King quickly found his new spear lacking when trying to fight the swarm of beetle-like simulacra. He could use either end of it to effortlessly punch through the stone armor of a single corrupted simulacrum at a time, but that was far too slow for his purposes. Even swiping its blade across the ground only cut two or three in half and sent a few more flying.
But as soon as he realized he no longer needed to fear their corruption spreading to him, he struck his spear into the sand through one of the beetles and left it there, choosing to crush his opponents with his shield and feet instead.
While more efficient, the sheer number of opponents was still overwhelming. For every two or three he crushed, ten more burst out of the sand and one managed to cling on to him with its sharp claws. The claws themselves did very little to the stone armor of the knight, but each one hindered his movement slightly. Any time taken to tear the more persistent ones off him, gave his opponents a chance to regroup and maneuver, so even at its best, the battle was at a standstill.
Emilia on the other hand didn’t quite have the mass to simply step on the mechanical beetles, but her mace was more than adequate for the job at hand, allowing her to almost effortlessly crack the shells of the simulacra swarming around her.
The beetles didn’t show quite as much interest in the priestess as they did in King, but she easily had her fair share of it to deal with.
Being bit more nimble on the sand than the knight, she could move out of the way if things started to get dicey, and only rarely one of the beetles actually got a hold off her boot – tough only to uselessly tap their sharp feet against the metal shin guards before being kicked away.
As the swarm showed no signs of dwindling down even a little despite the crushed husks littering the sands around the pair to a point of actually being in the way.
The presence of so many corrupted simulacra started to almost thicken the air itself and make it harder to breathe, and the freely flowing sand became harder and firmer, almost as if it was suddenly wet. Emilia also noticed that the flow of her cloak gradually slowed down and hindered her movement. The same was happening with the discarded remains of the broken simulacra; whenever she or King batted one into the air, it took several seconds to fall down – far longer than it should have. The effect was almost that of time itself being slowed, but that did feel quite correct, it was more akin to all movement being resisted by something invisible.
Pyria commented something about it, but Emilia was far too busy trying to not be buried under a mountain of mechanical beetles and didn’t really listen.
As the standstill battle dragged on, the priestess’ mortal strength began to run dry and her movements were more and more powered by the strength given to her from the fiend. She reluctantly had to keep giving Pyria more and more influence to keep fighting. With Sylvia, she typically allowed it to happen immediately, and it manifested in fire and molten metal, but with Pyria, things were different. The intense heat was still there, but it laid dormant, allowing something else to swell within the priestess. At some point during the fight, without even her noticing, everything touched by her hand or foot had started to carry a smeared print of blood. Her trail had become visible in the sand and blood dripped from her fingertips in not insignificant amounts. As far as she could tell, she was uninjured, so the blood must have had something to do with her new temporary alliance.
The blood would have bothered her more, if she wasn’t having so much fun against her own will. Each cracking of stone and dying whir of the beetles was like music to her ears. The satisfying crunch of the carapaces giving in under her mace and the flicker of the violet lights on them as they deactivated, were somehow easily the highlight of the month for her. It was awful, but at the same time, exhilarating beyond belief. The more she had to lean on Pyria’s powers, the louder the fiend’s songs became in her head, and together with the sounds of the battle, they created irresistible melodies and made fighting almost feel like dancing.
She cheerfully spun around with her bloody hands spread out and flung droplets of it everywhere around her, dotting the desert in crimson red while laughing and humming along with the songs in her head.
Meanwhile King was still dutifully stomping away at the swarm, but had started to notice their numbers waning slowly, which puzzled him. He knew what the beetles were for and how many of them there were, and that they shouldn’t have been anywhere near done. Yet, the beetles had started to lose interest, or rather, were actively falling back – but not from him. Glancing over to his friend, now a fair bit away from him, Emilia seemed to be having a time of her life as the corrupted beetles fled for their lives.
While some of the simulacra did manage to escape after understanding what they were dealing with, many of them were stopped when the individual drops of blood began forming long iron spikes that pierced their shells and left them impaled and hanging on display.
Grabbing his spear just in case, King approached the priestess, who had clearly just begun to realize something and using the blunt end of his weapon, he tapped his friend’s shoulder.
Almost as if she had woken up from a nightmare, Emilia stared at her inexplicably bloody hands that still ebbed a steady flow of red liquid onto the sand. “This might be a problem.” She muttered and lifted her gaze to see the mechanical carnage that surrounded her.
----------------------------------------
Leggy was quick to get on her feet as the underwater corridor sealed itself around the fallen husk of a mechanical behemoth and the rush of water in it subsided. She immediately noticed the set of six light blue lights keenly staring at her and Anastacia from the water above.
Swiftly grabbing the enchanted knife from the necromancer’s belt to have at least some kind of a weapon for her no doubt futile standoff, she stood over the unconscious girl and faced the gigantic mechanical beast that slowly leaned closer and closer to the corridor.
Despite her capabilities in combat being a far cry from anything King was good for, she stood unwaveringly before the underwater creature and clenched her fist around the knife.
Eventually the lights were only a few meters away, and each one on its own was larger than the Venator pattern simulacrum below them. Their brightness obscured the rest of the creature and their gaze began evaporating the water from Leggy’s wet armor. Yet the only audible sound it caused was an extremely low droning that could almost be felt as shaking rather than a noise.
For more than a few minutes, perhaps closer to a half an hour, the lights scanned both Leggy and Anastacia, moving side to side, back and forth. Perhaps the creature itself was confused as for why there was an unfamiliar simulacrum in their fortress with a human, or simply curious. It certainly had ample opportunities to bring down a fraction of its weight and effortlessly crush the visitors, yet it didn’t.
Of different fortresses and unsuitable patterns for it, neither Leggy nor the giant had a way of communicating, but both of them must have taken the other’s inaction as a sign of benevolence.
Leggy slowly loosened her grip on her weapon and while still keeping an eye on the lights, crouched next to the necromancer to see why she wasn’t moving like she usually did. The Venator patterns were generally used for discreet things and carrying of messages, so the functions of a human body were largely a gift not given to them, barring perhaps some that functioned as assassins. But Leggy was not an assassin, not even remotely, so Anastacia’s unconsciousness after hitting her head was truly a puzzle to her.
Lacking any other clues, the simulacrum assumed that the cease of function in the human before her must have been caused by the small blot of red on her shirt, just below the shoulder, where Anastacia’s wound had opened up slightly.
The rhythmic swelling of the human’s chest, generally referred to as breathing but an unfamiliar concept to Leggy, suggested that the core functions of the body must have still been in a working order, and that the problem lied somewhere between the human equivalent of the simulacrum core and the limbs, as well as the vocal generator module on her head that rarely ceased operation on most days. The pretty little optics in the necromancer’s face, which Leggy rather enjoyed, also seemed unresponsive and didn’t follow her hand when she waved it in front of them.
With the other human lost, their way back blocked and very much still in danger, the simulacrum decided that it was better to move Anastacia and attempt repairs elsewhere. She tossed the limp body on her shoulder and begun taking hasty steps in the only direction she could.
Thanks to the map in her head, she knew it to only be a short jog until they would reach the end of the watery chamber and wouldn’t have to worry about something building-sized deciding that they weren’t welcome anymore.
For the entire time, the six lights followed them in the water, but oftentimes right along them rather than trying to chase them like the one from before, as if it was simply escorting them to safety.
As the end of the underwater corridor neared, the behemoth following Leggy and Anastacia suddenly stopped. It circled around and stared into the direction they had come from.
Curious and worried about the change of behavior, Leggy slowed her pace and glanced backwards. What she saw was two distinct sets of six lights, further away in the water but slowly gliding towards them. But instead of the healthy light blue, their shade was that of the first one: a disgusting and what felt like almost an impossible shade of violet.
Instead of dwelling in what was about to come, Leggy made the perfectly reasonable choice to run and never look back. The exit was already in sight and there was very little she could do anyway. During her last few seconds in the corridor, she could hear same the piercing ring above her as she had before the first giant simulacra fell, and knew it preceded yet another explosion.
Making it into the safety of solid stone walls just in time, Leggy frantically tapped the frame of the door with her free hand until she found the pattern that closed it for good. From behind the sturdy slab of stone, she heard the pressure wave hit the wall and braced herself just in case.
After a quick check on Anastacia to make sure she was still in one piece, the Venator sought for a suitable place to attempt fixing the necromancer. Luckily, according to her map, the third door down the hallway they were in led to a maintenance depot, that would certainly have some tools and perhaps even a maintenance pattern simulacrum or one of the third artificial children that seemed to inhabit the fortress staffing it. Of course, thanks to the stupidly huge scale of the fort, ‘three doors down’ was synonymous to ‘well over a kilometer away’, but that was hardly a hurdle for someone who had been wandering the earth for thousands of years. Determined to return the favor for Anastacia looking after her before, Leggy hoisted the small necromancer on her shoulder and carried on.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Not designed to carry much weight, even the relatively light load she had was enough for her parts to whirr and hiss in a manner unfit for her usual stealthy demeanor. Had she still worn her weighty cape; she would have probably needed to drag Anastacia along for most of the distance.
Soon enough, they reached the maintenance depot and the simulacrum was able to carefully lay Anastacia down on one of the tables designed for the knights.
Preliminary inspection confirmed that the necromancer was still out of commission, and that the bloodstain on her shoulder had grown noticeably. Some kind of maintenance procedure was indeed required, but Leggy didn’t really know where to even begin. She started to look around the room for anything that might have helped.
The depot consisted of a larger room with four tables that large enough to fit King, several pieces of machinery even Leggy had never seen and didn’t know the purpose of, walls lined with shelves containing countless bits and pieces both specific to the knights and fitting for most simulacra. Tools for any given need a simulacrum could have were available, along with a healthy collection of cores to use – absolutely none of which a Venator pattern would ever have a reason to touch or know how to use. No maintenance pattern simulacra or any other help was anywhere to be seen either, so the problem was left to Leggy alone.
She almost arbitrarily chose one of the tools and a piece of stone armor before returning to the table. Trying her best to remember any of the occasions she had maintenance done on her, Leggy tapped the necromancer’s shoulder with the strange hammer-like tool and placed the piece of armor on top of the wound. Unsurprisingly, the small stone plate simply slid off and did nothing to help. Not letting herself be discouraged by the failure, Leggy tried a couple more times with the same tool, then with a couple of other ones and even a second piece of armor, yet nothing seemed to do the trick.
Pondering and thinking about the situation again, the Venator came to a realization that of course no new armor was going to stick when there already was a layer of some kind of a cloth-type armor in place. She remembered well that the necromancer would frequently change the outer layer, often for what seemed to be little more than a change in color.
She gave Anastacia’s shirt a tug, but despite it being incredibly flimsily installed as far as armor went in the simulacrum’s mind, it wouldn’t come off in one piece. So, her options were to break the armor entirely or attempt to only remove the problematic part with a red stain on it.
Choosing to attempt the latter one first, Leggy browsed the arsenal of mystery tools for a bit until she realized that there were none more suitable for the job than the necromancer’s own knife. Carefully, she ran the very tip of the enchanted knife across the fabric, outlining the stained part of the shirt and the area immediately around it. The knife effortlessly sliced through without any need for tugging and pulling, and the simulacrum was able to remove a circular piece of maybe ten centimeters across without accidentally further wounding the necromancer.
But alas, there was no end to her problems, as there appeared to piece of under armor hidden below the shirt. A long strip of linen had been tightly wound around the necromancer’s chest and shoulder. It too failed to provide any sort of protection and Leggy didn’t understand what purpose it could have possibly had, as bandages were not something the simulacra utilized. Since it too had the bright red stain, it must have been part of the problem as well and needed to go.
When she tried to cut it however, the entire thing began unwinding and snapped open. Fearing she had ruined something important, Leggy desperately tried to make the stainless parts stick to the necromancer’s skin by tapping them with all the tools she had gathered, but nothing seemed to help.
In her distress, she noticed the wound Maya had made roughly a day ago, and despite her utter lack of knowledge about human bodies, she could tell that something was wrong with that spot of skin. That, however, was as far as her correct assumptions went on that day; for a simulacrum, the connection between what appeared to be an unfilled hole in the skin and inability to move was fairly simple. So, encouraged by what she figured was a great realization, Leggy searched the shelves for a replacement piece for the broken core socket on Anastacia’s shoulder.
When not attached to a piece or armor or the frame of a simulacrum, the socket appeared to only be a hollow metal tube with one open end and a spike at the bottom as well as a couple of grooves in the sides to mark the points of contact the energy would flow out from. Leggy rolled one between her fingers and inspected it thoroughly.
Next up on the list was the core itself. The necromancer appeared to have some kind of preferences when it came to specific cores, but Leggy had no way to tell why or what they even were. She simply chose one from somewhere middle of the neat row they were arranged in and figured that it could be changed later if it wasn’t to Anastacia’s liking.
With the parts found, the simulacrum returned to the table, and placed them down next to the assortment of tools she had collected. More of the red liquid had dripped out of the wound she was trying to fix, so Leggy cleaned it away with some of the linen she had cut earlier and trimmed away most of the dangly skin from the side of the wound with the knife. Delighted to find that the socket and the would were almost exactly the same size, she lined them up, selected a tool that most certainly wasn’t meant for planting simulacra components into human flesh and began to gently tap the socket into the wound with it.
Around the halfway point of the operation, something inside Anastacia’s shoulder blocked the way, but luckily completely misusing one of the other tools to wiggle the socket gave it some more room and made it fit all the way in.
Despite the lack of knowledge, competence, skill, tools, ability, understanding and just the general wrongness of the operation, the result was actually surprisingly clean. The metallic socket acted as a plug in the wound and prevented it from bleeding and didn’t sink deeper into it on its own. All that that was left was to slot in the core itself, which in Leggy’s mind at least, should have reactivated Anastacia’s motor functions.
And to a degree, she was correct. As when the core was inserted, it briefly heated the socket until it flashed red hot and burned itself onto the surrounding tissue, which most certainly activated the ‘screaming in agony’ part on the necromancer’s bodily mechanisms.
Anastacia had been steadily waking up from her ill-timed concussion over the last few moments, and the searing pain was enough to finalize the process and wake her for good. She screamed for what must have been at least a couple of minutes until the brunt of the pain subsided. Out of breath, beyond confused and still in pain, she frantically looked around for anything familiar until she saw Leggy, who was visibly delighted over what she thought was a successful maintenance procedure.
Seeing the simulacrum brought her some amount of solace and let her know she didn’t need to immediately have her guard up. Rubbing the slight bump at the back of her skull Anastacia got a better look at the room she was in while trying to remember what happened.
“Are we at the other end of that corridor?” She asked.
Leggy nodded happily and reassuringly placed her hand on the necromancer’s knee while helping her sit up.
“King and Emilia are not here?” Anastacia continued inquiring while getting her bearings. “They were back at the camp, I think.”
The simulacrum shook her head and pointed into the direction they had come from.
The adventurer sighed. “Well, guess we need to find them then, but they can probably manage without us for a bit.” She more or less grasped what had happened. As she recuperated, she noticed the bandage that had fallen off from under her shirt. “And you’ve started to undress me… Which is… I’m not angry, but as a general rule, ask for a permission first when you do that to people. We need to wrap me again though, this shirt is for comfortable sleeps and not for public appearances, if you catch my drift. Not to mention my wound, which-“
Anastacia paused when she noticed the hole in her shirt and the core planted into her shoulder. The pain from it had more or less dissipated already and was further masked by the general nausea from hitting her head on a rock. She tried to tug on the socket itself and could feel it be grafted onto her flesh and possibly even a rib.
“And that’s not coming off without a knife…” She muttered and tried to figure out why there would be a core in her shoulder.
While it did still sting, she could tell that it wasn’t anywhere that would cause too much problems once she got used to it and it got a chance to heal. Other than that, it didn’t appear to do much of anything to her, at times she could maybe feel a slight tingle around it, but that could have well just been her imagination.
She could see the proudness in Leggy’s demeanor when she touched the core and didn’t need much imagination to correctly guess the train of thought that had led to the current state of things. She was sure that the simulacrum had nothing but her best interests in mind and couldn’t find it in herself to be angry about it. Unlike King, who had seen her faint several times by then, Leggy had probably never encountered an unconscious human and didn’t know if they would wake up on their own – that said, there was going to be more than a few first aid lessons in the Venator’s future, assuming Anastacia didn’t die from blood poisoning or some other aftereffect of the operation.
“Good job on getting me to safety.” She thanked Leggy and smiled warmly. “Let’s get me wrapped up and find those two!”
For purposes of modesty and the wound still being open on the backside of her shoulder, Anastacia instructed Leggy on how to apply the bandages as best as she could. The results didn’t quite match up to what Emilia or either of the necromancer-doctor equivalents above ground could do, but it was certainly better than whatever she could have managed on her own.
Before they left, Anastacia took a quick gander of the maintenance depot for anything that might have been useful. She ended up picking a few of the spare cores and a bowl-shaped metal thing she hoped wasn’t used for anything weird. She was of the opinion that having a bowl was simply better than not having one in their situation, as it could be used for cooking, purifying water and countless other purposes.
“Do you ever just wake up feeling better about yourself? I’m kind of feeling like that.” The necromancer said as they entered yet another endless corridor. “By the way, do you think those two have found something they’re trying to punch to death yet? I’m not too worried about them, King used to live here, so they’ll manage. I’d be more worried about us, but with your legs and my brai- resourcefulness, what could we possibly have problems with?”
Leggy nodded cheerfully and added a bit more bounce to her steps for a couple of meters.
They wandered along the corridor at a leisurely pace while Anastacia enlightened the simulacrum about matters most people would have considered utter nonsense, but Leggy kept listening attentively for the entire time. When she wasn’t speaking, Anastacia hummed along with the mechanical noises that still echoed from somewhere deeper. The long, drawn-out noises of air or steam escaping from somewhere had almost turned into a chorus accompanied by shorter rhythmical parps of pipe organs and the almost bell-like background pulse of the fort.
The relaxed journey only lasted for perhaps a couple of kilometers, until the pair came across yet another door, though not one that blocked their way. The door likely led to just another side chamber like the maintenance depot or King’s quarters, which was in many ways far more interesting than the ones at the ends of corridors, that generally seemed to lead into some kind of a new ordeal no one wanted to deal with.
“Want to go check it out and maybe steal some stuff if it’s cool?” Anastacia suggested as Leggy was already opening the door.
As the stone doors slipped away, they revealed yet another sight that the adventurers weren’t prepared to see underground. Rows of dozens of fruit trees sprouting from plots of soil surrounded by the stone floor tiles and lit by series of bright yellowish orbs trapped in metal cages above them. Most of them bearing a wide selection of different ripe fruits, some of which only grew in warmer climates.
The room itself was somewhat warmer than most of the fort so far, almost like a pleasant summer morning after the sun had climbed most of the way up. The moist air carried the sweet scent of apples, oranges and lemons among many others and the rustling of the leaves in the artificial breeze was immediately relaxing.
In the middle of the room was a large fountain that continuously dripped fresh water into a basin at its base, from where it was directed to the plots along small grooves in the floor.
The necromancer stepped into the room and took a few breaths of the fresh air inside. “We missed out on that last camp, so how about we make a new one here?” She grinned.