Sera and the rest of the party backtracked to the previous security station after locating the control station for the fortress’s core and shutting down the traps in the hallway. Fortunately the physical traps had a physical off-switch to match, easily identifiable because it was the only physical control there. It was designed to require a key, but Rinnie had been able to pick the lock.
After passing through the once-dangerous hallway and transiting through the security station, the group took the other door they had previously ignored, finding a staircase leading up not far away. Sera looked at the steps with apprehension, remembering how much of a trial the last set had been. A tug on her sleeve drew her attention elsewhere.
“Carry me,” Vivi said to her, a pleasing expression on her face. Layla and Rinnie were already on their way up, undaunted.
“I can barely get myself up them…” Sera told the cleric, who sighed in disappointment. “Let’s just get it over with. Come on.” Side by side, they started up the stairs. It was like ascending a staircase while only using every third step, but with triple the stair count in turn. Sera mused to herself that a setup like this could be great for athletes on Earth to exercise on.
“Why don’t you…just use a spell or something for this…” she asked Tiriana, who was a bit ahead of she and Vivi, panting just as hard when they neared the top.
“I’m good at flinging things…not moving them slowly…” the mage answered miserably. Sera thought back to those projectiles she’d launched in the last fight and got the point. Only Layla had a chance of surviving assistance like that.
Layla and Rinnie had already begun looking around by the time they reached the top, and the latter was on her way back to let them know what she had found.
“We’re close to the surface. This floor has a lot of workshops and some of them look like they were basements, but the buildings above collapsed and blocked the stairs. We can probably unblock them, and by we, I mean you,” the scout told Tiriana, who was still catching her breath. The elf gave Rinnie an annoyed look, as if wondering why she couldn’t have waited.
“Let’s not…I don’t know…how much damage it would cause,” Tiriana replied through heavy breathing. Rinnie shrugged as if it didn’t concern her.
“Well, there’s no traps that I’ve seen, probably because it’s a civilian area, so I’m going to just scout ahead and look for more of those giants.” With that, she headed off down the hall. Unlike the lower levels, this one seemed to be dimly lit thanks to light seeping in through the open doors of various workshops- gaps in the rubble blocking the stairs that Rinnie had mentioned, in all likelihood. Although the lighting was probably too poor to make out any detail, or even color, it would be enough to get a general sense of things even away from Vivi’s luminary.
Once the three non-warriors had finally recovered, they looked into the first workshop. It was packed full of magical apparatuses unidentifiable to Sera, all sized for beings much larger. Were she to take a seat in one of the chairs, she would look like a toddler with how her legs would hang above the ground, and her head barely rose above the tables and countertops.
“Judging by the setup, they were in the early stages of industrialization,” Tiriana commented as she walked around the room, examining various devices. “Look at how they’re set up so that each magic tool feeds into the next. They had the assembly line down, they were just doing it on a workshop scale.”
“Isn’t that a bit backwards? I remember on Earth that we started by massing workers in one place on lots of separate machines before we transitioned to assembly lines,” Sera replied, puzzled by the odd setup. She didn’t really understand what any of the tools here did, but they seemed to comprise a single complete assembly line in a small room, as opposed to many parallel lines in one huge building.
“Well, there’s no reason they had to come up with the two ideas in the same order. If they started with specialized craftsmen sharing a workshop, each doing their own part of the process…”
“Then their first move when they figured out machines would be to do the same thing with added automation,” Sera finished. “So they skipped the step of replacing the craftsmen with a identical machines for making interchangeable parts and instead started making unique parts using automation.”
It was strange to think about. Doing it this way, assuming the magic tools weren’t designed to the same specifications in every workshop, would increase productivity massively, but every product could only be repaired by the manufacturer without access to identical replacement parts- even the tools themselves. Every workshop would have different standards, training, and rules, as well. As a side effect, it probably prevented wealth from accumulating in a handful of large factory owners, since each workshop had lower individual productivity and a separate owner.
Presumably, the next step would have been to consolidate and standardize, but they hadn’t gotten that far before being wiped out. Sera wondered whether the tech side had advanced along the same lines or if they had already hit upon the same mass production methods used on modern Earth.
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“I wonder if this entire level is workshops,” Vivi added. There was nothing else to be learned here, so they went to find out. Sure enough, they found workshop after workshop- but more significantly, they found their first signs of resistance. After encountering at least a dozen workshops, the group finally came upon a crude barricade, riddled with bullet holes and smashed. The area in front of it bore signs of offensive magic being cast, leaving burns and other scars in the brickwork.
“Odd that the checkpoints were unscathed, but they made a stand on the workshop level,” Sera remarked. Clanking signaled the return of Layla from ahead, though Rinnie was still nowhere to be seen.
“Perhaps they concentrated their forces at a more defensible position on the lower levels and had no one left to defend them,” she speculated, having already examined the battlefield. “Those that fought here were likely the craftsmen, making a last stand. Their spells do not appear to have been particularly potent.”
“They might have been caught by surprise down below wiped out before they could resist, too,” Tiriana pointed out. “Everything I’ve seen so far indicates these people were advanced in engineering and defensive magic, but it’s possible they weren’t particularly good at fighting.”
Layla grunted in affirmation. “Either way, I suspect the buildings above the workshops were demolished deliberately to slow down their foes. Otherwise it make no sense to defend this position, where they could easily be flanked from the workshops behind them.”
“I’d be curious to know if this was before or after the core was destroyed, but there’s no way to tell. They certainly would have noticed they had been infiltrated when the fortress collapsed, though.”
“Technically we don’t even know the attacked destroyed the core,” Sera pointed out. “Maybe they wrecked it to keep the fortress from falling into enemy hands?”
“Either way it does not affect us. I am more concerned with the tactics used to take the fortress, as it may gift us insight into our foes.”
With that they moved on, looking for an unobstructed staircase with which they could reach the surface. It soon became clear that they would not find on within a workshop. Each one had been thoroughly blocked, and subsequent barricades told of why- a desperate battle had occurred here, with the defenders falling back to additional lines of defense over its course.
Their findings painted a grim picture of the city’s final moments. But even here, they found no bodies. Further evidence the attackers had been taking people prisoner to encase them in those suits. They didn’t know enough about either society to be certain the armored beings weren’t volunteers, but there was little enough evidence of the tech side using magic to make one wonder where they would have found mages willing to undergo such an operation elsewise.
The devastation grew as they continued, the defenders having grown more ferocious every time a barricade fell. At first the destruction they caused was limited, which Layla had attributed to civilian mages, but they may have been concerned about damaging the halls with more powerful spells, and that worry may have dropped in importance the further they were pushed, judging by the escalating collateral damage. Wider scorch marks, craters carved in the brickwork, magical ice that had yet to fully melt, and spikes formed of the walls themselves all greeted the party.
Finally they came across a room at the end of the hallway that was home to a wide staircase, covered only by a gazebo that wouldn’t have been sufficient to block it if collapsed and perforated with tiny holes, better for keeping out the sun than the elements. The floor was slightly sloped towards grates on the sides of the rooms, as if the room doubled as a rain collection system for the cistern far below. That might have been why so many workshops had their own stairs to the surface.
Rinnie was waiting at the top of the stairs, grassy hair swaying in the breeze as she looked out over the fortress’s surface. She heard the others approach and waved them up, indicating the area was safe. Tiriana, Vivi, and Sera glanced at each other before scaling this final staircase, all three hoping to avoid stairs in the near future.
When they crested the top, they beheld a vision of opposites: on one side there were farms and fields, with a forest in the distance, all of them in pristine condition, and on the other, to the center of the great turtle’s back, a city lying in ruins. The city largely blocked their view of the far side of the fortress’s back, but the layout they could see suggested that the residential section was in the center, with a double line of workshops on the outer edge and fields furthest out. Even from here they could see that the forest didn’t form a full ring around the city, though, so it didn’t seem that the area was full symmetrical.
“Why destroy the entire city…?” Vivi whispered as she took in the sights.
“I doubt the defenders could have put up enough of a fight to warrant it, but it is possible they destroyed it to spite their foes,” Layla responded grimly. Sera didn’t think that was likely though- she had seen pictures of warzones on Earth and this wasn’t the same.
“I don’t think this was deliberate,” she told them as she scanned the ruins. “I’ve seen pictures of cities destroyed in wars…I’m no expert, but the buildings didn’t completely collapse like this. This looks more like an earthquake hit a city that wasn’t built with them in mind.”
Most of the buildings were little more than piles of debris; only the sturdiest structures like the central keep had survived. Sera had assumed the damage to the outer walls was caused by the army of tanks, but now it seemed clear that they had partially collapsed from the quake.
“I’m not sure what an earthquake is, but I can guess what you mean- you think the buildings fell to pieces when the fortress collapsed?” Tiriana asked, and Sera nodded to confirm. Omichlódis likely didn’t have tectonic activity, so it wasn’t as obvious a conclusion for its natives. “I see why they didn’t leave behind many troops. There was nothing left to occupy.”
A moment of silence passed as they looked out at the remains of a city whose people had once built one of the greatest marvels of magical engineering ever created. Nothing remained but dust and wind of their once proud civilization. The silence was suddenly broken when Rinnie turned to Tiriana and posed a question that left her speechless.
“Why didn’t you just conjure dirt to make the stairs into ramps?”