“Go!” Oswald yelled. “To the elevator!”
The golem, a ten-foot-tall walking armor destined to destroy, did not seem like it could be taken down with any weapon they had. But they could still outrun it. Unlike the ancient machines, built of True Silver, Star Gold, and their forgotten alloys, the clockwork soldier was a towering mass of bronze, with sparse addition of lighter, precious metals. Whenever it took a step, the floor vibrated, and without ether, it wouldn’t be able to move. Still, it had the speed of a heavyweight wrestler and the momentum of a charging bashmu.
Nua barely heard the warrior. She sped up, holding her hands over her ears, even though it did not help. Behind her, there was a muffled scream and a crash. The sounds were getting through Anki’s lament like through woolen padding. She didn’t know who fell. Blood was dripping from her nose, and her eyes were welling up with tears.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blink of magenta light and jumped to her left at the moment a beam of light hit the floor, leaving a charred trace behind. Then a dark, sharp object cut through the air. Nua recognized Zaina’s throwing knife.
“Do not stop!” Oswald shouted. “We can make it!”
“Lykomedes is down!”
Nua realized that Anki’s screaming ceased and she nearly tripped again, this time out of relief. In half a blink, she glanced behind and took the situation in.
They were already well into the corridor, running towards the elevator. The golem fit inside without any issues; the interior of the facility was built with a generous excess of space, perhaps in anticipation of other machines traversing the laboratories. Lykomedes was sprawled on the floor, seemingly tossed aside with a tremendous force. He was not moving.
Facts: that golem was after her. It started attacking the others only once they got in the way. Did it focus on Anki’s ether? And it had the ability to shoot etheric beams from his remaining eye, for the River God’s sake. Zaina’s attempt at breaking it was well thought out. Whether her aim was off or the machine resisted the attempt, Nua did not know.
The king was silent. Which was good, but also sort of bad, because she would love some advice at this very moment, anything that would help her survive and also show that the spirit was still conscious and sane. She was afraid of him, and for him at the same time.
Other facts: the machine was in a sorry state. Its head and the left side of its body endured tremendous damage, its bronze armor was falling off in several locations, and its senses had to be damaged because it had missed. Nua had a hard time believing that the golem would survive the battle in the inner chamber if its weapons were so easy to dodge.
Also, the party could not exactly run toward the elevator with the golem able to shoot at their back.
“We have to break its eye!” Nua shouted.
“That’s what I’m doing,” Zaina hissed, zig-zagging around the golem. It recognized the threat and started rotating its head and changing the angle to aim. “Oswald, crunch its head!”
Dozens of memories flicked through Nua’s mind. Skeletons of war machines taken apart by scrap collectors. People of the Bottoms, talking about legendary findings at the scrapyard. A gang she once hid from, boasting about their abilities to fight everyone, even mage-engineers. And her own hand with the crummy knife, prying and hacking at the pieces of tarnished metal.
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“Its brain is not in the head!” she cried. “It’s in the belly!”
“Where it’s most protected,” Oswald grouched. “That figures.”
With agility uncanny for someone his size, he launched himself at the golem, then slid by its left, damaged side. The machine was aiming the light beam at Zaina, but it didn’t need to look – the “eye” was not necessary for it to see. A fist the size of a watermelon hit the floor just where Oswald was a fraction of a breath ago. There was a crack, and then another. The floor tiles fractured. The mercenary slashed at the golem’s knee. A metal plate fell off with a tink, a wire went loose. The knee did not give up.
“Quintus, a hand over here!”
“On it!” The Mycaean readied his gladius and shield. The guardian was a bad match for him, its size and mass making it unsuitable to charge and hold the full impact of bronze fists. But he could still attack at an angle, trying to give Zaina some breathing room. Now the golem had three assailants challenging it, but it made little difference. The hulking tower of heavy metal was moving as fast as Oswald, and did not intend to take another hit at the knee. It launched a flurry of subsequent attacks with its left arm while hitting Quintus with its right, and at the same time, shooting at Zaina. There was no pattern to its movements, its body parts seemingly independent from each other, and its damaged, sensitive spots were few and all located on the left side. Which it was trying to protect by exposing the undamaged areas to the opponents.
The golem’s fist finally made contact with Quintus’ shield. The warrior poet let out a painful cry. He managed to step to the side, with the golem’s fist sliding by and losing most force of the impact, but he was still knocked out of balance. Another strike followed. Quintus rolled away, his shield left on the floor and his arm hanging limp.
Nua understood that if this went on, they were all dead. Most likely, the machine stopped attacking her just because it knew that the mercenaries posed only temporary challenge and it wanted to get them out of its way. She clenched her fists, her whole body trembling.
“Where are you, Anki?”
But there was no response. In a momentary decision, the girl pumped herself full of burning, golden-red ether and entered the fray.
Looking back, she really did not think this through. She simply thought that the golem had just two arms and one eye, and with four attackers, it might be ultimately outnumbered. She also figured that she might draw its attention again, leaving Zaina an opportunity to act. So, because she was no fighter, with a single knife to boot, she lacked the sense for teamwork, and two things she could do best was jumping like an ether-packed flea and riding a half-feral musushu, she somersaulted directly at the golem’s back.
Clockwork golems make for really lousy mounts, she managed to think. Then all hell broke loose. If Shadow got bitten by a botfly, the effect would be similar. Nua held fast, half-consciously concerned about losing her teeth. Her knees were already scraped raw. She drew on ether again, pulled in more than back then in the canyon, more than she could take without excruciating pain. She had to be stronger and faster.
She had scrap to dismantle, and it was moving.
Part of the work was done for her already. Someone had the same idea before, and they tore off most of the metal plating at the golem’s back, leaving it a charred mess of wires and devices. She wasn’t in the perfect situation to pry one element by one, as usual. All she could to was to hack at the already exposed parts with her knife, adding a generous load of ether to her strikes.
Then, the metal soldier started transforming.
Nua thought – and her thoughts were fuzzy with all that was happening – that she couldn’t have triggered the change by repeatedly stabbing at its back. More likely, the golem, unable to respond properly to the combined attacks, considered itself truly threatened. Its fists withdrew, then re-emerged as an array of blades. In between its metal plating, spikes appeared. Finally, it sprouted two additional, burning magenta eyes on the flexible protrusions that grew from its shoulders.
She was barely aware of the screams that followed, or the sudden warmth that spread in her right thigh. Perhaps her heart was already pumping her blood out with every beat. All she could do was to keep stabbing.
As her vision started getting dark, her fleeting consciousness registered that the golem ceased its motion.