Tesla spent the next six days babysitting a spiral staircase with an increasingly annoying dwarf for company. Unfortunately the young ryujin lost his claim to the gold ring when Janek got a series of lucky dice rolls but, being a good sport about it, he chose to divulge its class so his companion could properly appreciate its value. He forgot that Janek was a dwarf's dwarf; from that point on the stumpy man spent all his free time inspecting the trinket and chortling about paying off an accumulated mountain of beer tabs owed, by all accounts, to every tavern, brothel, brothel-tavern, and tavern-brothel in Diatom. Thus Tesla spent the first two days stuffing random furniture into a passageway, performing maintanence on his two remaining golems, and mentally kicking himself for losing an important loot roll.
On the third day, all hell broke loose. With no indications of any deeper incursions into its lair, whatever it was that constituted a controlling intelligence over the fallen sisterhood apparently decided that the attack was over and gave orders to re-occupy the upper levels of the convent. Legions of spiders moved en masse but, after passing through several intervening levels choked with mutants, chimeras, randomly-discharging magical weapons, and a floor completely overgrown with a poisonous swamp, only a quarter of the group remained. Weakened by poison and old wounds, mentally cut adrift by a tenuous connection with the commanding influence, and obstructed by a pile of broken furniture of all things, the courrupted nuns went berserk and tried to force their way up the stairs.
As broken down as they were, and as tight as the staircase was, the surviving spiders weren't that difficult to kill. Some of them even attacked each other in their frenzy, especially the scorpions. The problem was that there were so many of them; there was no time to rest. Tesla and Janek were forced to defend the top of the stairs in shifts, swapping places every time a sister was felled, but it was a battle of attrition they couldn't possibly win.
The men held the high ground, a natural choke point, and their opponents were weakened by their previous travels. The spiders, on the other hand, had numbers on their side; the longer they waited their turn to try the stairs the more they recovered from their ordeals. Each corrupted nun was successively stronger than the last.
Tesla and Janek, on the other hand, grew weaker as time went on. Antidotes could cleanse the body and potions could seal up wounds, but nothing could help the men with simple fatigue. Tesla found no relief in food, as he was often choking down a strip of jerky while trading blows with a camel spider or tarantula. Expanding his awareness made time appear to slow down, or even stop, but he was constantly aware of the stresses accumulating throughout his virtual body and could not relax.
Janek's ribald jokes regarding the potential bedroom skills of multi-appendaged nuns fell painfully flat at first but, weirdly, more humorous with lack of sleep. The golems' reaction times slowed incrementally; Tesla would widen his consciousness bit by bit to compensate, but it made the action around him take on an increasingly surreal aura as his tired mind shifted his perspective between his own avatar and the senses of the brass dogs. The idea of a supposed Dream Eater being trapped in a waking dream filled him with light-headed mirth. Meanwhile, the dwarf began hitting on every spider that came up the stairs like he was at a singles' meet while loudly bemoaning the "lack of good spirits in this otherwise fine establishment."
The pressure escalated; eventually, the men were forced back from the upper landing of the stairs and into the hall beyond. From that point forward they were forced to fight two at a time and there was no room for rest at all. A golem fell, crushed and pierced beneath the sharpened claws of a cave spider's spearlike feet. Janek lost his axe, and was forced to switch to his unwieldy hammer; his pot helmet was in shambles. Tesla's own armor wasn't in much better condition: Several plates were actually ripped while some were missing altogether.
A pair of skulls were gripped in Tesla's heavy hands; he wasn't sure where they came from but, oddly enough, they would bite really hard on command. They did more damage than Dragon Claw, but didn't need a cool down. Some marginally lucid portion of the back of his mind recalled snatching them up as an item drop, but that was it. "Oy, dwarf... how ya holdin' up...?"
"Runnin' on... fumigations? ...You?"
"Perfumes."
Janek's eyebrows lifted. "...Lilac or rose?"
"Dogwood...?"
"Expensive... nancy-boy."
The second golem was ripped apart by a pair of whip scorpions, then burned in a puddle of acid. This bought Tesla and Janek enough time to stumble through the hall's exit and slam the oaken door shut. Both men threw their shoulders into the heavy portal's frame and braced against the impact.
"Rube."
Tesla blinked in a bleary fashion at the ring Janek held up in front of him, then slowly refocused his gaze on the dwarf's shaggy head. "...I don't swing that way."
Janek responded by punching him in the jaw, which did absolutely nothing to help clear his head. "Ye damn fool... I don't want it anymore. Ye take it."
"Oh." With exaggerated care the ryujin reached out with one of the skulls, and it delicately picked the ring up between its teeth. "...Neat." The thought of pockets drifted through his mind for a second, but when his vision cleared the ring was roughly five times its original size and comfortably seated where the tip of his tail joined with its distinctive hammer head. "Ooops... I didn't know I could do that."
Janek shrugged, then slapped at the door; frenzied clawing could be heard on the other side. "Don't care. Ye ready to die?"
"Dyin' is borin' okay? ...Let's kill 'em all instead."
Janek shakily shot a "thumbs-up," and Tesla was vaguely surprised to note that it was the only digit remaining on the dwarf's mechanical fist. "...Why not? Let's do it."
"Three..."
"Two..."
"-and a half."
"Hee-hee... hee."
"One...!"
----------------------------------------
"Six days." General Libellius Newcastle, a stern-faced fox woman of the volk race, seated herself upon a camp stool and slapped a rider's crop in the palm of one hand to the tune of the ring mail that shifted around her body. "Four of them non-stop." She fussily straightened her tabard, black with gold accents, to ensure the rampant white lion embossed upon the front was uncreased. "Such magnificent stamina." The standard at her back, a silver sunburst on a crimson background, was so weighed down with campaign decorations that the stiff winds blowing in from the Kraken Gulf could barely shift it. At that time, the majority of the combined arms of King Augustinian and Bishop Lott were merely staging on the plinths outside of convent proper; only a handful of determined men were fortifying the entrance of the unheard-of floors within. "Would you not agree, Chaplain?"
War Chaplain Mander Sticz didn't bother to sit, both because the battle-scarred full plate his body was completely sealed within wasn't made for sitting and because the grizzled dwarf hidden within the plate would be damned before he'd stare up at Newcastle for the entire conversation. "Yep." The standard at his back was an unrelieved cloth-of-gold with no distinctive patterns on its sheer surface. There were no decorations on the war flag of the Temple at his back; after millenia of constant strife, who could tell one of the infinite variety of collected bits and fobbles from another? Who could fit them all on a single flag?
Libellius released a controlled laugh and shook her head. "Taciturn as ever, you old goat!" She turned to a young aide mixed in the group of officers surrounding her and the war chaplain, the commanders of that bilateral force. Her stern features broke into a mischevious grin. "Once, I had to bind both of this bastard's arms to keep him from bleeding out after a Qupernian Raptor bit them off at the elbow. Do you know what he said then? "Ouch." That is all; just "ouch." It took a year for him to get used to his new prosthetics, but as soon as he did do you know what happened? He hunted down the same damn Raptor and strangled it to death." The woman's eyes sparkled merrily. "Do you know what he said then? "There." Just... "There!" At that, the general's control cracked and she doubled over laughing.
War Chaplain Sticz crossed his arms with a whir of spinning gears and frowned behind the mask of his helm. "So?" This elicited further peals of mirth from his contemporary, who fairly hooted like a drunkard with tears rolling down her eyes.
The fox volk eventually regained her self-control and wiped at her eyes. "How are they, bye the bye?"
Sticz looked to one of his own aides and waved him forward. The veteran temple guardsman, a human in his mid-forties, passed a rolled up medical report to a kingdom officer, who in turn passed it to Libellius. "They are still unconscious, Lady General," the aide summed up, "and the apothecaries surmise it may well be another day or more before they wake."
"Mmm. Any sign of arachnosis contraction?"
"No; this outbreak is supernatural in nature, more of an ongoing curse rather than a disease. Our chief apothecarion is certain it isn't contagious. The magicians' corps from both the King's Army and the Temple Guard concur. This doesn't appear to be a Liinyd plot. Rather the first assumption, that the Sisterhood of Aurora's Caul was engaging in illicit research into potential military resources, appears to be accurate."
Libellius unrolled the scroll and quickly scanned its contents. "-And the ring on the Spark's tail? This "Ring of Aranea?"
"Legendary Class, my lady, but the best any of our on-site appraisals can determine is that the item isn't cursed. If the ring were removed then we could tell you whatever you wish to know, but we have no idea how it could have gotten where it is in the first place."
The lady general shrugged non-commitally. "Some items will attach themselves to treasure hunters who get too close, but a legendary artifact with who-knows-what capabilities, and curse-free at that?" She waved the scroll in her hand. "It's the same with those skulls. Sparks attract some of the weirdest things."
One of her own aides stepped forward. "Should both sides apply for confiscation orders?"
"Would you want any of your hard-earned spoils snatched away from your hands on some quill pusher's say-so? Let them be; they have quite an impressive haul, but they came this close to dying for it." She held up her thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart. "Even the Spark; I have known many of his kind to simply let themselves die, regardless of the consequences to their allies, assured that they will easily return a year later. No, what is important here is that we have determined that the convent is not a breeding ground for the insectoid Liinyd's corrupting diseases." Libellius Newcastle leapt to her feet and pointed her riding crop to the convent's facade with an audible snap. "The War Chaplain's volunteers have held on for long enough. Let our joint operation commence at once."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"What of our "intrepid heroes," my lady?"
"If they are healthy enough to be moved then I want them, their spoils, their gear, and their ailuros loaded on a troop ship and flown back to Diatom. Our apothecaries will soon be busy enough caring for our own wounded; there is no need to waste bedspace in a warzone on a convalescing young Spark and an old fool who should stick to his desk like a proper official." Newcastle glanced at Sticz. "I trust we are in agreement, Stitches?"
The laconic dwarf slowly nodded his armored head. "Yep."
----------------------------------------
Tesla woke slowly, his subconscious mind passing through nearly a dozen diagnostic stages as deep-seated medical programs back in the real world measured cranial blood flow, hormone levels, and neural transmission rates. At each stage the green light was given, until the conscious mind asserted itself with a reactive pulse. Tesla jerked to life with a startled shout, then clasped his horned head in his claws and groaned like a hungover drunk. So, this is what pushing yourself feels like; until now, I have only slept because there was nothing else to do during those resting periods. Who knew that a body, with all the aches and pains that come with it, would have that much of an effect on my mind? ...I wonder if I could get away with using a co-processor to "bot" in order to let my mind rest. No, wait; I think that is illegal. The ryujin sighed inwardly. I have no choice but to accustom myself to it.
Gradually, his awareness expanded to include his surroundings. Temple stonework and iconography, rows of smallish beds surrounded by gauzy curtains, shelves of darkened wood filled with bottles of unknown liquids and trays of incense; he was no longer at the convent. Magical lights hovered in out of the way corners and a faint antiseptic smell filled the air. That, and Book's helpful-if-emotionless commentary, informed Tesla that he was currently situated in a Temple infirmary. "Ugh, this looks a little more serious than catching up on my "beauty rest." Did I die?"
"Not quite, though I hear it was a close thing." A young human man seated at a nearby desk finished a notation on a clipboard, then set aside his quill pen and rose to his feet. He approached Tesla, then drew back the curtains surrounding the ryujin's cot. "According to the Chief Apothecarion, if the War Chaplain's men hadn't have found you when they did, you would have been ripped limb-from-limb." He was much younger than Tesla's previous guess; though tall, he retained a somewhat babyish roundness to his features common to adolescents. Book threw out an indicator screen over the boy's shoulder, declaring him to be
"Is that so?" Tesla carefully swung his clawed feet off the side of the cot and attempted to stand up. His large body swayed a little as he towered over the boy, but he didn't fall over. Still tired. I could probably use more rest, but I'd rather not be confined to the bed any more than I have to.
Nander nodded, then skipped lightly over to a nearby cupboard and began pulling down the basic robes of a Temple priest. "The chief said something about a debriefing, but that's all I know."
"What about Janek?" Tesla used Equip on the holy vestments, and they settled around his muscular frame as though they were tailored for him. He ignored the boy's gape-faced look of astonishment. "The dwarf I came in with. I'd figure someone like him would have a better chance of survival than I would."
The boy came back to himself momentarily, then held up his hands. "Sorry, you were the only one placed here. Your friend must have been redirected to another infirmary." Suddenly, Nander snapped his fingers and produced a folded piece of paper from a pocket. "Oh! Here you go, the Chief said to give you this when you woke up."
Hey, rube, the henscratch scrawl across the paper scrap said, I've already gone back to work. Get off yer lazy ass and go talk to Arledge. See ye around.
"Great, just great." Tesla wadded up the paper and tossed it onto his abandoned bed. "Deacon Arledge wants some kind of after-action report, and it looks like that jackass dwarf just pushed it all on my shoulders." The ryujin looked down at Nander and stuffed his clawed hands into the opposing sleeves of the robe. "Is there any way to get word to the deacon that I'm up, or am I going to have to cool my heels in his office until he can scrounge up the spare time?"
"I'll see if I can't find a messenger."
----------------------------------------
"I see that you are finally awake. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to wait the full ten months before you roused." Gothen Arledge adjusted the logs burning in his office fireplace, replaced the soot-blackened poker, and leaned back in an upholstered chair. Outside the glazed windows of the deacon's tower Tesla could see flurries of snow kicked around by the midnight winds.
"With all due respect, how long have I been out?" Tesla stood at ease behind the deacon's seat and glanced down at the back of the man's head.
"Roughly a month, give or take a few days." Arledge tapped a finger against the arm of his chair. "So? From your perspective; I would like to hear it."
"Thanks to the ailuros, we made it to Aurora's Caul within the four day limit." Seriously? I've been effectively AFK for a month?
"The conditions?"
"The whole area was deserted, and lesser structures in the town were partially collapsed from neglect. I would surmise that both the livestock, and then the people, were picked up and hauled away just before the regular courier turned up missing. By the time we arrived both the larger wild game and some of the smaller were also hunted out."
"The people's status?"
"We found no survivors; as distasteful as it may sound, they were probably killed for meat. Janek proposed that some of the men could have been kept alive for breeding purposes, but if they were we found no sign within the convent itself."
"You mean the convent you set fire to."
"When we arrived at the convent it was choked with webbing. The walls, floors, ceilings, icons, and even the furniture were desecrated with unknown sigils and writing that almost seemed to glow when you weren't looking directly at them. The sisterhood itself had mutated, regardless of what their original races were, into soulless fusions of woman and arachnid. Janek made the call to purge the convent with fire, but I was the one who set the webs alight."
"You risked a vast multitude of important documents."
"Janek knew the official layout of the abbey; I believe he was aware of the protections laid on the lower floors when he proposed firing the upper levels."
"Oh? And when did I provide Janek with this information?"
"Again with all due respect, Deacon Arledge, if that foul-mouthed old dwarf isn't the Taskmaster himself then I'll gladly eat your boots."
The deacon snorted. "Figured it out, did you?"
"No run-of-the-mill pogue, Temple Guard or not, is going to waste his time memorizing the layout and purpose of every single church, convent, abbey, monastery, and back-hill shrine throughout the kingdom just in case he might have to raid it someday. Somebody should tell Janek Hess that if he wants to pass himself off as an ordinary soldier he shouldn't act like he's been briefed with information typically provided to generals." Tesla shrugged his broad shoulders. "This was a test that went awry, wasn't it?"
Arledge sighed and tugged at an earlobe. "Yes. We were expecting the sisterhood to have buttoned themselves up against a bandit army or an orcish horde, not... what we found." He arched an eyebrow at Tesla's silence. "Not going to ask?"
"My own involvement notwithstanding, I would assume that whatever's been found below the convent is classified."
"Good. Anyway, you were supposed to make contact with the sisters if you could, identify the problem, and then report back if you couldn't solve it yourself. Depending on the scale of the disaster, we would have expected you to clean it up entirely on your own. Unfortunately, given your unlucky Job Class assignment, the Taskmaster chose to travel with you as insurance."
"I'm glad he did; I never would have made it to the bottom of the abbey if he hadn't have come with me. Janek's far more of a heavy hitter than he lets on, which I guess is only to be expected if he's experienced enough to hold his official position. I wonder what he used to hide his actual status?"
"I am not." Arledge crossed his legs, sank deeper into his chair, and braced his chin atop his interlaced fingers. "If he had stayed here, then you would not have been so foolish as to leap head-first into a spider pit without a second thought. Instead you would have sent a message to us much earlier than you had, and I might have had enough time to arrange exclusively-Temple forces to retake the convent without the diocese losing face in front of the king."
"I see." No, I probably would have tried the convent anyway, though I would have set the fire starting at the main entrance rather than waiting until I was inside the primary sanctuary. No point in saying it out loud, though. Tesla's tail jerked back and forth. "Either way, the fact of the matter remains that we did enter the convent, and things turned out the way they did."
"Correct. Coincidentally, how many spiders do you think survived your attack?"
"None. At least, none within the abbey itself."
"You are certain?"
"The fire helped a lot on the upper floors, making the corrupted nuns easier to take down; we mowed through them rather quickly, but I tried to keep track. Anything we didn't kill ourselves fell to the flames. Below that the going became much harder, so we changed our tactics. From there forward we had to kill everything on each floor just to make certain we weren't caught in a pincer formation the deeper we went." Tesla held out one hand, palm up. "I have no idea about the deep levels. We took a glance at the first from the entryway, but we didn't explore."
"Nevertheless, I suppose you did quite well all things considered." Arledge stood from his chair and slowly made his way to the back door of the office. "I am retiring for the night. Inquire with Father Prymaug tomorrow regarding your compensation for this mission. As I understand it, the Taskmaster took care of the paperwork himself. As for meeting Janek in person, well, let us just say that he is currently in cloisters meditating on the difference between wisdom and foolishness."
Tesla nodded, then quickly left the office. "Sleep well, Deacon."
"I have every intention." Arledge waited until Tesla's footsteps echoed into silence, then knocked on his own door and returned to the chair.
"What did I tell ye; the rube's not as dumb as he looks." Janek stepped through the opened door, grabbed Arledge's desk chair one-handed, then dragged it over to the fireplace and plopped down on it. "I want him, Arledge; he's got fire, and he pays attention to his surroundings."
"He may be smart, but his physique is wasted as a golemeister. We wanted him for publicity's sake, a bright and shining holy knight with all the potential of a Spark to uplift the people. He may yet become that in the future. Now you want him as a Bricoleur? Will he actually be of any practical use on his own?" The deacon rubbed at his eyes. "I grow less sure of his qualities the longer I think on him, until I begin to wonder if the young man has any upfront value at all."
"Ye didn't see him out there. The kid was killing arachnosis-mutations ten times his own level, and higher, with his bare hands and a pair of glorified hedge clippers. I have never seen sleep-inducement magic with success rates that impressive, either. Think about it; a level one, across the board, actually supported an old vet like me all the way to Krakenside and down a dozen or more floors of eight-legged fury with all the tenacity of a wolfhound worrying at a bone. Supported, mind ye, not riding along on my coattails." Janek tapped the mechanical cap on his left arm where he was still waiting for a replacement to his shattered prosthetic. "Rube saved my ragged hide more than once those last four days. Besides, Bricoleurs aren't all about the grunt work; he'll have to think his way out of plenty of crises rather than just hammering them aside with that big-ass tail of his, and he's already shown he's got the brains to do it."
Arledge sighed and shook his head. "It will have to be on a provisional basis, you know; Bricoleurs are too close to the inner workings of the Temple for Central to allow the "invasion" of an unbelieving Spark."
"So I keep him on retainer and out of politics; doesn't sound too hard."
The deacon smacked his palm lightly against the arm of his chair. "Enough, we can discuss this at a later date. What is the status on the ring investigation?"
"Until we can get his help for a proper appraisal, we're forced to rely on documentation we've uncovered in the lower levels." Janek's beard bristled. "The name's a little off from the alternate that was recovered from that thing waiting for the combined forces at the bottom..."
"-The "Tiara of Arachne?" Arledge scratched his chin. "The abbess was many things, but I never thought her fool enough to actually try wearing a cursed item."
"Whatever; she probably thought she'd purified it. Anyway, the tiara was definitely mentioned in her files as an army builder, but its actual application was more like an army converter. If there were another device picked up at the same time, and she wound up mistranslating the old scripts..."
"Then the "Ring of Aranea" could be the maker, and that means we have a Spark wandering the grounds of the Temple of Diatom with an army-in-a-box strapped to his tail. How many men were lost to this conversion before they managed to kill her?"
"None; the old woman had little mind left, but it was apparently enough that she couldn't identify with anyone other than her own sisterhood. In the end, they were the only ones she altered." Janek tugged at his beard. "As for the rube, well, that's just another reason I want him working for the Temple. If he really does have an army at his beck and call, whether he knows it or not, then both we and the throne need to stay on his good side."
"...I will speak with the bishop tomorrow."
----------------------------------------
With nothing left to do and nowhere else to go, Tesla returned to the infirmary and slept until sunrise.