Anastacia and Leggy stared at the sudden end of the trail of blood they had been following. For no apparent reason, the trail stopped in the middle of the corridor, only a few meters past the door from the previous chamber. Whatever it was that had bled so consistently before clearly hadn’t stopped bleeding, as the path showed no signs of drying, instead it simply had a clear-cut end. Nothing on the walls or ceiling was different from any other part of the kilometers of tunnels they had passed or gave any hints about what had happened, so it really seemed like the thing they had been following had just vanished into thin air.
“Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?” Anastacia asked and tried to find any signs of a hidden door in the floor or anything that might have explained the situation.
Leggy hopped up a few times and tried to check the ceiling as well but didn’t find anything helpful either.
Not having much in the way of options, the two shrugged at each other and continued on their path towards the point they had been directed to. The vacant corridor continued for kilometers ahead once more, without anything interesting to look at, no forks in the path, no interesting rooms to take a break in, just endless dimly lit tunnel and nothing more. Having walked for quite a while, Anastacia made the call to stop in the corridor for a while, instead of looking for a better place with more aureun technology to fiddle with. She asked Leggy to sit down and laid her head on the venator’s lap while resting her eyes.
“So you were called Val-Varjo back in the day?” The necromancer suddenly asked, remembering what she had seen in the last chamber. “When you were still an aureun, I mean.”
Hearing the name obviously caused a reaction in the simulacrum. As far as Anastacia knew, simulacra weren’t supposed to remember their past lives, but the look of revelation on the venator was clear. Leggy stared at her own mechanical hands and slowly moved each finger, almost like she had just realized that she was a simulacrum. Hesitantly pointing at herself, she gestured for Anastacia to repeat what she had said.
The necromancer reached up to put her hand on Leggy’s cheek. “That’s right, I think your name was Val-Varjo.” As soon as she uttered the name again, a bolt of energy shot from the core in her shoulder, along the charred path burned on her arm and from her palm into the frame of the simulacrum. Considerably less painful than the first one, it felt more like a sudden muscle jerk than anything, and on its way, it lit some hidden patterns of light on the stone armor stuck on Anastacia. However, instead of the detailed map of Leggy’s mechanical body being drawn into Anastacia’s mind like last time, she could now see a flash of a scenery. In the vision, there was a tall figure she recognized as the aureun she had seen in Leggy’s memories, though this time, Val-Varjo was bound to a massive stone column with several layers of chains as well as impaled with metal spikes to keep her still. She could also see herself as she was at the time, barefoot and clad in stone armor as well as the lightly toasted remnants of her nighttime clothing. Just as the sight faded, she could see herself grasping one of the spikes and pull it out of the aureun’s chest, then the slowly growing pain in her arm snapped Anastacia back to reality from her brief vision. She immediately tried to smear her hand on the simulacrum’s face regardless of the burning feeling but wasn’t able to replicate the results.
It didn’t help that Leggy was excitedly swaying left and right with her hands on her cheeks. She seemed rather pleased by the effect of the energy spark, but there was no telling what it had really done.
“You seemed like a rebel as well, so I guess we’ve got that in common too.” Anastacia said and gave up on trying to recreate the connection. There didn’t seem to be much of a pattern to be found for when the core in her shoulder worked and when it didn’t, so she had to keep caressing the simulacrum every now and then – for science. “Want to compare notes on who was born into a worse shithole while I rest? Well obviously, both of them were just way too into killing people for dumb reasons. I feel like yours might have an edge in the numbers, but I think mine had dumber reason for it. The aureun were just astoundingly evil, but they did make you guys and the goblins, so I’m counting that as a plus. Meanwhile Mournvalley does use corpses for utility like the simulacra were used, but I’ve literally seen someone kill a person because there was a puddle on the road, and they didn’t want to step in it. They were transporting prisoners at the time, so the dipshit in charge just killed one to toss the corpse into the puddle and step on it – instead of taking like five seconds to walk around it. Though I suppose we don’t know half of what the aureun were up to, do we?”
Leggy spent a while gesturing with her hands and trying to communicate something more complex than usual to Anastacia. Unlike King, who generally didn’t have much to say and let his presence and subtle movements do the talking for him, Leggy clearly had a convoluted story to tell, and she expertly used some form of a sign language or just very skilled pantomiming to convey it. The months the necromancer had spent with her knight left her very apt at reading the almost unnoticeable differences in his posture or the meaning behind even the tiniest of gestures, to a point where it was frequently questioned if the two shared some kind of a psychic link – but this wasn’t at all the case with the venator, yet at least.
Anastacia patiently waited the entire time happily nodding and following the act until it ended. “Going to be honest with you, I have no idea what you were trying to say. It was all very graceful and no doubt on point, but there’s like a thousand generational gaps and more than a handful of cultural differences between us. We’re still very much in the ‘you pointing at things and me guessing’-phase of communicating. But when we have the time, I’ll teach you and King to write. The literacy rate in our kingdom is… dire, so at least having the king and housecarl be able to read and write would go a long way.”
The rest of their break was spent by Anastacia explaining the state of her goblin kingdom, it’s relations with the nearby woodland spirits and other sentient creatures the green little critters would occasionally harass, the tension between traders that wanted to abuse the gullible goblins into giving away anything of value they might have had and the construction projects at hand. Leggy was also further enlightened about her duties as a housecarl, much of which would have earned Anastacia at least a few scowls from any of the actually responsible people in her life but didn’t bother the simulacrum in the slightest.
In the moments of silence, the necromancer noticed something that had likely been there ever since they had left the chamber housing the training grounds for the custodians but had gone unnoticed on the account of the pair being worried about something luring them into a trap. There was a definite change in the sounds of the machine fortress that echoed from deeper withing, carried by the slight air current that kept the air in the tunnels fresh. While Anastacia had found the rhythmic thumping and mechanical wails enjoyable from the beginning, they had been little more than noises to most listeners, that was not the case anymore. The thumping now accompanied something that was unquestionably a song, extremely slow paced and still hard to decipher, but still most definitely a song. The booming thumping created a rhythm, and the other horn-like noises repeated a melody that slowly changed overtime, in a way where every five or so repeats were versions of the same melody, but after that the latest one became completely distinct from the first one and never seemed to go back to the previous ones again. On top of that, there were now lyrics to the song. Each of the swing-like thumps signaled the beginning of a single syllable being sang in countless voices. It was still too faint to be clear but felt far too purposeful to be accidentally made by machines still working on whatever they had been doing for the past few thousand years. Anastacia was very fond of the tune and kept singing along with the voices. Of course, she didn’t know the words to the song, but any syllable seemed to do the job as long as it was in rhythm with the others.
Inspired by the song, they continued their journey along the particularly boring stretch of the corridor. Still wary of the bleeding creature that seemed to have disappeared but now moving at a much faster pace, they covered quite a bit of ground in the next hour. For the entire time Anastacia kept singing along with the fortress and Leggy marched in synch with the beat. This way, both time and the tunnel itself passed without the pair even realizing it and their journey brought them to the next sealed door.
“Any chance that this room will be like a pool or something? Or a perfect replica of a bakery? Poolside bakeries with simulacra staff are a thing, right? A couple of goblins wouldn’t hurt either.” Anastacia jokingly hoped. All she really wanted was some interesting piece of aureun technology that she would be allowed to mess around with. Empty rooms with stone chairs in them had had their moment, and things that she could find above ground were beyond disappointing to find in the fort, so anything that didn’t fall into those two categories would have been fine.
Leggy pressed her hand on the plate in the middle of the door, which caused it to slowly slide open.
“YEEESSSSS!” Screeched the necromancer as soon as the room ahead was revealed. She rushed ahead even before the door was fully open and almost tripped on the way.
While no baked goods were present, the room was the first to match up to or even beat Anastacia’s expectations. Its layout was circular and at least fifty meters across. The most prominent feature of the room was a ten-meter-wide hole in the middle, and the slightly narrower, almost black pylon sprouting from it. Both the pylon and the room itself continued as far up as the eye could see, neither showing signs of tapering nor coming to an end in any way. The gap between the pylon and the hole’s edge was easily wide enough for a person to fall into and seemed to continue down more or less infinitely – all the way down to molten stone that hid deep underground, if Emilia’s theories were to be believed. Despite this, there was no railing or fence to stop anyone from stumbling into it, which made Anastacia a bit hesitant to approach the edge. The pylon itself had the texture and color of obsidian but was still covered in the same light patterns as every other wall and structure in the fortress. The patterns were only barely lit most of the time, but every few seconds a pulse of energy traveled downwards along it, brightly lighting them up as it quickly passed them. Perhaps more curiously, the entire surface of the dark pylon was covered in a thin film of water that soundlessly flowed down along it.
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The rest of the room was no less of a treat to the budding technophile of a necromancer, as every bit of it was covered in untold numbers of different equipment scattered across several workstations. Glassware and mysterious substances to rival any laboratory aboveground, tools far more intricate and varying than any craftsman’s shop and even what could have well been a forge. Most of the things in the room Anastacia couldn’t even recognize, assuming they even had equivalents in the modern world. Pieces of simulacra, both armor and base framework, were strewn about the room. Curiously, on a closer look, many of the stations looked like they had been abandoned in the middle of whatever process they were dedicated to.
While marveling at the possibilities the workshop would entail, Anastacia noticed something odd: the door forward was already activated. “Guess this isn’t a trial then?” She said, sounding more than a bit disappointed. “But maybe we should stick around for a while… to wait for King and Emilia. Since we’re here, we might as well test a few of these things. Also look for a bag so we can stea- take souvenirs.”
The closest workbench to the entrance had a massive vat of some kind of grey powder and a tap above what seemed deceptively like a mixing bowl. By it was a large metal hatch that emanated heat that could be felt even a couple of meters away. On the table was a chipped piece of stone armor that seemed like it belonged on a knight.
Anastacia took a better look at the piece to try and figure out what the purpose of the station was. She quickly noticed that few of the cracks in it had been filled in with a clay-like substance that only slightly differed from the armor itself in color. This, and the set of tools that bared a certain likeness to pottery tools was enough to give her a solid theory on what was going on. To confirm her thinking, she decided to check the nearby hatch, but before she could open it, Leggy forcibly tore her away from it and refused to let go before Anastacia stopped fighting back.
“Is it dangerous then?” The necromancer asked.
Leggy escorted Anastacia to a good twenty meters away from the hatch before returning to it and placing her hand on the handle. She then double checked that the necromancer was far enough away and yanked the heavy metal door open. Immediately, Anastacia could feel the almost unbearable heat even from a distance, as the white-hot furnace spat out flames. Any dust or dirt on Leggy was blown away and incinerated by the heat. The simulacrum closed the hatch before anything else caught on fire, and Anastacia could see the metal bits of Leggy’s frame briefly glow red before cooling down.
“Okay… That’s a bit more intense than I expected.” The necromancer admitted and fanned her face with her hand. “But what I think is going on here, is that you make a paste with the dust and whatever comes from that tap, use it to fill gaps in simulacra armor and then put them in the oven for a bit to harden it. Does any of that sound familiar?”
The venator shook her head, which probably meant that the method wasn’t really used outside of the fort they were in, and judging by the fairly worn condition of Leggy’s stone bits, wasn’t popular with the Firstborn either.
“We should test it.” Anastacia decided suddenly. She returned to the workbench and started her guesswork on the details of the process.
Whacking the metal mixing bowl on the side of the table a few times, she emptied the dried paste from it and placed it under the tap. With no idea what might come out, she slowly opened the tap until it started to make a strange hissing noise. A few seconds later, a single drop of bright green liquid fell into the bowl, soon followed by an uncontrollable spray that spilled on the necromancer’s clothes before she got the chance to close the tap. Though it looked somewhat hazardous, the liquid didn’t have a strong odor to it and the bit that spilled on her didn’t immediately melt her skin off, so Anastacia figured that it couldn’t have been that bad. She grabbed one of the tools on the table and started to stir the liquid while adding the grey powder to it with a scoop that had been left in the vat. Stirring and mixing until the powder created a clay-like dough, which smoothened out quickly and seemed very easy to shape into whatever its maker desired.
While figuring out what to make with it, Anastacia tossed the fist-sized lump she had created between her hands and smashed it against the table a few times. She didn’t really know why, but she had seen a few potters do it before so she figured it was a must. “What do you think, should I stick with the classics?” She asked from the simulacrum, who was still cooling off by the pylon in the middle of the room and only responded with a shrug.
A bit of rolling, shaping, a few carved lines and a whole lot of immature giggling later, the necromancer pointed a very crude clay member at Leggy, who clearly didn’t get the joke. Either it wasn’t something simulacra, or possibly even the aureun were familiar with, or the fact that it was made by someone who hadn’t seen one outside of a textbook was too apparent and she simply didn’t recognize it.
Still smirking like an idiot, Anastacia handed her creation over and asked Leggy to stick it into the oven. She knew that with regular clay, the works needed to dry properly, but they didn’t exactly have the couple of days it would take, and the clay she used was clearly not regular in any way. The kiln they had was far hotter than anything had any business being as well, so she figured that only a few minutes would be enough to make a difference they could figure out the proper timing from.
Surprisingly enough, the time it took for Anastacia made a larger batch of the dough was plenty for the firing process, and by the time Leggy pulled the risqué artwork out of the oven, it appeared perfectly hardened and undamaged.
Being even a meter away from the simulacrum was almost unbearable because of the heat she radiated for being so close to the oven for even just a moment, but Anastacia wanted to inspect her work in detail. Unlike regular clay, the dust had hardened into what was clearly just stone rather than any kind of ceramic. The color was the same as on the stone used for everything made by the aureun, and barring the wear and tear, it was indistinguishable from Leggy’s armor.
“That’s actually pretty good… Can you hit the workbench with it?” Anastacia asked, fully expecting it to explode or at least shatter.
Leggy swung the work of art at the stone workbench, but instead of it shattering, a piece of the bench chipped off along with a few sparks that shot away from the impact. For good measure, the simulacrum repeated the test and got more or less the same results out of it.
“So we’ve created the indestructodick! A legendary artifact of no doubt immense value. I kind of want to hold on to it and see if I can sell it to a historian, but I feel like we’d get an earful from Emilia – so just leave it somewhere around there for now and we’ll figure out a place where it’ll freak the custodians out.” Decided the necromancer. She had already come up with a new idea and felt that the joke was done. “Wait there!”
Anastacia sprinted around the room, checking the workstations one by one, looking for something she knew she would find among the tools. A couple of minutes later she returned with a familiar, spoon-like gadget in one hand, and a large bucket of water in the other. She had correctly guessed that some kind of an armor crafting laboratory would have a tool for removing and attaching armor pieces to simulacra and the means to cool down the molded pieces more quickly. Without saying anything, she splashed the water at Leggy, who was still hot enough to make it immediately boil off with an audible hiss. Few more bucketfuls later, the water stopped evaporating off Leggy’s armor, and she had cooled down enough for Anastacia to touch her.
Tossing the bucket to the side, Anastacia grabbed the tool she had found and pressed the button on it a couple of times, making it buzz threateningly. “Let’s get you naked!”
Seemingly delighted with the idea, Leggy clapped and sat down on the workbench to allow the necromancer to begin her work.
Anastacia’s idea was to strip the venator from her ancient armor, use the clay to repair the damaged parts and reinforce parts that seemed weak. It would take some time but may well have been a once in a lifetime chance to do so, and certainly seemed like it could be worth it.
Leggy had very little armor to begin with, and much of her metal frame was already visible. Her arms were covered in just enough stone to effectively parry a swing made at her and the hollow piece of chest armor protected her core as well as housed the parts her cape usually was usually attached to. However, her legs were entirely covered in thick, smoot stone plating that had inspired the necromancer when she named the simulacrum.
Starting from Leggy’s arms, Anastacia carefully dismantled the protective shell around her frame. Requiring aid to even move some of the larger pieces of leg armor, the necromancer couldn’t help but to blush a little while pulling them off.
With all the pieces removed, she took a good look at the uncovered metal skeleton before her. The venator’s proportions remained more or less the same, her being very bottom heavy in layman’s terms, and much of her upper body only consisted of simple bars of metal with very few moving pieces that weren’t already showing before. Interestingly, the armor had actually hidden quite a few light patterns, and Leggy’s frame shone almost as much as King’s armor. However, what was painstakingly obvious was that none of this was meant to be done. Venator patterns were made to be disposable and removing the armor almost entirely incapacitated Leggy. The modular simplicity of King’s armor was nowhere to be seen in her parts either, and Anastacia was slightly worried she wouldn’t be able to reattach everything. None of it was meant to be extensively maintained or repaired, as accessing some joints and other easily malfunctioning parts was extremely difficult. This made the necromancer furious, as it reminded her of Mournvalley’s complete and utter disregard for life. She couldn’t believe someone could build such an intricate and beautiful machine, let alone shove someone’s soul into it and then power it with another one, only to discard it the moment any of its parts began breaking.
To tame her growing wrath, she quickly hugged Leggy before moving on to applying the clay on the armor. Most of the repairs were simple enough to make with the tools laying on the workbench, as they only involved filling scrapes and blemishes and then scooping off the excess clay. By far the most difficult part was reforming the dulled and chipped edges that had to be painstakingly molded without anything to help keep them straight. Luckily, Anastacia had years of experience in detailed work and her hands were steady when it came to things she cared about, so she was able to make quick work of them. As she worked, she cheerfully hummed along with the fortress’ song.
“Alright! That should do it.” The necromancer finally exclaimed and wiped her forehead. “But I’ve still got some clay left, so if there’s anything fun you want to add, we could try it? I could give you bit of a fuller chest, add some cute little paw prints to the bottoms of your feet or maybe add like a cup holder somewhere?” She half-jokingly suggested, to which Leggy answered with nods and clapping.