by Jez Cajiao
“Death?” My brow furrowed. “Wisp, clarify the losses you expect if we fight the SporeMothers.” I ordered, and she smiled faintly.
“There is no doubt that the Prax is a highly valuable and sought-after facility; therefore the losses will be worth accepting…” she began briskly, then trailed off as she saw my face. “I estimate that, based on the information provided by the Goddess Jenae, you will be facing seven SporeMothers of various states, some nigh-on fully grown, some little more than annoyances. Therefore, with the forces you have here, and if you summon your fleet back, you should be able to defeat the invaders with less than fifty percent casualties.” The wisp smiled as though that was brilliant news, and I glared at her.
“Fifty percent?” I snarled. “With the fleet included, meaning we’d lose at least four to five hundred souls?”
“Possibly more,” she agreed calmly.
“Fuck. No,” I ground out. “I won’t enter into a battle like that, even if this thing was operational, let alone, as it is now! This Prax has lain here abandoned for centuries; it can wait a few more years.” I shook my head, dismissing her bloody stupid suggestion.
“The Prax is an Imperial War Machine. It cannot be allowed to fall into rebel hands!” she replied, sounding shocked and horrified, as though it was inconceivable that I’d leave it.
“Nearly a thousand years ago, yeah, it probably was,” I retorted. “Now, it’s a fucking derelict. Can anyone else control the systems? If I order you to lock down this area and concentrate on getting the Golems up and running, can you make damn sure that the SporeMothers and anything else can’t get in?” I asked.
“I judge it unlikely, but it is possible that the area could be secured. However…”
“How many Golems are intact and could be reawakened?” I asked. “For that matter, if you could repair the goddamn place, why the hell didn’t you already? Why wait hundreds of years for me to turn up?”
“There is no way to verify the state of the Golems until I have returned power to those areas,” she said stiffly. “As to the repairs, I was required to return to the Vault and hold fast until ordered to start repairs. It was a countermeasure to prevent damage to my core.”
“And, what, you just sat there while the world went to shit?” I asked, shocked.
“No. I slumbered as I was ordered; then, when I was reawakened by a member of the nobility, I called to the revenants that my crew became, and I attempted to reach others of my kind. The member of the noble houses had come at great risk to himself, he said. He battled through the revenants and demanded access to my core to heal, but when I permitted it, he claimed books and Skill Memories, rather than allowing the activation of the emergency protocols. I was forced to use a significant amount of my remaining mana to expel him from the core when he stole several of my Artifacts, and again, I called for help. Since then, I have been in a state of slow decline, as the last of the mana in the Prax has been drained. I have been surviving on what little ambient mana makes it past the creatures that have taken up residence, for an exceptionally long time.”
“Wait, the Lich I fought; I think he was a noble, was that…”
“The interloper, yes. He claimed several books on the undead and their capabilities, then stole a Lich Phylactery that had been stored here for safe-keeping and investigation long ago. He tied his soul to it and was reborn, spending the next several dozen years attempting to break into my core again to reach the rest of my Artifacts.”
“Okay, what…” I was cut off by a creaking groan that tore along the length of the room, and the floor shifted suddenly, making me realize just how precarious the Prax’s current structure really was.
“Jax!” Yen called frantically, and I grunted, waving my acknowledgement.
“Fine; we don’t have time for this. You accept me as Scion of the Empire; therefore, I order you to open the Vault and allow me access to the core. I will save whatever we can, and we will return when we have enough forces to retake the Prax from the SporeMothers and attempt repairs. For now, you’re coming with me.” I said firmly.
“I cannot…” she started to protest, and I cut her off.
“That’s an order, wisp.”
“But…”
“Open the damn Vault!” I snapped at her, and she stiffened, scowling at me, but waved a hand, and the panel to her right shifted, sliding back and into to the right wall, opening a narrow path into the small building.
I stepped past her and eased inside, finding a single room with shelves that ringed the walls. There were more empty slots than full, but it still held another dozen books, four glowing memory cores, and three swords, two of which were short and wide-bladed, while the third was enormous. There was also a pair of vambraces and a helm that had a subtle silvery glow, and I resolved to examine them later. I grabbed them all, only to find that I didn’t have enough room, Frantically, I dumped some of the sections of the vehicles I’d grabbed and a handful of shitty weapons, before trying again. Fortunately, this time I had plenty of room, having gained a lot by discarding the shit I’d piled up, but when I turned to the glowing Core, I growled in mounting anger.
The Core stood atop a tall narrow plinth, made up of rings that spiraled upwards, with manastones set in them, glimmering faintly. They looked to be almost exhausted; a faint glow remaining in around half, with the rest lying cracked and dull, and I swore as I realized that I might have doomed us all.
I quickly pulled up the quest and read through it while I started pulling the stones that had any charge free and dumping them into my bag.
Congratulations! You have made progress in your Quest: ‘Fix the Fixers’
You have discovered the chilling secrets of the Prax ‘Glorious Retribution,’ discovered a working, if unpowered, portal, killed the ‘Master’ and his unwilling servants, and looted the Vault.
Due to the level of difficulty involved, and the bravery shown by your acceptance of the realities of your situation, the Goddess Jenae has increased your rewards and has altered the Success Conditions of the Quest.
1) Recruit the Gnomish Survivors: 21/27
2) Recover sufficient manastones to power the ship ‘Interesting Endeavors’: 43/40
3) Eliminate Bartholomew the Lich: 1/1
4) Find and prepare the ship ‘Interesting Endeavors’ then use it to escape: 0/1
5) Bonus Condition: For each SporeMother killed, receive an additional 10,000xp.
Reward: Improved technological capacity in the Great Tower, Possible technological boosts to the fleet, Survival , Gnomish exploration vessel ‘Interesting Endeavors’, ‘ 500,000Exp
I grimaced as I dismissed the screen, seeing that I had literally just enough to get the ship up and in flight, and wishing I’d brought some of the hundreds we’d looted from the Stockpile to help power the damn thing.
When just the Core remained, I paused, turning to look at the wisp, who had been yammering onto me about protocols and requirements the entire time.
“Can you seal this up again and keep your core safe?” I asked her, and she glared at me.
“I’ve just been explaining why…”
“Yes or no, wisp!” I snapped.
“No!” she replied sharply, and I nodded to her before pulling the Core free of the stand. It was a single gem, larger than my fist, which glowed with an inner light, and as I pulled it free, I felt… something… change.
The Prax shuddered faintly, and the room around me seemed to become… lifeless. The walls stopped glowing, the lines of silvery mana that had continued spreading across the floor suddenly ceased in their movement, and the magelights began to lose what little light they held. Instead, the entire room started to dim as the power began to leech away, fading into the ether.
“Noooo, my Prax!” the wisp wailed, and I shoved the Core into my Bag of Spatial Folding, making her scream as the mana composing her dissipated.
I staggered to a halt, sensing her flowing past me and sinking into the bag, and I let out a reliev
ed sigh, even as something else cracked and the roar of water climbing grew louder.
I’d not killed her with my thoughtless action, I hoped, but with the lights dimming and the room becoming dead, the rising black sea, and the collapse of some of the Prax, I couldn’t take the time to find out.
I shoved my naginata into the bag of holding and ran the last dozen feet, leaping onto the gnomish contraption. Even the prisoners were hanging on for dear life further down the train.
“What…” I started to say, when Yen screamed at Frederikk.
“Go!” she yelled, and he grinned gleefully, hunching down and burying his hands in a pit of levers and switches. “Go as fast as you can…” she screamed, in clear disregard of her earlier advice to me. “… get us to your ship!”
The vehicle shuddered, then leapt forward like a greyhound after a rabbit. It was a single creation now, rather than a series of smaller ones, and was more rounded than before, with the additional wheels and legs from the older creations sticking out at odd angles.
As he gunned it forwards, I grabbed desperately onto a rough patch, my fingers scrabbling as I started to slide from my perch. Then a calloused hand gripped me by the back of my armor, shoving me forward, and my fingers caught the lip of a section of machinery. The small handhold allowed me to pull myself in and hunch down as flat as I could, while the wind began to whistle past me.
I glanced to the side and saw Grizz behind me. The Legionnaire nodded and forced a smile, then closed his eyes and hunched down further, going pale.
I squinted past him, finding Arrin, who was seated next to the still form of Lydia. She and Bane were strapped down, with gnomes hanging onto the machine and holding them down at the same time, but Arrin was grinning ear to ear as the walls flashed past in the darkness.
I nodded to him, flashing a sudden grin and feeling some of my annoyance and anger with him slipping away as we shared a mutual love of insane speeds.
I turned back to stare at the rapidly approaching far wall, swaying as we slalomed between the narrow corridor walls and built up even more speed, hurtling toward the far end.
The doorway that led out of the room was small, and for a brief second, I worried that it was too small, but we didn’t slow down; if anything, we picked up more speed, as one of the Gnomes further down the line started to sing.
It started as a low voice chanting, then it built as more and more joined in, intoning a weird, deep-voiced chorus. The song built as we shot into the tunnel, the extra wheels and limbs sticking out suddenly making perfect sense as we merely bounced off a wall and kept going.
We took a left, then a right, crossing corridors blurring past almost too fast to see. The contraption slammed into a pile of collapsed bones at the next intersection, sending them flying, and the rounded, thick steel ‘prow’ of the device made sudden great sense as well.
The minutes flew by as we hurtled upwards, the front of the vehicle slamming into a ramp that led higher and sent out a huge shower of sparks as we careened off the side of the wall, then smashed into a creature that had terminally bad luck. All I saw was a blur of red and green, flying chitin and insectile legs that tumbled past, and we were away.
We looped around, following the rising ramp, then came to an area where the sunlight filtering down from above showed that a barricade had been built on one end of a bridge that rose to join two slumping buildings.
I looked up and all around, desperately hoping to figure out where Frederikk was going to go instead, and I felt my heart seize as he hunched down closer and started singing even louder.
“Oh, fuck no, you crazy bastard!” I ground out, before squeezing myself down even closer to the frame.
The barricade grew larger and more solid-looking as we closed the distance, and I could hear Yen screaming at the Gnome, but with the rising singing and chanting, I knew he’d never hear us. Instead, I resigned myself to the upcoming crash, having realized that even if he wanted to stop, at this point, it would be too late.
The seconds suddenly seemed to drag out into minutes, even as they hurried by at an insane pace… then we hit it, and the world exploded around us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The barrier shattered into a thousand pieces; the section where we’d hit it was thin and clearly designed for a fast breakthrough, while the majority was solid, but I’d had the wonderful luck to be too close to a spar that stuck out, and it’d slammed into the side of the device just ahead of me, wiping me and the gnomes behind me off like the world’s most violent sweeping brush.
I tumbled from the gnomish contraption, both arms flailing wildly, and had a split second to be glad I’d stashed my naginata in the bag before I slammed into the dangling roots of a tree and felt bones breaking.
I bounced off, smashing into a wall, and then skidded across the floor to come to rest against the side of something huge that vanished above me.
I blinked, coughed out some blood, and took stock of my injuries as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.
I heard an excited sound in the distance, and a screech of metal grinding on metal as the device slammed into something and disintegrated. Cursing and shouts arose, and … laughter and cheering from the gnomes, along with a lot of growls and curses that seemed to be their normal way of acting now.
I forced myself to sit up, wincing at the pain, and blinked in an attempt to get the room to stop spinning.
“Hey, boss!” I heard a voice call, and a few seconds later, Grizz was there, reaching down and straightening me as I started to slump to one side. “You okay? You look like shit…” Grizz said, his usual cheerful manner fading once again as he examined me quickly.
“m ok’ay…” I mumbled, almost incomprehensibly, wincing as I felt bones grating against each other as I spoke. I reached up and gently touched my face, finding that my jaw and right cheekbones were grinding in places they never had before, and my fingertips came away bloody.
I closed my eyes, trying to control myself and get a handle on the pain, when a healing spell slammed into me. I gasped with relief, feeling the bones in my face pop back into place and start binding together again.
My eyes flew open as I hissed in pain, but I abruptly slumped back, being caught by Grizz again as I focused on Arrin, who’d just found us, and had clearly been the source of the healing spell.
It took a couple of seconds to run its course, but I took Grizz’s hand once it had, and he hauled me to my feet, looking me over with a critical eye as he took in my bedraggled, handicapped appearance.
“Boss, we have got to talk about the way you live your life. Seriously,” he quipped. “I mean, I’m gonna get booted out of the Legion when I get you back to them; just look at the state of you!”
I glanced down and snorted; not only was my armor dented, cut, and scratched all to hell, but I was missing my left arm below the elbow. My helmet was crushed to the point of uselessness, and I was covered in dried blood, much of it my own.
My Legion bodyguard, on the other hand, looked like he’d had a bad day, and that was it. A few dozen scrapes and scratches and a handful of small dents marred his armor, but in comparison, well.
I looked like I’d lost a fight with a blender the size of a house and had been trapped in it for an hour. He looked like he’d fallen down a few times and then got back up.
Bastard.
“Well, let’s face it…” I mumbled, rubbing at my grubby face. “If you did your job properly…” I left it hanging and winked at him.
“Are you kidding me? You’re like watching over a drunken toddler, off playing with exactly the wrong thing as soon as I turn my back!” he retorted, grinning.
“Ah, bugger off,” I snorted as I looked over at Arrin, who’d stepped closer and was watching me with a tentative grin. “Arrin, thank you, mate. That heal was exactly what I needed,” I said truthfully. “How’s everyone else?” Yen stepped into sight and visibly relaxed at seeing me upright.
“They’re fine, I think?�
�� Grizz said, looking back over his shoulder, lifting a questioning eyebrow at Yen.
“We’re all fine!” she called, her elven hearing allowing her to pick up the conversation at a distance none of the rest of us could match. “Aside from some bruises, and a single dead gnome, we all made it without any major injuries.”
“What happened to the gnome?” I asked curiously, and she simply pointed back to the barricade.
I winced, seeing the still form impaled on the same wooden stanchion that had swept me clear of the vehicle. Clearly, he’d gotten caught between the body and the wood, and boom. His race to escape ended prematurely.
“Fuck,” I said, shaking my head in sadness. The gnomes’ lives might have been short and brutal, like the majority of them seem to behave at the minute, but that didn’t mean I liked seeing one of them like that.
“Yeah, Frederikk is pretty upset. Apparently, the design was supposed to prevent that from happening. He’s furious that they failed, more so than at losing a gnome, but I guess that’s the influence of the way they’ve been living coming through…”
“He doesn’t care that they lost someone?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh, he cares, but it’s also a case of him having to kill dozens of them over the years for going feral. He’s more or less okay with the deaths, but he’s seriously pissed off about the design failure… Oh, and he’s annoyed that you ‘fell off’ as well.”
“I ‘fell off’?” I gaped. “That crazy fucker rammed a wall!”
“It was designed as an easy point to break through, apparently, but yeah. I’m not happy about the method either, but…” She gestured upwards.
I grumbled and turned, about to ask what she was talking about, when my words died in my throat.
The ship.
It was their ship, and just like the Fenris I had in storage in the Battleship, this was a work of art, especially compared to the shoddy, ugly, utilitarian things that the realm had currently.