Running for my life had becoming a recurring theme for me of late. Running from Formorian hordes was among the more memorable modes of flight among the multitude, however my past encounters had been nothing like this.
I must have been running for a month at least, or my lungs and legs were claiming. My endless stamina had held out thus far, yet so too had my pursuer… or pursuers.
Sweat was pouring down my skin as I pushed myself ever harder, but still they came.
I had to be faster, move sharper, think quicker. One slip and it would all be over.
Weaving through a maze of stalagmites I kicked off each in turn, bounding around corners faster than a speeding car, once more losing sight of the hunters….
Rock shattered with a boom that shook the cavern as a massive pillar punched clear through a stone outcrop hundreds of yards tall.
Wreathed in a tangle of horn and spines all aglow with an aura of ghostly blue-white, the limb tore rock apart like caked mud as it reached for me, tracking my every movement even as its owner was fighting through the rockfall it had unleashed.
The giant had no need to observe me with its head – bulbous caprine eyes burned cold with malice from every surface of its arm, dual points of pure frozen hate shining from the roots of each cluster of horn, following my movements as the appendage groped towards me, hissing and screeching through serrated maws that gnashed and spat black vitriol in their agonized rage.
Like two mammoth wrecking balls, the curves of the main horns splashed stone as water, sending the spray of boulders towards me as the main head broke through the barrier.
Those… eyes… fixated upon me once again, and my urgent breaths caught in my throat.
Eyes were just eyes, I would have said. They shouldn’t be made of anything else. But these eyes were.
Around each was a halo of horns, encircling an inner ring of jaws, ever gasping for breath. Within these… was the rest of each face, and innumerable more present only in pieces. A composite eye created from dozens of others, bonded with fine chitin lines like a mosaic, a stained-glass pane of hideous, repulsive beauty, aglow with spectral light from within as the banks of lenses tracked me.
Somehow they seemed to call out to me, to give in, to join them… to become one more pair of eyes… one more set of hands….
It wasn’t a giant formorian which I’d roused.
It was a giant made of formorians.
The distorted, tapering and centipedal torso of a formorian, the countless arms lining the underside, the horned head, all were recreated faithfully, down to the details of the hands, but the faithfully sculpted fingers were wrought of living beings, melded into one another in a profane embrace, their very heads the tips, their horns the nails. They in turn were woven into others, bodies somehow conjoined through surgery or magic to create every last element of a formorian the scale of a skyscraper, from the fragments of their own.
Their bodies intertwined, parts removed or added to make them fit, flesh melted together in organic welds or bonded to the jagged black chitin exoskeleton which it wore like vicious armor.
Many of the bodies were intact enough to have their own limbs, their own eyes, heads… to move… as if still sentient, still aware….
Others were woven tight into musculature, adhering to chitin joints, all but the torsos dispensed with as mere obstructions to the colossal vision of the creators.
I couldn’t tell if those allowed to retain some part of themselves were left that way as a mercy, or as a final punishment.
Either way, all were united now in their enmity towards me, thousands of arms, great and small, seeking to catch and pull me apart.
In that it was a terrifying weapon… and a horror to match anything Vitrgraf or the Demoniac had thrown at me.
A terrible thought wormed its way back into my mind once more, like rot festering beneath the surface until it erupted; unlike the miners, or the monsters I’d faced until now… this… the Formorians had done it to their own… perhaps even… to themselves.
I jumped over another sweeping ‘hand’, but more of the too-numerous arms flicked out, with frightful speed.
My spell finished just in time, and a blast of wind gave me a second leap, flying me towards the ceiling far above.
Anchoring myself for a moment, I kicked off with all my strength and more, breaking through fragile strands of hanging stone and glowing vine as I hurled myself towards the aperture at the far end of the cave, fluorescent liquids splashing over my borrowed attire as I flew.
Patch would be angry for certain, but I had no leeway to preserve her spare clothes any better than this. Hopefully the plant stains would wash out.
The thought was absurd of course – I was fleeing not for the sake of the plan, but for my very life, and the state of my clothes would be a moot point if I was caught.
My simple, human legs, made only out of me, might outpower the same appendages on any beast I’d yet to face in the Underworld, yet now they were competing against thousands, all pushing together to propel the giant after me.
Nor was it alone… even in what absurd sense such an amalgamation could be.
In the wake of the titan of violated flesh there trailed clouds of swirling blue-grey, billowing from its sides to fill the tunnels behind, cover for the endless horde it led. Formorians of every lesser size had joined the hunt for their death-marked quarry, physically running atop one another in layers like some conveyor belt of bodies, numbering in the thousands at least.
If they caught me, they would surely kill me. If I was lucky.
If not… I’d seen the chambers, where their victims were rendered down into sludge…. Or perhaps they might use my body to lay their hateful eggs, or tear me apart to turn into pieces for another titan… screaming in horror for endless years of torture and violation. There was nothing I’d put past the Formorians at this point.
But they weren’t to blame for any of this, were they?
That strange realization returned to me as I made the end of the chamber and bolted into the narrow tunnel beyond, too small by far for the giant. It wouldn’t stop the thing of course, but as before such stretches would gain me a little ground – a chance to compose myself and gather my strength and focus once again.
All of this was in service of the plan. The raid. I was the distraction, and everyone was counting on the Formorian host I was luring to the party.
Of course, no-one had planned on luring out… that.
I wasn’t simply afraid of never making it, of dying in the tunnels and leaving my friends to be caught or killed – if the defenses of Northastr were overrun the death toll would be in the thousands, surfacers and Pharyes alike.
But it was beyond too late to adjust the plan now. Even if there was time, I had no idea if I could slay a monster so gargantuan, especially with a whole city of formorians not far behind.
More sentient beings who were likely to perish, thanks to me.
Half-forgotten, a memory returned to me from long dormancy.
A hot, golden summer day, literal worlds away from my present Underworld sojourn.
Seville had been a wonder for a child such as I, a place where history had piled up in literal layers, eras and ages passing by and each depositing their own artistic and architectural sediments, creating a beautiful medley of a city.
My father had hated it of course. It was culture and culture was good for me, or else he would never have agreed to visit such places, but these experiences were the vegetables of the meal. Every mosque we explored, with wondrous arabesques and Mocárabes, or church or fortress, with their millennia long stories to tell, were all mere duty to be done, roughage to be chewed, swallowed and forgotten.
No, what he savored were the tales of the wars of the Reconquista, and the drama and bravery of the modern day bullring.
I could still recall going to see the bullfighters with him, another of his plans to ‘make a man’ of me.
The sun had baked the earth into a dry powder, but the blood had shone all the clearer for it as the lancers impaled the magnificent creature brought there to die.
The final stage of the fight, the lethal dance of the matador, had the whole crowd cheering and screaming. The man had been inches from death countless times as he baited and tricked the bull, driving it to exhaustion.
One mistake and it would have been human blood glistening on the earth in the ring, yet my father was electrified, moved by the performance, enthralled by the valor and the violence. That, he said, was a real man, and I should aspire to be like him some day.
I knew better than to speak my mind to him, even then, but the cruelty of it all had stayed with me.
Yet now I was the matador just as he had wished, risking my life to lure the bulls out, through the veils of stone and into the swords, waiting to cut them down.
Even if all went right, and the plan was a consummate triumph, I would have sacrificed their lives for my ends.
It wasn’t the same… yet the similarity squirmed at the back of my mind.
But there was no more time to think.
I was leaving the narrow tunnel, and it was on me again.
~~~
“There’s really no need for you to, a-accompany me,” Ivaldi repeated, managing to keep most of the anxiety from his voice.
“I have a few simple matters to look into, as a councilor I mean, but I’ll be at the lab soon enough.”
“Then allow me to help you,” Captain Eyrir replied, “Colonel Malmr has ordered I give you every possible assistance, and I assure you my injury will prove no impediment.”
Though his arm was still held immobile at his side in a binding the young officer wore a sharp look on his pointed face, his body held to attention, as if ready to fight at a moment’s notice. The man was like a naked blade, a hostile edge to everything he did or said.
That was almost to be expected of a Varangian however, and Ivaldi could understand his insistence in this instance – Eyrir’s Silfskjotr was one of the two ancestral weapons Ivaldi was there to attempt to save… supposedly at least. The other belonged to the man’s senior, Colonel Ilmr, ensuring he was doubly motivated.
The problem was that Ivaldi’s role in the raid was not only impossible to enact with a keen-eyed Varangian at his side, but also both time-sensitive and critical to next stage of the plan.
He needed some way to distract the man, to persuade him to leave for a while and keep him busy… some ruse he wouldn’t see through until it was too late to stop Ivaldi’s work….
Eyrir looked rather lost as the Chief Aulogemscire broke into a smile, but Ivaldi was far, far away – and long long ago.
He was in his mother’s laboratory, back at the very start of his apprenticing.
She had been a demanding teacher, working him hard and expecting much, but she wasn’t without her playful side either – she and Ingeborg had both enjoyed their pranks, often at he and his father’s expense.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That time it had been something of a tradition in her lab.
Ivaldi was the new boy, and so she had sent him up to the requisitions desk to request a ‘long wheel’. Ever of literal mind, for all his smarts it took Ivaldi over an hour to realize that the long wheel he was there for was a fruitless wait.
It had been only a small comfort to an aspiring young aulogemscire to learn that his father had fallen for the same trick once, during courtship.
“Counselor?” Eyrir asked, for the second time.
“Ah! Apologies, uh, Captain. As you say, I should make use of your hands. Er, hand I mean… sorry… anyhow, if you could just… run up to the docks, there’s something I need most urgently from the crawler.”
Could Eyrir hear how loudly Ivaldi’s heart was thumping? From the way the man’s eyes had narrowed, perhaps he could. If he had guessed this was a trick there was no chance of him leaving the aulogemscire be….
“You don’t mind, do you? It’s a….”
Ivaldi paused again, mouth half open, as he realized that asking for a ‘long wheel’ would be seen through in minutes, if not at once.
“A what, Counselor?” Eyrir demanded.
“Ah, apologies! It’s a phase-pump backflow inhibitor valve. A little thing, a metal sphere with three openings, no bigger than this….”
Holding up his hand he begged silently that the captain wouldn’t notice how sweaty his palms were.
“I had to take it out while I was looking for other parts, during the trip when… uh… well, never mind that. We forgot it while unloading you see, and, well, with the crew all busy no-one was answering my voice call… it would save a good deal of time if you could fetch it yourself.”
“You know where it is?”
“Um… about that…. I’m sure it’s in the 5th cargo bay… somewhere….”
Eyrir gave him a disdainful look, and Ivaldi met it with a hesitant, watery smile.
“Very good then, Counselor. I’ll bring it to you in the lab as soon as possible.”
It was only after the captain turned away that Ivaldi allowed his expression to dissolve into one of a silent, relieved sigh.
“You will be there when I return?” Eyrir asked, turning back.
“N-naturally! I should have finished my other tasks by then and, er, be ready to get your machine back to working order!”
If the captain noticed the sweat rolling down his forehead and nose, he said nothing to the aulogemscire as he left.
It was a few minutes later that Ivaldi arrived at his true destination.
“Stop!” barked a voice ahead. “This is a restricted area! State your identity and purpose.”
Although he was no Varangian, the uniformed military man still showed his training in the way he stood upright and attentive at the end of the corridor, his hand on the short sword at his hip.
Ivaldi had known there would be guards of course, but he still found himself hesitating as he locked eyes with his interrogator.
The tension was broken as the other guard, an older woman, elbowed the intense young man in the ribs.
He started to object, but she spoke over him.
“Welcome to Golem Control, Counselor Ivaldi, do come this way. Excuse my officer, we weren’t expecting you. Did Colonel Malmr not assign you an entourage while you’re here?”
“That’s, uh… that’s no problem, naturally,” he said, as he approached down the corridor.
“My entourage is already busy at work. I wasn’t expecting to come here myself, but you see… Colonel Malmr is rather concerned about preparedness here at Northastr, and so he requested that I assist in updating the combat routines for your compliment of golems. We’ve collated a great deal of data on the surface world you know, and while processing the information will take time there are already certain… well, patterns, and predictable tactics the surfacers favor, such as the propensity for ogres to use their mining skills in modifying battlefield conditions through the planing of stone surfaces and-”
“We understand, Counselor,” the woman cut in, curtailing the flow of nonsense as politely as she could.
She was as gracious as might be imagined of an officer under Malmr’s leadership, no doubt hoping that this meeting with an actual member of the king’s council might prove a great opportunity for her.
Even so she made no move to open the sealed door.
“How can we help you? Should I send someone to find the golem chief? I believe she’s resting at present.”
“Oh, I do apologize, I am rather wont to rambling, as the good Justicar tells me… uh, but no, there’s no need to bother the chief. Colonel Malmr spoke to her and they agreed there would be no issue with you letting me in to do some simple updates. Here, you see? They gave me a lykstone.”
His fingers were trembling as he reached past the woman, and it took two attempts to insert the small key of worked crystalline ore into the panel.
Crafting the counterfeit had required some time alone with the similar panel in his quarters, ensuring that his forgery was perfectly attuned to the fluid mix of the base, but the process itself was simple for a master aulogemscire.
The problem was that he had no way to know the pattern encoded into the real lykstones for the door. Instead his would send a different signal to the system, the escape code – known only to trusted aulogemscires and spyrja. The system would message control that there was an error, and wait for instructions. Of course, as chief aulogemscire for the kingdom, Ivaldi knew exactly which physical ducts that message would travel through, and thanks to a little meddling by Hylli just a few corridors away it would never reach its destination. Instead the door would be instructed to reset to the default encoding and resume normal operations. A default encoding Ivaldi had written himself some years back.
At least that was what should have happened.
The red glow of the gemstone above the insertion point had instead strengthened, flashing bright with its denial.
Ivaldi could feel his throat tightening as three pairs of eyes watched the light blink. Had Hylli’s meddling been discovered? Did they have extra security, beyond that of the standard design?!
In either case, it was too late. The alarms would sound at any moment. Even pulling out the lykstone would only serve to set them off, as the system registered a failed access attempt with an invalid encoding.
The guards were looking at him again now, peering right at his sweaty, panicking face.
He clasped his hands together, mouth opening to say something, to deflect their suspicions, and closing again uselessly as his brains failed him.
“What’s this?” the younger guard asked, glancing between the key and its forger. “This isn’t the chief’s lykstone! Lieutenant, look, the handle is totally different!”
“N-no it’s certainly not the chief’s lykstone!” Ivaldi said, before the lieutenant could speak. “The, uh, the chief, she gave me a spare since she… didn’t want to be disturbed when I was done. Th-this way I can just leave it with you afterwards, you see? B-but I suppose since it hasn’t been used for a while, the pattern may have decayed. It’s not unheard of you know, if you leave it too close to an active conduit. The essence leaked is minor, but it accumulates over time.”
He wasn’t buying it. Ivaldi could see the guard’s suspicions only growing as he spoke.
“Oh don’t worry about it,” the lieutenant said, a soft laugh cutting through the tension. “The system’s been acting up for wheels now, Counselor, probably just need to try reinserting it, let me help you-”
As she spoke she reached out towards the little mineral rod, only to freeze as Ivaldi gave a gasp of horror and gripped her sleeve.
“Counselor? What are you doing?”
There was no amusement or subservience about her now, as the woman stared over at the petrified Ivaldi.
A loud chime sounded, and the gemstone flashed green.
Three pairs of eyes stared over at the panel, Ivaldi more surprised than any of them.
“Ah, there we go!” he said quickly, releasing the woman’s arm and slipping the device back out of the slot and into a pocket. “I guess you were right about the system acting up! Should, er, would you like me to take a look at it before I leave perhaps?”
“No no,” the lieutenant said, bowing her head, “we’ve already logged the issue, maintenance should be this wheelturn. Apologies for the trouble.”
At her side the younger officer was watching Ivaldi intently, suspicion still showing through the façade of respect towards a senior political dignitary.
“Well then, I shan’t distract you any further,” Ivaldi said quickly.
“Not at all, Counselor,” the lieutenant said quickly. “We’ll be right here if you need anything – I’d be happy to assist you with your work too if you could use another pair of hands.”
“No that won’t be necessary, thank you!”
Slipping through the elaborate mechanism of the opening door he retreated into the neon cavern beyond and hit the switch to reseal it behind him before either guard could further interject.
A moment later the door thudded shut, and the mechanical locks closed once more, sealing Ivaldi in with the dense arrays of sensitive gemstone aulogemsic creations.
Time was critical, but even so he stopped, leaning back against the door and giving a long, shuddering sigh.
His hands were shaking worse than ever, too badly for him to even attempt the delicate task ahead of him, so he could only take a moment to try to calm himself.
Somehow his heart refused to steady itself however, his pulse racing as the fear of discovery, or of failure, suffused his every thought.
Happier ideas. Memories of good times. Those were what he needed.
His mind turned first to Reginn and Ingeborg, to their occasional drinking meetings and meals together, but before long it was his parents who were on his mind.
Ingeborg reminded him a great deal of their mother, but where she lacked the technical insight – or perhaps the interest – to be an aulogemscire, their mom had been masterful. She had taught Ivaldi a great deal.
He wondered what she would make of how he’d chosen to use her teachings; what she would make of it were she alive to see her son now, breaking into a military base to sabotage defenses in advance of a formorian attack….
There seemed little need to wonder what his father would have made of it. He’d risked himself for his duty countless times after all, prepared to sacrifice everything for the king the people.
Ivaldi clenched his fists tight.
His father would have been proud.
Ivaldi might not be fighting the same way his father had, but he too was putting himself on the line for the sake of king and the people, even if the threats had changed.
Hopefully his mother would have understood that too, he reflected, as he felt the throbbing, pounding of blood in his head ease.
Regardless, he would do what had to be done, to save innocent lives and stop the madness of the war.
~~~
Adjusting the instructions fed to each golem in the base was a laborious process, even with direct access to the array of gemstone cores which managed them. Every surface in the room was covered in readouts and control systems, connecting to various transmission devices throughout the base which could communicate with the golems, both footsoldier models and the larger Triskelions.
The fundamental principle was similar to the voice system used by the Pharyes themselves, however instructions had to be encoded into forms the golems were built to recognize and respond to, and carry appropriate security codes to ensure there was no tampering or interference. Even then, golems couldn’t have existing commands overwritten easily without bringing them in for hands-on maintenance.
Given the need to issue new instructions to the entire golem force, it was lucky that Ivaldi didn’t have to go that far. They were already designed to carry out all the tasks the raid would require of them, all that was necessary were some adjustments, and some new, falsified data.
Ivaldi was elbows deep in the tubing under the central core when the voice crystal on the wall came to life.
“Counselor?”
He froze as he recognized the voice.
“It’s Captain Eyrir. Open the door please.”
The icy tone made clear that Ivaldi’s trick had been discovered. Hopefully without any repercussions for Beyla’s crew, on whom he had foisted the Varangian.
His task would be several minutes more at least, but there was no way the man would wait that long.
“Counselor?” he repeated, growing impatient. “I’m at the door, please respond.”
If Ivaldi did nothing Eyrir would be certain to have the guards open the door for him – as a Varangian on temporary assignment to the fortress, it would be easy for him to call the colonel and get direct authorization. As soon as he tried it, the ruse would be discovered.
Disentangling himself from the mess of hydraulics and crystal, Ivaldi rushed to the door to hit the control.
“Counselor I-”
“Yes! I’m here!” Ivaldi blurted, before he could say more, “sorry! I-I was in the middle of something, Captain, I-I’m opening the door for you now….”
The heavy metal disk swung out slowly once the lock had disengaged, and Ivaldi ignored the stares of the two guards as he waved the irked captain in to join him.
The man did so, and then without a word the aulogemscire closed the door and sealed it once more.
“I don’t appreciate being made a fool of, Counselor,” Eyrir said, once they were alone.
“Wh-what do you mean, Captain? I’m sure I didn’t mean to do anything of the sort. N-now I really do need to get on with this work, the Colonel asked me to take a look at things here before I’m caught up in the Skidbladnir repairs….”
The lie sounded terrible even to Ivaldi, but he could only hope that the truth would be all the more implausible.
Eyrir glared at him, but made no move to stop the aulogemscire as Ivaldi crossed nervously to the panel he’d removed earlier and started working on the contents once more.
“I don’t know what a ‘phase-pump backflow inhibitor’ is,” he said, as he watched Ivaldi tinkering, “but there was nothing like that on the crawler manifest, and no sign of it in the holds.”
“Oh, I see! That really is unfortunate, it will slow down the repairs significantly… I-I’ll probably have to, uh, order another shipped from the Deephold. I’m very sorry about that, Captain….”
He did his best to look shocked, confused, even a little embarrassed, willfully ignoring the bead of sweat that was wobbling from the end of his nose, or the rivulets running down his body under his leathers.
The other man scrutinized him, watching what he was doing with the mechanisms.
“What exactly did the colonel ask you to do with the golem control systems? And why isn’t the chief present? This doesn’t seem proper at all to me… Counselor.”
There was that title once again. It was a wonder that he wasn’t arresting him on the spot given where they stood, but his status was the perfect shield and disguise. Had he been anyone but the chief aulogemscire of the kingdom, seated on the king’s council and dispatched by the Justicar personally, the scheme would have fallen apart long since.
Even so it would only take one check, a quick voice to the colonel, or the golem chief, and all would be revealed.
“I… er… well Colonel Malmr wanted me to assist in… updating the combat routines for the golems. We have been analyzing data from the surfaces battles you see, a-and we’ve discovered a great deal of useful information, key patterns in how the surface forces engage in combat, which our golems can be adjusted to better exploit – the Harpies are a very different foe to the Formorians or the Grafvollud, you know?”
He gave a panicked half-laugh. It had been intended to sound light and airy, but it came out more like a squeak of dismay.
“I… see… Counselor,” Eyrir said slowly.
It was well Ivaldi was a counselor indeed, as certainly wasn’t his acting that protected him.
“And you are here to do this completely alone, while the golem chief is asleep, instead of working on my Skidbladnir as the Justicar ordered?”
“Well… the thing is, I didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary waiting for her to wake up, you know? The colonel lent me a spare lykstone for the door and, well, I already needed to wait for you to find that part – s-so sorry again about the mix-up there, I could swear we brought one. I really think that Captain Beyla’s crew may have lost it, and just taken it off the records rather than admit their mistake! In fact if you’d help me get finished here I… I think we should go find the captain herself and insist she have all the compartments searched!”
Outrageous as the lie was, audacity was his final refuge - suspect as his actions were and miserable a liar as he might well be, a betrayal of this sort must be all but unthinkable to a Varangian like Eyrir. It certainly had been to Ivaldi himself.
Eyrir glowered over at him from the door, taking a long, labored breath.
Ivaldi saw the man’s good hand twitch.
The captain had been injured in the battle of Grand Chasm… by the very woman even now bearing down upon them at the head of a Formorian army. But even with one arm broken and lingering damage to his ribs, Eyrir was more than a match for Ivaldi should it come to a fight.
“I’m going to speak to Colonel Malmr about all of this; it’s entirely outside protocol for an outsider to be given unmonitored access to critical defenses like this, even a Counselor such as yourself.”
His finger pressed to the voice gem as he spoke, and Ivaldi saw him manipulating the essence within the gem, inputting the desired target to connect to.
A bang reverberated around the small chamber, and vaporized green fluid erupted from a valve overhead.
“The array!” Ivaldi gasped in shock. “Quickly, Eyrir, help me! There’s a critical overpressure within the core, it could crack at any moment!”
“What do you need me to do?!”
Only a moment of hesitation, Ivaldi noted. The man was suspicious, but like any Varangian, he wouldn’t be paralyzed with indecision based on half-formed suspicions.
“I’m trying to get the main core under control, you regulate the essence in the secondary core – that one there!” he shouted over the hissing, gesturing at a chamber lined with gemstones on the far wall, just visible through the vapor filling the room.
“Quick, before the whole system blows and we suffocate!”
Eyrir was there in a moment, reaching with his good hand for the interface gem. It was already glowing bright green with accumulated energy.
With a crack the huge volume of essence discharged through Eyrir’s arm, slamming the man to the floor.
He was still reeling from the shock when Ivaldi leapt on him.
The Varangian gave a roar of pain and fury at the attack, throwing Ivaldi off again with just the strength in his knees, but both of the man’s arms were unusable, at least for the moment, and as he rose Ivaldi wrapped his own around Eyrir’s torso, gripping his hands tight.
Eyrir thrashed, trying to kick at the aulogemscire, or throw him off, but the warrior was injured, weakened by the sneak attack, and grappled from behind. Ivaldi just had to hang on-
The counselor saw lights flashing in the green smog of the flooding room as his head cracked against metal behind him.
His hands almost came loose from the shock, his mind cloudier than his surroundings, but he came to his senses just in time to scream in agony as Eyrir slammed himself back against another wall and rammed a valve into the small of Ivaldi’s back.
The third impact emptied his lungs and slammed his head into another hard surface.
This time everything went dark.
It must only have been a moment, but that was enough for Eyrir to break free.
With his grip broken, his crystal nails tore at the man’s face and chest, drawing blood but failing to hold fast as he was thrown off.
Panting, burnt and gouged deep under his eye, Eyrir faced him with murder in his gaze.
Ivaldi looked up, eyes wide in horror as he lay in agony on the floor, feeling the blood pour from his head and back.
Charging at the frail, frightened young researcher, Eyrir kicked aside his right arm and pinned the left under one knee as he fell on his target, his broken arm groping for the voice gem on the wall above.
Distracted for a moment by the pain of moving a broken limb and cracked ribs, Eyrir didn’t see Ivaldi’s own hand fumbling with something else, lower down the wall.
Ivaldi tore the length of hosing loose, acrid coolant spewing out, blinding them both.
Unable to see anything but white and green, Ivaldi could only rely on touch as he wound the leather tubing around his foe’s neck.
Eyrir was struggling of course, and a kick took him square in the gut, forcing the contents of his last meal out, splattering down both of them to mingle with the blood and coolant.
Another hammered into his arm and side so hard he thought his own bones would shatter, but he managed to hold on, retaliating by biting the captain’s flailing broken arm.
The scream and the sensation of broken bone grinding and cracking under the skin almost made him vomit again, but it gave him a chance to force the captain down onto his front long enough to wrap the tubing around his ankles.
A few minutes later, a shaken, bruised and terrified Ivaldi had the man tied as securely as could be managed with nothing more than a length of leather piping.
The leaking coolant and hydraulic fluid had also been cut off, his original task completed and the safety systems Ivaldi had disabled to enact his trick restored. All before anyone outside could notice... he hoped.
That just left the two of them to stare at one another as they blinked coolant and other liquids from their eyes.
“Are you… going to be okay?” Ivaldi asked the other.
The concern in his tone seemed to startle the Varangian, and it took him a moment to understand that Ivaldi was sincere.
“I’ll live,” he answered bitterly. “I was worse after Grand Chasm. But why let me? If they catch you you’re dead! You could have killed me with that discharge… why take the risk? What are you even doing here?!”
“You’ll find out soon enough, when it’s all over. But I’m not planning on being caught.”
Opening a hatch in the wall, Ivaldi stepped into the emergency escape tunnel, and closed it behind him.
The hatch could only be opened from within the golem control room and only in the event of a catastrophic leak in the system, one which threatened to drown or suffocate anyone inside. Unlocking it in that fashion was also supposed to raise the alarms, but that assumed no-one had just finished disabling them. As such there was certainly no need to place guards at the other end.
He was almost out, and with time to spare. He just had to hope no-one found him in the corridors outside, wandering around bloodied and filthy.
That was when the alarms screeched to life, the chimes filling the air all around.
He’d forgotten to disable some circuit or flow, some extra redundant sensor that had detected his escape!
Then he noted the particular tone of the warning.
It wasn’t the alert for a leak or unauthorized intrusion.
It was the emergency call to arms.
Northastr had come under attack.