Soul Alloy
Prologue — An Act of Worship
The elves have a strange opinion of metals, deep in their cavernous, crystal-lined cities. They say that when the world was new, the allfather forged children in his own image, with all his omnipotentate, wisdom, and wrath. They were the first living things, set to be the lords of the World Below as their brethren the high gods ruled the World Above.
Of course, the engine gods fell to fighting among themselves, and were destroyed in the great war. Such is the fate of the primitive deities in all creation myths, else why are they not walking the world today? But theirs is different, say the elves. The machine gods are here, though they live no longer. Wherever you mine titanium in the ground, that is the bones of one of these ancient lords if creation. Every lode of iron is a scrap of their muscle; lead formed their guts and spun copper their spine. What could quicksilver be, but the blood of a god, and only their brilliant golden skin escaped tarnish as their bodies began to decay.
Their works remain as well; like the sun above, which the elves say is the still-burning fire of a bomb from the gods’ war.
Then at the close of the war, the allfather birthed us. Beastisl humans for the World Above, and graceful elves for the World Below, though the races are not so pure as they once were. Both formed after the visage of the allfather, but made from weak flesh rather than indefatiguable metals; and we have the power to create only by the sciences we can learn.
You know that the elves say trade is sacred? Everybody’s heard it, the city folk use it as a justificstion for their avarice, and the yokels who’ve never met an elf say it proves they’re just animals. But imagine how proud the banker or the baker must feel, to know every day he is handling the bones of his god. It is an act of devotion. The beautician takes payment only in gold coins to symbolise the majestic face of his god, not because of the metal’s value.
Mithril, I’m glad you asked, the most valuable coin of all. The only metal that cannot be blended from another through alchemy, or formed in the great Star Crucibles from the Pitchblende and Infinitum that were once the gods’ creation glands. Because mithril is the remnant of an engine god’s soul, every fragment divine, and only the greatest in each profession are blessed enough to receive it.
I wonder what the elves would say when they see us obliviously handing their soul coins to the best of the best sportsmen, or artists. Does that make the painting an icon, or the poem an oracle? And when I can spare just one coin to test their myths, what does it mean to pay a prostitute in mythril?
No, don’t answer. Don’t stop, you might just earn your soul.