Chapter Forty-Two

Reaching the mountain hours after we awoke made me realize just how far we’d come. Honestly, if this body hadn’t been ‘new’ I don’t think I could have made it. At least not as fast as I did. Tess was in shape, probably used to traveling around for supplies and whatever work she could scrounge up to fund her… mischief? Should I call it that? Shenanigans. Yes. To fund her shenanigans.

Dwarguy and Loysa were both used to this kind of thing. But me? I’d only had this body for about a week by this point and I could hardly believe I’d come this far. The kitsune form certainly is a wonder to behold.

I wasn’t ‘out of shape’ before, being of fairly slight build and all. But I hadn’t been a fitness buff or anything, so imagining my old human male body doing this was just… I couldn’t.

But now here we were, standing at the base of a mountain so tall that I could see the snow up high, but not the actual peak.

The path we were to travel was clearly cut, the road curving off somewhere well out of the way, following the path of the other mountain peaks, I had to ask a fairly stupid question. “Shouldn’t somebody have caught sight of us by now? A patrol, or some kind of security? I know they’re undead and all, but even so…” I swallowed the lump in my throat, “it just feels like we should have seen somebody.” I was thinking of the story of Loysa’s ambush.

All was silent. Not even any birds chirped.

I reached for my new magipistol.

Tess was already doing the same. “Get ready to cast ‘Gun’.” Loysa whispered. I think I was being praised again, and Dwarguy stood directly in front of us, he summoned his mech, which went from small enough to fit in a crystal, to full sized in half a breath.

Loysa’s staff began to glow with mana at the tip.

“Right now, we could still retreat. But up there?” She leveled her finger on the path and drew a path with it up the mountain. “It narrows, we can be hit from both sides”

Dwarguy’s voice echoed from within his mech. “If they kept ther brains, they may nae be hostile…or, no guards because they simply do nae care if’n we go up.” Dwarguy said while the chassis of his mech closed over him. “Could be they’re just wait’n to decompose an might even welcome an attack…”

“Well, we won’t find anything out down here…” I murmured.

“I could try a spell.” Tess suggested.

“No!” The three of us shouted at once, with Loysa and I whirling around toward her and waving our hands in wild refusal.

I had no idea what she had in mind… but through my imagination? “You might end up causing an Earthquake or a landslide or summoning a demon god or something!” I shook my head. “Just keep your pistol out, alright?” I asked.

“Fine. But my spells always sort of work at least.” Tess grumbled, but at least she cocked her pistol and didn’t protest further.

Dwarguy’s mech began to move forward, its heavy steps were anything but subtle, but if we were going to be ambushed anyway, I’d rather have a big hunk of metal, cannon, and sword in between me and whatever was coming at me.

The trek up the mountain was the most boring tension I’ve ever experienced. It reminded me of a horror movie that was full of jump scares but there was no actual monster or killer or anything going on at all. Like we were on ‘the verge’ of something happening but just… nothing did.

The wind blew, and eventually started to all but howl, and we drew closer to the entrance until we could hear noise within.

“Voices.” My ears flicked a little.

“So they’re still alive… sort of.” Tess said, and when Loysa glared back at her she mumbled… “Sorry.”

The entrance was carved into the mountainside, with two great stone doors wider than all of us with our arms spread fingertip to fingertip, and carved with intricate designs of dwarven soldiers standing guard.

“Beautiful work.” I said, “They almost look alive…” I said while I craned my head back to look up at them.

“Get back!” Dwarguy shouted from within his mech as the engraved ‘images’ revealed themselves to be something else.

Something I knew from video games and animated shows and tabletop role playing games.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Golems.

As the golems stepped out of the door, they created two great holes shaped like their bodies, they’d been built ‘into’ the architecture itself, and held great wide hammers clearly meant to ‘squash’ the opposition.

Dwarguy’s mech began firing the moment he shouted for us to move, and Loysa grabbed me by my tail and yanked hard, pulling me back just as the hammer of the one on the left came down where I was standing.

Tes’alay tumbled backward, her pistol firing toward the head of the one to nearly flatten me, and as I recovered, Loysa raised her staff toward the head of the one on the right and shouted, “Domination!”

“Damn it!” Dwarguy bellowed as a hammer came toward his mech, he had the hand of his vehicle up and I could see the flow of mana increase to add strength and compensate for the impact.

I fired as fast as I could, but whatever these were made of… it wasn’t any mineral I knew.

The golem Loysa tried to dominate briefly paused, only for the blue glow around it to shatter into a thousand tiny fragments.

Our shots were mere annoyances, and a flurry of spells began to fly from her staff so fast that I couldn’t even tell what she was casting.

If I didn’t understand the value of a generalist before, I sure did now. Wind, lightning, rumbling ground, fire, lightning, she might not have had the most powerful combat spells, but it kept the golems reacting at least.

Dwarguy continued to fall back, his cannon boomed and the echo was like thunder on the mountainside, the ball striking the golem dead center… and bouncing off, landing at its feet as if it just lost all inertia, and rolling away.

‘There’s got to be something…’ I didn’t have much in the way of magic yet, but then…

I released the hold on my remaining seven tails, allowing them to burst free and I used my Insightful Inventor skill, searching for a weakness in their construction. “Keep them off me!” I shouted, the mana within them was crazy. Like a damn gordian knot, of interlaced enhancements with different ones doing different things. Resistance to piercing, blunt, magic, control… the hammers came down again as I raced out of the melee and the mountain side seemed to shake.

“We’ll keep them busy!” Loysa bellowed, “Just do whatever!” I could see the sweat on her forehead, whatever skill she was using had the golem’s very eager to try to get past Dwarguy, but between the narrow walkway, or at least, ‘narrow’ relative to themselves, and his skill as a pilot, they couldn’t progress.

Each attempt to step over him resulted in a sudden charge by his mech that ended in a jump and a shove, forcing them back again.

Such was their focus that I was able to make it around them, to get a closer look and study the flow of magic and the intricacies of their construction… and I found the machinery within. I touched the ground behind them, it was still hot. The vents were in their feet. ‘They’re basically giant mechs made of stone…’ In principle, it was a brilliant design, the vents at the feet pushed the superheated steam out into the ground, allowing them to lift heavy feet easier. But it also hid the obvious weakness.

“Tess! Cast something on the ground! We need something hot!” I shouted.

This was a crazy risk, and Tess didn’t respond with acknowledgement, rather she held both hands level and shouted… ”Melt!”

What we got… was not what I asked for.

The mountain began to rumble, the ground shaking so hard that the golems themselves were rendered unsteady. “Get in!” I shouted and pointed to the unguarded door.

I really didn’t need to say anything, Loysa snatched up Tess before she could fall away and carried her like an undignified sack of potatoes over her shoulder and chased after Dwarguy whose mech seemed able to handle this unsteadiness with relative ease.

I whirled around and saw the giant golems turn around to face us…

And start to sink.

The ground opened up, and magma began to spurt out beneath their feet, wiping out dozens of paces worth of roadway and creating a river of glowing red, orange, and yellow along with blackened rocks.

The golems tried to move, indifferent to what would have been torture to a living thing, their legs moved anyway, the magitite cores within continuing to generate the heat and water…

But it had the desired effect.

The vents were opening beneath the surface, clogging up or being melted shut by volcanic heat, it still didn’t stop them from leaving, clambering out of the mass of the growing red river…

“Get back!” Tess yelled as if she intended to imitate Dwarguy, and I saw why a moment later. My skill was still active, I could see the vents were ruined, the golems were out, but the pressure was building.

We ran within… and Loysa threw both Tess and I down onto the hard ground, the wind was knocked out of me, then threw herself on top of us both.

Dwarguy’s mech braced itself between the three of us and the inevitable… while behind us, two explosions rang out like volcanic eruptions, shaking the stone that surrounded us and leaving a ringing in my ears that I wasn’t sure would ever fade away.

I looked back, all that remained were two pairs of oversized sandaled stone feet with little magma pools between the toes that would take a while to cool off. As for the rest? The fragments flew off in every direction, including over our heads and embedded deep within the rocks.

The presence of a few fragments, and dents, on Dwarguy’s mech, were a testament to what the destruction could have been if we’d been close up, and we only slowly got to our feet.

I would have said thank you right then and there, but Loysa spoke first, “If they didn’t know we were here before, they definitely know now.”

And based on the sound of approaching feet… lots of them…

They did.