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The old armadillo took the small figurine in his broad hands and examined it critically over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles. The shape was crude and unrefined, lacking any real detail but still recognisable as representing the overall shape of an upright armadillo. It looked much like what a small child might sculpt from clay or mud, but with one important difference; this figure was of the purest white marble.

"It's not good enough." The deep, rumbling voice carried the weight of years and was not unkind.

"B... but, it's the best I could do!" His indignant grandson stood before him, crestfallen in his moment of triumph.

"I know" He replied gently. "But this is better than the last one you made and the one you start tomorrow will improve upon this." The boy glared up at him. Smiling, he handed back the snowy-white sculpture and continued. "Remember, you can always do better. Complacency in his achievements only hold a man back from fulfilling his potential."

The boy stood quietly, running his thumbs over the vague lump of stone that was supposed to be his grandfather's face. Then he suddenly looked up into the familiar wrinkles and knowing smile.

"But, I mean... what if I can't make the next one better?" That made the old man laugh, much to the confusion of his young ward.

"My boy, I was almost twice your age before I could shape a stone like that and I was considered quite talented in my day." He patted the boy on his still supple head plate. "You'll find a way to get better. You're my grandson, after all, and eight generations of stone-shapers flow in your veins. My father always told me that our destiny is set in motion by our own determination and I, for one, think you're destined for great things."

They'd piled up a couple of crates at the side of the street to create a makeshift table, balancing long wooden boards across the top to give it a larger surface to spread the dog eared blueprint over.

"You're sure you can't have it finished any sooner, Mr Hewen?" The finely dressed ferret seemed ill at ease in front of the skeletal framework of the growing building and even less at ease with the bustle of people walking past him in the street. Elias sighed, he was used to people haggling on price, but time was far less negotiable.

"No, Mr Polliver. The time-frame I quoted to you, and we agreed on, is how long it will take this many men to complete the work." Picking up a thick pencil, he swiftly annotated a few notes along the edge of the plans while his mustelid companion composed another response.

"Well, can't you just work faster?" The tone said everything. Alrich Polliver was the sort of man who assumed anyone who wasn't born into his own exclusive social class was somehow inherently lazy. With that attitude coming from someone who'd never done an honest day's work in his life, Elias couldn't help himself rolling his eyes beneath the heavy brow of his head's armour plating.

"Mr Polliver, let me put it another way." Elias held up his hand and began counting on his broad fingers. "There are three wishes everyone has for their job. One, to pay as little as possible. Two, to have it finished quickly. Three, to have the job done right." Elias smiled, holding the full attention of his patron. "The catch is that you can only ever have two of the three, so you have to trade off what's important to you. You can do it on the cheap and quickly too, but you'll get shoddy workmanship. You can have the job done properly at minimal cost but it'll take time... or you can do it fast and well but I can promise you it wouldn't be cheap. Expecting all three is like asking for the moon on a stick."

The Ferret drew himself up to his full, insubstantial height.

"I'm not paying any more if that's what you're after, we agreed the price!"

"What I'm saying, Mr Polliver, is that the men are already working as fast as they can without compromising on quality. To complete the job sooner, would require more men and that would mean extra costs, which I'm sure you wouldn't want." A subtle shifting of expression told Elias that the ferret finally seemed to be grasping the most basic of concepts but wasn't about to go down without a fight. He smiled and continued the debate, wrangling the customer was all part of a job. The bickering nature of the aristocracy rarely got to him. He always thought to himself that being an Armadillo made him naturally thick skinned in more ways than one.

Dozens of feet above, the sturdy looking crane creaked as the chains shifted through the pulleys and the stone beam it was lifting swayed in the breeze. The towering buildings of Bannihar never seemed to cease their upward crawl towards to sky and the people of the city had become so accustomed to the perpetual construction and maintenance work that they didn't even give a second glance to the tons of stone that hung so precariously above them. They milled back and forth beneath its shadow as they went about their daily routines. Nobody noticed the chain shudder and jolt as it seemed to tangle in the elaborate pulley mechanism it ran though. The drawn out metallic screech went unheard as the linkage buckled and one of the three chains broke free, its heavy links crashing through part of the wooden framework. In fact, the first anyone below knew about the snowballing situation high above they street, was a stifled cry from one of the building crew as he ran in panic.

"THE LOAD'S SLIPPING!"

Anywhere else, you'd expect panic, an instant shift of the crowd away from the source of the warning. To the people of Bannihar, who didn't even notice the construction work around them any more, it barely caused a stir. Men glance around, muttering between themselves as stone ground against metal and the twelve foot column of stone over-balanced, beginning its unstoppable slide into free-fall. Then someone looked up... and screamed. Panic erupted in every direction as people ran into each other, struggling blindly to get away.

Elias had seen the crane shaking as soon as the first cry had gone up, his previous debate forgotten in an instant. The world seemed to run in slow motion as the crowd scattered, people too crazed over their own escape to notice the little feline girl get kicked aside and tumble to a halt in the shadow of the stone, too lost in her own tears to realise she needed to move. Further out, another figure was fighting against the flow of the crowd, shouting to the child as they tried to get back to her.

Elias didn't think, there was no time for that. With only seconds at hand, he simply reacted. Metal screamed as the second chain broke and the stone beam began its sudden descent but Elias had already dropped to one knee and slammed his palm to the surface of the street. There wasn't the expected smack of flesh on stone. His hand sank as it met the solid surface as if he'd pressed it into nothing more than fresh dough and from it flowed a rush of flowing ripples. They flickered across the distance to the girl in the time it took to draw a breath and passed beneath her. Then from the mosaic paving slabs behind her rose a surge of stone, shifting in shape as it grew. A flat rounded head, broad shoulders and arms took form and the figure rose further.

The world rushed back as stone met stone with a grinding crunch. The rising form of the stone golem met the falling pillar from the opposite direction and the street shook from the force of their juncture. The sudden jolt cracked the beam, one end shearing off along the fault and smashing through the paving into a crater of its own making. The golem's legs cracked to the hip and the crude fingers of its left hand exploded in a shower of dust as it shifted the weighted to the other side, redirecting the momentum to send the remainder of the falling stone crashing into the sturdy wall of the building it had been meant for.

Fragments of loose stone tumbled and dust billowed as everything came to rest. What was left of the fractured golem seemed suddenly still, towering over the screaming child as nothing more than a lifeless statue. It was several seconds before Elias breathed again, drawing his hand from the ground and letting the stone return to its original shape where his palm had been. By the time he looked around, the girl's mother had already snatched her away and disappeared into the clustered crowd. It was a few seconds more before he realised they'd started cheering, but by then he really didn't care.

A dapple stallion, mane faded by age and covered in stone dust, came stumbling from the direction of the crippled crane. Gasping from exertion, he was trying to say something urgently to Elias between his heaving breaths. Elias wasn't listening. He had crouched down by part of the shattered stonework, glancing over a couple of twisted links of chain before picking up what was left of an elaborate steel pulley system the size of his head. He turned it this way and that, calmly examining the twisted metal before standing back up and finally looking at the his equine foreman.

"Whose job is it to make sure the lifting equipment is checked before we use it, Joseph?" The horse seemed momentarily de-railed. He'd apparently been mid-sentence when Elias had spoken but recovered well.

"Elias, thank the goddess, by the ti..."

"I asked you a question." The tone wasn't angry but something about it cut through the Joseph's sentence and he knew better than to try to avoid it.

"Well, it's mine, but..." Again, he didn't get to finish.

"So can you explain to me why the inside of this is riddled with rust?" His words snapped into a snarl as he shoved the twisted mechanism into the chest of the taller horse, who instinctively caught it with a wince it before it could drop. "I pay you to do a job, I suggest you do it. Get this mess cleaned up and I want that support column re-joined and in place before sunset."

"But the crane..."

"That's not my problem." He wasn't looking at the horse any more. He was glancing over the extent of the damage spread down the side of the building and across the street. "I think stopping your incompetence killing anyone is more than enough intervention for one day. Get it done or find yourself someone willing to pay you for only doing half a job."

Elias didn't wait for a reply, although there would no doubt be some weak, self-serving attempt at justification for the incompetence. He seethed beneath his strangely calm exterior. Why today? Was it a sign? He walked by to the remains of his makeshift table. It had been knocked over in the rush and cowering on the ground beside it was the forgotten Mr Polliver, wide eyed and trembling. He'd been stood too far back to be in any real danger but he obviously hadn't realised that. Elias crouched down, the armour plates of his back flexing, and met the fallen man's gaze.

"My dear Mr Polliver, this was a shining example of what happens when someone cuts corners to save time." The ferret stared back, speechless. "I have standards, Mr Polliver, and this is unacceptable. All damage will be taken care of at my own expense and I'll apply a suitable discount to your final invoice." He paused for a moment to allow the man's shaken mental processes to catch up. The mention of money seemed to get a nod. "However, I won't cut corners. The work will be finished on time, as promised. I personally guarantee the workmanship will be some of the best in the city and now you're even getting it for less than you expected to pay." Elias rose to his feet with a sigh. "That's all three wishes, Mr Polliver. What more could you want?"

Elias walked away down the street without feeling the need to mention that he'd noticed the ferret's clothes had been soaked in more than just his own sweat. Someone else could clean up the mess, surely they could at least manage that without him.

The sturdy wooden door slammed shut behind him and a flick of his fingers brought the lamps to life. Elias had studied all of the elemental arts but had never given much time to anything that didn't come from the earth. He understood the theory but with the other elements had never practised much further than the tricks any apprentice picked up in their first year. Lighting candles and stoking the hearth were about as far as he'd bothered with fire. The inherent destructiveness of the element had never appealed to him.

The oil lamps lit up the dingy room well enough in the lack of windows to let in the daylight. Elias kept his living quarters below street level, having to walk down steps to his front door. The feeling of the truly solid walls around him was always a comfort, although 'comfort' wasn't a word most people would apply to his accommodation.

The walls were bare stone, which wasn't surprising, and the only furnishings in this room were a rough wooden table and a couple of similarly functional looking chairs. Elias could have afforded the finest furniture from the master carpenters of the city (a few of them owed him favours anyway) but he'd always chosen function over form just as with his clothing and almost every other aspect of his life.

He tugged his heavy cloth apron off, pausing to remove a stone rod about the size of a brick from its pocket, before tossing the garment over one of the chairs and sitting heavily on the other. The stone clicked against the wooden surface as he placed it on the table and he stared as it rolled slightly then came to rest atop the elaborate looking letter that he'd left there that morning.

"Why today?" He sighed and prodded the stone, watching it rock to a halt again. "How can I go now?" He couldn't help but think how he'd even considered it. What would have happened if he hadn't been there today? What would happen if he wasn't there tomorrow? There were too many projects, too many work sites. He couldn't just cut and run, could he?

Silently, he ran his broad fingertip over the letter's wax seal. It was the official seal of the high priest. Obviously, he wouldn't have written or stamped it himself but it still carried the weight of his authority and that wasn't something to be dismissed easily. That, however, wasn't what was weighing on his mind and preventing him from dismissing the request that the official letter had put forth so eloquently.

Carefully, he reached out and tapped his thick fingernail on the top of the smooth stone rod. It was no different to the ones given to every Bannihar stone-shaper when they began their apprenticeships at the age of thirteen. This one had been given to him by his father and had been passed down from father to son (and in one case, daughter) for eight generations. The apprenticeship usually lasted six years but Elias had gained guild accreditation in just three, using that very same stone to demonstrate his skills to the master craftsmen that witnessed his examination. The hour long demonstration was called to a close after a fraction of that time after Elias had started teaching one of the examiners how he'd interlaced an enchantment into the underlying structure of the stone to allow faster transitions between forms. Since then, he'd spent half a decade weaving increasingly complex enchantments and enhancements into his favourite trinket. It surprised him that no-one seemed to have thought of doing it before. Now all of the apprentices seemed to be trying to master the fundamentals of the concept to improve their chances in the guild examinations. He took guilty pleasure in the knowledge that none of them had figured it out yet.

As he lifted his hand upwards from the familiar surface, the stone rippled and flowed to follow, spiralling in graceful strands. Flows of stone danced and merged, taking on a more substantial shape that within seconds became recognisable as a figure and then more accurately as resembling his own, hunched shape. Fingers twisted into shape, grey skin folded and wrinkled, even threads of gossamer-like stone branched from the jowls and sides to make up the individual strands of hair. As the detail increased to unbelievably lifelike in miniature, the figure differentiated from Elias by looking distinctly older and somewhat thinner. Yet, despite the incredible refinement, one small area of stone remained coarse and vague in its shape.

The young armadillo sat quietly, running his thumbs over the vague lump of stone that was supposed to be the face, and whispered.

"I can do it now... so why can't I remember your face as clearly as I remember your voice, grandfather?" He remained there, lost in thought for some time. The spell broke when a gentle knock came at the door. With a sigh, he relaxed his hands and forced the small stone to run back into its original shape. The door opened without him issuing an invitation, that meant it must be Joseph.

The ageing stallion closed the door gently and wandered over to the table where Elias sat with his back to him.

"So, have you calmed down yet?" He pulled the discarded apron from the second chair and dropped it unceremoniously on the table before sitting down with a pronounced flinch. "I got the pillar back up there, don't ask me how, you wouldn't like it." Elias sighed and regarded his uninvited guest with a faint smile.

"Are you going to tell me why you cringed when you sat down?" The horse tried to chuckle, then grimaced.

"I was up on the crane and when I saw the first chain go, I tried to secure the second one while it was still under tension." The younger armadillo, resting his elbows on the table, put his head in his hands as he listened in disbelief. "I was too slow, I guess the years are finally catching up. Anyway, It got away from me and dragged me into the wall when it went." Joseph carefully raised a bandaged hand that Elias hadn't notice until then. "A couple of broken fingers and cracked ribs, I reckon I got off lightly. At least I bought a few extra seconds before it all went to hell."

"...and those few extra seconds were what gave me the time to do something." Elias shook his head wearily. "You're an old fool Joseph, but I know you too well to think you're an idiot. What really happened?"

Shifting uneasily in his seat, Joseph hesitated before answering slowly.

"Weeellll... It was my cousin's funeral this morning. You said I could take it off, remember?" Elias nodded. "So, I checked the lifting rig yesterday, marked that linkage as knackered and put it aside for repair. From what I've heard this afternoon, one of the apprentices was really nervous when he heard you'd be on site today and got some of the gear mixed up when he was ferrying it up to the lads that were rigging it..."

Elias leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. So, if he hadn't been there today, there probably wouldn't have been a problem at all. Maybe it was time to trust someone else with a job for once.

"How many times have I tried to fire you now?"

"Tried?" Joseph pondered. "Seven? You actually fired me twice, do those count too?" Elias couldn't help but smile at that.

"So why are you still here?"

"That's easy, most folks can't put up with you for much more than a year. You can be one hell of a task-master but they know a recommendation from you can get them a job pretty much anywhere else they want, so it's worth sticking it out for a while."

"True, I guess, but that completely avoided the question." The horse smiled back.

"I've been with you five years, I was the first guy you hired. I guess I'm just too dumb to let you get to me." He smirked and added, "Besides, without me as a buffer, you'd loose half your team in a week. The first time someone misplaced a hammer, you'd be foaming at the mouth."

For a few minutes, they sat in silence, then Elias picked up his stone and pushed the letter across the table to his companion.

"Then I'm sure there'll be a party when they find out I'm leaving you in charge."

"Leaving?" Joseph picked up the letter in his good hand and started to read.

"For Zion, it seems the city thinks it has need of my services and where else am I going to find someone dumb enough to cover for me?"