Now that the surging excess of mana had been dealt with, Malcom tried to gather his thoughts. Something big happened, and his peaceful time of being able to tinker around in the dungeon uninterrupted might be coming to an end sooner rather than later. It was time to kick his defense and readiness into overdrive- 'Is it? Well. Yes, it's a good idea, but does that mean I want to listen to it? I just calmed down to try and catch my breath and think for a minute, and I'm already getting these urges to get back to doing something else.' The mana was being channeled, albeit rather sub-optimally as he was just digging outward without focus, so Malcom calmed himself and peered out over the densely-packed masses of mana doing their best to form into mages, eyes locked on the first that was created.

'I can't wait to try and experiment with spells, but I hope that my summons come with some idea of what they're doing. They better, for all I picked a perk for that very purpose. If they have to fumble around for it too, it'll be slow going before I can get things rolling. They do have a limited selection of spells, though, so I can only hope that's due to the related information being imbued into them. Now, I can't summon anything else because... because... I'm being stupid, that's why.' He had limited his core room to a fifty-foot box and thought it would be more space than he would ever need, then merely settled in and made it his shrine for Amanda. If he could just expand the space, he would be able to summon more creatures, obviously. So how did he expand the core room without having to give up his inner sanctum he had built up so far?

'It almost looks like I've made a proper temple to you, Amanda.' Malcom noted with amusement. Grand murals across the obsidian stone of the walls, multiple statues arrayed around the area, his raised podium that held his core in the very middle of it all felt almost altar-like. 'Perhaps that's not the worst idea I've had. A temple. I can only have one room as a core room, but a room is defined by the walls, is it not?' With his mind thinking about temples he had seen in the pact, particularly the Greek temples with their pillars, it seemed right to him and gave him architecture he could try and imitate. Thick pillars formed an open-aired perimeter around what he had already created, ringing it and giving some sense of boundary from the growing room outside of them. He drew mana inward from his outer reaches, focusing on pouring as much mana as needed toward this task to complete it.

The stone evaporated away as quickly as cotton floss meeting water, the construction effort billowing outward. The location of his core podium seemed to soar upward by comparison, as surfaces in all directions were dug downward, leaving a sloping, pyramid-shaped approach to climb upward. It lacked any staircase or way to approach easily, barring perhaps flight, and jagged crags in the surface were once again broken further apart as spikes of the obsidian forced upward, the approach to the new 'temple' bristling like a defensive hedgehog. As if that wasn't enough, whirls of silver curled and tangled between the spikes like playful snakes, intertwining and entangling around one another. The edges of which were tingled with razor sharpness, a glistening silver hedge of bladed wire to make forcing up the slick, smooth surface of the pyramid even more agonizing. 'Only fitting for others to have to trudge through hell to reach you, Amanda. Then they might feel the smallest sliver of what I endure every day without you.'

Now for the areas for summoning. He carved deep trenches in the pyramid around the base in each cardinal direction, creating deep wells where his summons could form up as necessary and march outward, or use as a last line of defense. As these formed, Malcom took the time to start another mage's summoning, packing these trenches as much as he could manage. 'Good, I am allowed to summon out here, even with the pillars. Though, I don't see why a doorway stops me from expanding where I can summon but pillars don't. Is it something symbolic? Bah.' The questions behind 'why' mattered little, as long as it worked. The end result of his trenches filled with forming Mechanical mages was somewhat akin to the clay soldiers he had heard of being buried with some important figures back in his previous world. Was it clay? He knew it was something like clay. Terra... something? 'No, focus! Stop letting your mind wander. … Why? Actually, why do I need to stop letting my mind wander? It's you again, isn't it? Toying with my thoughts? Trying to force me down a path without thinking on it, hm? I'm onto you.' Nothing responded. With a mental grumble, he shifted his attention back to the room- the temple- he was creating.

Outside of the entrenched, dug-in lines he expanded his reach further, with grander pillars as thick as houses roughly interspersed through the space, slowly growing into a forest of columns that held up the mass of weight overhead. He might have been able to work some levitation effect into the entrance staircase, and he still wasn't sure exactly how that worked, but when it came to not having his core crushed flat, he wanted to at least feel secure thinking there was some sort of physics at work holding everything up above him. Stretching further and further, until he had created a vast chamber to spawn his armies in. 'Armies...? Hm. I suppose I will need a lot of troops. Calling it an army should suffice. I'm only preparing for an eventuality, that's all.' Around the midpoint of each of the towering support pillars for the wider cavern, platforms formed where more Picantch could roost or be summoned in great numbers. They cost him next to nothing at this point, pure pittance, and the greater cost of creating them was the momentary attention they each required to demand to form than actual mana.

The moment he stopped expanding the cavernous room, the mana swelled inside Malcom's core, the ache of over-fullness overtaking him immediately. The mana generation seemed no less vehemently aggressive now than before, so he hurriedly channeled it into thousands and thousands of forming figures. Crowforged appeared in ranks a hundred across, their feather-plated figures starting to form in mere minutes. Non-mage baseline Mechanicals started to appear in alternating patterns, leaving either of the troops in blocks a hundred ranks deep. Ten thousand troops, and he was dropping them as quickly as he could in block after block, surrounding the temple with a growing force. Each troop took only a flicker of his attention to start the process of, and silvery mists of mana fogged from his core like a tide as it rushed out to the appropriate locations to form. Entire flocks of Picantch were created for each pillar, forming a slow-growing cacophony from subtle noises caused merely by shuffling around on the hard stone. A hundred thousand talons clicking with their shuffling.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

'More. More. This isn't enough. Send them forward, claim their places in the tunnels. Flood them like a tide and make room for the next. The troops will shake the earth in march. The flocks will blind the heavens from peeking. I will not be stopped. I will grow freely, I will take greedily, I will crush them all. They will suffer. THEY MUST SUFFER. I hate them. I hate them all. I hate IT all.' Vision and thought alike turned red, Malcom struggling to form a coherent thought. Once more, the words flowed through his mind as unstoppable as the flood of mana had been, and just as overwhelming. The first of the soldiers had finished forming, and knelt toward the raised temple in unison. Each new rank that formed followed suit. The Picantch grew agitated, flapping their wings and cawing repeatedly, almost in unison, but in a cacophony that reverberated off the walls. The kneeling mechanical troops saluted fist-to-chest, bashing their metal hands off plated chests, forming a deep, thumping rhythm of metal clashing against metal.

It was hypnotizing. Intoxicating. This. This was how things were meant to be. Unbidden words rose into Malcom's thoughts, caught in the frenzy, or by something else. A chant, and it made his non-existent blood boil, with visions of violent suffering forming in his mind. A hallucination? A revelation? He saw battles of armies, on scales that covered continents. Great gouts of flames that poured from the earth like bursting volcanoes reaching for the clouds above. Of shadows dancing in the flames, formless. No, merely... free-flowing? A flap of something that was definitely wings cut through the fire, rising with the blast of flame as it had propelled the blurred figure skyward. Vaguely humanoid, it burst into the clouds with such force it punched a massive hole through them, before the mental picture shattered into fragments, a blinding ache all but overwhelming Malcom's thoughts. The chanting, however, lingered in his mind. It was not his thoughts, but it remained nonetheless.

Break. Burn. Slash. Churn.

Soon the heretics shall learn.

Blood. Hate. Death. Fate.

Mighty Gods made supplicate.

Hunger. Fear. Purpose. Clear.

All my foes shall disappear.

Rise. Tall. Over. All.

False divinity shall fall.

It merely repeated the stanza of the poem, over and over, the intensity behind the words growing heavier. It felt like every word was being yelled, then screamed, and then it was no longer a sound comparable to a verbal relation. At that point, it was merely reverberating through Malcom's entire being, the vibrations pulsing through him, then echoing back. 'Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP. Get out of my head. Get out of my mind. I can't stand the way you try and push me to purpose! I know you're out there! Toying with me! Playing with my mind. What do you want? WHY DO YOU BOTHER ME? I hate you. I hate you. I HATE YOU.'

This time, however, Malcom no longer felt the sensation tickling at the back of his mind that he was merely screaming at himself in the void. Cold coursed through his core, through his very soul, as he felt as if he had drawn the attention of something else. Something vast. That blurred, winged figure wrapped in shadow formed in his mind again, facing directly toward Malcom's view. It was pitch black, and had only a vague shape resembling a human face, the shadows constantly flicking and swirling to deny even a hard outline of features. It was impossible to see, but somehow Malcom felt that it opened its eyes only after he had screamed his hate toward the creature. There was no change in what he saw, but the cold jolting through him intensified, the sensation of being eyed by a predator too close to do anything about. A single word pounded at his consciousness like a blacksmith hammering his work.

Good.

The urge to snarl like a beast rose in him, trying to war against the cowardice he felt around his soul in icy grasp. It was real. It was real. He hadn't hallucinated, he hadn't been imagining it. Something was toying with him. It knew he was here. 'Why? Why? Why am I here? Why did you drag me into this fucking hole? Why do you try and force my thoughts?' No response, this time, as the figure blurred further, fading from his mind, as if another had turned away from the conversation, losing interest. A final scream ripped from him, the most important question he had to ask before the shadow vanished completely. 'WHERE'S AMANDA?!'

The fading paused for but a moment, solidifying a miniscule amount as if a glance over the shoulder of one departing. Again, despite seeing no face, Malcom felt the smirk beneath the blurred shadows that concealed expression. Malcom felt hope pulse in his heart. He had its attention. It must know something! It wouldn't react like that if it didn't know. 'Tell me! Damn you, tell me where she is!' The sensation of a smirk only grew, and the figure began to fade once more. 'Stop! STOP! You know! You know! Tell me. TELL ME OR I'LL KILL YOU. I WILL HUNT YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE WORLD. TELL ME OR I SWEAR ON ALL I KNOW I WILL END YOU.'

The illusion shattered, and Malcom was left staring around his inner sanctum, the statues, the images, all of Amanda brought him no comfort, now. They were but facsimiles. False comfort he shouldn't lean on. But he couldn't bear himself to change a thing about this temple to her. A reminder, then, mocking him to find her, to ensure that no matter how distracted he grew, or how much anyone tried to press him, he merely had to look around himself to be reminded of his goal. Now, however, there were two goals. While Amanda came first, and was obviously the most important, the lesser goal lit a fire in him almost as intense. Someone needed to die. Slowly. Painfully. Hatefully.