The low sun beat down on the caravan that kicked up dust in the early morning. The man standing at the front of the leading skiff kept his vigil against the wide dunes of the Vast Dust that spread out around him and his company. Closing his eyes he opened his third, which scoured the sands looking for mana. He found nothing out of the ordinary; naught but affinityless mana in all directions.
A woman came up behind him and leaned against the railing of the skiff, the only thing that kept the crew from being lost to the sand when something went wrong. He barely turned, keeping his watch, and smiled, “So, are we getting close?” he asked.
She nodded, showing her tusks with a grin, “Yeah we are, capt’n. ‘Nother few hours of skiffin’ ‘n we’ll be in Green Oasis. It’ll be good to be back home,” she replied with a happy sigh, “Let’s just hope nothin’ shows, nothin’ big anyway. A good little fight would get the blood flowing!”
The captain laughed as the orc woman flexed her muscles, “Indeed, Helga, a small band of monsters would get the blood flowing; not to mention the chips that would flow if we brought them to Green Oasis to sell. I wouldn’t get my hopes up, though. I cannot see even a whiff of any odd mana,” With his third eye open, he scanned the dunes once more and still found nothing of note.
Helga’s green muscles deflated slightly at the captain's analysis and her grin sagged into a bored frown. Pulling the revolver from her waist, she rotated the cylinder until she examined every bullet cylinder. Done with her checks, she slid the revolver back into its holster and sighed, “Ugh… this’s so borin’...” she lamented, “I thought this was the most dangerous way in the Vast… why can’t somethin’ interstin’ happen!?”
The captain chuckled at her plight, along with any other crewmates that were close enough to her to hear her, and gazed at the desert dunes once more, “Don’t be like that, Helga. His Ascendancy may grant your wish if you are not careful,” he lectured with fake concern in his voice that barely covered the humor he felt.
The orc woman sighed once more, this time in mild amusement, “Never pegged ya for a religious man, Cap’n. The blue robes finally worm their words into your head?” she joked.
The captain, breaking his gaze from the dunes, turned to Helga, shrugging, “I do not see why anyone would not give praise to the Two Creators. They gifted us the system. They gave us guidance. They gave us purpose, even,” he ranted, throwing his hands this way and that with every word.
“Purpose?” Helga laughed, “You mean the rise a so many monsters, the Clockwork, or the Shrines?”
Shrugging, the captain returned his gaze to the dunes and the sand, “Why not all of it? There may be upsides and downsides, but we have gained more than we have lost.”
“Plenty o’ folk' would disagree. We’ve never woul’nt know, ‘cause we live out in the fringes,” Helga pointed out.
“That… is true. We do not have to experience the terror of the Clockwork in the next empire over.”
“We would, if we happen to find ‘em breakin’ through into the desert. That, capt’n, would be a nightmare.”
“Well, let us hope we never-“ the captain’s words caught in his throat as his gaze fixed on a point in the sky in the north.
“Capt’n?” Helga asked with uncertainty, “What happn’d?”
“Helga,” the captain said, his words slightly dreadful.
“Yeah?” she asked with mounting dread.
The captain’s gaze never broke from the sky to the north, “Call for the Soren. Now.”
She nodded, fearing the worst, “Yessir,” she replied as she sprinted off into the depths of the skiff. She dodged crewmates who didn’t notice her as she sprinted through the bowls of the skiff, which was bigger than some naval warships. Eventually, she came upon a door made entirely of a brass-like metal. She unceremoniously swatted the door out of the way, slamming into the wall as it flung inwards.
Inside, a small creature was standing at a workbench with a screwdriver in one hand and a small clockwork contraption in the other. As the door slammed open, the furry creature jumped and whipped his head to Helga. He gave an annoyed look at first, but upon noticing the fear in her eyes, he looked at her cautiously, “Helga. Why must you always bash my door down?” he asked. As her face maintained its consistent serious expression, he stopped joking and placed the device onto the table.
“Soren,” Helga puffed, “The capt’n… he needs you. Now.”
At her words, he went wide-eyed for a moment before grabbing a large tome and breaking into a sprint, running out of the door and into the skiff’s interior. After a minute of running, he reached the deck and ran up to the captain, panting, “Captain, what happened?”
Without breaking his gaze, the captain sighed, “Soren, what types of mana look black and purple to mana-sight?” he asked.
Soren looked at the captain for a moment before opening his tome and flipping through the pages. He flipped and flipped, but could not find what he needed. Finally, he reached a page and stopped, hand hovering over the tome. Soren looked up, “The color black has many connotations, but the ones attributed to normal mortals are unknowns, death, darkness, and other negative concepts. As for purple, it usually has a more… mystical meaning,” Soren said, tracing a finger across the page as he read.
“By mystical you mean… what exactly?” the captain asked.
“Usually, it is a sign that the ones making use of the mana, or the ones who created it, do not know what the mana actually does. The only other possibility is that it is a natural phenomenon, but that is impossible if there is black-type mana there… unless… Captain, is the mana mixed together or structured into a sigil or rune?”
Leaning over the railing, the captain squinted his eyes, “Hmm… it looks like veined marble. Streaks of purple run through the black, but without any real shape. Why? Is there something wrong with it?”
Soren flipped through the book once more and landed on a page near the back of the book, “Then this is a natural phenomenon. Luckily it is not necromancers, monsters, or Clockwork. There are only two results left, then. The first case is when a vein of darkness-affinity materials are created, either through a major clash of mana or through natural happenstance. The other, however, is…” Soren trailed off as he read the page.
The captain opened one eye and glanced at the furry creature from the side, “What is it, Soren?”
Soren took a deep breath and looked out to the dunes with a troubled look, “The only other possibility is that a dimensional tear is being opened.”
Silence reigned for a short while, as the group of crewmembers who had gathered there were stunned from the revelation. Soon enough, the captain had orders, “We are changing course. Full power. I want to be at the edge of the tear by midday. Bring every vessel.” WIth the captain’s orders, the caravan worked quickly. Before a mile of sand had passed below the skiffs, they were speeding off in the direction of the tear, a beacon thrown into the sand to mark their original route.
It took the caravan a few hours to reach the edge of the tear, just barely making it within the captain’s deadline. When the skiffs pulled to a stop on the crest of a dune, everyone could feel the mana in the air. It was thick and viscous, almost like jelly, but those who took mana-based Traits could feel the tearing power of the mana as it subtly thrashed through space. Soon enough, the mana’s effects began to show themselves. A tear ripped open in the air, just 200 feet from the ground, and from it poured rain and violent gales. Just as the crew began to appreciate the scene, something fell from the tear. It was a cylindrical construct with three appendages protruding from its cone-like body, one on each side of the main berth of the craft and a shorter one protruding from the top. WIndows dotted the sides of the craft and a large window streaked across the front, giving the crewmembers with visual sense Traits a clear view of the unconscious men slumped in their seats.
The construct fell from the sky, almost gliding, and crashed into the dunes with a deafening thump followed by a cacophony of tearing metal. It slid for many hundreds of feet before finally grinding to a halt against a dune, the front ‘nose’ buried in the sand.
The crew sprang into action, even without the captain’s orders, and turned the decks of the multiple skiffs of the caravan into flurries of activity. Steam boilers were fed with mana by aspiring mages or runeslingers. Guns were passed around to the gunfighters, runeslingers, and mages. Axes and hammers were taken by those who invested their Traits into raw physical power. The skiffs glided over to the fallen construct and surrounded it, the flagskiff positioned at the very top of the dune with the other four skiffs defending the area around the construct.
Men and women leaped off of the skiffs, falling a few dozen feet, and landed on the soft sands. They quickly jogged up to the odd construct and began looking for a way in. While the axe-wielding and hammer-wielding crewmates looked for a way into the craft, the skiffs were manned by groups of gun-wielding crewmates. They gazed out into the desert with wary vigilance, tracking every grain of sand blown by the wind.
Helga walked up next to the captain and tried to peer into the dusty vastness, “You see anythin’ capt’n?” she asked.
With his third eye assisting his other two eyes, the captain scanned the skyline, “I cannot see much. There is too much black and purple mana in the air for me to determine whether or not we will have company. I believe we must-“
“CLOCKWORKS, NORTHEAST!” someone shouted. Turning, the captain and Helga saw a small cloud of dust on the horizon. They were coming in at the gap between the flagskiff and one of the skiffs surrounding the construct. None of the crewmembers could see what was making the cloud specifically, but from their years of skiffing, they could all tell that the cloud was made up of many smaller disturbances, and the only thing that could have that many crafts going that quickly were Clockworks.
Showing the first sign of displeasure in years, the captain growled as he watched the small group come ever closer. Helga laughed as she saw the cloud approaching, “Ha! You’re right, capt’n! I should pray to the gods more often; it’ll bring more fun things to our feet!”
The captain ignored both her worrying desires and her improper reference to the Two Creators, as he had bigger problems to deal with. Pulling the mana from the air, the captain fed it into his organ that lay just below his stomach and felt the mana flow back from it. While silently praising his decision on his first Trait, the captain funneled the mana into his soul, where he felt his Trait had copied down an outline of his most prized spell. It took multiple Traits from many levels to get to the point where he could recreate the spell, but it was worth it. Filling the spell like gold fills a mold, the captain brought the uncompleted spell out of his soul and into his body, where another one of his traits turned the affinityless mana construct into a fully completed spell, ready to be activated.
Bringing the spell into his hands, he marveled at the tiny thing no larger than a marble. The spell, his own custom creation, was something his family on his mother’s side had been working towards for generations and something that made him one of the most powerful skiff fleet captains in the entire Vast Dust: mana creature creation. Flooding the marble-sized core with mana, the complex, three dimensional maze of runes lit up. The mana poured into the spell floated around the core, crystallizing into a glass-like material. Letting go of the core, it floated in front of him and off the side of the boat, the glass-like mana growing into a vaguely humanoid shape. Once it was finally finished growing, the six foot creature with a hazy lower body and human upper body floated in the air off the side of the ship.
With a flash the mana creature’s color changed from a hazy blue to a sharp green and threw its arm out at the cloud on the horizon. A gale was shot out, carving a subtle groove in the desert sand as it flew, and reached the cloud before long. It was blown away. One of the crewmates with visual sense Traits called out what she saw, “Ten crafts! Scout transports! A hundred coming in!”
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The captain pulled out a pair of binoculars and peered into the broken cloud. There were indeed ten crafts, all moving just slower than a skiff, made of a brass-like material with steel-like reinforcements. The transports were train-like craft a few dozen feet in length that seemed to glide over the sand, but were actually propelled by barely visible balls of brass-like metal. On the side of each of the transports were five cylinders, all of which were made of the same brass-like metal. Between each of the pods, gaps showed the many gears, pulleys, and shafts that all somehow formed to give the scout transport life.
“Soren,” the captain said to the short creature behind him, “What are the odds that those scout craft are equipped with gattlings of their own?”
Soren took the binoculars from the captain and observed the Clockworks, “Almost certain. If they are alone, then it is certain that the transports are equipped to defend themselves. It seems, however, that whatever hive sent them wants that… thing,” Soren said as he pointed to the odd craft that fell from the tear, “If I were to guess, they will be equipped with four gatlings each. Minimum. I would suggest…” he trailed off as he looked out at the approaching Clockworks.
“That we use the cannons, yes, I agree,” the captain remarked as he turned to the other men and women standing on the deck of his ship, all of them fidgeting with their rifles and revolvers, “You heard me, get the cannons!” he barked. They nodded immediately and ran into the hold of the skiff to prepare the cannons. Sighing, the captain returned his gaze to his entourage, “I very much hope this dimensional tear’s bounty is worth it; the cannon shells will cost us a fortune.”
Soren and Helga chuckled, “Well, capt’n, that’s what happn’s when you pay for Clocksteel shells. Ain’t cheap,” she said in good humor.
“We can salvage some metal from the scout transports,” Soren said, “It will drive the price down a bit if we provide the materials; that, and we may be able to take some of the more delicate parts of the scouts.”
Helga laughed, “I doubt it, Soren! If you’re tryin’ to scrap those Clockworks, then be sure not to get your hopes up, ‘cause I’m gonna blow ‘em to pieces.”
Soren shot an annoyed glare at Helga, “This is why I have never liked dealing with you mercenaries: you do not understand the academic value that the Clockworks offer! You would rather turn them into piles of scrap rather than study them,” Soren grumbled.
“Heh heh,” Helga chuckled, “You eggheads just sit ‘n your libraries and workshops, so you don’t know how fun ‘t is to blow ‘em up. Maybe you should get out more often.”
Soren was about to make a rebuttal, but the captain cleared his throat exaggeratedly, “You can argue about this later. What we can all agree on is that none of us have a desire to be killed by the Clockworks, yes?” he asked. Helga and Soren reluctantly nodded. “Good. Helga, frost runes will be useful in this case. That goes for you as well, Sprite.”
The floating mana creature, Sprite, hissed in acknowledgement, its color changing from deep green to a pale blue. Mist began to fall off of it, chilling the area and wetting the sand beneath it. Helga pulled out her revolver and opened her other hand, facing her palm upwards. As mana began to trickle into her hand, she held it next to the cylinder of her gun and funneled strings of mana into her bullets. Soon, her gun was spilling freezing mist onto the deck and her bloodthirsty grin was widening. Soren sighed and pulled out the handgun he always kept in the pocket of his robe-like archivist outfit. Helga, seeing the clocksteel gun with its slide and magazine fed barrel, laughed, “HA! You’re shootin’ with somethin’ like that? You’re gonna have to clean it after one shot, maybe two, god forbid!”
Soren shot her a look of exasperation, “Minutes from a battle and you still find it appropriate to antagonize me?” he asked.
She grinned, “I’m an orc without a battlelust regulatory Trait. This is how I get pumped, you know?” she asked. Soren sighed and shrugged, pointing to the leading scout transport Clockwork. The Clockworks, likely noticing the stirring of the cannons in the hull of the ship, began to spread out, making a thousand foot long front, with a transport every hundred feet. The pods on the sides split down the middle, revealing their contents to the desert sun. Within a second of the pods opening figures leaped from each of the pods and onto the sand, running alongside the transports and just barely falling behind.
The figures were the Clockwork scouts. Humanoids covered in a thin layer of clocksteel, they had forward facing cones for heads, two purple-blue eyes glimmering. Their legs were similar to a Soren’s or a canine’s, with the knee facing backwards, and their arms were nearly identical to that of a human’s, disregarding the rifle that was their right hands or the pistons, gears, and tubes that ran up and down their arms.
The Clockworks were closing in now, coming closer and closer as they kicked up even more sand. They soon reached 2 miles, then a mile, then 4000 feet, then 3000 feet, then 2000, then 1000. The Clockworks spread out even more and the transports took point, acting as shields for the scouts. As they solidified their formation, ports on the sides of the scout transport Clockworks opened, revealing two pairs of gatling guns that began to spin in preparation for battle. The first to fire was a sniper crouching on the edge of the upper deck. A single bullet flew across the sands, soon reaching the column of Clockworks. The bullet buried itself in the neck joint of a Clockwork scout, sending it tumbling in the sands. The other Clockworks paid the death of their comrade no mind, as they continued to charge the skiffs. A second shot rang out, then a third. With every shot, another Clockwork scout fell. Despite the sniper’s best efforts, however, the Clockworks still had over 90 scouts and their 10 transports. Then one of the cannons blasted a shot. Then another. Then a third. The first shot went wide, landing in between two of the transports. The second missed the transport, but struck the middle of a Clockwork scout squadron; the shrapnel from the blast shredding every one of the scouts. The third slammed into the transport leading the shredded squadron and exploded. The front end of the transport blew open like a tin can. In spite of that, the ‘brain’ of the Clockwork still lived and drove it ever closer to the skiffs; luckily, the gatlings were blown off of the craft with the front end, leaving it mostly harmless.
As the cannons were reloading the Clockworks made it 500 feet from the skiffs, which was when they changed their tactics. The transports opened fire, their bullets pinging off of the mana-reinforced hull of the skiffs, and slid left and right. The scouts opened fire as well, sending a hail of bullets at the decks of the skiffs. In response, mages erected barriers and fed it with their own mana, allowing other mages to use it for their own spells. As the barrier went up and the bullets began pinging off of them, gunfighters and runeslingers made themselves known through a barrage of bullets. Most simply bounced off of the Clocksteel armor of the scouts, ricocheting into the sands around them. The few shot by runeslingers exploded with colorful mana upon impact. Some shattered the Clocksteel armor with cold-affinity runed bullets. Others dug into the hard armor with blades of wind. A few even sent the Clockworks flying with an explosive blast of force.
Regardless, a number of Clockworks still made it to the skiffs, 50 in all. At that point, Sprite made its move. Mana drained from the air, from the sand, and from the shattered husks of former Clockworks, and converged in Sprite. It then threw a needle of ice into the chest of the leading scout. The entire scout was immediately frozen, with what little moisture that was in the air turning to ice. Sprite then threw another needle. Then another. Then another.
As the scouts were being rapidly frozen, Helga flashed a menacing grin and blasted her revolver into the head of the closest scout. Its head exploded with freezing shards of clocksteel that flew through the bodies of other scouts nearby. She shot another scout, with similar results. She shot yet another, then another, then fifth, then the final shot in her revolver flew into the chest of the middle scout of the last batch of scouts. The scout exploded, its scrapped body tearing holes into the remainders of the charge.
With the last scouts destroyed, the transports swiftly retreated with their fronts facing forward. Although they tried to escape, some did not make it. Another barrage of cannons were able to cripple two transports, forcing them to slide to a stop. One final barrage of shells ended their mechanical lives.
After the battle ended, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, “Whoo… Capt’n, that was amazing…” Helga remarked, other crewmates snickering at her words, “What’re you people laughin’ at?”
Soren had a wry smile on his face, “They are just happy to have survived, that’s all.” Helga gave him a skeptical eye, but shrugged nonetheless, “As much as it pains me to suggest this, but I believe it would be pertinent to leave as soon as possible,” Soren said, surprising Helga and even the captain.
“Why do you suggest that, Soren? If I am correct, you are normally quite fond of the spoils of the Clockworks, so what has you so rattled?” the captain asked.
Soren shook his head, “It’s the transports that escaped that has me worried. They came here quite quickly, so I would not discount the possibility that a hive has formed somewhere in the desert.”
Helga’s eyes widened, “A hive? In the desert? You sure? They’re always looking’ for water for whatever reason, so why a desert?” she asked.
“Well,” Soren began, “They require water to power their Clockwork automatas in most cases, but if you failed to notice, these Clockworks did not have steam engines. That means that, luckily, there will be fewer of them, but they will not have the same weak points that most hives do. As for why they are in the desert, I believe they are trying to break the hold the eastern empires have on the front lines; a hive razing their borders on the Vast Dust would weaken their position significantly,” Soren explained, sending a chill down the crewmates’ spines.
The captain nodded with his assessment, “Indeed, that does make sense. And if we are correct, then we will be seeing headhunting Clockworks in the near future. Alright,” the captain said, making his resolve, “Alright! We need to leave within the hour! Minimum lookouts on the skiffs! The rest of you, get into the tear’s bounty and take as much as you can! We need to finish within the hour! Let’s go!” he shouted, rousing the spirit of the crew.
With Sprite following him, he cast a basic spell and floated down to the ground, landing in the soft sand without a sound. As he walked away, Helga leapt from the skiff and landed with a thud onto the sand. Dusting her white shirt and brown trousers off, she followed the captain, accompanied by Soren, who climbed down the side of the skiff with his retractable claws. As they walked toward the odd construct, lifts were being lowered with crewmates riding them.
As the captain and his entourage approached the odd thing that fell from the sky, they noticed a multitude of blankets laid out on the sand. In every blanket a person wearing odd clothing laid unconscious, some simply spasming slightly while others were coughing blood. The group walked up to a large man in a white coat who was treating the unconscious people, “Alex,” the captain began, “Did these people come from the tear’s bounty?” The doctor, Alex, nodded without looking up, “Do you know what happened to them?”
Alex looked up from his patient, showing the scar that ran across his neck to the group. Alex pointed up to where the tear was previously, then down to the construct that laid in the sand, then to the person he was treating, a woman in her mid twenties. He held out his hand and let the hazy blue glow of mana gather, then pointed between the woman and the mana, ending the gesture by placing a fist on his chest and fake-coughing.
Seeing Alex’s response, Helga raised an eyebrow, “So you’re sayin’ they’re sick ‘cause of the mana?” Alex nodded, pointing at the woman’s heart, then to the captain’s third eye, “Wait, they’re also sick ‘cause of the system? Or is it the capt’n?” Alex shook his head, pointing at her skin, tusks, and muscles, then to Soren’s legs, hand-like paws, and wolf-like snout.
“So it is the system, then,” Soren concluded, “It does make sense; we don’t know how we have the system, so it makes sense that odd things could occur to those, perhaps, without it.”
“Don’t let the Blue Robes catch you sayin’ that!” Helga laughed, “They’d string you up and beat you like a punchin’ bag!” Soren shrugged in response.
As they were examining the woman, one of the men who broke into the construct ran up to the captain. He nodded and handed the captain a strange, rectangular, black device with a few buttons on the side, but not much else, “Captain,” the man greeted, “We found stuff like this lying around in the thing over there, and in these guys’ pockets. There’s also a bunch of stuff like bags, boxes on wheels, and other stuff in there; what do we do with it, cause we’re pretty sure that a lot of it belongs to these guys, so…” the man trailed off, glancing at the sprawled out blankets, filled with people.
The captain rubbed his stubble-covered chin, thinking, “We should obviously bring them to Green Oasis —no sense in letting the Clockworks or beasts of the desert get them. Hmm… we will let them take whatever is theirs and take what is left over,” the captain decided, “By the way, how many people were on that thing?”
“About ninety, sir,” the man said, “forty five men, the same with women. Only one died; the poor bastard broke his neck trying to protect some other guy, it seems. Dunno how the two see each other, but the two guys must be friends or something.”
The group nodded, “That is manageable for us then. Alright, pry everything of value from the thing, get the people and their stuff on the skiffs, and burn the one guy who died— we do not want to give wandering necromancers or beasts food or soldiers, do we?” The crew quickly got to work, prying odd boxes from the seats in the construct, bringing bags and boxes from the thing to their skiffs, loading the unconscious people into spare rooms in the skiffs, and taking as much extra metal as possible. Eventually the crewmates had stripped anything seemingly valuable from the construct and loaded it onto the skiffs, taking one or two Clockwork scouts onto each ship after purifying them of the Clockworks’ signature mana. Once everything was finished, they set fire to the corpse of the only man who died and returned to their original route heading to Green Oasis.
As the fire burned, it stripped the body of clothes, flesh, and blood, eventually leaving nothing but blackened bones in the orange blaze. Soon, however, a spark of purple flickered in the fire. Then a spark of green. Then a spark of black. Sparks of purple, green, and black flared and smoldered over and over until they consumed the orange fire. The flames of purple, green, and black swirled and flared, reaching tens of feet into the air, before condensing into the skeleton’s chest. The fire shrunk and shrunk until something that resembled crystalized fire rested in the skeleton’s chest. The fire-like crystal was made of purple, green, and black, soon joined by a core of red that rested in the middle. As the fire subsided, the charred skeleton twitched, spasmed, and shook.
And it stood.