In the control room a routine had set in. Klara leaned against the glass wall, now wearing a bloodied Alchemist soldier coat and watching as Nika and Adamov received and sent messages. They wrote each down and were storing the sheets of paper in a pack. The information they’d be able to extract on the operation here could be huge.

  Klara, Mikhail, Nika, Elana and Matvei had all found black Alchemist soldier coats and donned them. Adamov had kept his own black coat. Yeger hadn’t been able to find a coat large enough. Well, he had. Then he’d kicked the man wearing it out the window…

  Elana had spotted the train crawling up the mountain several minutes earlier. In twenty minutes it would be beneath them and Yeger would jump into the last car full of coal, burying himself.

  “So what kind of wood do you think this is?” Yeger asked, running a gloved hand along a two-inch-wide strip of reddish-brown, fine grained wood that bordered the bank of levers in front of Nika. His pack with the explosives and the parachute lay on the floor beside the console.

  Nika squinted at the wood. “Judging by the colour—though it’s hard to tell in this light—maybe mahogany?”

  Yeger nodded. “I like it. And that? He pointed to the single panel of pale tan wood in front of the signal leavers. It had a concave cut into it so operators could sit close to the levers, but still have bench space around them.

  “Pine,” Nika said.

  Bemused, Klara shook her head. Yeger’s fascination with wood had taken her by surprise. The interest seemed… wrong on the giant man. Still, she supposed, it could be worse. He could love knitting or something. She almost laughed at the image of the six foot seven giant wider than most doors with hands the size of most peoples’ faces concentrating on two tiny knitting needles as he made a scarf.

  “You really need to go to Machtvoll,” Nika said. “My mother is from there, so we flew down as a reward for me getting into the Warrior Guild. You wouldn’t believe the wealth of wood there. Houses made completely of the stuff. Hardly anyone uses stone there, or metal, or uzhasgart”—she glanced at Elana—“sorry, Elana.”

  Elana, pouring over documents on Adamov’s desk, looked up. “It’s all right, dear. Using the Sila to construct things isn’t as evil as it sounds. Sila doesn’t feel pain, and it regenerates slowly over time as it feeds off rock and clay.”

  “What is Sila then?” Mikhail asked, his brow creasing. He sat on the floor beside the door, hugging his knees.

  “It’s… complicated,” Elana said. “It’s the remnants of a race that lived beneath Vlanovia’s surface nearly a thousand years ago. I’ll try to explain more once this mission is over but for now, rest assured that using the Sila is acceptable in controlled doses—and most importantly, with its permission. That’s why I raised no issue with any of you using strength extract.”

  Stunned silence fell on the room, and everyone stared at Elana.

  “What?” Klara asked. “We have that stuff inside us?”

  Elana nodded, apparently unfazed by their reaction. “Yes. Every extract that changes muscle and nerve response is derived from Sila. So that means each aspect of Trinity uses it. But ironhide does not.” She frowned. “That being said, though nightsight technically modifies the nerves in one’s eyes, there is no Sila in it. The Machtvollians have discovered a way to boost nerve response without Sila. I wonder if that can be applied to Trinity… It’s worth researching.”

  “But we’re consuming a living being?” Klara asked again.

  “Slavocks are alive before you kill them and eat it,” Matvei pointed out in his usual whine. He sat cross-legged on the floor by Nika and Yeger, idly toying with one of his throwing knives. The blackened blade flickered from hand to hand, moving impossibly fast with speed extract.

  “Yes,” Klara said through gritted teeth, “but they’re not intelligent.”

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  “Oh, I don’t know,” Nika said. “Have you seen the way a slavock looks at you whenever it farts? You know those big muckers are aware they nearly killed you.”

  “That’s why I don’t eat slavocks,” Yeger said, nodding. “I won’t eat a creature I respect.”

  “What about yutzis?” Klara asked. “Are they intelligent?”

  “Nope,” Nika said. “They’re about the stupidest creatures in Serovnya.”

  Klara looked at Yeger. “So you’ll eat them then? Or do you respect them?”

  “Stupid or not, they’re worthy of respect,” Yeger said.

  “Seriously?” Matvei asked. “If you put an obstacle in a path they’re used to taking, they’ll spend all day head butting it instead of walking around it.”

  “And yet,” Yeger said, “they not only survive on the tundra without us, but there are millions of them. Anything that stupid but still able to stay alive I have to respect.”

  “You just feel a kinship with them, don’t you?” Klara asked.

  Yeger drew himself up to his full height, glowering down at her from across the room. “How dare you…”

  Mikhail scrambled to his feet and darted between them, lifting his hands placatingly. “We don’t need a fight. Yeger is nothing like a yutzi.”

  “Yeah,” Matvei said, “for a start, if an obstacle is in Yeger’s way, he’ll rage and destroy it just because it had the audacity of being in his way.”

  A snicker from Nika quickly turned into a cough.

  Yeger pointed to Matvei, still glaring at Klara. “Exactly right. Nothing gets in my way and survives.”

  Klara wasn’t sure if that was a threat but left it. “Back to the Sila… does it die when we consume Trinity? Or is it dead when you make the extract?”

  “Actually, it doesn’t ‘die’ at all,” Elana said. “The Sila portion of the extract is bound to your muscles and nerves by the rest of the extract, which keeps it contained in your body and gives you the boost. However, your body will slowly burn through the rest of the extract, freeing the Sila after roughly an hour. It then departs your body through your skin as you sweat.

  “If it’s below freezing, the Sila remains dormant on contact with air, if it’s above freezing, it will make its way to more Sila, bonding and becoming a larger mass.”

  A shudder rippled up Klara's spine. A living, thinking being lived inside her?

  “What I want to know,” Mikhail said from his spot by the door, “is how much Sila is in a dose of Trinity?”

  “Very little,” Elana said.

  “And that is enough to make someone like Yeger stronger than a slavock?” Mikhail asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And theoretically, more Sila would mean stronger, yes?”

  Elana nodded. “But there is only so much extra speed and strength each body can handle before bones shatter and internal organs implode from acceleration. I got my hands on some old research notes from the original work into the speed, strength and reflex extracts.” Elana shuddered. “Believe me, you would not have wanted to be the poor sods testing them…”

  Mikhail grimaced, but continued, “So if you could strengthen every part of the human body, in theory you could continue to push the limits, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All right.” Mikhail eyed Elana. “So how much Sila do you have in you boosting every cell in your body right now?”

  Klara perked up at that. She hadn’t considered just how much Sila Elana had coursing through her body.

  Their mother looked trapped, and she coughed. “Roughly four thousand times the amount in Trinity…”

  Mikhail’s eyes bugged out of his head. “That’s impossible!”

  “It’s not, actually. I don’t fully understand it, but a disproportionate amount can live in a human. When it’s not in me, it would fill this entire tower in its gaseous form.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yeger cut in. “Are you saying you are stronger than me?”

  Elana nodded.

  Yeger stomped over to her and held up his right hand as if to arm wrestle. “Prove it.”

  The small, slightly plump and pleasant faced woman looked up at the mountain before her. “Certainly.” Elana took Yeger’s hand. “After you.”

  Yeger’s shoulder twitched, and he grunted. Klara could almost see the amount of power he was using bend Elana’s arm. Except the diminutive woman didn’t move.

  Klara watched, transfixed, as Yeger continued to strain.

  Then Elana, as gently as she might put a baby down, pulled Yeger’s arm down.

  Gasps sounded around the room.

  “Yutzi mucker…” Klara breathed, earning a sharp glare from Elana. She flushed. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  Elana let go and stepped back from the bewildered Yeger.

  “That’s impossible,” the man said. “You had no leverage, and you may be strong, but not heavy.”

  “As mentioned earlier with my ‘flying’, I can anchor onto nearby Sila. This tower is full of it.”

  “So,” Nika said, staring at Elana with a raised eyebrow, “why are we here? Couldn’t you just stroll into the mine?”

  “I've not been bonded with enough Sila to attempt a fight like this. You all saw what happened at the gate when the Warrior Guild used the shockwave cannons on the Sila—they have dozens of those cannons here. And... well, I don’t know how to fight.”

  “Fantastic,” Nika grumbled, turning back to the panel of levers, “the world’s strongest woman and she’s cursed useless.”

  “The Sila can fight, but that requires I completely surrender control of my body to it. Something I’ve done once and will never do again.”

  Klara noted the emphasis on “my.” Maybe Elana wasn’t completely at ease with her bond with the Sila. Before Klara could ask further, Elana’s eyes went wide.

  “Attack!” she yelled.

  Everyone scrambled to their feet—

  —as every window exploded inwards, a dozen Alchemist soldiers swinging through.

  Dark steampunk fantasy

  The world of Rohana exists beneath a barrier of luminous crosses that has enclosed humanity in a dome. Within it, people bow to Rohai and his Church of Harmony, who have divided the world into city dwellers who harness crystal technology and villagers who reject it.

  Haran Baratti fled his homeland with his infant son, Heron, and found refuge in a remote village in a neighboring country. But the sanctuary they seek does not last, and events revolving around Haran's past leave Heron alone, forcing him to return to his father's homeland. But to get there, he can only do it by obtaining a special passport, which will allow him to travel to different kingdoms.

  Having been raised in a different culture, Heron will have to navigate a world of mechanical cities powered by crystalline powers and governed by various social structures. There he'll meet allies and face dangerous foes. And those whom he encounters have secrets; some of them, if revealed to the public, may reshape the very foundations of the Rohana Federation. Will Heron, in learning those secrets, realize that maybe some of those secrets should have stayed buried?

  What to expect:

  ? Dark steampunk-inspired power fantasy with extensive world-building

  ? Magic systems where power comes at a psychological cost

  ? Visceral, well-choreographed combat sequences

  ? Mysteries that unfold across multiple volumes

  ? Steampunk aesthetics merged with elemental magic

  ? Stories where the actors are often found in morally grey areas