CHAPTER 13
Ari felt his body was trying to turn itself inside out, and making a valid attempt. He was simultaneously coughing and retching, with pain pulsing through his temples in time with the revolt. Someone was also trying to kill him, slamming hands down on his chest with the kind of force that made him weep for his bruised ribs.
“Lord Aristial!” shouted Eva. “Wake up! Come on!”
“I…” Ari tried to make more words, but his mouth still wasn’t on the same page as his mind.
Luckily, Eva’s eyes met his, and she breathed a sigh of relief and relented her onslaught. Ari continued coughing and spitting up on himself, only slowly coming back to the reality of the situation.
“Ugh…” he managed. “What happened?”
“Do you remember your ring getting stuck?” asked Eva.
Ari nodded. He lifted his hand in front of his face and felt a small sense of satisfaction when he saw that his Ring of Insight was still there.
“You got it loose?” he asked.
“It came loose,” said Eva. “I’m not sure how or why. Do you remember me dragging you up the shaft and out of the tunnel?”
Ari shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Then I suppose you do not remember throwing up on me, either?” asked Eva.
“Oof,” said Ari. “Sorry. I was out for that, but I’m going to assume that I didn’t mean to.”
“Some of it got in my hair, Aristial,” said Eva.
“Gross,” said Ari. “Do you want to throw up on me to make us even?”
Eva did not look amused. Ari grinned at her anyway. He was still lying on his back, and he reached over and pulled her into a gentle hug.
“Thank you for saving me,” said Ari. “I love you so damn much.”
“You’re still giddy from the time you spent without air,” said Eva.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t change the truth.” He cupped her face and leaned in to kiss her.
“The sentiment is sweet,” said Eva, “but I would prefer to take that kiss after you’ve rinsed your mouth out.”
Ari rolled his eyes and kissed her on the cheek instead. He did rinse his mouth out, though it felt as if most of what had left him had been water he’d accidentally swallowed on the way up.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “I’m starting to get really sick of this place.”
The hallway they were in was similar to the one they’d come from, with pipes running along the walls and ambient steam. They reached an intersection with two other hallways leading off diagonally toward where they’d come from, feeding in to the one hallway that led directly ahead.
“We should try to remember the layout as much as possible,” said Eva. She’d shifted back into sword form to make carrying the unwieldy mace a little easier.
“Right,” he said. “Though it seems like all of these passageways lead toward a single end route.”
Several more intersections seemed to lend credence to the idea, with the hallway Ari continued down being only one of many that connected into the main route, like streams feeding into a river. He walked for what felt like an hour or more before the passageway finally spilled out into a massive, brightly lit chamber.
The ceiling was high, at least fifty feet overhead. The room was in the shape of a large oval, with metal doors running alongside both sides. A small set of stairs led up to a dais in the center of the room which held a massive crystalline glass pod at its center, with a dozen smaller glass globes surrounding it at the base.
Hundreds of copper pipes connected to the contraption, split equally in bunches that came from both the ceiling and floor. Whatever it was also gave off the lion’s share of the room’s illumination, and steam billowed around it from the flaws in the piping.
“Yes…” A voice resonated through the room. “Yes!”
It was as it had been before, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once, but with a depth that had Ari feeling the sound of it through his teeth. Ari gripped Azurelight in both hands and took a slow step toward the dais.
The crystal glass pod flashed with light, and a form appeared inside it. It was an Escion, except with the ethereal, ghostly attributes of a dark-blue mesmer. Ari frowned as he considered the elongated head and strange facial features, the recognition slowly dawning on him.
“Mordus?” said Ari. “That’s you, isn’t it? And here I was thinking that I’d killed you.”
“Lord Stoneblood,” boomed the voice. “I can’t thank you enough for being so eager to place yourself in my power.”
“That’s an interesting interpretation,” said Ari. “I’m actually here to gather more essence, but you can think what you want.”
“You are here because I summoned you,” said Mordus. “You will serve as my hound. You will gather shards of the Godsword and bring them to me!”
A hissing noise came from both sides of the room as the metal doors Ari had noticed earlier slid open, steam billowing from within. Two dozen steam golems lurched into motion, carrying a collection of different weapons between them, all fixated and heading toward Ari.
“Eva!” shouted Ari. He held Azurelight out to the side, and the sword shifted into a mace-wielding woman. She split off from him, moving to engage with the steam golems approaching from the left, who were slightly ahead of the others.
Ari didn’t have a weapon, but he did have a scroll. He pulled it loose from his tunic and breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that the water hadn’t damaged the parchment. He kept it clutched in one hand, his will ready to trigger it when needed, and considered the situation.
A spell with a name like shock dome seemed to imply that it would work to either defend or attack in all directions. Ari shot a glance at Eva, who was doing an impressive job at taking on, or at least holding off, the dozen steam golems on the left side of the room. Her mace let out rhythmic clangs as she pounded them back, but he knew that she couldn’t keep it up forever.
One of the steam golems near Ari jumped forward with a surprising display of metallic dexterity. It had a whip attached to the end of its arm and snapped it forward with a fast and precise movement. Ari ducked underneath the cracking tip, but he was unprepared for the burst of blinding magical energy that came with it.
“Damn it!” he cried, blinking away the after image of the flash. The steam golems were moving to surround him. A few that Eva had been fighting against had split off toward him, perhaps sensing the opportunity.
It suited his plan perfectly. Ari dodged another whip strike and tried to position himself so that he was at the center of as many steam golems as he could collect. Eva saw what he was doing and clubbed one of the ones she was fighting toward him.
Ari probed into the scroll with his will, feeling the power of the spell for an instant before triggering it. He felt every hair on his body stand up straight, or at least attempt to, as a web of lightning formed around his person.
He had time to realize that casting a lightning-based spell while still damp from the water and wearing metallic jewelry was a bad idea. He didn’t have time to do anything about it.
The lightning danced over his skin, tensing his muscles and making his jaw tighten involuntarily, but that was the total of its effect on him.
Its effect on the steam golems was beyond what he’d been hoping for. The web of lightning burst outward, striking nearly all of the metal constructs and completely disrupting them. The golems seized as the lightning hit, twisting their bodies in ways that caused metal to snap free.
One of them bent over backward, folding itself completely in half. Another exploded into pieces, limbs flying across the room. Ari saw one compress inward, pulling into an approximation of the fetal position and letting out a grinding screech as its body tried to compress even further.
“Eva?” he called.
“I’m here.” Eva had dropped to one knee and shielded her eyes outside of the spell’s range. “I’m fine.”
There were two stone golems left, one
of which she’d already nearly destroyed. Ari watched as she brought her mace to the face of the other, ending the fight.
“You fool!” screamed Mordus. “You are alive only because I will it! Fall to your knees and beg for your life, and perhaps I will still allow you to serve me.”
Ari rubbed a finger along the edge of his chin and leaned into a suspicion he’d been harboring since he’d first seen Mordus in the glass pod.
“On our way down here, we ran into a small group of steam golems,” he said. “They attacked us immediately, and seemed like they were trying to kill us. Up until Eva shouted ‘Lord Stoneblood.’ They stopped immediately, and that was when we first heard your voice, urging us to go deeper in.”
“You walked right into the heart of my power!” shouted Mordus. “I could strike you down where you stand, and if you refuse to serve me, I will do so, primitive.”
“Will you?” Ari probed his will into the Ring of Insight, which replied in the negative. “You won’t. You can’t, can you? That’s why these steam golems were so much easier for us to take on. You don’t want me dead.”
Even as a mesmer, he could see Mordus seething at the implication of his assertion. Eva fell into step beside Ari, and they both approached the dais, coming to a stop at the bottom stair.
“Eva, would you like to hear my guess about what’s going on here?” asked Ari.
“Very much so,” said Eva.
“It seems as though Mordus and the Escions have something akin to the Soul Engine,” he said. “When Mordus died, his soul essence collected here, in this pod. Also much like the Soul Engine, it seems like there is some type of flaw in the process. Otherwise, why would he still be in the pod after more than a month, rather than back in his body?”
“That’s… very astute,” said Eva.
“You sound surprised,” said Ari.
“I am,” said Eva. “No offense. Did your ring help you with any of that?”
“Of course it didn’t,” lied Ari.
“Primitive!” shouted Mordus. “You have no understanding of what the stakes here are! Obey, or be destroyed!”
Ari walked up the stairs and approached the contraption directly. He summoned Azurelight to his hand and poked the sword against the copper pipes leading into Mordus’ glass pod.
“Before I destroy you again, I’m curious,” said Ari. “You keep mentioning this Godsword and how you and your people are searching for it. To what end? What does it do, anyway?”
Mordus let out a low chuckle, slowly building to a raucous, borderline-crazed laugh.
“You’re pathetic,” said Mordus. “Once you stood against us. Now, your world is just one more corrupt bead on the necklace of our conquests. You don’t even remember, you who stand descendant from the breakers of the Godsword. We will have the shards back, and your pathetic civilization will bear the brunt of the blight for as long as it takes to revert you into the beasts you are!”
“That’s nice.” Ari spun, slashing Azurelight into the copper pipes. The blade bit through the softer metal easily, and he swung again, and again. Steam gushed forth. Mordus let out an ear-splitting scream that resonated through the entire room. Ari hacked at the pipes until he’d severed all of them, then smashed the pod’s crystal glass just for good measure.
A glowing blue sphere meandered out, as aimless and mindless as any Mesmer that he’d seen before. Ari hesitated for only a second before swiping Azurelight through it, absorbing what little essence it contained.
CHAPTER 14
“Two dozen steam golems,” said Ari. “Along with this.”
Ari had done a circuit around the ruined contraption that had contained Mordus, only to find a crystal globe in the back half filled with distilled essence. It was more than he’d ever seen in one place before, an amount large enough to make it hard to imagine in terms of enchanted items or tower teleportations.
“We’ve accomplished our goal, it seems,” said Eva. She’d set her muscles and her mace to the task of smashing open the destroyed golems and retrieving their essence.
“Apparently we have,” said Ari. “But still…”
He shook his head. He had an odd, unjustifiable sense that they were missing something. He’d apparently destroyed Mordus, but once the fight had been over, the steam-powered doors that had opened to release the golems had slid closed, and the sound of metal on metal and shifting gears emanated from behind them like a gentle goodbye.
“Mordus is dead,” he continued, “but I can’t help but feel like this spire still has more secrets locked away within it.”
He’d found another hatch, too, directly behind the dais. On a whim, Ari had set his hand on the essence lock and almost gasped at the amount it required to open.
He had a general sense of how far down the rune lift had brought him, and it hadn’t been to the bottom of the visible portion of the spire, which in itself was only a section of a structure that surely must have reached down to the ocean bottom. There was more to explore within Deepwater Spire, more opportunity and more danger.
“Let’s take the victory we’ve been given,” said Eva. “We still have to reach the roof and the tower, but if we can accomplish that, we’ll be able to return to the tower having accomplished what we set out to do.”
“More than what we set out to do,” he said. “There is a ton of value here that we can make use of. For starters…”
Ari found the enchanted whip that one of the steam golems had been wielding and slipped it into his pack.
“With this, we can start making useful enchanted weapons,” said Ari. “Both for us to use defending Etheria and to sell in Cliffhaven.”
“You already had a few enchantments that you could have used for that,” said Eva.
“Yes and no,” said Ari. “An item with an enchantment similar to my Feathercloak or Ring of Insight would have been a little too nuanced to sell that many of. I also have Miragion, but the enchantment of that is so powerful that I doubt I’d ever be able to mass produce it.”
“Mass production is what you have in mind?” asked Eva.
“What better way to take advantage of all this essence?” asked Ari. “Of course, we’ll use some of it for activating rune wards and keep a portion in the tower for teleportation, but making enchanted weapons will be the most efficient way for us to raise money for Etheria. Especially given that we now have a bunch to get started with.”
He gestured to the various weapons scattered across the floor that had once belonged to the stone golems. There were plenty of daggers and short swords, a few longer blades, and a single silver spear with intricate engravings running along its length that he suspected would be perfect for Rin.
“We can’t take all of these with us,” said Eva. “There’s only so much we can carry.”
“Can’t you just put a bunch of weapons in your arms to take with you into your sword form?” asked Ari.
“There’s a limit to what the form-shifting magic extends to,” said Eva. “I suppose I could take the mace I already have, the spear, and maybe one of the longswords.”
“That should do,” said Ari. “I’ll stuff the whip with the enchantment and a bunch of daggers into my pack.”
They loaded the essence and weapons up. Eva shifted into her sword form while holding her burden, and Ari sheathed Azurelight. He took one last look at the room, hesitating as his eyes lingered on one of the smaller steam golems.
Its hand had come loose at some point during its struggle against Eva and her mace. Ari crouched down and picked it up. The hand was undamaged, and even the rune ward inscribed into the back of it had come out unscathed. It was smaller than Ari’s own hand, but the fingers weren’t otherwise that different in shape or size.
“It’s almost perfect,” he muttered.
“What is?” asked Eva.
“Ah, nothing.” He stood up and slipped the copper hand into one of the pack’s pockets. “Just an idea.”
The trip back through the spire was long but relat
ively straightforward. The underwater tunnel gave them a little trouble, but more due to the care Ari had to take to stay clear of the pipes this time rather than because of new obstacles.
The rune lift rose at a much slower rate than it descended. Ari and Eva were treated to repeat views of the Weatherblight biomes, and Ari found himself wishing that he’d forced Mordus to tell him more about them while he’d had the chance.
“Do you think we could ever destroy this place?” he asked.
“I’m not sure if it would be possible, given its size,” said Eva. “Do you suspect that doing so would stop the Weatherblight?”
“Maybe,” said Ari. “Maybe not. Mordus spoke of other worlds having also been corrupted. It might be that if we destroyed the spire, the Escions would just send down another one.”
Eva was still in her sword form, so Ari couldn’t see her expression, but he got the distinct sense that she was contemplating something.
“Do you believe that other Escions would react to the move?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t they?” asked Ari. “I’d been working under the assumption that they were up there, living on the surface of The Stray moon in the same way we live down here.”
“Why did they only send Mordus?” asked Eva. “It’s been hundreds of years since this spire first landed, has it not? Why nothing since then?”
Ari shrugged. It was a good question, and he wasn’t sure whether Eva’s question comforted him or unnerved him. Were the rest of the Escions just biding their time, or was there more to the situation? And what was the significance of the Godsword Mordus had mentioned?
“I’m not sure if we’ll have answers to these questions anytime soon,” said Ari.
“I suppose not,” said Eva.
The rest of the journey out of the spire was easy enough. Ari and Eva retraced their footsteps up into the main room of the top level, and then up the spiral hallway that led to the roof. It was the middle of the night when they climbed up the ladder, and fortunately one with a clear sky overhead. The two of them headed straight for the tower, and Ari could hear the distinct sound of an argument as he opened the door.
Reborn Raiders (The Weatherblight Saga Book 4) Page 9