Armless looked around, and his gaze met the Word-bearer’s once again. “It’s time?” he questioned. The tension among those present was almost palpable, and Rika wasn’t the only one almost wishing for a fight just to release it. The feeling was infectious, the patrons and staff seemed to be getting more and more agitated by the minute, until they all got up in unison and began filing out of the bar at a frantic pace, strained exhortations and prayers mixing into a cacophony of religious jargon.
Armless was the first to stand out of his group, leaving the food and drink behind. He intended to fade into the backroom in the commotion, and his comrades caught on to his plan quickly. People bumped into them, but nobody tried to stop them. They were rushing out of the bar, being impelled towards another place without regard for how they got there. By the time they reached the backroom door, the only one left was the thorned barkeep, rag in one hand and polymer cup in the other, his body frozen in place. He was shuddering. Markings flickered across his scales, but they were different. They were golden and intricate, and they followed a pattern of bulging veins around his thorns, spreading into his face. Blue blood dripped from his nose onto the counter. The fact that everyone stopped in their path at the sight made it clear whatever was happening to him wasn’t normal. The Word-bearer’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, and he had to stop himself from yelling out. “You? You were the one blinding him?!” he questioned. The barman nodded, his eyes squinting and his teeth grinding together. “Go!” he hissed through clenched teeth. He dropped what he was holding and slammed his forearms onto the counter, leaning his forehead against it. He began muttering something under his breath, golden exotic particles rising from his markings. "́͟Tho͝҉u ar̕͟t͝ ̧̕a ̢̀po͠w͏̶eŕless ̨͏͘p̛arà́҉s͏͘͞i͠te,͏̢ ̀a fake ̴͟me̵͠ssí̀̕a͏̕h, t҉h͡u͜͠s he ́̕who̷ wa̵̷tches h̕as pr̴͞͠o̡c͜͡laį̕͘med͏̶͝, ͘f͏̧͝o̵̵̵r ̡th́̀e̵͠ ̸n̸am̡͘͟er̸͢ ̀͡h̵̵͟a̧̢̡s̷ m̧á̧ś̸͢te̷̛r̵̷̢y̴͘͠ ҉̢o͢͞f̨̡͡ th̨e͘͜͟ ̷na̢̢͢m͠e̴̴d̴̡̛,͜͟ I̢ ̨bani͡͝s̨h̛͘͢ ͜t̛͜he̛͏e҉ ̷̸̡fr͟͝o̵͞m̧ th̢͜is͠ ̀p͟lac̷̵̀e҉,̴ ̨fiĺ̛th̀͜y t̀y͘ra̧͠͝nt̸̕,̢ ̢cu̧̧͝rs͠҉͏è̴d̨̀ ̴̀͝be ̀thy ̵l̢̛i̶n̴͢e͘-̛"̨͢
Armless had questions. So many questions. But this wasn’t the time for answers, not yet. He briskly walked over to the backroom door, and it opened at his approach, despite the lack of a visible hololens to recognize him. Nesgon’s voice hissed in his mask as he and his compatriots passed into the back room, “Quick, gotta close the door. He can’t hide you for long.”
The very moment the last person entered the back room, the door slammed shut, and the secret door began to open, whining against its own weight for a moment before it was forced open by a familiar armored giant. Nesgon, helmet and everything. He leaned out of the way, packing himself into the corner while he held the door open with his right hand and beckoned them to follow him with his right. They did as he asked, and in a few seconds, they were running after him through the network of tunnels, descending quickly. Just as Armless began descending, the Word-bearer jumped on his back, holding on for dear life. It didn’t bother him, since he wouldn’t have been able to keep up by his own strength without trailing blood everywhere. “What did you do you living fossil? Why is one of the barmen Accursed, and a builder caste at that?!” he demanded.
A raspy proclamation echoed from within the gleaming suit. “I will answer you once we get to the bottom!” he yelled in response.
“Why are we even going by foot?” the frogman further questioned.
The only answer he received was “I sabotaged the fast lifts,” and it seemed to be sufficient. It made sense, if he had done something like loosening whatever anchored the cables into the ceiling.
Left right left right. Tunnel after tunnel, ramp after ramp, crossroads after crossroads. There were slots of varying size carved through the walls, covered on the outside by what looked to be pieces of polymer designed to look like patchwork, but able to be lifted from the inside with simple protrusions that poked through the hole. They stopped at these every five minutes or so, and each time, they saw a different level of town. It was ordered chaos, the people were lining up in stiff rows and ordering themselves by caste, height, scale colour, even superficial traits like their silhouettes. They had their left hands stiffly to their sides, and their right hands over their chests. Poised and waiting, without so much as a noise or sway of the body. “Like puppets tightly strung,” Rika spat, disdain dripping from her tone. The Word-bearer piped up, “That’s what the so-called “Blessing of Divinity” does to you. Muddles your brain and makes you worship the bearer. Unless, of course...”
His gaze affixed itself to Nesgon. “Come on, how’d you create an Accursed? You can’t dodge the question forever,” he demanded.
Nesgon huffed into his helmet. “It wasn’t me. He started resisting the blessing on his own, and-”
“-and you did the ritual, I get it.” Vezkig finished his sentence, hesitant to believe, but willing. He asked two more questions, almost begging. “Did you at least give him a choice? Did you do it in an isolated place in case it went wrong?”
Nesgon looked down on him, his eyes shining from within the eyeholes of his helmet.
“I am a monster, but I am not like the Ecclesiarch. Of course I gave the lad a choice. I would’ve gladly paid my own life to keep the curse contained if the ritual had gone wrong. We must move now, quickly,” Nesgon said. He clearly didn’t want to speak on the subject any more than was absolutely necessary, as if just bringing it up could somehow cause misfortune.
The remainder of the run into the guts of the mountain was uneventful, the tension between the Word-bearer and Nesgon having been at least mostly relieved. It took them the better part of an hour to finally reach the bottom, and they emerged from one of the side tunnels further down the main tunnel, only some fifty meters from the airlock. The Marksman, Rika, and Nesgon didn’t seem exhausted, but Vezkig began relying on his cybernetics to carry him for the last ten or so floors, the back of his overalls soaked from the steam he vented.
Nesgon led them up through the tunnel, towards the cargo lift, the rover and Amalgam still in their spots on the platform. “We need to get these to the airlock,” he said, lightly smacking the side of the rover to illustrate his point. Rika didn’t hesitate whatsoever, and was in the driver’s seat in a flash of yellow and half a second.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Armless didn’t want to risk having to spend a significant portion of time getting the walker to connect, and so he tried to simply command it the same way he did when he had made it dig through his identity data. “Amalgam, remote movement control,” he thought. It took a solid five seconds, but he received an affirmative ping, faint lilac illuminating the black dome of its head.
He willed it to stand up straight, and though it took a moment to respond, it did. Its movements were clumsy and stiff, but it moved. That was all he needed. “I can move the walker from outside the cockpit, but it will require my full focus,” he said, and received affirmative nods from everyone present.
For the next several minutes, he meticulously walked Amalgam through the tunnel in the rover’s wake. It truly did take all his focus, as he had to control all of its movements, rather than just impelling it with the same intent-impulses that drove most of his body, as well as Amalgam’s own movements while he was plugged into it properly.
“Why do we need to move them if there is no place to hide them?” he asked as he walked,“So they don’t look down the shaft and see them?”
Nesgon nodded, “That’s exactly why. Stand it in front of the airlock, make sure they don’t think about hiding in the wreck.”
Armless did as told, willing Amalgam to cross its arms and look down in such a way that anyone approaching would be met with its three-eyed gaze. The rover was parked off to the side, backed up against the matte-black stone. Nesgon gazed up at the walker along with everyone else, taking in its imposing figure. It seemed to almost enthrall him, but he quickly snapped out of it, turning to Armless. “You will challenge Him at the cargo lift. My intel says he’s headed straight for the wreck with some five dozen builder-caste workers. You must use precisely these words: “By the Seven, I hereby invoke the Right of Heresy, lest ye be dishonored for all time,” otherwise he can deny the challenge. I will wait to be called upon in my quarters,” he instructed in plain terms. As instructed, the group began walking back towards the cargo lift, The Word-bearer, as opinionated about his former life as ever, spat disdainful commentary. “Probably to work them half to death digging up another piece of harmless archeotech and claim the ship bestowed it upon him,” he said, jumping off Armless’s back and beginning to walk back up through the tunnel alongside everyone else.
Nesgon never told him to stop, never openly disagreed with the Word-bearer’s slanderous remarks. Armless wondered if they held the same opinion, but only the smaller of the two was willing to speak them out loud. He didn’t have anything to lose here if things went wrong, after all. If Nesgon were to survive and be ousted as a traitor, however…
Armless suspected it’d be a far more extreme form of what had been done to the dishonored warriors that tried taking Amalgam head-on.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
As they walked, Nesgon broke off to sequester himself in his quarters. Rika walked to his right keeping her distance, while the Word-bearer and Vezkig did the same to his left. The Marksman followed directly behind, remaining a good ten meters away, gun in hand. Before they reached the midway point between the airlock and the cargo lift, Armless heard the rover’s back door open and close with significant force, and the sound of a half-ton warrior-caste stomping towards him. Red-eye. A one-eyed, white polymer mask covered his face, his right eye gazing from within while his left remained covered. His legs were wrapped in long black strips of polymer fabric, layered thickly enough that what was left of his implanted body armor wasn’t visible, and his duster was buttoned closed for once. He caught up quickly, filling the gap to Armless’s right. “That is your disguise?” Rika asked, almost mockingly, but without malice.
Red-eye nodded. “I have covered anything that could identify me as Goldeneye.”
“That… Is true,” Rika conceded the point.
The lift was gone by the time its shaft came into view. When they reached the bottom, they saw that it was already two thirds of the way through its descent.
As the lift descended, its passengers came into view. There stood four rows of lizardmen, wide enough to stretch from one side of the platform to the other. They wore the most basic of clothing, some even clad in little more than rags, builders and warriors among them, their postures as stiff as statues and their eyes pointed to the ground. They were not chained, at least not physically.
In front of the workers, there were four rows of eight warriors each in armored exoskeletons detailed similarly to Nesgon’s, only much less opulent. Those in the back two rows had spindly servo-suits with armor added on, while those in the front had full casements like Nesgon.
Even further in front, there were three individuals. Two were clad in armor nearly identical to Nesgon’s, but still slightly less opulent in design. Behind the third there was a fourth, clad in an armored exoskeleton entirely lacking any details, its musculature nearly completely white. And yet, the fourth still stood nearly in the front.
The third wore what one could easily describe as a vaguely humanoid work of tasteless kitsch, covered in filigree, carvings, inlays, and ivory-white plating. What was visible of its synthfiber musculature was dark gray, darker than what Nesgon had access to. The armor’s shape echoed a poor but inspired understanding of human anatomy, its helmet shaped to partially resemble a distorted human skull, with fangs, horns, and four eyes.
The one Armless assumed to be the Ecclesiarch had his arms behind his back, his posture radiating power and pride. Golden-white orbs shone from within the lower pair of eye-holes, scanning the group from left to right, stopping on the Word-bearer’s disdainful face.
What could only be described as the voice of an angry god thundered from the armor, very obviously amplified and deepened by a speaker system embedded in the suit’s helmet.
“What are you doing here? You were thought to have died honorably on the field of battle, and yet here you stand!” he roared indignantly. His gaze snapped leftward, and stopped on Vezkig, “And you. I’ve heard of you, heretic. I know not how you and your lackeys breached this holy place, but your transgressions will not go unpunished. Warriors!”
He raised his left arm in an ostentatious gesture, and the warriors behind him raised their slugthrowers. They began to advance, spreading out into a semicircle in an attempt to encircle the group. Everyone seemed to be fully ready and willing to enter into a battle they had a very slim chance of winning, yellow exotic particles rising from Rika’s markings already as she flickered in place. Armless diverted extra energy to his voicebox, intending to voice his challenge before the slaughter could start. He felt the ancient mechanism straining under the load, some of its weaker circuits even bursting. It was now or never, or he might go mute.