On the edge of the fountain that watered the orchard within the machine fortress, Anastacia rested her head on Leggy’s lap and nibbled on slices of apple the simulacrum peeled, cut and fed to her. She had already napped for a few hours but was betting heavily on the other half of the party finding them rather than the other way around, so she was in no hurry to leave yet; and yes indeed, were she smarter and less prone to getting bored, not straying far from the room with nigh endless supply of food and water would have been the play for them, but already she was starting to feel like she hadn’t come to the fort to wait around doing nothing.
The orchard itself was in good condition, but there were signs of it being neglected as of late. Dried leaves littered the floor here and there, a few overripe fruits had been left on the ground and quite a few of them should have already been picked, all of which clashed with the overall tidiness of the fortress. Regardless, its produce was definitely just as tasty as the ones grown aboveground. The fruits were all recognizable, but of unusual varieties that the surface world probably had not seen in quite a while, if ever. Anastacia would have hesitated to call them the best of their kind she had eaten, but they were definitely interesting.
The core stuck to her shoulder was showing little signs of life aside from the occasional tingling that still might have just been the necromancer’s imagination. Anastacia considered trying to take the core out but was worried it would either kill her or render her unconscious for some reason, like it did with the simulacra. She was also worried that she would wake up with cores shoved into her nostrils or ears if reviving her was left to Leggy again and the fact that the simulacrum had chosen the wound the first time around made her feel slightly lucky in retrospect.
“Come to think of it, you’re called ‘Sister Pyrus’ by the other Firstborn, right? Would you prefer that rather than Leggy? I just sort of decided that one for you.” Anastacia suddenly remembered.
The simulacrum shook her head and appeared content with the name given to her by Anastacia.
“Oh, okay! I’ll just keep calling you that then for however long you decide to stick around for…” The necromancer said with a hint of sadness in her voice. “I’m sure you have other Firstborn stuff to do after this, right?”
Leggy stopped what she was doing and stared at the trees for a while before gently moving Anastacia out of the way and walking out to fetch something. She searched the trees for a moment before finding a thin branch that was to her liking. Craftily bending it into the shape of a hoop, she tied it so that it didn’t unravel and attached a few leaves onto it. Returning to the necromancer with her creation, she placed it on Anastacia’s head, grandly lifted her fist on top of the core within her chest and kneeled.
Unsure of her part in whatever was going on, Anastacia looked around nervously. “Uhhh… Are you saying you’d rather stay with me?” She whispered as if there was someone looking.
Leggy nodded in response.
Delighted by the assurance that the newest of her friends wasn’t going to leave as soon as they had done what they were in the fortress for, the necromancer laughed. “Very well.” She said, trying to sound as royal as she could. “I shall grant you the rank of housecarl in our glorious kingdom of goblins, Lady Leggy! Your duties will consist of protecting the realm, making sure the goblins are safe and letting me scrub you clean every now and then, as is our tradition in the kingdom.”
She placed her hand on the simulacrum’s cheek to encourage Leggy to stand up, but as soon as the palm of her hand touched the metal, a spark of either electricity or some other energy jolted across her skin from the core in her shoulder all the way to her hand and then directly into the simulacrum before her. Strangely enough, Anastacia could feel the energy spread along the patterns hidden under Leggy’s surface, much like with necromancy, she could momentarily feel the way it coursed along the simulacrum’s body, where and how it transferred to one part to another, just like her necromantic powers did when moving from one type of tissue to another.
The sudden surge of power flushed out the imperfections caused by the thousands of years of operation and made the entire network of patterns crisp as if it had been made the day before. During this, for a brief couple of seconds, Anastacia could feel Leggy’s entire structure clearly enough to begin understanding how each bit of her mechanical body functioned, and what made it work as a whole. She had, for a while now, understood the flow of power along a single pattern but hadn’t gotten the chance to study their purpose or how they intertwined with each other. However, for that minute moment the energy from her arm lingered within Leggy, the information available to her was as extensive and exact as what necromancy allowed her to learn about any given fleshy body – and once more, the two appeared to have more than a fair bit of overlap.
Sadly, before she had gotten over her amazement and realized that she should have been taking mental notes the entire time, the feeling faded and was replaced with an intense scalding pain running across her arm, along the path the energy had taken. Anastacia yanked her arm away from the simulacrum and plunged it into the cool water of the fountain behind her, which luckily helped almost immediately.
Breathing heavily from both amazement and agony, the necromancer inspected the arm to see how bad the damage was. Burns were nothing new to her, considering she could throw flames with her bare hands as well as both heat and cool things she touched through magic, it was not once or twice her sleeves had caught fire in the process – but the lightly scorched line running along her arm now was no ordinary burn. The path it took was far from direct, and instead had several clean ninety degree turns in it, closely resembling the patterns on the aureun mechanisms and simulacra. The burned part of the skin was covered by an incredibly thin layer of some glass-like material that flaked off in large shards on its own as Anastacia moved her arm.
“Are you okay?” Anastacia asked and winced as she scratched the strange glass off her skin.
Leggy was slowly moving each part of her body, turning every joint and briefly activating every little mechanism she had been outfitted with, all of which now functioned flawlessly. The physical wear and tear of her parts from being thousands of years old was still there, but the control patterns responded quicker and more accurately to her commands than they had for as long as she could remember – barring a few scrapes, she was in the best shape of her life, and didn’t really know why.
The necromancer could see the change in the simulacrum’s behavior as well and got her answer from it. “Great! Could you come over here for a second?” She asked, and as soon as Leggy leaned closer, she planted her wet hand on the simulacrum’s cheek again.
An awkward moment passed as nothing at all happened. The necromancer tried pressing her hand on Leggy’s cheek a few more times, but whatever brief connection they had shared didn’t happen again. She then tried patting every other part of the simulacrum to no avail before putting her arm back into the cool water. She then repeated the process with her other hand, but that didn’t do anything either, but she considered it a long shot anyway.
Leggy didn’t appear to understand what was going on either but didn’t mind the attention. From the day they were created, the simulacra were first considered disposable by the aureun, then feared and hated by everyone else in the world, so a gentle touch filled with intrigue and kindness was something each and every simulacrum was starved for.
After countless failed attempts, Anastacia gave up and dried her arm on her shirt when the pain started to subside. “Hmm… Maybe it just takes time to charge or something?” She muttered and turned to the simulacrum. “So a fair warning: I’m going to be rubbing you frequently until I can figure out what the duck just happened – more than usual that is.”
Defeated by the mystery before her, Anastacia sat back down on the edge of the fountain, loosened the bandages around her shoulder and carefully scratched out the last pieces of glass from her skin. The skin around the core embedded into her shoulder was only slightly reddish, the burn only began a few centimeters away from it, but it was clear that it was the root cause for what had happened. She dug out a small copper tin from one of the pouches on her belt and opened it. A fresh minty scent wafted out, which suggested that the ointment inside could have possibly been tasty, but the necromancer knew better from personal experience. The burn ointment made for her by Emilia was beyond bitter and felt like greasy ice and frostbite on one’s tongue, it had taken several cups of coffee to rinse it out before. On burns however, it worked like a miracle. Thinnest of layers was enough to cool the burns for almost an entire day and was usually enough to avoid noticeable scars.
“Maybe we should finally get going? This place is nice but I kind of want to see what else there is. Besides, if we can find someone who isn’t a giant sea monster, they might be able to help us find King and Emilia.” Suggested Anastacia. She winced and applied a generous scoop of the ointment along the burn. “Collect a handful of fruits and I’ll get us some water for the road… or tunnel.”
After tucking the ointment back into her belt, Anastacia took one of her crystalline daggers and dipped its blade into the basin below the fountain. Large ice crystals began forming on it as she sapped the heat away from the water. She had learned that larger lumps of ice actually took quite a while to melt as long as they were even remotely covered with something, and could be hauled across continents to transport goods that were quick to spoil. She could easily make a ten-kilogram chunk of ice, wrap it in some unused bandages and have Leggy carry it while she handled the fruits and the bowl they had stolen. Even if half of it uselessly melted away, it would be enough water for at least two days. She could even make sure it stayed frozen with more magic every now and then. Had there been anyone to impress around, she would have definitely bragged about her cleverness – although Leggy was there and certainly impressed, not needing water to survive made her applause feel empty to Anastacia.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Now armed with ice, half a dozen apples and a metal bowl, the two departed from the little slice of agricultural heaven they had found and marched onwards at a relaxed pace. They stopped at every door and fork in the road only to find several storerooms that mostly just had more strange equipment they didn’t know the purpose of, and which were too large to steal.
Over the next however many kilometers they walked, they found no one to help them find the rest of the party either. No simulacra of any kind, no custodians or even a sign of any recent activity or tracks. Anastacia started to wonder if every single resident of the fort was really at the lower levels dealing with the intruders unit twelve had spoken of. As if that hadn’t been the case, their wandering around should have caused some kind of an alarm somewhere for sure, and someone would have come to confront them.
Despite getting handsy with the simulacrum several times over the course of the hours they walked, Anastacia was unable to activate the core in her shoulder again, which may have been for the better, considering they didn’t have the priestess with them to treat the burns properly.
“I wonder if I could get someone to make clothes for you? King hates it when I make him wear clothes and tears them when he thinks I’m not looking, but you already have a cloak, so you wouldn’t do that, right? You’d look great in a fancy dress and some thigh highs. Getting shoes might be a bit more difficult considering you’re all leg and no actual feet at all, but what if we just cut off the foot part and… those would just be chaps – but you’d look amazing in chaps…” The necromancer muttered mostly to herself while walking behind Leggy and staring at her. She had already decided that her new housecarl needed a uniform and had learned precisely nothing from the countless times she had tried to make King wear clothes over the course of the past few months. “I wonder if there are spare pieces of armor for you somewhere. Like what if I could add abs for you, that’d be the dream, no?”
Leggy simply kept nodding for whatever Anastacia suggested while trying to navigate along the infinitely long corridors. There weren’t many intersections in their path, but a single wrong turn could have led them to a wrong floor and add a day’s worth of walking to their route, if not more. The perkiness caused by the jolt of energy from Anastacia still affected her and there was a lot more spring in her almost prance-like gait than before, even while she was carrying the block of ice.
After what was starting to feel like an eternity of boring hallways, the pair came across yet another door that blocked their way. Though it did let Leggy know they were on the right track, it would definitely open up to something else they would have to deal with before being allowed to progress.
“I’m going to guess lava. There’s going to be an entire volcano in there for no reason at all.” Anastacia sighed before the simulacrum opened the door.
Behind the heavy doors of stone was no volcano or lava, nor was there yet another sea, instead, what opened up before them was a town. A completely average-looking mortal-built town, about the same size as the one aboveground, but not necessarily modeled after it. The massive chamber was lit by a single slightly blue orb of light high up in the ceiling, obviously simulating the sun and successfully having most of its attributes – including the eye pain it caused when stared directly at. It shed its light on what was probably the most average town Anastacia had ever seen. Rows of average-sized wood houses lining the sides of an average amount of average-sized roads, each fit for average-sized wagons and most of them leading to an average-sized town square with an average-looking temple by it. Outside of the town itself were the stables for nonexistent average horses and fenced off pastures for other common animals literally every town would have. Outside of the dirt roads, the ground was covered by some boring mix of grass, common weeds and clovers – like in every town ever. A bit further along the left wall, a constant stream of water lazily poured into an artificial river that passed one edge of the town, allowing its residents to build an average mill and an average sawmill for any average logging the townsfolk may have done in the average forest on the other side of the stream, which took about a third of the entire chamber alone.
Anastacia absolutely despised the nondescript nature of the underground town. She had delved into the fortress to find interesting things related to the simulacra, not the very archetype of what she could find anywhere else in the world.
“Bet this place doesn’t even have a damn cult secretly running everything.” She groaned and looked downright disgusted. “Ebonywatch had a cult, Aaa’aa literally only has five A’s in the name and it had two cults, Stoneweald had cult but they were actually nice to everyone, Fulcrum doesn’t have one but it’s built under a mountain-sized mushroom so it gets a pass, Hrongr is cursed to be forever on fire and even Oopdelt at least had a town full of utter morons! Hear that, town?! You’re worse than damn Oopdelt!”
There obviously was no answer from the town Anastacia could feel to be empty form any non-simulacra life, but she still had some hope that it would be populated by machines.
“Come on, Leggy, let’s go check out this oatmeal raisin cookie of townships and see if they have anything useful that we can take.” The necromancer sighed and headed towards the open entrance to the town.
About twenty meters before the outermost buildings, there was a wooden sign with absolutely no details to it posted by the side of the road. Carved on it with large bold letters was the word ‘TOWN’, which was almost enough to make Anastacia put down her remaining fruits just to tackle the sign and knock it over.
The surface of the road showed heavy use by feet, hoof and wheels, but something about it seemed very strange. At first Anastacia couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was, she had learned some tracking from Gilbert and knew what footprints from people and common farm animals were like, and the ones she saw were wrong. Finally, after staring at them for quite a while longer than she probably should have, she realized that every single footprint was made by the same shoe, flawlessly pointing either directly forwards or backwards without even a degree of angle to them. The distance between each step was exactly the same on every track passing along the road and the same applied to the animal tracks as well. No person or animal actually walked in such a manner, much less the entire population of a town, it was as if someone had gone through considerable trouble to artificially make the road look like it was used.
Annoyedly staring at the road and frowning, the necromancer suddenly noticed two tracks that appeared entirely different. At first, she thought they could have been made by Emilia and King, but she knew their footprints by heart, and they didn’t match at all. Both tracks were made by similar boots with only a slight size difference, but neither of them was made by someone heavy or light enough to even begin guessing the gender or race of the travelers, yet there was certainly a difference in their behavior. One track headed directly into the town without hesitation or lollygagging, driven and confident steps suggested someone who had learned how to march, usually meaning they had a background as a noble or a soldier. The other track was far more playful, it zigzagged around between both sides of the road, likely trying to peer through the windows of the empty houses. Such tracks were usually consistent with someone like Anastacia herself. Regardless, the two had clearly been traveling together and were headed towards the town square. It was impossible to tell how long ago the tracks were made, as the air inside the chamber was remarkably still, and they could have technically persisted for years since no one actually used the road.
Having learned everything she could from the tracks, Anastacia peered inside the first building to the right, which appeared to be some kind of a residence. The furniture inside was exactly like the town itself, normal with absolutely no distinctive features to it whatsoever. No professional carpenter would have ever agreed to make something so plain and even an amateur would have accidentally made something more interesting. Out of curiosity, Anastacia ran over to the other side of the road to peek through the window of the house there, only to see the exact same room with every single piece of furniture placed and positioned to perfectly mirror the room on the other side of the road. Neither showed any actual signs of people living there, but everything had been carefully placed in a way that it looked disorderly. The chairs weren’t perfectly lined up, one of the jars on a shelf was open and a single candle had been allowed to burn all the way to the bottom on the table. Looking at both rooms it was clear that someone had intentionally organized the disorder inside.
The next two houses were exactly the same, as were the two after that. After the third pair of houses, the next building on the right appeared to be a general store, at least based on the sign hanging from its wall saying: SHOP – Equipment and consumables in exchange for currency. After groaning over the blandness of it all, Anastacia asked Leggy to kick open the door and disappeared inside for a bit, only to return with the most boring leather backpack ever conceived. In it, she had put the fruit she still had, the bowl, a flask, some rope and some candles. Despite her hatred for the town, she left a few coins on the unmanned counter in exchange.
Following the pair of footprints that were just about the only things in the entire place that felt authentic, they slowly made it past the plain abandoned townscape. Anastacia gave up looking inside the houses in hopes of finding loot, as every building proved to be a carbon copy of each other and only contained the bare essentials every house in the world had.
“I would be creeped out by this place if I wasn’t so bored.” She complained and blankly stared at a sign hanging from a wall saying: TAVERN – Beverages and sustenance. “It’s like someone with no capacity for imagination build a full-size model town – you know what, I bet that’s exactly what this is! But why would anyone bother?”
Begrudgingly pressing onwards, the pair finally found themselves at the town square, complete with a few empty stands for fresh produce and shops lining the buildings by the sides of the opening – just like in every town ever.
The square itself was oddly enough paved with the same stone tiles the rest of the fortress was, likely because of the small pedestal in the middle of the square that housed a familiar-looking but oddly large white crystal on top of it. Clearly not a part of the dull fake town, the pedestal was more reminiscent of the one in the elevator and far too interesting to be there. Yet, the necromancer’s focus briefly wandered away from it, to a copper plaque on the wall of the boringly average little stone temple behind it.
“Temple of Religion…” She read it out loud and sighed so deep that a piece of her soul might have slithered out during it.
Still somehow managing to stave off death brough on by the disappointment of the average town, Anastacia turned her attention back to the white crystal and sang out the tune required for activating it. The crystal immediately resonated with her and lit up brightly, but nothing seemed to happen after that, no apparitions or voice recordings began playing.
Trying to listen for anything more carefully, Anastacia could suddenly hear distant talking from the direction she and Leggy had come from. Two distinct voices, one cheery and talkative, the other brief and cold, conversing with each other about something the necromancer couldn’t quite make out. The voices remained muffled until they reached the square itself, on the edge of which a recording of two people wearing matching white cloaks and accompanied by four knights of stone appeared.
“Charming little thing, don’t ye think?” The first one said and looked around excitedly. Anastacia thought for a second that he was talking about her, but that didn’t seem to be the case in the end, as the recording walked right through her. This one was clearly the cause of the erratic footprints.
The other recording calmly followed and didn’t appear interested in his surroundings at all. For a second, hopefully through happenstance, his piercing cold stare met Anastacia’s gaze, and gave the necromancer the shivers. “A pointless façade is all I see, but if you say so, it must be quite charming indeed.” The second recording agreed.