Arkk had a brief window of reprieve. He had to make the best of it.
After changing their tactics, the airship overhead fired all their cannons at once, then the whale ship spewed eggs, both took a few minutes of rest following that—presumably, time taken to reset things for their next attack. The main army was outside the tower, reevaluating their tactics. Evestani was about to engage with Mags and his men.
Arkk did not like the idea of leaving the tower during the battle. He could move about personnel whether or not he was present, but there were some things that he could respond to far better in person—for example, teleporting someone like Dakka, Kia, or Lyssa to him and casting a haste spell before throwing them back into combat. In addition, while he had spoken with the bombardment team about targeting the tower with an inferno spell to burn off those eggs, it had not been tested.
But there were some things only he could take care of.
“Agnete,” Arkk said, starting and ending his greeting with just her name. There wasn’t time for more. “I’ve prepared teleportation rituals leading directly beneath the tower’s current location. However…”
Arkk looked around the portal chamber. The vastly enlarged portal chamber. Having seen what Agnete was bringing through from his link with her, he had known in advance that the machines from the Anvil wouldn’t fit in the room’s previous configuration.
They barely fit now. The lesser servants had torn down the walls and joined the nearest dozen rooms together, moving everything of value off to some other corner of Fortress Al-Mir. Even with the modifications, the room was packed to the brim with bulky machines that, despite owning a much larger walking tower, he still felt a little intimidated by purely from a sense of scale.
“The teleportation rituals strain at moving a large carriage,” Arkk said with a frown. If only they had a full-scale portal out at Elmshadow.
“They are transports. If given access to the surface, they can move on their own,” Agnete said, gesturing to the bulky, brick-like machines that moved on treads.
“The battle is ongoing. I need to be back now.” Arkk frowned, watching as Agnete made a noise of understanding. “They won’t have time to cross half of Mystakeen.”
“You’ll find them faster than you expecᛏ,” Who said, stepping up alongside Agnete.
“While true,” Agnete said, looking to her mechanical contemporary, “the distance they must traverse to reach Elmshadow is… roughly the distance from the molten metal refinery stack to our workshop.”
“Ah…” Who’s cogs whirred down in what Arkk assumed was disappointment.
“I have had the lesser servants copying the ritual circles,” Arkk said. “About twenty individuals can move at once, at least as long as they can spark the circles with magic on their own. Otherwise, I’ll have to dedicate my men to doing so.” He turned, looking at one of the large Iron Mongers, as Agnete had dubbed them. They were like an entire foundry on treaded legs. “No idea how to get the larger things through.”
“Throughput issues,” Who said with an odd hiss of steam that Arkk equated with a scoff. The disappointed shake of her head only reinforced his guess.
Arkk chose to ignore her comment, focusing on the task at hand. There wasn’t time for banter. “Before that, however, there is one thing. If you… If it is possible to hire you as employees, I can assist in keeping you and yours safe. I’ve been teleporting people around, dodging attacks, and setting them up for perfect blind-side strikes.”
He honestly hadn’t the slightest idea whether or not he could hire them. They were metal constructs. Machines. Mobile statues. It sounded absurd to think that he could hire a statue. But at the same time, they were beings. His interactions with Who weren’t any different than his interactions with Agnete or Perr’ok. They could make decisions and act autonomously.
So which did the Heart consider them? Statues? Or beings?
Agnete and Who looked at one another. Arkk imagined their thoughts were running along the same path.
“Safety isn’t as important for us as it might be for squishy meatbags. If our casings are destroyed, we can simply construct a new one. Our black boxes are us. They were built by a god. They won’t be destroyed so easily.”
“That sounds time-consuming. Why waste that time when I can prevent ninety percent of your casualties in the first place?”
Who hesitated again. Arkk wondered if she was coming up with excuses just so she wouldn’t have to test this out. Rather than debate philosophy, he conjured up a gold coin from one of the increasingly sparse stacks in the treasury and held it out for Who to take. It was the quickest way to get an answer.
“Accept the payment and I’ll hire you. If you can speak for the rest of the Anvil’s forces, I can hire you all at once.” That had worked with Richter and his men, after all.
Who hesitated a moment longer throwing another glance at Agnete, before she reached forward and took the coin.
The link formed immediately, first with Who then it branched out to the rest of the assembled machine lifeforms. In one exchange of a coin, Arkk had tripled his number of employees. And it wasn’t just the Who-like machines who were mostly inside the transports or the flying serpents. Everything from the anvil gained an employee link. That included the transports as well as the large smithies on legs.
Arkk staggered in place as a sudden wave of vertigo slammed into him. Before this, Richter’s three hundred deserters had been the largest group to join him at once. But even aside from the numbers, there was something different about the group from the Anvil. Normally, he received some small amount of magic, an increase in his reserves, when someone joined.
If anything, he felt drained after they joined. Not completely. If he were to apply numbers to it, each of his new employees increased his reserves by ten, but at the same time, they started siphoning off nine. A net increase but only by a minuscule amount.
Who straightened further, her visible cogs and gears whirring with vigor Arkk hadn’t seen on her before. “Interesting,” she said, looking over the coin as if that was the source of her feelings.
Arkk had a theory. Or rather, an extension of Zullie’s theory. Zullie suggested that the Anvil’s relatively low ambient magic and extremely active environment were related. The Burning Forge was using the heightened magic levels caused by the Calamity to power everything, including the living machines. They were a drain on the magic of the Anvil, keeping the levels low. The theory didn’t quite fit, given that he was still gaining more from them than they were taking, but he chalked that up to some magical oddity he wasn’t aware of. Zullie might care to research it further.
He had more practical things to worry about.
“It worked,” Arkk said, alleviating the concern on Agnete’s face. “Who, you know your fellows better than anyone in my employ. If you can command them—”
“I possess no combat experience,” Who said, only to pause in a brief moment of thought. “None of us do. There are hostile lifeforms in the Anvil, but automated stationary defenses handle them, pushing them back so the Infernal Engine can expand. Some of the serpents occasionally assist, but that is far from their primary duty. However!” she quickly added, as if worried Arkk might send them away. “We are fully combat capable.
“From when Agnete made her petition to the Burning Forge to now, weapons development increased,” she continued. “Most carry portable lightning slingers—Agnete described your favored spell and we already had similar technology in the wyrms. It was simple to adapt to an automaton-portable, albeit less powerful, version. Our plasma cutters are also well beyond capable of inflicting damage on meatbags like yourselves. I believe most engineers, being familiar with the cutters, would prefer that.
“We just don’t know how best to use them.”
Arkk pressed his lips together. He preferred to keep cliques within Company Al-Mir together. They tended to work best like that. That was why Richter had near full command of the men who came with him, why Joanne was in charge of the Claymores, why the orcs were all mostly grouped, and so on. He mixed the groups often enough when he felt the situation called for more diversity, but the ones in charge were still the ones with the most authority over their respective factions.
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“It sounds like your automatons using lightning will mostly serve a similar role as battlecasters while the remainder will engage in the frontlines,” Arkk said, musing on the lightning weapons they wielded. “I have a few casters who I can move into a leadership position with you, though I would still prefer if you stayed on as an advisor. They won’t know the capabilities of the Anvil forces, nor what might be too much for you or what might be a waste of your talents.”
“I’m an engineer. I’d prefer being in the production line. Agnete could—”
“Agnete’s power will go to waste as a commander. She needs to remain an independent specialist.” Arkk shook his head. “Would that we had more time, we could have come to a more satisfactory arrangement. For now, we need to move and you’re in charge. I’ll start teleporting them to the ritual circles. You’ve used one before, can you inform the rest of your men what to do?”
Who sighed. A long, crackling, static-filled sigh. A few odd notes and pitch changes filled certain parts of the static before she finally went silent. It was a bit exaggerated, in Arkk’s opinion. If she didn’t want to be in charge to that extent, it probably was best if he replaced her with anyone else. A few of the other machines in the chamber echoed her sigh, including deep noises from the transports. He was about to say so when she straightened again.
“Done. Everyone is informed.”
“Uh…”
“Some strange way of speaking among their kind,” Agnete helpfully provided. “While I can understand most of their other language, this one is well beyond me.”
“I see…” Arkk shook his head. If that sigh hadn’t been a complaint, he supposed he would let it by for now. “We’ve wasted enough time. Agnete, Who, and myself through the hops first. I’ll move individuals to the ritual rooms to follow. We…”
Arkk trailed off, frowning as a change in the fortress caught his attention. “Agnete and Who will go through first. I’ll be following shortly. There is something else here I need to take care of while I have a moment. Agnete, the enemy has been launching some kind of egg-like things at the tower. If I’m not back by the time of their next attack, I may teleport you outside the tower. Burn them off as fast as you can.”
“Understood,” the former inquisitor said with a nod of her head. The smoldering coals in her eyes brightened as if someone shoved a set of bellows in her ears.
“Everyone else will regroup while I take care of things and find some battlecasters to take over.”
“The walking factories can remain here,” Who said after a deep noise erupted from one of the machines. “They’ll manufacture spare parts, armaments, and other items. A logistic team can move the created parts. We set up material conveyors in the Anvil to deliver raw materials for the factories to use, so not being able to move is probably best for them.”
“We’ll have to swap the portal back to the Underworld to charge glowstones before long, but we can switch it back and forth in a relatively short amount of time.”
“Excellent.”
Arkk waited for a bare instant to see if there were any further questions before he took a breath. “Teleporting you two and the first batch of automatons—along with a few of the serpents—to the rituals now.”
With just one extra moment for objections, passed in silence, Arkk moved them out. He teleported himself as well, reappearing in the temple room.
He swept his gaze over the statues, ensuring that none of them had changed, before settling back on the Holy Light. The statue wasn’t in its usual heroic pose. Arms crossed and a frown on its face, it looked occupied. As he teleported another group of automatons to the ritual room, he stalked closer to the statue. Two silver candles at the base of the statue burned slowly, sparking occasionally. Those were what had drawn his attention in the first place.
“Anyone home?” he asked. “Avatar?”
The statue shifted, its eyes swapped from a vacant, distant look to a glare at Arkk. “I believe I have said to call me Lyra.”
“Right,” Arkk said with a frown of his own. “Do you have anything valuable to say? Or are you here to waste my time begging for my employees.”
The statue let out an audible sigh. “I understand you have made contact with our enemies.”
“Our enemies? I’m sorry, I don’t see you out there fighting.” Arkk was a little upset with the avatar of the Light. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. The avatar came to him with an offer of an alliance and then told him a bunch of half-truths before demanding Agnete, among other concessions, for her offers of intelligence. Every time they spoke, his opinion of the Light diminished more and more.
Vezta was right. The Light couldn’t be trusted.
“And I have a fight to get back to,” Arkk said, turning away. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Hold, Arkk,” Lyra said with a soft note in her tone. Almost begging. Arkk knew she would try to stop him. It was why he hadn’t simply disappeared. But begging? “We haven’t seen eye-to-eye on a number of matters—”
“Just your insistence on returning Agnete to you, as if she can’t make her own decisions.”
“But! I do have a vested interest in seeing my contemporaries fail before they decide to turn their armies on Chernlock.”
“You have an interesting way of showing that interest,” Arkk said, folding his arms over his chest, only to stop and hesitate. One of his arms wasn’t there anymore. With his cloak, it wasn’t obvious. Otherwise Agnete or Who would surely have said something about building him a replacement. There wasn’t time for that now anyway. He teleported another batch of automatons. “Two minutes. That is all I can spare.”
“Before anything, you have not let any eggs hatch, have you?”
Arkk shook his head, deepening his frown. He hardly needed the avatar of enlightenment to tell him that it would probably be a bad idea. After that first had shocked him, he had egg removal duties as the highest priority. Even above saving his men. He did not wish to find out what would happen if the eggs were allowed to mature.
“Good,” Lyra said. “Don’t.”
“You could have warned me about them.”
“I warned you that the Eternal Empire would be deploying ancient weapons long since banned,” the statue said, transitioning to a shrugging pose.
“Well thanks for the advice,” Arkk said, purposefully injecting as much sarcasm as possible into his tone. “But unless you’ve got a way of taking those airships down, I think we’re done here.”
This time, the statue adopted a smug pose. “I do, actually.”
Arkk could only sigh. If Lyra had said no, he could have simply left. Now he had to hear her out. “They avoid, deflect, or otherwise ignore all the bombardment magic I’ve thrown at them. The only thing that worked was an overpowered Electro Deus, and that took more out of me than it took out of them.”
“They aren’t invincible. The creatures within are vulnerable on the inside.”
Arkk already knew that as well. Lexa’s successful destruction of one of the incomplete whale ships attested to that. But he didn’t exactly have a good way of getting someone up into an already flying ship. The harpies and syrens had wings, to be sure, but if the airship could knock a massive boulder off course, he doubted human-sized creatures would manage. He had already tried forming a boulder—and some of the other bombardment spells—directly inside the airship holds. Unfortunately, the magic that generated the stone required an absence of solids in its vicinity. It was one of the reasons they formed so high up, to ensure nothing would leech the magic before the boulder fully formed.
And those whale ships were leeches. Even trying to conjure a boulder, flames, or anything else in their relative vicinity ended up with the spell eaten before it could do anything. It was one of the reasons Arkk had ordered the stop on the continued attacks. If those eggs inside the whales ate magic, he didn’t want to feed them more than he had to.
Unless those eggs hatching inside the ship would be bad for it. If that were the case, he could spare a bit of magic.
He posed the question to Lyra.
The horrified look on her face told him the answer well before she could speak the words. “Light, no. I don’t know which specific weapon the Eternal Empire has deployed against you. I can think of four egg-shaped entities that absorb magic in their arsenal. The least of which absorbs that magic until it reaches a critical point and erupts. I did mention that our wars reshaped entire landscapes, did I not?”
Arkk just sighed. “Then how do you propose I damage their insides to take them down? And that regular-looking airship too, I’ve hardly been able to damage it either.”
At this point, he was hoping that Agnete’s return would provide some solutions. With her increased control over her abilities thanks to her time in the Anvil, she could almost mimic the golden rays with her flames. If that couldn’t damage the ships…
A tug across the link, coming from his scrying team, had him jolting. “I have to return to the—”
“Wait! Accept this.” The statue of the Holy Light changed once again, kneeling with its arms outstretched. Its hands were just above the height of Arkk’s head, holding a shallow bowl. “It will allow us to remain in communication. In addition, you have an inquisitor among your ranks other than Agnete, correct?”
“Sylvara…”
“Bring her to the basin at your earliest convenience and I shall impart knowledge of spells that can pierce any material. Any other trained Abbey clergy may also benefit, if you have any others in your company.”
Arkk pressed his lips together, still not trusting the Light’s avatar. But at this point, any additions to his arsenal weren’t something he could overlook. Taking the bowl in hand, he stepped back, only to freeze as he noticed one more oddity in the room.
Another statue.
All the other statues in the room were beings, most in a humanoid shape. This statue was a thing. A large round wheel made from rich, polished wood. Large golden symbols adorned each of the wheel’s spokes. Cards, chance cubes, stars, a black cat, a shattered mirror, and more. All symbols of luck—both good and ill. Engravings along the rim, written in a language Arkk didn’t understand, gleamed with a bright orange light. At the front, attached to the spoke of the wheel, a set of scales hung. Unlike the other statues, the wheel was in motion. It lazily turned, rotating forward and then reversing. The scales at the front tipped side to side, never remaining perfectly balanced.
The Fickle Wheel.
It had appeared during his conversation with Lyra. He couldn’t say during what part. He hadn’t noticed. If not for the subtle movement in the corner of his eye, he might have teleported away without noticing.
The sight of it made Arkk feel sick. The only other statue to have spontaneously appeared was that of the Laughing Prince immediately after Arkk wielded a massive undead army. Undeath being in the Laughing Prince’s domain, that made sense to him. But the Fickle Wheel was the god of random chance, gambling, and luck. And not necessarily good luck.
Arkk teleported, feeling an urgent need to find out what had happened in the last few minutes.