Chapter 120 – Jarl of Steel
(Lyra)
Lyra couldn't sleep.
Tamara snored very softly on the other cot, sprawled like she'd punched the bed into submission and then collapsed. Noelle was a tight little ball under her blankets, hands tucked under her cheek, lips moving with some half-dreamt prayer.
Lyra lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.
Her skin itched.
Not literally.
Just that restless, crawling feeling that meant if I lie here one more second I will climb the wall.
She rolled over.
Rolled back.
Kicked the blanket off.
Pulled it up again.
"Ugh," she whispered to nobody.
This was stupid.
There was a perfectly good Erynd down the corridor.
Tired, overworked, annoyingly principled Erynd who needed to be bitten and sat on until he admitted he was human.
She slid carefully out of bed, bare feet silent on the floor.
Noelle shifted and mumbled something about "blessings."
Tamara snorted and flopped an arm out like she was reaching for a sword that wasn't there.
Lyra smirked.
"You two get your Master time in the day," she thought. "My turn."
She eased the door open and slipped into the hall.
Yggdrasil's night shift was quiet; mana-lamps turned down, only a few patrols passing with low footsteps and the soft click of weapons against armor.
Lyra padded barefoot down the corridor toward Erynd's room, humming under her breath.
She had a plan.
It wasn't a complicated plan.
Walk in, climb on him, refuse to move.
He'd grumble.
He'd say, "I have work."
She'd say, "Too bad, lie down," and sit on his chest until he obeyed.
Simple.
Perfect.
As she got closer, she slowed.
Something… smelled wrong.
Not bad. Just… strong.
Warm.
Spiced.
Him.
Except concentrated, like someone had taken the normal Erynd-scent that clung to his clothes and bottled it and spilled it all over the room.
She frowned.
"Did he overdo the soap?" she muttered.
She reached his door.
It wasn't locked.
That was strange too.
He always locked it if he was actually sleeping.
"Master?" she whispered, easing it open.
The room was dark except for the low glow of a mana-lamp turned halfway down.
The bed was empty.
Mostly.
Julia was there.
She was on her knees on the mattress, hair loose and messy around her shoulders, wearing absolutely nothing. One hand clutched Erynd's pillow, pressed over her face as she inhaled like she wanted to drown in the scent. The other hand—
Snapped away from between her thighs the instant Lyra spoke.
Julia jerked, eyes wide.
"Lyra," she blurted. "I—this isn't—"
Lyra leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms.
"That's not fair," she said. "You're hogging his smell."
Julia's blush, already bad, went nuclear.
"I was just—" she started.
"Uh-huh," Lyra said. "Totally innocent clinging to his pillow in the middle of the night. Not pathetic at all."
Julia's embarrassment flickered into annoyance.
"At least I'm honest about wanting him," she said, sliding off the bed with infuriating grace. "You skulk in hallways and pretend you're just here to train."
She walked toward Lyra.
Still naked.
Because of course she did.
Lyra's brain helpfully pointed out: wow, yeah, those really are as big as they look under her clothes.
Julia stopped close enough that Lyra could feel the heat off her skin.
She folded her arms under her breasts in a way that was absolutely deliberate.
"I would satisfy him more with these," Julia said sweetly. "Compared to yours."
Lyra's gaze dropped in spite of herself.
Julia was… not subtle.
Full curves, high, soft, the kind of breasts bards wrote terrible songs about.
Lyra glanced down at her own chest.
Firm.
Small.
Perfectly fine.
"B-cup" she'd heard them called once, when some tailor had done fast, clinical measurements and made a note Lyra hadn't understood then.
She lifted her chin.
"He doesn't care about that," she said flatly.
Julia's mouth curled.
"He might not say he does," she murmured. "Men never do, if they have any sense. But who knows? It doesn't hurt to have… advantages."
She bounced her arms slightly.
Gods, she was doing that on purpose.
Heat flared in Lyra's cheeks.
"Size isn't an advantage if your brain stops at your collarbone," Lyra snapped.
Julia's eyes flashed.
"At least I have one."
"Brain or chest?" Lyra shot back.
"Both," Julia said.
She stepped closer.
Now they were almost touching, body to body, a ridiculous mirror of a duel.
Lyra felt something ugly and hot twist in her chest.
Not just jealousy.
Territory.
"He's my lord," Julia said, voice low. "I've served him longer. I keep his people fed. His money flowing. His operations running. I deserve some… rewards."
"I bleed for him," Lyra said. "I've taken knives meant for him. I put my life in his hands and he puts his in mine. You think you can buy your way into his bed with spreadsheets?"
"It's called logistics," Julia said. "And yes."
They stared at each other.
Lyra's fingers itched.
Julia's did too.
It was stupid.
Childish.
Inevitable.
Lyra moved first.
She grabbed for Julia's shoulders.
Julia grabbed back.
It wasn't a serious fight.
Not like the training room.
There were no killing blows, no real strikes.
Just hands in hair, shoulders, that ridiculous little shriek Julia made when Lyra yanked on a lock.
"Stop pulling!" Julia hissed.
"Stop flaunting!" Lyra hissed back.
They wrestled across the edge of the bed, knocking Erynd's blanket half off, nearly tripping over his boots.
Julia tried to use her height.
Lyra ducked, twisted, got an arm around her waist and shoved.
Julia yelped and toppled onto the mattress.
Lyra landed on top of her.
For a second they froze.
They were both breathing hard.
Skin to skin.
Lyra became excruciatingly aware that she, unlike Julia, was technically dressed. Thin shirt. Underpants. Not armor. Not much protection.
Julia's eyes flickered.
"This is ridiculous," Julia panted.
"Yes," Lyra agreed.
They stayed there for another beat.
Then Lyra rolled off with a huff and dropped herself on the other side of the bed, near the wall.
"Fine," she said. "If you're going to contaminate his room with your desperation, I'm contaminating it too."
Julia sat up, pushing hair out of her face.
"You can't sleep here," she said automatically.
Lyra snorted.
"Watch me," she said. "I'm not moving. You can carry me out if you want, Jarl of 'Essence Spreadsheets.'"
Julia's nostrils flared.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Shook her head, muttering something under her breath in a language Lyra didn't know and probably wasn't flattering.
Then she flopped back down on her side of the bed, very pointedly dragging Erynd's pillow to her chest again.
"Fine," Julia said. "But you stay on your side. No creeping into his spot."
"What, and let you absorb all the smell?" Lyra said. "No way."
She grabbed the edge of the blanket and tugged it until it covered both of them.
Julia made an affronted noise.
"You are impossible," Julia said.
Lyra closed her eyes.
"Get used to it," she murmured. "That's what he said about me too."
The lamp hummed softly.
The room smelled like him.
Eventually, the warmth and the faint sound of Julia's breathing lulled her down.
She drifted under.
The last thing she registered was the absurd thought:
He's going to be so confused when he comes back.
***
(Erynd)
The training level always smelled like sweat and magic and iron.
If you took the elevator down and turned left, you'd hit the contract room first: plain stone, big table, warded walls. A place to talk about dangerous things without killing the actual training hall with stray spells.
Straight ahead from the elevator, past the glass that let you watch without getting burned, was the main arena. Practice dummies. Reinforced walls. Scorch marks nobody had bothered to heal out because they were basically trophies.
To the right, tucked behind a secondary set of wards, was the forge.
Not just a blacksmith's corner.
A small, contained sun.
Grum had insisted on it.
"If you want real work," he'd grumbled when we'd first discussed it, "you don't put your smithy next to your pantry. Heat and flour don't mix, lad."
He'd also insisted on a stipend "for being kidnapped."
Technically, I hadn't kidnapped him.
I'd offered him more money than his old guild master and the freedom to build whatever he wanted.
He'd called it kidnapping anyway and then moved in without a backward glance.
The forge door opened with a blast of heat and the sound of hammering.
Grum was at the main anvil, bare arms slick with sweat, beard braided back out of danger.
Beside him, Rana worked over a smaller station, her scaled hands moving with methodical precision as she inscribed runes into cooling metal.
Demonkin, lizardfolk signifiers in the tilt of her head and the shape of her pupils.
No tail; her tribe had docked them as a mark of exile when she Awakened, if her file was accurate.
Idiots.
She was one of the best forgemasters I'd seen.
"My Lord," she said without looking up as I stepped in. "The weapon blanks are ready for you to test."
Grum snorted.
"He means 'aye,'" he said. "He's just too proud to say it first."
Rana's mouth twitched.
I walked in, letting the door seal behind me.
"What've you made me?" I asked.
Rana gestured to the stand at the far side of the room.
Two rods lay there.
Zoe's gifts.
Black metal, etched all over with tiny sigils that made the air around them taste like old gods and bad ideas.
Around them, Rana had built housings.
A haft: dark, reinforced wood bound with filigree metal, sockets at the top designed to take the rods in parallel. Above the sockets, a focusing frame cradled a cut crystal the size of my fist.
For now the crystal was dormant.
Even asleep, it felt… hungry.
"We took your specifications," Rana said. "Variable length, balance suitable for both thrust and throw, capacity to channel and shape the rods' output. Grum handled the physical frame. I handled the integration and runes. Ethan sent down a sheet of things we weren't allowed to do under any circumstances."
Grum rolled his eyes.
"That boy's scared of his own brilliance," he muttered. "Every time we hit on something fun he starts muttering about 'containment protocols' and 'we are not blowing up this level, it's expensive.'"
"I like this level," I said. "Please don't blow it up."
Grum grunted.
"No promises," he said. "But we'll try."
I picked up the haft.
It was heavier than it looked.
Not clumsy-heavy.
Solid.
Like holding a folded storm.
The sockets at the top were open.
I took the first rod.
It hummed under my fingers, that faint familiar sensation of "this wants to hurt something divine."
"Zoe send any notes?" I asked.
Rana's lips thinned.
"She sent a description that was mostly 'stab god, pull trigger,'" she said. "And then a diagram that made no sense until Ethan translated it into something that didn't assume we could see in six dimensions."
"Sounds right," I said.
I slid the first rod into its socket.
The runes along the haft lit up, one after another, like someone was waking a sleeping beast by pushing buttons on its spine.
The second rod followed.
The air in the room changed.
Pressure.
Everyone in the forge went still.
Grum stopped mid-wipe of his hammer.
Rana's pupils narrowed.
The crystal above the sockets flared, then settled into a steady pale glow.
"Containment holding," Rana said, more to herself than anyone else. "No bleed. No feedback. Good."
I let my grip adjust.
The haft fit my hand like it had been custom-measured.
It had.
I sighted down the length.
The crystal shifted, facets aligning.
A blade of light extended from the tip.
Not light.
Too solid.
Too sharp.
The projection shaped itself into a spearhead about as long as my forearm: leaf-blade style, double-edged, edges humming with a tone I felt more than heard.
Runa-lines crawled along the phantom metal, interlocking like tiny gears.
It looked like a bear spear, long enough that the butt would hit the ground if I rested it, the head level with my eyebrow.
"Try a thrust," Grum said gruffly. "Not at anything expensive."
I picked the least beloved training dummy in the corner.
A old, patched thing half-eaten by previous spells.
I took my stance.
Thrusted.
The spear moved like it wanted to get there before my muscles did.
The projection slid through the dummy's chest.
There was a pop.
Not loud.
Just a small, ugly sound, like an eggshell breaking inside flesh.
The dummy didn't explode.
It didn't even fall dramatically.
It just… collapsed.
All at once.
Like someone had cut every supporting string and the stuffing had given up.
The air smelled faintly scorched.
Rana exhaled slowly.
"That," she said, "is with the output damped to one percent."
"Good," I said.
I pulled the spear back.
The projection retracted, vanishing into the crystal with a faint, reluctant hiss.
Grum whistled low.
"Ugly thing," he said approvingly. "In the way a hammer to the face is ugly. Effective."
Rana nodded.
"We built in three modes," she said. "Piercing, dispersal, and rupture. Piercing does what you just saw. Dispersal spreads the charge over an area—good for breaking fields. Rupture…" She hesitated. "…is for anchors. Things that shouldn't be here."
Old Gods.
Dead gods dragged back into shambling half-life.
Things like Nazyen.
"How many shots?" I asked.
"Depends how much you want to melt the rods," she said. "At full power, you'll crack them after… three? Maybe four? With careful use and recharge time between, many more. Ethan refused to do more precise tests because he didn't like the way the walls creaked."
Grum snorted.
"He's a coward," he said.
"He's invested in staying alive," Rana countered.
She looked at me.
"My Lord," she said. "This is not a toy. It will do what you want it to do, but if you get clever with it mid-fight and overdraw, it will take the mana from somewhere. Maybe the rods. Maybe the air. Maybe you. Understand?"
I nodded.
"I understand," I said.
We stood there for a beat.
The spear sat in my hand, silent and heavy and hungry.
It needed a name.
Names matter.
They stitch things into stories.
"Gungnir," I said.
Rana blinked.
"Is that a word in some old tongue?" she asked.
"Old tale from… somewhere else," I said. "A spear that never missed its target and always returned. It belonged to a god that I won't say who."
Grum grunted.
"Good name," he said. "Sharp. Angry."
Rana tilted her head.
"Does this one return?" she asked.
I rolled my wrist, feeling the weight, the balance.
"If I throw it," I said, "I'm not planning to let it go far enough I need it to come back."
She smiled, small and sharp.
"Then Gungnir it is," she said.
I looked down the length of the weapon.
Soon, there would be a broken goddess and a burned-out idol somewhere in the city.
If everything went according to plan.
If.
I lowered the spear.
"Good work," I said. "Both of you. Get some rest. We'll do full combat drills tomorrow."
Grum snorted.
"We'll rest when the metal rests," he said. "Now go away, lad. You're making the tools nervous."
Rana gave me a little half-bow, the closest she ever got to formality.
"My Lord," she said. "Try not to die."
"I'll do my best," I said.
I left the forge with Gungnir in my hand.
The elevator hummed as it carried me up.
Somewhere above, there was a bed I technically owned and never slept in enough.
And, unknown to me, two women currently occupying it like very territorial cats.