CHAPTER 59: ENGINES OF ATTRITION

The thunder of cannonade rolled across the Ashlands in slow, grinding intervals.

Not the furious tempo of battle, but the measured cadence of a siege.

Each round sent sparks flashing across Emberhold’s shimmering barrier, cascading ripples of light over its basalt towers and obsidian walls.

The barrier held, as Caedrion expected.

But every shell was a stone on the scales, and even the strongest wards would eventually crack under the weight of constant bombardment.

This was not the ancient barrier that proudly stood over Dawnhaven at all hours.

Crafted by the Eidolons, a mystery that defied the laws of thermodynamics, at least from Caedrion’s understanding.

No, there was no perpetual energy to find here. Sooner or later this barrier constructed by the hands of men would break.

It was only a matter of time.

Surrounding the city like a tightening noose stretched the Ferrondel trenches.

Timber-reinforced walls, lattices of Cheval de frise bristling with spikes, overlapping sectors of fire arranged with mathematical precision.

From the ground it looked like little more than mud and wood, "a fortress of dirt" as Ignarion’s nobles sneered from within.

Yet Caedrion knew better. Earthworks had humbled empires in his old world, and they would do so again here.

For all the strength of Emberhold’s barrier, House Ignarion could no longer sally forth.

Their cavalry found themselves skewered on palisades.

Their infantry broke against interlocking rifle fire.

Their spellswords, few as they were after Dawnhaven and the slaughter in the Ashlands, dared not risk their lives against the new artillery.

Siege was not glory. Siege was starvation. Siege was patience.

And siege was logistics.

Caedrion spent more time bent over ledgers and supply maps than he did saber in hand.

His army now swelled to twenty thousand, and each man needed bread, munitions, and water.

The flow of wagons from Dawnhaven never ceased, rolling over new-laid plank roads, guarded by pioneers and dragoons alike.

He rode the lines daily, inspecting trenches, encouraging men at their labors, ensuring no crack appeared in the machinery of war.

But the worst of it, the part that drained him most, was the magic.

Each cannon bore etched with his runes could fire about two thousand shells before its enchantments waned.

After that, the men looked to him.

Always him.

To kneel by the iron beast, glove off, hand pressed against still-warm steel, and pour his Architect’s fire back into the lattice of sigils.

It was not quick.

It was not simple.

And it was exhausting.

After a week of bombardment he felt hollow, as though his veins had been bled dry.

One evening, as the sun dipped behind Emberhold’s volcanic peaks and the glow of its barrier painted the ash clouds red, Caedrion slumped in his command tent, sketches strewn across the table.

His officers thought him resting. In truth, he was drawing.

Not walls, not supply charts. But something new.

He stared at the lines of a gem cut into facets, encased in steel, connected to his enchantment matrices like a shell in a chamber.

In his world, a battery.

In this world, a Vessel.

The Magi had used gemstones for millennia to store their power, but only for personal use.

What if they could be industrialized? Standardized? Fired into a cannon’s breech not as a weapon, but as fuel.

Expended not in an instant, but in sustaining enchantments across thousands of shots.

His hand scribbled notes furiously.

Replace direct fueling with power cells.

Each gun crew carries spares.

Insert through bore like a shell, chamber closes, rune lattice draws charge.

Empty shell auto-ejected.

Aelindria’s formwright teachings whispered in his thoughts, not healing flesh, but stabilizing structures.

Bones were beams, veins were channels.

Why not treat enchantments the same? Strengthen them, reinforce them, give them a skeleton of their own so his presence was not always required?

His eyes burned from the candlelight, but he kept sketching.

Somewhere in the night, a courier’s horn sounded, another supply caravan arrived from Dawnhaven.

Somewhere beyond the tent walls, a cannon fired its measured thunder.

Caedrion ignored it all, pen scratching, mind racing.

"The world isn’t ready for this kind of warfare," he murmured to himself, echoing the thought that haunted him since the field guns first barked.

But readiness no longer mattered.

He would make them ready.

Tomorrow, he would rise before dawn, walk the lines, and pour his lifeblood into the guns once more.

But tonight, beneath the lamplight, he dreamed of power cells, of weapons that no longer needed his constant touch, of an army that could march and fire and win without pause.

For Emberhold’s walls would not fall tomorrow.

Nor the day after. But Caedrion Ferrondel was already shaping the engines of their doom.

---

The Ember Court burned with torchlight, its vaulted chamber cast in hues of molten gold and blood-red flame.

Yet for all the grandeur, for all the carved obsidian pillars and the ever-burning braziers, there was no warmth within.

The Lords and Magi of House Ignarion sat in silence, eyes fixed not on their lord, but on the maps spread across the central table.

Lines of earthworks spiderwebbed around Emberhold’s perimeter, each trench, each mound, each artillery position marked with clinical precision.

The encirclement was complete.

Veltharion broke the silence at last.

His voice, once a booming command that cowed generals, now carried a weight of iron fatigue.

"They’ve ringed us. Every road, every field, every ford that once fed Emberhold now lies in Ferrondel hands. The caravans that once came daily bring nothing. Even if they dared... the other Houses would see no profit in helping us. They smell blood. They smell weakness."

A murmur rippled through the court. An older Magus, gaunt from too many years of ash and fire magic, rasped:

"Our fleets... what of them? Surely the Crucible-born vessels could run supplies through..."

"They are gone," Veltharion snapped, eyes flashing.

"Sunk. Vanished beneath the Shivering Sea. Not one ship has returned. Whatever lurks beneath those waters has claimed them. And none among you seem brave enough to face the Abyss and ask why."

The chamber fell silent again. No one dared utter the whispers of nagas. Once thought to be myth, the madness of sailors lost at sea.

Now suddenly becoming a more frequent tale spoken.

A younger noblewoman broke the stillness, her jeweled hands clenching as she leaned forward.

"Then what do we do? The barrier holds, yes. But how long? A year? Two? Our storehouses are not inexhaustible. Already the merchants whisper of rationing. Already the soldiers mutter about thinning their bread."

Another voice hissed in the gloom:

"The people will turn on us before the Ferrondel artillery breaks the barrier. They’ll tear down the gates themselves if their children starve."

Veltharion slammed his fist on the table, the impact cracking the obsidian inlaid with flame-sigil.

"Do you think I don’t know this? Do you think I don’t hear the whispers in the barracks, or smell the fear on the streets? I know! I know better than any of you! But we are Ignarion. We do not kneel. We do not beg. We are flame eternal, and flame consumes until nothing remains."

But even as he roared, even as the words scorched the chamber, the courtiers saw the truth in his eyes.

He did not believe.

Not anymore.

One of the elder counselors spoke with deliberate calm, his voice a counterpoint to the rising panic.

"My lord, forgive me, but fire burns brightest before it dies. We must accept this truth, Ferrondel has found a power the rest of us cannot grasp. The other Houses will not aid us. They will wait for us to break, then scavenge what remains. We are... alone."

The words hung like smoke.

Veltharion lowered his head, his molten eyes narrowing, his voice now a low growl.

"Then we will endure. If it takes a year, we will endure. If it takes ten, we will endure. Until that boy’s flames gutter out, until his so-called industry collapses under its own weight. If Ferrondel thinks he can starve us, then let him choke first on the ash."

But as the court filed out, no one truly believed.

They had seen the maps.

They had heard the silence of their empty docks.

They had felt the trembling of the earth each time Ferrondel’s artillery thundered in the distance.

House Ignarion was not burning bright.

It was burning out.

---

The streets of Emberhold no longer echoed with the bustle of merchants or the laughter of children.

The city built into the heart of the volcano had always thrived on the promise of abundance:

food caravans from fertile Dawnhaven, luxuries brought in by sea, wealth carried on the backs of conquered lands.

Now, the gates were closed. The roads were cut. The sea had turned traitor.

The markets that once overflowed with produce now bore only the withered remnants of grain sacks and crates of dried fish.

Stalls stood abandoned, their owners vanished into the shadows, hoarding what little remained.

At first, the Ember Court ordered strict rationing. Bread was halved, meat vanished entirely from the common table, and stews grew thinner each day.

What was once considered a poor man’s meal, crusts of bread dipped in ash-salted broth, became the fare of nobles and commoners alike.

Mothers clutched children with swollen bellies, whispering lies of feasts that would return when the "false rebellion" was crushed.

Fathers joined the militia patrols, if only to earn an extra scrap of bread.

And in the taverns, where once songs of Ignarion’s glory had rung out, only whispers remained.

"Ferrondel guns, they say, crack mountains like twigs."

"An army of Nulls, twenty-thousand strong, how is that possible?"

"Veltharion claims we will endure, but endure what? Hunger? Watching our children fade?"

Even the Crucible priests struggled to soothe the crowds.

Their sermons, once full of fire and triumph, sounded hollow in the ears of starving men.

When they declared the Flame Eternal, women spat into the dust and muttered, "Flame cannot feed my child."

Whispers became mutters. Mutters became shouts.

At the northern gate, a riot broke out when a grain store was opened for the garrison.

Soldiers cut down their own people in the streets, crimson staining the blackened stone.

The corpses were left as warning, but warnings did little to quiet an empty stomach.

Still, none dared speak rebellion aloud.

They knew too well the wrath of House Ignarion.

But fear no longer kept them still.

Fear had turned to despair, and despair was a seed that grew in silence.

Meanwhile, each night the earth trembled. Distant thunder rolled across the city walls, not storms, but Ferrondel guns testing their fury.

Children woke screaming, mothers held them close, and the people prayed the barrier would not falter.

Yet some, in the stillness after each bombardment, dared to wonder if perhaps it would be better if it did.

Better the swift fire of destruction than the slow choke of starvation.

And so Emberhold smoldered, not only in its braziers and furnaces, but in the hearts of its people, a city proud, powerful, and eternal, now reduced to waiting in silence for the ash to settle.