* * *
Golems in the Empire of Ages were loved, used, and even respected by those who provided these units for armies, guards, aristocratic squads, or even individual guilds with trading houses. It was hard not to like a thing that could replace the average fifty men, taking the blows of enemy charms and arrows while protecting the more vulnerable meat bags from those blows. The Empire of Ages knew a lot about golem-building, both creating its stuff and buying the mechanics of the Undermountain Kingdom, always having at its disposal a wide range of extremely fanciful, expensive to maintain, difficult to repair, but crushing in terms of combat giants.
Alas, there were relatively few such golems in Eternal. The place of such creations, be they solid-stone or mechanical, based on temple magic or classical magic, has always been near the borders of the state. That's where they belong because fast delivery of golems from the center of the empire is simply impossible without investing a crazy effort. The power of the golem in the ability to tear as paper infantry formation, sending ordinary soldiers, junior officers, grassroots mages, or even near-elite units to the other side of the world. Strong, unique, and really developed warriors or sorcerers are not afraid of the golem, and ten golems, too. At most, they will retreat.
There is a simple truth to this. There is nothing for a golem to do in a capital city that is protected from the arrival of a regular army. There is simply no place to use it because even if a group of mighty saboteurs breaks through to the heart of the empire, which sometimes happens, they will be opposed by the same mighty imperials, and by the time the sluggish constructs are brought to the end, everything will be over.
One way or another.
Nevertheless, there were a few golem squads in the capital, mostly from those belonging to non-army structures. For example, the main temple of the Ascended Warrior was guarded by two dozen silent marble statues at once, animated by the divine Miracle. At any moment, they could come down from their pedestals, stone fists, swords, or hammers, proving the power of their creator, because not for nothing, they say that inside each of them sleeps the soul of the adept marked by the Warrior. The other smaller temples also had such defenders, but in smaller numbers and of lower quality.
Then again, there were the dwarves, who always equipped their Embassies or Craftsmen's Quarters as if they were ready to withstand a siege and not an allied city but an enemy camp. A healthy paranoia, which they indulged, and they were always trying to forbid them to indulge. If, for some reason, they decided to stab them in the back during some conflict. But they tolerated it, of course, even though they warned against betrayal in every possible way, most often successfully.
The only mechanized brigade of heavy golems stationed in the capital was number sixteen and was not so much a military unit as a repair shop with a touch of training camp. A good portion of the shortlings living within the walls of the Eternal worked here, helping, repairing, and even teaching. Knowledge, of course, was not given to everyone, but the methods of the dwarven Mechanists and Pilots were never particularly secret. These secrets of skill are very much customized to the race, without which it is difficult to master them even halfway. The dwarves preferred to recruit those brilliant, who could surpass or at least match the dwarves on this field, lest one day, such a briliant should come to the tip of the army storming the Undermauntin. Sometimes, they even managed to get ahead of Imperial intelligence.
In any case, despite the number of available vehicles, both controlled and manned, it was at least problematic to use them against the guests from Hell. Some had been dismantled, some had already served their time and were good only for parts or meltdowns, and some existed only on paper, but in reality, they were quietly sold under the counter. It is quite likely that it was sold to one of the undercover cultists - it was very timely and successful to sell the last very large batch right before it started.
Right now, Todbum of House Tsvrgpdk, nicknamed One Brow by his kin and people alike, did not even have the strength to curse his greed, so busy was he with the most fascinating task possible - to survive. His personal, moving with him from one place of service to another, walking armor of the Toughness Crusher class worked on the wear and tear of all parts, without mercy to the delicate structure of the alchemical propulsion and fragile core. Liquid flame, almost a material essence, albeit diluted with petroleum additives, poured from the flamethrower, stamped lead balls the size of hen's eggs by the materializers in the cartridges to the two automatic lead-gun turrets on his shoulders, but the charges to the main gun, replacing the left arm, had to be saved. They were pure cold steel with thick mithril plating and runic treatment - even the legendary beast had its teeth and brains knocked out by such shells. The devils were fidgety creatures, taking skill and leveling any damage by paying with other people's souls, but even they had to respect the Crusher and the One Brow sitting in it.
Two elite creatures, four huge piles of possessed flesh - the tactical crystal lens of clairvoyance called them some sort of Sowers, but to the straightforward dwarf, they remained under the name of Walking Asses - resembling asses walking on two fat thighs, and one large crystal golem, not otherwise taken from converted mortals, had fallen to the day's portable cannon fire. And then there were the two legendary creatures that had taken a couple of hits each and were now staying away, waiting for Todbum to run out of steam as his allies did. The fleur has little effect on the fighters in the golems, dropping, weakening, and being shielded by the glow of the runes slowly melting from overheating. It is possible to mess with their heads, which creatures in practice proved, forcing them to shoot into their comrades or just fall out of the battle, but a certain protection had everyone.
The Pilots...
If he had known that he would call those sad clowns who were standing next to him, watching his back Pilots, he would have died on his beard! Except for his relatives, who were also not the luminaries of talent, himself, and a couple of talents who came here by chance, no one could control the mechanism of the golem armor properly.
But he acknowledged it, he acknowledged it, and paid tribute, if not to their skill, then to their willingness to fight and die, even without a chance of victory, even without hope of rescue. The news that came from the Palace was disappointing, claiming that the entire mechanical brigade had been cut off from the Allied forces and that there was nowhere to wait for help because it would be more cost-effective to send it to other places where it was needed more. They could only wish them luck and ask them to hold out as long as possible.
And they held on.
The old Hildra, a fat, squabbling old woman with the face of an ugly ogre, boorish and insolent, stood beside him, proving to Zvrgpdk that the Broken Kirk had lost its former influence to the point of giving even women the right to combat classes, but that their valor remained the same. Saddling a reinforced Disrupter, hidden in the iron gut of a tall machine taller than even his own, armed with a dozen battle wands of various orientations, the vile bitch stood behind Todbum's back, showering the attacking ranks with so much evil magic that there wasn't even any rot left of the average abomination after the hits.
A little behind them stood a formation of classical Colossuses, supported by unmanned Giant drones guided by their chasers, under the command of Bark of the Earth Shiver, a young upstart who had grown up under the Sun, not in the Undermountin, a total pervert who drank beer without a foam cap and cure hungover with charms! And look at you, a sucker whose beard doesn't even wrap around his belly a couple of times. He holds the line in his Herald, shuffles reinforcing mechanoauras like a cheat's deck, and doesn't let the creatures break the already few defenders. Piloted golems and even guided golems are very few, even though it is possible to add stone golems, human-made, also serviced on their base.
Less than sixty working machines, of which there were now just over a quarter of a hundred. It's mostly standard Colossus, albeit with different types of armaments. That's serious power, capable of not conquering a small kingdom but pinching the borders and ravaging a couple of major cities. Todboom himself in his Crusher, a Hildras Disrupter that has already lost some of its wand armor, a more or less intact Herald whose pilot is about to die of a cerebral hemorrhage, two barely rebuilt and not really debugged Tearers... Too few, especially against devils who specialize in ranged combat and tricky tricks. Too few.
True, there is another, shall we say, nuance.
"Wah, listen here, I your house garden trampled, I your Hell celibate introduced, I your mama without burqa seen, I your papa in burqa seen, come here, jackal's turd!" How much Todbum regretted at this moment that the first thing he did was not to remove its powerful stereo transmission systems from the personalized Hammer of the Empire sent for repairs, belonging to Uraz Kraz-Bamg himself, how much he regretted. "You fucked me, didn't you? I'll fuck you myself with this hammer, swalota, vanyushchee shit, rotten, moldy, asshole!"
A human couldn't use this piloted golem, just couldn't, and that's it. Personal binding to a completely different pilot, and dwarf, the lack of half of the necessary titles and class skills, which have nothing to replace and, in the end, the banal size of the pilot cabin! Honorable Uraz, even among low dwarves, was very low and puny, which forced him to seek a better life away from the House that did not accept the dwarf. The House had three hundred times regretted all its deeds that drove this talent out of the walls of the House, but they could not do anything about it.
Uraz became famous as one of the best Pilots in the world, having become an honored Hero years ago, one of those for whom the Emperor of the Ages commissioned a personal mechanical walking golem of the Hammer of the Empire class. Sitting in this behemoth, Uraz had more than once created such horror on the battlefield that his name was cursed in Alishan with enviable regularity. It did not add to the health of the already slim in body but mighty in spirit dwarf.
If it were the same Hero in the small cabin of the Hammer, it would not be mortals who would have to defend themselves now, but devils, for two legendary creatures the character of countless songs of praise, if not trampled down like cockroaches, would have forced to flee faster than a squeal and not return without reinforcements. Uraz Kraz-Bamg had recently traveled to the Undermountin Kingdom at their personal invitation, only to reject again the offer to return to the bosom of the waiting mountains. His vindictiveness was as worthy of legend as his skill. His personal war machine had been sent here from the border for testing and adjustment, and just to keep it from standing on the border, within easy reach of many saboteurs. No, it is extremely difficult to damage even the Hammer of the Empire, any of the three existing ones, standing motionless and out of control, and it is even harder to do it unnoticed, but why risk it?
Now they're gonna give it to the creatures.
Well, not right away.
"One at a time, bitches, one at a time, I'll give you all shit to eat, I'll give you shit to drink, I'll give you shit for change!" All the forces of Mountain let the next blow destroy the sound modules. His head hurts, honestly. "I'll remember you all, I'll slaughter you all, I'll kill you, you rotten jackals, I swear!"
Yes, indeed, a man would not be able to control this gigantic masterpiece of mechanical art, but that was a normal man. And it was difficult to call Barai, this miscarriage of the border mountain auls, who had crawled out of his stinking shithole for no clear reason, normal even in a relatively adequate state.
Actually, the young, boorish, unfriendly, but still talented to the point of injustice man was brought to his, Todbum's, brigade by the dried wobblers from the Eyes, whose department this scarecrow was under. Apparently, he was an important witness and, at first, even a suspect in some high-profile case on the border or even beyond it. In general, their games with small principalities, kingdoms, free cities, and other republics, which only say they are sovereign, but in reality are clearly under the Empire's ass. It's a familiar picture, only that they couldn't accuse this guy but threw him overboard as a waste material. Not out of pity for his ruined life, we are not in an anecdote or a love story, so that in the Eyes there was a place for compassion, but thanks to the skills of this savage roughneck.
Terribly crippled, missing both legs at the knee and one arm at the elbow, his face scarred and partially scalped, one-eyed and almost deaf, forced to speak through a mechanical enchanted voice modulator, he was not a worker but a mockery. Todbum would have thrown the "advised" specialist into the cesspool where such stumps belonged if he had not revealed part of his Status to the high-level Brigadier. Even if the classes were ridiculous and did not pay off injuries and unreliability. But the level and the list of titles inspired respect - very slight respect - even for the wise dwarf.
T.N. You haven't forgotten Barai yet. From the interlude. And he survived the Stone.
Looking at this human turd through his favorite sensor monocle, Todbum noted a lot of potential and the fact that either this cretin had jumped into the alchemical crucible, where some of his flesh and the essences that defined that flesh had been sucked out of him, or he'd dived into a breach in the Mist, which was even worse. So he was even more of a cretin than he looked. But accepted, of course. Thanks to Eyes' insistence not to throw away potentially strong recruits, and simply because he didn't know about the character of that fucking bastard Highlander at the time!
"Aaaah, you disgraceful bitch, your mother was a female hamster, and your father smelled like elderberries!" The Beard of the First of the First, how loud that sound is, and also hissing and squeaking, because of the double-recording of the sound. "Your stupid face is uglier than my ass, and your ass is uglier than my brigadier!"
For that last phrase, Todbum promised, if he survived, to punch the bastard in the face before giving him a personal victory feast, as he had already saved a lot of lives. And even his physical injuries won't save him because he's got it to his liver and more, the bastard. But their bastard, beastly, and just absolutely scum, which, of course, infuriates and requires regular threats of physical violence, and even use it. But at such moments, this craziness plays to the advantage of the whole brigade and its Brigadier because this shit can't be frightened if it is not afraid of its reflection.
Barai couldn't get into the cockpit of the Hammer. He just couldn't squeeze in because there was enough room only for half a man. But there was only half a man left and the shittiest one at that, so he simply took off all his prosthetics, except for the voice one, managed to forge the access key somehow, and didn't break the golem's mechanics or himself against the defense. Yes, most of the golem's counter-control systems had been removed because, without the original pilot, it was hard to move it, let alone work on fixing it. But still, even with such indulgences, the ability to subdue the Hammer of the Empire at least partially without being bound to it.... that's a lot.
Todbum himself could do it, especially with the right preparations, the use of some of his amulets, the support of his own squad of mechanics, and God's help. Of all of the above, Barai had only a bottle of technical spirits, which did not kill him only thanks to the implant that had replaced half of his guts, but made the Highlander's already not-very-good accent unbearable. Todbum could do it, he could do it, but at the risk of killing himself with three chances against one for survival and success. Barai's chances were even lower, he was, after all, inferior to the Brigadier in everything, but he was lucky. Yes, lucky, very lucky.
"Do you expect me to die in here, bitch?" The grinding of the filters and sound baffles of the built-in speakers seemed to work as another source of shock. "I wasn't hired to die for this paycheck! I survived last year's calamity not to be eaten by a cunt on chicken legs, fuck you, bitch, fuck you, pig dog, fuck you, son of a tax collector, fuck you, [censored]!"
Yes, it was not the venerable Uraz the Exile, but it was still the Hammer of the Empire, even if it was used to barely a third of its potential, wasting resources and ammunition, wasting combat charges. And it was even more effective than the Brigadier because Todbum was in command, guiding the defense, directing the mechanics left in their workshops that right now were putting into battle more and more new controllable golems, and Barai was just killing. The armor and enchantments of the Hammer allowed him to ignore most of the fleur, preventing it from entering his mind, while the smaller part was calmly restrained by the madness that had seized the man and his stupidity - no brain, nothing to subdue.
The Hammer was even a little shorter than the faithful Crusher but almost twice as wide in the shoulders, reaching almost square proportions, and had a body made of an alloy of such price that the shavings taken from it could be sold almost by weight in gold. Yes, there is certainly not half of that weight of pure mithril, but only a little less. The combat effectiveness and strength of such a "body", created by dwarves for humans' mechanism, corresponded to its price, not to mention the fact that in addition to pure strength and resistance of the body were multi-layered and duplicated several times layers of runic scripts, there were personal generators of magical fields, there were embedded and fused into the body artifacts, among which even a couple of weak-weak, but legendary grade.
When attacking, the Hammer could fire astral beams of various types from its head, which was pressed deeply into the torso, and could hit with telekinetic battering rams launched from the palm of his hand, which could tear down fortress walls, could use a lone lead-shooter turret on his left shoulder, firing not simple iron. There was also a hammer, which gave this model its name for a reason - one of the three legendary artifacts, for the use of which the project of creating the Hammers of the Empire was once born.
The weapon, too heavy for anyone but giants or very tall ogres, required truly steel muscles to lift it. But in the hands of an amazingly fast, maneuverable, almost invulnerable golem, this steel brick opened to the full, simply tearing barriers, ghostly flesh, and any matter to shreds. The standard manned type golems prefer to make either cannon-wielding or unleash them against a deliberately weaker but very numerous opponent. A strong warrior for a golem is, more often than not, too impetuous, fast, and elusive, but that's for a standard golem.
The Hammer of the Empire, under the control of Uraz, could literally dance with his enemies, taking apart one-on-one the legendary planar creature that had been summoned, the Alishan-created corpse-monster, the orcish battle monster that had also earned its legendary status, and even the cursed Necrotitan of the Great Desert. Well, if you take the blessings off that one beforehand, disperse the cover group and the escort, and then set fire to its flanks a bit more. Barai, sitting in the golem actually stolen from the glorious Hero, was also dancing, though not the graceful flow of movements of an experienced swordsman, but the drunken mating dance of a lame goblin. But he did it quickly, very quickly, and no matter how bad his movements were, no matter how wrong his blows were, and no matter how stupidly the man used the legendary artifact, it all paid off. Because if the opponent doesn't have time or has no opportunity to defend himself, it doesn't matter how technically correct you are in smashing him on the stones of the sidewalk.
Charms, magic blows, and fleur techniques are simply sucked into the ever-brightening hull of the Hammer shining with red-hot metal. Artifact absorbers activated at full power suck any power out of the enemy attack at the speed with which a good beer flows on a weekend night. Barai tries to dampen them with tricks that have no auric or energetic manifestation - mental suggestion of the veridical type, memetic information, piercing super-fast spells, all the things that devils are so loathed to fight for. It's not as if their tricks don't work - the creatures have a lot of experience and skills, and a crippled psycho is no match for a pious Uraz to counteract them at will.
Every now and then, the golem freezes for a fraction of a second and makes a different movement than the pilot originally wanted. The cripple's mind fogs, dulls, calms, makes him forget about the battle, and immerses himself in his fantasies. Todbum knows what he's talking about because he's also tried to be taken in the same way, but where the dwarf is left to rely on level, titles, and a set of personal defenses, the rabid Highlander is saved by his machine, whose amulet systems seem to have short-circuited in the continuous rolling of cleansing effects. Considering the highly advanced Amuletist class and the quality of the amulets inside the Hammer, it was decent.
"Bitch, you ate it, asshole! I'm gonna run you over with an undersized gurney, you bastard!" This degenerate was best at amplifying the work of sound-transmitting amulet complexes, though it was not surprising. "I'll have you as a breeding sheep, a donkey, and a cow combined!"
Very fucking decent.
The machines stood firm, retreating not too hastily, snapping back regularly, and managing to almost nullify the losses in manned golems, occasionally exposing simple Goliaths to blows, losing some of their cover but retaining the core of their combat power. The creatures, the possessed constructs of oiled flesh, and the cultists, thinned by their combined efforts, found themselves in a situation where it was still possible to win quickly and decisively, but the victory would be catastrophic, worthy of the Beardless Plight or the assault on Stupid Pass. Having already lost a bit more than they had originally intended, the creatures turned to tactics of measured attrition and clever tricks designed to bring the score in their favor. Much to Todbum's delight, such positional warfare was almost the only scenario that allowed mortals to win, if not win, then lose handsomely.
The same mental defenses, the constant fire of multiple wands, lead shooters, atomizers, and other wonders of dwarven weaponry, made any number of weak flesh a mountain of corpses, be they ordinary creatures or stupefied townsfolk, forcing the stronger creatures to remember that they were not immortal on this day. They did remember keeping a respectful distance from the Disruptor's longest-range wands, marking their presence rather than actually fighting.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
This tactic also suited the endowed, allowing them to live longer, giving them faith and hope that someone would come, that the situation would change and they would survive this protracted day, that it was not yet time to say goodbye to each other in anticipation of eternal agony, perverse and obscene. This is not the death, not the outcome of defeat, which will be called noble, worthy, or at least not too shameful. And this hope grew with every second, with every moment, with every attack repulsed. In such a mood, the endowed ones drove away from themselves the thoughts that the creatures were only preparing something, that the devils were about to show their devilish nature and pull some trick for which they were not ready, against which the power of iron statues would not help.
They invented it.
They prepared it.
They showed it.
Todbum didn't know exactly how they did it, but he was inclined to use non-material creatures. That is, the devils are non-material, as most creatures are, but they recreate pseudo-material vessels for combat. This, for a second, is alphabetical knowledge for any educated reasonable person, as well as the fact that in a normal world, not in this horror-nightmare that Eternal has turned into, the creation of a body is a labor-intensive, long and complicated process. Here and now the devils were incarnated almost by pure desire alone, though any of them could change into a nonexistent form, even if only for a short time.
Intangible devils, always intangible, rather than having disposed of the vessel for a short time, having no body as such at all, being rather objectified fleur which did not even have a sonm, were not, strictly speaking, devils, just as golems were not human beings. Analogous to a reasonable closed field, only based on Vice, imperceptible, intangible, irresistible, but unable to exist outside the sonm, a considerable share of which it constantly occupies, as well as falling apart from any strong attack. Now, these essences found themselves used strictly to the point, traveling from below, under stone and earth, reaching to the unprotected rear.
Mechanics, assistants, servants, and just random passers-by became their victims. They did not become them at once, gradually and completely unnoticed. They were communicated with, instructed, and answered, but it was not enough. Without distracting themselves from the negotiations on the communication amulets, the charmed unfortunates very professionally opened all the available defense circuits, and even part of the non-piloted golems disconnected.
Then the crowd ran out to meet the attack wave, before the pilots, who had not yet realized the depth of the problem, had time to react. The elite creatures followed, much faster, more decisive, and suddenly too, and they were noticeably more numerous than they had seemed at first. Wands and cannons blasted in vain, automatic lead guns emptied their drums and disks, but their effectiveness was poor. Stabbed in the back, deprived of coordination and the blessings of Mechanics, losing communication and order in their ranks, they were not prey, but they could not stop the enemy.
Strange moans and enticing whispers poured into their ears, merging into a litany of Lust, hypnotizing them through their amulet transmitters, putting them into a submissive trance. Communications were cut off, almost all of them, but some of the pilots had been listening to these whispers for much longer, they had been whispered to them a little earlier. One of the Tearers suddenly attacked the other, and a couple of Colossuses also changed sides, the Chasers were pitting simple golems against golems that were still following the original directives.
They could no longer fight back. They could neither win nor survive, but they still had a chance to wash the enemy with their blood, to feed lead and flame to those who would later feast on their souls. It was at this moment, while the Sixteenth Mechanized Brigade still could, that two enemy Legends, of which one was a previously unfamiliar one that had come for reinforcements, struck while a third of them continued to dance around the embroiled Hammer.
A sexless clump of tentacle-like genitals and tentacle-like genitals emerged from above the battlefield, contemptuously ignoring several blows of battle wands from old Hildra, who had managed, thanks to Herald's enhanced sensors, to track the creature's appearance. The creature released a dozen captive souls, each of whom had once been a Technician, Mechanic, Guide, or someone of comparable class, and not weak, not at all. Only the non-combatants, subordinates, and submissives who ran outside screamed in a moan of endless bliss, and once they screamed, they began to melt like candle wax.
Their souls resonated with those used by the creature, amplifying the effect of the square attack, truly Legendary and worthy. The souls flared up, attracting each other or burning out, but still inside the devil's greedy womb were far more Machinists than it had spent on this strike. A blow that completely overran the unmanned giants, irrevocably disabled the defense systems and the few working automatic lead nest turrets, and disabled every last Colossus, leaving the pilots untouched.
Todbum instantly realized that the machines were only temporarily shut down, and a little later, when the pilots had been harassed and persuaded, they would be on the other side of this battle. Only the Colossus had been turned off by the charms, but the remaining higher-grade machines could do nothing. Here is the ugly bitch's Disruptor frozen, undamaged, and able to continue the fight, as an experienced mechanic can even now say, but Hildra herself, apparently, is already drooling lustfully inside the control section. Here folds in on itself a blazing Herald, to which has been applied some version of the gut blast, an extremely nasty and very difficult enchantment sharpened against golems.
Todbum should fight but he can't, as if something - whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper - makes you watch their debacle but not interfere until you've finished. The creature that had occupied Barai for so long jumps back, staring resentfully at the hands covered with terrible wounds from which streams of golden honey flow out. However, after blocking the blows inflicted by the legendary artifact with the Hammer's powers, there shouldn't have been any hands there. Nevertheless, the tall, only slightly shorter than the golem and unbearably alluring girl, as if molded from red and green pieces, swiftly removes even these ridiculous, as for such blows, wounds.
The other one, replacing one tired Legend, looks like a stretched man - long, like a bazaar jester painted in all the colors of the world, with a disproportionately stretched body and limbs, like really sun-heated rubber. The creature knots space itself, changing the vector of motion and gravity with indescribable ease, enveloping the Hammer of the Empire. Todbum can't know it, but this - whisper-whisper-whisper - seems to suggest the essence of what is happening. A space master, augmented by the souls of less fortunate masters of the same orientation, will simply pull the man inside out through a miniature wormhole so as not to waste energy destroying armor that will still serve them well when the man inside becomes obedient and lustful in equal measure.
Still, at the very last moment, in his fading consciousness, Todbum saw a reason for a slight smile. At least in something the creatures had failed, at least in something that horrible and unceasing whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper had been wrong... Instead of ending up in the hands of the stretching man, Barai only had time to wail:
"You, [censored]...."
The shriek quickly faded, drifting away, along with the golem, which soared upward and flew like a road stone after a boy's kick. The real Hammer of the Empire was flying away, and it was hard for One Brow to imagine what the creature was thinking when it tried to pull this stunt. There are so many rune scripts in there that complex spells of this type fail horribly, unlike more straightforward combat spells, requiring extremely complex recalculations, or knowledge of how exactly to act against such defenses.
The Barai-piloted golem was flying, leaving pieces of hull, having lost one of its arms cut off by the spatial shift, and the tired dwarf, closing his eyes, saying goodbye to his life, soul, and honor, caught himself thinking that he was truly glad not to hear those foul cries at last. The madly laughing Legend had also teleported somewhere, either in pursuit of his escaped prey or on some business, but it didn't bother the fallen warrior anymore. He was happy and remained happy for some time while he, rapidly getting better, thinning and growing tits Hildra and the rest of the survivors and pilots who had not managed to kill themselves were laid out and fucked right on the hulls of their golems.
He personally got some disgusting hybrid of the female and male body, as if possessing all the characteristics of both sexes, and Todbum even tried to resist but could not move a single finger, except the one that he did not want to move, but quickly wanted to.
Half an hour later, he was already driving his machine and the rest of the crew where he had been told to go, only he didn't look like an old dwarf anymore. Mutated, having grown several sets of genitals in the most unexpected places that allowed him to have sex with himself while driving the golem, now bloated and occupying the entire cabin, this lump of distorted flesh thought of nothing and remembered nothing.
* * *
"Stupid, lazy, and ugly barbarian!" A woman armed with a clip and a magnificently enchanted crossbow, beautiful in appearance, of a difficult fate, and of a very bad character, shouts through the sounds of the massacre in progress. "I was only with you to get into your bosses' pockets! And as a lover, you're not very good either!"
The words are the kind of words that hurt a man's pride more than a kick in the balls, especially if they are covered by an armored codpiece with a cushioning rune on the inside. Meticulously sent arrows with the effect of armor-piercing and additional damage by breaking the metal rod when the bolt is already inside someone's wound, hit even harder, just not on the one for whom the hurtful words were spoken. Only the most stupid and weak devils could be killed with such weapons, literally having neither normal defense nor survivability. On the other hand, it was possible to kill at least someone because there were too many targets, and I didn't want to die. This way, at least if you didn't kill them, you could make them hide their bodies behind walls, trees, or just details of the terrain.
"A horny capital bitch who thinks she's a queen. Fuck." A man dressed in a set of heavy armor, assembled from several separate sets, and still barefoot on one foot and forgetting to put on his armor does not hesitate to respond, and he can give out even more claims to the lady of his heart than she gave him. "Why should I strain with you in bed? You will do everything for me, and so, two-faced bitch! Or did you think I didn't know about your class? I was sent to you with Ser Droggie's permission to find out who your employer is. And all they fed you were lies, you insatiable cunt!"
The girl, or, to be honest, the not-so-young woman who looked like an innocent seventeen-year-old flower thanks to alchemy, choked on her indignation, which was thickly mixed with the hurt professional pride of the not-so-subtle Seductress. If it weren't for the overall situation, she wouldn't have been too lazy to aim her crossbow at an unwilling ally who, like herself, had been yanked right out of bed by the invading devils. A common bed, where she had already successfully completed the hypnotic trance and was about to move on to the most interesting part - getting compromising information about one of the inconveniences to her master Lords.
"I'll do it myself?" From the cry, absolutely identical in intonation to that of a harbor whore, who decided not to pay, much more corresponding to her real age and character, the panes in the windows of the cozy cottage-gazebo would shake, if they were still intact at this point. "You don't know shit about my class, you foul-smelling sheepfucker! You fucking told me everything three times, you little fucking woodpecker, or did you fucking think I was messing with you, huh?"
The small estate, consisting of a dozen small houses of seclusion, was used especially for the meetings of lovers who did not want to advertise their relationship. It was here that the couple, as well as the rest of the vacationers, were caught by a problem common to all the city's vested interests, and so suddenly that both of them did not even have time to get dressed. If they had not been retreated here at once by half a hundred guards, as well as the retinue of a high-ranking nobleman and a team of adventurers, among whom was a surprisingly strong Hydromancer, they would have quickly found themselves in an unenviable fate. On the other hand, if so many forces had not been drawn here to a convenient point for defense, which equally strengthened both druids and watermen, there would have been fewer enemies.
"Am! Ne! Si! Acs!" Each syllable was followed by the blow of a simple club, more like a rhizome plucked from the ground, almost completely devoid of any treatment, but still, an artifact of a rare rank approaching the epic rank while the man's face was one of genuinely happy and amused gloating. "I was cleaning my memory, bitch, and then I had a guest mentalist put false memories on me just so you'd listen, you fucking bitch! What, you think you're smarter than everybody else, asshole? So yeah, I was just relaxing and enjoying an expensive whore for next to nothing, and I got a bonus for it! But you worked hard, you worked all your holes, you cunt!"
With their backs pressed against the lake, on the opposite side of which was the city's largest park, more like a small hunting ground, the defenders have engaged in a tight positional meat grinder, eager to buy themselves some time. The enemy troops aren't eager to attack either, though they are stronger overall. The battle here is frankly out-of-state. No one needs it, and the creatures simply have no advantage in a crushing victory, nor do they have the strength for it. All the elite are now elsewhere, busy holding important positions and knocking out those who might interfere with the overall plan.
"You stupid scum, he enjoyed it!" Another attack had died down, so the two quarreling lovers were paying more attention to each other than to the defense, which was unprofessional and dangerous, but there was no one to say so because, in the heat of the quarrel, the two were somewhat out of formation. "I only pleasured you for the first few nights, you rotten degenerate, until the Attention Net was complete, and then I just had you eating shit, bitch! You're a little smarter when you're fucking gagged, you know what I mean, asshole? Enjoying it, huh?"
If it hadn't been for the crossbow-wielding cultists who had approached them again, forcing them both to huddle in the ruins of the retreat they had rented, a short and bloody fight would have broken out between the two lovebirds. Either the enraged warrior would crush his opponent despite all attempts at resistance, or the trigger network would work despite the frenzy of battle, after which the duplicitous agent would plunge a dagger into the neck of the powerless object of her work. Neither of them had any sympathy for each other, only a sincere desire to squeeze each other by the throat.
"We're all going to die here." Issued a tired and devastated Seductress, firing all available bolts and barely overpowering another wave of fleur, which, without the support of the Benefics focusing on the largest groups of defenders, was even more dangerous than usual. "And I, bitch, will die beside you. That's the worst doom I can think of."
"I can give you a hint." The mighty barbarian from the foothills of the northern limits, a two-meter lump of anger and hatred, is also tired, also barely murmuring, barely forcing himself to move his lips lest he falls asleep right there, to the lulling murmur of viscous promises. "You want it alphabetized?"
Their bodies obeyed worse and worse, and they realized that it was not just fatigue but something worse, but they had neither the strength to react nor the desire taken away by the devil's trick. The creature emerges from invisibility gradually, as if with difficulty squeezing into reality from somewhere far away, towering over the couple in all its glory. The slender and fragile frame seemed to be genderless, yet it had that soft appeal that only the most exquisite of courtesans and devils possess. Thin arms, thin legs, thin torso, faceless head with one large eye where a man's nose should be.
The creature had come here, chosen a position not yet visible to the regrouping mercenaries and guards yet suitable for its attack. Here, it can prepare a strike, direct it, coordinate the small units of cultists and ordinary devils, and crush the already tired endowed ones. The creature is strong, dangerous, and falls under the concept of elite, but it is already tired, having wasted its strength in previous battles, in which it managed to win unconditionally. The creature sees no reason to go up against these scraps of defensive forces, is not going to take any risks, and does not mind replenishing some of its lost resources.
The two people lying before her, deprived of even the possibility of fear, reduced to mere observers, would be a breath of fresh air, two small lights in the greedy hands of their molester. Briontia Mardo, a rather famous mercenary, taking on various subtle and soft tasks, acting under the auspices of several noble families and a couple of high-ranking agents of the Eyes at once, but loyal to herself alone. Bordar Gall, also a mercenary, but long since settled down, now working not for the Imperial Lords as he used to show the world but for one of the high, but not the highest, members of the Keep and Seal Foundation. It was an interstate association of power-hungry, unscrupulous bastards and self-sacrificing enthusiasts alike, formed out of the Empire of Ages, but now it was an organization that searched for and preserved dangerous artifacts and cursed relics.
Not combat, but precisely dangerous, unpredictable, evil, and simply not applicable in any normal circumstances. The Foundation was famous for its pompous and overblown desire for secrecy, despite which almost every dog knew about them, the presence of patronage among the upper echelons of power, who also did not like to deal with various curses themselves, as well as a passionate love for the use of live lockpicks, recruited from prison scum, disenfranchised peasant and other low people. Enthusiasts, of course, but they are recognized masters in their ability to work with cursed areas, as well as in the ways of cleansing artifacts of high value from various abominations.
The creature literally absorbed all this knowledge and sucked it into its single eye, never ceasing to influence the paralyzed people, to send telepathic messages to its charges, to prepare another powerful blow, and to savor what it wanted to do to these two. Maybe it was too early to put them into the sonm, for it could still nurture them into something better, more complete? Oh, and the knowledge in the man's head, no matter how much it was mopped up by potions and magic, was also very much to be desired. Little things and unhelpful nuances, but it was the kind of little things that made up the kind of agency work that had allowed Hell to put roots deep into the hoards of curse gatherers on several occasions in the past. The only pity was that they were other devils from other domains, and the mortals themselves, thanks to the disjointed and cellular structure of their organization, managed to discard the converted parts of themselves each time, starting to rebuild almost from scratch.
"That's it. We'll finish like dogs." Indifferently and hollowly summarizing the outcome of her life, Briontia leans against her enemy's shoulder simply because she desperately wishes there was someone around at this moment. "Should we pray?"
"To whom?" Equally indifferent and tiredly specifies her enemy, just as unwilling to leave alone, though he realized that no one would let them just take and die, not devils. "There were five priests over there. But they didn't do any good. They didn't give even the weakest blessings. They just yelled prayers."
"At least to someone." The eyes open less and less, the speech becomes more and more muffled, and the strength less and less. "If they save us, I'll even marry you, you stupid asshole."
"At least there's some good news." Not even a whisper anymore, but a wheeze overcoming his shutting down mind. "We're not going to be saved."
Bordar promised himself he would marry anyone, even that two-faced bitch, if he could get out of here, or at least live another day, live for himself, not for what they would be made into later. They were both willing to promise, swear to be faithful and loving, to take any vows or asceticism, as long as it didn't end this way.
The lights dance around the creature's motionless statue, attracting the eyes and taking the hearts of those who look at them. The creature casts spells, and the souls it captures also cast those spells, creating a psionic field of monstrous power capable of safely shutting off the minds of at least half of those desperate fools who still hope to fight it. They've taken cover with a wall of water, trees distorted by the druid's wrath, a few barriers, and constantly renewing their purifying boons, but once they've gotten the hang of leveling the fleur, they've forgotten about the rest of the effects. Simple and reliable material enchantments would shut them out, but mental power had no physical manifestation and could not be stopped with the means at hand. Oh, they could survive that, but they would have to be prepared for the blow, and the devil had used only the most primitive elemental charms and a fleur so that the use of his strongest soul and a trio of worse ones would be sudden and unrepeatable. Of all the creature's treasures, after all the battles of this too-long day, only the flame of the mighty subterranean mentalist's essence remained intact, unburned by his lord's will.
Ten beats of the heart.
"Goodbye, barbarian. One last word, one last confession. "I hate you."
Five beats of the heart.
"Goodbye, bitch." Last truth, last will. "I hate you."
Three beats of the heart.
The creature is focused, expending all the concentration available to itself, transferring all the available processes to the souls in reserve, but the reserve is not enough. The creature is covered by its subordinates while it is defenseless, covered by those willing to sacrifice themselves and take on its wounds. From either side of the world, from underground, by teleportation or otherwise, the devil would have been warned in time, but the blow comes from above. It wasn't that they weren't expecting a strike from there. It was just that there was nothing and no one to block that direction for the tattered cultists and common flesh.
"...aaaaaaaaa!"
The faulty but very loud stereo system, set on afterburner, could, even without other factors, deafen or concuss a person in the vicinity, but the trouble was different. The material from which the Hammer of the Empire of the Honorable Uraz was made, in addition to dozens of other properties, was capable of muffling intuitive and predictive abilities. In battle, this was a great help, for the sake of which many rare additives were added to the alloy of the armor because it was precognition that could compensate for the lack of strength, survivability, and striking power if the Hammer happened to go against a strong but alive opponent.
The devil could easily react without foresight because one would have to be deaf and blind to miss the approach of a piloted golem as tall as two such devils! He could have, a thousand times could, if in a different situation, if this golem had not arrived, flying, by the way, in no way adapted to fly, at the moment of maximum tension.
The rumble of the fall of the multi-ton carcass, which does not fall into the ground when walking only thanks to runic mass compensators, could not cover the audible and, Bordar and Briontia could swear it, perplexed crunch with which the creature that almost took them became very flat, like Bordar's sense of humor, according to his, apparently, future wife.
"I can't believe it." Already unaffected by the mind-bending charms, but still as lost, both of the last-minute rescued baddies uttered. "It doesn't work like that."
"Evil bitch, I'm fucked your sheep, your donkey, your sister, and you too!" The pilot who had saved their hides didn't even seem to notice his feat, trying to get into a fighting stance, but he wasn't very good at it. "Never, never I'd accept an easy job in my profession, one more time! Why, why is it that every time I think I have everything normal, some shit happened?"
The savior was swearing, apparently either concussed or very drunk, or all of them together, very passionately, but monotonously and not particularly inventive, but loudly, even thunderously. Two people who recovered from paralysis did not go deaf only because after the first couple of statements, the sound transmission mechanics squealed particularly nastily and fell silent, finally breaking down.
"I've only read that in stupid books about knights in love." The Seductress was barely restraining a real hysteria, but the shrill and lost notes in her voice, miraculously not breaking into mad laughter, clearly indicated the state of mind of the one who had just believed, even if it was unclear in whom. "Well, it can't be like that. It can't be like that!"
"Oh, shut up." Bordar is shocked too, only not hysterical, but fatalistic because fulfilling the vows made in desperation will have to be done. "This is sickening."
The warrior feared that if he failed to fulfill at least some of these promises, Fortune herself would embody her essence beside him and give an epic kick to the careless oath-breaker. The possessor of level twenty-one and an uncommon class had lived long enough to not indulge in illusions. Unless he had just been personally kissed by the aforementioned Fortuna, he was a goblin. It really didn't happen that way. The odds were just too small.
"To Sheila's temple, yes." Giggling like a lunatic, Bree reloaded her monster speed shooter, hammering the last two bolts into it, not enchanted ones, but regular ones. "Be sure to get in there. She'll definitely appreciate it. She can't help but appreciate it."
"Planning a donation?" Strangely enough, the other attackers were in no hurry to finish them off, even though they should have, if not hit them, then at least run away from the golem crowing on the ground. "That's right, I'll sacrifice too. A lot."
"Stupid?" The question is perplexed, not meant to insult, and immediately answered. "Oh, right, definitely a fool. A wedding ritual to order. You're not going anywhere from me now! Not after this."
"What's that harlot got to do with it?" It wasn't that he refused to recant, but he hopelessly believed that the two-faced scum would be the first to recant and that he wouldn't be blamed. "Oh, but yes, it's your profession."
He was determined to keep his word and take his marriage vows together with this cold-blooded scum since fate had decreed it. But when the vow was fulfilled, the first thing he would do would be to snap her neck. The Seductress was also not going to give up her words and even kill her future husband quickly and painlessly, maybe even pleasantly. Well, in the extreme case, both of them were ready to endure at least a couple of months so as not to anger the forces that saved their lives, at the same time waiting for a reason, even if formal, for bloodshed. Neither of them doubted that there would be a reason.
* * *