//------------------------------//
// The Artifacts 
// Story: In the Company of Night 
// by Mitch H 
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SBMS127

The surviving foundations of lost Grande Cave had been re-purposed by the technicals of the Company, those who worked their trades full-time within the embarrassingly small train, and those part-timers who worked their hobbies and secondary roles in between their duties with the cohorts.  Wintertime brought with it few duties and responsibilities within the ranks.   Winter was when the detail-ponies and hobbyists set aside the lance, spread out within garrison, and worked their avocations.

The new Grande Cave had begun as a common project between myself and the grenadiers and demolitioniers of the griffin corps.  It was where we built our burn piles and set up a pair of shacks for the dicy business of purifying sulfur and mixing blasting powder.  There was always a chance of blowing these shops at the moon, and nopony wanted to smell the sulfur, in production or in storage.  

The initial push for the creation of blasting-powder was long past, but because the production of saltpetre is a slow process demanding patience and weak senses of smell, it had to go on continuously and steadily.  I'd mostly left the matter to a griff everypony called Salzig Petr; few griffins have strong senses of smell, but they say Salzig Petr was as deaf in his nose as I am blind in my left eye.

One filthy, stinking industrial set of shacks attracted a second set of stinking industrial hovels, and the tanners moved in on the nearest surviving square of foundations unmolested by the late Mad Jack's stone-scavengers, and soon enough the smiths shifted shop to join the rest of the outcasts.   Finally came the warlocks, with madness gleaming in their eyes and a Company grown quite tired of magical experiments gone awry within the walls of Dance Hall hot on their hooves.

Gibblets and Obscured Blade had cleared the interior of the last of the remaining foundations in Grande Cave, and removed the rotted planking that was all that remained of what must have been somepony's parlour once upon a time.  They had raised a heavy tent over the foundation, and built a low log-frame wall around the edges of the hut, existing drainages cleared to keep the snow and the damp outside of the building.  The canvas bent low overhead from the recent snowfall, clumps of heavy, wet snow slowly sliding down along the slope as the heat below warmed the heavy fabric and melted the lowest layer into a flow-slip.

Covered lamps lit up the interior, and low candles mounted in the corners of yet another ward-circle aided the two warlocks in their creation.  I stood by the exit, leaning against my annals-chest, while my understudy stood closer to her superiors, watching their work carefully.

"Do I really need to be here for this horseapples?"

"Settle down, Sawbones.  We could have Feufollet operate the chest, and shift about the artifacts as needed, but do you really want an understudy in close contact to, well, those?" asked Gibblets, looking up from the rococco spray of curved lines he was inscribing within the wards.

"Pay attention to what you're doing, you damn goblin!" barked Uncle Blade.  "One mistake, and something might manifest from these things, or summon summat we wouldn't want summoned, by damn!"

"When you put it that way, maybe I don't want to ever bring anything out of the chest, maybe?   We haven't had good experiences with circles, have we?  Twice I've come into a warding circle, and twice wild and weird and horrible things have happened!  Every time I see an circle anymore, I cringe and wait for the world to explode!"

"Settle down, zebra.  This is the Company, things explode on a regular basis.  Just because twice it was in close proximity to a warding circle, doesn't mean the two are causally related.  I'd be more inclined to say you are the common correlating factor.  Things tend to only blow up by intention when you're not here; you're always here when things accidentally detonate," groused the goblin-witch.

"We've made two tons of blasting-powder the last year without anything exploding; I've run alchemical alembics and distilleries without a single room blown to Tartarus.  Don't put this bollocks on me, you damn drippy biped.   Speaking of which, go wipe yourself, you're drizzling on that line you just drew."

He looked down, and cursed, and went for a towel.  Uncle Blade took over his work, and re-drew the offending line.

Finally, they were finished, and Feufollet and I carried over the chest to hold it over the circle.  The two of us were not needed to do this; I could carry it over by myself, heck, Feufollet could carry it balanced on the tips of her long ears if she needed to do so.  The two of us were necessary to hold it in place while I opened it and worked the controls.  We kept it within the completed circle, our hooves safely outside of the circle on either side.

I pulled the first artifact out of its hiding-place, and carried it gently into the heart of the warding-circle.  Then I closed the shelf, and the chest, and Feufollet carried it back into a corner.

The two witches walked forward to examine the phylactery, and I stepped back.

"So that's what they look like.  Weirdly pretty; looks like a piece of artwork."

"Hrm.  Not much in the way of power coming off of it.  If somepony hadn't told me it was what he claims it was, I'd call it just that, a neat bit of carving."

As Obscured Blade was casting aspersions upon my scholarship, the shadows in the corner of the shanty opposite of Feufollet stirred, and the Spirit in her Nightmare aspect walked into the world from the darkness.

"There is little power in it, little pony, because all of its power is drained into ourselves.  I can feel the tug; this is the vessel of the first lich."   

She reached into the ward, and crushed it without ceremony.  A violet flare filled the bounds of the circle, and purple flames flickered around her semi-tangible hooves.

"Tha-that's not supposed to be possible!" objected Gibblets.  "How did you get through that ward?"

"Warlock, there are more things in the Chain of Creation, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  Would you think it possible that I would let myself be trapped once again in one of these damned circles?  Or perhaps I influenced you to leave a gap for my entry and exits, and for now until the end of your days, you will leave me sally-ports within your mystical fortresses, that I might come and go?  How many times must I tell you, goblin-clown, that you are MINE TO DO WITH AS I PLEASE?"  Tartarus burned in her gaze, and Gibblets hit the packed, dry earth with a thump, kneeling with his forehead in the dirt. "Still, it is good that you thought to open these in a circle; we don't want a free-roaming death-witch to feel our hooves upon their throats, would we?"

She turned her eyes upon the curious jenny and the chest.

"So let us continue.  Acolyte, how many of these did you say we recovered?"

"Eleven in total, Mistress.  Ten, now."

"And how many legates are there in your common employer's employ?"

"I've never gotten a good count on that, Mistress.  Names?  Eight other than the three you've destroyed.  But I've got it on good authority that there are more than that, perhaps as many as twenty, twenty-five.  And we have no proof that these examples represent liches free and loose in the world.  The rest of these might even be the phylacteries of liches still within the Grand Barrow, perhaps even anchor-posts holding down the Death-Ram's prison.  The possibility has been why I've been loath to mess with the… artifacts."

"Well, let us proceed.  We can at least separate the dross from the silver; worry about the silversmith afterwards."

And so we did.  One more was determined to have belonged to the Marklaird, and was crushed in its turn.  The Spirit opined that four others belonged to sleeping entities, perhaps far and to the eastwards, below the high barrow that covered the grave of the imprisoned Grogar.  These precious anchor-stones were returned to their nest within the annals-chest.

The remaining five were examined closely within the ward-circle, that night, and through snowy nights that followed.  Nothing was done to them at first, but the warlocks and their Mistress drew up plans to make use of what had slumbered, forgotten, nestled within our archive-chest.

And still the Bride's representatives failed to arrive and deliver unto us their judgments.  What delayed the Imperials?   We awaited the signs and portents of an outside world gone silent as the snow.