038 – Machines
***
“Okay. This is the spot,” I said. “Time to set our plan in motion.”
Malisent and I came to the place we had been searching for, another elevator shaft on level negative three. This elevator went from ground floor to here, and did not continue down to the array. All the equipment we needed waited in a heap at the bottom of the shaft.
“The workers delivered our supplies down this shaft. It’s a long drop. We have to check if anything is broken. We put the block and tackle in barrels stuffed with straw. The barrels shattered, but their contents should be fine.”
“Human stupid! Slow, deaf, blind!” A goblin thief appeared out of nowhere, grimacing and holding a small knife.
“Not this time, Nimblesto. I fully expected you to jump out of the shadows at me.”
The goblin frowned. He failed to startle me for once, although he did sneak up on me without my noticing him.
“Ugh. Why is this vermin here?” Malisent asked.
“Nimblesto has good hearing and can see in the dark. He’ll be our lookout while we work.”
“Goblins hate dungeon. Stoney home dungeon. Stoney squish goblins.”
“Your tribe used to live in the citadel. I guess the basement was off limits to you back then, huh?”
“Stoney old. Stoney hate all. Stoney squish all.”
Malisent looked in at the giant pile of rope and wood. “You should have brought some workers with you instead of a goblin.”
“They couldn’t climb all the way down here. Two magi can do the job. Just remember to lift with your knees.”
“I expected something more flashy from an Ancient One, not a bunch of ropes and pulleys,” she said. “This is something a siege engineer would devise.”
“What’s that?”
“Siege engines are for storming forts. Catapults throw rocks to knock down walls. Ballistae shoot bolts like giant crossbows. Battering rams knock down gates.”
“Oh. I wondered why the walls around Dovestone were so ridiculously thick. I guess that explains it.”
We removed our supplies from the bottom of the shaft, trying to stay somewhat quiet so as not to alert the golem. The equipment spread out on the floor. I took inventory and then checked for any serious damage.
“Nimblesto hear above. Bang bang bang. Boom boom boom.”
“Good. Gritha has started the drumming. That should distract the golem. Tell us when it changes. And definitely tell us if you hear Old Stoney’s footsteps coming our way.”
After checking the gear, we looked for a place to set it all up. I found a great spot not too far away in a large, empty chamber.
“This is the spot. These columns have capitals we can loop the ropes around. The only drawback is that no low corridors connect to this room. Should things go bad, it will be a long run to the nearest safe zone.” I unrolled my scroll with the blueprints on it. It showed how to assemble everything. The pulleys even had numbers painted on them to keep them straight.
“Don’t worry about that. We’re here to fight and win, not run away.”
“Nimblesto hear below. Woo woo woo.”
“That’s Veylien blowing her horn. They’ve got the golem bouncing back and forth. As long as they keep the noise up, we should be okay to work.”
Malisent complained about getting stuck doing manual labor on the way down, but now that we were here, she stopped her grumbling. She could enhance her strength, which helped her. However, enhancement didn’t change her weight. Trying to push or pull very heavy things would make her feet slide across the floor. The block and tackle were the important part of this plan.
The tree log we planned to use cracked down the middle, lengthwise, from the drop. That wasn’t a serious setback. We looped sections of rope around it to help keep it together. The operation took almost an hour, mostly hauling things and getting them into place. Then we assembled the rig and began to lift the whole thing into the air.
The two other witches continued with their part of the plan.
“Nimblesto no hear noise. No woo, bang, boom,” the goblin hissed at us.
“What? They shouldn’t be done yet,” I said.
Gritha had beat the drums until the golem reached the top entrance. She then retreated to safety and stopped making noise. Veylien took over, blowing her horn to summon the golem from the other end of the complex. That went according to plan. But then Veylien stopped her music prematurely. After sending the golem back and forth several times, she knew approximately how long the trip took, and she quit making noise almost exactly at the halfway point. She intentionally lured the monster down to our level and then went silent.
“Nimblesto hear Stoney! Stomp, stomp, stomp.” The goblin took off running back for the elevator shaft. I never expected him to stick around for the dangerous part of the mission. He had done his job as a lookout.
“Get ready, Ariman. The guardian has heard us trespassing into its lair.”
“We haven’t tested anything yet. We have to adjust the height and check to see if it actually works. Let’s retreat and try again later.”
“No time. If the golem has any brains at all, it’ll smash your engine to splinters. We have to use it now.”
I also heard the pounding footsteps of the golem. It was close. It left the spiral ramp and searched for us through the winding halls of level negative three. Malisent stood in the middle of the room. She snapped her finger to light some extra torches and then drew her sword. She had more confidence in my plan than it rightfully earned. Or maybe she really did thirst for revenge against the monster that broke her arm.
The golem approached. His cherry red glow preceded him and spilled in through the doorway. I ran toward the edge of the room and hid behind a column to keep out of sight. Old Stoney stepped into view with his steel claw spinning in its socket. The whole room lit up with red light from its blazing horns.
Malisent couldn’t defeat the monster. She had already tried twice and failed. But she needed to keep his attention. He would have run straight past our trap otherwise. There was no time to wait or judge if the golem stood in the right spot. I took out a knife and slashed the rope tied to the column. The log swung down.
Our trap was not a complex machine. Just a log suspended near the ceiling from a rigging of ropes. When released from its position, it would fall about a meter, then swing on two lines attached to the log’s ends. It would pick up speed and then hit the golem from behind to snap off his two crystal horns. It was a simple horn smasher.
The trap did not work perfectly. The log struck the golem in the back of the neck instead of grazing the top of its skull as intended. Because of the fracture in the log, it cracked apart against the Ancient wonder, splitting into dangling fragments of wood. The trap would not get a second use.
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The impact knocked Stoney forward. A bright light flashed as one of the horns cracked in half. Glowing chunks of red crystal scattered across the chamber. The top heavy monster reeled off balance and landed on his face with a resounding boom. The second horn hit the floor and crumbled to pieces.
Before falling flat, Old Stoney lashed out with his spinning claw. It smacked Malisent and sent her flying backwards. She skidded across the floor in her metal armor. I ran over to help her up, and she clutched her left arm in pain.
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said. “I can carry you up the shaft.”
“There’s no time for that. We have to press our advantage. Destroy those crystals while we can.”
I would have fled this fight. Stoney was knocked down, but he wasn’t dead. But it was true that the hornless golem might escape the labyrinth and attack the citadel. This was our chance to stop him while he was tired and freshly wounded. His claw clanged against the ground uselessly.
Malisent went to our tools and grabbed a hammer with her right hand. I retrieved an iron pry bar. Getting close to the golem made me nervous. Its inner fire flared wildly, proving that the broken horns had affected it in some way. Malisent smashed her hammer against the stub of glowing horn that remained. I banged away at the crust of quartz on its head.
“Its core is inside the skull, behind this removable steel panel. We can pry off the panel to eject the brain. Or smash it to bits if we have to.”
Malisent tried to loosen the panel with hammer blows while I dug in with the prybar. We stood on the monster’s back as he jerked around in a spasm. A golem shouldn’t feel pain, but Stoney writhed as if in agony. I put my full weight against the prybar and Malisent pushed from the other side with her good arm.
The steel plate groaned and bent at a corner. I inserted the pry bar on the other side and started going at it again. It finally popped off with a spray of quartz shards and grit. Before us was the original brain, a sphere of glowing rock crystal about the size of a bowling ball. I hesitated to touch an object containing such a powerful daemon. The pry bar wedged between the sphere and the casing. After a few good tugs, the core popped clean out of the metal skull and rolled across the floor.
Instantly the golem stopped moving. He went limp, and the frightening claw stopped whirring. The soul fire evaporated from the mechanical body and faded to a mere spark within the rolling orb.
“We beat it.” I gasped for breath, my chest heaving.
“Damned this thing to hell. It got my other arm before it died.”
“We should never have risked it. If Stoney had hit your head instead of your arm, you’d be the one with a wide open skull and missing brain right now.”
“It was fine. That golem moved at about the half the speed as the last time we battled. The mana starvation slowed it down. We could have outrun it.”
I gaped at her recklessness. Malisent was a mad adventurer. She lived for these kind of hectic encounters. She loved the rush of danger, the thrill of victory, and the relief of walking away from a battle with all her limbs still attached. For her, danger was fun rather than terrifying and addictive rather than instructive on how to be more safe in the future.
Our differing occupations really shaped our manner of risk assessment. Technicians designed things to be as safe as possible while swordsmen constantly lived one step away from death. I planned things ahead of time; Malisent lived in the moment, shifting and adapting as events unfolded. Her mindset was based on facing active and intelligent opponents, mine was centered on cooperating with others. I valued human life as a top priority, she clearly did not—not even her own.
For fighting monsters, I had to admit that her method was superior to mine. Not every fight would allow me to map a perfect escape route or set up a trap ahead of time. I needed to loosen up with my risk taking and improve my adaptability—not to the levels of this crazy witch, by any means, but definitely out of my comfort zone.
By itself, building machines wouldn’t be enough to survive, even when fighting another machine.
“That wasn’t the toughest monster I’ve ever battled. It was invulnerable to attacks and devastatingly strong, true, but it was also simple minded. It only thought to smash. Other beasts have magical powers that make them more deadly and unpredictable.”
The deactivated golem lay face down on the floor, and it was going to stay there for a long time. The thing weighed tons. Now that it had no daemon, the metal parts would start to rust. If left for a decade or two, it would break down to useless rubble.
“What should we do with this orb?” I asked.
“Will it help you revive and control the golem? Take it with you. No reason to let the others know about it, after all. I defeated this thing all by myself.”
“I was here too, you know?”
“And it’s a good thing you were, disciple. You will make an excellent witness to my victory.”
I had fully expected her to take all the credit. That was okay with me. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Taking the daemon core as payment suited me fine. I rolled it into a leather satchel and slung it over my shoulder.
“Do you still need me to carry you up the shaft?” I asked.
“No need for that. The labyrinth is ours. We can ascend by way of the main ramp, like champions.”
***
Magi could heal from injuries with remarkable speed. Malisent healed her first broken arm in about a week. This time, alchemic medicines further sped her recovery. Her left arm could heal in a few days. But that was not the limit of magical healing.
Enhancement techniques could give a temporary boost to healing, and projection could help other people heal, but the augmentation method truly excelled at it. Those with the right techniques could reattach severed limbs or even regenerate them the way a lizard regrew a tail. Those swordsmen survived unbelievable injuries from violence, fire, poison, or drowning. Although they would never be as invulnerable as a golem made from steel and stone, augmentation specialists had a reputation as difficult to kill.
Augmentation didn’t interest me much as a method, but improving health and recovery did. With all these dangerous missions, it was only a matter of time before some ugly monster broke one of my limbs. I hoped there were minor pain killing techniques.
I stowed the daemon core in my workshop. It worried me having this thing around. Spirits could move from one suitable anchor to another. Assuming it could possess humans, it might take over some unwary cultist and transform them into a hideous monster. The core’s original control runes had faded away long ago. I needed to devise a proper set of arrays for imprisoning these modern daemons. They were too dangerous to leave laying around.
“Human give glogloball.”
Nimblesto the goblin thief grabbed the glowing core and scrambled for the door of my workshop. He was so small that it looked huge in his arms.
“Let go of that, you little maniac.”
I grabbed onto the orb. He wouldn’t let go, so I yanked him off his feet and spun him around the workshop. His tiny legs kicked in the air.
“No! Mine! Give!”
“I’ll pay with some other shiny object. This is too dangerous for you.”
The idea of the daemon possessing and further mutating a goblin was too horrifying to dwell on. A red super goblin with glowing horns. But just as annoying.
“Give glogloball. Human promise head. Head break. Nimblesto take glogloball.”
I wrenched the core away from him. It pulsed with malevolent energy in my hands. I dropped it into a metal lock box and removed the key. Nimblesto pounced on the box and gnawed the lid in frustration. He was like a monstrous toddler.
“Listen, you crazy goblin. Old Stoney’s ghost lives inside that ball, and I don’t want him getting out. I can find you some safer lumestone to impress the gobgirls with.”
Malisent entered the workshop. She wore a sleeveless tunic that exposed her arms. There was no trace of an injury on either of them. Magi’s scars faded away quickly.
“I have good news, disciple. Today Spymaster Luniqual’s messenger bird informed us that the dark lord will travel up the Spitpoison River with the next round of deliveries. He will arrive at the citadel in a few days time.” She took my seat at the workbench. I had to get some extra chairs in this place if goblins and witches were going to keep inviting themselves inside.
“How is that good news?” I asked.
“It means that we will give Lord Hrolzek a report on the new citadel’s progress. And in that report, I can tell tale of my single handed victory over the invincible golem.”
“Single armed, more like,” I muttered.
“Our operations will speed up once the dark lord arrives. Improvements on the citadel will increase. The monster army will grow. He’ll hold a court in his new throne room when the other officers make their way here. Then we can start infiltrating the Kingdom of Sandgrave to ready ourselves for the invasion.”
“Where are the officers now?”
“The Holy Paladins destroyed our former temple on the Island of Forgotten Skulls. Dark Lord Hrolzek took serious injuries fending them off, and the Paladins assumed that they’d killed him. We dispersed across the continent to make it appear as though the Void Phantoms had splintered, thus concealing the fact the dark lord survived. Our swordsmen wait patiently for word of the Void Cult’s resurrection.”
Augmentation specialists were notoriously hard to kill, and magi could heal almost any wound in time. I wondered what sort of injuries the dark lord sustained in his battle with Paladins, and why it took him several years to recover. It must have been much worse than a broken arm.