The God Hand

Elanor gazed upon the massive structure in front of her, the height of half a dozen men and twice as wide around its heavy iron base that clung to the floor like a mountain rising out of the earth. The dwarves and Elves had worked alongside each other once again with the materials supplied by the newly rebuilt city of Geldar. The finishing touches were performed over the last weeks as the Nymphs of Agathok had arrived and began blessing every inch of the machine with their magics, bolstering the warding runes and giving the steel a low hum from the contained power.

It had been nearly a hundred years since the raising of Geldar and the subsequent destruction of her sister city Geldon, where some of the greatest heroes to ever be written and sang of fought a battle that cracked the earth and set flame to the sky for nearly thirty days. Elanor craved the stories told of the great war, they inspired her to build great walls and defenses, and even to take up sword crafting herself. She would never be as great as the dwarves with her limited amount of time, but they were still happy to have her in the forges. Some would find it stressful to work in lung searing forge after running a town all day, but she found manual work satisfying.

Elanor looked to the long barrel that protruded from the fortress-shaped machine for nearly thirty feet, as if someone hung thick plates onto an already formidable fortress that kept a cannon the size of a war ship. The barrel itself had taken four days and some of the greatest dwarven engineers to raise up the side of the castle they now stood upon. A great fat tower over a hundred feet tall had been constructed to house the machine, mighty beams of steel going in every direction one looked.

“What do you think milady?” a well-kept dwarf with snow white hair questioned.

“It’s a work of art, Dwenmar” She stated, still gazing at the machine, “we are going to have a great celebration tonight.”

“Thank you, Elanor, our fathers would be proud indeed.” Dwenmar responded, “Never again shall Geldar be conquered, we’ve already began drawing up the battle rings.”

“Proud indeed, you dwarves never rest, do you?” She questioned, giving the dwarf a smirk before clasping a hand onto his thick broad shoulder. “For now, why don’t you tell me what you have created here.”

The two began making their way around the great iron monster they had created. Folk from every corner of the land had come to lend a hand with its creation, sending engineers, or workers, or even healers to help the wounded or exhausted. At first glance it looked sealed like a safe, few seams, a construction that appeared airtight. Elanor knew better and began looking for a panel or levers, some way to control it, and on top of that some way to load it.

Dwenmar chuckled before giving several hand gestures to a supervisor that sat atop the machine, trying to work out the last of the preparations as he fixed a statue of gold and silver in the shape of a bear to the forehead of the machine. At once a large section rotated around finding its wat home with a bone rattling clunk, exposing a dozen levers and twice as many dials and gauges. A moment later the breech was opened, thousands of pounds of steel sliding back away from the base of the barrel to reveal a loading mechanism a horse could sit comfortably in. All of this accompanied by the hissing of super-heated air and the wine of the dwarves new contraptions that used oils to move heavy objects.

“I saw you searching” the dwarf stated with a chuckle.

“My apologies, I would have spent every moment I had here if I had the chance” Elanor responded with a slight frown.

“Worry not, my people will happily take on a thousand more burdens if it means we never have to endure another great war” Dwenmar responded.

“Burdens?” Elanor questioned with a hurt tone, “You see these things as burdens?”

“No milady, you misunderstand, a burden is not inherently bad in dwarf culture, it signifies a great task, one that will require a great deal of blood and sweat, usually associated with a great hope or undertaking” He responded, “You could never burden us in your people’s definition.”

Elanor chuckled and made her way to the panel that housed the controls for the great machine, the majority of the levers from steel while many of the gauges and dials were made from copper or silver. The handles that adorned the long levers shown a glossy black in the fire light around them, almost like the obsidian the mountain dwarves risked mining from the volcanoes of the crimson Plains. She recognized it as Agathok Iron wood a moment later, a gift from the Nymphs no doubt, she made to run her hand along one of the long handles before Dwenmar stopped her.

“Careful Elanor, we haven’t tested it yet and there’s something you need to know” the dwarf said leading her around to the front of the machine.

“What is it you have to tell me” Elanor questioned with a kind questioning look.

“It has a mind of its own, like a magic construct, we put too much power in one place and the Nymphs blessings bonded a spirit to it” Dwenmar stated looking up the monster with a fascinated glee.

“You had best treat it right then” Elanor responded. “What have you named him?”

“Him?” the dwarf questioned, “How can you tell it’s a man.”

“Women are petite and calculated dwarf; this is a hammer” Elanor responded.

“Not dwarven women” Dwenmar responded with a loud laugh.

“When your men are ready.” Elanor stated a few moments later.

They both gazed upon the massive cannon that had taken nearly a decade to put together, the dwarves reckoned it would be the death of a thousand if ever used in combat while the elf’s skepticism and love of a finer warfare said far less. The Nymphs feared it would burn the land more than the enemies might, unfortunately preferring that over having their forests burnt again.

The breech smashed closed with a rumble while orders were shouted back and forth between the crew that had been chosen to do the initial test fire. Levers began being pulled down hard while dials were moved with the upmost precision, riding a line between a catastrophic malfunction and unleashing one of the greatest forces to be seen since the last great war.

A boom wrang out moments later that knocked the dust off every surface for a mile and shook the foundation of every home in Geldar. The following hiss of blue fire sounded as a man’s last dying battle cry, long and loud, full of agony and pride, the flames spat forth for an unnatural amount of time before tapering off. A haze filled the tall dome that housed them, a crackling hot static covering every steel surface, including the armor of the men around them, Elanor’s silver bracelet hot enough that it began leaving small white marks on her wrist.

Long in the distance, among the Crimson Plains there was a crash of thousands of pounds of magic imbued steel propelled by eldritch flames smashing into the wastes of the demon sands. As if a god himself brought his hand down from the sky to take the earth back, the clouds were replaced with a dark smear of sand, ash, and smoke.

“Di’Ev Ranka” Dwenmar gasped out.

“The God Hand” Elanor stated in amazement.