Dragon's Storm (Legion Of Angels #4)(34)

So he’d heard of me. This conversation could go one of two very different ways. People tended to either instantly like me or instantly hate me.

“My friends call me Pandora,” I replied.

I hoped the master smith had a sense of humor. Too many of the older Legion members did not.

He chuckled. “A fitting name. What can I do for you, Pandora?”

I looked over the weapons around him—swords, daggers, whips. They were all magical, but not one was unique.

“What do you know about immortal weapons?” I asked.

“They are very rare. Few people have ever seen one.”

I peeled up the bottom of my top to show him my scar.

“A scar from an immortal weapon.” His dark brows lifted, and he leaned in for a closer look. “A bullet from Shooting Star, one of the weapons of heaven and hell.”

Wow, I’d hoped he’d known something about immortal weapons, but I hadn’t expected him to be able to identify one by the scar it had left.

“Do you have any immortal weapons?” I asked him.

He didn’t appear shocked by my question. He probably thought I was morbidly curious. Truth be told, I wasn’t eager for a second encounter with an immortal weapon. I’d barely survived the first.

“We have only two at Storm Castle,” he said. “One is Diamond Tear, a dagger used by Colonel Starborn. The Colonel is away at the moment, so I can’t show you that one. But I can show you our second immortal weapon. It’s too big to be wielded in combat.”

He used the key around his neck to unlock an enormous locker that could easily fit two people—stacked on top of each other. But there weren’t any people inside the locker; there was only a rod. Except for the runes etched into it, it looked an awful lot like a flagpole. I saw what he meant. A Legion soldier with supernatural strength would probably be able to swing it around on the battlefield, but it was impractical to carry for extended periods of time. It was far too long and heavy.

“This is the Lightning Spear,” he told me. “The Dragons sometimes use it in their training rooms. It’s indestructible, so it can absorb a lot of magic. I use it to cleanse the castle of excess magic, which I can later put into the weapons I make.”

“Do you know how to make an immortal weapon?” I asked.

“No, that magic is far beyond my limited power.”

“Who can make them?”

“No one on Earth,” he said. “And no one in heaven or hell either.”

“I thought the gods and demons used them in their wars.” Well, when they weren’t warring by proxy anyway.

“There are two classes of weapons used by gods and demons—and, sometimes, by their angels,” he told me. “The simple ones are made by gods and demons. Those are their normal weapons. Weapons of the immortal, they’re called. And then there are the immortal weapons. Immortal weapons cannot be broken, or so they say. The weapons and armor are powerful, sentient.”

“Alive?” I asked.

“In a way. They were forged in the Sea of Souls, where the fallen gods and demons live on. Pieces of their immortal souls were absorbed into the metal of the immortal weapons. Parts of their personalities and their power live inside those weapons. Only an expert magic smith can create a cohesive weapon out of the soul of a god or a demon. Only an expert magic smith can control such powerful, unwieldy magic. There was once someone who could make immortal weapons, an immortal named Sunfire, born long before gods and demons came to be.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, as though afraid his next words would be overheard. “Sunfire could manipulate light and dark magic equally. He was the first and only person who has ever been able to forge an immortal weapon. Later in his life, when the wars of gods and demons threatened to tear his world apart, he created the full sets of immortal weapons and armor to fight them.”

“There’s more than one set?” I asked in surprise. I’d thought the weapons of heaven and hell were the only ones.

“Yes, but they have been lost to the ages. Most of them have not been seen in centuries, if not millennia.”

“Where is the immortal blacksmith?”

He shook his head. “No one knows. He disappeared long ago. Some say he is dead. But his legacy lives on in our magic, in our ability to manipulate magic to create enchanted weapons. Every magic smith today owes our power to Sunfire.” He sighed. “And yet even the most skilled among us cannot hold a candle to his work.”

If Sunfire was alive, I had to find him. I had to speak to him about the weapons of heaven and hell. In my hour of need, I’d been able to control them. What was my connection to them? And what was my connection to the Guardians? I had memories of past Guardians wielding that same armor and those same weapons. Something was going on here—something bigger than all of us—and I intended to find out what it was.





11





Tranquility Pools





After leaving the master smith, I continued on to the Tranquility Pools. The magic here was peaceful and calm, very different from the intense, high-density magic of the Dragons’ training rooms. Palm trees swayed in the warm, balmy breeze. A velvet-soft bed of sand surrounded the pools of cool water. The sweet scents of coconuts, pineapples, and other tropical fruits flooded my senses.