Bullhorns and Basalt

The brass blare of an amplification horn split the sulfur haze three hundred feet below, shattering any hope Kjellmar had of quietly negotiating his shift release.

Through the narrow slit between Ravnsk’s interlocking stone wing-joints, the factory yard resembled a damp iron tray. Dozens of morning-shift workers stood clustered behind the fat-skimming troughs, their yellow hazard aprons bright against the soot. At the center of the cobbles, standing beside a reinforced brass payroll cart, Foreman Stennar gripped a heavy copper bullhorn with both gloved hands. Beside him stood two municipal guild wardens in leaded trench coats, their copper-tipped shock pikes glinting in the morning gloom.

"Mixer Kjellmar!" Stennar’s amplified voice echoed up the chimney bore, distorted and metallic. "You are thirty-four minutes past the morning horn! You have failed to report to Vat Station Four, and you have caused catastrophic structural damage to Smokestack Seven! Step down from the rim immediately, or your guild certification is revoked on the spot!"

Ravnsk stirred beside Kjellmar. The gargoyle’s chest rumbled like a boiler firing up, a deep bass vibration that rattled Kjellmar’s boot soles. The massive head swiveled toward the rim gap. The creature's molten gold eyes narrowed, fixing on the tiny figures shouting in the yard.

A heavy stone claw reached out, curling gently around Kjellmar’s vulcanized collar, tucking him deeper into the soot-lined hollow.

"He is not firing me," Kjellmar muttered through his respirator grille. "I have twenty-two years of flawless shift logs. He cannot void my pension over an unprovoked wildlife incident."

Kjellmar planted his boots against the chimney brick, leaned his hazard-jacketed torso into the slit of light, and cupped his rubber gloves around his filter.

"Stennar!" Kjellmar bellowed downward. His voice sounded thin against the vast basin sky, but the chimney draft caught it and threw it into the yard. "Check the Municipal Labor Code, Section Eighteen, Subsection C! Unscheduled detention by hostile biologic entities constitutes workplace duress! You cannot dock an active hostage!"

Down in the yard, Stennar lowered the horn, wiped grease from his forehead, and raised the horn again.

"Hostage?" Stennar yelled back. "You climbed up there with an unauthorized chemical rig! You blew the skylights out of the main cupola! The guild assessors are already tallying the glass replacement fees against your retirement ledger! Climb down the service ladder right now, Kjellmar, or we seal your pension crate permanently!"

At the mention of the word pension, Kjellmar felt his jaw set hard beneath the respirator. "I didn't break the skylights! The beast broke the skylights! Furthermore, the emergency ladder is blocked behind thirty feet of living basalt! If you want me down, send up a crane basket and an extraction team!"

Ravnsk leaned over Kjellmar’s shoulder. The heat radiating off the monster’s stony hide smelled of hot slate, ozone, and scorched tallow. A low, wet hiss escaped the gargoyle's fanged maw. Judging by the vibration rattling through the chimney coping, the harsh, barking noises rising from the tiny humans below did not sound like labor disputes to the beast; they sounded like threats directed at his nest.

The gargoyle spread his massive jaws and let loose a deafening roar.

The sound hit the refinery yard like an artillery blast. Windowpanes rattled along the boiler house walls. In the yard below, three grease-haulers dropped their buckets and bolted for the shipping tunnels.

"Quiet, beast," Kjellmar warned, tapping the side of Ravnsk's snout with a gloved fist. "We are establishing legal jurisdiction. Do not aggravate the foreman."

If the beast understood municipal jurisdiction, he gave no sign of caring. The gargoyle’s slate tail whipped across the rim, dislodging a loose coping stone the size of an ale barrel. With casual, horrifying strength, the creature scooped the three-hundred-pound slab of masonry into one talon, reared back on his hind haunches, and hurled it over the parapet.

Kjellmar lunged forward. "Wait, that's company—"

The stone whistled through the smog in a terrifying, parabolic arc.

Below, Stennar shrieked, dropped the copper bullhorn, and dived behind a fat-rendering trough. The two guild wardens scrambled in opposite directions, their lead coats flapping wildly.

The slab struck the center of the yard with the impact of a falling meteor.

It landed squarely on top of the company payroll cart.

The cart's brass-reinforced oak chassis disintegrated in a violent spray of splinters, iron bands, and crushed brass tokens. The stone drove two feet deep into the cobblestones, kicking up a cloud of pulverized mortar and yellow sulfur dust that engulfed the entire front gate.

Silence descended upon the basin floor, broken only by the hiss of steam from a ruptured drainage pipe.

Ravnsk snorted with profound satisfaction. He curled his wings back down over Kjellmar, blocking out the morning glare, and rubbed his massive stone cheek affectionately against Kjellmar’s rubber shoulder pad, coating the black vulcanized coat in gray grit.

Kjellmar peered through the gap at the smoking crater where the payroll cart had been thirty seconds prior.

"Well," Kjellmar said under his breath. "That establishes duress."

Down in the yard, a soot-stained figure crawled out from behind a trough. Stennar got to his knees, his cap knocked askew and his face white under the coal dust. He looked at the crushed remains of the cart, then slowly tilted his head back toward the summit of Smokestack Seven. Beside him, one of the guild wardens raised an official ivory-banded megaphone.

"Mixer Kjellmar!" the guild warden’s voice boomed up the flue, noticeably higher in pitch than before. "Pursuant to Municipal Code Forty-Two, Dangerous Fauna Containment! The refinery is declaring a localized biologic siege!"

Kjellmar pressed his respirator against the stone rim. "Which means what for my shift wages?"

"It means you are formally designated the Primary Biologic Wrangler!" the warden shouted back, his hand shaking as he pointed at the sky. "As the sole party currently inside the nesting perimeter, you are legally responsible for maintaining containment of the apex predator! Your base wages will continue under Hazard Tier Four!"

Kjellmar blinked. "Hazard Tier Four includes the triple butter allowance?"

"Yes! Everything! Just keep the beast on the chimney!" Stennar screamed, popping up from behind the trough and snatching the megaphone. "Do not let it throw any more rocks at the infrastructure! If that monster drops another stone onto the primary boiler, Kjellmar, I will personally file your transfer to the sulfur salt mines before the dust clears! You keep it calm up there until the specialized purge crews arrive!"

"Define calm!" Kjellmar shouted down.

"Do whatever you have to do!" Stennar yelled. "Sing to it! Scrape its back! We are sealing the lower blast gates until further notice!"

The brass horn clicked off. Below, Stennar and the wardens retreated swiftly toward the safety of the main administrative bunker, leaving the yard deserted save for the smoking hole in the cobbles.

Kjellmar sat back hard against the curved inner brickwork of the smokestack.

Above him, Ravnsk settled down on his massive forelimbs, folding his wings into a tight, protective dome that sealed out the wind. The gargoyle let out a long, rumbling purr of triumph, clearly convinced that he had just repelled a mortal assault on their marital hearth. One huge stone taloned hand reached down, gently patting Kjellmar on the head as if praising a prized pup for surviving the siege.

Kjellmar pulled the respirator off his mouth just long enough to spit a speck of soot onto the bricks.

He had saved his pension from immediate revocation and secured Hazard Tier Four wages. But now the municipal government had officially appointed him the personal caretaker of a three-ton territorial stone monster that considered him its blushing bride.

"Just twenty more years," Kjellmar whispered to the dark basalt vault above him. "Just twenty more years and the greenhouse is mine."