Using all of the thrust Barbatos had to offer, Deek tore through the tunnels towards the sound of plasma rifle shots. The darkness was briefly illuminated either with glaring blue light that almost echoed throughout the corridors, or with harsh bursts of whiteness that threatened to blind Deek with every flash.
Within seconds Barbatos skidded to a halt as Deek entered a large chamber which must have been a storage area. Broken wooden crates lay scattered around the room, while the ceiling was high enough that Barbatos could stand up, albeit with its head bowed.
Also present in the room was Emb, who was liberally using her mana in order to avoid a hailstorm of magic bolts. As Deek entered, Emb had stuck herself to the top right corner opposite of the entrance and, while upside-down, fired off a plasma shot before leaping to her next firing position. Although there were only five golems left, the amount of firepower stored within their roughly humanoid frames was impressive, or would’ve been if not for their advanced age. Like all things the golems’ integrated weaponry had worn away and lost much of their power, although each missile was still more than enough to turn Emb into a red smear.
Locking onto the nearest golem, Deek threw Barbatos’ spur, which arced through the air and hooked into the golem. Grasping onto the cable that connected spur and machine, Deek gave it a rough tug, ripping the golem apart. The glowing ‘blood’ of the golem splashed against one of its comrades, distracting it enough for Emb to blow its head off with a plasma shot.
The other golems, sensing a greater concentration of Sunblood turned to face Barbatos before unleashing a nightmarish salvo of mana bolts. Lifting his one arm up, Deek was surprised as the magic projectiles simply washed over the voidstone plating, not even jolting the mech. While not strong by any means, the voidstone was more than enough to negate the weak mana bolts of the golems.
Grinning, Deek charged forward and held his arm out to pick up the dropped spur. Using the momentum Barbatos had built up, Deek spun around and pierced one of the golems with the spur, causing it to careen into another one just beside it. Deek yanked the spur back into his hand and prepared to cut down the golem, although a plasma bolt through its chest finished the job. Instead, Deek threw the spur at the last remaining golem and crashed the magitech creation into one of the walls, causing specks of dust to fall from the roof.
Deek surveyed the wrecked room and saw that Emb had stopped to rest in the centre of the chamber, bent over and breathing heavily from exhaustion. Before he looked away Deek saw Emb’s arms let off a burst of orange dust.
“You must have used a shit ton of mana. Will you be all good to go on?” Deek began moving towards the exit.
Emb stood up straight and stretched her legs, causing more plumes of spent mana to emerge from her exhausted mana circuits.
“It’s fine, the point of my class is using as much mana as possible. It should regenerate in a few minutes.” More mana leaked from her body, though only in small bursts, signalling that her body had almost removed all of the excess magic.
“I mean, aside from your fucking insane mana usage those golems were surprisingly easy to kill.”
“Fuck off Deek.”
“What?” Deek, who was bent over and halfway through entering the exit corridor, turned to face Emb who was strolling over to the open tunnel.
“One of those missiles could’ve turned me to paste, and before you arrived it was pitch fucking black.”
“Oh… Forgot about that. Actually that’s a great segue into my next question.”
Emb let out a pained groan.
“Oi. Anyway, why did no one tell us about the abandoned mage bunker filled with active war golems?” Deek sighed as he tried to not scrape the roof with Barbatos’ head spikes.
Emb ran out to be in front of Barbatos before resuming a normal pace.
“Probably because no one knew. These bunkers haven’t been touched since they were taken over. In one of the previous wars we must’ve stormed the place and then moved on, found the voidtech bunker and never touched this place again.”
“Did we have teleportation rings back then?” Deek could see in the distance the faint light of the moon-fragment.
“I’d say so. These golems are what, two, maybe three hundred years old tops? We probably had teleport tech back then, although it’d be brand new.” Emb began running towards the exit, and Deek followed with a hasty crouching walk.
“Well I guess that’s one more thing to report when we get to battlefront eh?” Deek stepped outside into the crisp night air and instinctively stretched Barbatos’ back, and was greeted with the sound of creaking metal.
----------------------------------------
As night turned to day a swarm of black flares were fired off by the void shard soldiers.
Emb could only stare as the black smoke arced into the sky and slowly burnt out. Deek however, was much more spirited in his response.
“FUCK!”
Everything was silent for what felt like hours. The extremely faint sound of battle had gone quiet, instead replaced by howling winds that swept from the far-off ocean. Deek beckoned for Emb to get on Barbatos, extending its straight arm. Emb scurried up the arm with held breath. Her form was backlit by the extreme, harsh light of black flare spells. While the black flares simply left dark smoke illuminated by a white light, black flare spells left a glow that seemed to suck all other light into itself yet still leave its impression upon the eye.
Deek dropped his jaw, and Emb clutched at her head.
“So this is it eh?” Deek chuckled slightly and buried his head in his hands.
“The glove’s off, so let’s get this thing to where it’s needed.” Emb pointed towards their destination.
“Hold on, I’m going to turn off primary limiters so we can go as fast as possible.” Deek began flipping various switches behind the monitors in Barbatos’ cockpit and tapping at his screens.
“Whatever you need to do, Deek.”
Deek grimaced as he felt whatever consciousness that lived in Barbatos stir, driving itself further into his mind. He felt a slight wetness around his nose, and without checking assumed it was blood. Whatever Barbatos was doing, his body rejected. Ignoring the disturbing train of thought, Deek gripped the controls until his knuckles turned white, and boosted forwards.
Within seconds Barbatos had gotten to its top speed, or at least as fast as it could go without causing Deek to become comatose. Salt and earth churned in Barbatos’ wake, and Deek could no longer see clearly the rushing landscape. He heard Emb squeak in terror as the wind resistance tore at her body.
With every millisecond that passed the din of battle grew louder and louder. Far off wails became earth-shattering screams as voidtech artillery fired, and distant sounds like glass shattering became waves of cacophony as mages cast grand spells. Also heard were the inevitable cries of men and women shot and crippled. Amongst it all were strange noises that scratched the conscious mind and ripped into the unconscious.
Looking up from the centremost monitor, Deek saw that they had already reached the trenches, and in the distance he could see the bunker. In but one hour total war had consumed the previously peaceful front. Against normal magics, the ancient trench walls had held, but something new had caused vast rents in the land. In the distance, Deek saw a single mage stand ahead of the lines, and with a grimace the caster sent out a sickly cyan tendril that whipped against the trenches. The obvious gestures that were used in whatever strange casting style the man used gave everyone on the void shard side enough time to avoid the deadly tentacle.
Skidding to a halt (and making Emb slam into Barbatos’ head), Deek charged directly towards the back of the bunker, and lept over into the courtyard. Landing the heavy cataphract caused the whole structure to shake and groan, and several of the soldiers nearby yelped numerous expletives at the sight.
Emb gracefully jumped off Barbatos while Deek was trying to figure out which switch opened the cockpit. Eventually he found it, and the opened hatch revealed an army of engineers, two of which jumped into the cockpit to remove Deek.
“Move your head a bit, either direction works,” one engineer said as they typed at a screen and pulled out a connected plug.
“I can’t, there’s a needle connected to my skull.”
“It’s attached to a cable, move your head down and out, should pop out just fine,” the second engineer commented while running through several diagnostic checks on another tablet.
Deek tried moving his head, and found the spine connecting his Fluke to the mech popped out of the seat while still remaining in his Fluke.
“Shit, that’s neat,” Deek quietly mumbled to himself, then a bit louder added, “why do I need you guys to detach me from Barbatos?”
The first mechanic had hooked his tablet to a small panel behind where Deek’s head was sitting a moment ago, and replied, “it’s so you don’t have your mind stuck in the mech. You need to be properly disconnected.”
“I see…” Deek shivered at the thought.
The second engineer piped up.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Good to go, minimal damage to the arm’s plating and motors. We should hook up the other one soon.”
“Agreed, let’s get you out of here.” The first engineer pulled out their tablet, and Deek found the connecting spine retract from his Fluke. He stood up and stretched, and jumped down onto the courtyard floor.
Deek ran over to where Emb, who was sitting on a fold-up chair. She was drinking chocolate milk with added mana stimulants and an energy bar.
“Here, catch,” she threw Deek a milk bottle and an energy bar. He sat down on the floor next to Emb.
“We finally made it and now we have a full blown conflict going on. Fuck me.” Deek sighed.
“Luckily for us, there’s only one mage that’s causing the trouble. Kill him and the other magic users should be easy to neutralize.”
“The trick is killing him though right?” Deek took a long sip of his chocolate milk. Instead of mana stimulants his was loaded with temporary Endurance boosters that increased his resilience and stamina.
“Yup. You saw those tendrils right? Well so far no-one has a fucking clue how he’s doing it. There’s no spent mana release either, so the fuck is somehow casting that without using mana. Earlier on he was apparently causing fireballs and shit using the same method.”
“Some hidden class or something?”
“Maybe. Allegedly he’s a merc or something so we have no records on him.” Emb crunched into her energy bar, causing the brittle food to let out an unappetizing snap.
The two ate in silence until the central elevator opened up, revealing Barbatos’ arm. Unlike the relatively plain construction of Barbatos’ original limb, the new one was a bright crimson in colouration and looked to be made of dozens of overlapping crystals. The fingers were like talons and the elbow had a large spike coming from it, seamlessly blending into the forearm of the crystalline limb.
“No fucking way, Emb are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Deek dropped his milk and ran over to the cataphract.
“Is that… Sanguine? Where the fuck did they get that much?” Emb began running towards Barbatos as well.
When Emb got to Barbatos, Deek had already hopped into the cockpit and was, although Emb couldn't see it, flipping various switches in preparation for melding his mind with the machine's. A large crane had been wheeled over to the new arm and a legion of engineers were trying to connect the various cables to Barbatos.
The machine jolted as Deek successfully connected, and he switched the audio options back to loudspeakers, though he turned the sound down slightly.
“Everything's all clear in here. You should be able to connect the arm without any issues.”
When Deek finished speaking, the engineers had all of the cables linked up, and was slowly moving the arm into its socket.
“Okay, preparing for connection in 3… 2… 1… LINK!”
A groaning noise resounded as the crystalline clicked into place, and for a split second the speakers of Barbatos flared to life with an unbearable scream, before Deek managed to switch the audio settings to radio. Emb clutched her ears as Deek's wails echoed through her skull.
“You alright in there?” one of the mechanics inquired, staring at where Deek would be sitting in the cockpit.
“Just fine thanks,” Deek said before realizing his audio output was only on radio frequencies. Emb heard him grumbling as he swapped back to loudspeakers once more. “I’m fine. That really hurt, the fuck is this thing?”
Barbatos stood up and Deek flexed the new crystalline arm. It seemed to operate even smoother than the original arm, flexing and moving in almost perfect synchronicity with Deek’s motions in the cockpit.
The head mechanic spoke up, “it’s made of specially tempered Sanguine. Not only will work better than the other one in terms of strength and latency, but the Sanguine’s been made to be near immune to magic. Mana should wash against it like waves on a rock.”
“Neat. Actually, I can feel some sort of cavity in my arm. It feels weird.” Deek punched the air with a clawed fist, causing the air to swirl around the ridiculous force of the blow.
“The palm of the hand has a projector that releases more of the small mana-immune Sanguine crystals. Just be aware it consumes Sanguine and power like a mother-fucker. It also won’t protect against anything stronger than say an Empowered fireball.”
“So it’s like a broader shield for protecting smaller targets?”
“Exactly.” The mechanic turned to the rest of the crew. “Okay everyone, pack everything up. We’re needed to clean up the-”
Deek let out a guttural warning cry as he saw a massive tendril of cyan light race towards the bunker. It whipped back and forth, causing explosions of salt and mud with every metre and the air recoiled from its presence. Emb too turned to look at the speeding bolt of magic and activated all of her mobility skills, trying to jump behind Barbatos.
Deek turned to face the tentacle of mana and assumed a wide stance with his new arm held up towards the tendril. He clutched the arm with his other to stabilize it and with a click of a button began to project the field of nullifying crystals.
In a split second the tendril met the shield of crystal. And shattered it.
Cyan energy whipped all around Barbatos, scarring the stony bunker and stripping any bones of its flesh. The crystal barrier broke into a red dust storm, while the arm projecting it shattered into pieces. Metal buckled and Sunblood splattered the courtyard. The blood vessels in Deek’s own arm strained the surface of his skin and burst. Deek howled an unearthly scream and began biting into his other arm to muffle his cries. Only when he tasted more blood did he let go.
Breathing shakily he looked around the courtyard, seeing only devastation and crackling bolts of cyan energy that remained after the crippling blow.
“EMB! EMB WHERE ARE YOU?!” Deek’s voice was choked with tears as he desperately looked around for any sign of Emb.
It was only when he looked down that he found the answer. Against the pale grey voidstone plating of Barbatos’ legs, Embs bright red blood was incredibly conspicuous. It wasn’t the magic attack that killed her however, but instead the force generated from Deek’s deflection. With her already impressive speed that had been built up, the gust of pure kinetic energy had pushed her against Barbatos’ legs with enough force to crack the plating.
Deek could only let out choked cries. But through his tears he saw something in Barbatos’ visual feed. The mage, standing in the middle of the battlefield. His dead expression belied no hatred, merely the feeling of someone squishing a bug. Deek roared in rage and jerked forward as he felt something enter his mind from the intelligence inside the cataphract.
Foreign feelings of hatred and joy swirled together in Deek’s mind. Hatred, for the prey that dared to raise its hand against the hunter. Joy, at finding new prey after centuries of dormancy. Deek felt more emotions rush into him, and he saw in a reflection on a screen in the corner of the cockpit that his right eye had filled with a golden light.
Soon the emotions turned to words, and the words were simple:
“Kill... Kill... KILL. KILL ALL MAGES! PURGE THE GHOSTS FROM OUR SIGHTS!”
The rising tsunami of Barbatos’ emotions flowed through Deek freely. With his right eye now fully golden, Deek smiled.
“Hey Barbatos. Give me everything you can! Hold nothing back!” With those words he flipped off all of the limiters, and saw his left eye fill with blood. With a cough of gore, Deek grasped his cataphract’s controls and charged towards the enemy caster.
In an instance his crippled arm rushed out to grab the now useless control tendril that used to command the Sanguine arm. Instead, as soon as his hand grasped the handgrip Deek felt Barbatos’ spinal spur detach and began whipping around Barbatos like a spiked tail. Apparently the cable that connected the spur to the cataphract was in fact mechanical muscle, adamantine filaments laced with Sunblood veins that had enough strength to rip apart a golem in milliseconds.
Seeing several enemy knights charging towards him, lances outstretched, Deek willed Barbatos to jump and allow his tail to shred them to pieces. The cataphract almost gleefully complied, and soon the spur snaked through the air and pierced through one knight, slamming her into the other. With a twist Deek pulled the spur out and beheaded the other knight. In a flash Deek dodged to the side as a bolt of cyan burst across the battlefield towards him. An opportunistic soldier tried to take advantage of Deek’s momentary imbalance, however Deek reorientated himself by sticking the spine into the ground and swinging himself upright. Using the newly found momentum, Deek twisted to grasp the soldier in his clawed hand, and threw the hapless man towards the tentacle-summoning mage. A quick burst of energy turned the man into chunks.
Grimacing, Deek continued his one-man charge with Barbatos’ predatory consciousness egging him on. With every whip crack of Deek’s tail, another head rolled and with every twist of his hands, the mage caused another rent in the landscape. Even moving at top speed, the battlefield was difficult to navigate and needing to dodge the destructive bolts cost Deek time. Barbatos groaned with the strain, and Deek bled more with every movement, but the two had become a whirlwind of fury that would drag their prey into the depths of hell.
After ducking another whipping tendril of energy, Deek stopped to pause. He was breathing heavily, blood dripping from all of his orifices. From the outside, Barbatos appeared hunched over in a predatory stance, head hanging low as if it was processing its anger. All of the soldiers had stopped fighting, jaws dropped in awe of a true demon. With a great groaning noise, Barbatos’ bearded jaw began to open, ripping off hidden plates and restraints. The silence of the temporary ceasefire was replaced with a pure scream of hatred. Deek’s anger caused him to begin crying, however in the recesses of his mind he wondered if this hatred was truly his own.
In response to this display, the hunted mage held his hands in a praying position with only his index and middle finger outstretched. In between the fingers was a small chain that contained a tiny censer. With eyes closed in concentration, the mage began casting a spell. In dead silence he focused, and the intricate mana circuits on his arms began glowing with a blue radiance that scorched the ground around him. To the soldiers around him, all that was audible was a deep drumbeat that grew louder with each second. The glowing on his arm too grew brighter and brighter, and the focused expression on the prey-mage’s face was replaced with one of pain. With a mighty roar of agony the mage’s left arm exploded into irradiated chunks of magic. However, as that happened tentacles of light rose from the ground, and the mage threw open his arm with a clawed hand, veins and arteries close to bursting with the raw energy flowing through his skin. His eyes had become filled with radiance, and soon larger tentacles began rising all across the battlefield.
Deek saw the tendrils rising and in a single burst of Barbatos’ thrusters he charged towards his prey, clawed arm outstretched and tail raised to strike. Mud was evaporated under thruster and tendril alike, until Deek was but a hundred metres away from the mage.
With a twisted raised arm the mage threw forth a writhing lance of a dozen tentacles. Too fast for even Barbatos to dodge. Deek twisted Barbatos’ torso in a desperate bid to avoid death, yet still the beam shredded through the cockpit and Deek’s lower half. Barbatos crashed into the mud on its side.
“Uhhh…” Deek groaned, hoping that he had woken up in a field hospital. Instead all he saw was the battlefield on its side. He was still in Barbatos, and lacking a lower half. Deek couldn’t speak, or even scream as he felt his viscera fall out onto the mud. The only thing keeping him suspended off the ground, and still conscious, was his Fluke. Looking down he saw that hovering above his heart was a glowing golden orb filled with milky white fluid, which slowly drained with each second.
Painfully looking up towards where Barbatos’ head would be, Deek thanked whatever power lived in the ancient machine. Turning his focus towards the battlefield, Deek would’ve recoiled in pure horror at what was happening, if he could’ve moved. The mage had become shrouded in a dome of tentacles, and thousands of the tendrils had sprouted from the mud and were aggressively seeking out life, regardless of allegiance. Deek watched a magic shard soldier get stabbed by the construct of cyan light. But instead of falling over, the corpse continued moving with unnatural movements. The soldier screamed, a horrifying sound that could only be made by one in true despair. After only a second of wailing the soldier’s mouth closed and the body shook before continuing its stilted walking.
Seeing that the orb was nearly out of fluid, Deek channeled all of his remaining strength to say one last thing:
“Bar...ba...tos. Don’t,” Deek hacked up more gore, “let me die… like… that. Plea-” Deek coughed up more blood, and the golden orb shattered. Life left him soon after.
Despite this a tendril rushed towards the fallen pilot, yet before it could reach him a golden figure with broad wings and a helmet-covered head grasped the tentacle. In one move it crushed the construct with a clawed fist and let out one final cry.