a low, guttural grind of sound. It struck, a blur of obsidian and emerald, its fangs snapping at the empty air. The sheer force of its movement made the dust motes in the forge dance. Then, I saw it. A flicker. A wrongness. A faint, sickening green luminescence pulsed along Voshari’s viper, an unnatural tremor shaking its otherwise robust frame. It was like a corruption, a parasitic energy. A spark, feral and hungry, detached itself from the viper’s head, a miniature, swirling vortex of jade light, heading straight for my chest. “Shavara, no!” Voshari bellowed, his voice cracking with an urgency I’d never heard. He flung himself forward, shoving me violently to the side. The feral spark, instead of striking me, impacted squarely against his outstretched arm, just above the elbow. He gasped, a sharp, ragged sound, as the viridian light flared, searing into his skin. The air filled with the smell of ozone and burnt flesh. The glass viper, now fully consumed by the green blight, shrieked—a sound of shattering crystal and raw pain—then lunged, not at me, but at Voshari’s exposed back. He was still reeling from the magical impact, his arm smoking. I reacted instinctively, a surge of Vitromancy bursting from my palm, crystallizing the air between the viper and Voshari. The blighted beast hit the nascent wall of glass, shattering into a million shimmering, corrupted shards that rained down around us. The green light dissipated, leaving behind a ringing quiet. Voshari was on his knees, clutching his arm, his face pale beneath the soot, slick with perspiration. A burn, livid and jade-tinted, spiderwebbed up his forearm, the skin blistering already. The magic had scorched him deep. “Are you… hurt?” he managed, his voice strained, eyes still fixed on me, not his injury. I stopped short. The man who guarded his emotions like a dragon hoarded gold had just thrown himself in front of a magical attack for me. The raw, reckless protectiveness in his eyes was undeniable. The duel, the forge, the very reason we were fighting, all seemed petty in the face of it. “What in the blazes was that?” I demanded, kneeling beside him, my fingers hovering over the angry burn, unwilling to touch the seared flesh. “That wasn’t a standard animation flaw. That was… tainted.” He shook his head, wincing. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a Glass-Blight manifest in a controlled forge environment before. It’s… outside the city’s wards.” “Outside the wards, or inside the vessel?” I muttered, my gaze sweeping over the scattered shards of the blighted viper. The green residue, faint but unmistakable, clung to the shattered glass. It was a peculiar, almost sickly sweet scent, a metallic tang beneath the ozone. A familiar scent. Too familiar. I picked up a shard, examining the crystalline dust on its surface. My fingers trembled. The residue was identical, a perfect match, to the artificial poison that had caused my two-year quarantine, the very illness Jendox had ‘cured’ me of. “This changes things,” I stated, my voice flat, yet laced with a dawning dread. “We need a truce. A partnership. That dragon isn’t just about winning a commission anymore, Voshari. It’s about figuring out what the hell just happened, and who is behind it.”

Serpents and Shattered Truces