With the threat of the coming voidspawn force looming over all of Hellfrost, the voidhunts took on new, grim purpose. No changes yet, the same spawn varieties as always, but now they were part of a greater army, the vanguard of the coming flood. Each kill was one less monster that would be part of the coming wave.

  The new weight of their mission did not, however, preclude Aven showing off a bit. Especially since today Aelia was watching.

  Her wagon stood at the top of the hill overlooking the field of voidpits, and she was visible only as a lump of swaddled coats. With Hellfrost lacking a proper carriage, the next best thing they had was a modified sledge for hauling hay. Rather less dignified transportation than most county executors demanded. Despite Aven’s cautions (shared by all his officers), Aelia insisted on seeing firsthand what they were fighting, no matter how grisly the work.

  Fortunately, showing off turned out good for soldier morale too. The whole troop cheered when Aven swaggered up to the pit alone.

  Twin burrowers burst out of the ground just after Ouron barked a warning, jaws snapping at Aven from both sides. A coordinated attack, Aven noted in the stillness of the Battle Mind while the many-fanged circular maws closed in. How did spawn like the burrowers communicate? The deathsinger’s songs held actual meaning, but the lesser ones still worked together even without that...

  Things to ponder when there weren’t monsters from the abyss trying to gnaw his bones.

  The Battle Mind, deeper now than ever before, split to track each one. And with the power of a Third Circle, Aven’s body could now almost keep pace with his mind. It was almost pitifully easy when the voidspawn moved in slow motion while Aven could nearly move at full speed to his perception.

  Two voidhands burst from his shoulders, shaping to spears and stabbing right through the gaping maws. Renewed cheers erupted as the snake-like burrowers wriggled helplessly on the end of voidformed spears. From spear to blade, edges sharpened, and Aven tore the voidclaws through the burrowers’ skulls.

  New ripples disturbed the voidpit’s surface, and Aven shot out a spear just as a new spawn emerged. A lesser one, not even the size of a shepherd-dog. Aven’s spear reached further than before, a full ten paces to impale the writhing, insectile creature through the carapace before it could properly emerge from the pit.

  Carelessly, he tossed it behind him, flinging it right towards the waiting soldiers to gasps and shouts. The six-legged spawn shrieked, tumbling tail over pincered face through the air. Panic turned to laughter when a Kvormskaja ogre lunged forward and swatted the creature right out of the air like a fly, stomping on it when it hit the ground. The rest of the Kvormskaja ogres gave a booming cheer at their companion’s quick reflexes.

  “What, am I going to have to clear the entire pit myself?” Aven called out.

  The soldiers surged forward at the invitation, rushing down as more spawn scrabbled from the pit. Aven himself stepped back, taking a position to observe the formation and strike at any spawn that threatened to make it past the spear wall. None did.

  This new power...it was intoxicating. Before, the constant struggle to control his own body had been exhausting. Now, it was exhilarating. He could feel the miasma of the void roiling in his blood, but it felt less like a poison and more like a tool. A terrifying, alien, and powerful tool.

  “It wasn’t even a year ago that hunters died every fight,” Logash noted, his massive hand resting on his own axe as he watched the clean-up.

  “Difference between sending half-starved prisoners into the meat grinder and having a real company dedicated to killing the bastards,” Aven said. “That, and a zhagra who’s fought real battles. And ogres who don’t run screaming. And a captain who isn’t a sadist.” He smirked, “And me being just a little bit stronger.”

  “Little bit,” Logash rumbled.

  With the last of the spawn dispatched, the company moved back up the hill. Everyone needed to be well away for this part.

  Janaya approached, eyes blazing. While hellfire was far too volatile to use in formation, it was perfect for this next part.

  “The spawn are purged!” Janaya reared back her head and howled. “Let their evil taint these lands nevermore!” She plunged both hands into the black ichor pooled around the pit. The hellfire surged out, a vortex of flame that spun down into the earth. The mists within the pit boiled and burned. The very air shimmered with heat.

  And the pit erupted. The reaction of hellfire and void blasted out a column of flame that rose higher even than the walls of Hellfrost Keep. Hellfire annihilated the voidspawns’ taint, and the land itself rumbled with the fury of it. Janaya remained in the column of flame, still flooding the voidpit with hellfire until no trace of the black pool remained.

  Something else remained in its place, however: glass. A crater of black glass, fused and smooth, now filled the space where the voidpit had been.

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  Janaya stumbled back from the glass, gasping for breath, sweat plastering her hair to her face. She was pale, but her eyes were burning brighter than ever while the others cheered for her.

  “What do you think?” Aven dropped back to the waiting sledge to see Aelia pause her note-taking.

  “Are the...theatrics necessary?” Aelia asked.

  Aven chuckled and gestured out, “Let Janaya have her fun! The soldiers enjoy it.”

  Aelia gave him a blank stare. “I was referring to your theatrics.”

  Ah, there was definite disapproval in her tone. Right.

  “Just trying to show the men these aren’t unstoppable monstrosities,” Aven explained. It was an explanation. Definitely not an excuse. “They’re stoppable monstrosities. That makes a world of difference. And...a little bit of confidence goes a long way.”

  Aelia’s frown softened, “I...suppose that has some merit. My concern is that it may go too far. Treating even lesser voidspawn flippantly...could it not undermine the seriousness of the threat?”

  Aven mentally kicked himself. While he’d been concerned about appearances and impressing a woman, that same woman was more concerned with the very real threat lurking in the future. Of course she was.

  He leaned against the sledge, the cold of the winter air feeling distant. “You’re right. I’ll treat the threat more seriously in the future.” Changing the subject, he nodded towards the pit where the company was now digging out the glass and butchering the spawn. “Found a use for the glass yet? We’ve got the storage silo overflowing at this point.”

  Ever since they’d started using Janaya to destroy the remnants of their hunts, each hellfire-scorched voidpit left the glassy black stone behind. The pits still refilled after her purging, but much slower than before. Wouldn’t stop the voidspawn but could at least slow the threat down.

  “The Hravast have requested some for making arrowheads and spears,” Aelia flipped to a different page in her book. “For some tools, it could replace iron imports as well, though the smiths are finding it difficult to manipulate. It is remarkably hard and even resists vis.”

  “Huh, a lot like blackstone,” Aven noted.

  “Yes, like...” Aelia trailed off. Her expression froze. Eyes widened. Aven had the distinct pleasure of seeing a brilliant mind receiving a revelation in real time. “I need to get back to the Keep! Give the soldiers my regards for their efforts!”

  A few more shouts, and the rather bewildered sledge driver pulled away, headed back to Hellfrost. Aven shook his head and chuckled as the cart jerked off over the snowy landscape. Whatever burst of inspiration had struck her, he’d find out soon enough. Probably something to overturn the economic order of Hellfrost again.

  Concerns for later, because they had three more pits to burn today.

  * * *

  Aelia’s hands trembled with excitement as she stared at the results of the experiment. Innocuous at first sight. Just a faint scratch in the stone. But it was a scratch in blackstone.

  Fashioning the voidglass (a working name, but a reasonably descriptive one) into a chisel had proved a simple task for the smith once she’d suggested the idea of using voidglass to shape other pieces of the same material. The Kvormskaja had their own method of creating stone tools (”knapping” they called it), and the same technique proved capable of shaping both blackstone and voidglass. As it turned out, the properties of the two materials were even more similar than Aven’s idle comment had supposed.

  Geologically, the finding was fascinating in itself, but even beyond scholarship, the revelation could change...well, not everything, but they were just scratching the surface of the applications.

  Which, incidentally, started with scratching surfaces.

  “I’ll be damned,” Hellfrost’s finest smith looked as fascinated as Aelia felt. Shakra ars-Ferris was a zhagra ogre, perhaps the second-largest in Hellfrost after Logash, yet her powerful hands handled the voidglass tool with surprising delicacy. “Cuts blackstone better than any tool I’ve seen.”

  As could blackstone tools. But blackstone itself was so difficult to shape that shaping it into tools was impractical at any scale. Thus far, the only purpose blackstone served was as export to areas with vis powerful enough to actually work the material. A literal mountain of the stone sat beside and beneath Hellfrost, and all they’d been able to do was take from its surface. But now...

  The other two observers of the experiment murmured equal excitement. Tormach was the current quarry foreman, by election among the quarry workers. Bhaghor was the Kvormskaja’s elder stoneworker. Both men shared the same glimmer in their eyes, the same Aelia felt. The glimmer of opportunity.

  “Tormach,” Aelia asked. “With tools able to cut blackstone directly, how much could we expect to see production increase?”

  The man shook his head, “Not a man of numbers, ma’am. Not to your precision. But if all our workers had the tools...wouldn’t be surprised if we could double our amount.”

  Blackstone was already Hellfrost’s most lucrative export. Even with their limitations on output, even with only being able to export a raw, unshaped form. The most processing Hellfrost could do to the stone was break it down with the stoneworkers’ water hammer to chunks easier to transport. Being able to shape blackstone into blocks for easier and cheaper transport...that alone would cut costs and boost profits. Being able to actually carve or shape the stone...that was something beyond Aelia’s previous dreams.

  “Among the Kvormskaja,” Bhaghor interjected, “there is a legend of weapons made from black glass left behind in voidpits. With such a weapon, Akhrambhtor the Conqueror united a dozen tribes and slew a deathsinger.” The ogre’s touch was reverent as he touched the chisel their experiments had produced, “Kharshil, we call it. If...if you have discovered kharshil in this age...that alone is a gift from the goddess.”

  Whatever legendary or religious significance the voidglass held, the practical applications were more immediate. Tools for stonecutting. Tools for carving the blackstone itself. Tools for hunting and war. The possibilities...

  Aelia’s mind was already racing, making lists, drafting proposals, calculating new budgets.

  “I will need an inventory of the current supply of voidglass,” she said to the smith. “And a projection of how quickly you can produce more, assuming we can continue burning pits at a similar pace.” She turned to Tormach, “We’ll need new estimates on stone production with the new tools. And I will need you both to work together to determine which tools would be most efficient to produce first.”

  The men nodded, eagerness written on their faces. Eager for new opportunities.

  When the voidspawn came, they would not find Hellfrost helpless. They would face a Hellfrost armed with new weapons. Stronger defenses.

  When the voidspawn came, Hellfrost would be ready.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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